A few years ago, back when I lived in the States, I used to hang around with a guy named John Gonzalez, who had a habit of offering you money to do stupid things. "I'll give you 50 bucks if you go to work without any shoes on," he'd say. "I'll give you 30 if you go over to that woman and sing Happy Birthday." Mostly I declined, but there were times when I was tempted. I remember staring at a bottle of red-hot barbecue sauce one night, wondering how much damage it would do to my insides if I drank it. Gonzalez was prepared to pay $75 to find out. I took one sip and ran to the toilet in tears. Oh, how he laughed.
I don't think the aim was to inflict pain and humiliation. Instead, I think Gonzalez enjoyed watching his dilemmas play out. He'd study your face as you considered whether or not to smear spaghetti sauce in your hair before leaving a restaurant ($25), fascinated by the expressions of doubt and anxiety. He was either a student of human behaviour or a nut, it's hard to say. The weirdest thing about all this, perhaps, was the precision with which Gonzalez calibrated the pros and cons of his proposals. What he really wanted, you felt, was to create a situation where the conflicting impulses of risk and reward were so evenly balanced that the choice became impossible to make.
It was better yet if you were desperate for cash, if he could offer a desultory amount and still get your instincts in a twist. For instance: Gonzalez was the owner of a ratty old cat, named Cat, who smelled so bad it made your eyes water to be in the same room. I remember once he offered me $10 to wear Cat on my head, "like a hat", for 30 seconds. In the end I refused, but I was broke enough that the end was a long time coming. And that, for Gonzalez, was a victory in itself.
One thing you could say for him, though: Gonzalez was always happy to pay out - in fact, he was never happier. He seemed to derive a special pleasure from watching self-preservation succumb to self-gratification. It was as if he was setting out to prove a point. There were times I wondered what lengths Gonzalez might have gone to if he'd been a wealthy man, whether his offer of $20 to lick the wheel of a bus would have moved on to more ambitious levels: $10,000 to let the bus run over your foot; $10,000,000 to let it run over your head.
The last time I saw my friend, I was going through a bad patch. There had been an illness in my family. I had to fly out of the country. I couldn't afford a ticket. "How much do you need?" Gonzalez asked me one night. I waited for the "How bad do you need it?" but that didn't happen. Instead, he pressed the money into my hand, hugged me tightly and walked away.
The stats
Ship name: MSC Bellissima
Ship class: Meraviglia Class
Delivery date: February 27, 2019
Gross tonnage: 171,598 GT
Passenger capacity: 5,686
Crew members: 1,536
Number of cabins: 2,217
Length: 315.3 metres
Maximum speed: 22.7 knots (42kph)
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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Paltan
Producer: JP Films, Zee Studios
Director: JP Dutta
Cast: Jackie Shroff, Sonu Sood, Arjun Rampal, Siddhanth Kapoor, Luv Sinha and Harshvardhan Rane
Rating: 2/5
Karwaan
Producer: Ronnie Screwvala
Director: Akarsh Khurana
Starring: Irrfan Khan, Dulquer Salmaan, Mithila Palkar
Rating: 4/5
COMPANY PROFILE
● Company: Bidzi
● Started: 2024
● Founders: Akshay Dosaj and Asif Rashid
● Based: Dubai, UAE
● Industry: M&A
● Funding size: Bootstrapped
● No of employees: Nine
Expert input
If you had all the money in the world, what’s the one sneaker you would buy or create?
“There are a few shoes that have ‘grail’ status for me. But the one I have always wanted is the Nike x Patta x Parra Air Max 1 - Cherrywood. To get a pair in my size brand new is would cost me between Dh8,000 and Dh 10,000.” Jack Brett
“If I had all the money, I would approach Nike and ask them to do my own Air Force 1, that’s one of my dreams.” Yaseen Benchouche
“There’s nothing out there yet that I’d pay an insane amount for, but I’d love to create my own shoe with Tinker Hatfield and Jordan.” Joshua Cox
“I think I’d buy a defunct footwear brand; I’d like the challenge of reinterpreting a brand’s history and changing options.” Kris Balerite
“I’d stir up a creative collaboration with designers Martin Margiela of the mixed patchwork sneakers, and Yohji Yamamoto.” Hussain Moloobhoy
“If I had all the money in the world, I’d live somewhere where I’d never have to wear shoes again.” Raj Malhotra
The specs
Engine: 1.5-litre 4-cylinder petrol
Power: 154bhp
Torque: 250Nm
Transmission: 7-speed automatic with 8-speed sports option
Price: From Dh79,600
On sale: Now
The specs
Engine: 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8
Power: 620hp from 5,750-7,500rpm
Torque: 760Nm from 3,000-5,750rpm
Transmission: Eight-speed dual-clutch auto
On sale: Now
Price: From Dh1.05 million ($286,000)
Company%20Profile
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Cricket World Cup League 2
UAE squad
Rahul Chopra (captain), Aayan Afzal Khan, Ali Naseer, Aryansh Sharma, Basil Hameed, Dhruv Parashar, Junaid Siddique, Muhammad Farooq, Muhammad Jawadullah, Muhammad Waseem, Omid Rahman, Rahul Bhatia, Tanish Suri, Vishnu Sukumaran, Vriitya Aravind
Fixtures
Friday, November 1 – Oman v UAE
Sunday, November 3 – UAE v Netherlands
Thursday, November 7 – UAE v Oman
Saturday, November 9 – Netherlands v UAE
SPECS
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Will the pound fall to parity with the dollar?
The idea of pound parity now seems less far-fetched as the risk grows that Britain may split away from the European Union without a deal.
Rupert Harrison, a fund manager at BlackRock, sees the risk of it falling to trade level with the dollar on a no-deal Brexit. The view echoes Morgan Stanley’s recent forecast that the currency can plunge toward $1 (Dh3.67) on such an outcome. That isn’t the majority view yet – a Bloomberg survey this month estimated the pound will slide to $1.10 should the UK exit the bloc without an agreement.
New Prime Minister Boris Johnson has repeatedly said that Britain will leave the EU on the October 31 deadline with or without an agreement, fuelling concern the nation is headed for a disorderly departure and fanning pessimism toward the pound. Sterling has fallen more than 7 per cent in the past three months, the worst performance among major developed-market currencies.
“The pound is at a much lower level now but I still think a no-deal exit would lead to significant volatility and we could be testing parity on a really bad outcome,” said Mr Harrison, who manages more than $10 billion in assets at BlackRock. “We will see this game of chicken continue through August and that’s likely negative for sterling,” he said about the deadlocked Brexit talks.
The pound fell 0.8 per cent to $1.2033 on Friday, its weakest closing level since the 1980s, after a report on the second quarter showed the UK economy shrank for the first time in six years. The data means it is likely the Bank of England will cut interest rates, according to Mizuho Bank.
The BOE said in November that the currency could fall even below $1 in an analysis on possible worst-case Brexit scenarios. Options-based calculations showed around a 6.4 per cent chance of pound-dollar parity in the next one year, markedly higher than 0.2 per cent in early March when prospects of a no-deal outcome were seemingly off the table.
Bloomberg