investment in this decade

It's Jan. 2010.  The first month of the second decades in 21st century. It's a good time to consider the investment strategy for this decade.

For the last decades, resources, gold, commodity are the stars of the investment.  So, what will be next star sectors?

One article I recently read gives a strategy of investing in the ignored sectors.  Just like the resource and gold was ignored at the beginning of the past decades. It sounds like reasonable.

Let's guess what will be the next growing sectors in this decade.

* Health Care
  This sector basically had not much grow in the past decade. It may be a good sector.  I rate it as 4 out of 5. (XLV)

* Telecommunication
  3G/4G will change the lifestyle of everyone,  just like the Internet has changed our life already. (VZ)

* Railroad
  The most efficient transportation method.  It's green and efficient. (IYT)

* Energy midstream
  With China and India crave for energy, the transportation midstream, will gain a lot of businesses. (DUK)

* Natural Gas
  Natural Gas is already bottomed.  No way it will drop any further. (GAS.TO)

board game is gaining monument in China now

Heard from my friend that board game is gaining a huge monument since last year.  Check out this website http://173zy.com and you may have some idea this kind of game is hot and fresh in China now.  The website is trying to sell online version of the games.

Well, my business idea is finally making sense now.  My plan was to sell board game in China by Chinesize the popular and succeeded board game in western country. We can borrow game idea from the existing games and incorporate into the Chinese culture.  That sure will make a big hit.

Right now, maybe it is a good time to enter this market and start the business, as the early market has been opened and players were educated already.  So, it is relatively easy to sell the concept of board game to players now.

Let's make a business plan on this.

point roberts pickup

I went to Point Roberts to pick up the books I ordered from Amazon.  The massey tunnel was quite crowded south bound this noon. The border is quite empty, I passed the border without any question using my Nexus card. The returning trip is quite easy as well.  After I dropped my traveler's claim card, no questions asked anyway.

I went to Aberdeen center to pick up the mails for Linda this afternoon.  A lot of people in the mall actually.  It's hard to find a parking stall.  The design of the parking lot is quite stupid, making it hard to get to the mall.  I don't understand why the parking lot is not designed to be flat.  Maybe they want to squeeze more car into the lot.  That sucks.

google and baidu

The announcement of Google is ready to quit China's market is a huge bomb to the Internet stock recently, especially Baidu, the No.1 search engine company in China, whose stock price surged more than 30% in two days.

I bought some Feb. put option of Baidu this morning, hoping a correction will bring some money to me.  Let's wait and see.  But I can hold those put for too long, no more than 2 weeks as the time value is decreasing fast for the near term options. I should close this position by the end of Jan.

I bought some Jan. call option of Google this morning and sold it in the afternoon.  I bought it in 2.8 and sold it at 5.  Such a quick move, anyway, it's like a gambling, just for fun.

exciting business idea: haoge food

I have just come up with an exciting business idea this early morning when I was lying on the bed.  It's an idea of fast food franchise, called "Haoge food" or whatever.

The concept is to create a Chinese fast food franchise similar to subway, with Chinese style sandwich.  The selling point of this fast food is healthy fast food.

The Chinese style sandwich is a descendant  of Xi'an RouJieMo plus Chengdu RouGuoKuei.

The bun is based on GuoKui, or ShaoBing. I'd like to use whole wheat to make the bun.

The ingredient:

* Meat
   * Chicken
   * Spicy Chicken
   * Pork
   * Spicy Pork
   * Beef
   * Spicy Beef
   * Sausauge
   * Spicy Sausauge
   * Meat Ball

* Vegetable
   * ZhaCai
   * PaoCai
   * XiangCai
   * Green Onion
   * Onion
   * ShengCai
   * Green Pepper
   * Cucumber
   * Tomato


* Extra
   * Fried Egg
   * Cheese
   * Chili Pepper Powder

* Sauce
   * Ketchup
   * Mayo
   * HaoYou

* Drink
   * Green Bean Soup
   * Red Bean Soup
   * YiMi Soup
   * Soy Milk
   * Milk

self employee vs employee

I was discussing the self-employee vs. employee with George and Ray today.

