Saturday, September 29, 2007

Indulgence Day

Today is the Indulgence Day for me. First we went to the newly opened Central Mall right next to Clark Quay. The original plan was to have lunch at the Grains, but the last minute we decided to go to Tom Ton instead. Tom Ton is one of the rare restaurants that serves meat from black pigs. If I am not wrong, black pig is a speciality of South Korea. The last time I had pork from black pigs was back in year 2001, in Jeju Island in South Korea.

I ordered Yaki Pork Spare rib & Sukiyaki, whilst PurpleRain decided to have Shoga Bimbimba. Well, these names sound greek to non-Japanese speakers. Yaki Pork spare rib is just grilled pork (from black pig); Shoga Bimbimba is rice with ginger & pork served in a hot STONE bowl; Sukiyaki is hot pot with ingredients of pork (from black pigs of course), a few different kinds of vegetables, and the main is udon.

My Sukiyaki is not too bad. The black pork does taste a bit better (maybe just psycholological), the soup is way too salty to my liking. Shoga Bimbimba is not bad. Btw, if you can get a good table in the restaurant, you can get a good full view of Clark Quay, which will be interesting to see all the night life in the area.

Some of our food pics. (All pics taken by PurpleRain)

Shoga Bimbimba



Sukiyaki

Prices:

1. Yaki Pork Spare rib $4.80

2. Shoga Bimbimba $18.80

3. Sukiyaki $18.80

Total (++): $49.90

After lunch, we went on to Vivo City and then indulged ourselves in Haagen-Dazs ice creams & coffee. Feeling guilty about all the calories we had chalked up for the day, we went to Sentosa for a 2-hour walk to shed off some of the fat ;P

Dinner was at Fortune Restaurant at Food Republic @ VivoCity. We shared a small bowl of boat congee (艇仔粥), a plate of Chee Cheong Fun (猪肠粉), one plate of ShaoMai(烧卖)& one plate of crystal pao. The Chee Cheong Fun with Char Siew was not bad, it brought back some of my fond memories of having it back in my hometown many many years ago. However, the Chee Cheong Fun was NOT made on demand as claimed by the restaurant. On the contrary, it was ready-made, and only to heat it up when a customer orders it. Ok, the taste was not bad, so I am not so critical about this. The rest are quite ok, but not exceptionally good.

Friday, September 28, 2007

Friends (朋友)

Some songs dedicated to all my dear friends, for their continuous support...





Wednesday, September 26, 2007

A Chinese Prescription for Sensitive Nose

My mum has a very sensitive nose. Whenever the dust content in the air goes up, she will start sneezing non-stop. I kind of inherited that from her, too. About 10 years ago, a monk gave me a prescription to cure my allergic, or at least to reduce its impact. I am going to share it here.

Ingredients:
1. Lotus root
2. Almond nuts

Directions:
1. Wash the lotus root clean. Make sure there is no mud left-over.
2. Cut the lotus root into small pieces
3. Put the lotus root and almond together into slow cooker, add water
4. Cook for 3-4 hours, then add salt.

Drink the soup and eat the lotus root & almond.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Bad Luck

Chinese are always good in expressing themselves, in a humorous and reserved way. They don't say bad luck, they say you have 'foul hands'. Just like people say you have 'green fingers', which means you are good at gardening work, a pair of foul hands will just bring 'death' to almost everything. If that pair of hands touch a project, the project will fail, or be cancelled, or be put on hold in the best case. If that pair of hands touch a specific stock, that stock will turn for the worse, usually from strong uptrend to nosedive downtrend. The owner of that pair of hands probably is just a stupid retail share investor, who is generous enough to contribute to the wealth growth of many other sophisticated investors.

In Cao Xue-qin's (曹雪芹) novel "The dream of the Red Chamber" (红楼梦), he described Lady Feng (王熙凤)as "Too smart for her own good". I strongly dispute this comment. She is NOT too smart for her own good, her failure is NOT due to her intelligence; instead, she failed miserably because she is still not smart enough, not sophisticated enough. If she is really smart, then she would ride through all the ups & downs of the four families.

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Fake Supersampler Shots

Lomo is fun, but then for each roll of film I shoot, it will cost at least:

1. film: $2.50 - 3.50
2. Development: $3.50
3. Scan to CD: $5.00

Total cost is about S$10.00. It does not seem much for one roll, but if I shoot 10 rolls, the cost just snowballs to $100.00, which is more than the cost of the camera itself. This cost escalation is not acceptable in economic terms.

