• Moved to another department in the company. Got a salary hike, a higher position and not to mention work related stress.
• Attended a weeklong ISMS course and got certified as a ISO 27001 lead auditor at the end of it.
• Read 33 books at an average of more than 2 books a month. The increase mostly due to listening to audio books.
• Watched more than 85 movies.
• Went for a relaxing holiday to Kuala Lumpur towards the end of the year.
• Celebrated Christmas at Hyderabad for the first time post getting married.
• Met some net friends personally after having chatted with them online for a few years.
• Investments in stocks and mutual funds went on as usual.  Towards the end of the year, the whole equity portfolio was in red barring a few stocks. Though the mutual funds portfolio is quite profitable.
• Completed 11 years in Singapore.
• Blogging took a backseat.  I have no plans of abandoning this medium though i have been more active on Facebook.
• Took the longest vacation (of a month) ever since i started working. It started off as a normal vacation but circumstances forced the vacation to be extended.

Previous years recap: 2008, 2009, 2010

More excited about 2012 as i have some big plans lined up and if they all work well, it should be yet another defining year in my life.

Update: And ya, this is my 700th post. Cant believe i have managed to spew out so much in 4 years.

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Its that time of the year to clear leaves and also to stretch your legs and relax.  What better time to spend Christmas back home with family and friends.  Going back home to Hyderabad tonight.  Will be back in Singapore only in the new year.

Lots of cakes, cookies, appam, stew, hyderabadi biryani and the festivities await.  This will be our first Christmas back home since I got married.  Really looking forward to it.  Looking to go around the city and take the sights and sounds of the city i lived in.

Its really been a wonderful year. Tough no doubt but, professionally satisfactory.  At the beginning of the year moved to a new department, attended a course and got certified.  Worked in a more structured way.  Learnt the importance of documentation and keeping my foot down to say NO.

Raring to go into the new year.  Lots of things planned for the new year.  Gotta make some really radical decisions.  Cant wait.  Not to mention, completed 11 years in Singapore on the 4th of December 2011.  Time has just sped by.  Have spent a third of my life here in one of the most progressive and dynamic cities in the world.  Have made some great friends for life.

Let me take this opportunity to wish the best of the season to all of you and your loved ones.  Have fun and enjoy the holidays.

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Petronas Towers at dusk

Christmas @ a mall

A fish sculpture

Fountain

Liberty on wheels @ Genting

Chilly, misty afternoon @ Genting

Looooooong cable car

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Tree inside Takashimaya

Ion Orchard

Orchard Central

Orchard Central

Orchard Central Orchard Road

Paragon

Tangs

Takashimaya

Plaza Singapura

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It has to be non-fiction. Fiction is a big no-no to me. I cant bring myself to waste time reading fiction. If at all i want to read fiction, i would rather watch a movie that is made on that book. Saves me considerable time considering the fact that iam a slow reader.

Biographies are an instant pick up for me. Doesnt matter the background of the author or the person the book is based on. I have read biographies of Warren Buffett, Lance Amstrong, Louis Gerstner, Andre Agassi, Steve Jobs, Hillary Clinton, Michael Dell, Jack Welch, Kishore Biyani, Richard Branson etc.

Books on finance, investing, stock markets, management, science etc are also my favourites.

Book recommendations in magazines or by successful people like CEOs or other management people who have read books and recommend the same.

Random search on google or amazon after i have read a particular author and liked their writing.

Listening to audio books is my favorite method of reading. Earlier, audio books had someone reading out in a droning voice which could put you to sleep as soon as the books started. Today professional readers pour emotions into their reading with perfect voice modulation which makes listening to a book very much interesting. Sometimes its the author who himself / herself reads out the book. Sometimes its a professional reader and these have made listening to audio books much interesting.

Earlier i used to complain that i had no time to read books till someone nailed it as excuses. I spend at least 2 hours daily commuting to and from work. Mostly the time is spent looking around or listening to some inane radio DJ railing about some crap in between the same songs that you have been hearing for years now. Not to mention the ads that keep popping in between the songs.

I started with one audio book first. It was a bit difficult concentrating on listening to the book. 2-3 books later, you learn to control your mind and concentrate on listening to the book. Honestly today, i hate wasting time listening to songs or radio. I put on an audio book even when i go jogging or ironing clothes at home.

List of books that i have read are here

Above picture courtesy: ArabDetroit

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Time to say NO.  My weekends are mine and don’t expect any great favors in case of any problems during weekends.  I have a right to life beyond work and I intend on living it.

Now if only i could hold on and use my anger constructively.  Time to keep my cool, study and strike when the iron is hot.

Above picture courtesy: Cartoonstock

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Will write soon.

Work has been too tough and nerve wracking ever since i moved into the new department more than 5 months ago (ya, time flies), not to mention colleagues who are of no use to the team but somehow manage to survive at work inspite of doing nothing productive. Ya, life is a big bunch of surprises.  The ones who work are questioned when there is a lapse on their end, but some people just laze around at work and unashamedly take the salary at the end of the month and no one even bats an eyelid.

