(Photo courtesy of flickr.com)

I met up with my son this afternoon and I was delighted to see him smiling and looking very relaxed. “What’s going on?” I asked, thinking maybe he’d just gotten a cash advance loan. “Cars are pouring in,” he said. “Don’t ask me why or where from; I don’t know. All I can tell you is that my six technicians are working flat out, even overtime, and buisness is looking great.”

What a change from the past two months. My son operates a small business that provides pre-delivery services to car dealers. They fit radios, antennas, alarm systems, keypad locks, tracking devices, GPS, and even inboard computers. All these items, as ordered by the car buyers, are fitted while the car is in storage and prior to delivery.

Work stopped completely

Business was going quite well, despite being below its normal turnover due to the recession, and then about two months ago my son arrived at the storage center one morning to be told, “You have to take your crew out of here. There are no new cars and we cannot tell you when cars will start arriving again. We can’t have your men wandering around with nothing to do.” Naturally, he was devastated. He switched to providing repair services, but that dried up after a week or so, too. Two of his technicians quit their jobs to look for other work, and as much as he valued them, he accepted their resignations with relief.

People were laid off

All in all he laid off only three men and managed to keep the other five busy with all sorts of car-related odd jobs. He himself looked pale and nervous as he stood and watched his years of hard work building the business go down the drain. Then he managed to get a cash advance loan to help him through the next few weeks.

Suddenly, business started up again

Today my son is a new man. He has worked until midnight almost every day this week to fill in for the men who left but is quite happy with the situation. On the other hand, he says, “It all happened so suddenly that I’m nervous I’ll get to the workshop one morning and we’ll be shut down again.”
From what I can make out in the press reports, the car industry is going through a major crisis in the wake of the recession. People simply are not buying new cars. But as always happens, after the shock wave dissipates, things return to some semblance of normality and everything starts up again. So long as you don’t look over your shoulder and see the newspaper headlines or the homeless in the streets, you’re fine.

The casualties are everywhere

The casualties are everywhere: the unemployed, the homeless, those that have lost their pensions and have had to return to work, and those who are working at jobs way below their positions before the recession. I think it’s going to take years and years for things to come right, if they ever do. The number of empty stores still seems to be increasing and retail trade is nowhere near what it was.

Let’s hope the holidays help!

Hopefully, the coming holiday season will give business a boost along with a dose of cheer. A cash advance loan is a good back-up plan to make sure ends meet while sharing a little joy in the upcoming (and expensive) holiday season.

Apply here for a Cash Advance Loan

Novak Djokovic may need one of his credit cards to help pay the fines for his latest on-court outburst. (Photo: Wikipedia.org)

“Use one of your credit cards, Novak!” I shout from my semi-comatose position on the couch. I just witnessed a tennis player’s breakdown that’s going to cost him money, maybe lots of it. Novak Djokovic missed a tiny little lob over the net and smashed his racquet into the court surface in rage. The racquet, of course, folded and close-up shots from the TV cameras showed possible ridges in the court surface.

This is Gonna Cost!

Whatever happens, this little display of temper is going to cost you, Novak. Probable fine from the APT tennis organization will be in the region of $10,000, wasted racket – $200, repairs to courts surface – a whole debate. The Shanghai Club may decide to lay a complete new surface, because the surfacing contractor will no doubt tell them that it is impossible to ‘patch’ a court surface… “We will never get it perfectly smooth.” If you are really unlucky, they may decide to resurface all the courts in the club so the colors match. As far as the racquet is concerned, one of your credit cards will look after all the messy details.

The Money Angle

This year is the first that Shanghai joins eight other cities in hosting an ATP World Tour Masters 1000 event, the new top tier of tournaments on the ATP World Tour. It is also the finale to the three-week Asian swing of the ATP World Tour. The prize money is over five million dollars. Wow, Novak, you couldn’t have picked a worse place for your demonstration. Over a billion Chinese will remember you.

We Understand

We may be highly critical of your actions and your uncontrollable desire to smash something, but inside we do understand. The court surface was a better choice than your opponent, Gilles Simon, or the umpire or even some stray character out of the audience. But the media is going to dine out for weeks on this event. All sportsmen and others who are trained to such a high pitch snap easily. My grandson, aged nine, lost a swimming race by a touch last week and he’s inconsolable, mentally kicking himself for taking too long on a turn. He hasn’t smashed anything in rage, but I’m sure he will learn as he gets older.

Ambition

It’s all about ambition, the desire to win, to excel, to never be second. Every time we are on the way to the swimming pool, grandson reminds me that his ‘dream’ is to swim in some future Olympic Games. I hope he makes it. Then he says, “What was your dream when you were my age, Pop?” It’s difficult to explain that I wanted to be a tail-gunner in a Liberator bomber. Luckily, I was too young to achieve my dream.

The Novak Djokovic Dream

Novak has achieved his. At age 24, he will be elevated to the world’s number three ranking in a week’s time, something very few people manage to do. He has already won about 14 million dollars playing tennis, so he walks with a wallet full of unlimited credit cards. The racquet-slamming incident was not money linked, just an outward sign of sportsman’s total frustration.

Eggplant: The beauty is more than skin deep (Photo courtesy of flickr.com)

Oh thank you, Valerie Bertinelli,  for your wonderful Tuscan-style soup recipe! I am so excited! I spent last October in Tuscany with a painting group and I really enjoyed the food and the wine and most of all the soups that preceded every meal.

As soon as I came home I started collecting Tuscan soup recipes and I have been making something different every day. I know these soups are supposed to be very healthy, but the truth is I’m putting on a bit of weight. Could this be from all the bread I eat with the soup?

Meet the soup maker

I’m a retired engineer, writer, and soup maker. I got into the soup side after listening to a woman – not my wife – complain about the hardships of cooking. I went into the kitchen, took down a recipe book from the shelf, and proceeded to make a passable pot of bean soup. Not only did I find the task relatively easy, I found it relaxing. I mentally composed an article as I was blending the beans. (Reminder: Buy a new, hand-held blender; the old one is burned out. Reminder: Apply for a payday loan to buy the blender; the bank account is running on empty.)

