3p||<

There was one day at work when we had some visitors from other countries coming to the office. There was this particular guy from the African continent who was exceptionally tall and he towered over everyone else.

One of the girls in office may have made a Freudian slip when describing him as “tall, dark and long”. There was an awkward silence before laughter burst out as she realised her gaffe and tried to explain that she just wanted to emphasise his height.

It was sometime back that I went on a tirade against a company (sounds like “aged pee”) for their abysmal quality in notebooks and you might have wondered what I have done with the notebook since then.

Well, even though they acknowledged that there were critical engineering and quality issues with that line of notebooks, they were willing to let me trade it in for about 10% of its value so I could purchase another piece of junk that they pass off for a notebook. Once bitten, twice shy. Twice bitten, go and die.

Rather than throw good money after bad (which is what I told the person), I dismantled the entire notebook in a futile attempt to see if anything else other than the RAM and HDD could be salvaged.

Unfortunately, my Sony Ericsson went kaput on me one day and I had to use one of the spare phones that was available to me: a gold Motorola D&G Limited Edition phone.

Needless to say, I got plenty of ribbing from my friends and colleagues…

I have a wii at home. Currently its sitting there gathering dust along with the balance board. We used to have a lot of fun as well as getting some exercise while playing it.

Now? Esh and I get more fun and even more exercise playing with L-A. It’s tiring, I tell you! Maybe when L-A grows up and is ready for the world of video games, I’ll dust it off and challenge her to a game of wii Tennis.

The moment I stepped back home after my business trip to Bangalore, it was quite evident that L-A missed me as she was so happy to see me and was eager to give me a hug! That was a good feeling…

This actually happened to me quite a while back but it should serve as a lesson for managing your own investment portfolio.

Although “buy and hold” is a viable investment strategy, it does not mean that you can just “buy and forget about it”. After a loooong time, I decided to take a look at my stock portfolio and I was wondering why I could not find any prices for some of my stocks!

I thought I was the victim of some scam or maybe the company had gone bankrupt! Thankfully, that was not the case. After digging through filings with the SGX, I found out that some companies had changed their names, some were privatised and delisted (I had already received the payoff and I didn’t realise it!). So please, take an active interest in your investment portfolio even if you are a person who buys and holds…

Morning skyline from Sheares Bridge

A long line of people snaking towards Sheares Bridge

Trip to Bangalore was indeed an eye-opener! The way that the drivers understood each other was absolutely amazing. The traffic seemed to be in a perpetual of near-misses between vehicles, but everything ends up ok.

What I couldn’t believe when I got back was people telling me that the traffic was even worse in Mumbai! I suppose that will be something I have to see for myself.

Got up really early on a Sunday morning to join the Brisk Walk group on a walk to Sheares Bridge