Better late than never, a long awaited gathering

after more than X years of "PLANNING", finally we have a gathering at home.
almost 2 weeks of heads up and confirming...finally, Saturday came.

Preparation started on Friday's evening and yes, I finally succeeded with my 2nd attempts of Mango Puddings!

If you need the recipe, you have to contact me at 1800-SINJUN(Toll free) provided that you get through and even you get through, it won't be me answering. I got it from the internet and too bad I ain't going to reveal the source. I have good reviews from the guests and yes, I have already started planning on my retirement plan ...


Other dishes for the day:
"Stirred" Japanese Rice - My 1st attempt to use rice cooker to cook the rice with the rest of ingredients and in the end, it became "Fried" Japanese rice cos I almost burnt the rice cooker again... Jason, if you read this, you will tease me again...

Mentaiko Pasta was not quite a success cos I unwittingly bought the wrong type of pasta so it ended up being Mentaiko "Bee Hoon"... Paid attention to the label next time.. I just see spaggetti and cook in 2 mins so I grabbed it... Reminded me of the Low Fat milk I bought this morning. Was Banana Low Fat milk. Damn I didn't see the small print..


The other success dish is "Sunshine Salad". My "virgin" creation as well... Not bad right??
I am not going to describe the ingredients. You can tell from the picture. See See!



Food wise, 3 thumbs up I gave myself!

Fun wise, I couldn't rate... Folks you got to loosen up, you guys don't seem to feel very comfortable (we last gather last year). I really miss the days when we were so young then teasing each other... As we grow, somehow, we lose that magical feelings... Next gathering, maybe we have to drink enough.. , I well bring more beers and wines... if I have to make you drink to loosen up.... August 18th, looking forward to this gathering...

Until then.... ............ ...........


Ja na....

I am the Master of my Fate; I am the Captain of my Soul.

... read from Your Magic Power To Be Rich! by Napoleon Hill, originated from Invictus by William Ernest Henley.

Instructions:
- face mirror and read aloud once every morning and night.
- repeat faithfully.
- incease dosage as required :p

Book Review: The Only Three Questions That Count by Ken Fisher et al

Finally crunched through this 400ish page investment book, not that it is a bore, but I'm simply too lazy to spend lengthy time on reading at one go. Ken Fisher is good. This book is good. It is a 'investment for dummies' book that caters to the 'slightly-financially-informed-and-want-to-have-a-go-at-investing' masses out there, myself included. The book far from those thick boring financial textbooks with minute font sizes, and it definitely covers many issues that are not covered by typical textbooks. It is certainly a must-read for anyone interested in investing more successfully. Want to know the relevance (and irrelevance) of stock prices to PE ratio and oil prices and country debts and president elections and many other things you may have never thought about? This is THE book to start off with. While I'm convinced by the three questions strategy highlighted in the book, I'm again, too lazy to be asking the questions diligently and frequently enough in my attempts at stock investments. Nevertheless, I believe I have gained very useful knowledge from reading this book, and I will certainly recommend it to everyone else who plans to have a hand at stock investments.

More Than Meets The Eye

We watched the Transformers movie last weekend with some relatives, tickets courtesy of one of the cousins. Oh boy, what a mixed feeling we had after we got out of the theatre...

The good: The special rendered effects were awesome. Fantastic Four's effects looked like child's play compared to Transformers. The movement and transformation of the robots seemed natural (robots... natural... I'm probably contradicting myself...) and they even threw in matrix-like-slow-motion action scenes (robots in slowmo of course, not Keanu Reeves). Ok, I think that's about it for the good part.

The bad: I grew up watching the ORIGINAL transformers cartoon, so I'm probably a little prejudice about this, but everything else about the movie (except special effects) were bad >:| with the following in particular:
1. Nothing about the robots' appearances look like the original ones, except Optimus Prime's head and Bumblebee's yellow coating. Megatron looked just like Starscream who looked just like Jazz (especially in the confusion of big battles).
2. The background story was majorly revamped. Now there's a Cube (which can transform from a BIG cube to, er, small cube) and people can use its power to create Decepticons.
3. Lots of screen time wasted on the human actor (who isn't handsome) and his cheezy teenager-falls-for-sexy-girl-does-stupid-things-then-acts-heroic adventure.
4. Missing iconic Transformers theme song. Unforgivable.

Thus, I conclude and give the movie a 7/10 purely because of the amazing special effects. I actually don't mind watching the movie again for the effects :p

The movie obviously gives much room for a sequel (or many sequels) so we'll see how the director redeems himself in the future (assuming he isn't slaughtered by Transformers fanatics by now).

National Day Rehearsal

We were fortunate to be the recipients of 2 admission tickets to one of the National Day Rehearsal held last weekend. Here's some snapshots taken for your viewing pleasure. A pity there wasn't any fireworks at the end of this rehearsal so no pretty pretty firework pictures for you.

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Birthday Cake from The Patissier

Bought a cake from The Patissier for S's recent birthday as a surprise. The cake is called Empress Dowager (well it's HER birthday) and it's a strawberry-vanilla sponge mousse cake, which tastes pretty nice, though not the best we've tasted. However, both of us find the decoration and presentation of the cake excellent. S likes the ribbon in particular. We certainly wouldn't mind trying out the many other cake varieties from the Patissier again :p

Who Needs Professional Investors When You Have Housewives

Dammit! I should have become a housewife/husband instead of trying to get into the financial industry!
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Housewife beats traders at their game
By Johnson Choo, TODAY | Posted: 04 July 2007 1218 hrs

A housewife beat professionals at their game when she emerged the overall winner of a warrant trading contest organised by Macquarie Securities.

Trading over the past eight weeks in a simulated environment mirroring the SGX warrants market, Madam Chua Chwee Heok managed to become a "millionaire" by increasing the value of her hypothetical $100,000 investment to more than $1 million.

Mdm Chua, new to warrants trading, said: "My son, who also entered the competition, helped me. I found the contest challenging and educational and it's given me a taste for warrants trading."

She won the grand prize of $8,000 cash, which she plans to use to visit her family in China.

Macquarie said Mdm Chua "played a highly geared strategy", trading exclusively in warrants over the Hang Seng Index, riding on the back of a 4.5-per-cent increase in the value of the Hang Seng.

"The aim of the Macquarie Warrant Hotshot contest was to increase investors' understanding of warrants and to improve their trading skills," said Mr Barnaby Matthews, head of warrants at Macquarie Securities here.

"It was also a great opportunity for new investors to gain experience in warrants without risking any capital," he said.

Trading of structured warrants averaged $1.7 billion a month in the first quarter of this year, an increase of about 55 per cent from the same period a year ago. In 2004, transactions averaged $40 million a month.

There are primarily two types of warrants: Call and put warrants.

Call warrants give the holder the right, but not the obligation, to buy the underlying stock at a predetermined price, on or before a predetermined date. It will generally appreciate when the price of the underlying stock rises.

Put warrants, on the other hand, give the holder the right to sell the underlying stock at a predetermined price, on or before a predetermined date. It will generally appreciate when the price of the underlying stock falls. - TODAY/sh