Meet Jenny and Valerie

The recipe came to me courtesy of Valerie Bertinelli a spokesperson for Jenny Craig, Inc.  Jenny Craig is a weight loss, weight management, and nutrition company headquartered in Carlsbad, California. The company was founded in Melbourne, Australia, in 1983 and was established in the United States in 1985. The company became a part of Nestlé Nutrition in 2006. For this and other favorite Jenny Craig dishes visit www.jennycraig.com.

Eggplant: The blossoms are as lovely as the fruit (Photo courtesy of wikimedia.org)

Meet the eggplant

The Valerie Bertinelli Soup recipe has eggplant as an ingredient. The eggplant, (aka aubergine or brinjal), is a member of the Solanaceae plant family, commonly known as the nightshades.

The smooth, shiny, ovoid, purple to blackish-purple or white fruit of the eggplant is highly valued as a flavor-holding, culinary ingredient. Closely related to other nightshades like tomatoes and potatoes, eggplant is native to Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lank, and India.

Any fruit or vegetable that can survive the monsoon rains, floods, and other natural disasters of such native lands doesn’t deserve to end up in the soup –  but it certainly imparts a wonderful texture and flavor.  I whipped up a quick version of the Valerie Bertinelli Soup recipe and it was delicious!

Coming soon: An Engineer’s Guide to Soup Making

My personal soup recipe collection continues to grow and I am seriously considering publishing it in the form of a book. I have already decided on the name: “An Engineer’s Guide to Soup Making.” I think it will be a winner and will attract many men into the kitchen. With the Valerie Bertinelli Soup recipe to start with, you can’t go wrong!

If I don’t plant anything in my garden will I raise a nice looking crop of weeds? Every year we refresh the soil by mixing in compost and fertilizers. We rake it smooth and then we plant nice fresh seedlings that we buy at the nursery, carefully selecting the colors unto we have a pleasant mix. Then we water liberally, and adjust the drip irrigation system and sit back to listen and to watch our garden grow. If it sounds as though it covers a few acres, that’s fine – we treat it as such. It’s actually 170 square feet in area, it’s up on the third floor and all the plants are in containers around the edges.

Avid gardeners

We have always been keen gardeners and wherever we have lived we have created colorful gardens that we enjoy immensely. Living in apartments is different; if there is a balcony it is generally narrow and difficult to transform into a garden. But when we saw this apartment we understood that we could have a garden. The architect sacrificed a room and in its place is a room-sized balcony. So we’re back in the gardening business, bringing bright colors back into our lives. But this is going to be tough summer.

Take Cash Advance

I suppose I could apply for a Cash Advance and take another trip to the nursery and spend on plants, but I’m not sure – my ‘must have’ list grows longer by the day and the garden is about halfway down.

The money shortage

This summer there are 2 shortages – money and water. The money one has been going on for about a year and there is no end in sight. Now and again there is a flutter of movement but it is brief and all it does is mislead everyone into thinking that major change is talking place. The truth is that nothing has changed. Unemployment is up and the amount of work around is down.

The water shortage

The water shortage is easier to understand. The amount of water available to us humans is pretty static – we have not learned to make new water in any appreciable quantities. All the water we use is recycled and we just keep using the same water over and over again. The big recycling plant up in the sky works pretty well. It’s called rain and we depend on it for our very lives. This year there are floods in China and a drought in England, next year there will be droughts and floods in different countries. This year we are having a drought year right here and water is scarce – and therefore the rates go up making it expensive as well. Plus there are restrictions about watering gardens.

At the nursery

Our visit to the nursery this morning wasn’t the usual happy-go-lucky affair. We looked for the cheap; we selected perennials instead of annuals so we got less color than usual. We also looked for hardy plants, those that will thrive on little water, lest the water department discovers what’s going on up here on the third floor. We rushed home and pulled out the dead plants from last year, added compost and fertilizer and planted.

Watering

I checked the microscopic sized computer that controls the water and set it to drip for 6 minutes in every 24 hours. I hope the plants will be happy.

Here we go again – the same headlines, the same accusations and the same agonized shrieks and violent threats coming from gypped investors. It all sounds so nice and familiar.

Virus Warning

If someone, anyone, whether his name is Ponzi, Madoff, Standford, Tannebaum or anything else, offers you a return on your investments of 20 percent per month, hit delete and run for your life. You were at the point of losing everything. You were about to be stung by the Ponzi virus. If you are having a genuine money problem, contact the Personal Money Store and take a Cash Advance. That way you may get a little less, but you will be free to move around town and spend it.

Money

Money is a strange thing – everyone wants it. They want theirs and they want yours. If they have some, they want more. Then they want yours no matter how little or how much you have. Some people cannot control their desire for money and will go to great lengths to get their hands on it. And some, of course, are prepared to sit in jail for it.

A recession

Every financial situation gives rise to a new crop of crooks, those who come out of the woodwork when they get a whiff of a new smell. The recession is producing its share of these people as well. Simply put, new financial conditions produce new challenges.

The recession factor A

One of the good (?) effects of the recession is that old and ongoing Ponzi schemes are not only affected, they are ravaged by the same fiscal turbulence pounding the world’s legitimate businesses. They have been collapsing at a record clip, exposing prolific, rampant and colossal frauds that have bilked investors of billions of dollars.

The recession factor B

The bad effects of the recession are that many more people are trying to set up fraudulent money making schemes. They use the low interest rates that prevail in such times to entice investors (read suckers) into placing money with them at high and unobtainable interest rates.

The latest

A South African by the name of Tannenbaum launched a scheme which has fleeced billions of dollars from about 400 investors, including some very high-profile businessmen. The scheme has been operating for about four years and provided investors a return of more than 20 percent over three months. In all honesty I ask you, if someone came and offered you an investment plan that would pay more than 20 percent over three months, wouldn’t you be suspicious, or at least cautious?

The high profilers

In every one of these Ponzi schemes that has burst into the limelight, we hear the agonized screams of the injured, the lamed and the ruined. “I put my life savings in there,” he/she sobs to the media. “How could my friend do this to me?”

