My First Visit to London

Last week we were launching a deal, so I went to the printers in London with a colleague where we get together in a big conference room with all the parties to the deal and negotiate and scrape and claw and edit a document into presentable format. Once we have the final product, we collectively approve it, and it gets printed in a professional format for distribution to potential investors.

It is actually a very gruelling process, especially when then document has not reached a point where the format is presentable and some of the content is inaccurate. The point of the document is to make a sales pitch to potential investors about buying into the shares of the company. Therefore it needs to have certain disclosures, not all of which the company is comfortable in making, and the information needs to be verified as accurate, and sometimes the company wants to cut corners on some of the information. In this case, it seemed the company was particularly unwilling to make concessions and develop the content into something we thought was presentable.

As a result, when we arrived at the printers at 10:00 Thursday morning (after having flown into London at 3:00 a.m.), it was a constant struggle to modify the drafting. That first day, we worked until about 2:00 a.m. Friday we went from 10:00 a.m. until 7:00 a.m. Saturday morning (yes, I worked the whole day straight), and then Saturday, we worked from 11:00 a.m. until 2:00 a.m. Sunday morning. Midnight was our final deadline to get the document printed on time, and we made it, kind of. We were only a few minutes late. So after a few hours sleep Sunday morning, I caught a 9:30 flight back to Madrid, so I could spend Sunday afternoon with the family.

So if you think I didn't get to see any of London, you're wrong. My colleague who went with me lived there for a few years while going to school. So when we came in on the taxi, he pointed out Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, Hyde Park, Chering Cross Station, and more. On the taxi ride to the printers in the morning, he described the local area and indicated points of interest. On the taxi ride to the airport when we left, we passed by Parliament, Big Ben, and the massive ferris wheel they call the London Eye. So I saw London, just not the same way most tourists see London.

Happy Columbus Day!!

Today is Columbus Day in Spain. For a second I had to wonder to myself why Spain would care at all about Columbus Day. Duh! They financed the voyage and it was the beginning of a global Spanish Empire. So much for empire, but the Spaniards certainly love their holidays. Everyone gets the day off, which means the Spanish office administrators and legal assistant are out of the office, the Spanish clients we work for are out of the office, and I'm working to make sure a Spanish issuer can make their deal happen in time. They also hold a grand parade just right down the block from our house and my office. It is seriously a big deal - a whole big militairy march, fly-overs by fighter aircraft - the whole schebang. And I missed it because I was processing some documents.

So the family came to bring me lunch while I slaved away. On the way here, Isaac saw the Mini-Cooper dealership next to my office and thought he would look pretty good riding in one. He asked Eryka to buy him one, and she said we didn't have enough money, and that maybe if Daddy worked more, we would have enough.

While he was visiting in my office, he asked if I had enough money. I thought he was speaking in reference to me having to work today (or at all). That's because when I leave for work in the morning, he asks why I go and I tell him it's so we have money to live. Therefore, I reasoned he must have assumed if I had enough money I could come home and play. Eryka must have thought the same thing because she assured him we had enough, but I still had to work because I had a deal to get done.

So where did he go when he left my office, with the assurance that we had enough money? Straight to the MiniCooper dealership to buy himself a new car. Unfortunately, they were closed for the national holiday, so we'll have to take care of that another day.

I'm back!!!

Ok! So this will be really quick. I'm at school and I have a 10 minute break and they have internet. Wow! The only problem is I'm on a spanish keyboard and everything is different. Oh'well.

Hi Everyone. I miss you! We're loving Spian but I'm having a really hard time with the language. Why can't everyone just speak English!!! Hopefully I can figure it out soon enough to start design school in a few weeks.

I have to clear a few things up. We are living the good life here in Spain but we really needed to hire somebody to help with laundry. They don't have dryers here. And I have no clue how to hang clothes and Iron them!! jk. It's been great having Daisy. She's great with the kids and our house has never been cleaner.

Hopefully we get an internet connection soon. As soon as we do you'll get regular updates and pictures. The kids are doing great. Isaac is really learning the language. We'll be doing something and he'll slip in some spanish. It's really cute. Stella is still not saying anything. But I think her grunts have some spanish in them.

\i have to go but hopefully this sounds ok. I didn't have time to check it. Sorry!!! Love ya.