MISSED THE BOAT...

In January I was given a gift. It came in the form of two words = Baillie Gifford

Their share price was touted around in early 2013 as one to watch or, if you had the balls/foresight, to invest in. At the time it was 150p per share.

Baillie Gifford Japan Trust plc are a securities house that invest funds across a range of Japanese companies, property and other investments to make other people money and themselves a good cut of the profit. Despite my interest in Japan and things Japanese (and I don't just mean the japanese girls comments I've made in the past!) I didn't do anything about it.

Lately though, the news has been full of the turnaround in the Japanese economy that has been made in the last 5 months, mainly being attributed to the new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe - last weeks' Economist magazine even hailed him a Superman!

The Nikkei Index, Tokyo's main stock tracker index has gone up in value by 55% in the last 5 months.

So, I checked the stock price for Baillie Gifford again today. Rightly enough it has gone up. But I wasn't quite ready for the magnitude of the gain.

Currently priced at 312p per share, a gain had I had the balls (?) of 108%, dwarfing the 55% general index increase...

Sat here in May those two words have turned into one.

Balls...
 

GRAND THEFT AUTO...

I had to share this with you as it is a piece of genius data analysis. A comparison of car theft crime rates with sales of a video game purported to be one of the factors behind a rise in crime over the same period...

Shoots (pun intended) down those who say video games promote crime.

It comes from an interesting infographic that looks at car crime rates, unfortunately in the US rather than anywhere else, though there is a small section on international rates of car crime. This includes the alarming statistic that 9.7% of all car theft in the world occurs in Britain.

By any measure this is quite a surprise given that Britain's 62.2 million people account for barely 0.1% of the world's entire population. However, our car stock is going to be higher given much of the world doesn't even own one.. leaves the blog to go and find statistics on global car pool..

HOCKEY & MOZZARELLA..

HOCKEY..
A slightly disappointing start to round 2 of the 2013 Stanley Cup playoffs for New York Rangers. Down 2 games in the first 2 games to Boston Bruins..

Current standings are (21 May):

Boston really are the surprise at this stage being 2 straight games up. Pittsburgh and LA are my personal favourites and I would have thought would be 2 or 3 games straight up but both have conceded a game.

Detroit, Mrs P's team (for different reasons to judging hockey skills and more to do with likeable players!) are looking a bit scrappy in their games but have been helped by Chicago's similar performance. Who knows which of those two teams is going through to the semi-final..

New York being down 2 games is in fact a good thing. As each game they lose goes by my yearning to be in New York later in the month to soak up the atmosphere of a game and some great Brooklyn beer and freshly smoked mozzarella pizza is slipping away.

MOZARELLA..
On that, I have just found out that Joe's Dairy, a family run cheese shop in SoHo that used to make the best smoked mozzarella I have ever tasted closed last week (11 May 2013).

Unbelievably, the shop was suffering from not enough walk in sales for their home made cheese.

I went in 2007 and witnessed the steam being blown across the road as the vats were being opened one morning. Bought some smoked, sliced by Anthony Campanelli at that very counter below and he wrapped it for me in a paper wrapper. I had it in my backpack, visited Bleeker St record store and then found a great Brooklyn Brewery real ale style pub close by at lunchtime and really enjoyed it for my lunch. One very memorable morning spent. Seems that won't be happening again. Shame. Real shame. Here's the official report.

In fact, it deserves two links it was that great a place - here's a really good review on a blog called Vanishing New York. Joe's reminded me of the types of store I used to see on Starsky & Hutch or other US TV programmes when I was a kid. Still a lot around, but not too many in Manhattan it seems. These days you have to venture out to Brooklyn, Long Island (not a bad thing - I am a fan of the New York Islanders after all!) or up to the Bronx.

Happy hunting.

MAN v CITY..

Let's take a look at the evidence..

Click the video.



This game is, yet again, about a world where things are falling apart.

This game is, yet again, taking the genre further.

This game is, yet again, looking incredible.

This game is, yet again, being developed by Ubisoft.

Watch Dogs.

I rest my case. Ubisoft, by far the most imaginative games designers out there!