The holiday just completed had some high points. My wife and I did our first wreck diving, going through the pilothouse of a giant auto ferry that sank in the early 70s.
We learnt to better control buoyancy so as to not hit the ceiling with each breadth of pressurized air. We also looked for sharks at Shark Point, the anticipation was exciting, but seeing only a field of giant clams was more so.
Another first was organizing our group of nine for an elephant trek through the jungle, moving fallen branches and fording rivers. The four gentle elephants moved like smart sport utility vehicles, only feeding on bananas instead of petroleum.
Bottom line, I recommend Thailand to all who appreciate friendly folks, good food, and awesome nature.
I am now “decompressing” from my Rayavadee holiday before traveling to wherever on Tuesday for work. I am looking forward to another bout of intensity on the divestment front before taking a rest somewhere in the Pacific Ocean in late April/early May.
My work is not clearly delineated between weekdays or weekend nights, summers or winters, good times or bad. The work is in fact perfected correlated only with its own cycle of feast and famine. My partners and I have been feasting on the good and bad fortunes of clients for the last 10 years, and I alone for another 3 years before that. In that long cycle of feasting, there was one momentary frame where the partnership bank account held a mere USD 1,500, just enough for 10 days rent.
I may have used “decompressing” too presumptuously. I uncrated a Gateway delivered “Pentium IV 1.5 Ghz 768 Mbyte Rambus DRAM 120 Gbyte HD 15.7 inch flat screen hooked to 64Mbyte nVidia GeForce2 GTS Ultra Video Accelerator Card, w/ 16x DVD, 56k modem and 10/100 Ethernet Card and Windows ME, all I/O-ed via clutter-free wireless keyboard and mouse”.
I do not believe the company made any money off me after paying its part suppliers, workers, and properly allocate for its rising cost of capital and cost of distribution. This is not a good sign in a now volume driven industry.
I found it quite “compressing” when realizing that GTW’s ORCL powered ERP software is being incorrectly used. I failed to see where my existing Cambridge surround sound speakers would plug into the ordered but missed Creative Live sound card.
No sound card, no on-line gaming, or at least no winnable on-line gaming, as I cannot hear the receding screams of departing and the approaching footsteps of incoming combatants. So, after accounting for the upcoming house call service representative and his USD 25 taxi ride, GTW will probably lose money on this very fine machine.
More decompressing-ly, I spent the least amount of time installing and tuning this machine compared to all my past machines and especially recommend the on-line services of www.mcafee.com where their ASP applications with embedded expert systems route themselves through CSCO boxes and PCCW wires, cleaning up the resident software and hardware bugs and rare viruses, all for USD 29dot95 per year. The service is fantastic, satisfying and priced to vroom.
I had access to CNBC and CNN during the holiday but spent no more than 2 minutes per day on the content. I understand the E3 crew is once more aloft and the same with the various stock indices. Both happenings were more or less within estimation, with the former less puzzling than the latter, and all fundamental issues still remaining in place.
In the presence of daunting bad news and more impending bad news, the god of money is giving me a chance to redeem my mother’s portfolio at original invested amount, minus two years of gains. Not too bad for the entertainment value for mom.
I feel that, given the fine shape we collectively still are in, specifically:
(a) The lack of panic and logic,
(b) The lack of massive parallel and sequential bankruptcies and market clearing events,
(c) The presence of much enthusiasm and bounce amongst the masses, and
(d) The still high valuations relative to market prospects, cost momentum, dividends, and cash flow,
the stock indices will head lower than my original optimistic guesses, and the Nasdaq reaching for three-digit level. I originally guessed Nasdaq to bottom at 1400 if we are good, and 900 if we be bad. The party apparently will not stop until the roof caves in, and stay caved in for a while, say 36 months.
I will be moving a bit more personal money to Euro in the coming week, and my partners are happy to let me allocate some corporate cash reserve to high-density metals.
Chugs, Jay |