It’s easy

According to the many Ponzi stories on the internet, it’s easy to get into this business. No start-up capital required. Just a little nerve and a great big uncontrollable desire to make money on someone else’s back.

I keep reading all this green stuff that everyone’s writing and I am full of admiration for those that would repair our planet. Then I decided to take the green matter one step further and live green. I made the announcement in the kitchen where my wife and her 2 assistants, my daughters, were preparing dinner. I ended my little speech by saying to my wife, “you are the manager of our Green Project. You decide what we do.” She nodded in silent acceptance. Oh boy… Did I hear shrieks of laughter after I left the kitchen?

Dinner

Dinner turned out to be salads, fresh fruit and 2 pieces of whole-wheat bread. The bread was quickly withdrawn when daughter number 2 reminded us that bread is baked in an electric oven and using electricity is a green no-no. I was about to suggest that we could get around the electrical problem by taking a Cash Advance and buying bread which is a dietary necessity, but then I realized that the cooking factor would still be there. We definitely saved money on the dinner.

Shower

I hopped into the shower before going to bed to find the water icy cold. “I turned the boiler off. Heating water with electricity is a green no-no. I suggest you build one of those solar water heating panels tomorrow.”

“But I arranged to go fishing with the boys…”

“Your choice. I myself find the cold showers invigorating. Plus we’re saving money on electricity and saving the planet.” I saved more money on water. I was out of that shower in a flash.

Bed

“Reading lamps are out. Electricity again. But we don’t have to give up reading in bed, we’ll use candles. I managed about 2 pages of the thousand page monster book I was trying to finish. “Can’t we just…?” I asked. I got a silent headshake. Money saved on my candle.

Breakfast

Breakfast was cereal and cold milk and an awful concoction of hand-stirred cold coffee. I was presented with a small scrap of paper which simply read, “Savings to date $35.78.” I sprinted for the garage so I could get away from this self-inflicted madness and get to the office and environmental sanity as quickly as possible.

The car

The garage was locked with the largest padlock I have ever seen. Yep, my car is not green. It’s not even hybrid, just an old-fashioned fossil fuel guzzling super-comfortable Chev. I love it! I grabbed one of the girl’s old bikes from the tool shed, pumped up the tires and made for the station. I have to admit that I enjoyed the bike ride but hated inhaling everyone else’s exhaust fumes. I also hated the feeling that I was a moving target for every car on the road. I broke the green rules by riding on the electric powered train and enjoyed it. I may get back to bike riding in the countryside after this green experiment is over.

The office

The office brews great hot coffee, has an electric water cooler and as a senior draftsman I have an electric pencil sharpener.

The day

All in all I had a good “green” day. We saved money and if we keep this up and iron out some of the bumps, we can live green lives. Like everything else it will take some work.

Remember how things were before the recession? There was a lot to do; my many clients sent emails requesting work. I got out of bed early in the morning to write and I wrote late into the night to keep up with the demand. Everyone paid their accounts, in full and on time and life was pretty hectic. Then, almost without warning, came the recession. It was called a ‘downturn’, a ‘slowdown’, an ‘adjustment’ and only when it got very serious did it turn into a global disaster where it remains to this day.

Life changed

Life changed, alright. For the first time I was forced to take an Online Payday Loan to keep a few creditors from breaking down the door. I had always been a good payer, probably the best payer in town. There was plenty of money in the bank so why keep people waiting for theirs? The work requests twitched a couple of times and then lay still. I searched around but there was nothing. So I introduced a few little changes as well, in keeping with the changes in the overall economy. I took a crossword break/nap on the couch after lunch. No point in sitting in front of a non-moving computer, is there? I went shopping with my wife to the supermarket mainly to supervise the spending hold-back that I had introduced. I had an occasional morning coffee shop meeting with other unemployed colleagues. And then there’s the beach…

I like it

It’s easy to get used to a life of idleness. Bertrand Russell, the twentieth century’s most important liberal thinker, wrote in his essay, In Praise of Idleness, “I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached.” I agree. I have come to enjoy idleness.

Back to earth

A phone call from my old engineering office jolted me out of my pleasant life. The company is hanging onto life by its fingernails, mainly by not completing work for a major client. “Please be in the office at 2 pm sharp!” I was on the highway threading my way through the traffic at 1:00 pm for the 20 mile drive. In the office I was introduced to Gordon, “who has joined the organization and is taking over marketing. Please support him.” The office pays me a minor retainer just to be around so I nodded blankly wondering where Gordon was going to find a place to market.

Work!

Wherever he’s going to market, he’s demanding a whole slew of background work from me. I swallowed, cancelled a coffee meeting with Sid, my unemployed architect friend, and started work. Ten minutes later an email sailed in from an old and trusted client asking if I could do some work for her in a hurry? No problem, I replied and added 3 days to Gordon’s timetable. His response was icy. A phone call – “I understand you are a writer. How would you like to edit a 200 page memoir that my father wrote some years back? He’s decided he would like to publish it after all.”

No more work

I am not opening emails nor am I answering the phone. I am suffering from mixed feelings. It’s great to be working again but I’m dying to get back to a life of recession.

Are we looking at the imminent demise of the US dollar as the dominant currency for conducting business, trade and investments? Is it about to be to be replaced by the next big thing in the history of the world, namely the Chinese Renminbi or Yuan? Why does one currency have two names?

International trade

International trade is traditionally carried out in dollars. Suddenly things are changing. The Chinese government is making agreements, first with Brazil and now with Malaysia, in which trade will be conducted in the currencies of the countries concerned: renminbi and reals, or renminbi and ringitts.

The US dollar will be standing outside the fence and watching this going on.

My Loan Account

Are you telling me that my next Cash Advance Loan will be made in Renminbi or Yuan and that I should come with a U-Haul truck to pick up all the paper?

The dollar

The immediate impression being created is that the dollar is imminently doomed, consigned to the proverbial garbage can of history, whereas the relentless rise of the renminbi is inevitable. But before you race off to enroll in “Mandarin for dummies” classes and mastering the use of chopsticks, let’s consider a few aspects of the “renminbization” of global finance.

