Just a quick update from my online absence. Actually, just blogger absence.
I'm out of breath from my latest new low in stocks. Down near 30% after the market defied the downturn. Still holding though with the few points of note:
- Fed rubbishes all USD to save its pride by downing rate to technical zero
- Hedge funds unconstitutionally, illegally and irresponsibly suspends redemption. If the fund previously allows anytime redemption and now suspends it, it falls in this group
- Madoff, enough said. I actually admire his guts and realization that he pulled off something a lot of corrupt officials have not been able to. Only bad is that the charities are hit too, which is TOTALLY the charities' fault. I would recommend legal action against the misuse of charitable funds.
- Auto bailout. Enough protectionism already. Foreign companies hires Americans too.
- Obama's mystical powers at work. His wow factor is killing me more than helping me. Then again, I will thank him if I still have continuous income ten years from now.
Well, not all are gloomy for shorts, but I'll rather focus my creativity on my story book. Stuck and stuck, and too much action. I need more substance in the story, which I have but cannot really express it in words. Unfortunately, formulae don't work here.
Weeks away from the blog. Why?
Football season is over. Basketball season is over. Not to mention the hike in gas prices made life a bit uncomfortable. The worst part I'm losing money in the stock market. Well, I have come to the conclusion that my conservativeness is not conservative enough. Unfortunately, I'm feeling upset that my richer friends can't see the problem.
You see, like when I was studying my Masters, I'm worried that my family will need help paying for the house. So, while they can afford to lose money with enough backing to go back to in their family, it's a different family upbringing for me. As the eldest, I see it as my duty to remain the flag bearer who needs to stand even when everyone else is beaten down. So while I might whine a bit like a kid, I feel I genuinely can't afford to lose too much ground. And it's not personal. Not me directly at least.
Anyway, for whatever reason, these few weeks is also a downturn in my ideas. I'm also finding my expenditure for my apartment is getting unnecessarily high. Maintenance fees, cleaning, space, whatever. I think the "Sometimes I don't really care" attitude from my roommate is probably a mitigating factor as well. It's easy to say I'm being negative, but if I put in effort for stuff, I expect people to put in something as well.
Ah well. It's funny that bad things must always happen together. Like above, my ideas is also running into a dead end. There is a skeleton for my little trial novel, but I'm just running dry for a while. To make things a bit more edgy, I contacted a friend to see if her husband can help. Not in terms of idea, but in terms of experience. Her husband published a fantasy book before, so I thought I could get some idea what I need to go through. I'm not sure if the shut door I got was because they thought I wanted more help that experience pointers.
Of course, these aren't really the only bad things happening. So to top it all off, I decided to declare myself broke. As in, no fun, no excitement, just plain Joe from step one. Well, I'm living pretty cheap actually, but I suppose I can find excess fat to rid myself of. And as the flag bearer statement, I think precluding my savings for my parents' house is the best I could do to ensure that they have a backing right now. Well, that probably means I definitely won't get married anytime soon, but I did not have a girlfriend to begin with, so that was easy.
Actually, there was quite a few exciting things these week, but the bad overwhelmed the good. While I have been losing money in stocks, this is the worst week. Well, to be frank, I had a good run that upped my little gadget expenditure a bit. Made about 100 dollars.
I even got myself a new laptop due to come by first week of July. I wanted to make preparations to give my laptop to my parents. I can give them a new one, but they always say they don't need it...Well, I'll still give them mine, since I doubt tech will go any faster and fatter at this rate...
What made it bad?
Of course, the bear market! This is a heavy losing week. I'm only playing percentages, but heck, I should be more careful! Anyway, I probably erred on the side of being too careful...But unlike Singapore, they are only starting to jail the finance executives that created the bad funds to get money for themselves, and one even managed to become a fugitive...MEANING HE ACTUALLY GOT AWAY...
Well, we don't really get to punish a lot of these people in Singapore, but regulations and laws are supposed to make things work for general economy. The rich can get richer, the poor may get poorer, but if no one gets to work, who gets the money? Even the rich won't. Those people who wants less regulations can go ahead and cry all they want, like Kudlow. They messed up so many people's lives, they deserve worse than jail time.
