Are you kidding me with his age?

Today is a very sad day for me. My friend Paul C died at the age of 39. I have not written his last name because I do not know how his family will react if they see this blog. Paul was an attorney whom I had known for last 5 years. He was sharp, smart and full of life. He used to party with all of us even tough we were younger than him. I just found out that this weekend he past away in his apartment. He felt chest pain and called 911 but by the time paramedics arrived it was too late. We always used to joke whether he will survive the way he was going so it comes as a chilling reminder that living life to the edge may have its down falls. Paul used to do coke, MJ, heavy drinking and was a big time smoker too. All this we know is not good for the health. But leaving his bad habits aside he never tried to influence us to become like him. We had a breathen of 5-6 people who worked at this Fortune 500 insurance company. Paul was the lead attorney on many of our cases. We knew it was good times when he took over. His enthusiasm and energy was something none of us could match. I am sure many of you might have had some person you know who might have died. For me this is the first time in my youth that this has happened. Being young I don't think about death. Last person I saw up close who died was my grandfather but then I was 8 and things seemed different. This seems real. There are so many "good times" which are now just memories. I remember when Paul got his BMW 5 series and I took it for a spin driving it past 130 mph on the freeway. Even he had not driven it that fast. He was freaked out! I remember numerous times when I was a manager at the insurance company he saved my ass on many cases.

It just seems too shocking and emotional that something like this can happen. The saddest thing is that there was never a complete closure. I was never able to say the final good bye. Lately we had not seen each other for a while. There was a happy hour 3-4 months back which I was not able to attend. I remember he wanted me to meet this girl he was dating whom he wanted to marry in October. I wondered what happened to her? Along with numerous other questions which will now remain unanswered? I wonder how he would have grown old? Or what would have come of him? He never married because he was still looking for Ms. Right? But now we will never know and that is the tragedy. Rest in peace Paul.

Are you kidding me with these numbers?

Today ExxonMobil world's largest company reported another quarter of record profit. $10 billion dollars in three months. That works out to $1318.00 per second! This is insane amount of money. Exxon's revenues were $99.03 billion in three months! That means they sell approx $400 billion dollars worth of oil and other bi-products every year. The company's market cap (the amount of money needed to buy 100% shares of this company) as of today 07/27/06 is $402 billion dollars making it by far the biggest company in the world. GE which is a global behemouth has a $339 billion market cap.

Everyone can point to high oil prices and say that's the reason why oil companies such as, ExxonMobil BP, Royal Dutch, ConoccoPhillips, Chevron are making record profits. But what people don't see is how good these companies are at doing it. First of all they are all western companies, which is ironic because most of the oil is in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and other far out regions. If global oil prices are benefiting many countries, how come the companies which are benefitting the most are American and European companies? There is no secret to it, it's just outthinking, outsmarting and outrisking your competitors and that's what the American and European oil companies are good at. It is amazing to see that lot of these companies are making these profits even though they are traders in many instances. For e.g. Saudi Arabia owns all its oil fields. All foreign oil companies get a piece of action to dig and process oil. They still have to pay Saudi Arabia for that oil. Even after paying for oil, these Western companies are still able to make not a decent amount of money but an amazing amount of money which even the Saudi's are not able to do! How clever is that?

So to all those who say we are getting killed by these record prices think of all the employees working at these companies, as a team (part of the giant team USA) at least some of our fellow team members are not doing as bad. Can I have a job ExxonMobil? :)

You gotta be kidding me?