![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Stiff legs
Mar. 15th, 2012 01:27 pmWell, I broke the Dell Streak again – it fell out of my inside pocket when I was putting on my leather jacket, although I have no idea how – so decided that I needed a new phone. That resulted in a trip to O2 to buy a new mobile phone -- which turned out to be an HTC Rhyme. Still not sure if it was the right choice and that I should instead have bought a more expensive larger screen phone. On the other hand, if I get used to this, then I could keep the phone and go for a tablet with a data allowance for a fiver a month or whatever it is they charge.
Various busy-ness (not excluding the three hours spent reinstalling stuff on the new phone) has meant that I've neither played poker, practised the piano nor watched TV for three days. I went to the theatre on Tuesday and had the phone fun last night. Monday was just a general tidying up and sleeping evening.
On Tuesday I had an hour's training with another trainer, since Nick has gone to Brazil for a couple of weeks. Even though the training was similar, the slight changes in exercise, and the things that a new trainer spots which your established trainer might not, all made for an interesting hour.
Ryan wanted to give me 24kg dumbbells for the lunges, a weight which had me staring in disbelief. However, he assured me that I could manage 20kg on either side, and, indeed I could (and this was after the squats exercise).
And at the end we did an interesting (but killing) planks exercise. That was so good in terms of reward for work that I did it again yesterday.
But today I've got the standard two-day-delay-world-of-pain in the legs after a tough new workout. And this was despite a really strict stretching-off period after we had finished.
But it's still the diet, the diet, that's occupying my mind the most. I mean, I work really hard at my training, and I put myself through a lot of pain for the rewards achieved (which really ARE worthwhile!) only to undo 75% of it through not being tough enough on myself over diet.
The reason is not hard to find. The 'hour of pain' is just an hour, whereas the "eating very sensibly" is a 24-hour task. If I could just treat that temptation of a sugar rush the same way I do a whisky or a cigarette, then I could do it, but, for the moment, I'm not managing it.
I think that I'm still reducing the amount of fat, on average, but far slower than I could do if I were properly strict. Far slower.
+++++++++
A lot of money could have been made last October if you were an institutional player with the right mindset. I'm seeing figures all over the place showing that this was when many financial institutions got out of Italian bonds and global equities -- and, in good Goldman Sachs terms, it was the worst time to do it. I did right on the equities and I had no chance on the Italian bonds -- if there had been aan easy way to punt on the yield dropping, I would have taken it.
Because, quite simply, Italy is not Greece. It isn't even Spain (and last October the yields on the Italian bonds actually went higher than Spain's). Notwithstanding my opinion that the country is a political and economic mess, it is, like the USA, a country that can cope with being useless far better than can Greece or (indeed) could the UK. Indeed it's perhaps because the country can survive such uselessicity that it has failed to get its act together. Like Ireland was 40 years ago, the youth is leaving, in Italy's case because the labour market is stitched up by a conservative and aging workforce. But it has a system that means it can survive for a long time before the shit hits the fan.
While my opinion on the euro has not changed, it's interesting what strategy has been employed. By delaying and delaying, banks and insurers have used free cash flow to reduce their exposure to peripheral debt. Meanwhile the ECB has printed money. Of course, it claims not to have printed money. But that's a bit like their claims that the Greek default was not a default. What it called it was a "long-term refinancing operation" (LTRO). And what that was, was another 'kick the can down the road' idea.
As with cereal subsidies in emerging nations, the LTRO will be a difficult hole to get out of, even though it solves some short-term problems. What happens at the end of the three-year 1% loans so eagerly snapped up by even solvent institutions? If that €1trn is taken off the market in a single year, the economic strain will be immense. If the financial institutions did what they have been doing ahead of the Greek default -- building up their balance sheets so that they could make the write-off without going bust –- then we could probably survive. But the financial institutions have toher calls on their cash -- not least, their investors. And with Greece it was a race against time. With the LTRO there will be the strong hunch that the ECB will blink first and will agree to a rollover at, say 1.25%. This will give us the LT RO-RO, kind of a cross between a bus and a ferry.
__________________
Various busy-ness (not excluding the three hours spent reinstalling stuff on the new phone) has meant that I've neither played poker, practised the piano nor watched TV for three days. I went to the theatre on Tuesday and had the phone fun last night. Monday was just a general tidying up and sleeping evening.
On Tuesday I had an hour's training with another trainer, since Nick has gone to Brazil for a couple of weeks. Even though the training was similar, the slight changes in exercise, and the things that a new trainer spots which your established trainer might not, all made for an interesting hour.
Ryan wanted to give me 24kg dumbbells for the lunges, a weight which had me staring in disbelief. However, he assured me that I could manage 20kg on either side, and, indeed I could (and this was after the squats exercise).
And at the end we did an interesting (but killing) planks exercise. That was so good in terms of reward for work that I did it again yesterday.
But today I've got the standard two-day-delay-world-of-pain in the legs after a tough new workout. And this was despite a really strict stretching-off period after we had finished.
But it's still the diet, the diet, that's occupying my mind the most. I mean, I work really hard at my training, and I put myself through a lot of pain for the rewards achieved (which really ARE worthwhile!) only to undo 75% of it through not being tough enough on myself over diet.
The reason is not hard to find. The 'hour of pain' is just an hour, whereas the "eating very sensibly" is a 24-hour task. If I could just treat that temptation of a sugar rush the same way I do a whisky or a cigarette, then I could do it, but, for the moment, I'm not managing it.
I think that I'm still reducing the amount of fat, on average, but far slower than I could do if I were properly strict. Far slower.
+++++++++
A lot of money could have been made last October if you were an institutional player with the right mindset. I'm seeing figures all over the place showing that this was when many financial institutions got out of Italian bonds and global equities -- and, in good Goldman Sachs terms, it was the worst time to do it. I did right on the equities and I had no chance on the Italian bonds -- if there had been aan easy way to punt on the yield dropping, I would have taken it.
Because, quite simply, Italy is not Greece. It isn't even Spain (and last October the yields on the Italian bonds actually went higher than Spain's). Notwithstanding my opinion that the country is a political and economic mess, it is, like the USA, a country that can cope with being useless far better than can Greece or (indeed) could the UK. Indeed it's perhaps because the country can survive such uselessicity that it has failed to get its act together. Like Ireland was 40 years ago, the youth is leaving, in Italy's case because the labour market is stitched up by a conservative and aging workforce. But it has a system that means it can survive for a long time before the shit hits the fan.
While my opinion on the euro has not changed, it's interesting what strategy has been employed. By delaying and delaying, banks and insurers have used free cash flow to reduce their exposure to peripheral debt. Meanwhile the ECB has printed money. Of course, it claims not to have printed money. But that's a bit like their claims that the Greek default was not a default. What it called it was a "long-term refinancing operation" (LTRO). And what that was, was another 'kick the can down the road' idea.
As with cereal subsidies in emerging nations, the LTRO will be a difficult hole to get out of, even though it solves some short-term problems. What happens at the end of the three-year 1% loans so eagerly snapped up by even solvent institutions? If that €1trn is taken off the market in a single year, the economic strain will be immense. If the financial institutions did what they have been doing ahead of the Greek default -- building up their balance sheets so that they could make the write-off without going bust –- then we could probably survive. But the financial institutions have toher calls on their cash -- not least, their investors. And with Greece it was a race against time. With the LTRO there will be the strong hunch that the ECB will blink first and will agree to a rollover at, say 1.25%. This will give us the LT RO-RO, kind of a cross between a bus and a ferry.
__________________
