The London Blogger’s Meet Up took place on Tuesday, sponsored by Paramount, and It was arguably the most fun I’ve had since the last one!

Wonderfully hosted again as always by Andy, we were treated to a talk from Marko Saric, blogger extraordinaire who was kind enough to run through his 58 ways to build a better blog. Marko was a joy to listen to and as engaging a speaker as I’ve had the pleasure to have seen.

As always it was great to catch up with a few regulars like Lolly, Hayley, Ant, Cristiano, Melinda, Tom, Peter and Sian.

It was also a pleasure to meet a few new faces (to me at least!) like Godwyns (a man who seems to write about pretty much everything from politics to erotic poetry), Kate and of course Marco!

It was nice to see a mix of newbies and regulars, and I hope that the venue, Doggett’s Coat and Badge, helped to facilitate that! Indeed, Doggett’s is a cracking venue with awesome views from the Southbank over the Thames – I for one would love to see it used again in the future for an LBM.

29West and the Chicago Stock Exchange (CHX) announced on October 15 that 29West’s Ultra Messaging® products have been chosen for the enterprise messaging backbone for the CHX. This includes both 29West’s LBM and UME messaging products.

CHX is a United States National Market System participant offering the ability to transact business in NYSE, NYSE Alternext and NASDAQ listed issues. With a robust matching engine and the CHXConnect routing network, CHX customers can choose immediate delivery to the CHX matching engine or order-routing to FINRA Market-Makers and CHX Institutional Brokers who are able to provide customized order handling solutions for their clients. Eligible orders resident on the CHX enjoy immediacy of display, execution  and cancellation with full exposure to all National Market System participants. The CHX system offers functionality beyond the simple matching of orders and is an ideal venue for hedge funds, options market makers, quantitative, professional and active individual traders that require  immediate and automated execution, while continuing to serve the needs of  traditional broker-dealer clients and the individual investors they represent.

“Last year, we decided to move to 29West for its impressive performance,” said John Kerin, CTO at CHX. “As a direct result of the switch, we’ve also gained incredible flexibility and scalability, along with a marked reduction in the server footprint we need to support our messaging backbone. We have already deployed LBM for all our market data distribution, and we are in the process of rolling it out, along with UME, across our entire enterprise.”

29West’s LBM pioneered the nothing-in-the-middle next-generation  approach to messaging in 2004, and has continued to be at the forefront of  the low-latency performance race ever since, being deployed by industry- leading firms like CHX.

29West’s UME has brought the unique Parallel Persistence® design to guaranteed messaging, and is used as the basis for matching engines inside exchanges, smart order routers, options market making systems, FX pricing and trade buses, and algorithmic trading systems.

“We’re very excited to add CHX to our long and growing list of financial customers,” said Mark Mahowald, President and Founder of 29West. “CHX is an excellent example of how 29West Ultra Messaging can simplify the network and make the system more robust and easily scaled at every level.”

As my stay in London comes to a close I’ve naturally been reflective about my UK adventure.

I’ve been thinking about all the excellent live music I’ve seen; that’ll be an upcoming topic for my other blog, The Plummet Onions. But I’ve also been thinking a lot about the associations I’ve made here: all the people and groups that I’m now connected to, and better for, simply because I moved here in February 2001.

The most important of all is obviously my amazing wife, whom I met in November 2001. There are also the really good friends I’ve made via that relationship, flatmates and friends of hers, people that I now count amongst my best friends: PC, the She-Aussie, the Colombians, and others. We also have some good friends in the Neighbours. I’ll leave it at that, since – despite appearances – I don’t actually live my entire life on the internet.

I’ve made some good friends at work here: the Scotsman, the Other Scotsman, and the Other Other Scotsman (see the trend?) especially. There are definitely some folks I’ll keep in touch with, and Facebook and LinkedIn make that easy to do.

It’s important to say that I’ve kept in touch with my closest friends back in Canada since moving here, and that’s not going to change. We never talk as much as I’d like, but I get to see them now and again and we email all the time and I know they read my blog. I’m not letting them go.

There are also some groups I’ve connected with that have resulted in some really good times and friendships here in London. One of those was Echoing the Sound, a Nine Inch Nails fan discussion forum. I was quite busy on there for a few years during the productive recording and touring period for NIN. I’m not on there much anymore, but the common thread of the band meant I got to know some new, cool people all around the world. And the London shows meant I got to meet a lot of them here for lots of Good Times™.

