As I have mentioned in a previous entry, I’m not normally a fan of organized athletics. However, there is one sport that is so thrilling, so keenly competitive, so rich in complex tactics, and so seeped in macho glory that I cannot help but be seduced by its siren thrills.
I refer, of course, to pancake racing.

Lately, I have begun seeing advertisements around London for a novel that, according to the blurb, is “funny, wise, and sentient.” Frankly, I am not sure I like the idea of a sentient novel lurking about my flat.

The BBC recently tackled one of the great questions of the modern world: do Americans get irony? And, no, they weren’t joking. Or, at least, not as far as my feeble, irony-deprived American brain can perceive.

(Continued from Part I)
When I discover that my film is not on the screening schedule, I write a panicky note to the event organizers. They respond by telling me that a number of films failed to follow one of the challenge’s few rules–all films must begin with a title card featuring the assigned film title and the team name. If my film wasn’t included, I must have disqualified myself by leaving off the title card. I write back to assure them that I did, indeed, include the title card. I ask them to check again.
To be honest, though, I am beginning to wonder whether I want my film screened at all. I have now had the chance to watch it again with a good night’s sleep, and it is, frankly, pretty crappy. Everybody else’s contribution is just as good as I remember–the acting, the music, and the backpack wrangling all hold up extremely well. The only problem is the writing and the directing. The first 30 seconds of the film are nothing but a slow pan over a still image of a garden. That’s 11% of the film’s entire running time, taken up with the dullest possible image. The next 30 seconds aren’t much better; it’s not until a full minute into the film that one of my actors actually appears on screen. And once the action starts, the shots I’ve chosen often aren’t the best ones to tell the story.

I admit it; I am not a fan of professional athletics. My idea of a perfect sports-related evening is when my wife finds somebody else to go to a baseball game with her, so that I can stay home and watch a Busby Berkely musical. (By the way, if anybody ever holds a contest to construct the least heterosexual sentence possible that contains the phrase “my wife,” I plan on entering the one you have just read.)
But Lauren has always thought it would be fun to go to Wimbledon, and since going to Wimbledon will never require a smaller investment of time than it does now, I agree to come along.
And thus it is that, on a beautifully sunny day that would be absolutely perfect for sitting inside watching a movie, I find myself having to endure fresh air and world-class athletics.

As I sit at home working, I smell something that smells kind of like candles burning. I look around my flat, but there seem to be no candles. Then I see smoke gushing past my window. I look outside, and it is clearly belching from a window of the building next door. The building is set back a bit, so I can’t see exactly where it’s coming from, but it seems to be a window in the third floor flat, which almost unquestionably must be on fire.
Should I go outside and check? No–if I delay, people could die. I call 999 (which is British for “911”) and report what is happening.

In England, a spring without the Oxford/Cambridge crew race would be like a winter with sunshine. The race is one of the most-watched sporting events in the UK, watched on TV by some 400 million people around the world.
And so on this April day, we’ve joined a quarter of a million other Londoners along the Thames. Or, at least, that’s the theory. In practice, there’s simply not enough space along the Thames for a quarter of a million Londoners. London has evolved for river trading and river industry, not river race watching, and throughout much of the city, buildings crowd right up to the edge of the river, leaving little or no space for pedestrians.

London is one of the most expensive cities in the world. If you want to know what something will cost here–from a packet of tea to a month’s rent on a flat–you need only apply a simple three-step process. One, write down a reasonable price in dollars. Two, erase the “$” and replace it with “£.” Three, weep–because £1 is worth roughly $1.60.
As a result, a single salary isn’t enough to keep two people in tea and crumpets, but in the half a year that we’ve been in England, I haven’t yet found steady work. True, I’ve been doing bits and pieces of freelance writing, and making slow progress on finding a more steady writing job. Unfortunately, our landlady will not accept payment in the form of steady progress.

Heathrow Airport has what may be the world’s largest collection of duty free shops. Today, I have arrived early for my flight to Berlin, giving me plenty of time to browse them.
Rapidly, I discover certain subtle similarities among the shops. W.H. Smith sells books, magazines, and Toblerone bars. The Chocolate Box sells truffles and Toblerone bars. World Duty Free sells perfume, gargantuan bottles of vodka, and Toblerone bars. And then I notice a fact that sends shivers of excitement up my spine: the value of 400 grams of Toblerone seems to fluctuate depending on where in the airport you are.
At World Duty Free, for example, you can buy a Toblerone bar for £3.50. A few yards away, The Chocolate Box sells the very same candy bar for the bargain price of £3.25. Meanwhile, across the passenger waiting lounge, in what must be the high-class neighborhood of the terminal, W.H. Smith expects you to pay a full £3.60 — but for that price, they will present the candy to you in a little cardboard sleeve that say “To My Love” or, for the less committal, “To My Friend.”
Things get even more complicated when you venture away from the simple realm of the individual bar. World Duty Free sells two bars for £5; The Chocolate Box sells 3 for £6.50.
Immediately, I realize that I am facing the single greatest opportunity for arbitrage since George Soros became a billionaire. If I invest £6.50 in three Toblerones at The Chocolate Box, I can then import them to the swanky neighborhood of W.H. Smith, where I can unload them for a grand total of £10.80. After two such trips, I’ll have £21.60–enough to purchase 9 Toblerones at The Chocolate Box, which I can then sell for a total of £32.40, which I can then use to purchase 15 Toblerones, which I can then sell for £54, which I can use to purchase more Toblerone. After my 13th trip, I will have enough money to buy Lauren the 18 carat gold earrings with diamond solitaire that Gassan Tax Free Jewelry Shop is offering for £2112.
And I’ll still have £966 left over, which I can invest in 444 more bars of Toblerone, which I can then sell for an additional £1598.40. If I reinvest this money, and make 13 more trips, I will have more than £1 million. Curious to see what this is worth in real money, I stop by the Bureau de Change, where UK£1 = US$1.57. Or, as I now think of it, US$1=289.9354 grams of Toblerone.
But wait a minute. I’ve been overlooking something obvious here. I’ve focused exclusively on one particular size of Toblerone bar, when the duty-free bazaar offers them in a dizzying array of sizes, all the way up to the torso-sized 4.5 kilogram bar that W.H. Smith sells for £50. A little bit of calculation reveals that there is no bulk discount when you purchase this chocolate mammoth. In fact, the humungous 4.5 kilo bar is more expensive per gram than any other Toblerone on the market here.
And that means an even bigger arbitrage opportunity. Clearly, I would be wasting my time if I merely carted individual bars back and forth. Could I but set up a chocolate forge and start smelting, I could transform £24.375 worth of individual chocolate bars from World Duty Free into a single behemoth bar worth £50 at W.H. Smith. I could double my investment in a matter of moments. Surely, in an airport of this size, there must be somebody who has a chocolate forge for sale.
Alas, I don’t have the chance to look. With all the time it has taken me to make my calculations, it is now time to board my plane. Curses! Opportunity has slipped through my fingers.
I board the plane, and as it takes off, I find myself browsing through the in-flight shopping catalog. Wait a minute: they’re selling a pack of 7 Toblerone bars, each weighing 50 grams, for a total of £5. That’s a staggeringly expensive £14.43 per kilogram. Stop the plane! I have to go make an investment!