A lovely autumn day in London – View from my flat

Le Meridien Split Lav

Gorgeous – looks like Lake Como

Arrived in Split – warmer than Zagreb and beautiful

Zagreb: cold, rainy & miserable. On my way to Split

Wahanda going to Croatia to give keynote address at SIBEC – Health, Fitness and Leisure conference

Lopo & I are travelling to Split, Croatia to attend the SIBEC health, fitness & leisure conference where we will be giving the keynote address on behalf of Wahanda and also meeting with companies from all over Europe and the world.

The conference is being held at the Le Meridien Lav, Split, where there is also a lovely spa, which hopefully we will get to check out.

“Wahanda is a Native American word for “great spirit and creator”.
This certainly sums up the energy and passion that Salim Mitha and Lopo Champalimaud have for health, beauty and happiness.”

Spirit of Jazz exhibit at Getty Images Gallery, London – Louis Armstrong

Eastcastle Street, London W1

The true cost of Olympic Games – a money losing proposition for any city – £9.3 billion+ London 2012

I was directed to this Harvard Law blog post via Seth Godin, which highlights the truly staggering cost of staging an Olympic Games.  Here is a nice excerpt from the aforementioned blog:

“…it seems reasonable to assume that the Olympics (in Chicago) would have cost at least $5 billion. That would be enough to finance a great engineering college, an online university serving tens of thousands of students, an electric car manufacturer, a bunch of high-tech businesses, a free wireless Internet covering the entire city, and still have a lot left over. Unless taxpayer dollars were truly unlimited, could anyone minding the long-term best interests of citizens choose to spend that money on a two-week spectacle?”

Given that the 2012 Olympic Games are in London, it will be interesting to see the fallout from financing the Olympics. Already the London 2012 cost estimate is significantly over budget and is now £9.3billion (vs. the initial estimate of £2.4 billion), so the trend continues:

Hosting the Olympics is an expensive proposition that taxpayers finance with funds and resources that can be deployed for much more productive uses: education, social services, hunger prevention, infrastructure development, safety & crime prevention

Man vs. Plastic Vacuum Sealed Gadgets

This is fantastic – I hate how many things come in these impossible to open without cutting yourself plastic sealed packages

Salim Mitha                                                    

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Sol campbell at La delizia

Bicycle on Circle Line