Traveling in Japan

Spending a week and a half in Japan, will be back soon :)

Japan is an interesting country. Their service is outstandingly good. And by visiting Japan, I somehow have a better understanding of the Chinese culture. Japan preserved more Chinese culture than the Chinese themselves.

Will write more soon....

Spilled Milk

Stock markets across the world went through another round of roller-coaster ride. DJIA went up 900 points in a single day, the largest ever single day gain since 1930s. But that is after DJIA dropped to ~7000 points for the 1st time since many many years....

The DJIA and the rest of the world gained because people are optimistic about the concerted efforts by governments across the world to save the financial industry. Being a skeptic, I am not very sure how effective those concerted efforts will be, and what kind of seed it will sow.

The current problem lies in the fact that people are spending beyond their means. The toxic securities lying in the bank balance sheets are said to worth a lot a lot more than what the markets say they are worth.

It is like you think you own an asset that is worth 1 million dollars, and you happily spend half a million. Now you realised your asset is only worth half of what you thought, which is only 0.5 million dollars, but you have already spent that half a million. You are penniless!

The injection of credits into the ailing financial system only penalise people who are prudent in managing their own money. Why? Because the injection of credits means you need more money to buy the same stuff. Effectively, you lose money!

In my personal opinion, once the current finanical crisis settles down, we will go back to high inflation, commodities and precious metal will again become hot. Mark my words, it may take another 5-10 years to see that happening, but it will happen. The trillions of dollars won't just lie quietly in some corner of a bank vault.

Recession - Now It Is Official

Recession, now it is official that Singapore has entered into a recession with 2 consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth.

The stock market is terrible. It is like a tape rewind to the Asia Financial Crisis days back in 1997/98. Share prices are plunging, but the prices now are still not as low as 1997/98 levels yet. So you figure, is it time to bottom fish? Mmmh, better do your homework, otherwise you may be fishing at the wrong time.

According to some analyst's report, next support for STI is 1800, then followed by 1500, then 1400 is the 161.8% retracement level based on the Fibonacci analysis.

Foreign banks are failing one by one from US to Belgium to Iceland, to UK. Globalisation is good, it brings business to the whole world; and it drags everybody down too when there is a screw-up. Singapore banks are also sold down drastically, with all the preference shares trading at discount to its liquidation value.

Don't Judge a Book by Its Cover

Don't judge a book by its cover, don't trust a man by his looks. That's my conclusion after watching the movie Painted Skin.

The demoness, Xiao Wei, in the movie, is such a beautiful woman, and she appears to be caring, gentle, understanding, etc. She seems to have all the virtues of a noble lady, but then under her skin, the painted skin, it is disgusting. She eats human hearts the shasimi way to maintain her youthfulness and beauty. Her body is full of nothing but worms, all the disgusting worms that will make anyone who sees to puke.

However, it is easy said then done. Research shows that beautiful people tend to be more successful in life. They have this natural advantage of being beautiful. How many great heroes fell victim to beautiful people who eventually gave them the fatal blow.

You can still be generous and kind-hearted, but you must know certain principles that you must uphold under all circumstances; otherwise, you will become the next victim. And remember, the more beautiful it looks, the more poisonous it is...

Painted Skin (画皮）

The movie Painted Skin is a movie adoption of a story from the book Liaozhai Zhiyi （聊斋志异）, authored by a Qing Dynasty scholar Pu Songling (蒲松龄).

The cast is great, including big names such as Zhao Wei, Zeng Zhi-dan (Donnie Yen), Zhou Xun, Chen Kun & Qi Yu-wu.

Costumes and stylying are not bad either. I like the costumes they wear in the movie. However, the story is a bit plain, and to make things worse, there are times the movie will just 'freeze'.

In terms of acting, Chen Kun, Donnie Yen, Zhou Xun and Zhao Wei are all very great. They took up the challenge to act those difficult characters. Qi Yu-wu is only a supporting actor in the movie, and his character has very limited room to show off his acting skills. Too bad. This is also the first Qi Yu-wu movie that I have watched. I missed all his other movies, such as 881, 12 Lotus, and Home Song Story.

Microstock: Concepts

In microstock, quantity is important, but what is more important, as many other things in life, is quality. Concepts, ideas, creativity play an utmost important role in a sccuessful microstock photographer.

Keep in mind that you are doing stock photos, not pure arts. Your photos must fit into some commerical use.

With good concept photos, you don't need to have a very large portfolio for you to do well.

Take a look at this lady's portfolio in ShutterStock. Her portfolio is not that big, small compared to many, but she has got the essence of stock photography.

http://www.shutterstock.com/gallery.mhtml?id=197602

400

400! That's the number of photos I have in my portfolio at ShutterStock. It took me 2.75 years to build that small little portfolio but I finally reached there today. It is small, and it took too long to build, but then at least I am happy.

My next target is to reach 800 photos. I hope it will not take another 2.75 years to add 400 more photos.

Strange Calls

In the last week or so, I had been receiving strange calls to my mobile phone. It is not uncommon to receive calls from those telemarketers, and the moment they start to talk, you will know they must be from one of the banks offering you credit cards or credit lines or whatever, but then at least they will get your name, open their mouth to talk, and you know where they are from.

But then the recent calls are very strange. Caller ID always shows 'private number', when I pick up the call, it is always silence. After a few hellos from me, the caller will just hang up. It happened not only once, twice, but many many times.

I will pick up those calls with 'private number' being shown as the caller ID because I have friends who would call me from overseas. Sometimes their numbers don't show up. I don't want to miss those calls from my dear friends.

However, the recent strange calls really make me feel a bit scary. You don't know what is in the making.