We’ve been there before

The Western world went through a similar bout of angst and pessimism exactly 20 years ago with the Japanese yen, and the outcome was that the Japanese economy imploded in 1990 and has never recovered, whereas the American economy did recover and went on to much bigger and better things.

China is different

There are many arguments why China is different from Japan and why America is also different today. Very simply Japan committed national suicide by failing to procreate and so allowing their population to age, (read decline). This has sapped the vitality of the economy and continues to do so.

America

In contrast, the American economy is the beneficiary of fresh blood pumped in, both by natural growth and by new immigrants. The massive immigration of the 1990s and early years of this decade will be a strong influence on the American economy for many years to come.

I am dollar linked

I live in a dollar-linked economy and with the fall of the dollar, I am suffering. Look at this example. An article I wrote on the 28th of April 2009 brought me about $17. I exchanged that for 72.25 shekels. This article, which I hope will also bring me $17, will, at the exchange rate quoted by the bank today, bring me only 66.80 shekels, 8 percent less. And there is no way I can cut the link!

Dollar linkage

I know that 8 percent is not serious, but the point is that everything is linked and everything has fallen by that same 8 percent between those two dates. When it comes to buying an American car, for instance, we are talking about major money. If it is an apartment, and there are apartments priced in dollars, it can easily put an end to the deal. Of course there is a good side to linkage, but that’s another article.

It’s how we are made, I guess. The whole winter we dream about summer and the summer fruit and all the way through the winter months, I for one, drool at the thought of eating juicy oranges, a winter fruit. So now summer’s here and the fruits are in abundance, it is so expensive that everyone is becoming very picky. A peach with the slightest blemish won’t sell at these prices.

I’ll need a loan this summer

I went fruit hunting yesterday at a few different fruit shops and supermarkets to scout out the territory and returned home feeling annoyed and dejected. Here we are, quarter way through June and the prices of the summer fruit are astronomical. It’s as though all the fruit farmers are hiking their prices to pay for new trucks or for running them on last season’s gas prices. What’s going on? At these prices I’ll need a Personal Loan every time I go shopping for fruit. We’ll have to cut fruit to once a month at this rate!

Life in the fruit belt

We have every kind of fruit imaginable and a few that are quite beyond imagination as well. So when the seasons change we look forward to filling our baskets with the latest fruit at usually very reasonable prices. This summer it’s different, and while not all the summer fruits are in the shops yet, the prices are very high compared to past years. Perhaps it’s all part of the recession and the farmers marking their goods up to beat an imaginary financial crisis.

We’re eating the fruit

Despite the prices, we are already eating peaches, plums, apricots and bananas but we are buying them in smaller quantities and checking each item carefully before taking it home. The watermelons and melons are in the fruit shops; these are always notoriously expensive when they first appear and then the price sinks steadily as the summer draws on. I was never a confirmed watermelon freak, but then someone – I guess it was a dairy – began advertising a cube of watermelon on the end of a fork with a small cube of salty cheese on the melon. I am now a melon and cheese freak!

Mangos

The mangos will start making their appearance in the shops one of these days and then the pressure will be on to spend big money and buy them. I will fight back, remembering what happens every year. Mangos start out at their weight in gold and after a month the price will go down. And they are simply delicious and can be eaten as a starter course, the main course and the desserts of every meal. The season starts with very small mangos for the first two months. Then the variety changes to a larger type and finally to the giant green mangos which weigh well over a pound each.

Summer

In the hottest days of summer we often sit down to a salad of mango, melon, bananas and a peach with a dollop of ice-cream as a major meal. It is filling and nutritious and delicious. Here’s to the summer fruit – may their prices fall!

Born Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite 27 years ago, he is better known by his nickname of Kaká. I think of him as Mr. Money. Listen to this: Kaká is a star football player and according to reports “the most complete Brazilian player of this era.” Remember that football in Brazil is the national religion/culture so this guy must really be good. But he doesn’t play in Brazil – like all these top players he is playing in another country, Italy, where they are even more hysterical about football than Brazil, if that’s possible. Kaká belonged to a club called A. C. Milan, a top Italian club.

They sold him

Along comes the wealthy Spanish club, Real Madrid and they decide that they want Kaká, so they started making offers to buy him. Bartering and negotiating around large sums of money go up and down from Italy to Spain with Brazil listening in and at midnight last night it was announced that the deal had gone through. The price? $90 million. You read it right. This is not the largest price paid for a football player. The same club, Real Madrid, bought a player named Zinédine Zidane from the Juventus Football Club for $106 million in 2001. Oh yes, the owner of A.C. Milan is Silvio Berlusconi the current prime minister of Italy and 70th on the Forbes 100 richest people list with assets of $6.5 billion. It seems that even a billionaire like Berlusconi couldn’t pass up on the offer.

More money

All the money above was between clubs and owners. What about Kaká? He will net $12.7 million per year for six years after taxes. And his agent, who is also his father, will pocket up to $14 million in agent’s fees. A $12.7 million annual salary or around $1 million a month is not bad and will allow Kaká to live it up, if he can. At the price they paid, the club will probably keep him under armed guard with a team of doctors in attendance around the clock. Note to the Loan Processors at the Personal Money Store: you can tear up Kaká’s application for a Cash Advance, he has changed his mind.

Real Madrid

This is the most successful team in Spanish football and was voted by FIFA as the most successful club of the 20th century. Real Madrid’s members have owned and operated the club since its inception. Real is the world’s richest football club with $550 million in terms of annual revenue.

The player gets a deal too

The President of the Board of Directors of Real Madrid, Florentino Perez, is the dynamic force behind the club at present and there’s a great deal going on. Pérez has developed a formula to profit by whatever he spends. He gives the stars he signs a 50-50 deal on their commercial image rights. Whatever Madrid makes by marketing their players around the world is shared between club and player. This is the same deal that was signed with Zidane, Luís Figo, Ronaldo and David Beckham and it made them all rich.

Go and play, Kaká

Get out there and score goals, Kaká. You’ll be earning $22.75 per minute and we don’t want you to waste a single second.

