Thanks to my ICIS colleague Paul Ray for this classic passenger complaint letter which is circulating the world in email and now enshrined in an article in the UK's Daily Telegraph.
January 2009 Archives
It starts at the airport with the comforting cappuccino and the plateful of dinky little mini-croissants and pains au chocolat, because after all it was such an early start and there wasn't time for breakfast at home. Then there are the long hours of forced meals and zero exercise on board the plane. Then the extra meal on arrival when your body is screaming out that it is bed-time but everyone around you is on local time and raring to go.
Then the one-hour breakfast meetings at the all-you-can-eat hotel buffets with their waffles and pancakes and eggs cooked to order, mounds of fruit and perpetually refreshed coffees.
Then there's food in the office - bagels and cream cheese in ICIS New York, durian pastries in ICIS Singapore. Gradually the pounds then kilos pile on. The belts are loosened by one notch. The pencil skirt is consigned to the bottom of the suitcase.
"Conference weight gain," we call it, hoping that it will melt away like the snows of yesteryear when we are back to our relatively disciplined and active lifestyles.
There's always the next trip to order the "Healthy Option" lo-cal breakfast, decline the after-work beers and take the recommended jogging path through the deafening and steamy high-rise canyons.
A battle is raging in the august columns of the Times today about the benefits of those little pencil-sized plastic bags of milk which are served with coffee on trains, planes and in cafeterias, versus those of the tiny plastic pots of milk which were previously ubiquitous.
Columnist and former Conservative MP Matthew Parris finds it hard to decide between the two of them, pointing out quite accurately that they are both devilishly hard to open.
It's an easy choice for the Blog, once we read the manufacturer's claim that the sticks of milk contain 50% less plastic than the little pots - as if this is a good thing!
The designer of this new motorhome-citycar-combo hopes that "the sleek curves will appeal to women buyers." It's appealing to me already, but I'm not sure how good those swathes of shiny white glass-reinforced plastics (GRP) will look when they have been parked under the lime trees outside chez Blog. Designed for these economy-minded times, the Colim vehicle is more fuel efficient than a traditional motorhome, and allows tourists to cruise around the towns they visit, according to this article in the Metro.
A dubious video showing a worker at a liquid natural gas (LNG) terminal setting fire to the goggles on his head in a life-threatening prank was recorded and posted on YouTube, according to this article spotted by our friends at ICIS Heren.
Investigations are under way to discover whether the video, which purported to be recorded at South Hook LNG in Pembrokeshire,
The video, which was posted in December, disappeared suddenly as it was being investigated by Western Telegraph earlier this week.
Gary Koebbe has joined Kolmar Americas, Inc as a trader for olefins and liquid petroleum gas (LPG), the company announced on Tuesday.
The appointment was effective from 1 January 2009.
Koebbe was previously president of Trammochem in Connecticut, US.
Julia Meehan reports on her recession-busting approach to DIY carpet cleaning ...
An ivory carpet for a kids' bedroom is probably not the best colour - it's now covered in stains and, quite frankly, it no longer looks anything like it did in the designer magazine which inspired it.
Since I can't afford a new carpet I decided to rent a carpet cleaner called a Rugdoctor.
But when I inquired about the cost, I learned something about supply and demand in a recession. For some strange reason, the price of hiring the unit seems to have doubled: could it be that across the country, demand for these machines and the chemical solvents they use has rocketed, and therefore the prices too?
Obviously DIY carpet cleaning is the new vogue in times of financial hardship. So, in my quest to save even more of the few pennies in my purse, I advertised on our company's intranet to see if any colleagues would like to share the hire cost. Well, the response has been phenomenal.
Only yesterday, while trying to talk to the polymers world, every second call I received was about my advert for the Rugdoctor hire. The calls came from far and wide, and from all walks of carpet cleaners. Despite our different needs, what we all had in common was a dirty carpet and the lack of funds to purchase a new one.
In total, I must have taken more than 15 calls from people inquiring about the share of the hire cost. At £37.50 ($51.68, €29.79) for 48 hours, it would have worked out at about £2.50 each, but owing to time and logistical issues, four people in the hire chain would prove enough. So my girls will have a carpet as good as new for approximately £9, rather than a new one costing about £500.
(Click here for the full article in this week's ICIS Chemical Business.)
I've just seen these BP billboard ads all over
Click here to view the campaign.
