Basking in funny, arty Barca

We spent three days in Barcelona, staying in the main tourist area and seeing the sights. This city  grows on you. We saw it from two great vantage points: Montjuic, which houses the Joan Miro museum and commands a great view over the port; and Park Guell where Antonio Gaudi lived and worked for many years, which gives another view over the city centre. It is quite a coincidence that the English word gaudy is so similar to Gaudi's name. Gaudy is certainly a word that comes to mind when looking at the many works of this famous architect that dot the city. I say this not in a pejorative sense - Gaudy's work is stunning and fun. One can say the same about Miro's art which has a child-like and impish quality to it. Even some of Picasso's work in the Barcelona museum is outright funny, notably his series on Pigeons which made me laugh out loud. We travelled quite a bit in the efficient Metro system and I was surprised at how few signs there were of the unemployment shock that has engulfed Spain in recent years. Catalan unemployment is up at 20% but people seem to be getting by. In metro systems you spend a lot of time looking at people's shoes and there were very few that looked in bad disrepair. Actually my old sandals looked worse than most! The QSL is from Cadena SER Barcelona heard on AM 828 in Johannesburg in  1991.

Chill pills for London property

The home-buying system in England has to be among the stupidest in the world. You need chill pills to handle it. For a country with such a well-developed legal system it's a disgrace. So we are interested in this house. As we always do we make a point of meeting with the sellers to show them that we are serious. It's also a chance to get to know more about the property. London is not cheap. One measure is the ratio of London prices to the rest of south-east England (itself not cheap). This ratio is a couple of standard deviations high for the past 20 years. Anyway, the sellers like us and we put in an offer. They accept. But.... they too are buying and their seller is very uncommunicative. He will only take emails. So our deal just hangs. In the meantime another buyer could come along and outbid us and the same could happen with our sellers: another bid could come in for the house they want. There is no contract yet, it's all in the air. No one is legally bound. It's great for the solicitors and surveyors: they get involved and if the deal falls through, too bad, they get paid anyway. Infuriating. So we got out of town for the weekend and went to Brighton, staying in a beautiful flat close to the sea. Luckily there was no traffic pile-up on the highways so we whizzed through in 2 hours. The QSL is from Mid-Downs Hospital Radio in Haywards Heath  (just north of Brighton) using 1 watt, one of a bunch of low-powered AM stations heard in Kent over a decade ago. 

Kiribati has a sinking feeling

So you want do get away from it all and take up residence on a desert island? Sip sundowners and watch the palms swaying in the breeze? Forget about the Eurozone crisis, the US debt ceiling and Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz? After all, Paul Gaugin had a whale of a time out in Tahiti. Sounds good, only it's not as safe as you think. On Kiribati (the old Gilbert  Islands) in the Pacific they are negotiating with Fiji to buy land as their own set of atolls is threatened by rising sea levels. The island group with a population of 100,000 averages just 2 metres above sea level and storms are eroding the coastline. Fresh water supplies and crops are suffering from salination. The idyllic island aura was devastated by some of the bloodiest fighting in World War 2 when the Americans attacked Japanese positions on the Tarawa atoll. The QSL is from Radio Kiribati, Tarawa heard in Johannesburg in 1989. The frequency given on the card is 846 kHz medium wave, which would have been a prodigious feat over nearly 15000 km - virtually impossible unless you're near the coast. I actually heard it on 14918 kHz on shortwave. At the time it used to come in every morning around 0745 Joburg time, 10 hours behind Kiribati. So I used to listen in just before driving into work with the strange feeling of knowing that their day was already over.

Not all bad in Hyderabad

Massive amounts of band-aid applied to Greece have enabled investors to feel more positive about risk assets. But there is still a high degree of scepticism about Greece with many feeling that it will still ultimately leave the Eurozone and that the current bout of cocoon-wrapping and debt write-offs are merely preparing the way for an eventual Greek exit. I'm not so sure. If I know one thing it's that nothing stays the same. What you see now in economies is for sure not what you're going to see in three years time. This is especially true after a crisis. Greece may well surprise. In the meantime, emerging economies are easing up on monetary policy. Brazil has cut interest rates more than anyone expected. In China inflation has halved in the past few months so stand by for more easier policy this year. This is the old-fashioned way of applying monetary policy - when things are booming hike rates so when things are cooling you can run 'em down again. India is also jumping on the bandwagon, with the Reserve Bank of India dropping banks' cash reserve ratio again this week. India has missed the boat somewhat with its lack of follow-through on economic reform. Congress Party is gripped by policy paralysis. But India is capable of chugging along at a 6% pace, even if not at the the ballistic rate that seemed possible just a few years ago. Over the past decade emerging economies have doubled their share of global GDP and it's likely to continue to grow for the another generation. The QSL is a classic from All India Radio Hyderabad heard in London in 2002 and signed by the much-beloved AK Bhatnagar. Hyderabad was founded in 16th century, now a city with a population about the size of Chicago.