Last night, I learnt a trick from Clubsnap to merge many photos together and get that supersampler 'look'. Here is my first attempt, does it look like a supersampler shot?

There are pros & cons of using a DSLR as a Lomo.

Pros:
1. ISO is changeable on the fly and as the need arises
2. Many different available lenses
3. Shoot digital, no film cost, development cost => almost 0 consequence cost

Cons:
1. DSLRs are too big & heavy to carry
2. DSLRs attract too much attention when in action

Saturday, September 22, 2007

Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节) = Moon Cake Festival?

The coming Tuesday (25 Sept 2007) is the mid-autumn festival in China, and some other Asian countries such as Singapore & Malaysia. In Chinese, it is call 中秋节, which means it is a festival on the 15th day of the 8th month in the lunar calendar, right in the middle of Autumn, so the English translation of Mid-Autumn Festival is correct & precise. However, in South East Asian countries, such as Singapore, many of those other-language educated people tend to refer to this festival as the MOONCAKE festival. All they know is you must eat moon cake. As a matter of fact, Mid-Autumn festival came thousands of years ahead of the tradition of eating mooncake on this special day.

Mid-Autumn festival came into being 3000 years ago during the Zhou Dynasty. You can read the details here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Autumn_Festival

Eating mooncakes only became a tradition for this festival after Zhu Yuan-Zhang (朱元璋)founded his Ming Dynasty. It is said that Zhu planted a revolt againt the Yuan Dynasty. To keep the communication secret, they hid the messages in the mooncakes. After Zhu became the 1st emperor of his Ming Dynasty, he gave his ministers & subjects mooncakes as a token of appreciation. Ever since, eating mooncake became a tradition.

Well, let's cut the history part short, but keep the eating part long :) In the past, there were only limited variations of mooncakes. Usually the pastry is made from lotus seeds; and only one type of mooncakes skin. With less and less modern people care about tradition, the mooncake manufacturers have to come up with new ideas to attract both the young and old customers. First there were mooncakes with one egg yoke, then two. And then they change the recipe to have "snow skin" mooncakes, with many many different favours such as durian, green tea, custard, yam, etc. I personally favour the snow-skin over traditional mooncakes.

A recipe for snow skin mooncake can be found here:
http://www.geocities.com/susanchua_sg/moon-cake.html

No harm giving it a try. There are many other food/fruits for you to eat in the celebration of Mid-Autumn festival, but I will just stop here, as I am getting a bit hungry just by writing all these stuff ;P

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Solid as GOLD

Back in 1997/98, that were talks about gold is no longer the reserve currency, and the value of gold is going nowhere but down. True enough. At the time it was the Asia financial crisis. Asian countries have to dump their gold reserves into the market to raise whatever amount of money that they need. I can still remember very clearly the Thais queuing up to donate gold to the government to pay back the loan from IMF.

To put salt on the wounds, some world financial institution announced they would slowly reduce their gold reserves. More gold would be dumped into the already saturated market. That went the gold. For an ounce of solid gold, you only needed to pay ~US$300.

As a Chinese saying goes "The east side of the river will prosper for 30 years, then the west side of the river will prosper for 30 years, and the cycle repeats". Down from its trough, gold has been climbing up slowly, unnoticed. Here is a photo of the Gate of Paradise at the baptistry in Florence, Italy. Whoever bought gold back in 1997/98 will be in the euphoria of paradise now.

Look at this chart of the price of a gold ETF. From a low of US$45, all the way to yesterday's US$71.43 and thanks to Ah Ben, who flooded the financial market with liquidity by lower the Fed fund rates to 4.75%, the price of this gold ETF is still going strong. For the same ounce of solid gold, now you to have to pay US$729.86. That goes the US dollar...

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Microstock: Travel Photos

Travel and photography seem to come hand in hand naturally. When you visit an interesting or beautiful place, you want to capture the beauty of the place to share with family & friends when are back home. Many people start their first journey with photography during their first travel experience. It is natural too to think that travel photos are ideal candidates for stock photography.

The founder of one of the more prominent microstock sites - Shutterstock, was a travel photographer, too. He started selling his own travel photos to various customers. Then he found that being the only contributing photographer, he didn't have enough time & energy to shoot enough photos for his customers. That came the microstock agency - Shutterstock.