"Careless talk costs lives," was the wartime reminder to be careful when discussing sensitive information in public, or at least on trains, for fear of enemy spies who might be lurking on the luggage rack.Business travellers might usefully be reminded of this when sharing their concerns about their own companies while hanging around in airports, particularly on a major petrochemical travelling route.
The Blog was waiting in line at the boarding gate, when she was joined by two fellow travellers, evidently process engineers in petchem companies.
"Where are you going?"
"Louisiana, Baton Rouge, the FCC's down."
"Ah, the big one."
"Yeah, third time this year, you?"
"Texas City for two weeks, we've had a bad start to the year."
"Were you in the office on Friday - see the memo?"
"It's a good package, but you don't want to be on the job market now. I've only got a few years to go."
"You could move out here and go onto local terms. The market's still looking good there."
(And more of the same, halted only by taking our seats on board.)
"Even the walls have ears," and that lady standing next to you tapping on her Blackberry might just be a reporter.
For more on Baton Rouge and Texas City plants, click on ICIS news.
The launch of a new chemicals business-to-business (B2B) companay called Fuchem was announced in an email from the firm's founder, Henk van Vreumingen on Monday.
Linda has just sent me this great website for the Dutch retailer of plastic goods, HEMA.
It's ostensibly selling plastics and other goods, but just click on it and wait. Best with sound on.
I thought three was enough for Blog postings on Lego, but now I've come across a website "Geekologie", which features not just this Star Wars Diorama - a snip at $400 for 3,800 pieces - but also Stephen Hawking in Lego form, Lego sushi, a Lego rap album cover and many, many more. Enough to make you feel quite queasy.
Traders Trammochem confirmed on Thursday that Patrick Cox had quit to pursue other options. The split was amicable and everyone wished each other well. Cox had been trading aromatics at the petrochemical trading house's European office in Altendorf, Switzerland.
The Blog hears that he will be joining a Geneva-based energy trading company, although this is naturally unconfirmed by any of the aforementioned parties.
Chemical trader Chemium has expanded its European operation with the addition of Aruanan Mastenbroek to its
"Mr. Dirk van der Burg will also be operating in conjunction with Aruanan out of Belgium, and Mr. Miguel Ferreres will remain operating out of its office in Madrid, Spain," the announcement said.
Mastenbroek had formerly launched his own benzene brokerage, TnS in October, and prior to that had been with traders Oxyde and BMS.
Chemical traders get a bad press - roundly abused by producers, consumers and even reporters, all of whom resent having too rely on them when they are in difficulty. Nonetheless, the ones who stick at it seem to think that the rewards are worth it, even in these problematic and unpredictable times when real physical demand for their products has suddenly dropped away.
But is the life of a chemical trader as bad as that of a forex or share trader? Reviewing a new BBC series, "Million Dollar Traders," Lucy Kellaway writes in today's Financial Times:
"The message that the programme rammed home is that being a trader is the worst job in the world. That it is horrible in normal conditions - all that fear of losing, and never being able to leave your desk. But in abnormal ones, when markets are volatile and falling, it is more beastly than a human being should be asked to bear."
The Blog was sure that the proposed Macau Pavilion at the
Legoland
This photo gallery in the Guardian has 11 photos of the Lego inauguration, complete with some sly little captions.
My favourites are the Lego Aretha Franklin, and picture 6, "George Bush Sr, Barbara Bush, Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton show no emotion during Lego Obama's swearing-in ceremony," with their blank Lego faces.
Click here for links to the Lego James Bond 007 Operation and Giant Lego Man Washed Up on Beach.
It's worrying but I find I am drawn inexorably to the works of motoring correspondent Jeremy Clarkson. His pieces on Top Gear on the Fiesta doing a beach landing with the Royal Marines which was shown on
And today while craftily reading his review of the new Volvo XC90 D5 SE R-Design, I see that he has views on Monte Carlo, traditional home of the annual EPCA conference, which chime with those of many in the petrochemical industry:
"As we know, Monte Carlo is a fairly horrible place full of prostitutes, wedding cake architecture and greasy little men who've learnt their English from baddies in James Bond films and who meet in bars at night to sell one another machineguns. It rains more than you might think, too.
And yet it is perceived to be a glamorous place simply because of the cars that prowl round
The cars are what makes
It would have been a hard sell to argue that I needed to attend the London International Boat Show to look at the ingenious ways in which ICIS subscriber companies use reinforced plastics and marine resins to manufacture luxury yachts. So it was in a purely private capacity that I slipped quietly away from the office yesterday evening and headed off to the glossy world of sailing, watersports and catwalk exhibits of beachwear. We had an invitation to view the show followed by cocktails on HMS Westminster, and it was no great hardship to spend half an hour strolling amongst the very shiny new Sunseeker and Princess yachts. It was like being back at EPCA in Monte Carlo but without the sunshine.
