Up early we had a nice surprise in the morning…breakfast was included and the major part of it was cheese and olives! diving into the buffee I made a brief realisation that I am either going to get very fat after this trip or get too high cholestrol. On the plate you can see two different kinds of “white cheese”, one piece of “Helve”, three kinds of olives, two different sausages, some vegetables and a newly baked baguette. This was the first plate……

just a few hours later it was time for lunch with my friend Ali and his colleague. We went to a third generation run Iskander Kebab restaurant and had probably the best kebab ever. The photo below is not fair at all to the dish and was poorly taken by me with the wrong settings. After serving everyone they came and poured melted butter over the meat…under the meat was bread pieces that sucked it all up..wow…so good!

After the dinner we shared some dessert and had turkish tea. Walking uphill to Ali’s office I realise how come they manage to stay fit eating delicious food like this. At the office we enjoyed some turkish coffee on his balcony with a view of Istanbul (view not fair on my photos so will not show it) with the mandatory glass of water in order to “clean up” the coffee bean remains.

The area on the “Asian” side, Kadikoy,  is a different feeling and a bit younger. Feels like less tourists and with many nice cafes and restaurants.

apparently will smoking be banned in public places such as cafe, restaurant etc from mid July. Wonder how they will solve the water pipe habit that you can find everywhere? 

So, time for vacation and blog writing again. This time from Istanbul in Turkey. Not first time I visit turkey. Two times before have I visited the Mediterranean parts with beaches.

Istanbul seems to live up to the expectations my friends have. I try to go without any expectations of the place I visit but with all friends raising it to the skies I was a bit worried. The main reason to go to Istanbul is for a good friends wedding, but I also was planning to enjoy a different culture and eat a lot of good food. Trust me, both good food and culture can be found!

Arriving in the afternoon we went to get a birds view of the town. Waiting for the sun to settle a bit we enjoyed some turkish tea.

then we climbed up in the tower (elevator) and enjoyed a magnificent view of Istanbul in all directions.

On way back home we jumped into a small restaurant on the street and had two nice dishes (was meat, cheese and other stuff in it).

after these two small adventures we were completely exhausted after travelling for more than 20 hours with only a few hours sleep (first a full working day until 18.00 and then flight 23.30 from Shanghai).  Headed back to the hotel and passed out in the bed around 21.30.

My latest book read was “Even Buffett Isn’t Perfect: What You Can–and Can’t–Learn from the World’s Greatest Investor”.

This book is probably one of the better ones about Warren Buffet. It shares Buffet’s successes and mistakes, but also shows the difference in tools that Warren Buffet has compared to a normal investor. It discuss Buffett’s investment styles and key investment concepts for normal investors to think about.

One of the more interesting chapters discuss value versus growth stocks, and low-cap. versus large-cap. companies. Empirical studies are presented and strategies that suites different investors discussed.

The book can be found on Amazon.

After two weeks in Sweden, 6 days of wokring and four days of vacation, it was good to come back to China. It is really not fun to be on an airplane for 10 hours in a row and it is affecting you for a couple of days.

But the trip in Sweden was good in many ways. The work proved valuable and the fours days vacation I had gave me time to meet parents and friends.

picture of the wing from the finnair airplane I flow with

view over finland before plan went down for landing

my dad’s renovated Moto Guzzi GTV 500cc from 1945

my sisters dog Nikita

Bella waiting when I got back to Shanghai

It first when you wake up, spend the day exploring the new environment that you realise it was not a bad idea to take some vacation. Going to Bali, despite the long trip, was in fact not bad at all. It was a short trip of only five days (inlcuding two for travel), and we stayed on the south east part right on the beach with view of the corral reefs and a mountain.

First day was spent snorkling and in a SPA. Maybe a not to well thought trough decision. Snorkling in the morning gave a nice sunburn, and then SPA for three hours, of which body scrub was one hour, hurt a lot!

The second day was spent driving around in a car with a driver for 11 hours. visited several villages on our way to a still active volcano. The volcano was the most boring part of the trip but a nice view. On the way back we managed to visit a few more temples, have some freshly roasted Bali coffee and get lost in the jungle.

Third day and last day we spent walking around on the beach and shopping in a market an hour away.

During the whole stay we enjoyed all the great food we could find..except the grilled fresh fish was the local dishes such as nasi goreng and fried noodles two favourites. Add a large selection of fresh fruit juices and you will feel very good. The pity though was that on the flight back from Singapore to Shanghai, the planes aircon was so cold that I catch a very bad cold. So I have since arriving in Shanghai been sick and almost embarrasing coming back to office in worse shape than before leaving for vacation.

Decided today to spend less time in front of my computer and instead enjoy the evening at home with some chinese tea and a new book….need to buy a new mp3 player so I can close my eyes and listen to audiobooks instead

It has now been more than a year since I moved to Shanghai and I felt it was time for a small change and update.

I recently decided to change industry and are now working with corporate banking. Doing it in China is certainly a bit different compared to do it anywhere else in the world. The market is super hot and the attempts to cool it down results in changes o rules and regulations. And this just makes it more fun and challenging.