Caught this clip of one Mark Dice, trying to sell an ounce of gold for US$50. Last I checked, gold closed at above US$1100 an ounce.
While Mark concludes that people are too stupid to know the value of gold, I’d like to point out that if someone’s selling something at a greater than 95% discount, my initial reaction would be one of intense skepticism.
And really, it’s highly unlikely anyone can verify on the spot that it’s a real gold coin he’s holding and not some well-made imitation.
Plus, as one of the respondent’s pointed out, ‘I don’t need it.’
So after three days of eating, merrymaking and general holidaying in Thailand, I head home for a good 12 hours of sleep before waking up this morning at 5am to catch the taxi to the New Balance Real Run.
Doing 15km on a Sunday morning is not something I do on a regular basis. Doing 15km immediately after three days of indulgence is an even rarer occurrence. It’s also a rather bad idea.
The run itself was rather pleasant, and in terms of distance, rather short. Of course not having trained at all for the run may have contributed somewhat to the burning sensation currently residing in every angle of my legs. All in all, not a performance I want to repeat anytime soon.
Better get started training for the 42km then.
I pull out two videos that I made over the past few weeks.
The first is of a birthday party, by a friend of mine for his girl’s 21st birthday. It was a big party, with not enough alcohol and many parents and babies.
The second is a trip to Malaysia, to the city of Kuala Lumpur and the slightly smaller town of Cameron Highlands. And even though I fell sick, it was a kickass holiday.
And that’s how I spend two weekends.
Tonight’s weather: pleasantly cool. Perfect for a run.
Never mind that multiple body parts are orchestrating a mass revolt. My left ear is a ringing cymbal and my right ear is a throbbing timpani. My nose leaks mucus and water, the better to expel in a trumpet’s blare. My throat punctuates every 10 breaths with a buildup of phlegm that comes out in a gooey hacking double bass. My head throbs gently to some retarded drummer’s beat.
I figure it can’t get any worse, and the run might shake a few germs loose.
2km later, I feel a little too dizzy to run without parting company with the contents of my stomach. My ego is a damaged kazoo, farting its way home.
I’m not a morning person.
Once in a while, I’ll go for a morning run, and the wind slaps me awake. As much as I love the fresh, clean fragrance of 7am, I’m seldom up early enough.
I envy people who can burst out of bed, going from zero to a hundred in three seconds like a ferrari engine running on rocket fuel. It’s 8am, an hour before work starts. I wake up like a bear coming out of hibernation; sleepy, bleary-eyed, a little hungry and somewhat pissed off. The stupor lasts all the way through the morning shower and shave.
I curse as I pull on my trousers, only to realise my zipper lines up with my ass and not my groin. It takes me a few seconds to recognize the face in the mirror as I throw on my shirt. I double check all my pockets to make sure I haven’t left any essential organs behind. Wallet, handphone, hard drive, access card, watch, spectacles and acessories. Gym bag on Tuesdays and Thurdays. All systems go.
I hug my parents before I leave the house.
Travelling to the office is something of a blur. After doing it more than 300 times, my mind heads off in a different direction while my body heads to Raffles Place. I step into the office, make my first of many cups of coffee and take a sip.
The instant coffee is weak, watery and weaker than a politician’s promise. It warms my throat as I feel it flow, easing the rest of my bodily functions into the slow rhythm of cubicle life.
Time to go kill some sentences.
It’s October and I’m still watching Bob Janjuah’s call.
Market: S&P 500 @ 1097.91 (as at 20 October 2009)
Direction: Big Up/ Up/ Sideways/Down/ Big Down
Target level: 500 – 600
Timeframe: September 2009 – December 2009
Haven’t heard anything from Bob recently. We’re nowhere near his target. I’m not saying it won’t happen, but I’m certainly more than a little worried about whether the market is overreacting to the not-so-bad economic news.
And I bought a fund. The last time I succumbed to temptation and bought into a fund in June, the market crashed four months later.
Some time ago, I advised a friend to start blogging again. Seems that I should take my own advice, since it’s been nearly a month since I’ve touched WordPress.
In my defense, I’ve been pretty bogged down by a variety of pleasures and pressures, which have derailed my intentions to blog about
1. Diving
2. Writing
3. Investing
4. Working out
Someday, someone is going to invent an autoblogging device that records your thoughts as you think. Oh wait. It’s Twitter.
I have no iPhone and I must Tweet.
So I was youtubing randomly, trying to shake off the mental post its from work, when I stumble across some guy from UK called Ortopilot. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone like him.
His looks are typically Brit – painfully white. His voice is a combination of John Mayer and the late Jeff Buckley, which means I need an extra dose of rock (Avenged Sevenfold anyone?) to balance out the pop.
But why am I blabbing away? Listen to the dude cover ‘Run’:
and ‘Hallelujah’:
Frankly, Ortopilot’s cover of Jeff Buckley’s cover of Leonard Cohen’s original (bet you had to go back and read that twice) is the best I’ve heard.
Here’s to the Youtube generation.
I make it back to Singapore in one piece.
There’s a ton of stuff I’ve missed out and I’m too lazy to fill up the gaps in my memory. Just so I make a show of effort, I put together an MTV of my time in Mumbai:
Twenty-five days is a long time for a virgin trip to Mumbai. I really miss soup noodles.
I wake on Sunday morning. A colleague generously offered to show me around the city, and having spent several days confined to my hotel, I welcome the chance to get out.
We meet at the office. I sometimes wonder how people have lives outside the office. So much time is spent travelling from office to home that there’s hardly any time to workout or socialize. The office isn’t located in any sort of proximity to any places of interest. Mostly it’s eateries, offices and low-rise housing. The highest concentration of excitement would be the school next door. That we’re meeting at the office is another testament to how central work is to life here.
We head to the Jogeschwari train station. The queues for tickets snake well past the sheltered counters, into the blazing midday sunshine. We push past the queues and buy coupons; a stapled stack of thin, colored papers. These are sold on the left side of the ticketing window. The window itself is just shoulder-width wide. Fitting two people requires shoving.
Getting the tickets is merely a teaser. Getting on board the trains, I learn, is the real challenge.
Each train cabin has two entrances, several windows, and more occupants than it can hold. This is by default. We miss several trains and I take the opportunity to observe how people get on or off. Train arrives…thirty seconds…boom, we’re off to the next station. This makes the thirty-second window especially hectic. Passengers swarm out while more passengers swarm in. It’s a rugby scrum of magnificent proportions. Each carriage deposits roughly 10 to 30 people. And 30 more board simultaneously. There are no doors on the carriages. They probably wouldn’t last long anyway. People hang half their torso out of the train, one hand holding onto a pole directly in front of the carriage’s entrance.
And then it’s my turn. The train pulls in, a reluctant, groaning metal beast. Already the crowd starts to surge forward. I’m not being pushed, yet. The first passenger leaps from the train and scuttles into the crowd. This signals the rest of the crowd to start boarding, something I find out only when I am shoved from behind. I try to keep up, only there’s a man two centimeters away and closing fast. We collide. More bodies. Someone shoves me in the back. I manage to glimpse my colleague. He’s somehow found his way onto the train already. I strain against the sea of bodies. This must be what a wildebeest stampede feels like.
And then, like a child being born, I manage to force my way through an impossibly narrow gap between two bodies.
Unfortunate metaphors aside, I’m now armpit-to-armpit with at least four men. And butt cheek to butt cheek with at least two. I think ‘uncomfortably intimate’ is an appropriately employed phrase.
