Bull vs Bear Round 2 - A Draw

DJIA went up 68 points, then went down 68 points in the first hour of trading last night, then finally it ended up 27 points for the day. STI went up in the morning, as usual, then went down in the afternoon, with a long tail, as usual. It ended the day with 14 points down.

The bull and the bear are fighting fiercely again after the non-farm payroll data released last Friday appeared to be dismal. For this round, it is only a non-exciting draw. The market did go down a bit, but not very drastic, then it rebounded. Technical rebound, or dead cat rebound, or whatever you want to call it. It seems there is still a lot of money floating around, in investors' pockets, just waiting for the right time to release their power.

From this novice investor point of view, Ah Ben should not simply continue to cut rates. I don't think cutting rates is the right solution. Chinese saying "Cure the head for headache, cure the pain in the feet when there is pain in the feet", it will only cure the symdromes, but not the root cause. Just imagine you cure the syndromes of a cancer patient, but not the root cause, what good will it do to the patient? Oh, yeah, to improve the quality of life of a terminally ill patient.
But you put that in a macro economy, it will only delay the cure, and prolong the suffering.

Let's see what will happen next. It is gonna be interesting.

Face . Mask

The crown prince said: "The best actor wears his mask all day and all night."
"The Best actor wears no mask at any time. His face is his mask." Replied the Queen.

-- A conversation recorded in The Banquet (夜宴）

The Iron...

I hesitated a bit whether I should write this. For sure you have heard of Iron lady, Iron man, Iron fist, etc, etc, but have you heard of IRON GROIN? A video clip is circulating in the Chinese internet community recently showing a man using his genital to pull the weight of a skinny teenager, then he uses his genital to pull a stone drum.

The man is said to be a kungfu monk called Shi Yan-Wu (释延武） from the famous Shaolin Temple, a master of authentic Shaolin Kungfu. When the media contacted Shaolin Temple, they acknowledge there is such Shaolin Kungfu known as Iron Groin (铁档功) and some of the Kungfu monks indeed are master of it; however, they deny Shi Yan-wu is a Shaolin monk. Interesting.

Many have used the Shaolin title to mislead people into believing they are secular disciples of Shaolin Temple, although they are not. The sole purpose is to use the name to profit for themselves.

The video is made like a news broadcast on TV, but the last few minutes which includes contact numbers for people to call (just like those TV ads) makes it look like an advertisement.

What do I say? 无语。

Anyway, the link to the video clip is below.

Warning: Male nudity, enter at your own risk and for 18 yo and above only!
http://www.ku6.com/show/yWXpDjbfnyD6T4mm.html

ROSKOPF PATENT Pocket Watch

I want to find out more information about the ROSKOPF PATENT pocket watch as shown in the photos above, but so far to no veil. Anyone can help me on getting information on the value & history of this watch? Any help will be appreciated, as this pocket watch has special meanings to me.

I only know it is a Swiss made watch made by a German watch-maker. This is what I got from the internet.

Georges Frederic Roskopf was born the15th March of 1813 at Niderwiller .In 1829, at the age of sixteen, George travelled to La Chaux de Fonds, Switzerland, where he undertook a three year apprenticeship as a sales clerk with Mairet & Sandoz, a firm selling hardware and watchmaker sundries.Later, in 1834, he became apprenticed as a watchmaker to J. Biber, a firm also in La Chaux de Fonds.In 1835, financed by his wife, he set up his own watchmaker business on Leopold Robert Street. This firm worked as "etablisseur", - a company that buys watch components and assembles them. A son, Fritz Edouard was born the same year.

In 1855, again, Roskopf set up his own business together with his son, Fritz Edouard and Henry Gindraux as ROSKOPF, GINDRAUX & Co. Roskopf was an idealist who dreamed of making good quality, low cost watches for the working man. After two years, his son left him to open his own watch business in Geneva while Gindraux left him to become director of the watch making school of Neuchatel.

In 1860 G.F. Roskopf began to design a watch that could be sold for 20 Swiss francs (then a week's pay of an unskilled laborer) and still be of excellent quality, simple and solid. He called this watch "montre proletaire" (laborer's watch). At first, Roskopf met indifference and hostility among the watchmakers of the area, who were still working as a home industry and who did not wish to make a watch, suitable for mass production.

It is said, that in 1866 Roskopf ordered two boxes of ebauches (= raw watch movements) from Emile Roulet and asked Gustave Rosselet to make escapements. Both refused to take his orders. He finally succeeded in producing his watch in 1867, using ebauches and cases from the MALLERAY WATCH CO., and parts from many other makers, and having them assembled in Damprichard, France, by M. Chatelain. The original order to MALLERAY was 2,000 watches. By the end of 1867 he was in business and by 1870 he had ordered 20,000 ebauches.