It’s become a daily cry – “I’m off to the supermarket!” In the good old days, this cry evoked pictures of appetizing food and fruit and other culinary delights. In these recessionary times it simply evokes nervousness. In these times, replacing spent money has become a major challenge. Some of these supermarket trips are serious and have to be financed by a Cash Advance.

The proximity plus

Living across the street from a supermarket presents many different facets, none of which I was aware of when we purchased the apartment. It is very convenient. Pour cereal into your plate in the morning, open the fridge to take out the … “Hey, there’s no milk!!” I grab money, sprint across the bridge, race up the escalator into the supermarket, grab a box of milk, push my way through the express line and I am back home in about 2 minutes. The plate of cereal is waiting patiently. The same applies to anything during the day. It’s just too easy and the best news is that because we are pensioners, we get a 7 percent discount on everything we buy there.

The proximity minus

But it’s not all good news. The supermarket is smart. They have a game of sudden and unexpected over- and under-pricing and if one doesn’t watch the prices and buys without looking, you fall straight into their trap. There is no sign hanging at the entrance that says “Caveat Emptor” or “Buyer Beware”. You are on your own and at the mercy of the supermarket price-fixers. This time we won.

“I’m off to the supermarket!”

I heard the cry this morning, but I was in the midst of a complicated article and managed a grunt. I was aware of the squeak on the shopping bag contraption that my wife uses to save her lugging the groceries home. An hour later I heard the front door bell. I flung it open and there stood my wife, her arms folded around full paper bags, the wheeled shopping bag overflowing. “I couldn’t get to the keys.” I stood gaping, about to repeat speech No. 23, the one about the recession which includes holding back in the supermarket. “I got a bargain!” she said excitedly.

The bargain

“Cucumbers are 19 cents a pound! Can you believe that?”

“And what will we do with all these pounds of cucumbers?” I ask carefully.

“I’m going to pickle them, Pete. Remember those delicious pickles that we used to eat at Aunt Mildred’s house? Well, I got the family recipe from her and that’s what I’m going do!”

The recipe

I was in the kitchen in a flash, my article abandoned in mid-sentence. It was all too simple. This recipe is for a 2-pint glass jar of pickles.

Wash and slice 3 large or 6 medium sized cucumbers into rounds, not too thin.

Prepare the pickling solution as follows:

2 cups of water

1 cup of vinegar

1 tablespoon of salt

4 tablespoons of sugar

8 bay-leaves

12 peppercorns

Bring the mixture to a boil, add cucumbers and turn them until the color changes – approximately 5 minutes.

Put into a jar and allow to cool before placing in the fridge.

You’re in business

I’m seriously thinking about designing and printing my own labels as well.

We spent the evening at Susan’s 70th birthday party on Monday evening. It was a modest affair in the local church hall with many guests – there must have been 60 or 70 – and lots of good finger-food. Had we known about the food part we wouldn’t have eaten dinner; I can snack on party food for hours… Susan looked well and spent the evening chatting to her guests. She also gave a very emotional speech of thanks to everyone.

The economics of a Recession Party

How could Susan afford this? She doesn’t have a penny to her name so I guess that she took a Cash Advance Loan to pay for the food, but she was so economical with the whole thing that I thought I should share these budget-friendly party ideas with you.

Where to have the party

Look and see where you can get a hall for free. Churches are the first place to go. There are also parks, or a friend’s home. In Susan’s case, the hall was probably free and there were no other expenses.

Drinks

The drinks were Coke and Sprite, hopefully bought in bulk on sale, and there was no alcohol, also cutting down on costs. Water and lemon slices would have been even less expensive.

Decorating

Plates were plastic in colors selected to match the paper tablecloths and napkins and the flatware was chromed plastic. Despite the obvious strict budget arrangements, the tables looked great. They were decorated with little vases of wild flowers and grasses probably picked from a nearby field and sprinkled with little silver plastic sea shells. To my delight they were also sprinkled with candies and chocolates.

It must have been a challenge

When Susan decided to celebrate she must have thought everything out very carefully and built herself a tight but realistic budget. In circumstances like hers, a budget is probably a major part of her life. What’s more, she understands the strict discipline that’s necessary to stick to every cent of her budget. No extras and no deviations!

Susan

Susan is a widow – twice. Her first husband collapsed and died in his forties and left her with two teenaged children. The second husband, an older man, died when Susan was in her mid-fifties. Neither left her much and she has worked all her life. A few years ago she was laid off her job as a secretary at the university and she ran around frantically seeking work. These days she works part-time at the university who hires her as a temp without any benefits. She also has some other part-time job in town.

The birthday gifts

One of Susan’s friends asked her if there was anything particular she preferred for a birthday present and Susan said she would prefer money as she had some expenses that she has to pay. The word was passed around. I was asked to do a small painting for a communal birthday card and the guests were asked to sign the card and drop their gifts in an envelope which was handed to Susan. I was pleasantly surprised at how smoothly the act of handing over a cash gift was handled – there was no embarrassment on either side and the guests seemed delighted to be able to help Susan. Susan thanked everyone for coming to help her celebrate this important milestone in her life and we went back to the food.

Good party

My wife and I rated this as a good party, truly modest and enjoyed by all. Happy birthday, Susan!

Imagine if you were appointed as an advisor to the un-used car industry and the very first question you have to deal with in your new position is, “what shall we do with the millions of brand new, never-used cars standing around in countries all over the world?”

I investigated

In the interest of writing a good and informative article, I applied for and received a Cash Advance and spent some of the money on a train tickets to one of these mammoth auto assembly plants up north. What I saw was beyond my wildest imagination! It was like standing on the edge of some strange world and looking down at a place that was entirely covered with money. Cars are money to everyone in a different way – the maker, the seller and the buyer. I felt like calling one of the attendants and saying “Hi Feller, can you please get me that pale blue one from the nineteenth row, twentieth from the far end.”

It’s more than metal

Besides the millions of tons of sheet metal out there, there are many other elements, most of which the environmentalists will soon be screaming about as they start to deteriorate in the sun and the rain. And what about all those cast iron engines that have probably made about 3 revolutions just to test that they actually do turn. And batteries filled with lead plates and acid? And thousands of miles of copper and other wire?