The result can be summarized like the following simple points.

Given the relative higher salary working as a software engineer, if  you are doing other self-employee business, like vehicle importing, reality agents, ...

1) around 40~50% chance that you will make less money than your current salary + bonus + benefit

2) maybe 20~30% chance that you can get even with your current employed job, in terms of salary + bonus + benefit

3) maybe 10~20% chance that you may made more than you currently have

So, it is quite a dilemma to do your own business vs. being employed by a big company.

There are other pros and cons in this discussion. I'll come back later on this topic the other days.

A better approach would be to do part-time business while keep your current job.  A software development business would be a good starting point.  We had discussed about the iPhone application development.  That may be a good business opportunity.

brainpal, the future computer that I dream

I want a brainpal, the future computer implanted into your body.  It doesn't have to be powerful. I just need it to access the Internet and multimedia content.  It needs wireless connection and the battery should last for a very long time, say charge once a year.

Why do I want such a computer?  Because I want to access/retrieve information whenever I want, when I was running, or in the bathroom, or driving.  I basically need an accompany 24x7.

I believe the current technology is not too far from creating such a small embedded system into human body.
However, the user interface is still the biggest problem. How do you give command to the brainpal, and how do you receive information and media returned by the brainpal.  I believe it may take another 20 years before it can be created in lab.  Maybe another 10 years before it can be commercialized.  I just hope that I can get one before I can't use a computer.

Note, the name "brainpal" is coming from the award winning sci-fi novel "Old man's war", written by John Scalzi.  The novel is one of my favorites.

about medicine

I've quickly read a book written by a Japanese doctor about the medicine that may not be good to your health. In this book, one sentence I am impressed most.  It is actually a Chinese idiom I knew of for a long time - "Every medicine is 30% poisonous."  That's definitely true.  The medicine is created to cure some diseases. However,  many diseases are not a simply reaction or equation, like 1+1=2, they are far more complicated process than human can comprehend for now.  Many can be caused by various factors, like gene, life style, virus, bacteria, and so on.  I can't believe a "simple" medicine can take into account of all the factors and cure the disease easily.  That's why no medicine are 100% effective.  They can only somehow relieve the symptom. Patients still have to rely on their own body to cure eventually.

Anyway, I read this book and it warns me about the medicine.  What I learned immediately is that there is no need to take medicine for allergy unless the allergy are really affect your life too much.  That's actually what I did in the past several years, relying on my own body to get used to the symptom of allergy and I am getting better in handling the allergy year by year.

ultramarathon

I read a race report today about a 50 miles ultramarathon race, written by a guy in mitbbs running board.  It's an inspiring report.  I love one sentence at the end of his report.  "Pleasure is closer to pain sometimes.".  This is the first race report of ultramarathon in that board. This guy trained very hard and he made this great race. Running is really addictive, especially with all the pain.  The rewarding experience is coming from your conquering of the pain in the race. Human sometimes are absurd.  Seeking pleasure out of pain.

Anyway, I really hope that I could run an ultramarathon sometimes.  I plan to do the H2H 100km ultra.  That sound like not an impossible mission, if I can get to 70mpw training.  It's a huge commitment though.  Maybe I won't have time to train in recent years.  I won't set a fixed time for this goal, but it is definitely on my calendar.

dumpling and wanton

We made dumpling and wanton tonight.

The dumpling is stuffed with chives and ground pork. The wanton is stuffed with JieChoy and carrot and ground pork.

The dumpling is soft and smooth, while the wanton is crispy and some bitter with sweet.

They are delicious.  A quick and delicious dinner.

Investment in 2010

I accidentally found a new tax shelter in Canada. "Flow-through Share".

Simply put, you put a certain amount of money in flow-through share, usually through a fund, starting from $5000.  100% amount of that money, will be deducted from your income.  The flow-through share is usually issued by resource companies listed in stock exchange. The fund acquired the shares with some premium.  You can sell the share usually after 2 years.  When you sell the share, your income, for example, $5500, will be your capital gain and you are subject to tax on your capital gain.

