A frantic end to the working year finally ends in the Business Lounge at Heathrow where my friend Peter and I have a quiet tipple before boarding the direct flight to Bangkok. As before, Eva Air take off late but the service is excellent. 12 hours later, bright sunshine greets us over Thailand and from 10,000 feet I am looking down on what looks like a toy aeroplane landing at the new Suvarnabhumi airport. A long left-hand circuit takes us out over the Gulf of Siam and the long final approach ends with us touching down smoothly to the sound of jingle bells and a temperature of 30 deg Celsius – something I have still yet to get used to.

By the time I am through the stricter immigration and security checks, Peter’s limo has whisked him off to Pattaya but two friends are there to take me to my hotel in the Sathorn district of Bangkok. News of my arrival has spread and next day an old friend invites me to his club which has a decent jazz combo on that night. We are getting hungry by this time, so we walk past the members’ racehorse stables for 5 minutes to a humble little restaurant where roast cow’s udder is added to George’s list of exotic delights tried in Thailand. The cow’s tongue and liver are beautifully cooked too and soft in texture – something few restaurants seem to manage as both these dishes are very easy to overcook.

As a balance to all this pleasure, two days later I am back at the same dental hospital as last year, for a check and to have some mercury fillings replaced. This reveals a problem with one of my molars requiring a root canal treatment which will be done by a specialist.

After 4 days in Bangkok, we repair to Sunset Village http://www.sunsetvillage.co.th/ just outside Pattaya for 3 days in a chalet by the beach. Within 5 minutes of dumping my suitcase on the bed, I am in the warm sea swimming lazily for a change and a butterfly rushes off when I lumber back to my chalet later. The holiday village seems to be full of Germans, and Russians for which there are dedicated cable channels. Half of the holiday reading books left behind by previous guests are in German and among the local newspapers available, is Pattaya Blatt http://www.pattayablatt.com/ the newspaper for German expats in Thailand – there is a Russian one too.

Quickly, I drop into a sort of routine with a good nap in the afternoon but this and getting up late throws my sleep patterns into complete disarray and twice in the 3 nights there, I find myself sitting outside the chalet watching the waves roll in under the nearly full moon. This of course, is on its side as we are further south but the constellation of Orion is clearly visible and Sirius (the dog star) and brightest in the sky is much higher than when seen from the UK. Canopus, the second-brightest star is visible further south. At about 3 a.m. someone with a hand torch is slowly walking along the edge of the surf searching for something. My curiosity overcomes me and the guy shows me a bag of small edible crabs he has collected. Other lights from fishing boats twinkle out in the bay and the bright lights of Pattaya and Sattahip are visible all night. After 90 minutes, I get the feeling that I ought to try and keep a reasonably normal sleep pattern so I go back inside the chalet.

For Christmas Day itself, we have been invited to a party in Hua Hin on the west side of the Gulf of Siam and the Sirin Hotel http://www.sirinhotelhuahin.com/html/map.htm where I stayed last year, has rooms. The party turns out to be a grand do with equal numbers of Thais and ex-pats, loads of turkey, pork etc with all of us sitting by the side of a rather large pool. The co-host turns out to be a retired USAF officer and we have a great time swapping flying stories. He proudly shows me his pride and joy – a large cross-bred dog which is actually 85 per cent wolf! Several of the local guests have sky-diving badges as parachute training seems to be part of regime for the police here. When I mention that one of my daughters really enjoyed a tandem jump a few years ago, I am promised that she would be welcome to have one in Thailand should she return there – could be an interesting thing to mention in my father-of-the-bride speech at her wedding in July….

In Hua Hin, the local bookshops offer Thai/Swedish/Russian/German and other dictionaries together with a reasonable selection of thrillers and romantic stuff, but Retiring in Thailand by Philip Bryce catches my eye. Reviews of this book published 2006, show that it is US-biased and needs a bit of updating but one wonders how many copies are sold each year…One can live very cheaply in Thailand but as one reviewer said, do you want to spend the rest of your life on a bar stool? Hope I don’t get trampled in the rush here.

