Auswanderer Quatsch

After reading so much about the current economical crisis in the news and in great posts like this one (in french) from Franck about the original purpose of companies and their relation to the stock market, I finally decided to take this book (Vingt Propositions pour Réformer le Capitalisme) – that was gathering dust on my shelf since 2009 – with us on our trip to the Caribeans and read it cover to cover in a blink.

This book takes a very interesting approach of summarizing the state of the financial world, try to explain why it evolved this way and suggest 20 ideas that could solve as many weak points of the system. Written at the end of the first subprimes crisis in 2008, I found particularly interesting to read it now, 3 years later, as we are still stuggling with the aftermaths of this major crisis.

Beside learning tons about the stock market itself and discovering a world that makes way more sense than I ever thought (don’t misunderstand me, I still think – like Frank – that the stock market is answering the wrong question and endangering the system as a whole in the process but still), it gave me some confirmation on the fact that without ethics, nothing will change. Most of the ideas proposed make sense but would be very hard to put into place.

Some are almost impossible to put in place without a “world governing institution” like for instance the interdiction of trading insurances for products that you don’t own or (and this is one of their methaphores) “create new floors (insurances) on a building in order to make it safer when the base (the products insured) is still completely shaky (subprimes)”.

Another example could be the idea of creating a very stable market enforced with hard rules where the risk and the return on investment would be low to oppose to the wild-wild-rest. This sure sounds very nice, but that would be assuming that the investors would accept to forget about their double digit growth rates and understand the ethics behind such a preventive approach and not try to bend it as soon as the authorities would turn their back.

Another very interesting point of the book was to make parallels between the different bubbles we had and try to make out some patterns of the history. I was astonished to hear that the 1929 and the subprimes crises had very similar triggers: buying actions/houses with only very little (~10%) personal income and relying on the marketgrowth to cover for the rest. And bytheway, I wonder how this was not flagged as a Ponzi-like scheme from the begining…

I also really liked the construction of the book, going from very precise financial points to market dynamics, global organization and finally to ethics. The book has a very good lexicon to which you can refer every other page to get the meaning of those awkward financial terms.

All in all, this was a very interesting reading, so interesting that I noted a few points I need to investigate back home. I also would be very interested in hearing about the impressions of 2011 crisis by the same authors as some of their proposals were already partially implemented and some that they did not dare wish started to move as well (at EU level for instance). And least but not last, I might now be able to understand what my friend Joe is doing :] and what he means when he “computes the VaR of his energy package at maturity based on a risk-gaussian distribution in order to smurf his smurf in the smurf” (I know, this sentence does not make any sense).

Decisive point anyway, this is a french book so… nothing for my non-french-speaking readers :[

The color leaves can take is simply magical. This weekend, we went for a walk/hike in the Frankische Schweiz (actually it might be already the Oberpfalz… but that does not really matter) to admire the splendid colors of the countryside in this season. As you can see we were not successful at all :]

About 40 min driving from home, we finally parked in the middle of nowhere, in search for the beginning of the trail. After successfully not finding it, we decided to head straight into the tree line and head for another section of the trail that should be higher up and easier to find. After crossing some fields and electrified fences, we finally reached the woods where the early sun peaking through the trees  made a plain magical atmosphere…

The leaves cracking under our shoes, the silence of winter, no car passing by, no other hiker (there is a lake nearby so all the people tend to gather there and avoid the surrounding hills). Just plain nature. What a blast.

The hike was maybe 2 hour long ; barely more ; but going up and down, over gravel roads and pathways, wood trails and fields… a variety of landscapes bathed in red tones.

This weekend marked also the first signs of frost and this morning we woke up to a nice and cozy -5°C. During the hike, all the shadowy places still hidden from the sun were still frosty and the zones warming up were displaying a very light fog that created some sort of surrealistic ambiance.

The last part of the hike, we decided to head directly into the woods and avoid a part of the trail that would be following a road. In this last wonderful part of the hike, we crossed ways with 5 deers… probably also enjoying a Sunday hike.

Some seasonal details…

I’m looking forward to next weekend :]

I just learned that the upcoming electric car lineup of Audi will be called “E-Tron”. For the non-french speakers, “étron” (pronounced exactly the way germans say “e-tron”) means “crap” in french… I wish a lot of fun to the French-Audi-marketing teams :]

First of all, and because I realized how unspectacular the sand hill picture montage looked like… and because Mr.T (a colleague of mine) provided me with this wonderful “other side of the hill” picture! Here’s how it looked like from… the other side of the hill (warning: this post is sponsored by “Whining&Co” and “SelfCentric AG”). This hill came right after the second muddy-pond, which came right after the aid-station.

This now said, you can understand how I looked like when I finally set foot on some finally-flat ground after climbing the above-described hill… and how I looked like jogging down from it! At those times, the only thing I thought of was my running form, stance and the way I landed my feet on the gravely road in order to clear my head of the negative-thoughts.

Another place where MrT. got a shot at me was at the aid station in the middle of the 5km loop. Looking at the clown face picture and the one where I’m busy thinking “fuck this shit, what am I doing here” you can imagine those were taken at 2.5 and 7.5km… but no. In fact those were taken at a few moments interval… and the clown face is obviously the fake one!!!