Israel's economy slaan die Kol

Israel is country is constantly mired in complex problems: the Palestinian issue, extreme political flux in neighbours like Syria and Egypt, nuclear threat from Iran. It has a population about the same as London's - 7.5m people - and occupies a tiny stretch of land not quite as big as the state of Vermont in the USA. But it has one heck of an economy. Economic growth has chugged along at an average of around 4% for many years despite an almost constant state of regional crisis. Inflation is low at around 2% and has fallen steadily over the past decade. The population is rising at around 2% pa. At the head of the central bank is Stan Fischer. Nowadays called an 'Israeli-American' he was actually born in Lusaka, Zambia (which was Northern Rhodesia at the time) - the same country as my Mom. He has an unmistakably southern African accent, even today. Over 130 Israeli companies are listed on Wall St and the country boasts it's own version of Silicon Valley which bristles with hi-tech start-ups. Where the US version has a high percentage of consumer product innovation, Israel is more into business solutions. It simply doesn't have the population to experiment on, like the USA. The next step in the economy is the proposed break-up of its extensive conglomerates to increase competition. Israel is testimony to the idea that a high state of tension is good for the creative juices. The QSL is from Kol Israel, heard on AM 657 in 2000 while I was on a business trip to Istanbul.

Skipping through profitable Schiphol

Another quick roadshow in Europe. This time I really pushed it, doing five cities in three days: Frankfurt, Copenhagen, Stockholm, The Hague and Paris. Last week it was really cold in these places with Frankfurt recording minus 15 but it warmed up in time and everything progressed without a hitch. To get to The Hague you pass through Schiphol, Amsterdam's airport. This is a busy place with nearly 50 million passengers pouring through per annum. For some strange reason, KLM, the national airline, doesn't seem to get very good slot positions at the airport so on internal European flights you always have to walk for yonks before you get clear. The airport is very profitable, booking a net of Euro 194m  last year, up about 15% on 2010. The Dutch government has continued to hang tough with the Germans on Greece and for the umpteenth time there was another cliffhanger through the week as the Eurozone north piled the pressure on Greece to pass swingeing austerity measures to comply with the terms of the second Euro 130bn bail-out - that is not small change! Labour costs in Greece and other peripherals are coming down sharply now which will render them more competitive but they face very tough times before they can reap any benefits. The QSL is from Radio Bloemendaal, the Dutch religious broadcaster, heard on AM from Kent in 2002.

Not enough to go in the Volvo

This year's Volvo Ocean race is just a little bit boring. Team Telefonica has won all three legs and looks a shoe-in for overall winners by the time they reach the final destination of Galway in July. Leg three finished last week in Sanya on the Chinese island of Hainan, having started in Mahe on the Maldive Islands. Leg 2 from Cape Town was distinguished by its finish at a mysterious undisclosed port whence the boats were shipped to Abu Dhabi. This was repeated to get them  to the start at Mahe. All this because of worries about the wretched pirates in the north-west Indian Ocean. I think the Volvo race is a thrilling concept and we saw the start in Cape Town of the previous race in 2008. It was stunning to watch these boats powering through Table Bay, waters I know well from sailing in various yachts. But this year it seems that the designs are too finely tuned and there have been a number of failures. This is not on when you only have a field of six. They should reduce the specs to allow for less equipment error and more sailor skill. This might also attract more entrants. I feel the Americas Cup is making a similar mistake: the advanced design parameters are putting the race out of the reach of many potential competitors leaving it in the hands of all but the very rich. The QSL is from the Maldive Islands Broadcasting Service, heard on short-wave on the strange frequency of 4740 kHz from Cape Town way back in 1968. It's one of those weird cards where they indicate that your report was correct or incorrect. Imagine the disappointment if you got one that was marked 'inaccurate!'