One Idea to Another
Haven’t had any food pictures in a while. Also haven’t taken many pictures since the Mildura trip. Well, not any pictures worth posting anyway. The above are pipis in XO sauce on noodles. Chinese restaurants prepare the quickest and simplest but delicious meals.
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Banging this post out on Ubuntu 8.10 which is installed on my SD Card on my Eee PC. It feels very different compared to 9.04 now that I’ve tried it as the older version of Ubuntu seems to lag substantially on the Eee. I didn’t feel any noticeable lag while I was trying out the latest version. The final version of 9.04 should be out by tomorrow evening and I’ll probably download the Netbook Remix version (UI is optimised for the small screens on netbooks) and give it a spin on my netbook. Will try to make it dual boot with the default Windows partition although I still haven’t figured out how to edit it to get the correct code in the boot menu. It’s all to do with the complexity of Windows being on the main SSD but the SD Card will become the master device with the SSD becoming the slave when you swap the boot partitions. Heh, or something like that.
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It’s nearly been half a year since I’ve been working again. A little less restless than before, and contributing to the organisation. Lots more of it is starting to make sense now and a new business analyst has just started this week. Providing a little training and it’s not as rigid as when I started my first job, where I recall having my notebook jotting down instructions and trying to follow them to the letter. It took me a few months to realise that the world wouldn’t implode if you did it in your own way and most times, I had a more efficient way of doing things.
Shifting through the different divisions at work and having had a chance to work at the different portfolios gave me insight into how they work and what elements are more important than others. Also learning about human characteristics as I have more interaction with a more diverse crowd. It is interesting to see how people respond to situations differently when presented with a scenario. It makes me wonder about myself and how I’d deal with situations.
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Still comfortably warm this time of the year. It’s getting darker earlier these days but it doesn’t feel any colder. Well, the weather is strange like that. You don’t quite feel it until suddenly one day you can’t just dress in your shorts and t-shirt anymore and not feel chilly inside out.
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Putting a little more cash into the stock market. There’s a wealth of information out there on how to manage your personal finances and I’ve been reading up every now and then. Put some cash into index funds, which replicate the ups and downs of the stock market as it is a basket of stocks weighted according to their actual amount on the stock exchange. Less risky than investing in individual stocks (I’ve seen bank stocks fall and rise by 50% in the last few months) but also having less potential gain. Well, return is relative to risk in that the higher your expected return, the higher you need to have an appetite for risk. I’m personally pretty risk adverse, but looking at current interest rates (3.5% for cash savings), it might help to put some into stocks, which can have capital appreciation over the long term.
Warren Buffett’s words of wisdom. “Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful”. It does make sense, as when people are letting go of their stocks, prices go down, which make them cheaper to buy, however, one will have fear that it will go down more and shun the market. When markets go up, people become paranoid of losing out on the bandwagon and jump in only to find out they have bought it at a higher price than they should have and make losses when the market loses confidence and starts selling.
It’s a pretty volatile market at the moment, where investors are trading on sentiment and I’ve noticed the news with amusement that when stock prices go up, people warn that we haven’t seen the worst of it. When prices tumble, there are reports of positive factors in the economy that could stimulate growth.
I feel it’s good to put together a personal portfolio of investments just for your own future. The first few times I put money into stocks I broke out in a cold sweat, fearing for the worst. Heh, but wetting your feet is the first step to getting familiar with it and if you don’t make mistakes you will never learn how to become better.
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On a side note, that 4-4 match between Liverpool and Arsenal was most spectacular, even if I only watched the goals between the two teams. Should have got up as I intended to earlier to watch it.
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Heh, enough banter for tonight.
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