Till now, you may think that travel photos must be selling well at all the stock sites. Not true. On the contrary, travel photos in general don't have good sales. Why? How many travel magazines out there in your local bookstore/news-stand? How many travel fairs does your city host every year? Yes, customers do come in to grap photos from time to time, but that is about it.

However, you should not be completely disappointed with travel photos. There are still some tips that can help you improve your sales of travel photos.

1. Have photos of all the HOT spots. World events, especially the rise of some new economy power will attract lots of interest to the place. For example, My Ho Chih Ming City series has been doing pretty well.
2. Get a series of travel photos, instead of sporadic ones. Sometimes customers want to do a story or something about a place, they will just come in and grap everything related to the same place. Voila! You will have sudden jump of sales :-)
3, Be unique. Many tourist hot spots have been photographed zillion times by others. In order to catch some eyeballs, you have to grap attentions. Even photographing a cliche place, try different angles.

Ok, I will stop my mumbling here. Happy shooting :)

Monday, September 17, 2007

Snake King

You see, sometimes Chinese can speak 'perfect' English while a native English speaker without any knowledge in Chinese will have no clue about what is being talked about. Snake King, both words are standard English words, when they are put together, what do you think it means? King of snakes? Someone who is very good at dealing with snakes? No, no, no, you are missing the whole point.

What are the characteristics of a snake?

Snake is slippery;
Snake is dangerous;
Snake is lazy.

If you fit these characteristics, especially the last one, then you are qualified to be crowned "Snake King".

Everybody will be lazy in some aspects of time, or just some time in life. You see your classmates coming to school with assignments unfinished; colleagues goofing off occasionally at work. It is part of life. However, some just do much better than others, including being lazy.

A colleague of mine, who comes from a 5-star country (being his fellow countryman, I feel ashame of myself), is the greatest ever Snake King that I have ever met in person. He can openly goof off at work, trading his stocks online, reading news, sleeping, and still dares to say he feels guilty that he didn't do any work for the whole day openly to the entire team! Then he continues to tell everybody his attitude is right and adorable because at least he feels guilty, although he is not going to change any bit anyway.

It is the first time that I have such an encounter, and I don't know what is the best way to deal with it. I did consider talking to my manager, but then would it help? I can't do much with this guy, can my manager do anything? Nothing much really. With the current tight labour market, and the low salary this company offers, we had been having difficulties in recruiting for quite a while. The 5-star guy knows this well, too. Before he transferred from our production plant to our department, his Snaking behaviour was even more daring. He himself told us that he usually came to work at 9.30am (while officially it is 8.30am), then went off at around 4-5pm (officially 6pm). He even went for a job interview during office hours without getting any time off or day off. And to make you feel better (or worse), he was praised by his supervisor.

I feel bad that I don't know how to do with it. My incapability to deal with this guy jeopardises other members in the team. Whatever the Snake King leaves unfinished has to be finished by someone. :(

Saturday, September 15, 2007

Microstock: A Good Concept

Yesterday, I talked about how to get more sales by having more photos in your portfolio. That is only one aspect of the game. A good concept is even more important in microstock. What is a good concept? Like Supreme Court Justice, Potter Stewart, once said about pornography, "I know it when I see it"... Your wallet will know it too. A photo with a good concept will get you good sales. A picture is worth a thousand words, so I will just show you an example.

Photo with A Good Concept:
http://www1.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/2767316/2/istockphoto_2767316_silhouette_lover
(Note: This photo is NOT mine, so I just use a link)

Flip through some magazines, both local & international, take a look at what kind of photos are commonly used. When you shoot, ask yourself, under what kind of theme/circustances can your photo be used?

Yes, microstock photos are different from your fine art/journalistic photos. What you think is a good piece of art may be quite useless for stock. Just keep this in mind. :)

Friday, September 14, 2007

Microstock: Getting More Sales

It has been quite a long time since I last wrote about microstock, it is time for me to start writing about it again.

As in any other business, having sales is the top most priority. Microstock is of no difference. To be successful, you need to have both quality and quantity to have good sales.

In terms of quantity, having 400-500 photos in your portfolio will be good. Nowadays, almost all the microstock sites go for the magic number. They always want to out-do each other by having more contributors, more photos on site for their customers. Quite a number of sites passed their 1 million photo mark in the past one year. Just imagine, out of the millions of photos, you have to grap the attention of a potential customer. By having a bigger portfolio, you will have a higher chance of getting your photo noticed, simply by statistics. It is a numbers game.