At the end of the exhibition day, the most popular spots were clearly the Bollinger Bar and the remote-controlled boats lake.
Something that was completely new to me was the brush boarding display where a guy in a protective bodysuit was surfing on a rippling dry slope.
As the show's website says: "brush boarding is a revolutionary cross between snowboarding and surfing on dry land, and is done on a Brush Ramp. Situated in the South Hall, the ramp, which is the size of a quarter-pipe skateboarding ramp, has a moving surface of soft brushes that push the rider upward. The rider is taken up the ramp by putting an edge of their board into the brushes, and skims downward when the edge is taken out."
The cocktails on the quarter-deck of the naval frigate HMS Westminster, which was moored alongside the Excel centre, proved to be the Royal Navy's favourite tipples of gin and tonics and Horse's Necks (brandy and ginger - another new experience, and way too strong for this Blog). With the lights from Canary Wharf shining out over the water, the planes from City Airport roaring overhead and the yachts lined up in the harbour, it was a pretty smart place for a party.
The polypropylene chair has received the ultimate accolade of Design Classic and features in a new set of stamps for the UK's Royal Mail, released in January 2009.
The series of ten stamps also includes Sir Giles Gilbert Scott's telephone box (his K2 design is from 1926) and Robin Day's polypropylene chair for Hille Seating from 1963.
Along with those tourist favourites, the London Underground map and the Routemaster Bus.
The perennial topic of golf and chemicals is given another airing by my colleague Ivan Lerner in our New York office, in a humorous article in this week's ICIS Chemical Business: "Skip the First 18 Holes."He espouses the theory that "the time-honored tradition of petchem deals and camaraderie over nine or 18 holes is down to the work of comedian and actor Bill Murray."
In the Blog's last golf special, on the occasion of the 2008 Ryder Cup in September, the Blog was full of admiration for the sporting attitude of chemical industry players in the US, where "some of the players are complete beginners and turn out in the most unflattering shorts. You'd never catch Europeans being so inclusive or so relaxed about appearances."
Who'd want a timid fruit and cereal breakfast when you could wake up to Darth Vader Toast? What more could you want to set you up for a day of corporate mayhem? Fresh and toasty from your Star Wars toaster (with its glossy black ABS shell), it's just the thing to keep the force with you, at least until lunchtime.
For anyone interested in natural gas, this is a great map of European gas movements, including production, consumption and transit figures for each country, in the FT today.
The Blog had to laugh on hearing the news out today from the Society of Motor Manufacturers that total December sales for the Hummer in the
Deep underground at the bottom of a potash mine in the north of
A kilometre below the earth's surface, down dim and dusty corridors, the scientists are engaged in "Zeppelin 3", an international collaboration to find what the dark matter of our galaxy is made from.
Contrasting the potash mine with the glamour of the more famous CERN quest for dark matter, at one point the reporter says: "I must say this place looks more like a builder's yard than a scientific experiment. It's got buckets of open stuff ... it's not a science lab as I'd imagine it." (Click here to see photos on Flickr.)
This comedy credit crunch song "Caution to the Wind" to the tune of "Candle in the Wind" is a cheerful little tune you can hum along to while reading all the gloomy news about bankruptcy on ICIS news. Starring Gordon Brown and George W Bush on the roof of a multi-storey carpark.
"My credit burned out long before/my repayments ever did ..."
Our own Ed Cox is quoted in today's Independent on gas prices in the UK, in an article titled "Britain feels the chill as wholesale gas prices soar."
Edward Cox, deputy editor of ICIS Heren's European Spot Gas Market, said British household bills were unlikely to rise as a result of the "within day" and "day ahead" rises...."I think there's a nervousness in the market but most traders are still confident it [the stand-off] will be resolved in the next few days," said Mr Cox.
The death of compact discs is nigh. UK sales of CDs slumped 27% in Q4 compared with 2007, and retailers have gone or are going out of business, according to this article. CDs are being killed off by the i-Pod and assorted MP3 players. Optical media like CDs and DVDs represent around 20% of polycarbonate demand, not to mention all those fragile CD boxes made of general purpose polystyrene, so this is not good news for petchem demand.
