M4 Hell

Britain is famous for falling apart at the first sign of snow and this week we really lived up to expectations. For some reason, nobody had bothered gritting the roads before the snow started falling. Perhaps whoever is in charge had engaged Michael Fish as a special weather advisor? Whatever the cause, the SE descended into a frozen wonderland of stationary and abandoned cars. It took me five and a half hours to get from Hounslow to Wokingham and others I have spoken to fared even worse. But I did get home eventually and I suppose if everything worked like it does in Switzerland, we would all be bored and the papers would have nothing to write about.

BA Iberia merger

Last week was a busy one. On Sunday, I flew out to Mexico for a oneworld meeting and to welcome Mexicana into the alliance. I flew back via Madrid and arrived back in London just as the merger agreement between BA and Iberia was announced.

It’s taken a long time to get there, but fantastic news. Time to start learning Spanish!

Shanghai smog from my hotel window

I was away from the UK for 61 hours on my recent trip to Shanghai, travelling out via Tokyo and back via Helsinki. This somewhat less than direct itinerary meant that I spent more than half the elapsed time at airports and on aircraft, giving me only one afternoon and an evening in Shanghai… by no means sufficient to do justice to this most dynamic of world cities.

It is four and a half years since I was last there, and a lot changes in China in that time. What was most noticeable to me was how much worse the smog was. A reminder perhaps of the downsides of China’s enormous and rapid economic development.

Or maybe I was just there on a bad day.

BA1, ready to depart

I was at London City airport this morning to see off the first BA flight to New York. It took me over an hour and a half to get there from my office near Heathrow. Which is the point really – if you live or work on the east side of London, that’s how much advantage you get from using this new service compared to flying from Heathrow.

Free Cell

My iPhone tells me that I have just won my 564th game of Free Cell. It reliably informs me that I have spent 103 hours and 23 minutes achieving this milestone. Now, that is a serious amount of time to have wasted playing solitaire. But has it really been wasted time? I have come to realise that this game has taught me some interesting lessons on how to get ahead in life.

Let me explain.

To achieve 564 wins has required me to play 713 games, a 79% success rate. But what is remarkable is that I am now on a winning streak of 308 games in a row. How is it possible to move from a 63% success rate in the first 405 games to a 100% success rate in the next 308? There is clearly something going on here. By my calculation, to achieve a winning streak of 308 by chance based on a success rate of 63% would be more than a one in a novemdecillion chance (I looked it up: 1 in 10^60).

Now, if this change of form had been achieved in a business setting, scores of academics and management consultants would be beating a path to my door to discover the ’secret sauce’. Is this simply an application of that oldest of insights, the learning curve effect? Or have I discovered a fantastic new winning technique, that can be written up in a blockbuster best-seller?

The truth is that my change in success was down to the simplest of changes in strategy: I just decided that I would stop giving up when I got stuck. My wife Amanda had told me that you could always win at Freecell. But faced with the hard evidence from my first 405 games, it was easier for me to believe that she was exaggerating or that there was something different about the version of the game I was playing (“it won’t work here”). But eventually I decided to persevere. Use the ‘undo’ and the ‘restart’ button to try, try again if at first I didn’t succeed. Now although this is a simple change in strategy, it is far from an easy one (my longest ‘win time’ is 1 hour 10 minutes). I think there is a life lesson in there.

So now I have a new challenge. Can I prove that you can always win at Free Cell? By my calculation, based on a winning streak of 360, I can be 95% sure that the chances of having an unwinnable hand are less than 1%. To be 99% sure that the chances are less than 1%, I’ll need to extend my winning streak to 500. Or maybe I should just believe Amanda.

You’ll probably think it pathetic that I have nothing better to do than calculate obscure statistics. You’re right, I’d better go and do something more useful. I’ve got an unfinished Freecell game to solve.

UPDATE: The winning streak has now been extended to 500, after another 33 hours. Something of a scare 11 games ago, when it took me 1 hour and 21 minutes to win and almost had me giving up!

Red Arrows

The family went to Silverstone last Sunday to see what could be the final Formula One Grand Prix there, if Donnington can get its act together by next year. Sadly, unlike our first visit last year, we didn’t get to see a British win, despite Jenson’s dominant form this season. On a brighter note, last year’s rain and mud were replaced by sunshine. Last year, the low cloud cover caused the Red Arrows to cancel their display. This year, they delivered a stunning show in clear skies and sunshine. The parking and traffic control were also significantly improved and as a result our journey home was much faster. We are certainly hoping that Silverstone will get a reprieve, as we really don’t fancy the extra miles that Donnington would involve. Fingers crossed.

Lobby feature

We realised that it had been some time since we had escaped for a dose of sun and relaxation by the pool. With only a five day slot in our collective calendars, we were somewhat distance and time zone constrained and settled on a few days in Dubai. It had been over 10 years since we had been there as a family and a lot has changed in that time. We expected big and brash and Dubai delivered… with golden knobs on. We expected hot and got 44°C. We expected some of the best hotels in the world and got palatial rooms, fantastic food and an attached water park, complete with ziggurat. What we didn’t quite expect was how expensive the place has become, for example the cheapest bottle of wine on the menu was £40 and a beer was £8. Ouch.

Finished kitchen

Well, I think we can now finally draw an end to the new kitchen saga. The decoration is done and the TV and Wii reinstalled, so the kids are happy. The weekend project was to put the curtains back up and since they haven’t fallen down yet, I’m going to quit whilst I am ahead. We still need blinds for the kitchen window, but since we haven’t had any for the last 15 years, I am declaring that ‘out of scope’.

Winchester Cathedral

The orchestra that Laura plays in put on a concert in Winchester last weekend. The concert hall was in Winchester College; beautiful old buildings surrounded by fantastic magnolia trees in full flower. A magical setting for an evening of Bach, Vivaldi and Holst. Wonderful.