It defers your tax by two years and reduces it for 50%, as the capital gain is taxed on 50% only.  Your risk is the price of the flow-through share dropped.  Given the current market, I strongly believe the resource industry will keep growing in the next two years.  Even if the share price doesn't change, you saved tax on half of your investment.

I'm definitely interested in the flow-through shares.  It is said the CMP LP is the best flow-through share investment tool.

Car repair

I felt unhappy these couple of days as my car was sent to workshop for repair.  The car didn't start on Tuesday morning.  It had this start problem intermittently since last year but I didn't pay enough attention to it until it is totally down.  I called BCAA and towed it to Firestone.

What really makes me unhappy is that I have recently invested around 2k in repairing this car and it is still broken.  I was hoping that it can at least run another year before I finally sell it.  Unfortunately, it is still in the repair shop and not ready to go yet.

I had planed to replace this car in the summer time, when new car was on sale and this one still work.  However, various reasons delayed my decision and I decided to keep use it for another year.  I just hope it can really survive this time.  Otherwise, I may lose 3-5k on it after my investment of replacing tire, changing brakes, changing time belt ...

I hate it and I really should just take bus.  I enjoy taking bus to commute as I can read and listen to music during commute.

Two New Year Parties

Just come back from the New Year's Party from Jimmy's home tonight.  Last night, we went to Phoebe's home for a New Year's party. Had no time to post about the two parties.

We had great ham/salad and chicken wings in Phoebe's home last night. We played the "Wits and Wagers" game with Stephen, Mike, and Phoebe. That's the first time we played this game with friends and they all love this funny trivia game. A Chinese version would definitely be entertaining.

We had discussed about the "Food, Inc" documentary.  Seemed this documentary may have affected a lot of people's eating habit with meat.

I had studied the "Canadian Health Guide" this afternoon in Chapters, especially the nutrition chapter.  It explains the fat, protein, sugar and their effect and food.  I am clear now about the saturated and non-saturated fat.  The trans-fat is rare in nature food.  It is a product of hydrogenate with non-saturated fat to make it more flow and stable in processed food, such as deep fried food. Saturated fat is not good as it will increase the level of cholesterol, especially the LDL, which is "bad" for heart and artery. Monononsaturated fat will lower the LDL, so it is good.  Olive oil, sesame oil, and peanut oil contains more monononsaturated fat.  Olive oil is especially good as it contains antioxidant, which makes it the most healthy fat. Polynonsaturated fat as also good, why? (Don't remember)

We went to Jimmy's place for another party with alumni. We had discussed a lot of topics covering Economy, China, Stock, Business.  It's fun to have a smaller alumni gathering so that we can have more intensive discussion.  They have prepared a lot of food.  I had eaten too much. :-(

Aftermath: Population Zero

I watched a movie tonight on CTV HDTV channel. "Aftermath: Population Zero".  It's a sci-fi movie or future projection, about the changes and evolve of earth after all the human beings disappear in one day.  This movie is quite thought provoking.

There is no cast in this movie, only a narrator explains what's happening.

Within the first couple of hours, power outage everywhere. After backup power depleted, most of the cities will be out of electrical power in a few days.  The nuclear power plan may last longer with diesel backup generators.  However, they will end up with disasters after the diesel run out.

Power outage, nuclear power plans explosion, industrial plants explosion, those won't damage the earth too much, just the related areas.  Animals will thrive and rule the earth again.  They are evolved to live on the earth in most of the conditions for thousands of years.

Most of the human built building or constructions will be collapsed or damaged in two centuries. The remaining parts ironically include the Great Wall in China and other ancient buildings like the Pyramid.
The carbon oxides generated by human beings will be absorbed by mother nature in less than a hundred years.  The movie also projects the world without human beings after 1000 years. There is no obvious sign of human being on earth anymore. The next ice age will hit the earth after maybe 25,000 years.

It takes human beings 10,000 years to establish the civilizations and put our signs on the earth. Compared to the 4.5 billions years age of earth, it is just a blink of eye.

