Is It Time, Morgiana?

Down to his last 5 million dollars, the Dubai-based oil trader spends it on a new, grey-coloured LaFerrari. An excellent choice of investment. Well, it's not really an investment of course, more of a thing to do with your last 5 million dollars.

What is it - pewter grey? Plastic modelling kit grey?

All the little oil traders, you see, are in any case hiding inside their oil jars, listening to hear for the slave girl Morgiana to come by so that each might ask her: 'is it time yet, Morgiana?'

I mean it's just so easy to make money now isn't it? As the affluence laps at the soft pink toes of the little Dubai tax dodgers and thieves - that affluence which springs from the global Central Banking hoodlums and their ZIRP/NIRP 'money...' What could possibly disturb the equanimity of all the affluent, living it up in their daydream condos...

But is it time, Morgiana? After all, my La Ferrari will lose 3 million dollars as soon as it trundles out of the showroom, and my German Bund notes will buy me but a meagre breakfast after ten years holding onto them. Is it time, maybe, to buy... ...gold?

'Not yet, oh affluent and clever thief. Wait just a little longer. You have, after all, still 5 million dollars left to bide your time with.'

The moral of this story is - well, you know it - the thief intends to do something when he jumps out of the box, er sorry, jar, he is sitting in.

Some People Never Learn

Preparations for the Chinese Lunar New Year are well underway across the whole globe. Inside China itself it has become a tradition now that people - usually those who work in cities - return to their families outside of those cities, and sometimes quite far away in fact, to celebrate the festival.

On the one hand the Western media has it that China is suffering some kind of downturn...

The kinds of statistics which are quoted in the media do not hold the same significance to me that they might to those who dabble in Exchanges that put up moving prices for people to bet on and have stops run through on and all of that saga. It's all very clever. Very, you know, technological.

Cathay First Class Lounge -
part of it, anyway

I am much more personally interested, in things such as whether or not the First Class Flight Lounges are going to be fairly empty or not!

Or whether the Vodka Mandarin tray is well topped-up regularly. You know, it's kind of a 'James Bond' lifestyle thing... ; )

And they have at the service desk in there, a supply of the new Cathay Dragon-branded USB sticks - complimentary; you can just ask for one and they'll give it to you for nothing (that is to say, it's all contained in the excellent pricing arrangement they currently have for your tickets). 

What is the news in the world today?

Well, the top crook judge, friend of now dead Chief Gangster Lee of Singapore, also died himself this week. This guy, whose name is not worth remembering anyway, spent his life doing his master's bidding from the bench of the Supreme Court. And now he's dead and has to follow his master to wherever these sorts of characters go after they depart from this Earth.

Absolute Mandarin Spirit...! In the First Class Lounge. Places in the clouds. Not for the unworthy.

Wonder what Gong Li is doing this CNY? She will not be in Singapore of course. I hope they give her at least part of the Cathay Dragon brand ambassador mission. That would be something special. This is a truly first class airline.

Hidden In Mists

There are quite a few things in life that are 'an acquired taste.' Well, that's the phrase that is usually applied to them. How does one acquire a favorable regard towards what might ostensibly be horrible, though? Or something that apparently, by nature seems quite repulsive?

I mean, here we are going to move into some once again, fairly arcane understandings, things that are not generally accepted in the ordinary mind, and certainly not commonly held perspectives.

Believe me, black truffles and roast chicken in a simple
sandwich with quality mayonnaise, is not for everyone!
You're not going to find it on many - if any - of the First Class
menus on even the most expensive airlines. A lot of
people don't like truffles.

There are still those extraordinarily rich people left somewhere in the world - not all in the same place, that's for certain - who have what in the old days used to be known as background.

You see it's really a preposterous notion to have someone - let's say, a failed footballer - turn their hand to epicurean-ism, and be believed by those with background. Nevertheless, in the modern era, such ex-footballers have made (or so we are led to believe by the Goldman Sachs-owned media facades) countless millions by chopping up some lettuce and chives and shrimp and rapidly plating-up and serving the consumer.

But tomorrow morning, China will have lost a few dozen billionaires to their declining 'financialized' economy, Dubai and Saudi Arabia (aka Londonistan) will have lost several dozen more oil trillionaires due to the severely declining oil price, and if Bernie Sanders wins the White House in the USA, there will be a few Manhattan pavements dressed in blood.

Background takes you the whole round trip without the disasters which await the young money.

When you leave the planet on your final journey, and travel past the Moon to seek your 'star' in the heavens (which is where souls with potential of saving go), you may, if you have the necessary background, comprehend which guide to acquire, in order to reach your happiest destination.

I shall let you in on a little secret... Some go on the long trip all right, and they make it a round trip and end up in the so-called Mount Meru - which in Vedic knowledge is not exactly totally a place observable on the simple physical plane, which is not to say that it isn't here physically, or actually; because it is. But it is hidden behind thick mists.