Anyways, over a period of time have steeled myself to ignore such characters and sideline them.  There are others who are enthusiastic about work and they are the ones who really encourage me to look forward to going back to work daily.

But this week off was a much needed one.  Have been doing nothing but having good home cooked food, having my regular post lunch naps, wandering aimlessly around the city, reading books on the couch and most importantly watching the financial markets melt the world over.  Watching this self inflicted wound by the US not only to itself but criminally exporting its problems to the worldwide economies is simply mind boggling to watch.  Not to mention morons like Alan Greenspan openly bragging that this debt ceiling is of no issue to the US as they can print as much dollars they want.  Now beat that.

The funniest part of the whole debt problem is the reaction from China which blasted the US for its uninhibited funding of its consumerism by debt.  But why is China so worried about the debt downgrade of the US from AAA to AA+ by S&P ?  Its because China holds more than a trillion dollars worth of US debt.  The more irony comes from the fact that just a few months ago, some so-called Chinese thinkers were threatening to dump dollars that China is holding in the form of its foreign reserves to show who the boss is.  Which makes one wonder, if China dumps the dollar, which moron in the world wants to buy it?  And if it dumps the dollar and the value of the dollar takes a nosedive further eroding the value of the reserves its holding, who is China threatening in the first place?  Its like cutting the nose to spite the face.  The whole fracas reminds me of the saying that i had posted sometime earlier in this blog….

“If you owe the bank $100 that’s your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that’s the bank’s problem.” – J Paul Getty

China today finds itself between the devil and the deep sea.  On one hand it needs to keep the yuan weaker by buying up all the dollars else the export oriented economy that China has carefully built up over the decades will collapse.  With thousands of riots happening countrywide, the Communist government doesn’t want another disaster on its hands.

And its not easy to make a complete turnaround of the economy from an exporting one to a local consumer led economy.  The transition takes years to happen. So, it keeps buying up dollars to keep its own currency cheaper and with the US dollar collapsing to newer lows, everyone is at their wits end trying to hold things together.

So, what to do now?  Nothing much..if you have money sit tight or start buying into blue chips in small tranches.  For the ones who sold off their equity holdings a few months earlier, i have nothing but admiration for your foresight.  For those who plan to sell during the collapse now, there is nothing more foolish decision than that.

Gold is scaling new heights daily as the US dollar loses its value.  Its gonna be a turbulent few months ahead.  Sit tight, there is much more trouble ahead.  Like the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett once said…

“Its only when the tide goes out that you learn who has been swimming naked”

Pictures courtesy: Now Public, Guardian, wmpoweruser

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I decided to not only save a small part of my salary but also start investing. Real estate was out of question as it required a bigger monetary commitment and i was loathe investing in land that could some day be encroached and i would need to run around the authorities and people in power to get them evicted.

The next best option was the stock market.  It didn’t require a huge upfront money and also because of Systematic Investment Plan (SIP), i could invest a small amount every month in the mutual funds.  Also because of demat, it was easy for me to buy small number of shares of the companies that i liked.  Since my knowledge of economics, finance and the stock market in general was a big zero, i had to educate myself.  I attended a few seminars, but at the end realised that they were nothing but big money making scams.

This is when i truly realized the power of the internet.  With some great help from Google uncle, i jumped headlong into an intense 12 month study of the stock markets. I searched for information like crazy on equities and mutual funds. By then i had more or less realised that i was going to concentrate primarily in the Indian stock markets.  A developing economy which
was consistently clocking above 7% growth every year and a huge market, i realised that if i could get in early, i could probably ride a 20-30 year long boom.

India was then just starting off.  The BSE Sensex was then around 4500 (it has since climbed to 21,000, then fell to 9000 odd and is now back to 19000). I remember reading an Indian business magazine that pointed to a target 8000 for BSE Sensex in a few months time.  I chuckled to myself at the audacity of that heading.  But still deep down in my heart somewhere I had the belief that we were looking at something spectacular that was about to happen.

Imagine a country of a billion people and with the economy clocking 7-8% annual growth in GDP, it was sure to hit a trillion dollars soon and if the rate of growth could be kept up, then the next trillion could come in 8-9 years.  Yes, there were and are lots of things that could derail the growth. Terrorism emanating from Pakistan being just one such issue. Poverty, rampant corruption (that has become a norm these days), a closed economy, religious and regional violence…many issues could be an impediment to India’s growth and thus hit my investments in the market.

But honestly, when you realise that you are in the pits, the only way to go is up.  I took the risk and opened a demat account.  Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) was getting listed on the Indian stock markets for the first time ever in 2004.  I applied for the IPO and was allotted a measly 7 shares at 850 rupees each.  I was disappointed at not having been allotted more. Nervethless,  i held on.  A few months later the stock hit 1400 rupees.  I sold off at almost 550 rupees profit per share.  I made more than 3800 rupees (not accounting for taxes) in a few months by investing in TCS.

I had tasted blood.

Target 2015 continues….

Above target picture courtesy: David Hawkins

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First & Second Anniversary posts

Above picture courtesy: Lovelife

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