Monday, October 20, 2008

Downtown Houston, Texas


Today (Monday, October 20) I was summoned to participate in an all-day meeting. (Boooring!) The one bright note is that today's gathering was held in one of our company's two downtown offices that I had never previously visited. This particular building is located across the street from the office structure whose picture I posted here on October 8 (see below). The office I was in today (pictured above) may be familiar to some readers in that this was the first building that Enron built in Houston - the one where that infamous "E" was situated out in front. This was the "Ground Zero" where the one of the biggest corporate thefts occurred. Many people lost their jobs and Houston suffered a 'black eye' after the scandals by Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling surfaced. (My humble opinion: the Enron bankruptcy may have been a precursor to the current economic turmoil now afflicting the USA and the rest of the world!). Anyway, I digress ... I simply want to say that being here in this building had a certain meaning for me in that here is where history (albeit very bad history) took place. After Enron ceased operation, our company leased several floors of offices at a very attractive rate. In addition, we also purchased the other building Enron constructed - again, this was the structure I showed in my earlier posting.


PS: I survived my all-day meeting and am now comfortably ensconced in my regular office on the west side of Houston!


PPS: For all my readers who reside outside of the USA, do any of you know about Enron?? Just curious. To this day, that was one of the largest corporate failures in our country's history.

8 comments:

Liza said...

<-- Houstonian here

Would it be a stretch to say that 99.9% of Houstonians despise any mentioning of Enron?

Blah.

However, I'm glad you saw downtown Houston. I love the architecture there.

chemist said...

M Lefty:

Thanks for stopping by my blog, "Traveling Chemist". Yes, you are correct, 99.9% of us Houstonians hate to even bring up the name Enron. Still, I am curious as to how many of the foreign readers have even heard of that former company.

Traveling Chemist

John said...

Hi Traveling Chemist,

Rest assured that I, together with most of the news-conscious people over here at the eastern portion of the globe have heard of the greatest corporate scandal of the 2000s, probably in history.

Definitely a black dot in the economic world's history. And nothing worth remembering.

John

WiZ said...

i so wanna visit texas

DUTA said...

Thanks for your Thanks of Oct.18.

As for the economy turmoil - It started, I think, long before the widely known Enron affair. It's the general addiction to a drug named Credit. And since an addiction is very hard to cure, May God help America and the rest of the world.

DogsDeserveFreedom said...

hey that's a really nice picture perspective.
Congrats on being listed on blogsofnote! That's where I found your blog. Maybe one day my blog will join yours! :) (queue the music for "high hopes" song) lol

Theresa said...

Sad Fact: The CEO of Enron was a friend of the Bush family.

Nadin said...

nice post


actually i've never heard about enron .I'll search that scandal thingie!

anyways nice blog..

Keep it up