Global Wandering

Roses in Amboise

There are some places where one just feels at home. My overseas travel has not been comprehensive, but of the countries I’ve visited (Australia, Korea, Switzerland, Italy, England, the Netherlands and France), I feel most comfortable in France.

It is difficult to describe, but the French people just feel as if they are at peace with themselves. They seem genuine.

We flew into Amsterdam today and while the city is gorgeous, the shops are inviting and Breanna and I have had a blast riding our rented bikes all over the town, the tension level seems higher. Tempers appear shorter.

I could be totally off base, but it is just my initial impression.

Tuilerie Gardens Lunchbreak

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Mont-St.-Michel

Breanna and I left Paris and spent a few days in the Loir Valley to admire the castles, the poppies and a local zoo. We stayed in a quaint B&B in Amboise where there was no Internet service. Hence no posts. Now we are staying on the island of Mont-St.-Michel, founded circa A.D. 500, population 34 and lo and behold they have WIFI.

The Mud Flats

This is an amazing place. It sits on a mudflat but when the tide moves in, it moves in fast. We walked the mudflats about 7 PM in the evening and the sea was miles away. Two hours later the mud was covered with ocean.

Breanna watches the tide come in

I've never seen the tide move that quickly. It had an almost tsunami like eeriness to it. Tomorrow we hike to the top of the abbey and then we are off to the D-Day beaches.

Breanna writing in the mud

A whirlpool made by the incoming tide

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Entrance to Jardins de Tuileries

I came to Paris without any expectations. No high hopes or pressing worries⎯other than for my non-existent French. After two days, I can understand why U.S. expatriates might choose to live here. Granted, so far Breanna and I have hunkered near the major tourist sites since our hotel is steps away from Jardin de Tuileries. Hence my data set for drawing conclusions is limited. I recognize there is much (most) of Paris I haven’t seen.

Fountain on Place de la Concorde

Still, here are the initial impressions of someone who is has traveled a fair amount, but hadn’t really give much thought to Paris.

1. This is a very clean town. So much so that when we visited some of the children’s playground equipment in Tuileries Gardens, Breanna could only use part of it because workers were powerwashing the grounds and polishing (yes hand polishing) the balancing beams. There are downsides to high taxes, but at least the children don’t get germs from the playsets.

2. Dining out is inexpensive for such a major city. To think that a few steps from the Louve, Breanna and I can have dinner at a café for twenty Euros. This includes the amazing salad I had of lettuce, beets, cooked ham, cucumbers, tomatoes, green beans, and topped with three pieces of toast with Roquefort cheese.

3. The people are kind. They humor me by continuing to speak in French after my initial Bon jour and only after they see I didn’t respond to their flurry of phrases do they say something in English. I’ve always found it annoying when traveling in foreign countries that locals immediately speak to you in English, even after I’ve spoken to them in their native tongue.

Avenue des Champs-Elysees

4. They cater to children. Air France still allows families flying with children to get on the plane first. Children get free admission at museums and other tourist sites. In fact, tying in the kindness factor above, a security guard at the Arc de Triomphe actually went over to the ticket booth to get Breanna her free admission ticket to accompany my Museum Pass so I didn’t have to stand in line.

First impressions are just that, but mine to date have been all positive.

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A jet lagged Breanna took the camera and shot several dozen pictures inside Notre-Dame in Paris. Here is what caught the eye of a nine year-old.

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For those who want to increase their blog traffic via google search hits, I inadvertantly discovered the secret. Just creatively spell words. I'll have you know this blog is ranked second in Google for those who insist on spelling "Yellowstone Grizzlie" using the same rules I picked up at the Catholic grade school I attended as a kid.

Spelling rule number 65 is "i" before "e" especially when following "zzl."

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One of my favorite hills for biking.

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For the last week I’ve been absorbed in an exhilarating, but frightening book, "The Black Swan” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The book eloquently and systematically makes the case for why my chosen profession is based on a “great intellectual fraud.”

The fraud he writes of is the “bell curve”, and as it applies to modern finance the leap of faith we take that expected returns for asset classes can be neatly plotted around an average with a precise measure of variability (risk) denoted by the standard deviation. All the while we ignore the fat tails, or Black Swans as he calls them⎯unpredictable, rare and extreme events that not only skew the average but make the concept of average meaningless because the Black Swans change the game entirely. After the fact, we create narratives to explain why the extreme event took place so that we can watch out and protect ourselves from such unpleasantness in the future.

Unfortunately, the next Black Swan is usually something that wasn’t even on the radar. We don’t know what we don’t know.

Much of what Taleb writes I’ve learned the hard way over the past decade. I used to think certain investment managers and corporate leaders were smarter than everyone else, only to find that they too had no clue and were buffeted by the unexpected.

Now I manage money by refusing to put faith in experts, keeping costs low, maintaining extreme diversification in order to avoid company level Black Swans, and staying humble. It's called winning by not losing.

Yet what I find disturbing about the book is not just its ramification for investing, but the role “Black Swans” have played in my life to date and the significant impact they will have on my future. So often we look back and create a narrative for our lives. We selectively remember things while conveniently forgetting others. We attribute too much of our success to our own skill and not enough to the kindness of others or just to plain luck.

In my case, I have too much vested in my Plan A ⎯ my systematic vision of an early retirement in ten years in order to spend more time traveling and doing good. I need to focus more on Plan B and Plan C ⎯ the plans that recognize the existence of Black Swans and that the steady trajectory I have forecast for Plan A will not likely be as smooth and upward trending as I anticipate. In fact, Taleb would recommend throwing out plans entirely, since we have no ability to predict the future.

At this point, I have no conclusions. I plan to reread the book while in France next week.

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I like to walk in San Francisco. It is one of the few cities you can get winded while strolling. The hike up Jones Street from Union Square area is one of the steepest grades in town. That is where I snapped the above picture with my cellphone. Only the buildings are straight. Everything else is crooked. Even the trees.

In one of the galleries I stopped at I was intrigued with the paintings by Rossmary Valverde. Such vibrant colors.

One of my favorite unusual food combinations is blackbeans and sweet potatoes. There aren't many restaurants where you can get both. Asia de Cuba in San Francisco is one of them. Just order a side of Cuban black beans and the lobster sweet potato mash. It's amazing.

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