Kasi-Blog

“go to work, send your kids to school
follow fashion, act normal
walk on the pavements, watch T.V.
save for your old age, obey the law
Repeat after me: I am free”

Graffiti in Bristol, UK via Flickr

This year I had the honour to play the role of Gordon Brown at the Model G8 Youth Summit in Japan. Before our delegation left, I sent a letter to Downing Street 10 and asking Gordon Brown to be the patron of our delegation. He replied now (he is probably very busy). Incidentally, he send off the letter on my birthday. Quite amazingly he also signed in person. Very nice.

It’s getting warmer, so I fled the library, joined some eager Puntians, steadied myself on the “Ferry” (a punting boat for 13 people) and to the tune of Gerry and the Pacemakers pushed the joyful gang – which was sipping champagne and eating strawberries – down the river.

Great concert last night of the Trinity Hall Music Society. Mostly undergraduates performing wonderful music.

First, a truly great clarinet concerto by Aaron Copland. Some people said that the soloist did a great job, but the orchestra had a hard time following the soloists. Below is a version by the London Symphony Orchestra.

Next, Chason de Matin from Edward Elgar

Beethovens Piano Concert No 3. (below the 3rd movement) with some great skills by the soloist and the orchestra being on the same level.

Finally, a bombastic English Folksong Suite by Vaughan Williams, who is also a Cambridge students. Somehow the theme sounds familiar.

Yesterday was a a very sunny day so I decided to leave email as it is, leave my studies as it is, cycle around Cambridge a little bit, buy the ingredients for the birthday cake and then waited for people to arrive at the party. I had a great time and want to thank everybody who came along.

Because of globalization and time zones, the first congratulations reached me already on April 15th and the last ones reached me this morning. Thanks to everybody who thought of me, I’ll try to respond very soon!

When I was 8 years old, I thought that by the time that I am 28, I will be a multi-trillion-zillionaire with a huge house on a cliff, my own rollercoaster and hundreds of cars. Right now, I have a bike, live in a graduate student accomodation and do not even own most of the books in my room (because they are from the library, of course). Well, what would I do with hundreds of cars, anyway?

However, when trying to look back, it seems I’ve done a lot of interesting things, but not always followed a very consistent course in life. But I got to know a lot of very interesting people, and I guess I have to be thankful for that.

Today I was at a workshop in London in the Finance district not far away from the Bank of England. The workshop took place at a very noble club.

The most fascinating things were the toilets, however. Old tiles and large mirrors – it has the poshness of a 19th century bath. With free shoe cream for black shoes. I don’t know the English word for that, but the boxes above the pissoirs were out of glas so you could see the water flushing down.

The most exotic thing: a large leather chair in one corner. You sit on it, and it shows your weight in stones. Next to it: two leather-bound books with the accumulated weight statistics of the members of the club going back all the way to 1892. What a treasure.

This winter, I really wanted to go skiing, but again it did not work out. Studying took too much time and Berlin is unfortunately not close to any big ski ressorts. My last hope was the snow that came back to Germany in March, but by now it is probably all molten away.

Today I found this video of Julia lip-singing to the almost-forgotten “What’s up?” by 4NonBlondes, a band that managed only two or three hits in the charts during the 1990ies. Julia is singing about the great big hill of hope while going up in a ski-cabin somewhere in Utah. Apparently her dad filmed it, must have been weird to film her without hearing the music played on her Ipod.

Ski Dub: 4 Non Blonde’s “What’s Going On!?” from Julia Allison on Vimeo.

I decided to move my blog posts on Economic Issues to my new blog called Kasinomics.

While there is a mixture of rain and sun outside my window, I work on a new way to structure my research. I decided to move my blog posts on Economic Issues to my new blogs called Kasinomics. There I am combining my research on the Global Financial Architecture with a discussion of what is happening in the global financial markets.

Last week and this week, I attend conferences about International Finance here in Cambridge. This has led me to think a lot about whether a career in Academia is really what I want. Certainly, as a Phd-Student life is very nice, you get to travel, meet interesting people, attend conferences, get invited to nice dinners like last night.

On the other hand, most of your work has only relevance within a small community of people. There is no immediate feedback and you evolve only slowly. For instance, at these conferences, even if somebody talks utter nonsense, people are very nice about and say “That was a very interesting contribution”. I am fed up with that, I want people to argue and discuss, and say “That was rubbish because… ”

The same with academic papers: the first skill of publishing papers is finding a professor who wants to publish an article under his name with you, because big names will get you into big journals.

The second skill of publishing is making reference to the big kids in the playground, those authors which drive a certain paradigm in science, in the hope that you get noticed by them and cited in one of their articles. It is almost like blogging if you are out for a high pagerank, you link alpha-bloggers to catch their attention and get a backlink from them.

The third thing everybody seems to think in academia is that articles contribute to the evolution in science because they pick up where other people stopped their argumentation. I am not sure if that is the case, often they simply reaffirm a certain paradigm and very few scholars manage to link different schools of thoughts.

The final thing in academia is the obedience to hierarchy, but that is probably a human phenomenon. If a professor says rubbish or clouds his arguments in a certain lingo, then everybody say “Nice thought!”. If an undergraduate student says the same thing people will think he is an arrogant tit.

Cambridge is much greener and sunnier today. I am also thankful for the advances in modern nutrition science: the apple juice (opened already), which I put in the fridge one month ago, is still fresh and still tastes good. I have to make an inquiry at the co-op and ask how they do that.

I was scheduled to arrive in Cambridge at noon, it was 5pm when I was finally here. The reason: RyanAir. After I checked-in my Rucksack, I went to security where they told me that my small laptop bag and my small bag containing my suits can not be checked in – even though both of them together easily fitted into the small blue box next to Security Check.

After long discussions, they finally agreed to let me through if I put both of them in a blue plastic trash bag. After long discussions, they also decided to give the bag for free. Then I ran to my airplane, only to find out that the flight was delayed. RyanAir eventually exlaimed that the flight was moved from 10am to 2.30pm.

Well, I am really fed up with RyanAir now. First they introduce the fees for check-in baggage and force everybody to put everything in hand-luggage. Then they wonder why a lot of people don’t check-in any luggage any more and simply carry their rucksacks on-board. And then, without notice to rip these people off, they give an order that only one piece-off luggage is allowed, disregarding the fact that on most flights with Ryanair there is plenty of space in the cabin and for hand-luggage.