A Dreamy Monday Morning

It is a dreamy monday morning here in Singapore.

The sky was overcast and it was drizzling when I woke up.

I woke up because of the school bells that marked the start of the new year of school for the primary children who attend the school just below my flat. Over the loudspeaker, I could hear the teacher giving instructions perhaps to the Primary 1 kids who are spending their first day at school.

Feeling really lazy and stuff, I brought my family over to Provence @ Holland Village for breakfast. I had a croissant and cheese onion bread with coffee while my wife enjoyed an egg toast with some tea (Earl Grey I reckon). It feels like I am at Starbucks but I am not.

At the nearby coffeeshop, Dan Fogelberg's Leader of the Band was playing and it sort of calmed me down. I tried to make sense of the madness that I have gone through in my 20 over years of life. Next year, I will hit the big 3-0 and it scares me to death.

I was just doing some people watching and it was entertaining in some sense to see who were the people who walked into Provence to grab a quick bite or to eat breakfast there.

A Japanese looking family was eating their breakfast at the table to my right. I thought they were japanese until they started speaking and I could tell that they were clearly Singaporeans.

Nevertheless, they looked pretty dignified. Husband, wife and daughter. The daughter looked like she was in her late twenties while both husband and wife seemed to be in their fifties or sixties. They spoke little but seemed like they were not in a hurry to get to work even though it was already 9 plus in the morning. Dressed in their office attire, they ate slowly, exchanged a few words here and there and left silently.

Next, a man in navy uniform stopped his car outside and rushed in to buy a quick bite. He was wearing a coat so I could not see his rank. He left as quickly as he arrived. He must have been late for work.

A white Porsche was the next to stop. Out came a woman in her mid forties to fifties. She certainly did not look glam and stuff. I remarked to my wife how common she looked for someone who was driving a Porsche. You would bump into her at the hawker centre and not figure that she drove such a posh car. I also told my wife about a woman who used to work in McDonald's all her life and actually had $500,000 of cold hard cash sitting in her bank account. These are the normal people in life who are actually really rich. (Next time you see a McDonald's auntie serving you coffee, she might actually be much richer than you )

A man wearing a standard Chartered marathon singlet was the next to drop by. He was with his two sons and it seemed that his son was perhaps "sick" as he mentioned about buying medicine later. Good excuse if you ask me cos he did not look sick at all. Perhaps he just needed some excuse to skip the first day of school for the year.

Different people from different walks of life. All finding some sort of comfort in this little bread shop. Some trying to escape their lives, some living up to their lives and some just getting on with their lives.

I live you with the lyrics of the Leader of the Band:

The Price of Coffee

I realised that there is a vast difference in the price of a cup of coffee in various shops.

In a normal hawker centre coffee shop, a cup of coffee will cost you around $0.70
In a fast food restaurant, a cup of coffee will cost you around $2.00
In Starbucks, a cup of coffee will cost you easily $5.00

Matter of fact is that the coffee actually tastes almost the same to me. I certainly cannot tell the difference between a Starbucks coffee and one that is served in Macdonalds if you put me through a blind test.

What is amazing is that it does not mean drinking at Starbucks will make me a happier person. In fact, it is possible to drink a cheap cup of coffee and still derive the same amount of satisfaction and happiness.

It is thus possible for a person to spend a lot less and still be happy. Better to be eating bread and living a peaceful life than to have a buffet spread everyday but be unhappy.

Just my thought for the day.

The author had a cup of coffee at a fast food restaurant that cost him $2.10 today. He feels that the coffee was only average and did not particularly enjoy the coffee session anyway.

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Avoiding Group Think

So here I am sipping on my caffe latte in Starbucks and I am thinking about something that I read recently at Problogger.

The article basically mentioned why "weak ties" - those ties we have with people outside our normal social circle - might be a more useful source of information compared to strong ties we have with family and existing friends.

The reason given is that people in our social circle usually already share similar values and goals as us. If someone is a teacher, most of their friends will probably be teachers. If you came from a certain junior college, polytechnic or university, your friends that you hang out with are also probably those who have taken the same course as you or were in the same school.

In that sense, the life experiences and exposure they have would have been very similar to yours. That means that they most probably have nothing NEW to offer to you. In addition, because of the need to maintain close ties and come to a consensus, you and your friends will engage in something called Group Think. As they say, highly cohesive groups are likely to engage in groupthink.

If your friends are the partying sort, you will realise that all of them will feel that there is nothing wrong with partying. If your friends are all smokers, they will all have the same attitudes towards smoking. This goes the same way for our financial decisions be it in terms of insurance, investment and the like. The dangers of group think is that we confine ourselves to certain ideas without testing them out in an analytical manner.