My dental appointment beckons me back to Bangkok but not before a couple of cans of Chang beer with my English chums in Hua Hin, the details of which will have to stay in a men-only version of another blog. Quotes for the cost of getting back to Bangkok vary from Baht 90 for the cheapest bus, Baht 200 for an air-conditioned mini-bus, Baht 3,150 for the Cessna air-taxi service (flight time 35 minutes). As the journey from Suvarnabhumi airport into town will be much longer than the flight, I settle for the Baht 2,200 taxi (including nearly 2 hours waiting time) direct to my new hotel thus enabling me to get some work reading done in comfort – should make an interesting entry in my CPD log.

The actual root canal treatment has me in the chair for 1 hour 15 minutes but with her Dallas training, gentle touch and very modern equipment, discomfort could not have been made less – worst was a slight neck-ache from having to keep my mouth wide open for so long. Next day with no side effects or pain, I decide to visit my Bangkok tailor again using my favourite suit as a template.

Having previously horrified my Thai friends with my journeys on the licensed taxi-bikes, I can spare the time for a slower taxi ride today as it is a holiday and the traffic is light. The journey starts with an argument with the taxi-driver who gives me a small brochure of his favourite tailor which would give him a handsome commission, much more than he would earn for a taxi ride, if we went to him instead. Phoning my guy, I give the handset to the driver to confirm the address and eventually he accepts that we are going to my tailor rather than his.

While Christmas is marked in hotels and shops with signs and carols, in terms of activity, it is pretty much a non-event and if you want you car washed on Christmas Day – no problem. New Year is taken more seriously and some places are closed for four days including the weekend – so I had better find an internet place which is open…. Happy 2008.

It has been a good year at in2 Consulting, so for our Christmas beano we have our sumptuous Christmas lunch in Brussels, rather than London. Part of the idea comes from the spanking new St Pancras Eurostar terminal opened two weeks previously and construction of which, helped significantly in London winning the bid for the 2012 Olympics. Eighteen coats of paint and grime have been removed to show its original light blue paint on the roof castings, and we really have a railway station to be proud of. As if to emphasise the point, we glide out very smoothly 90 seconds early according to the platform clock, instead of the scheduled 8.05 a.m. Any tiredness is quickly forgotten as we rush through several tunnels and out into the beautiful frost-covered Essex countryside. Steam from chimneys rises straight up in the still air, jets make chalk marks in a clear blue sky and it is a great way to start the day.

My colleagues are noisily playing “spoof” on the next table and after the second bottle of champagne is opened, the number of players is expanded. I lose the first one so still owe my round of drinks and while there seem a few tunnels, my question about when are we going under the Channel, is met with the response that we will be in Brussels in 10 minutes! Station to station in 1 hour 51 minutes.

Apart from chocolate and mussels, I do not know what else to see in the limited sight-seeing time available, so some of us trot off to the most famous tourist sight there, the Manneken Pis after a hot drink in Grand Place. Thankfully it is shown without clothes and the statue of a little lad having a pee is shown in its small naked brass form. After returning, I find out that since 1987, there has been a female version Jaeneken Pis too… Life in Brussels all seems quite normal although the country has not had a proper government since the most recent elections in June. After talks on autonomy broke down, the French-speaking Wallonia southern region and Flemish/Dutch-speaking north could split, leaving Brussels as a self-governing federal district in the middle – Brussels D.C. perhaps??

Back at home, mortgage valuations are definitely down as is the property market generally with some selling prices down 10-15 per cent compared to say, a year ago. As always some people will hold on the these now fictitious prices and even people who have reduced their offer prices are not selling quickly. History repeats itself here with everyone now waiting for the Spring which looks to be a cold one and the now fully-implemented Home Information Packs will only gum up the market further. For one of my previous rants on this plague http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/?p=42

Our in-house meeting reviewing next year’s business plans is very rewarding giving me a couple of good ideas I might incorporate into my own. There is a last minute “rush job” where an employer needs to implement a Stakeholder Pension Scheme as they now have over 5 employees. Not having a Designated one, can lead to a £20,000 fine – enough to pay for quite a few trips to Brussels…..