Here is the entry for Georges Frederic Roskopf in Wikipedia: Georges Frederic Roskopf. It says he died in 1889, while the pocket watch was said to be made in 1896 (if 1896 on the back of the pocket watch actually indicates the manufacturing year), so this watch must be from one of his successors.

By the way, the pocket watch is still working, although not too accurate. It becomes about 5-10mins faster in a day's time :)

Another link: http://www.musketeer.ch/watches/roskopf.html

To my frustration, I couldn't any photo showing exactly the same pocket watch as the one in pictures above.

Drought

When I arrived in Guangzhou on 20 Dec 2007, it had been two months since it last rained. The province was facing a severe drought in recent history. Farmers are having a hard time this year. Many agricultural produces are expected to have a poor harvest this year.

Water levels are dangerously low in rivers, reservoires almost dried up. People feeling the pinch of the drought while food prices are hitting their pockets.

Should we blame global warming for the drought? Mmmh.....

Wealth Protection

Inflation in 2007 was high in China. Having experienced such inflation back in 1980s, people in China are very aware of wealth protection by buying real assets, to hedge against the fall of the otherwise useless money.

All real assets, especially those non-renewable assets, such as jade, precious & semi-precious stones are in high demand. The hard currency - gold, is in high demands, too. Swiss gold bars are hot stuff in China. They sell like hot cakes.

In contrast, people in Singapore tend to complain a lot of the recent high inflation, but few seem to have anything to hedge against inflation, other than their investments, which are stocks, bonds and other financial instruments. Of course, they have CPF too. However, the question I have is, if there is ever a high inflation caused by unstable political scenarios, or imminence of war, do Singaporeans have any real assets to protect their wealth?

People here like to buy consumables, such as electronics. The latest handphones, latest computers. We all know electronics will only depreciate, rather than appreciate, over time. In time of war, how much would your compute fetch? Would anyone be willing to exchange some food or water with you for your computer? or your memory card? or your handphone? Indians and Malays may still do well. The gold chains, bracelets will help them get through, for a while at least.

Many think they have lots of money, in the banks. But hey, those money nowadays is nothing more than a couple of numbers formed by some pixels on that LCD screen. If there is a war, the numbers die together with the LCD screen.

Pirates & Fakes

Pirates

A year ago, there were lots of people and shops selling pirated DVDs in the streets of Guangzhou. It was not uncommon to see shops with pirated DVDs piled from floor to ceiling. They did it openly, nobody seemed to be bothered. Then there were people who lined the main streets with a portable table or something, again selling pirated DVDs. It would be difficult for you NOT to bump into one pirated DVDs seller when you walked down the streets.

In just a year's time, things had changed. You can still get pirated DVDs, the pirated ones are still as good as the originals, or as updated as the originals, but you hardly see anyone selling pirated DVDs along the main streets. There are no more shops. You have to go into the side streets to hunt for them. They are still aplenty, but some hunting is needed. Some provision shops will just place a small box outside their shop with pirated DVDs in it. Only when people approach them, the sellers would then come out to serve the customers. Some shops don't even display the pirated DVDs. Only the 'insiders' can come and ask for some sources.

I am not very sure whether there was some change of policy in the past one year, or the law had been enforced. The scene is vastly different. Hollywood movie producers should be at least pleased to see this, although a lot more has to be done to meet their demand.

Fakes

In general, I don't have the habit of checking whether the money is genuine or not, especially when I get my changes. A couple of days ago, when I was sorting out the bunch of loose changes I had in my purse, I found a special piece of 50 cents note. My attention was attracted to it when I touched the note. So smooth! Flawless! I took a closer look. It was a 'brank new' banknote. I touched the surface again, very smooth. Then I took out another 50 cents note and touched it. You could feel the textures on the surface.

Do I need to tell you what happened? Probably you already know I got a fake 50 cents banknote! My gosh! I never expected people will be this mean to actually produce fake 50 cents banknotes! Read carefully, 50 CENTS! NOT 50 YUAN!

Living in mainland China is a challenge. You never know when and how you will be cheated.

Just a reminder to myself, in the next few days, I will write about how I got cheated when I bought some small items, and wealth protection as well as inflation in mainland China.

Happy New Year 2008

First entry of year 2008. Just want to say HAPPY NEW YEAR to everybody. Wishing everybody a fruitful year ahead.

I will write more about what I did, what I saw during my holidays in the coming days.