And the great material – plastic

And then we come to that great material, plastic, that we once thought would save the world and now understand that it is slowly but surely sinking our world by piling up higher and higher and filling our horizons with gargantuan trash heaps that will never decompose and provide anything useful for the generations that come after us. I don’t know what percentage of a modern car is plastic in one form or another but it is a big one, from dashboards to seats and carpets and door and roof linings. Much of the car body is plastic too as far as I can see.

Rubber

If there are a million cars standing around waiting for someone to get in and drive off, there are 5 million tires hoping for the same thing. That amount of tires could keep the tire-burning protestors of the world happy for years!

The land

What about the land that these cars are occupying. Is no one shouting about this? Have they been promised that the cars will be moved soon?

Okay, let’s sell them!

Do you think anyone at the board of directors meeting of a car company would agree to sell these cars at a loss? At this stage, before the first rust spots appear, the answer is probably ‘no.’ Once the rust sets in, things may change. One of those super-heavy hail storms may change this as well when they are faced with looking after pock-marked cars.

Just give them away!

Why not? Who will be lining up for free cars? I can’t wait to see the outcome of this man-made potential disaster!

This year’s French tennis Open tournament has, so far, produced its share of upsets. Some of the top names are out and both of last year’s winners are out. Today I witnessed yet another upset, the sweeping victory of 19 year old Sorana Cirstea of Romania who defeated the tournament’s number 2 seed, Jelena Jankowitz. I sat in front of the TV watching the battle, thoroughly fascinated at the tenacity of Cirstea who simply refused to give up on her decision to win. Then I began to think about the money.

Entry fees

The payers who qualify to play in these tournaments have to pay an entry fee. It is probably around the $100 mark and of course they also have to get themselves, their coaches, trainers, physiotherapists, parents, aunts and uncles and other family to Paris and installed in hotels for the 2 week duration of the tournament. The hopefuls among them probably manage this with Personal Loans. The tried and tested players probably have enough left over from previous tournament participation to finance these costs.

They’re not playing for peanuts

The players, from the top all the way down to the lowest seeds, have one eye firmly fixed on the money. They may be sportsmen and make great speeches about playing for King and Country and the Glory of Tennis, but they are professional tennis players and this is their daily work. Imagine playing tennis day in and day out, standing on the court hitting the same shot a thousand times a day until the coach says, “okay, I think you’re getting the hang of it. We’ll do it again tomorrow.” They are playing to win, for King, Country and Money.

Sorana Cirstea

Along comes Sorana Cirstea who has a fair history in the game, she is 19 years old, she wants to win and she puts her entire body and brain into the task. She plays killer tennis, and her unfortunate opponent, the experienced Jelena Jankowitz, who also plays killer tennis, runs straight into a brick wall. Whatever is served to her, Sorana comes back twice as fast and twice as hard. After an almighty battle, Sorana wins. They both earn about $58,000 and Sorana goes on to earn $190,000 for making it into the quarterfinals. Should she continue into the semi’s it will bring her $380,000, the finals $760,000 and if all goes extra well and she wins the tournament, she will go home with one and half million dollars. Who else is making one and half million a year, er… per fortnight, in this recession?

There is a recession on

I thoroughly enjoy watching the tennis tournaments on the TV. It’s a great spectator sport, but there is a small part of my brain that focuses on the money at stake. We are deep in the grips of a recession and these gifted sportsmen and women are out there, battling it out to win small fortunes. I am sure that without the natural gift of speedy reaction, uncanny anticipation and sheer muscular strength, training can produce good tennis players. But it is the gift of nature that makes great tennis champions and champion money earners.

I went back to the gym this morning. It’s on the top floor of the mall across the street from where we live, convenient, clean and a nice clientele. I had been a regular there for some years and didn’t think it really did me any good other than keeping the guilt down. When the recession started and I lost a few of my writing clients and my income dropped drastically, I cut back on as many expenses as I could, especially the regular monthly payments that are there no matter what. The gym was first out of the window.

The loan system

I switched my finances to a Personal Loan system while I rushed around looking for new clients and sat, hour after hour, scouring the internet for work opportunities. Slowly things returned to some sort of normality, although at a lower level, and the first place that I thought about reinstating was the gym.

The monthly payment problem

One of the problems of joining a gym is the financial side. I have no complaint about the monthly cost, but rather about the ‘contract’ that you have to sign. The contract is usually for a minimum of 24 months and payments are made through your bank account, making it virtually impossible to cancel. Whatever happens, the payments go through on the specified date every month. You get up feeling tired and don’t go, that’s your problem. You feel like dropping out for the winter – that’s your problem. If you take a holiday or become ill, you bring a copy of the air-tickets or hotel booking or a doctor’s letter and maybe, just maybe, they credit you with the missed weeks or months.

You are locked in

I hate the “locked in” feeling of such a contract. Another place that I gave up on was the art school and my painting group there. It was just plain expensive but here the deal I signed was for monthly payments via the credit card, only for the months that I attend. No long term contracts. It was a relief to know that I could cancel at any time without paying a penalty.

Back to the gym

I was wrong about the ‘no benefits’ from going to the gym. After I stopped going there I began walking in the streets instead, and I quite enjoyed the change in scenery and faces. But I am lazy by nature and soon began to find excuses not to walk. After a month or so I wasn’t walking at all. Then I found myself short of breath whenever I had to walk. I panted up a single flight of stairs and worst of all, I found myself walking unsteadily, like an old man, weaving my way down the sidewalk. That made the decision for me.

Walking lessons

A few years ago, a young man suddenly appeared in town and offered walking lessons to anyone interested. We would meet outside the Mango Coffee Shop at 8 of an evening and he would lead a group of 10 to 20 people through the town streets in single file. Often he would stop and take a critical look at each one of us as we passed him. He then came over and explained how we were walking, why it was wrong and what we had to do to correct it. I remember his lessons very clearly and I still try and walk to his specifications. So with thanks to him and thanks to the gym I will soon be fit again and I’m sure that the fittest part of me will be my head.