If there is no regulation, there is no moderation, nor consideration to human life if needed. No one wants to hurt others? From what I see, since most people don't care about what happen to others, they don't really care if they hurt others as well, as long as they don't "know" it. Even if it is obviously morally wrong.
The other side. Italy beat the French toast left behind by the Dutch. Now, that's kind of sickening to me. I rather Romania in the quarterfinals than the Italians. If they cut down their diving and focus on making goals with open plays, I'll have been more friendly towards their game. Unfortunately, class, skill and flair aren't the basic elements of their game. I did tell an Italian-American, Baggio was the last great player they have. Well, maybe with Di Canio, but Di Canio was not a national team regular.
One more destabilizing piece of news. Promotions. They come, but they went to the wrong people this time round. My company have the knack of giving people promotions in the wrong manner. Skillset, timeframe and whatever you can think of. That's out of the window. It's about favoritism. Well, not exactly that all the time, but if a more capable person has to take the elevator up with the rest of the crew, why should one be allowed to take the helicopter at others' expense? My boss probably need to answer this question of mine soon...There are some unfair things I can take, but not those done in a gross manner.
Now, the good part. Germany beat Portugal fair and square. Russia beat Sweden with enough time left for a smoke break. Turkey displayed the passion for the game. Hey, soccer is a low scoring game most of the time, but if people play it correctly, it is way better than most other sports. The only problem? It has a high inertia in terms of its rules.
Anyway, I'm into Chapter Eight. That's like one every month with a spurt of two more this month. If my production increases more drastically and get the level of help I need, maybe I can publish it before 2010!
This Sunday is the opening of a few items that I decided to work on. A lot of house cleaning when my roommate disappeared again for the weekend. The fact that he had not reviewed my writings had not gone unnoticed. I had two sets of reviews, plus I had some pre-planned items to work on.
Actually, the writing went better than expected. In the sense of speed, since I planned to be only at two chapters at best by this time. But! I reached number four! In fact after my first trial, so that's like five times the speed, so I got so distracted from other things as well!
One other thing I did was watch Star Wars. I never liked it, but well, at least the 70s version is much better than the recent ones. Plus, I think I saw some materials that might be useful for my writings later. Not bad for a "classic". It's not my favorite, but I must admit Lucas did well back then. Not now, obviously.
One other thing I did, GRE Math. Bad. I got about half wrong from the trial 20+ questions I had. I was watching TV with writing my fourth part of my twenty-six parts, but I definitely have quite a long way to go for this. Not to mention the GMAT.
Stock wise was not too good. Some good turns did not give me complete recovery. I'm still down quite a lot despite some recovery. Not very good news for next weeks, but some fun so far. Hopefully it does not go too bad. I probably will get a decent idea of my progress over the next few months, and hopefully it is good.
Definitely not so well for football. NBA next?
As I probably let some people know, I'm trying to write a story book. For one that doesn't read, that is tough. In fact, my auditors have admitted to having problems with my essay. As least its not the topic, so it could be worth selling. In fact, my originality has been given the thumbs up, so the only things left is to put the two hands firmly into making it.
Today, I saw "CSI". Well, everyone knows I watch "CSI", but the rerun of "The Unusual Suspect" does add to my entertainment. The problem with a long story is that all good things must end. I peeked at the episode where the genius girl came back into the scene and, it was just a typical end, and often not very "reality" reality. It would be interesting to see if intelligent plots can be made out of her. Of course, that's a long shot. I'm also very interested to see how they are going to end up with the miniature killer, but well, I read everything on Wikipedia. Darn, quite smart but not beautiful of an act. I do have to say that other than "Monk", I watch "CSI" most and I don't have any complaints other than watching reruns.
Anyway, I think it is quite impossible to create a repeating villain like the comics. One, reality does not really permit it. Two, it does get boring over time. But I think I'll have a few recurring villains in my story. Time to induce some fun, since I'm very bored and angry about losing money in the brokerage. My portfolio is amateur but no one likes losing money over nothing, especially when one and only one brick fell off.
Of course, my story, which started some time ago was not at the first chapter. In fact, I have two chapters and going into my third! I even thought of a prologue, but I can't find a way to connect the prologue to the first chapter. Well, things will work out! I need to get a book agent and marketing plan first.
