after a long absence, suddenly i find myself blogging again….  and when i read some of my past entries.. it is like dejavu! it is strange yet familiar. i do not even recognize or taken by surprise what i said or wrote. it is almost like talking to another stranger.

well,… much have changed since my last entry. life is still a journey and there has been a lot of surprising turns. many too private to openly say out in a public blog like this one. yet, there is a strange desire to share. this i guess is part of the nature of humans - no man is an island as the saying goes..

still sharing or hinting it in a cryptic form is enough to provide relief. it’s been a long day and this will do for now… till the next sharing session. to keep my mind occupied, i will return to my few passions in life… AV and photography =)

.. . .. .. .. .

trailing dots,.. there is just something mysterious abt them. i do not know how to explain it. it leads the imagination to wander and wonder. simply putting one dot after another… makes it more personal, make it more interesting, makes it more exciting…

haiz.. i rly must be gg crazy. talking to myself this way.

After selling off the Marantz SR4500 the intent was to jump onto the HD audio bandwagon. While searching, the trusty Pioneer Elite from EJ was put back on active duty for the processing function. Alas, I did not anticipated that it was a 5.1 - thus rendering the other 2 Revel surround redundant.

I now realised that the earlier decision was a prematured one. It would seemed after much deliberation that it is an unwise decision from a cost perspective.

The entry ticket to HD surround is too high considering that at present I do not have any HD player to speak of. It is also unclear what time frame is the adoption. Therefore, it became painfully obvious that I will need to live with the older 7.1 technology for some time.

Enter the SR7500 - lucky! Couple days back, I came across the ad on a SR7500 on the used market. It’s about double what I sold my SR4500 for, however this model is 2 levels up and has THX Select to boot. There is a significant boost in pwr as well. This would also meant that I now have an opportunity to get rid of the Rotel RMB1066 6ch amp.

It appears that there is a lot of eq movement this year.

The unit was installed last night - looks real pretty and purposeful. The initial audio test is ok - nothing fantastic nor anything negative. BUT it does not match well with the ML432. Must be the balance-unbalance thingy… each time I switch the surr mode, there will be a thump emitted from the front speakers. Not good. I wonder if I can ever get rid of this annoying error. Help, anyone?

Another life-long objective fulfilled… my very own Mark Levinson power amp. It’s the current model as well. In the flesh it is truly a beautiful beast. It weighs in a full 52kg of precision machined metals, high quality parts and components.

To say the improvement is night and day against my current Rotel RMB1066 is being conservative. There is just to comparison in terms of sound quality btw these two. Considering the price diff, that should be a given.

I’ve always felt that the mid-bass and lower mid from my DIY floorstander to be ‘lacking’. After countless times of xo tweaking, it never really sound right. Today, I finally discover the root of the problem - there was just not enough power to drive the scanspeaks speakers. With 400w into 8ohm and doubling to 800w at 4ohm, there is more than sufficient headroom to drive most speakers to unrealistic levels.

I can imagine myself thumbing through my fav CD collection over the next few weeks. There can be no regret getting this unit ;D

Surprisingly, it took this long before I step foot in the US-A. With all the american/hollywood influence you’d think that I’ll be there the moment I got enuff dough.

My maiden flight to the state would be complimentary of uncle Wyeth on a business class SIA bird no less. Obviously I do look forward to it somewhat with another lifetime 1st in the form of whitewater rafting in West Virginia.

The trip is not without its drama, having almost not made it due to visa issue. Who’d thought a so-call global travel company to not mandate the citizenship information in their database. I knew about the trip like 2 months back and when the itinenary came, it states that I need no visa though I’m M’sian. It seems odd to me at the time and even requested for re-confirmation. However, the response came back the same. Thankfully, I realized the mistake when speaking to KC, thus immediately scrambled to get it done.

The experience at the American Embassy was another eye opener… those guys really take a over zealous approach to security. Good or bad is debatable depending on who you speak to. However, do not expect friendly customer service, that’s for sure. From that experience alone, I should expect a super long wait at the JFK airport trying to get past security.

Hopefully I get the time to put more in the blogs while I’m there… I wonder how much mileage I’ll get from the new canon EF20-200mm F2.8L IS lens that I just bought few weeks back??

