Yep….I was there….for those of you who have me on facebook, you probably noticed my continual status updates throughout the week. In a sense, I am glad to be back home because the trip was pretty much “spur” of the moment. My flights were firmed up on Thursday of last week and flew out last Sunday, the 21st, on a morning flight that left Ottawa at 6:00am, arriving in Toronto one hour later to catch the 9:30am flight to London.

This flight was chosen for a couple reasons. First, I didn’t want to fly out Saturday night because I had plans. I didn’t want to fly out Sunday night because that would mean that I would have to go straight to the customer site, which would not have been my preferred option. The Toronto flight was exactly what I wanted as it landed in London at 9:15pm which allowed me to be fresh and ready for Monday.

This go around, I didn’t get a chance to focus too much on seeing the sites, but I did manage to visit Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum at Piccadilly Circus on Monday night and went to the London Eye on Friday night, with a quick walk about through London’s SOHO district before having to return to the customer site for a 10pm test. The other nights were pretty much work, work, work and no play.

The London trip ended with a 4:20am Blackberry wakeup call this morning to catch a 4:50am shuttle from the hotel. It picked up 4 others enroute and headed straight for Heathrow. Flight was to have left at 8:30am, but due to weather, the flight didn’t leave till 9:30am, which resulted in missing my 1:10pm flight to Ottawa. But all was good as I was already re-booked for the 2:10pm flight to Ottawa.

How do I feel? Considering that I was pretty much up from 11pm EST, I am starting to feel the exhaustion, but I must remain awake to at least 10pm so I got another 4 hours.

I think that is enough blabbing for the day….nothing in this post is thought-provoking, but more or less a blurb about this weeks activities.

Paul

What a day, Wall Street sees worst day in 7 years. So….not only did Hurricane Ike devastate the coastal regions of Texas, Galveston being hit the worst, but Lehman Brothers declares bankruptcy and Merrill Lynch is being bought out by the Bank of America. This is over and on top of last weeks government bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I have never seen such market conditions sparking fears among the investment community. And to add to all this uncertainty; the restructuring plans made public in the afternoon by AIG.

Investor response to such situations are always over-exaggerated, but this is a fact of life. Investor response will always be exponential in nature when there is bad news, however, you don’t get reciprocal behavior with good news. What will happen in the coming days, specifically Tuesday? Well, it is normal to see investors looking to get under-valued stocks at bargain prices. Also, by end of the week, I have a feeling that the DOW will likely be only down 200 points compared to price at closing on Friday. Again, this is based on observation of past behavior only, so don’t hold me accountable.

Now, the thing that puzzles me is that the price of oil has dropped below $100/barrel. One would think that our local fuel prices would drop, but nope. There were fears that Hurricane Ike would knock some of the Texan refineries out of commission, however, according to the same CNN article, “early reports showed Hurricane Ike didn’t do as much damage to oil rigs and refineries in the Texas Gulf region as expected.”

If this is the case, why do we not see relief at the pump? Why did they raise prices in the first place when the price of crude oil didn’t really change over the past week? As the prices of crude oil goes up, our local pump prices increase, so the reverse should “in theory” hold true. We may yet see some relief, but I doubt the local gas providers will reduce the price to the levels typically associated to $100/barrel. That would just make too much sense, wouldn’t it.

Well….I have to head out shortly for my Ultimate game in Vanier….so let me know your thoughts on the above…..

Paul

The Terry Fox Run is happening on Sept. 14, 2008. Only two days away. I have had some personal pledges and online pledges, so thank you to those that have pledged. I really hope I can get more of your pledges as I will be participating with my team for a fourth straight year in a row.

Please visit my pledge site HERE

Thank you so much for your support. I hope to get more in the next few days and you can continue pledging afterwards too for the next month.

Paul