A couple of years ago I also started attending the London Blogger Meetups because I felt a little isolated in my blog writing. It was a small group when I started, but under the guiding hand of Andy Bargery it’s grown into a waiting-list, sponsor-pursued social networking event. I’ve gotten to know lots of good people via that gathering. Andy’s even been kind enough to ask me to say a few words at my last LBM tomorrow night.

The LBM has been a gateway for some other fun, friendly, and beneficial associations, particularly with Qype UK. If you read this blog you know that I was getting invited to a lot of food, fun and drink events with them. They’re a very good gang of folks as well. And that in turn has spawned occasional invitations to food and drink blogger events with Relish PR.

And all of those channels have spawned Twitter connections, some of which have turned into real-life connections of various types.

Some of the things I’ve been involved with in London have been temporary, of course: not everything produces life-long friends. I really enjoyed the many evenings I spent at Birkbeck College getting my Certificate in Philosophy, and the few weeks I spent at the London College of Contemporary Music learning to play the bass guitar.

People often complain that it’s hard to get to know people or make new friends in London. And maybe that’s true, relative to other places where people are less guarded. But it’s certainly not impossible to extend your network of acquaintances, and maybe even make some real pals.

You’re ace, London.

September’s London Bloggers Meet Up was sponsored by the wonderful Ebay.co.uk, recent sellers of Skype and bargain hunter’s online refuge.

Heat re-appeared and beer (kindly paid for by Ebay all night) was shared with conversation, as always, in full flow (hi Cate, Mike, Cristiano, Mel, Alex and Ant et al…)

I like Ebay, I use it a fair amount, and it’s great to see a huge company embracing engagment with the blogosphere in a positive way and what with the likes of Lastminute.com, Guinness, and of course Starbucks (yup, full disclosure, I am indeed a Starbucks guy) having sponsored the event, it shows how important the movement is proving to be for these brands.

I’ve mentioned before how odd it can be doing the PR and blogging thing, and how the balance can be tough to find, but it struck me last night how many of those in attendance juggle both, without detriment to either.

What would be great now, would be to see the brands who sponsor the meetups contribute with a next step by blogging themselves. It’s great that they want to take part, get involved in the community and add value to it – the next stage in the progresion is to become blogging entities themselves, whether it’s through a network, a shared blog or from comments of the CEO.

PRs are becoming bloggers and bloggers are becoming PRs, so why not have brands become bloggers too, if they’re increasingly being represented by people who are themselves blogging and understanding of the nuances of the community?

Lots do this already of course, in particular the more technology-oriented companies. What’s stopping those that aren’t?

Fear of the community and the way that the language will sit within it (don’t be scared, we don’t bite)

Time is of the essence, and who has time to put together 400 words once a week? (A lot of us with full time jobs, not to mention those who are parents, manage this just about)

Hesitance to be totally transparent (surely we should all be aiming for this anyway?)

Personalities within the company who are reluctant to use a new or untried channel of communication (there’s a few of us who blog y’know, it’s not a fad)

The first step towards ‘getting there’ is to get in and amongst bloggers, find out what makes them tick and then apply your business’ characteristics to give the writing a voice – readers and credibility will follow.

I was at another London Blogger Meetup last night. This one was sponsored by eBay UK. They bought all of the attendees several rounds of drinks and grub; had a raffle for a netbook, some 3G dongles, and memory sticks; ran a couple of buy-it-now sales for us attendees only; and did a little marketing spiel on some of their newer features like their daily 8am deals.

As always, I had fun hobnobbing with friends old and new. There seems to be a trend of sweatbox LBMs, though, and this one at Farringdon’s Ember bar was no exception.

In reference to Jim Carrey’s movie “Yes Man” I find my self lamenting on my poor state of health. Yeah that means Im thinking why the heck my immune system is so freaking weak. Last Wednesday, me and my girl went out to eat a late night dinner over at a local grill when after an hour of strolling this tinggling sensation shoots up my ass. Yes, you got it! Something was wrong with the food I ate. It was either that or the careless moment I did slurp down spoiled soup thinking it was meant to be sour. That was a disaster.

The days were normally fine, but in the evening there was a ruckus in my stomach and this feeling that I had been punched several times in the gut. Gross out warning: my poop was watery like soup with some chunky bits and pieces. It reminded me of minestrone. The bathroom and I had become very well acquainted in the process. Someone buzz me and tell me I need a new toilet seat.