More seasonally, Barnet Symphony Orchestra http://www.barnetsymphony.org.uk/sponsors.html put on a lovely concert in Hampstead Garden Suburb with two daughters playing trumpet and french horn with the third one sitting at my side – it really makes a dad feel very proud. The main piece on the programme is a clarinet concerto by Luis Spohr where the soloist is a very talented 18 year old Japanese girl who has just started at the Royal Academy of Music.

Thirteen months after I move in, my flat in Muswell Hill is finally christened with its home warming event where all 3 daughters, sister plus all partners demolishing several racks of Welsh Lamb – my Christmas meal choice for some years now. The brainwave of a Secret Santa where guessing who had got the present is great fun and something to repeat next year.

Something catches my eye clearing up next morning, when I notice a woodpecker hacking into a branch on the now leafless oak tree outside my kitchen window. It is obviously missing its own Christmas lunch and after 10 minutes, a six inch long piece of bark falls off and it flutters off back to Highgate Wood.

It now only remains for me to flutter off to Thailand by jet tomorrow evening, and wish you all a very Happy Festive Season in advance of what is shaping up to be a busy 2008.

Larry Elliot of The Guardian gets my week off to a cheerful start with an analysis of our housing market which has now shown 3 consecutive months of decline. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/dec/03/houseprices.marketturmoil The above heading which was sometimes applied to American servicemen in the UK during World War II, now seems to apply to our property market as a consequence of the continuing US sub-prime blowout. Like any doom philosophy, these predictions tend to be self-fulfilling. Strangely after an extensive trawl, I can find no sign of a survey released a few weeks ago showing how rental demand was increasing – good for buy-to-let investors of course – and which usually happens at the end of a housing boom. This is when property gets too expensive for First-time Buyers who have to continue renting.

For people on the housing ladder, in2 Consulting mortgage department’s busiest sector unsurprisingly, is Remortages – both for Buy-to-Let and for private owners. The mortgage market is still very competitive and for a Buy-to-Let owner, a small reduction in borrowing cost can make a big difference to the net profit figure.

For a different angle on property, I have a very interesting 1 to 1 with Jean Liggett of Elan Properties who specilaises in properties in Morocco www.moroccoproperty1.com . We are both members of the Bond Street group of Business Referral Exchange www.brebondstreet.co.uk and this Friday was my turn to deliver a 10 minute presentation on the even more cheerful subject of pensions. For my previous diatribes on this touchy subject http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/?cat=2

On Thursday, I am back in the (money) doctor’s chair doing my monthly pension surgeries for would-be and current members of one of the group pension schemes in2 Consulting looks after. The usual questions come up again e.g. “what happens to my pension if I leave? etc” but it is nice to help people, many of them foreign, who know very little about pensions and where their employer has taken the trouble to put in a generous staff benefits package.

Confirmation of my continuing recovery from my throat cancer treatment which finished in July, is when I am told that I will not need any more formal appointments with the Voice Therapist. This of course, is as long as I remember to steam my vocal cords morning and evening, do not overdo things and breathe properly. The latter means taking an abdominal breath before speaking which gives the voice more power and timbre. The view from the top of UCH seems to echo this. From the therapist’s office, the sky is black in the distance and planes with their ghoul-like pairs of landing lights approaching Heathrow from the south-east become recognisable friendly objects when seen from the west side with its glorious sunset and warm outlook.