You need to already know a lot, to discover a lot in this Universe!

Ayurveda means - life knowledge.

There are many materialistic thinkers, deeply filled with a lot of factual detail too, who will never get to visit these places that are hidden behind the mists. There are a great many magical words and concepts which require to be solidly and firmly fixed into your consciousness before you can locate the mysterious passage-ways, the crevasses through which it is possible for you to gain entrance into these special places.

What is the most fascinating, most exciting, most thrilling, most pleasurable, most most pleasant, most desirable experience that money can buy...?

Is it this:

At a cost of 5 million bucks, there are quite a few in
London, Dubai, Geneva..

If you know any Dubai rich kids you will be familiar with their favorite word - 'gorrrrjess.' And that's what they think about these sorts of trinkets - although I wonder whether they are talking about the price tag; it seems to be the thing that turns them on the most about anything, really. Not that this car is not one of the cleverer of these old hat wedge super-car shapes of the pre-oil crisis Seventies. 5 million dollars of cash in US currency does not fit into the boot, such as it sort of is, of this conveyance.

Or, the greatest experience that you can have, more like this:

Alas though, I know the human mind all too well, and I can hear resonating echoes of 'I want both.'

When the loud thunder breaks into the jungle silence, afterwards, you need to be here, before you can get there - if you know what I mean.

Ayurvedic James Bond

Did you know... that the most effective time of the year in which to do ayurveda-based healing, is in the monsoon season?

Which is a timely idea over here because right in the middle of the hottest months of the year for us down in the Southern Hemisphere - we suddenly have these massive thunderstorms with the temperature dropping a lot as well!

It looks a bit like a monsoon outside.

Monsoon - best time for ayurveda

And it sounds a bit like a monsoon too.

Which brings me to back once again in these discussions, to the Orient. If someone were to ask me which secret intelligence service is the most efficient (with all of what that entails...) I would say the Hong Kong one. What? There even is a Hong Kong secret intelligence service? Oh damn right there is.

And now that the Bond franchise has dropped like a stone into the bottomless pit of movie-land darkness, never to be seen from or heard of again, why let us consider the prospects for a real James Bond circa 2016.

He couldn't be driving a juvenile Londonistani Aston Martin! He would have an appropriately Oriental Mandarin-color leather interior-ed Rolls Royce Dawn drop-head. With a nice Chinese red coach-line up the side, rising seductively on the waist...

And his theme music would be some nice modern New York-made faux Shanghai chillout, in keeping with the international nature of today's Oriental intelligentsia: I am reminded of that Hong Kong professor from the think tank responding on RT to Ash Carter's idiocy to China about how the USA was a force for peace in Asia and the Far East. 'Ohh, no-h' the guy said in that peculiar HK British accent with the relatively poor grammar included as a bonus - 'Ahy doh-wun fink soh. The ho ('l' - there's an 'l' in there somewhere at the end; maybe a silent 'l'...) The ho wurwold nohs vaht Amehwicca was involved in the Vietnam War...'

Where Is Your Compass Pointing?

During this last little, tiny, tremble in the mighty Dow skyrocket, there were a few people talking about tossing rib-eyes on the barbecue...

Perhaps, getting them outta the air dried deep-freeze might have been more appropriate for just yet.

Right now, we have to do with some simple recipes of the olde folke using ingredients which do not cost the earth.

Look at that caramelized onion!

Don't worry though -  a new installment of the latest TRUE James Bond never-ending saga is on its way. Meanwhile however, let us recall Paris, and days gone by, when the good people performed magic with simple produce:

• onions - you cook these slowly exactly as you would do caramelized onion; you know, sugar, vinegar, and long slow simmering
• beef broth - just boil down some beef, a tiny few grains of whole black pepper
• and sherry.

When everything is all complete - onions suitably caramelized - through them in a ramekin with the beef broth, and -

• stick the ramekin, topped with hard bread and some cheese, under a grill, and
• when bubbling, if not sort of charring, take out, and pour in some sherry into the soup.

The shaman - basically the shaman everywhere say the same thing by the way - say that souls need to head off toward the North Star in order to reach heaven.

Where is the North Star?
What, is the 'North Star...'

Which is fine for those who believe there is better French Onion Soup in Sirius or someplace...

Or, maybe it is that the shaman would like to have all the more to themselves and are shoving everyone else off, as many as they can shunt away!

I shouldn't really slander shaman, they are not the ones trying to head everyone off to WWIII, at '3 minutes to midnight' on the Nuclear Clock, as that propaganda machine the BBC just called it. Besides, everyone knows Putin probably advanced the minute hand...

Lyrics start at around 2 minutes in...