Slight fevers would pop in at times, but never really as bad as I would expect them. They were fairly under control. Finally after realizing that it was not an ordinary case of stomach flu, my girl and I had my fecal matter analyzed at the nearby hospital. As it turns out, I had yeast cells in my poop.

It was about time to contact my 2 brothers. Theyre nurses and damn good ones too. Their suggestions in my situation was pretty much the same – DO NOT GET DEHYDRATED. That made a lot of sense since dehydration would complicate my current state. They also told me that pooping like a madman was my body’s natural reaction to a foreign entity trying to attack my system. My immune system was at work cleaning out the yeast from my stomach. Good thing for me it wasnt anything more serious than that. My girl and I had been arguing whether or not this was a case of Amoebiasis or Cholera. We always have to expect the worst and pray for the best. As an added aid, they told me to eat fruits, go on a soft diet and whenever possible eat foods that I can soak or partner with vinegar. The vinegar apparently kills a lot of bad stuff inside the body. Also if you got something similar to mine, consult a doctor immediately and spare yourself the trouble. Hospitals are like hotels nowadays anyway.

Now it has been nearly 5 days and my body is slowly – and I do mean slowly recovering from the incident. I feel sluggish from not being able to go out and exercise, but better since my tummy is not acting like Normandy on D-Day. I hope that no bombs need be dropped later tonight.

In a conversation at last week’s London Blogger’s Meetup with a fellow social media PR type, we were discussing one of his campaigns and the sort of tactics that his agency had employed. This set me thinking.

I don’t know of any other sector of the PR industry, where discussions of ideas, plans and executed campaigns are shared so freely. I can’t imagine the guys who run the Coca-Cola corporate strategy, sharing their plans with the Pepsi corporate team for example.

Is it because social media PRs are happier to talk and share in order to help fellow professionals and develop this growing and vibrant industry sector? Or is it because they/we want to show off how well we’re doing with the new tools afforded to us by technology, and to covertly rub our industry-mates’ noses in the dirt?

I am not entirely sure to be completely honest with you.

The PR with whom I was talking was quite happily telling me what their execution strategy for one of their clients was – I am being cynical if I were to suggest that this was purely being done in order to shellshock me, a younger and less experienced PR (nearly two years, oh yes), into trying to put them on a pedestal as a leading light?

Was the PR trying to genuinely encourage and provide me with something to aspire to, by telling me a tale of success?

Nope, still can’t decide.

What did strike me was the number of PRs who are happy to talk to other PRs about this, no longer the ‘Oh, there’s such and such from whoever’s agency, let’s stay clear of them’ of yesteryear. Maybe it’s because an increasing amount of PRs doing digital are younger and not struck by the prejudices of the ‘old way’, and are happy to converse with each other.

Incidentally, we both agreed that the way we prove ROI to clients has to change – a common thread that is emerging in actual conversations not just hypothetical blog posts.

What are your thoughts? Was I inadvertently taking part in a ‘my strategy is bigger and better than your strategy’ conversation, or a ‘this was cool, see if you can run with it’ copnversation – help me to work it out!

Lets start off easy. I was born in December 1993, and I am currently in 10th grade. 16 years to my first logo made for my dad’s business was a big congrats for me My dad told me to make a logo for his company ‘lautan biru makmur’ and is shortened by my dad, and he wants me to make a ”LBM’ logo. here it is

If you’re wondering what the saga of assholery is, read this entry first.

Lucky me. The phone rang and when I answered I was not-so-fucking-delighted to find that the person (and I use that term loosely) on the other end was one of the professional bullies at LBM phoning on behalf of Orange.

When I repeatedly explained (slowly, without using any big words) to the ‘person’ on the phone that I STILL didn’t have any desire to talk to them and STILL wanted my details removed from their database, I was shouted at until I gave up and put the phone down.

Since there was no way to contact LBM without handing over more contact details I attempted to pursue Orange for some kind of resolution. Orange has no corporate phone numbers listed anywhere so I called the business support line as they seemed the most likely to know where to refer me to for help.

According to an obnoxious man in Orange’s business sales department, the only way to contact Orange to make a complaint is in writing. There is no way that I can speak to someone about the issue.

He told me to contact LBM and when I explained that this was impossible without handing over more personal contact details, he suggested that I register an email address solely for the purpose of making a complaint. Seriously. Hear that dull thudding sound? That’s me banging my head off the wall.

