ALL THINGS BIG AND SMALL 2.0

As I grow older, I have naturally gravitated  to a healthier diet with less meat and more fruits and vegetables. My eat-out  dinner tonight  was a bowl of Fishball Soup Noodles. and a fruit salad called Rojak. Rojak consists of Pineapple, Green Apple. Red Apple, Turnip and Cucumber. In a sauce of fermented shrimp paste.  Cost:S$10.00  

The iconic Gibson ES175 is the most sought-after guitar by jazz guitarists. Since 2019, Gibson has not been making it's range of jazz archtops. It's no longer commercially viable to produce hand-made top end guitars in the USA. Although there is a huge supply of used Gibsons ES175s in the market, jazz guitarists often prefer the made-in-Japan ES175 clones that have been produced since the 70's. Not only are they cheaper, they are extremely well-built, in some cases. of higher quality than the real Gibsons. Here are 3 of them from my collection as well my original Gibson. From left to right: 1968 Morris MB-1. The first MIJ ES175 clone. A heavy guitar with lots of mids. A tone reminiscent of the older jazz guitarists such as Joe Pass and Jimmy Bruno. 1972 Gibson ES175 Finished in nitrocellulose, making it a very playable guitar with an airy acoustic tone. The nitro has turned the body's original blonde into an almost orange color. 1989 Greco SuperReal Project FA-750. A ra...

Executive Summary  As of 18 July 2025, the three quantitative models present a nuanced picture: a near-term constructive signal from the GBDT forecaster is offset by persistent macro headwinds flagged by both the DXY-Metals Nexus Monitor and the Real Yields Monitor. The GBDT model assigns a greater-than-60% probability of price gains for gold over the next 20 and 60 days, and above-50% probability for silver across both horizons. Median forecasts for both metals sit above current market prices. Three of four forecast horizons carry a positive skew — meaning the model sees more room to the upside than to the downside. A particularly notable observation this week is that the 20-day Q90 pinball loss scores are lower than both Q50 and Q75 for both gold and silver. As explained in the GBDT section below, this is a bullish leading indicator: it signals that actual prices have been consistently landing closer to the upper end of the model's predicted range, pointing to embedded upward mom...

  24 JULY: KEY DATE FOR GOLD INVESTORS. A major regulatory enforcement action will come into effect on 24 July 2026 in China. Chinese mega-banks are officially shutting down all intermediary services for retail investors to trade leveraged and paper precious metals contracts linked to the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE). This action is being led by Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC)—the world’s largest bank by assets—alongside other state-owned giants like Postal Savings Bank of China, Ping An Bank, and China Guangfa Bank. • The Specific Targets: The ban completely turns off retail access to deferred delivery contracts like Au(T+D). These are the highly speculative, margin-funded instruments that allow ordinary retail investors to short or long gold using leverage through their mobile banking apps. • The Deadline Rule: After settlement on 24 July, retail traders can no longer open any new positions. Any remaining leveraged contracts must be manually closed out or taken to ...

Spicy noodles with liver, minced pork, fish ball, fish meat dumpling, braised mushroom. A popular Singapore food in the  coffeeshops and hawker centers of the public housing estates heartlands. Cost: S$5.00

A MONSTER JAZZ ARCHTOP GUITAR I got this monster made-in-China Farida 18" archtop from a friend in the UK relocating to Hong Kong and wanting to get rid of excess baggage. Farida is more well-known for their acoustic guitars, this archtop is no longer in production. You can gauge how huge this thing is by comparing with the '68 Morris copy of a Gibson ES175 (Left) which has a lower bout of 16.75 ", and the '78 Yamaha copy of a 17" Gibson L5-CES (Right) The Farida is heavy and won't fit into any standard archtop gig carrying-case. It is very well-made with an Ebony fingerboard, and very loud when played unplugged. And has an old-fashioned sound like those rhythm guitars in a 1930s big band going comp comp comp before electric guitars were invented.  Looking at the tail-bridge, it's a copy of the 1939 D' Angelico New Yorker which probably has a valuation today of at least $50,000.