Posted: April 12th, 2009 | Tags: Holiday, Spain | 1 Comment »
For the last week I have been staying in Nerja (Spain) with my family and have returned in time for Easter day.
I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, as my previous experience comes only from a hot, dusty and long drive across central Spain from Portugal to reach a horribly remote airport. However I’ve also read a fair amount about Andalusia due to my love of flamenco which I’ve played for years.
Fortunately, I was pleasantly surprised by the beauty of the region. Our villa had a magnificent view of the ocean and had a backdrop of an impressive mountain range. Every street appeared to be blooming with beautiful flowers and the fragrance of jasmine often followed you around. I even found my favorite flower growing on the Balcon de Europa; the Bird of Paradise which I first saw growing wild in South Africa.
While in Nerja I experienced some amazing food, and tapas is a wonderful way to eat. In some tapas bars you are given a little dish of food with each drink so you can spend hours relaxing with breathtaking views, enjoying an amazing variety of food and drinking small Spanish beers.
My only regret was that I didn’t see any flamenco while I was there, however I didn’t really go looking for it and gives me another reason to go back and visit!
Posted: February 16th, 2009 | No Comments »
My new personal business cards arrived last week from Moo and I think they look quite good! Thanks Moo!
Posted: January 26th, 2009 | No Comments »
I’ve just moved this site to a new server so hopefully everything is ok… however if you have a problem please leave a comment on this post and I’ll try to get it sorted!
Posted: December 22nd, 2008 | Tags: finance, investment, money, zopa | 2 Comments »
I wrote a while ago about “Zopa - Experimental Investment” and my initial experience and plans to use the service, so just under a month later here is my update of how things are going!
As mentioned in my previous post, my aim was to set an extremely competitive rate of interest in the hope of attracting borrowers as quickly as possible. On the whole this strategy worked, with almost the entire sum being “processed’ within the first week. However one thing to note is that just because a loan is being processed it doesn’t mean you are guaranteed that that money will be lent.
All of the money I put into Zopa has now been lent to borrowers and in my opinion that is extremely efficient. 60% of my money went to A* rated borrowers with the remaining 40% going to A rated borrowers. Looking at the information on demand, these two categories are by far the highest so it makes sense to include these in your offers.
Below is a breakdown of my current loan book with the borrowers blurred out for privacy reasons:
One thing I was pleasantly surprised to find was that magically, 4p appeared in my account. It turns our Zopa will pay you interest on money sitting in the holding account waiting to be distributed which I didn’t expect! It isn’t a high rate of interest but some is better than none.
Posted: December 14th, 2008 | Tags: Action, Film, Review | No Comments »
Transporter 3 staring Jason Statham was probably the worst out of the trilogy. That being said, it was still an extremely entertaining film with some great action scenes and the odd moment of comedy genius.
The basic plot is that Frank Martin - “The Transporter” is forced to drive a package to an unknown destination guided only by GPS coordinates given by the criminal mastermind controlling the whole situation. With an explosive bracelet locked to his wrist, Frank is unable to get further than 75ft away from his car without being blown to pieces.
Frank is accompanied by Valentina (Natalya Rudakova), a Ukrainian who is also accessorised with an explosive bracelet and provides the majority of comedy moments particularly when asking Frank in a Borat-esq way; “are you the gay?”.
I’m a big fan of the Transformer series and if you are looking for a fun, entertaining and easy to watch movie - this would be a good choice!
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paulmbain
@paulbain