After that, it was just running, thinking only about the next obstacle and my running stance. But just for the scenery of it, here’s my arrival at the end of the race, climbing up the very last hill toward the finish line… too absorbed by making-just-another-step too realize that it’s almost over :]

All in all, did I say the race was great? And it made me break the 10km limit for the first time since almost 3 years (but that’s another story to come). I’ll be there next year… if not earlier ;]

This weekend marks a milestone in my “running career”. After a tad more than a thousand days off, I finally took part in an official race again (the last one was the Winter Waldlauf in Erlangen on the 1st of April 2008): the Wolfsman Run in Zirndorf… and it was gooood :]

Let’s put this straight: this-is-no-normal-race. Following the example of the so called Warrior Dash or Tough Mudder or Strongman Run, the Wolfsman run is an a new obstacle race that happened for the first time this weekend in Zirndorf, near Nürnberg. The race is simple: 56 obstacles (28 per loop) going from sand hills to mud ponds, beton tubes to crawl inside, haystacks to climb, tires stacks to stumble into, rivers to cross, metal containers to climb up and down, jumps over all kind of obstacles and of course constant ups and down hills (part of the race took place on a motocross loop) etc. all this spread over a 10 kilometer race that you should run as fast as you can.

The start was done in two phases: the alpha wolves start (solo race) first and the pack start (people racing in groups of 5 and helping each other) 20 min later. The race was built of two 2.5 km loops that crossed at the starting point and that you had to run twice. That means that you had to do each obstacle twice… but also that the race was at most a few hunderd meters away from the starting point and that you had almost always people cheering on the side of the track.

The race started nicely… for the first 200m. After stepping onto some tree logs, we went down 10 m to climb them back-up almost instantly (this actually became a constant: whenever the track could go down, they made us storm down, turn 180° and climb back up right away). A few mud ponds later, we reached the the first artificial hills: 5m drop of sand followed by some beton tubes to crawl into (outch my knees) and a 10 m sand hill to climb back up (there was a rope on the side to pull yourself up, and thus preserve some of the energy you might still need for later – but still some people did not want to wait a bit for a free spot on the rope and crawled their way up in the sand… some of which paid that dearly afterwards). Then came the river (100 m running in 20 cm water), the tractor-tires-stacks and the first pond (breast deep with about knee deep light mud at the bottom to prevent you from walking correctly in there). After climbing on some containers, crawling under an army truck, climbing two cars and crawling under a laid-flat fence we finally reached the first aid-station… which means the first 2.5km were over.

This is me coming out of the aid station… surprisingly alone… nobody to see either in front of me and in my back. I even wondered if I took a wrong turn somewhere.

At the end of this downhill path came another pond. This one was nicer, way less mud, way easier to walk into. Following the pond came another sand hill. No rope this time. I could have stormed it up, but I prefered to get down on all fours and climb it slowly while trying not to burn too much energy. After that, the track got nicer for about a kilometer ; some grass and then 1/2 a kilometer on a street. That’s when I noticed that my shoes (5fingers) were full of sand.

Speaking of shoes, it was also the first official race with my 5fingers ; and the longest run with them was well. Everything went fine and I’m very happy I ran with them instead of some running shoes. There were quite a few other VFFs in the race. I noticed a small dozen. I think the VFFs must have felt lighter after being soaked in water, mud and sand. But on the other hand, some paths were really stony and I had to constantly pay attention where I step, bend my knees and be ready to drop in case I landed on a bad stone.

The rest of the loop was not so fun. A few mud slopes that forced me to walk up. Tractor tires to crawl through and were really “edgy” for the knees. Another knee deep pond to rush through. An uphill crawl that was not fun at all (specially during the second loop when the earth was now completely wet) and a hay stack that almost broke my leg (my foot landed between the hay and the rope holding it while I was climbing down – thankfully I was being cautious and I did not thrown my self forward too hard… so I could twist my leg when I realized I was being blocked). Other than that I came back safely to the start and at the second aid station, ready to start it all over again. That was 5km.

The second loop was a bit calmer ; at least I was not disturbed by anyone on the obstacles, I could take my time on some of them (when you have to climb up a ladder and try not to trip on something before jumping 2m down in a sand bucket for instance ; somehow, this goes very well when you’re fresh, but becomes a bit harder when you cannot think straight anymore). I used the short running pieces to concentrate on my running form, try to get my pulse back to a reasonable pace and try to feel my body to see if – closing on the 7km – my feet problems would come back.

The second part of the second loop was the hardest, but I had some reserves. I think I would have had enough for a third loop – endurance wise – but the explosive part of me wasn’t there anymore. Over the last kilometers, I was rejoined by two runners, which finished a few seconds before me. You cannot see it, but on the left picture here under but you had to climb up a 10m steep hill to reach the finish line… that killed my finishing sprint… but not my smile :]

All in all, the race was really fun. Lots of nice persons running and helping on the side. Nice people at the aid stations. Very nice track ; I mean not nice for the heart, but very well designed so that each could get his own tempo and that almost nowhere I had to come to a halt before an obstacle. I also had a top notch supportive team consisting of MrsV, her brother, her father and a colleague of mine (two of the above will be partaking next year I can tell you – they already regretted not participating this year)!

About the results, I took part in the alpha race and finished 41/204 with a very honest 67 min. I did not have any feet issues and was very happy to run in 5fingers! That was the good choice. Here’s a mug-shot of me right after the finish: muddy, wet, smelly but happy and with already a beer in the hand :]

Rendez-vous next year Wolfsman, we might even have a pack of colleagues by then!