Bonds, equities & potato prints

Source: BVI Beacon taken on 20 Jan

For those of you who don't quite know what I do when I sit in the office in the mornings (I think that is everyone?) what I'm really doing is paving the way, through my growing knowledge of the stock market, for my first mega yacht - like the one above..  When we first saw it on Monday morning on the way to school  the boys were jumping up and down screeching "look at the submarine" - which it does look a bit like, or maybe something out of a ropey Austin Powers movie

But  I, of course, knew better.  Because of my job (monitoring the performance of our trusts and mutual funds under investment) I get to do a lot of reading of the Wall Street Journal, Bloombergs, the FT & Yahoo Finance,  which means I'm learning an inordinate about Russian oligarchs, 'Wealth & How to Spend It' and mega yachts. So I just happenend to know that this yacht, called 'A' is the largest mega yacht in the world and belongs to some 30-something year old Russian. You can read all about it in the WSJ link above.  Now, we do get to see our fair share of mega yachts in the 'Hood, but this one really takes the prize for unfettered ostentation and FUness - all $300 million of it. Anyhow, nothing like a little bit of bad taste to brighten up a Monday, and T tells me that they went and scraped it on the Scrub Island dock as well, so that made us feel even better.  





Boys at Sailing Club

 We've had a good week with T still doing day shifts and things getting back to the new normal. Our children are becoming as scheduled as any other global, middle class kidsters - with soccer, sailing, extra maths etc. Luckily we get to chuck it all up and go to Cane Bay Garden on a Friday afternoon - the kids get to play with about 30 of their best friends until the sun sets, and the moms have a few Painkillers or GODW (glass of dry white) and relax a bit. This Friday was extra special, as the fisherman trawlled their nets off the beach, and they had 30 over-excited expat children 'helping' them bring in the fish. This was all happening as the sun was setting. The cruise ships had all gone, there were only 'locals' on the beach and it was so magical that we were all secretively thinking that this was exactly the reason why we put up with island life, for moments like that. Wish I had my camera there.

My solution to digging myself out of  melancholy is usually to get hyper-organised and 'do things'.  In a moment of pure madness, I signed up to run a craft workshop for 5 year olds once a week (WHY?) and now I'm faced with my first one on Wednesday. I'm feeling hugely daunted - flat-out terrified actually, and will understand the psychology of it all at some later stage - but there you go. I'm running a toddlers craft group. Amazing.