Hi,

 How are you?  London seems to be the same as when I left in August - no sun, 
cold, serious looking people, expensive, etc.  In addition, we have had May 
Day riots, a post office bombing, train strike, etc.  Not to mention all the 
excitement in Enron Credit.

 It would be nice to know who I am supposed to be reporting to.  I am getting 
loads of conflicting messages - as illustrated in the forwarded email from 
Vasant.  According to you and Slava, the strategy paper/Duffie report seems 
to be a higher priority.  However, Vasant seems to indicate (in his forwarded 
email) that this is not the priority at the moment.

 In addition, there seems to be lots of chaos in Enron Credit - not only in 
the Houston office, but even more so in the London office.  This brings to 
mind a Russian proverb I learned from Slava when he expressed his views on 
the current state of Enron Credit - " a fish rots from the head."

 Finally, I would like to know exactly what you want me to write in this 
Duffie report:  Do you want to hear what Enron Credit would like to hear - 
that all they need is for us to develop a private firm model for their 
exisiting "infrastructure"?  Or do you want to hear what I really see, hear, 
read, etc.?  If the latter is true, then I may need to write two reports, 
because what I am learning does not look too good and would probably not make 
the Enron Credit personnel too happy.

 Well, I think I have said enough for now.  Look forward to your feedback.

Thanks,
Iris

 -----Original Message-----
From:  Shanbhogue, Vasant  
Sent: Friday, May 04, 2001 3:39 PM
To: Mack, Iris
Cc: Dhar, Amitava
Subject: london work

Hi Iris,

 Amitava must have told you that both he and I are getting swamped with work 
here.  As a result, we expect you to take the lead in scoping the Enron 
credit project and making sure the infrastructure is readied.  You should 
also make sure to understand the econometric/data analysis software side of 
the project -- this is probably more important than preparing a document for 
Duffie right now.  You should definitely sit with Ben/George and actually run 
the software with them to get a feel for how it is to be used.  But we also 
need to be able to try out potential other ways of analyzing data.  Both 
Amitava and I will help as best as we can, and answer any direct questions, 
but we will have limited time to review documents, etc.  I expect Amitava to 
get heavily involved once data starts coming, but we expect you to have 
already set up the infrastructure etc for the data.

Hope the trip is going well.  Would you be extending the trip for some more 
time?

Vasant