Dream of Red Chamber

Dream of Red Chamber
Originally uploaded by tqhh

I uploaded the photos I took this September when we were watching the "Dream of Red Chamber" dance in The Center in Vancouver.
The dance was based on the traditional classic Chinese Novel, written by an author in Qing Dynasty. The novel was claimed the best four classic in China. Almost everyone in China knows the basic storyline of the novel.

The show was performed by Beijing Dance Group. It's a good show with fantastic stage design, fabulous light effect and music. However, I was expecting the music would be familiar to us, but it wasn't. Maybe because of the copyright issue, they didn't use the the music from the popular TV drama of the same story.

The show was great. It is divided into several scenarios, from DaiYu entering the House of Jia, Grandma Liu and her grandson, the complex relationship among BaoYu, DaiYu, and BaoCai, till the poem party, flower funeral, marriage of BaoYu and DaiYu, ended with the death of DaiYu and BaoYu went to temple. It's a complete story and will be most enjoyable if you are familiar with the original novel.

Most of the audience there were Chinese. That's totally understandable. For oversea Chinese, the dance is like a cultural feast.

New Year Gathering

We had a new year gathering with friends last night in Richmond.  We visited Nancy and her newborn baby girl before the dinner.  The baby girl is so cute and lovely, looks very similar to her dad.

We talked about new year's resolution during the dinner, seemed nobody had really come up with any real or practical resolution in the 2010.

When I was running outside today, I found my iPod touch sucks. The volume down button won't work and the shuffle doesn't work as well. This new iPod touch is not a good buy.  Control is too much trouble, although it seemed innovative in the first impression.  I'd rather use a reliable control system like before.

English Writing

As I write more and more blog posts, I found it is necessary to learn more about English writing.

The following is a book review I read recently, which I found it's a good example of writing.

"With the increasing number of Linux programming books on the market, the new Linux coder is left in a bit of a muddle.
Information about Linux is spreading—a good thing in terms of the open-source model and the community that supports it. The influx of new Linux authors also tends to decrease the odds of finding literacy and technical expertise in the same place. Numerous would-be writers ride the popularity wave of “Penguin Power!”, resulting in increasing numbers of Linux “bibles”, most of which are just as difficult to follow as the original and not nearly as imaginative. In either case, the context is most often distorted, if presented at all. Then again, there are exceptions."

Running changed my life

When I was running today, I was pondering my running habit. It's the end of 2009 and a good opportunity to retrospect my life, especially the running habit.

I started running from about 2007, to prepare for Vancouver Sun Run.  That's the first time I seriously start running and preparing for a race.  Before that, I was running in gym during work-out as a warm-up.  I used to run 3 times a week with 30 minutes covering 5k, on and off.  I trained together with Kenneth, a pretty good long time runner in our company.  We ran every Monday at lunch time.  My plan was to finish Sun Run within 60 minutes. We followed the training plan created by Kenneth, ran about 15-25 minutes each session, plus warm-up and cool-down.  During the training session, my confidence was built up gradually.  One night, I tried to run 10k on the treadmill in the gym of our apartment and I made it.  I can still remember how excited I was and I was anxious to tell Kenneth that I had made my first 10k in my life on treadmill.  I really believed that I can finish Sun Run 10k. The Sun Run wasn't too bad and I made it in 56:56 the first time.

I wasn't a runner at all in my early time.  I run sometimes in the morning, usually 2k, urged by my parents in middle school.  I was bad at running, jumping, because I had no interest and I thought I had no talent in them.
In my university, one roommate who is an avid runner run for 10 years.  He went out for a running almost every night.  He didn't inspire me but his persistence had impressed me.  I found the first time that running can be so addictive to a person.  I started running at the fourth year after I recovered from a severe headache due to nose inflammation and lack of activities.  I ran couple of times at night.  I don't remember the details, but I thought that it wasn't too bad as I had no bad memories.

