Erratum & Addendum

Erratum: Morning news, 31 March 2008

So I hear and read about all these riots in London due to the arrival of the Olympic Torch Relay team… ahem… So on top of confusing Tibet with Nepal, did I not write about the Olympic flame arriving in Beijing a couple of blogs ago…? Well, I apologise for this gross mistake, it’s embarrassing. The news item did have something do to with the Olympics, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it was then… I do have several excuses for my mistake: a) I was not hearing the news as I was listening to my MP3 player, b) it was a very early Monday morning (9.15 am or so) and c) my mind was wandering somewhere between the office and the Red Sea…


Addendum: Taxi!, 2 April 2008

Quite coincidentally I just read another blog where Robert de Niro is quoted. He doesn’t get the quote quite right, but it’s (again) a funny one by Chris Skinner. Here it is:
http://www.finextra.com/community/fullblog.aspx?id=1173

Are you chewing my cash?
08/04/2008 08:06:58

It’s a line that may become a classic, in a similar vein to Robert de Niro’s famous Are you looking at me? from the film Taxi Driver.

Are you chewing my cash?

Why would this line be even remotely notable?

Well, there’s a sad little news story on BBC’s website yesterday: Termites feast on trader's money.

This is the story of a Dwarika Prasad, who placed his life savings in a safe deposit box of the Central Bank of India in 2005. Far safer than stuffing the money under the mattress.

That was until the bank had a termite invasion in 2007 and didn’t bother telling their customers what was going on, unless they came into the branch.

So, when Mr. Prasad went to get his fortune back in 2008, all he found was dust and shreds of bits of paper.

The fact that the bank is ignoring his pleas for reimbursement is rather mean, but the lesson must be to put everything on a computer disc. Far safer as you can back it up.

What’s that?

HSBC lost 370,000 customers’ details on a computer disc.

Darnit. I guess you can’t win ‘em all after all then ...