Reading Time: < 1 minute This is probably my only successful merge arbitrage speculation so far. By “success” I meant I am out after the recent US FTC failed attempt to stop the merge. Note the UK authority could still pose challenges or stop this thing completely. Although the market does expect the deal to close eventually. I didn’t speculate

Reading Time: 5 minutes (Update 12-31-2023) I just looked at one of my IRA accounts in which I hold mostly stocks. The dividend yield is about 1% (I hold about 45% of the portfolio in $BRK). There are two points of the views on dividend based investing, some people argue we don’t always need the dividend. In the example

Reading Time: 4 minutes This is probably my 3rd or 4th visit to the Jeff City (I recall one of my American friends used to call it Jeff City). I had to admit I forgot most of it as my last visit was probably more than 20 years ago. I recall in the Thanksgivings of 1997 and 1998, I

Reading Time: 2 minutes This is something I felt we were doing sometimes in the agile software development. It goes like this, we analyze a problem, and we come up with some sort of solution / architecture / design. But during implementation we realized we missed something, especially on the consideration of things like performance. We know we cannot

Reading Time: 2 minutes Both my daughters’ passports expired. They are kids and it looks like they will have to get new ones. My wife was thinking we just go to to the USPS office on Saturday (which is how we do in the good old days), and I promptly stopped her. Because from my own experience, a lot

Reading Time: 6 minutes Background This is a continuation of my earlier post here, also just noticed I wrote about the US healthcare systems back in 2009: My Thoughts On US Healthcare Reform, My Thoughts On US Healthcare Reform: II, My Analogies On Healthcare Reform Protest, and Healthcare Reform: Some Good Things About US Hospitals. Below was written over

Reading Time: 3 minutes I was not aware or conscious of the famous Chinese singer Liang Jingru’s age until a few days ago. Note 梁静茹 Sometimes the fans call her Fish Leong. I think Leong is the last name 梁 in her native Malaysia: her ancestor is from China’s Guangdong province and I assume they all speak Cantonese. The

Reading Time: 3 minutes I thought about this for a while. The last time I planned to switch, was a few years ago, at our previous home (condo), for some reason the AT&T technician could not find a port for the broadband, per my wife (I was likely working at the credit card company at the time). And the

Reading Time: 3 minutes I owned an Amex Gold card for a while. Sometimes I tweeted about it. I was thinking about giving Serenity a card (I talked about it in my blog), too. In fact, the other day Mother’s Day 2023 to be precise, we had her “pay” for the dinner. Note the reason I used the double

Reading Time: 4 minutes (11-06-2023) Design with Reach has some deals for the Herman Miller chairs. The website popup says 20% off (not sure if it can be stacked on the existing 25% off offer). (09-25-2023) And now I realized I had an issue with the jeans. Googled it and it seems people were talking about it on Reddit.