Facebook and Moods.

My absence on the humor side is all involuntary, the financial crisis and the way it unfolds is not funny, but then without a bit of humor we might as well take the plunge into the shark pool. However, of late I have been fascinated with the networking of the thing called Facebook. Well with close to 2000 'friends' I think I can be a bit of an authority on the facebook phenomenon. Here are some of the observations I have picked up after a year of accumulating friends.

Facebook is a great place to let people know you are alive and post the odd photo of your child, pet, car or the latest trophy girlfriend, (do not forget to delete the ex), and yet its a great mood barometer. People will post stuff there to their near and dear 2000 odds friends about their moods which they would not normally talk to their shrink about. One posted something about the ensuing ups and downs with her boyfriend. Now why would you want a network to know that 'he doesn't touch me the way he used to', or in another case, 'i am menopausal today' or a man announcing 'I am turning 50 want a fling before closing down'. I suspect any one of those mood announcements would ofcourse have prompted a myriad of emails and offers; from the sleaze to the imaginative.

Ofcourse, there are other more amazing cat fights that occur, one was over who owned my Black Stallion, (I am talking of a real horse you gutter bags who thought otherwise), and it was amusing that people who had not seen him insisted it was 'their baby'. The honor must indeed go to the one where a woman posted what she thought were emails straight on her facebook page and pretty much poured out her sexual life and fantasies in one click of the button 'share'.

Now that is interesting 'Share', but with who? Your nearest and dearest 2000 friends who would not recognize you if you walked past them, or perhaps just pick up the phone and call the real friend. But then facebook, Hi5, Myspace etc etc all fill a void for us, it allows us to vent. But venting in public is a hard thing, even though we can press the 'remove' button and hope people have not seen what mood you were occupied with the previous night, invariably the damage is done.

Is Facebook then the moral equivalent of what the movie The Invention of Lying suggests; a world where people never lie. So can we in facebook simply tell someone how terrible they look in the photo they posted or just be polite and ignore the booger coming out of their nose as they surface, in the photo, from the Aegean Sea on their holiday in Greece. (See what I have just done, now every one of 2000 friends who went to Greece on a holiday will be spending hours checking their Greek holiday snap shots on Facebook).

I love this tagging of photos, its great. I tag my friends in my photos, and then when I am pissed off with them then I un-tag them. If that does not get them the message I can always remove the friend, assuming in that one stroke I have just got rid of the person for real. Usually that does get the message. Well I do notice some people who are total psycho's who do that to me and delete me because they are pissed. I wait three weeks, add them back again, and guess what their bi-polar moment has passed so they accept me as a friend. It does not take them long to get pissed at me and delete me again. This is better than Farmville, a game on facebook, and why not rename Facebook to Friendville?

Now someone studying for exams and announcing it is fine, almost a 'DO NOT Disturb' sign and that works, but then announcing, 'I want.....' well that is a bit too forward for even my liberal bent of mind. The better ones are always the people who will change their announcement like 20 times a day, and somewhere along the way forget that people can read the comments too, so its interesting what comes out of the comments.

I find the strangest to be the ones who join facebook under false names and feel they will never be found out. Men forget their gender and start communicating in the masculine tense not realizing they have been pretending they are a woman, or indeed vice versa.

More alarming is how some people will come of facebook and then shun it and say its too invasive. A model I knew argued she didn't like it and did not want any of her photos on facebook, but then why be there, just delete yourself, and ofcourse remember there are sites dedicated to you modeling photos?


Now facebook groups are another whole drama in their own sense. There are bizarre groups and deserve a piece on their own.

For the moment I love facebook, it ranks as the best entertainment I could ever wish for. Oh yes the psycho woman who keeps sending me emails there about this amazing real Pegasus horse, please read this and stop.

Driving in the Emirates.

As a long time resident, and driver, of the Emirates, I have a 29 years PhD in observing the antics of drivers on the road. Being from Pakistan, where we do not drive on the left or the right side of the road but bang in the middle, driving in the UAE was, initially, a challenge. Since then I have graduated to knowing I am on the right side of the road, though not sure if I know which lane I am supposed to be in. My son believes in the next 29 years I will figure that out, but may be too blind by then to be able to know if I am in the drivers seat or the passenger seat.

However, not being a great driver, does not mean I do not observe others, and this gives me great comfort because compared to them I am perfect. Yes perfect.

Here are somethings I noticed.

1. Cars sold to some UAE national drivers have the accelerator on the dashboard which explains why they put one foot on the dashboard.

2. Lebanese women driving need four mirrors on the inside so they can adjust their make up every ten meters.

3. In UAE you see the most number of car accidents involving only a single car.

4. The speed lane is also for cars traveling at 60 Kph.

5. We have to remind the drivers here that using your indicator does not run down your battery.

6. Even the police cars do not know how to use the hazard lights. (You only use them when the car is stationary, in the UAE you use them whenever you want..)

7. Changing lanes is part of your high speed chase practice and must be performed in rush hour.

8. Traffic lights are optional.

9. Driving with you four year child in the front seat with no seat belt is to prepare him for a career in head butting.



Some of the reasons I heard from drivers for having accidents.

1. The pedestrian hit me and decided to go under my car.

2. I was not my fault it was a stationary truck coming the other way.

3. An invisible car came around the corner hit my car and disappeared.

4. A short man in a small car with a big mouth caused the crash.

5. I am color blind. I swear the traffic light was not red.

Bankers + Greedy Buyers = Innovation gone wrong

I have lived in the world of finance for most of my working life, and when I quit banking I could still look at it with a humorous bent, not something everyone would like. Ofcourse the oldest dictum remains that banks want to lend when you do not need their money and avoid you when you do need them. However, they also have an amazing panache' to invent financial products. So much so there was a phase of financial engineering that consumed Wall Street (and every other street where banks were) resulting in Interest Only securities and Principal only securities (splitting the revenues streams) and ofcourse hedge funds which were never really hedged.

The property boom of the past decade also brought out their own set of fun innovations. When the concept of selling 'off plan' apartments emerged the idea of buying a 'hole in the air' caught on. A well known journalist friend of mine told me of how he went to a dinner and found he and another guest were the only two people in the room who did not own 'a hole in the air'. The fact that everyone in the room proudly talked of this 'hole in the air' that each owned made his friend feel out of place and sure enough some months the journalists friend also proudly owned a hole in the air.

How did it all happen? Well you selected a 'developer' who was smart on marketing ideas and images and he sold you a hole in the air with one two or three bedrooms and views to die for. You then went to a banker who ofcourse had more money than Carter has pills, and the banker suggested he can lend you 90% of the value of the hole in the air. Ofcourse you asked him for the balance 10% as you didn't have it, and indeed the banker said no problem for the 90% we create a mortgage on the air where your home will be and for the balance 10% we give you a personal loan. Presto! were it not for our banker friends how would we own these lovely well designed holes in the air.

Then a few months later you met someone else and decided he needed your hole in the air badly enough to offer you more than you paid, and guess what? His banker was also willing to lend him in the same way to buy the hole in the air. Thus the cycle of trading holes in the air was born and happy bankers got their fat bonuses for the business they brought, and the developer got his hole in the air sold and the whole cycle of 'success' started. When the hole in the air never became anything but the hole in the air suddenly the notions of all these holes in the air on the balance sheets of banks became issue.

The moral of the story ofcourse a greedy banker plus a greedy buyer and a developer who does not know how to build a hole in the air do not all make good bedfellows...