In addition to having a bigger portfolio, your constant presence in the microstock scene is very important, too. Just like the sales people, they call on their customers from time to time, even there is nothing in particular important. Sending greeting cards for major holidays, birthday cards to the customers. Why do the they do that? They just want their customers to be aware his/her existence, to remember him/her when there is business to do, profit to make. The same applies to microstock, but in a slightly different way. You don't send cards to your customers, you don't call on them, as you don't even know who the customers are. How do you make your presence known? Contribute photos periodically. For example, in Shutterstock, if you don't have any new uploads for a month or two, no matter how big your portfolio is, you will notice there is a drop in your sales. How big the drop is varies from person to person.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Wrath of Nature

Yesterday evening, an earthquake measured 8.2 on the Richter scale rocked the west coast of Sumatra in our friendly neighbour Indonesia. The shock waves from the earthquake and its many aftershocks could be strongly felt in Singapore.

When the earthquake happened yesterday, I was in Mr Huang's car, so I didn't feel anything. This morning, around 10am, all of sudden, my colleagues all stopped work and wandered around, asking "Can you feel it? Can you feel it?" The electrical wires in the lab started to swing on their own. The tremor was not strong, but it lasted for a minute or two. For that minute or two, the concrete building was like a paper box, which was shaking in the wind. OMG, mother nature has again expressed her wrath on the ungrateful residents living in her territory.

I don't know what is the physics behind it, but every time I feel the tremor from an earthquake, I will have a very bad headache, so bad that it hinders my brain's proper function; at the same time, I also feel my stomach stirring, there is an urge to vomit.

In the past, I always wondered why didn't people just run away when an earthquake strikes, now I realise that when it strikes, it will paralyse the people, just like in the sword-fighting stories, the gangsters will use some kind of incense to paralyse their preys before they take action.

Last but not least, let's all pray hard that all our friends & family will always be healthy & safe. 出入平安

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

9.11

September 11, such a special day, it is a day that will be remembered in history for the collapse of the New York World Trade Centre, as a result of the terrorist act of some cowards.

September 11, it is also my anniversary day of joining my current company in 2000. On the 1st anniversary, I was sitting in my living room, with my flatmates, watching the tallest building in the world being ramped into by two jumbo airliners, and the subsequent collapse of the two towers. Awe & shock, what else can better describe my first reaction?

September 11, happens to be one of my friend's birthday. I don't know whether she has the mood to celebrate her birthday, on a day that many others are actually mourning.

September 11, 2007, unlikely there will be another terrorist act of the same scale as 6 years ago, but the financial market may pose a much bigger threat to more than the terrorists.

Let's pray for a brighter future, and better tomorrow...

Monday, September 10, 2007

Lomo Supersampler

Haha... Probably you already know, my new toy is a Lomo supersampler. That's how it looks :D Well, photographs are deceiving. It looks cool, doesn't it? In reality, it looks plastic & cheap. See that black square at the top? That is the 'viewfinder', which fell off before I started to use the camera. That buckle at the bottom? It is the film advance string. 100% mechanical, not a single piece of electronics is there. I ordered it from Hong Kong, the total cost (inclusive of shipping) is ~SGD$92.00. Kind of $$$$.

The supersampler was designed not by the camera manufacturers, but the Lomographers themselves. They came out with the design, put it into production in a factory in Shenzhen, China.

A lot more Lomo cameras can be found at the Lomo Asia site:

Sunday, September 9, 2007

My First Lomo Adventure

My first adventure with a Lomo supersampler had been thrilling. Very unusual not to look at the viewfinder, as there isn't one for you to look through anyway; very fearful while I was shooting with all rules broken. Using a roll of Agfa Vista New color film with an ISO of 200, whose expiry date is July 2005 (Yes, it is 2005, not a typo), under a cloudy, rainy condition, I had no clue what would actually come out. Now the results are out. Most of them, as expected, are under-exposed. Ok, no picture no talk, just see for yourself and make your judgement.




Personally I like the beach volleyball shots. Too bad, the weather yesterday was all doom & gloomy, hardly there was any sunshine, hence the dull colors. Nevertheless, it shows the advantage of the supersampler, which is good for action shots. I am quite happy with the actions captured, although it is a bit too small to see clearly. More interesting angles may be explored. Some old habits just can't be changed instantly, eg. always keeping my hands steady while taking photos. For Lomo, some 'motion' may be more desirable.