Orange are basically paying another company to harass people on their behalf so that no-one anywhere ever has to actually take responsibility for what is happening. If you want to read other people’s unfavourable feedback about the fucknuts that populate the world of ball-suck that is LBM, check this out.

With any luck, Consumer Direct and Watchdog will be able to help, or at least point me in the direction of someone who can.

One of the downsides of being listed in business directories is that I get spam phone calls. Every day. Numerous times a day.

Anywhere else in the UK, I would be able to opt out of such things as I’m self-employed rather than being an actual company and could therefore register my phone numbers on the national Do Not Call registry. But not in Scotland. Well done Scotland.

So today I got a call from some phone monkey at LBM calling on behalf of Orange. As I was explaining that I have no interest in receiving calls from strangers trying to sell me things, he hung up on me.

So I called back, this time on my landline as it was an 0800 number which is free from landlines but not from mobile phones, to ensure that my details had actually been removed and I wouldn’t get any more phone spam from them.

BUT…simply by phoning them again, they assume permission to register my landline number on their database. Then the recorded message gave another freephone number to call if I didn’t want to have them contact me again. Again.

The second freephone number did basically the same thing, although it gave me an option not to be contacted again, which I chose. I was then informed that my phone number would be removed from their database in 4-5 working days.

So I went to their website, determined to find a way to actually speak to someone and ensure that I wasn’t going to have phone spam ad infinitum. The same thing happened when I called the customer service number on their website.

Basically it’s impossible to phone them at all without the number you call from being saved on their database, at least for the next week or so. I’m sure as hell not emailing them.

All I wanted was to talk to a human being to ensure that I wouldn’t keep getting phone calls by people trying to sell me things that I’m perfectly capable of finding and purchasing by myself, should I want to.

Nowhere on the website that I can see, does it say that by contacting them at all I am giving permission for my number to be saved and used by them however they see fit. While this may be in their smalltinylittlewee print, it really ought to be somewhere visible. Somewhere it can be seen before you phone them.

I did consider calling their Sales Enquiries number, since that’s probably the only number you can contact them on and actually have a person answer the phone but if I speak to another fake-voiced wank-stained shite with a phone strapped to his head I think I might start eating my own hands, just to have a pleasant distraction.

So this week’s Go Fuck Yourself award goes to LBM Direct Marketing and Orange. Congratulations. You suck.

Want more information about the depths LBM will sink to? Check out this info on Dynamoo.

I’m a member of the London Bloggers Meetup. They’re playing a round og blog tag in an effort to raise group awareness of all the blogs in a rapidly-growing group.

I was just tagged – both here and in my personal blog – but decided to tag the next blogs there. Go check it out if you’re interested in who tagged me, or who I tagged.

There was another London Blogger Meetup last night. As always, organiser Andy Bargery did a bang-up job with venue and presentations.

It was held at Shish on Old Street. Upstairs it looks like a close-to-fast-food Moroccan/Middle East restaurant. Downstairs, though, there’s a fairly funky bar, which we had reserved. It was just right for lounging and mingling, I thought.

We had two presentations, too. The first was from group member and author Floyd Smith (if you’re a fan of the Dummies Guides you might know him as Bud E. Smith). He gave an interesting talk on how to turn your blog into a book, using the fact of pre-existing content and built-in test audiences as major helping points. I wonder if there’s a book waiting to be self-published in my music blog?

The second, shorter presentation was from member Jaz Cummins, who outlined a really nifty and very participatory campaign for Refugee Week called Simple Acts. Check it out and do something.

Of course, there were also a few drinks imbibed and much chit-chat made with folks new and familiar.

It was a strange but wonderful experience being at the London Bloggers Meet Up on Tuesday. It was wonderful, because as a blogger, it gave me the opportunity to speak with like minded people about ’stuff’. Blogging, Twitter, other social media related topics – it was the perfect opportunity to meet tweeps that i’ve been following and to get to know them, as well as meeting people who are now tweeps I follow.

It is the ‘weird’ side of this that I want to explore further. A conversation with Andy Bargery (LBM planner and all round nice chap) got me thinking. I’d asked Andy about his perception of the ratio of PRs to bloggers at the meet up and their behaviour – he said that it was lower than i’d imagine, and on the whole those PRs who did attend were more interested in talking with people than pushing products. Big thumbs up.

