Silly Toys

Working in IT with the occasional trips to Silicon Valley, you meet the odd people who have made a lot of money -- a few odd million to 10's of millions. The paupers hanging out in Santa Row would still be sickened by some of the moolah being thrown around in Monte Carlo. (So you can image how po' ol' me feels...)

This is the random selection of cars parked outside of the hotel I was staying at in Monte Carlo:


The array of Ferraris and Lamborghinis outside of the Casino is even more impressive.

However, these seriously are children's toys. The real status symbol in Monte Carlo is boats:


I'm pretty sure I've seen both Larry Ellison's and Paul Allen's boats parked outside the balcony of where we were staying on different days. They are noticeable because they dwarf the other nearby boats. We are talking about boats worth 100's of m's.

And the horrible thing is, I don't think these guys do any fishing!

Monte Carlo

I am sitting out on the patio of my hotel room -- I'm not even trying to make this look good, but this is seriously the view:


The temperature is perfect as well -- around 30 degrees celcius with no real humidity.

No wonder the Billionaires flock here!

Spidey

To be able to take a month off work, I feel like it added a further 5 weeks worth of workload to my last month at work. As long as that seems, the trip from Sydney to Monte Carlo (via Singapore/Heathrow/Nice) seemed even longer -- roughly about 30 hours from home to here.

Not that I am complaining; at the end of long travel is typically a good destination. (This is not a record for me -- I once went to Washington DC via Hawaii, Vancouver and Chicago, which ended totaling up more than 40 hours).

On the plane, I caught a few movies including Spiderman 3. I've loved Sam Raimi's work in the first two movies, but even a Stan Lee cameo couldn't make the third installment stand up. It wasn't bad, but it just wasn't up to the standard we've come to expect (three stars vs five). I think one of the key detractors is the Hollywood trap of trying to double the number of villains to make the movie "twice as good".

On the other hand, Blades of Glory (which I would have never otherwise considered watching if I hadn't been a captive audience) was hilarious. I like Will Ferrell, but none of the plugs I had seen on TV made me think I would like it. Think Zoolander on ice, but much better execution.

OK... that's enough on air travel :)