Ethiopian photos!

See, now that I am back, I feel like I should be posting! First, I noticed that the number of visitors to this blog have not actually dropped very much during the time that I didn't post anything. To be precise, the number of visitors has actually been increasing!!!

So I did some basic statistical analysis, with N=25 monthly observations and at first sight, the correlation appears to be negative between the number of posts and the number of visits to my blog. The correlation coefficient is about -0.32 and regressing posts on visits gives a negative coefficient with a p-value of 0.12, so pretty close to significance!

However, when controlling for a linear time trend, the effect of posts becomes a lot smaller. While still negative, it is no longer anywhere close to being significant. Finally, after eyeballing the data, I think it is important to control for the month of January. I am guessing it may have something to do with my birthday, or with people being interested after xmas holidays or something, but January appears to attract a lot of visitors. Adding a January-dummy (which is highly significant, as is the time trend), the number of posts finally has a positive impact on the number of visits. So that is good to know: you do actually like it when I post something. Thanks for that!

Anyway, apart from that little geeky intermezzo, here are some of the promised photos from our Ethiopian holiday:







Summary: It was AMAZING.

Tschüßi,
OJ

PS We're off to Dublin for the weekend for a mini Bocconi reunion! Afterwards, I'm off to London for work and then we go to Hamburg for a party next weekend!

Better and badder than ever before!

In answer to Gerwin: no, this blog has not died. It was temporarily comatose, that is all! But it has been revived...

What happened in the meantime? Well, I guess that would be too much to explain! In summary:
- Bavaria (incl Oktoberfest): awesome! And 1 Hillman Wonder!
- Washington DC: twice, always nice to be there
- New York: good times!
- Marie & Tom's wedding in the Netherlands: a lot of fun
- Brussels: acting like an expert at the NATO Headquarters
- vacationing in Ethiopia: superb!!! (I will post some photos later. No wonders, except that we got stuck in Istanbul, so 2 wonders for Fedor)
- Poznan: great to see Dominik, but I am not sure I would want to move there (it's pretty enough though)

Hmmm, when summarising half a year, it feels travel is the main focus: of course we also received visitors, worked, had parties (Halloween was supercool), etc.

Of course, this begs the question? Why try and revive this blog now? Well, probably because I want to share with you that I made my debute on BBC World last Friday. In a live interview on the flagship programme GMT... Being broadcast in the US on BBC America, in the UK on BBC2 and in the rest of the world on BBC World.

In summary: OH MY GOD, it was absolutely nerve-wrecking!!!! But also supercool, so that made me happy. And I learned something: if I ever see people doing live tv interviews again: respect! It is really not as easy as it seems!

Anyways, I'm back!!!

Tschüßi,
OJ

PS I realised that I have spent the past 7 New Year's Eves in 6 different countries! I think I would like to continue doing so!