It is all too easy to slip into the mode of PR – you’re at a bloggers meet up, you talk to the bloggers, you wax lyrical about clients and you try and get coverage. Very simple. There’s your target, that’s the goal, this is what you want the outcome to be.

What do you do though, if you’re part of the blogging community, or consider yourself to be, but are a PR from 9-5:30?

I think, and please correct me if i’m wrong, it’s actually very simple to not get “confused” in these situations.

Firstly, the clue is in the title: BLOGGER MEET UP. If you are going in as a PR to sell your clients, you are going to get flamed pretty quickly.

Secondly, do you really want to carry on your day job when the final whistle blows?

I would position myself as a blogger who does PR. You may of course think ‘well you would say that’, and that’s fair enough, but I would argue that my reason for attending the meet up was to meet other bloggers and get different opinions on platforms, styles and to share stories of frankly awful pitches (sex blogs?).

I made anyone who wanted know, aware that I did PR, and I hope that it was not an issue that stuck in their minds for too long: “He’s only here to pitch to me”.

It’s bad etiquette to pitch a client at these events – it’s a professional matter, so keep the pitch to an e-mail, if you must pitch.

These events are not about which clients you work for and getting what you want written, to get written. They are about building long lasting relationships, sharing ideas, knowledge and making each other aware of stuff that is tucked away on the farthest corners of the cultural sphere in to which we have stumbled.

For everyone at Tuesday’s London Blogger Meetup, we had the pleasure of meeting the Fashion Targets Breast Cancer UK (FTBC) team who spoke with us about Million Model Catwalk. You can foolow the team on Twitter @FashionTargets, and there’s even a dedicated hashtag #1mmc.

Ten celebrities, including Jade Jagger, Sara Cox, Mark Foster and Bryan Ferry, are supporting FTBC as they try to raise £1m to help fight breast cancer. Did you know that nearly 46,000 women and 300 men (yep even we get affected chaps) are diagnosed with breast cancer annually in the UK, and that 1 in 9 women will develop breast cancer at some point in their lifetime? Neither did I. Mark Foster sums it all up rather well, “The photo shoot for Fashion Targets Breast Cancer was a lot of fun – but ultimately for a serious cause. I am happy to give an hour or so to help save or change lives – that’s what this campaign and this charity is all about.”

In the UK, so far the FTBC campaign has raised over £9m for Breakthrough Breast Cancer, which goes towards supporting education, research and work raising awareness of the issue and cause.

The idea behind Million Model Catwalk is that you upload a photo of yourself and strut your stuff down a virtual catwalk alongside the celebs – neat. The FTBC clothes range includes designs from River Island, Coat, Topshop and sustainable design company, Goodone. You can check out the trendy t-shirts from the MMC blog which has links through to the relevant retailers.

Million Model Catwalk is also offering some top fashion tips from Gerry DeVeaux, who has given his predictions for the next spring and summer trends.

Finally, there’s a a series of weekly competitions you can enter to win a a whole bunch of cool prizes (swish).

There’s a lot of effort being put in to raise the level of public acknowledgement of Breast Cancer, and this is just one strand of that activity. It’s a great cause with some really clever ideas to get you involved, so please check out the Million Model Catwalkwebsite and blog and get involved!

That’s right, tonight’s London Bloggers Meetup – the first of two March events – saw us (okay, me) enjoying drinks mixed with two of Ireland’s finest beverages: Bushmills whiskey and Guinness beer. This all went down at Diageo’s private bar on Henrietta Place in London (a very cool location to have a few glasses of anything, really).

Some of the drinks they had on were a bit poor: the mint julip, and the Guinness and champagne cocktail weren’t really to my taste. But some were delicious: the extra-strength Guinness export, and the Evening Irish Coffee (YUM!), for instance. There was some tasty finger food, a draw for rugby tickets, and a chance to learn to pour a pint of Guinness (my shamrock was shaky, but identifiable).

More important than that was meeting up with pals like Annie Mole, tikichris, Mel, epicurienne, and lots more. There were some folks I’d met only very briefly before, like Chris from Cheese and Biscuits and Matt from Londonist, and it was good to chat to them a bit more. I met tons of new folks, too.

It was an awesome evening, all in all. Organiser Andy pulls off another top-notch networking event.

Working as a call center agent on a night shift spells danger. Robbers. Rapists. Sleepy drivers. Drug addicts. Gang wars. Rushing trucks and cars. Slippery roads. Mad dogs. Mosquitoes. And so many more. However, the worst danger that could put the bravest call center agent into a knee-shaking situation is none other than…ehem, LBM. Just three letters and it could ruin a career of a professional agent. Here’s my story.

