Well not totally down but it’s getting there. After all the world’s stock markets have plunged, the City people are losing jobs and even champagne sales are down in London and I share some responsibility in that. I’m sure you must be wondering what on earth a land use consulting, former non-profiter, environmental scientist has to do with the plunge of the world’s markets. You see before I went to Sri Lanka in 2005 to lose part of my liver and most of my mojo I worked from late 2004 until the end of 2005 as a sales representative for a sub-prime mortgage bank over here in sunny SoCal. Why? Because the money was brilliant and more than enough to fund my excessive debaucheries in Vegas, San Francisco and eventually in Sri Lanka. Of course there is a price to pay for all things but that’s a different story.

You can barely take a peep at the business section of any paper or website these days without bit hit in the face with how the sub-prime mortgage market and its collapse in the US is going to well…destroy the world. Well I participated gleefully in that market when it was at its peak and what a market it was. There was the thrill of hitting multi-million dollar targets, from $5 million initially to a whopping $30 million a month at our team’s peak. There was also a very attractive Filipino girl that I worked with that was the icing on the cake (yeah she was married but so what, technicality). Times were good, the money was rolling in, I had a fast sports car and who cared if we lent to people who couldn’t pay back.

It did eventually get to me though. At heart I’m a reasonably decent human being and seeing people getting fucked on a daily basis, the greed of the brokers, the number of lines we were asked to cross and the stupidity of the average borrower became too much and I cracked. I should have ended up in Angoda but I’m back here reasonably well adjusted and happy (well as happy as I can be out of Sri Lanka). I do feel a smidgeon of guilt however every time I read the news about more stock market plunges. Too think our little deal makings are having repercussions like that befuddles me. I truly am very sorry for the ignorance in which I worked back in the days and for the way that’s hit the poor suckers who bought those toxic bonds that those Liar Loans were packaged in.

If it’s any consolation to those who have lost bundles on the market these days there’s an incredibly beautiful half Latino, half Filipino stripper in Vegas who to this day must be utterly astonished by the rather extravagant tip left for her by me one drunken night in Sin City. Incidentally I’m still a bit pissed about it and have henceforth kept my hundreds (oh wait I don’t have those anymore) strictly separate from my ones.