Led Zeppelin

The best and most successful band in the world, Led Zeppelin, is playing at the Dome in London on 11/26. I entered the ballot to get two tickets and if I do win I’m going. Even if that means that I’m just gonna be in the UK for 6 hrs and travel for 24 hrs. This is *the* concert if you weren’t old enough to be at Earl’s Court, Madison or any of the concerts during 1970-1976.

If I don’t win I’ll just watch “How the West Was Won”.

The Fried Rice

As easy as it seems to cook, it’s hard to find really good Fried Rice (a.k.a. “Flied Lice”). Here is my version:

1) Cook Jasmine rice for 20-minutes, then let cool off for 10.

2) Mix Dijon mustard, Hunan sauce and Soy sauce into a thick, spicy and dark brown sauce.

3) Fry eggs (one per person) just like you would making scrambled eggs.Chop and scrape. Chop and scrape.

4) Fry bacon, onions, hangersteak, sausages ot whatever you find in the fridge. Anything goes. This is a leftover dish.

5) Mix the rice with 1/2 of the sauce in a wok. Stir. Add the scrambled eggs. Stir.

6) Finally add all other ingredients. Stir.

Serve the Fried Rice directly from the wok with the rest of the sauce as a side for the guests that enjoys hotter food. This dish takes about 30-minutes all-in-all and is very inexpensive and super tasty. As long as the rice is properly steamed, the sauce hot and the eggs scrambled it’s hard to fail.

Nail on the Head

The most beautiful words: “We chose to invest in Dopplr because of the strong team and the simple execution of a great idea.” The essence of startups!

The Association of Realtors

About 10 months ago, the Association of Realtors paid $40MM for a campaign to convince retail buyers that it was the right time to buy or sell a house… as per my doubtful blog post from November 4, 2006.

Today they announced that the seasonally “adjusted index of pending home sales for July fell 16.1 percent from a year ago and 12.2 percent from the prior month”. Hmm, the reason is – according to their chief economist – due to that “mortgages have been falling through at the last moment”.

The real reason we see a drop in the real estate market is that we have reached a point where few are prepared to take the risk of owning a house versus renting. It’s now 40-60% more expensive to own than rent in the US, UK and Australia according to the Economist, the highest it’s ever been since 1989…

As we have seen over the past few weeks, the American Dream has become a nightmare for many folks that trusted mortgage brokers, lenders and real estate brokers. Well, every bubble got it’s own learnings. It’s unfortunate that people’s homes have to be at stake to get people to smarten up.