The second time I tried to run was during my GRE preparation.  As Mr. Yu Minhong mentioned, you may run 2,400m every night to encourage you to score 2,400 during the GRE test, which is the 100%.  I am a kind of guy easily motivated and I started running again.  I don't know how much I ran every night, but I do remember that I ran at least half an hour in the humid and hot summer night, almost every night.  At that time, I found running not boring to me, as my brain wasn't rest and I can think of anything during the running.

My interest in running resumed after the first Sun Run, but hadn't yet formed a habit of running.  The second year I attended Sun Run with a better time of 51:56.  That's a bit improvement to me and my interest in running was ignited eventually.  I was very confident that I can do a better job in running.  I decided to pursuit a higher goal of running.  I registered the Victoria Half Marathon in the Fall.  And I then attended the running clinic of the running room.  I was training for the half marathon in the summer time.   I did couple of long run from 12k to 16k.  I was confident again that I could made the half marathon.  At the same time, I had purchased the Garmin 305 running watch and two pairs of professional running shoes.  I checked the runner's forum daily to get inspired by other runners' stories. I went to Victoria with my parents to attend my first half marathon race in my life.  The experience was great to run a race with thousands of runners, in a beautiful city full of scenic views during the race. I made the race in 1:56:xx, which gave me a good boost of running enthusiasm as I could finish my first HM in 2 hours.

I kept running after the race and I had attended the Harley to Harrison 100K relay together with other 7 runners.  I was the first leg of the relay.  I got up at 4am in the morning and started the race around 6am. Our team did pretty good, ranked No. 5 in non-professional runners.  Like a miracle, I hadn't had any serious injury in my running, maybe because I hadn't pushed me too hard. :-)

The beginning of 2009 unravel the climax of my running habit for my 34 years of life.  I had registered the Vancouver Marathon 2009 after I finished the Victoria half marathon.  I started training with my own plan, a confident and aggressive plan.  I planed to finish my first marathon in 4 hours, which is not impractical based on my time of half marathon.  I started my training in January, when the road were still covered with snow. I ran downhill from the top of Burnaby mountain, which is really a bad idea.  I injured my left knee in the second time I ran downhill.  The injury turned out to be the first serious injury of running, ITBS.  I felt the pain during my training on Burnaby lake and I had to cut my training plan.  I heavily cut back my mileage and run very slow with Ying in the lunch time to get a slow recovery.  I did massages and bought supplements to help the recovery of the knee.  I did a long run in March for about 20 miles. I did it slowly and did no harm to my knee.  After that, I had confidence again to finish my first marathon, although my goal had been adjusted to just finish strong, instead of 4 hours.  The Sun Run added some more confidence in my running. I finished my 3rd Sun Run within 50 minutes.

The Vancouver Marathon was my first marathon.  The journey had been covered in my previous post "Vancouver Marathon".

My running interest kept going high after the first marathon. I then registered the Okanagan Marathon in Fall. This time, I didn't want to be too aggressive.  I strictly followed the Hal Higdon's 18 weeks marathon training plan. I only missed 2-3 times running in the whole 18 weeks' plan.  I can still remember that how I got up very early in the morning to finish my 12k, 20k running plan during my vacation to Ucluelet, how I stayed late to run 11k watching the sunset, how I managed to finish the 20 miles running on treadmill, how I run freely in the downpour of rain...  I am still amazed at my capability to finish the 18 weeks' plan rigorously. It's a life changing experience and the training really paid off.  I exceeded my best estimate during the race. The details of the race is recorded in my post "Okanagon Marathon PR'ed".

My life is completely changed after two marathons.  I am now a very confident person in running.  I also believe that with proper plan and preparation, people can reach targets that they can't even think of in the beginning. I learned a lot from running and it benefits me both physically and mentally.  Running changed my life forever.

Boxing day

We went out today to check out the busy boxing day.   There is as many people as before this year, due to the impact of financial crisis.  Still a lot of people in Walmart and Superstore.  Guess people are in favor of bargain store in this situation.

Urban Network Down again

Last night, the Internet at my home was down again.  I left a message to urban network.  They called me that the network was recovered last night around 2am. I hate Urban network.  It's network is really unstable.  Down once a month.  I hate it.  I'll switch to Shaw cable soon.