stlplaceBy the time of this writing, CIT Group (NYSE: CIT) fate is still unknown. A while ago (Apr 24 2009) I wrote about CIT Group because I traded it on that day. I felt the situation looked more an more like WaMu as that afternoon the rating agency downgraded the rating of CIT bond to “junk” or “default” (I can not remember exactly).
When I say “play Buffett” I meant people who follows Buffett investing strategy, more specifically people who buy and hold his company Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A, BRK.B) stock. This is not easy as Buffett’s strategy is not clear cut, and his company stock is mostly overpriced in recent years (because of his fame), not to mention doing homework on Berkshire is almost mission impossible (at least I felt I cannot understand his corner stone business: insurance). So here is a better way:
Buying the stocks Buffett bought
My logitech V200 mouse is more than 3 years old. Recently it acts a bit strange, basically the clicking does not work very well: for instance, when I intended clicking once, it will click twice, vice versa. So I was looking for a replacement for some time. I found the VX Nano is a good one.
(Left: the new VX Nano; right: the old V200
Price and Review
Bought both from Amazon.
We went to MUNY last night, Meeting Me in St. Louis is on.
It’s 4th season I went to MUNY, I still remember in year 2001/2, I did not even know what MUNY is when a colleague wanted to give away MUNY tickets. Long words short, MUNY is the largest outdoor musical in the US. It’s being shown every summer in the outdoor MUNY theater at beautiful forrest park (history of MUNY). You don’t have to pay to see the show, the last 7 rows of seats are available on “first come, first serve” basis.
A while ago I wrote about Internet Safety.
Last year
MySpace/Facebook, Barack Obama (this is probably the bright side, if you believe Barack is a good guy)
This year
Twitter revolution, Iran;
SMS (text message) + online BBS, Urumqi incident (what I call a terrorist attack/organized killing against innocent civilians);
Cyber attacks, notice the recent news South Korea and US gov web sites got attacked, not to mention the endless email from Nigeria says I will receive $10 million dollars if I can him my bank acct;
and there is this great thing many people love (but don’t want to admit), this porn thing (see WSJ video about software to help a guy get rid of bad habbit).
Well, yes or no. As with many things in life, there are honest (at least try to be honest) western media outlets, such as NPR and PBS; and there are some biased ones, mostly for profit media, such as CNN, and even WSJ which is a business newspaper. Why is that? The simple reason is the media has to please its audience (in the case of CNN, it’s US and western audience), to get viewership and the advertising dollar (which is not an easy thing esp. in this economy).
(Update July 9) A personal story written by NY Times reporter Edward Wong.
(Original) This is Sept. 11 for China. July 5, Urumqi (Capital city of Xinjiang, China), 9-11 style attack happened to innocent people walking on the street, students/workers on the way to home, shop owners attending their customers,… were beaten and some are even killed by some well organized terrorists. I don’t have all the details yet, but the following video from Youtube offers a glimpse of the situation. Warning: some scene are bloody, exercise caution/judgement when watching.
I would like to list some of the Chinese restaurants I visited in this trip (and in the past). I will also list some web sites which I think will be helpful to plan Chicago trip.
Chinese restaurant
Lao Sze Chuan (web site here): this is the first Chinese restaurant I visisted in Chicago (2001?). I waited for more than 30 minutes in a hot summer afternoon. The waiting line is much shorter nowadays because there are more authentic Chinese restaurants. It is located at China town. Some of the food (e.g., rabbit meat) are very spicy in my opinion. Get a map here.
We are back from Chicago. Visited the Premium mall (near Aurora) yesterday, and was quite impressed. This was my first trip to the Aurora mall, and I was surprised to see so many premium brands and shoppers (esp. the crowds at Coach store). Judging by the size of crowds in the mall, it seems the economy is doing fine. But yesterday, the unemployed number announced by the gov (470,000) exceeded the expectation again. The market tanked again, although I think it has more to do with the July 4th US holiday, people want to play safe in this long weekend.
PT Cruiser
I rent the car from Enterprise near my home, this is a small rental office to serve the Lou Fuze car dealership. I booked an “intermediate”, and they offered the PT Cruiser to me. This is one small mistake I made, I should have booked “midsize” or “standard”. Usually Enterprise has a free upgrade in airport locations, but not this small office, as matter of fact they have to get the PT Cruiser from another office. Initially I was a little uncomfortable about taking this little car to Chicago, but the PT Cruiser turns out to be very good, except one minor problem: there is no guard/screen for the trunk.
GPS