From this first experiment, I also got to know with ISO200 film, it doesn't work in any indoor environment or in a rainy day.

Next weekend, if the weather is good, I will go back to Novena square Velocity to take some more beach volleyball shots. Anyone keen to join me? :D

Film development is $3.50, scanning to CD is $5.00, done at Choa Chu Kang Lot 1 Fujifilm lab.

Saturday, September 8, 2007

Squid Ink & Food

The first time I heard of people eating squid ink was a number of years ago on a TV travel program. That program brought TV audience to Hokkaido in northern Japan. A famous local delicacy is the squid ink ice cream. It was kind of disgusting to see the TV host's mouth & teeth turned black as he was enjoying the ice cream. First reaction: yucks! I will never try it.

Then two years ago, back in Milan, a plate of rice simmering in some black liquid was put on my dinner table. As I was scratching my head what that was, my Italian colleagues told me that was a local delicacy - rice with Squid Ink! It looks very much like a pile of rice dipped into that black liquid for Chinese calligraphy. However, the scent from that black pile was way too attracting to resist the temptation to give it a try. Once I tried it, then I couldn't stop. Never knew squid ink would have that appetising fragrance. I guess I must looked very ugly that night, with a black mouth & black teeth :)

Last week, CK bought for me from Milan two packs of squid ink pasta. Expensive stuff, the 500g pack of spaghetti cost 2.70 euros, while the 250g pasta cost 4.70 euros. Expensive they are, the good taste is worth the money. How good are they? You can eat them on their own :D

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Teo Ming, Dave 兵变

Teo Ming, Dave is the most talkabout person in Singapore the past few days. A 20-year old full-time NS man stationed at the Mandai Hill Camp, on Monday evening, he disappeared from his guard duty together with his SAR-21 assault rifle and ammunition! The police and the Singapore Armed Forced started an island wide manhunt and finally tracked him down through his handphone signal. 20 hours after his disapperance, Dave Teo was arrested on the 3rd floor toilet of Cathay Cineleisure at Orchard Road, with his SAR-21 assault rifle & ammunition.
It was very lucky nobody was hurt in the incident. Just imagine he opens fire at Cathay Cineleisure, how many lives will be lost! (Ok, he did not have that many bullets, thank God)

This incident also shows how fast news can spread in this information age. Shortly after Dave's arrest, news already came out in one of the online forums - hardwarezone.com. Then later, it appeared in asiaone.com as well as many other online forums in Singapore. People went to friendster, flickr to look for his photos. That is not the end yet. As people are curious about his intentions, some mananged to find out his ex-girlfriend's blog. Voila! Another shock.

It appeared that Dave Teo broke up with his girlfriend of 3 years 5 months ago. To make things worse, his ex-girlfriend soon found her new love, a new love of a SHE.

The whole event became even more complicated when the police charged a 2nd person - Ong Boon Jun, 21. Ong is said to spend some time with Dave in a Geylang hotel on Monday morning. What the heck were two young men doing with a rifle in a red-light district hotel room?


There are many questions unanswered in this incident.

1. How did he sneak out his army camp with his SAR-21? Don't they have guards?
2. What happened to his guard duty partner? Was he the one who raised the alarm?
3. How did he go from Mandai Hill Camp, which is near Woodlands, to Geylang, and then Orchard Road with a BIG piece of weapon unnoticed? (Well, probably everybody thinks it was a toy rifle)
4. Why did it take a full 20 hours for the police and SAF joint forces to track him down and arrest him?


If it is true that he deserted his duty just for his ex-girlfriend, then it is really a stupid & rush act of the young chap. Considering he is going to leave the army in a month's time. Instead of leaving the army with honour, he now has to face a 5-10 years jail term, and maybe 12 strokes of caning.

The Straits Times report is available here: http://www.straitstimes.com/Free/Story/STIStory_154880.html

The online New Paper report is available here:
http://newpaper.asia1.com.sg/news/story/0,4136,140919,00.html


Background Information:

All Singapore males reaching the age of 18 have to serve national service, and many of them start to have problems with their girl-friends. Some end up with a broken-heart after their 2-year national service.


