What time is it? It’s Annual Report time, which is the time the Corporate World gets frisky. Also the time when YT comes closest to being a veritable translating machine, sitting for hours on end with terms rattling around in her brain like ‘fixed capital formation’, ‘net income before depreciation and financial items’, ‘exchange- and interest rate developments’, ‘net cash from operations’, ‘liabilities less current assets’. ‘equity ratio’, ‘essential value of share capital’, and on and on and on ad infinitum.
Do I know what they mean? No. Do I care? No. As long as they appear to make sense on the page, it’s fine. And apparently they do, as my clients keep sending them to me. ‘The book value of total assets of […] was ISK […] million at year-end 2004.’ Uh-huh.
SPEAKING OF FACTS AND FIGURES
Applause and three cheers to Colin, who took it upon himself to do a lil’comparative study of a few different countries with regards to size, population figures, even GDP. And by including Iceland has earned himself an honorary stool [as it were] in the Friends of Iceland Hall of Fame. Welcome, Colin! Have a shot of Black Death, a bite of putrid shark, a cube of pickled Ram’s testicle! You may never want to include Iceland in anything again!
THE WEATHER
Just a hint of a breeze, mild temps, and towards evening the overcast sky turned into one of those brilliant Icelandic sunsets that totally take your breath away. I happened to be situated in a garret room with a view of the Tjörnin lake and the sky beyond and wow! I’d forgotten what a proper sundown looks like, what with winter darkness having just left us and all. Brushstrokes of every shade of sunset drawn in horizontal lines across the sky; the city silhouetted in the foreground. Amazing. Temps now, at midnight, are 4°C and the sun came up at 8.21, set at 18.59.