In Latin they say…

Mens Sana In Corpore Sano. This translates from Latin as “a healthy mind in a healthy body”. The intended meaning here is that only a healthy body can support a healthy mind, so we should strive to keep our bodies in top condition. I’ve changed this to, “Mens sana in bank account sano,” meaning a healthy mind and a healthy bank account. They go hand in hand, don’t they?

May was indeed a Merry Month for me here in the Home Office. I hope everyone’s May was as abundant as mine, but from the statistics, it is clear that the recession is still dragging on for so many people. On the last day of every month I take an hour off working and run my business figures across my mental screen to see if I am still ahead of my creditors. The rest of the world is having a rough time and the number of small, medium, large and giant corporations going belly-up is still on the increase. General Motors has gone from the world’s largest corporation to the world’s largest failure.

My personal record for May

Loans

Number of applications to the Personal Money Store for a Personal Loan or a Cash Advance: 0

Sales

Article writing

Gambling articles: 4

Insurance articles: 35

Financial articles: 30

Translations

Assembly instruction page for gadget: 1 – (Hated every minute of it.)

Painting department

Watercolors: 1 started and finished

Acrylics: 1 completed

Income

When it is all paid it will get me through the month of June as long as there are no major surprises. These could range from a car break-down to a washing machine explosion, both designed to wreck any household budget drastically and immediately.

The client who ordered the translation probably won’t pay - I delivered the work in 2 days by email and I have received no response. This is one of the risks of taking work that comes from an unknown source –

• you are offered the work,
• you are excited at the prospect of a new client,
• you do the work in a rush to impress,
• you do a great job to impress even more,
• you send the work,
• you never receive a response,
• emails sent to the same address come back from the Daemon Mailer with a note that says ‘uh-uh, this email address doesn’t exist.’

Expenses

A home-based writer has few expenses. All the usual household expenses apply and unless one prints work, there is no need to buy ink or paper. I splurged and bought a new 22 inch computer screen and I am enjoying it. I figured that if sitting in front of the computer is my life, I may as well make it as comfortable as possible. On the painting side, I made the mistake of using my favorite watercolor brush to work in acrylics and that ruined the brush. So I bought a new one and an extra one in a different size. Buying good brushes is no joke-they’re expensive. I want to write it off on my taxes but I’m not sure if the IRS has me down as an Old Master or a Sunday afternoon painter.

June

Well, Hi June! Let’s take a look at the prospects. On the article writing front I hope everything will remain stable and maybe even increase. Some months I receive orders for extra gambling articles and news items but this sector is having a very bad time. I am psyching myself up into starting a new painting which requires some energy, time and small amounts of money in photos, prints etc. and getting my main model, a grand-daughter, to sit still for a few minutes while I take pictures.

I hope the recession numbers improve so that all will have a good June.

Age

I added 1 month. We all did.

We all remember James Bond, aka 007, aka Sean Connery, the retired hit man and/or spy who now sits on a log on the back page of the paper drooling over his super-expensive Louis Vuitton sports bag. We’re a lot alike, James and I. It’s all a matter of zeros – he was, if you remember, a double zero man. I have a few zeros to my name as well, mainly in my bank account. The other thing we have in common is a liking for Aston Martin Cars. This is relevant because the latest model, Aston Martin, was formally unwrapped at the Geneva Motor Show which took place in March.

I was there

I happened to be in Geneva at that time on the strength of a Personal Loan I had taken from the Personal Money Store to go to Switzerland to examine the plans for a new solar power station that is being planned for installation in Spain. That part of the visit went very well. I did the work, wrote my report, submitted my account, received a check, paid back the Personal Loan and then made the mistake of visiting the Car Show. The moment I laid eyes on that car, everything went into collapse. I have to have one! There will only be 77 made – imagine its value in a couple of years’ time.

The price

Now the price of the One-77 model is being tantalizingly released. There is no final confirmation but it is strongly rumored to be in the $1 million region. The construction will be a rigid carbon fiber chassis, a 7.3-liter V12 engine and more than 560kW of power. The car will weigh about 3,300 lbs and will be capable of a 0-100km/h sprint in around 3.5 seconds. Top speed, and this is the feature that excites both James and I, will be over 200mph. So when I pick up my grandson at the swimming pool just off Highway No 4 and the traffic is moving at a steady 7 mph, I will thoroughly enjoy all the features of my new Aston Martin.

The Mille Miglia

I am writing this within earshot of the death throes of General Motors coming from the TV in the next room. Here’s a strange item: The Mille Miglia is a celebratory road rally designed to evoke the spirit of the famous Italian road race. The participants are a selection of exotic sports cars from the years between 1920 and 1957. The rally takes place on the roads between Brescia and Rome. There were 377 entrants and there was not a single sign of financial problems or recession among any of them. I guess that for some lucky people it’s high-end auto-business as usual. Aston Martin must be feeling pretty confident about producing $1 million cars at a time like this.

I’m calling James

I will call James Bond in the morning and see if he is interested in some sort of joint venture with this new model Aston Martin, something like “You pay, I’ll drive”?

Recession or not, our baby daughter Diane is getting married. After two years of being squired around town by young Timothy, who I regarded as a son after the first month, they’re finally talking the giant step. My wife and I are thrilled, and relieved. Adding Tim to the family will be an easy task and he will be a great asset. He may even get to help me in my law practice one of these days. “So where do we begin?” asked my wife after dinner. “Where everything begins these days,” I said. “Online. Type ‘wedding costs, or weddings or wedding preparations’ into Google and see what you get. That should keep you busy for the first month.”

Personal Loans

I’m not sure what my wife will find on the internet. One thing I do know, though, is that a wedding is probably not a subject for a Personal Loan from the Money Store. On the same subject, I suspect that by the time my baby daughter is safely wed, I will have chalked up a long list of loans.

The wedding search

I was right. It is all online. There are sites where you type in your zip code, go through and tick off a list of options, answer a few questions and the computer spits out an estimate for a wedding of your choice after a couple of seconds. Be warned, none of the estimates are cheap and depending on your zip code, it will pay you to tell your daughter to elope or just move out of town with her boyfriend.

