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.

Villa Olmo

Villa Olmo is the residence of some noble family situated in a small little picturequette town of Como in Italy, facing the picturequette Lake Como.

Construction started in 1782 and completed in 1797. It has this neo-classic style in architecture. Currently Villa Olmo is used for international conferences and events organized by Alessandro Volta Centre of Scientific Culture.

This small little 'palace' is not well-known to the general tourists visiting Italy. And I didn't expect anyone would bother to download photos of such a less-known palace from microstock sites.

Then something interesting happened. In the past week or so, my photos of the villa had been downloaded from different stock sites. Two of them are even enhanced license sales.

Mmmmh.....What is brewing there?

Imperial Treasure Nan Bei Restaurant

Lunch at Imperial Treasure Nan Bei Restaurant at Ngee Ann City today.

Ordered some dim sum and one Green Wresse. The dim sum was not bad, they use whole prawns in every single dim sum dish. You can only see this in some more expensive dim sum places. The mass produced Singapore dim sum does not use whole prawn, maybe just a slight bit of prawn meat.

The Green Wresse was nice, tasted good. The tenderness and the freshness are evident. However, at that price of S$14 per 100g, it had better be. For the one we ordered, it set us back by 84 bucks.

The shark's fin Chinese dumpling is a disappointment though. There is little shark's fin in it, although there is lots of sundry fish 'air-bag' (?). The soup is tasteless.

My over-all rating for this restaurant is at most a 3.5/5.

The total cost of this meal for two is S$133.00, one of the most expensive lunches I ever had :(

Buddha's Tooth Relic Temple - Update

Went to Buddha's Tooth Relic Temple in Chinatown a couple of weeks ago. They now have some new additions since Vesak Day this year.

Two new Boddisava(?) statues have been added to the two sides of the main buddha statue in the main hall - Hundred Dragon Hall on the ground floor.

Short Covering

STI went crazy today, up 139 points! You saw many shortists covering their short positions before they burn a big hole in the pocket.

The short position I had didn't go up to hit my original stop-loss price, but anyway, I closed the position, with S$200 loss. Well, now all my short positions are closed and I can have peace of mind.

The market is expected to be volatile in the coming week. I only hope the preference shares can go up and recover all my paper losses.

However, what has changed over the past week? From extreme pessimistic to extreme optimistic? Lehman went down, Merrlyn sold itself, AIG bailed out. Then it is said Federal Reserve is going to setup a permanent institution to take in all the junks. Fundamentally, do you think the storm is over? Junks are junks.

FED the helping hand

Today is a very dramatic day. STI went down more than 100 points by 12:00 noon close, then it went back up 100 point to close with 0.88 point down!

I had a short position in KS Energy. When the counter was re-opened for trading in the afternoon, after its trading was halted in the morning for company announcement, my profit in the counter was still S$900 plus, but by the time market closed, my profit had gone down to S$300 and was triggered out.

I shorted one more counter today. I am not very sure what will happen to that counter. Hopefully it will bring me profit.

Bless me, please.

Entry of the Panic Stage

DJIA went up 100+ points last night, and STI opened with 27+ point gain, then it still ended the day with close to 60 points down. The Fed's bailout of the insurance giant AIG didn't seem to impress investors much, not even giving them much assurance.

Looks like the market is entering the panic stage. STI is technically into a zone where a rebound is imminent, but then it has not happened yet. People are still dumping their shares.

It will be interesting to see what will happen in the coming days.

Something sad for me. I am still making S$1000 loss per day. And also heard that the biggest loser of the collapse of the American financial system is not really the Americans, but the Chinese. The Chinese holds a large portion of the Lehman brothers' debt. Poor Chinese.

A Gentle Fall

STI extended its fall today, but ended the day with a drop of 25 points only. Considering over night Dow Jones went down by 504 points, this drop in STI is considered really small. Some of the counters actually even recovered a bit. For example, SGX managed to gain a bit today.

I learned the lesson of not to be greedy, so I set the exit point a bit higher for the not so good counter that I held a short position. Luckily, it triggered out. The counter is MapleTree Logistics Trust. I entered at S$0.68, but then it went up to 73 cents, and oscillating between 0.655 & 0.73. There is no sight of it going down further. So I am pretty happy that it was triggered out and I can still exit with a little bit of profit. Profit is better than loss, right?

Now, I am only left with 1 short position. I will let it run. The trigger point has been set to a very low price. Hopefully it can generate more profit to offset the huge losses from all the big 3 local banks' preference shares that I am holding :( The rate of falling of those preference shares is steep. I am losing almost S$1000 a day over the past two days. Sad...