Photo By Ramon

Part One

Before I went to work on the Monday shift, that was Sunday, I was not feeling well already. I knew that my very sensitive stomach was on protesting mode. I took one capsule of medicine and went to work. It was so scary. Good thing, nothing bad happened.

Before I went to work for my Tuesday shift, I was already thinking twice if I would go or not. I didn’t have that much luck kept in my closet, you know. I thought of Ms. Shee then I decided to go. I was thinking I might go on half-day instead if nature was in total bad mood, you know what I mean. When I left the house, it was raining. I thought it was a sign that I should not go. However I was thinking of my $250.00 for the month of March. I already lost my $150.00 for February. That was enough catastrophe. I couldn’t afford to lose them both. I have so many financial liabilities to pay, err.

Going to work, I was trying to feel my stomach. It was like there was me and my stomach, two different persons talking to each other. I was talking to him, begging him to behave and let the whole shift pass without putting me on unimaginable status of embarrassment. I thought he heard me because he finally behaved. It is all in mind, Fernand Yim. I kept telling this line to myself that it sounded like a chant already to me.

When I was to log-in on HRIS, all the computers froze and they were not accepting my finger print! Another sign? Err. While walking on the hallway, I felt my stomach move in a painful way and it alarmed me in I-saw-dead-people-walking kind of feeling. I went to the sleeping room, sat on the comfy sofa and had the chant again. It is all in mind…all in mind.

Before I took my first call, I approached Ms. Shee about it. Sincere concern registered on her face. It made me happy a bit. I said it was not that serious but it was serious. She asked for a clue. I told her it was about me. She then said, LBM? Arg, did I stink already? How did she know right away? She assured me that all I needed to do was to call her attention whenever I needed to leave my station. She was under the impression that going to comfort room would make me okay. My stomach issue was different. I couldn’t explain it. Like I said before, as much as possible I don’t want to take any medication because it is just a natural occurrence in the body that needs to go into process. Besides, drinking the medicine has a side effect on me, a very painful and irritating one.

After two calls, I told Ms. Shee that I thought I needed to go. She advised me to go to the clinic first which I did. The clinic, by the way, is located on the 36th floor on the other side of the building. The elevators on that side of the building are super slow so…a big good luck to me.

In the clinic, I met this fortyish nurse who accommodated me right away. I told her about my case. She asked me if there was sipon (What’s sipon in English?) in my you-know-what. You could say yuck. I would understand that. I was like, err. I said none. Then she gave me two capsules of medicine. I told her about the side effect it had on me, hoping that there was something else she could offer me. And it turned out there was none. She just advised me that instead of taking them at the same time, there should be six-hour gap before the second capsule. I was waiting for her to say more, thinking that I might need to lie on the white bed they had there, or they might need to do some check-ups on me, Don’t you think you need to listen to my heartbeat? Things like that, however, she already nodded to me like saying, you could go now so that I could watch TV alone. Then I left the room.

Going down from 36th floor was another challenge to me. Inside the elevator with other nine people, I thought I felt my stomach move in a most threatening way, err, please not now! Then the elevator stopped at the third floor. I was already screaming inside my head. But then again, like a miracle, my fear had not yet materialized. Sigh.

Back to my station, I was hardly moving on my seat. Ms. Shee approached me then Ms. Agatha showed up behind her. Many thanks to both of them that they let me go home. I heard Jasmin remind me of eating banana and hard-boiled egg behind my back as I approached the door.

Part Two

I was waiting like forever in Dela Rosa for a bus going to either Sta. Cruz or Alabang. I didn’t have a watch or a cellphone but I knew an hour had already passed by. I should do something. I couldn’t just stand there. While walking, I felt my stomach had a bad twist that I needed to stop and summon all my powers to take over the control of my body. “You are just one part of my digestive system, so you should listen to me!” I told to him, to my stomach. I think it was a bad move because I was starting to sweat really badly. I remembered the other capsule, didn’t care of the six-hour gap, with my shaky hands I took it with one quick gulp of a bottled iced tea. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. When my stomach was finally dead silent, I started walking again.