Surprisingly, though being in the IT line, I’m rather behind in terms of the latest gadget and developments… This I discovered at the recent PC Show 2007 held in Suntec.
Got myself a SanDisk U3 portable storage… technology finally caught up to one of my wishlist. A stored application on the go! The exponential growth in storage has reached a scale where it is big enough to start putting little standalone apps into it. There this sync app that you can configure to backup your files, email and etc… neat! So you need not worry about not being able to open some of the files that you are backing up…

Another thing, a 4Gb drive is now less than SGD $60 - I still remember forking out $200++ for a bloody 1GB CF!!! Today you can get a 8GB CF for a little over $200. There’s also a huge range of blue tooth devices and media players… not to mention all those wireless and network attached devices… especially NAS types.

GPS system prices are also coming down fast… You can get one for less than 1k,… sign of old age I suppose.

Fixing up the long neglected photo album… update the gallery software to version 2.2.1 - realised that there’s been some broken links and correcting them is turning out to be a real challenge!!

Managed to put in place the watermark… can still be improve no doubt and good enough for now.
Restarted the scanning of old negatives, especially the 20+ rolls from vacation in the UK and Paris. Wonder how long the drive to finish can be maintained… since I’m putting in this much effort, might as well do a good job in the photo touch up in Photoshop.

Had recently cashed out from the market during the March correction,.. could have maximize my profits but a little slow in doing so. Kinda costly as the diff is more than 20% difference. Main points;

 Ellipsiz did shot up to almost $1; alas, I exited ~78cts. FUCK!

Sunpower - despite my telling everyone else how great this counter was, I failed to listen to my own advise. The mistake cost more than 30% in opportunity cost - though I did managed to average >100% in returns. Win some, lose some.

Riverstone - a surprise! It returned above 20% and I gladly let it go.

MIIF - unfortunately I did not have the patience to wait after the div,.. could’ve close to 25% gain instead of just the 4% div.

My bad in predicting a major correction that failed to materialized. Clearly misjudged the strength of the bull!!

I might be too early afterall, the bull is looking stretched and the irrational enthuaism giving way. Gains are tapering off and the down trend may just started to set in. Unfortunately, I did re-entered two counters; Jasper and China Enersave - the former is a micro-penny at 2.5cts which might be not be an issue at all while the latter is suffering from paper loss. Greed can be blinding…

If the down trend does takes place, it then mirrors almost exactly what happened last year!

My portfolio is turning green all over the place…

Sadly, last year’s top performer Ellipsiz is languishing in a stalemate - range bound btw 75-85cts. Good thing I reduce my holding by 50%; still has an uneasy feeling it may suddenly shoot to $1.

This year’s brightess star must be SunPower - shining so briliantly moving up almost 80% from low of 13cts to 21cts. Managed to squeeze in Genting at 88cts; a lucky number no doubt. Maybe do a quickie contra if it hit $1 tomorrow.

Another sleeper that is waking up is HGMetal… this was a huge disappointment abt 3 yrs back. It had remained dormant after moving down to abt 25cts from a high of 60cts. No doubt, it was paper loss most of the time; The main reason I did not sell off was because of the relatively generous div @4+%. There was significant recovery in price, moving up ever so quietly… Unfortunately, I did sell off some 2 days earlier @46.5cts while today’s closing stand at @51cts… At least overall, I managed to retain the capital for those lots that was sold.

Others counters taking a back seat at this point in time are;

1. MIIF - good div return; >6% based on buying price
2. Noble - only left bonus issue; intend to buy back when funding permits, hope it does not make a run before that…
3. Riverstone - new ipo; tough luck… range bound @ipo price… only managed 2 lots for the ipo and had to top up @ premium from the open market… but, have a feeling this one will eventually move when reporting comes.
4. K1 Venture - failed to meet expectation; some paper loss at the present moment. Full of potential, but market just refuse to recognise it. Good thing there was a redistribution back of 15% capital

Well, it’s been almost as good a new year as it was in 2006. Obviously I hope to surpass my target set for 2006 and 2007 by a big margin.

Today is the 1st trading day for 2007 (Singapore STI).

Almost all my counters make good gains… especially SunPower (+12%) - ALL GREEN It is joined by my top perform of 2006, Ellipsiz (+5%).
I have a very strong feeling that my portfolio will break new records this year.