BenjaminAlexander.co.uk
Sidebar
|
Monday, October 13, 2008
Fulfilment at work
When I was younger I used to think, why do people go to work so much, and why do some people seem to enjoy it or speak of finding some sort of fulfilment or satisfaction at work? I still do think these to some degree - I would rather be at home with my wife, at church worshipping God, be on a train, sleeping in my bed etc. than be at work. And yet, there are days like today when I do actually, genuinely feel good after a day of work. Here's a list of what I achieved today...
That, my friends, is most definately a good day at work. Labels: fulfilment, work Monday, September 29, 2008
The first sign of Christmas
Co-op are now selling their mine pies. As an aside, Christmas seems to be silly season for "special" offers - virtually all the mince pies and all the turkeys I saw last year were "on offer" - I mean come on, seriously?! These offers can't be that special. Labels: Christmas, co-op, mince pie, turkey Thursday, August 28, 2008
Office move...
My office has recently moved from a pleasant 2.5 mile bike ride from my home, to being a 6 minutes walk from where I live. It's great! I get to wake up 20 minutes later, and I've never been late yet ("late" being a bit of an oblique concept in our office in any case). I get to pop home for lunch some days - which can be nice & relaxing though I do have to remind myself that I have to go back to work. It was especially useful when the Olympics was on as I could catch more of the action. Finally it also means I can do the food shopping at lunch time, giving me even more spare time at home and is generally a useful thing for the family as a whole. If you ever get a chance to live so close to your work I advise you take it - I'm probably never going to live so close - and thus have so much more time to myself - than I do now, and I intend on making the most of it. Friday, July 18, 2008
In training...
My wife and I are doing an epic amount of time on the train in the coming weeks - in fact we are spending 5 weekends in a row on the train, over 24 hours, covering about 1500 miles in the process. It's a good job we like trains. If you know me at all you probably know I like getting cheap train tickets in advance, and this is no exception, and it is probably the greatest number of train tickets I have ever had in my possession at any one time. So I got them all out and took a picture...  Bon voyage to us, and may our delays be few. At least the weather seems like it's going to be alright - our most delayed train journey came last year as we left an hour earlier than planned, arrived over 2 hours late and went a completely different route to the one planned, as it happened to be the wettest day of the century so far... surely nothing that bad can happen again? Never mind if it does, for we shall just smile, have a hug and thanks God for the many, many blessings he has bestowed on us :) Labels: holiday, trains, wedding Wednesday, May 21, 2008
ANNOUNCEMENT : Euro 2008 & forums
I am please to announce a couple of extensions to my website. First off are some forums for people to discuss on - this is only open to people who I know in real life (everyone signing up has to have their application approved by me). Secondly, those of you who have known me for more than a couple of years may remember that during the world cup in 2006, I ran a prediction game on my website, which went quite well and evidently was enjoyed by all. Therefore I have brought this back for the upcoming European Football Championships 2008, commonly known as Euro 2008. There are a couple of minor improvements this time, and of course the forum to discuss on (if I don't know you but you sign up to the euro 2008 game, then you can still sign up to the forum). It's a simple game really - guess the results of the games in Euro 2008, and the closer you are the more points you get. Many people who took part last time didn't know too much about football but they said afterwards that taking part made the real football a lot more interesting and fun. So go on, why not sign up? Links to both are in the sidebar on the left, as ever. Labels: Euro 2008, football, forum, prediction game Wednesday, April 23, 2008
At long last, the bubble is bursting...