The wedding is just the beginning

Some couples end up using all the monetary gifts they get to pay for the wedding, especially where the parents cannot afford the big splurge or are not willing to refinance their mortgage to finance it. Other couples split the costs down the middle and in other cases, the wealthier family foots the bulk of the bill. Whatever the case, we’re talking about major money. The day after the wedding, the money problems start in earnest.

After the ball is over…

We have the photographs and the video of the wedding, we have gone through the list of gifts and we have mailed out thank-you cards. They have another 2 weeks in Tim’s rather crummy apartment and then the lease comes to an end and they have to move. They’d love to move into that super place they saw on Maple Street. It’s still vacant but the rental is sky-high. We need to sit down and help them build a budget.

The newly-wed budget

Why did they get married, they wonder now – the bills are stacking up and it’s starting to look like a financial impossibility. How does everyone manage this? Okay, that Maple Street apartment is expensive. They know that and they know they can’t afford it. But in this budget that we sweated over with them last night, they can’t see that they can afford any apartment at all. It looks like they’ll have to move in with us. If we hadn’t spent $20,398 on their wedding, we could have put a down payment on a house for them.

Twice in 2 days someone else decided that I was old. What nerve! Surely I’m the one to decide whether I’m old or not. I went across to the gym yesterday after deciding that I really should go back to exercising. That’s a sign of youth, right? They were happy to see me. “We’ll just fill in this form and get you back into shape in no time.” The gym is called Great Shape – get his pun? He starts filling out the form copying information from the computer screen. They haven’t erased me even though I stopped going at the end of last year for economic and not health or age reasons. All of a sudden he puts down his pen and starts laughing, I mean really laughing. “Look at this mistake with your date of birth!” Wasn’t he the funny one? I told him to stop laughing and that it had been a great year.

Then a doctor of all people

This morning was my regular check-up at the urologist. “Everything seems fine. No more PSA tests for you.” Why not, I ask? “At your age it’s a waste of time.” I sat, stunned in shock. Six months ago I wasn’t too old, but today I am too old. In all fairness he was probably quoting the instructions of the health fund. Well, whatever it was, I was furious. Not because they won’t do the tests any more, but because they have taken the responsibility of telling me I’m old. I don’t care what they think. I’m the one who makes the decisions about my age. Is it possible I’m being ridiculous?

The Personal Money Store

What’s the Personal Money Store take on age – are there restrictions? Do they make it a Green Banana thing – everyone has to pay back their Personal Loans in 4 months, except for the over 65’s. They have to pay it back sooner, in only 3 weeks.

A bad story

I recently heard a bad story about this kind of thing. An ‘older’ man, which I take to mean that he was over, say 65, had been having dialysis at the hospital for some years. One day he arrived for his session and was told that there was no place for him because the unit was full of younger men and they had preference. He said to the clerk, “are you telling me to go home and just die?” The clerk wept, the old man was in shock; all in all a bad story about growing old. I am sure there are many such stories and all of them equally heart-rending.

It’s unfair

In many ways old age is really unfair. If one is healthy and all systems are operating in accordance with the handbook, the senior person is just like anyone else. He may move a little slower and probably does react more slowly, but he or she is right up there with you when it comes to thinking.

It’s what you make it

Like many things in life, old age will be how you make it. Like they say, expect the worst and you will probably get it. Ignore it and hope it will go away – I’m not sure this will work, especially the ‘go away’ part, but ignoring it will certainly reduce its impact on your life.

At the end of last summer we spent 2 weeks in Tuscany in Italy. We were on a painting and cooking trip and stayed in a working winery in the Tuscan hills, amid the vineyards and olive groves. The food at this place was excellent and the wine, all of it various types of Chianti, was outstanding and we drank it by the bottle. But my most vivid memories – besides the great paintings I turned out – are of the cheeses we ate, morning, noon and night.

The meals

The cheeses first appeared at breakfast – a huge tray of half inch thick slabs of a whitish sheep’s milk cheese with slices of tomato on a bed of lettuce. I couldn’t resist.

At lunch I ate more sheep’s milk cheese and swished it down with Chianti.

Dinners were an unabashed orgy of sheep’s milk cheese tasting and cheese eating, accompanied by wine tasting and wine drinking. I was instantly hooked on this new way of life. My internal cholesterol counter was working overtime and a little alarm bell was ringing faintly somewhere. I emailed requests for Personal Loans so that I could stock up on cheeses and wines before I left for home.

Back home

I began the search for sheep’s milk cheese. I drove on country roads, stopped and read the little notices that folks hang on their fences, followed the arrows and got nowhere. My best effort was to find 2 places that make goat’s milk cheese, but when I saw the conditions under which it was made, I did a smart U-turn and shot out of there. Another man told me that he bought the goat’s milk at a reliable dairy, brought it home and made the cheese there under hygienic conditions. Most of the other people milked the goats themselves. It put me off, way off!

Cheese week

Imagine my delight when we received a flyer in the mail-box “Sheep’s milk cheese week at MegaMarket”. I was there tapping my foot when they arrived to open up. And there were my sheep’s milk cheeses and all priced especially low for Cheese Week. Why is it Cheese Week? Who cares, they should do it every month. I stocked up and am now taking bites of delicious gorgonzola, mouth-watering mascarpone and scrumptious pecorino every time I pass the fridge. All these cheeses contain between 25 and 30 percent milk-fat at which my doctor will have a cadenza, but I have no intention of inviting him over to sample. He would probably also frown and shake his head at the amount of red wine I’m drinking to offset the effect of the cheese.

What’s the problem with sheep’s milk cheese?

How come I can never find it? Goat’s cheese milk is all over the place. I tasted water buffalo milk cheese recently, but I didn’t enjoy the experience. I have seen water buffalo standing shoulder deep in the rice fields in China and Thailand and the sight is not a pretty one. I’m sticking to sheep’s milk cheese and in fact at this very moment I am unwrapping yet another slab of Gorgonzola that’s full of that nice green mold and pulling the cork on another bottle of red wine. Wanna share?