For people who have never seen a SAR-21 assault rifle before, here is how it looks:


Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Cambodia Part I - Landmine Museum in Siem Reap

I have written about Yunnan, Vietnam and Italy. Looking back, I think I did it a bit too hastely, didn't give more in-depth information. Hence I decided from this Cambodia entry, I will go the slow way, one at a time, to give more information about the places I had visited. I am never an expert, but just want to share with you what I see, what I feel, what my impression is.

Cambodia is another war-torn country. It suffered even more than Vietnam. All the wars lasted well into the 1990s. It is also one of the most densely populated places in the world of LANDMINES! Many people, in particular children, are still easy victims of landmines.

The Landmine Museum in Siem Reap was started by Aki Ra. He was formerly a Khmer Rouge soldier who LAID landmines. In 1994, he joined the UN Transitional Authority of Cambodia to REMOVE landmines! This Landmine Museum is a direct consequence of his de-mining activities. You can find more information about the museum from its official website: http://www.cambodialandminemuseum.org/history.html.

Visiting this museum proved to be a big culture shock to me. The 1st shock was the way leading to the museum. When we told our driver we wanted to go to the landmine museum, he was not actually very sure where it is. As he found out the way, the road was a winding, small alley. Road surface was as if it had just been bombed last night. Big holes everywhere. Our driver carefully negotiated the holes, yet it was still an acid test to the poor car's anti-shake system (or the anti-shock system?).

The 2nd shock was the museum itself. What do you imagine a museum would look like? A building or a proper house built with bricks or stones? This museum? Neither. The museum is nothing more than a few shacks. The de-commissioned landmines are piling around the yard.

The exhibition shack itself is like a UN security council. Landmines from USA, UK, France, China & Russia were aplenty. To your/my surprise, Singapore also has a hand in the landmine business, but probably they got into it too late, no Made in Singapore landmines was on display.


The Exhibition Shack of Landmine Museum

The 3rd shock was the presence of war orphans, landmine victims. Most of them are kids or teenagers, some of them had lost a limb or two. A few smaller shacks beside the main exhibition shack are where they call home. Those shacks are no bigger than a few squared meters, barely enough to have small bed. They help out in the running of the museum. Their appalling living conditions made me feel very sick.


A teenager acting as a guide at Landmine Museum

Wars, whatever the cause maybe, are cruel. They shatter hopes, cut lives short, break hearts, destroy civilisations. Nobody should ever take a war lightly.

Monday, September 3, 2007

Humour

Life is hard, sometimes some life antidotes are needed. Let's share some jokes :)

警察與路人

有一天路人準備去買東西 
剛剛好看到警察
路人匆匆忙忙的跑掉
警察開著警車追那個路人
警察問路人說:你為什麼要跑!
路人說:因為....
警察:說啊!
路人:因為我沒帶駕照!!
警察:(昏倒)


Bra & Hat

What did the bra say to the hat?
"You go on ahead, while I give these two a lift."

Sunday, September 2, 2007

2007 Fall/Winter Fashion

This entry is specially dedicated to Ms J. Li, a loyal reader of this blog :), and of course, all the lady readers.

Season is changing, now it is fashion time for the fall & winter, let's take a look at what the designers have come up with :)

2007 New York Fashion Week


Best of Milan - Fall/Winter 2007/08


Best of Paris - Fall/Winter 2007/08

Saturday, September 1, 2007

More lomography stuff

More lomography stuff. The first video is about the Holga camera, another toy camera for lomography, but it is using 120mm film. The second video is for people who don't want to own a lomo camera, but want to have the lomo effect with their digital photos. Stanley, this video is for you :)

1. Holga


2. Photoshop Lomo Effects

The Bull Hunter

Just finished reading The Bull Hunter - Tracking Today's Hottest Investment by Dan Denning, published in 2005. I kind of wanting to kick myself while I was reading it. What the hell was I doing in 2005? If I had read this book then, now I would have plenty of cash ammunition in my pocket :D

The author shares with the readers a thousand-year old investment doctrine: Always use money to buy STUFF, stuff that can generate MORE money. In investment terms, those are things that you need for the economy to develop, natural resources such as oil, whose price has been soaring sky high in recent years.

Then he pointed out to the fall of America. Reason being Americans spend more than what they earn, coupled with the mismanagement of the country's finances by President George W. Bush, plunged the whole country into a debt-ridden nation.

This book successfully in 2005, predicted exactly what is happening now in 2007. Soaring commodity prices, the woes of the subprime mortgage market, they are in the book.