More minutes passed by before I got a jeep to Ayala-MRT. There I waited for any bus. It was not the right time to be picky on which bus to ride. Besides I didn’t have any other option but to take those suicidal buses. Those buses which are like flying that you need to hold real tight on your seat or you might be thrown out the window even before you have said, “Para sa tabi.” To some point, I was thankful that the driver was driving like that. That night seemed to be the longest night of my life.

Many times I wished I could pull the end of the road towards me so that we could get there right away. Sometimes I wished I could fly. Problem was that I didn’t know Manila or Makati that much. I might be lost in the atmosphere. Then I wished I could do teleport. Same problem applied. I might appear in crowded place or something like that. I also wished that in just one blink I could wake up from this painful nightmare. And, of course, none of these happened.

Along the way, the suicidal bus had to stop for the two passengers. Trouble was that they had so many things with them and I hated them for that. So it took like two minutes before the bus started to fly again, err. I tell you, that was the longest two minutes of my life.

At the Toll Gate in Alabang, the electronic pre-paid thing was not working. I was really running out of patience. Why now? Why now? After that was fixed, the suicidal bus stopped again for the Inspector to let him…err, inspect the bus? That was the first time in my life that I felt so much anger for someone who was doing nothing bad to me. Well, indirectly they did. Then the bus flew again.

It was so hard to believe but it was another waiting game I had to endure in Alabang. My stomach was in total pain already. I needed to get home as quick as possible. It started to rain softly. Why all of these should happen on the same day? Why the world hates me so much?

Then a jeep, not a bus, arrived. There were few passengers inside. However, I still chose to sit on the front next to the driver. I didn’t care if I got wet because of the rain showering by my right side. I could bear the rain, not the embarrassment, just in case, you know what I mean. And it was a long journey. I thought it was because jeeps have smaller wheels than buses. I noticed that it seemed like there were more trees at night. They even looked like heads of sleeping giants in the middle of the dark night. I got a view of my face on the side mirror. I smiled, knowing that I was still cute through all this. Err.

I was already feeling cold when we reached Calamba. I was so wet because of the rain. But it was fine. I was getting closer to home. That time I was brave enough to take a trike (tricycle) from Crossing to Spring Homes. I asked the driver how much would be the fare. One hundred pesos. Err.

Epilogue

I am thankful that it is my rest day. The side effect is the hardest part of it. I also got a fever. But I’ll be fine soon. I’ll give you an idea of the side effect the medicine has on me. It is like a combination of diarrhea and constipation. It feels like my soul is being drained out of my system that every time I go to the comfort room, I feel like being sentenced to death. There is no comfort with that. Sigh. And another sigh.

Chicago and Trade Tech Architecture London, 25 February, 2009 – 29West today announced it will provide an Inter-Process Communication (IPC) transport using shared memory for its LBM and UME messaging solutions. The feature currently provides one-way messaging latency of roughly 3 to 5 microseconds with throughput of approximately 13 gigabits/second to applications running on a single multi-core commodity system. The 29West IPC Transport will be part of LBM 3.5, which will offer early access availability at the end of March, 2009, and general availability slated for May 1, 2009.

29West has developed this technology in response to the growing multi-core trend in the microprocessor industry, as well as the growth in multi-chip server design which is enabling truly unprecedented parallelization opportunities for financial application developers.

“Intel and AMD have made it clear that future development in microprocessor architecture is going to be horizontal,” said Mark Mahowald, founder and CEO of 29West.  “In this environment, where it is feasible to run multiple financial applications needing pub/sub messaging on the same machine, we can offer our clients untouchably low latency. We have always felt the best way to optimize messaging performance is to remove everything possible between the sending and receiving applications. We removed the servers and daemons in 2004; now, using shared memory removes the kernel and network stack as well.”

Remove the network; remove the network latency.  In high frequency trading, where time is counted in microseconds, the race is on to remove every possible source of latency in the system. In this race to zero, users of the IPC transport will have a definite edge.

29West’s IPC transport will be available at no charge to all current 29West customers, and will come as a standard feature in future releases of LBM and UME.  The new transport makes use of the same API calls, and only simple configuration changes are required to activate its use. The 29West IPC transport will be supported on Windows, Linux, Solaris and AIX, with other platforms being added as customer needs dictate.

From customers building and running smart order routers and exchange order execution platforms to small proprietary trading firms, electronic market makers and foreign exchange systems engineers, 29West provides the ultra low-latency messaging that financial industry users demand. Leveraging the IPC transport on the same machine for multiple processes will give users yet another level of high performance.