Now those of you who talk to me much know that pretty much the only thing I'm unhappy about in life is the unaffordability of houses. Now let's get this straight - house prices are in an utterly other-world realm of expensiveness. There's pricey, expensive, very expensive, way too expensive, probably a couple more layers of expensiveness, and then there's UK house prices. If you want to put it another way - currently I have what is a pretty good rental deal on my flat, however if I tell anyone aged 35+ how much it is, they say "my word, how on earth can you afford it?!" (for example, I pay over double my parent's mortgage). But, if I wanted to buy a similar property in a similar area, I'd be paying not far off twice as much. Here's a quote from a decent article on the telegraph website called "Why is everyone worried about house prices?" When I got married in 1981, we bought our first house, in a reasonably good postal district of London, for just over four times my fairly modest annual salary. It was a financial stretch. By my rough calculation, a person in the same situation buying the same house today would have to produce 20 times his annual salary. So he can't. He buys less, for more, or he does not buy at all. I am surprised it has taken this long for house prices to start coming down, but now the credit crunch has come along it has finally started the process. The fact it has taken so long will, unfortunately, mean some pain for current home owners, and people who have over-borrowed. This is inevitable. There really is too much rhetoric coming from the government about "fixing the housing market", "getting the housing market going again" - quite simply, house prices have to go down, and they are going down. There are two reasons for house prices going down... 1) The credit crunch making it hard/expensive for people to get mortgages 2) Gross unaffordability And, in addition, there are many extra reasons for why it will continue... 1) Market sentiment - if people think house prices are going down, they will submit lower offers - becomes a cycle of house prices decreasing 2) Buy-to-let landlords - as prices come down, they will see the value of their investment drop and some will sell up (I know of at least one case of this already) 3) Bank's expectations - basically banks are expecting a 10% drop by requiring a 10% deposit. This may lead to people offering 10% less than asking prices and this feeds back into the whole market sentiment. 4) Downsizing - I think that as people can't afford the payments on their houses due to rising interest rates and cost of living, they will want to move into smaller houses, leading to general price deflation. The only factors I can see stopping house prices going down are 1) House prices finally reach reasonable levels again 2) Mass buy-to-let landlords not selling up 3) The continued supply/demand issue here in the UK. Nevertheless, here are my predictions. At least a 15% drop in house prices between the start of 2008 and the end of 2009, and house prices probably continue to drop through to at least 2011. Personally I'm hoping for a drop of 40% in time though that may be wishful thinking. We'll see. In the meantime I'm happy to rent & save up a deposit for the future. One final link for you showing how ridiculous the house prices have been. Coming soon - my comments on the 10% tax row. How frighteningly intellectual! Labels: house prices, politics, rent Friday, April 11, 2008
Paris Holiday
Sooo my darling and I have just come back from 5 days in Paris. We had a wonderful time. I'll spare you the details - we did most of the touristy stuff, and found a couple of lovely restaurants thanks to the Lonely Planet guide (this one and this one). We did have somewhat of a lucky break on our journey out. We were travelling on the fantastic eurostar, leaving at 12:30pm. There were some sort of technical problems in the channel tunnel, which meant there were trains due to leave at approx 10:30am and 11:30am that only left at around 12:20pm. So at 12:25pm, we were pretty much all on our train, when an announcement comes over the station tannoy system - "Attention, attention. This is an emergency. Please leave the station by the nearest available exit. This is not a drill." This message was repeated an awful lot. But the train manager told us to stay where we were and that we would be leaving shortly, which we did at about 12:35pm. I guess they decided that the quickest way out of the station for us, was by train, especially for the people way down the platform on the 17th and 18th carriage (they'd've had to walk a very long way to get out of the station). It turns out there was a suspect package (note the incorrect information about the station being evacuated at midday - it definitely was nearer 12:25pm) and the station was closed for two hours after it. In the end we arrived at Paris about 25 minutes late - most definitely a lucky escape considering the large delays if we were on an earlier - or worse, a later train. This hasn't put me off my preference for trains rather than planes if it is feasible though; indeed I do intend to make a post about that at some point in the future. We took a lot of photos so I'm uploading them in two batches. The first batch is up now, and, in a benjaminalexander.co.uk first, a couple of videos - all located via the usual link on the left. Also I've started getting through the backlog from the second half of last year. Enjoy! Labels: eurostar, holiday, Paris, trains
|
Footer. Made by Benjamin Alexander