Ed Cox enjoys some Russian hospitality at a Gazprom press conference ...
Last week I was exposed to the mighty force of the Russian
- or should I say Gazprom - marketing machine in my quest to keep on top of the latest episode in the dispute with Ukraine over gas supplies.Well they say gas is the sexy side of the industry, and without wanting to do down my beloved chemicals background I can see why, following my trip to the Russian news agency's London branch on Tuesday.
Offices in Kensington don't you know
- where one bed flats start at £700,000. Just down from the Maserati and Ferrari showrooms and near some exclusive looking gated residences, I slipped into a little room with a live link up to Moscow.Sitting perilously close to a microphone that could have informed a fair chunk of the Russian and global media about my cold bug, I scribbled down the latest news, or lack of it. How much the Russians must care about their appearance abroad was shown by our permission to ask two questions against Moscow's one. We numbered around seven people compared with Moscow's 50, or maybe more.
Forget all the ins and outs of the dispute, all the accusations, all the anti-Russian press that it's created over here, Gazprom's marketing machine is quite a beast. Gone are the hours of chasing after English translations of some hidden Cyrillic press release
- these days there is a website with up-to-the-minute sound bites summing up the latest failure to reach an agreement. They have the most courteous PR Company in London too. And don't forget they want to use Rolls Royce to build a pipeline to Germany so they're employing us too!While we're at it, the UK doesn't rely on Russia for gas, contrary to certain media reports. Remember when the gas price in the UK briefly dipped to zero last year? That coincided with a flurry of Norwegian imports
- funny how the press didn't latch on to that in the same way.All that said, this whole Gazprom operation still seems a little too clean cut for my liking.
I like the sound of the new phrase "digital diet" which is what we're all going to be on this year.As the fashion swings away from social networking sites with our hundreds of "friends", most of whom are just online acquaintances, people will be craving the real thing, old-fashioned face-to-face contact with the people we really want to keep in touch with.
So where we started with pruning our Xmas card lists, this will continue into removing unwanted online "friends" and cutting back on the number of networking sites we frequent.
"You can be too connected," says Richard Watson, an author who calls himself a futurist. "Just as owning a mobile phone was once seen as a mark of sophistication, not owning one (or using one sparingly) is becoming a signal that a person has sorted out their priorites or has staff to take mundane calls."
So we can look forward to a return to hand-written letters, face-to-face socialising IRL (in real life), fountain pens, and more "Out of Office" messages.
Real-life superheroes
clad in skintight spandex costumes are running amok in the streets of US cities,
according to this article in the Times.
The World Superhero Registry lists more
than 200 of them, who patrol the urban streets dressed up in outfits of spandex
(the generic term, invented by DuPont in 1959, of which the most well-known
brand is Invista's Lycra, and of which a key ingredient is MEG - mono-ethylene glycol.)
A cursory
visit to the Lycra website has convinced the Blog that this is by far the
sauciest chemicals company website in the normally staid petrochemicals space. Not
wanting to kick a company when it's down, but if you look beyond the raunchy
pictures, there is also some excruciating brand poetry:
"If black is sexy, there's nothing sexier than my
bra. My after-hours secret. Nothing comfier. Nothing blacker.
My
swimsuit. It moves and stretches. It speeds and glides, in lakes, in oceans, or
the local pool.
Clothes that help me unwind. No matter what position I'm in. Or trying to get in."
And that's before you get into the "Hosiery and Socks" section.
Elbowing aside the photos of firm bodies clad in "Intimate Apparel", the Blog's own favourite Lycra photo has to be this one of the K9 Topcoat Lycra Bodysuit.
While news
of Gazprom ruthlessly cutting off gas supplies to the Ukraine is in the
headlines everywhere, my friend Liz, who is involved in local good works, tells
me over holiday drinks that the mighty Russian company has its UK base in our
sleepy hollow London suburb on the riverside at Hampton Wick, and that it is a
regular sponsor of local good works.
I've spent
the last eight days away from computer screens, but there's been no way of
avoiding the big breaking chemical news stories which have featured prominently
in the newspaper business pages.
The biggest
news was the collapse of the K-Dow joint venture, covered in detail on ICIS
news from the first announcement on 29 December.
Then there
was a curious piece on Akzo's takeover of German chlorine producer LII being
held up by a "polo-playing aristocrat" who claimed to own the firm.
And then on
New Year's Eve the news that LyondellBasell was considering seeking Chapter 11
bankruptcy.