At my lodge, my own outlook expands after a short and warmly-welcomed visit to Northumbria. Our hosts are the Neptune Lodge in Wallsend leaving 3 other Neptune Lodges to visit in the UK. Next day is a rush round some of the nearer parts of this beautiful county looking at Alnwick Castle where the quidditch game in Harry Potter was filmed, visiting Holy Isle where Christianity was introduced to the British Isles and hearing about The Rat Inn at Anick in the Tyne valley – a pub which predates the Norman Conquest, as this area put up strong armed resistance to them when they invaded in 1066

N.B. From next Sunday, I will be in Thailand again for Christmas and New Year returning 12th January. My Thai friends tell me that as well as barbequed rat which I have mentioned previously, cobra and birds are available too. Hope this does not put you off your Christmas turkey…

The above seems to have become a cliché for people who have retired or been made redundant where their pension income is inadequate. For someone who has had a highly skilled position, having to take a part-time unskilled job to make ends meet can be humiliating at best or worrying at worst. Income when we cease work, can come from pension benefits which will provide an income or from capital or assets which will generate an income. Examples of the former include pensions you have earned in employment or taken out yourself while in self-employment, while the latter could include buy-to-let properties, the value of your business or an investment portfolio. To be able to have a “pension” i.e. an income you get without having to work, does not always mean having a pension scheme or policy – other assets which can generate an income can serve just as well. By far the most common problem with people at retirement age is that the fund or value of assets that could generate an income, is way too small.

The average Prudential pension plan when it matures is between £40,000 and £50,000 which for a male aged 65 will yield a level annuity of between £3,700 and £3,300 a year depending on where you buy the annuity from. Amazingly, 46 per cent of people did not know that you could shop around for the best annuity rate, something called the Open Market Option in a recent survey of 800 people by insurer Skandia Life. A level pension annuity is fine for a while but not good if inflation takes off again. If you want escalating annuity income of say, 2.5 per cent a year, the starting annuity income amount will drop to between £2,814 and £2,883 a year which will take over 10 years to catch up the level income figure and longer than that if you allow for inflation as well.

To repeat what seems to becoming my mantra here, there is no point in having a small pension as per my earlier blog http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/?p=17 which has a link to a pension calculator.

As an antidote to the Beast of Pensions, last Sunday was spent at Harley Street at a Beauty event organised by a lady Masons Lodge. Thinking I might learn a little about lady masonry, instead I find myself at a whole day seminar on the latest beauty treatments where I am the token male apart from three male doctors. Subjects included the latest fillers which are not permanent as these are safer apparently but of course need to be “topped up” after 6, 8 or 12 months. Demos were being done on a couch while the next speaker was doing their presentation. Apart from one which involved infra-red treatment delivered by what could have a been a three head razor, the fillers – first one side, then the other – were administered by injection into the cheeks in several places without any anaesthetic and and without any sign of discomfort. Sometimes blood was drawn, but this was calmly wiped away by the nurse and the needle was stuck in somewhere else. There was no shortage of volunteers for this stuff either.

Most popular, was a talk on detecting breast cancer with themography instead of mammograms. The latter did not come out very well in the comparison. Their detection error rate seems to be about 30 per cent, each mammogram increases the chances of getting cancer by about one per cent, the nodes that are detected are relatively large by the time they are picked up and the whole process involves compression which can be very uncomfortable.

For avoiding cancer generally and staying healthy, more general advice included: eating raw or steamed brassicas e.g. cauliflower & broccoli (boiled is OK if you drink the water); cancers love sugar and the best place for a microwave is…….in the skip.

Last but by no means least, my hosts very kindly sat me next to the lady Grand Master. Having been under the impression that lady masonry was a product of women’s lib, it was a surprise to learn that lady masons have been around since Edwardian times with the first UK lodge in 1913. Now there are 14 lodges in London, 3 in the Isle of Man, a new one in Gibraltar and other countries too.

STOP PRESS: in2 Consulting has just published a client newsletter Financial Focus with articles on: Offshore investing, changes in PEP and ISA rules, estate planning, student debt and investor protection. If you would like a complimentary copy, please e-mail me and I will send it to you as a .pdf file.