ALL THINGS BIG AND SMALL 2.0

A typical Chinese small-time business man on the train from Shenzhen to Hong Kong. The ubiquitous cellphone glued to his ears, the soft-case for his documents, and the two large bags containing his wares. A house of the Swamp Aborigines in the Mangrove swamp of Johor, Malaysia Aborigine children eating their rice gruel and curried fish A beauty salon way out in the Florida swamplands: Fellsmere. An Amish farm at sunset, Lancaster county, Pennsylvania The ancient (at least 30 years old) ShoeBill stork at Jurong Bird Park, Singapore A Pied Oriental Hornbill in the trees, Changi Village, Singapore Discus fish at Qian Hu fishfarm, Singapore Peeping through the window of a guitar shop in Summit, New Jersey that sells only jazz archtop guitars A baby Alligator climbing on to a drainpipe of a canal in downtown Melbourne, Florida Relaxing on a sunny afternoon at a cafe in Annapolis, Maryland Sunday afternoon Bluegrass jam in a park in Malabar, Florida Crowd watching gamblers in a card game; in...

Ten Types of Common Trees In Singapore from Singapore Postage Stamp * all images generated with Fractal Grower software by Joel Castellanos of University of New Mexico: See http://www.cs.unm.edu/~joel/PaperFoldingFractal/paper.html 1. Leaves on a stem 2. Fern 3. Weed 4. Simple tree. This post is on what we often ponder: that what shapes our life as we grow is a combination of our genes, our environment, the decisions we make along the way, and random unforeseeable events which had an impact on the path we were traveling on. I choose to compare our lives with the shape of trees. An Oak is as different from a Coconut Tree as a Fern is different from a bush of Roses. An Oak cannot turn into a Coconut Tree and yet each Oak is different. The analogy with Life is that to a certain extent there is a boundary beyond which your Life cannot cross, yet within this boundary, there is considerable freedom for you to choose the the eventual 'shape' you will become. Let us illustrate this wi...

The New Lucky Claypot Rice stall Rice, Chicken, Pork Sausage, Liver Sausage, and Salted Fish cooked in a claypot Close up of Claypot Chicken Rice Black Chicken Soup with Wolfberries, Red Dates and Dang Qui Herb Braised Chicken Feet and Mushrooms In Dark Soya Sauce Soup of White Fungus and Pork Ribs Soup of Lotus Root, Red Dates and Pork Ribs Chicken Feet and Peanuts Soup Water Cress and Pork Ribs Soup Prices for Claypot Rice: S$10= US$8.00 In a previous post on this Blog, I wrote about the joys of eating out in Singapore: the variety, the quality, the convenience- and how I have not cooked at home for three years: See http://www.fu-lu-shou.net/2010/11/affordable-eating-out-increases.html . This post offers another example of affordable, good food in Singapore. The New Lucky Claypot Rice restaurant is situated in Clementi, one of the suburbs of government-built apartments in the west of the island. Claypot Rice is its specialty, and as you can see from the signboard in the top image, ...

" My Stray Cat" is a linguistic contradiction since stray cats by definition don't belong to anyone. But I have come to regard "Catty" [that's the unimaginative name I gave her] as mine, and we have known each other for more than a year. There she sits every day on the footpath that leads to the bus stop from several blocks of apartments. And that's how I came to be acquainted with her on my way to work in the morning and on my way home in the evening. Catty is not a beautiful cat, unlike Lucy the cat at the marketplace, the feline equivalent of Marilyn Monroe, wearing a collar set with Rhinestones and sexily purring her way into everyone's heart . Nor has she an adorable disposition, like Tom, the cute cat who loves to sit in places with a good view, his head poking out between the iron railings of the staircase and giving you a welcoming meow. Catty, is a dour, morose cat. You never see Catty prancing about, playing with twigs and leaves or even ...

LATEST UPDATE OF CHERNOFF FACES: 31 JAN 2011. According to the Chernoff faces, the DJIA (and by implication the general market, with a bias towards big cap bluechips) remains still much the same. Size of face is proportional to valuation +/- % and if you are looking for undervaluation, look for the small faces. e.g. Alcoa and BAC. But then there are reasons why BAC is undervalued. Alcoa is not so squinty-eyed anymore, due to a combination of improvements in its Expected EPS, volatility and Beta. Chernoff faces of the DJIA as at 31 January 2011 Chernoff faces circa 15 Dec 2010 Above is a Chernoff Face glyphplot of the DJIA stocks. For explanation of Chernoff Faces see my post at http://www.technifundamentals.com/2010/12/merry-xmas-edition-fun-with-statistics.html . The 3D visualizations below are derived from the 30 constituent stocks of the DJIA, and their fundamentals e.g. P/E, Beta, 12-month Return, Earnings Per Share Forecast, Earnings per Share Actual etc - 15 selected variables ...