Let's take the investment in stocks. Do you use fundamental analysis or technical analysis? What are your approaches and strategy?

Even in the online community, it is easy to engage in groupthink when we find like minded people who will not test out our ideas to see whether it works or not. So sometimes, it pays to find people to argue with. Yes..people who do not accept our ideas!

In this way, we can be exposed to different school of thoughts and learn from people who are not as similar to us in our thinking, actions and behaviour. These "weak ties" will help to strengthen our own thought process and serve as a testing board for our new ideas.

As they say, keep your friends close but your enemies closer.

It is only when we engage people from the opposite camps do we truly grow in terms of our thought process and hopefully our investment decisions.

So next time, try to find some one who disagrees with you and engage with that person. Your goal is not to show him that you are right. Your goal is to listen to his point of view and try to understand why he thinks that way.

The author is trying hard to listen to views from both sides of the FA and TA camp. He tries not to stick to one school of thought unless it works.

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A Perfect Day

I am a morbid person. I have recently been thinking about life and death. I realise that death is a respecter of noone. It can visit you when you are young. It can visit you when you are old.

Too many times in our lives, we are just cruising through. We are not truly happy. We are just making a living.

We all know that we should live each day as if it is our last. But how practical is that? If everyone was to do that, I am pretty sure that noone will be going to work. Everybody will be hanging around and doing nothing.

So as much as work is a "curse" in that sense of a word, it is still a necessary part of our lives. Without work, most men will not find meaning in their lives. Without work, there will be no food on the table. So how do we balance work and life? What would make a perfect day?

This is my thoughts on the perfect day (inclusive of work):

8.00am - Wake up and wash up
8.30am - Breakfast, coffee, read newspapers
9.30am - Leave home, DRIVE to work, listen to the radio
10.00am - Reach work, say HI to all your colleagues
10.30am - Settle down and clear all your emails
11.30am - Plan out what you are supposed to do by the end of the day. Meet boss.
12.00pm - Eat lunch with colleagues
1.00pm - Coffee to go, start finishing the work that you have planned out.
3.00pm - Tea Break, catch up on the latest news in football
3.30pm - Back to work, read your email, finish your work
4.30pm - Meet boss, clarifications
5.00pm - leave office
5.30pm - Reach home and change
6.00pm - Get out of the house and meet friends
7.00pm to 10.00pm - Chill out.
10.00pm to 11.00pm - Surf net, read books

That will be a perfect day for me =)

Another Day at Starbucks

It is another day at Starbucks for me.

People are studying all around me. Some people are sipping coffee. Some are surfing the internet. The guy sitting next to me is busily monitoring the stock market. The Starbucks staff are busily chatting away as they serve customers the coffee. The aroma of the coffee and the jazz music that is playing at the background helps to soothe my nerves and gives me comfort.

I see people getting off the bus stop and from where I am sitting, I can also see people waiting for the train.

The weather is really hot and I am enjoying the aircon. The caffe latte (whatever remains of it) sits on the table in front of me.

I have been reading this blog by a Malaysian full time blogger and have found some useful tips for my own blogging. You can read his blog here.

Record Earnings from Adsense ($4.85 in A Single Day)

On a happy note, I earned like a record $4.85 from Google's Adsense while I was sleeping last night. Apparently, my articles on Canroys ranked pretty high up Google's search pages. Not too sure how I did it but when I checked again just now, the rankings have gone all the way down.

Imagine the power of the residual income I will be able to earn if Adsense gives me $485 per day instead of $4.85 per day. I will be laughing my way to the bank! Hahahahah

Sold off Hongguo for a profit of over $3000

On the investment front, I sold off one of my small cap stocks (Hongguo) last week before the long weekend. Managed to earn over $3000 from an initial investment of $5000. Quite pleased with my results and am looking to enter into it again should the price drop once more.

I have also been looking closely at the performance of my REITs and wondering whether I should cash out of Suntec REIT which I have entered into at $1.02. The current price is now at $1.12 so it is a profit of $1000.

Financial Standing

How do I compare to the rest of Singapore? I think I should be at least above average in my savings and investment =)

I have $13K in my CPF OA, $14K in my CPF SA and $20K in my CPF MA.
Me and my wife have $100K+ in liquid cash sitting in the bank
I have $80K+ in stocks.
I have $50K in cash value in my insurance policies (Whole Life and Invesment linked plans)
Me and my wife have a flat that is valued at $550,000 when I last checked the HDB website resale price.

I believe that I have an abundance which some people do not have.

Yet, I am pretty sure that there are people out there who are like a hundred times richer than me.

Time to work harder!!!!