Serendipity

I haven't blogged for a few weeks now. A few things happened. Who says life is not full of surprises. My old PC blew up and I have spent the past few weeks trying to buy a new PC. I bought a Dell and it was supposed to be delivered around 12 days ago. It did not arrive. I spent the past week trying to sort out the mess. It was one VERY frustrating process. Spent hours on the phone with Dell's delivery agent (Schenker). It was a truly awful experience to say the least. Finally, Dell got onto my case after I sent several emails to the customer service representative who sold me the PC. While I am feeling a bit better, it is a lesson in brand/marketing. A lot of good will/brand can be blown up by the little things. The lesson is, when there is a problem, it is far better to proactively manage the case. Even if it involves making a call and say we don't know where is the PC but we are looking into it. A little effort makes a huge difference.

I must say I am feeling quite fishy about the stock market these days. Be careful out there. If green shoots don't grow into something else, it is going to hurt. I find it amusing that everyone is now counting on China to crarry us through this mess. The little problem is, even if we assume China can run its own race, China only accounts for some 40-50% of certain commodity demand. I had lunch with some of my friends last week. One of them is a management consultant. One of them is a tax hotshot in a large firm. They told me that internally they are all planning for a slow 2H. Btw do you notice that everyone now expects the stock market to stay above its recent low ? We may have a bit of a dip and then resume the ascent. It feels a bit too neat for me. If we assume the market is always wrong, maybe there are two distinct outcomes that will totally surprise all folks. First, a raging bull market. Second, we tank below the recent low.

Can the property market do its own thing ? We made our FIRST ever offer 2 weeks ago. We came across this property totally unexpectedly. We went to lunch in this new restaurant. We haven't looked at this suburb before. It is a bit further from the City but manageable. Anyway, after spending years looking at the Lower North Shore area, everything else outside stacks up well (big land, big house etc etc...). When we heard the price guidance from the agent. We thought it seemed low so we put in an a bid. Subsequently, the agent found another interested party. It went to auction which we did not attend. A third party came in and won. We missed the final price a fair bit. So a "good" loss I guess. Still, it is quite interesting to me that only 3 parties were interested in that property. Everyone knows this is a tight market in terms of supply, what happens if we get more houses coming onto the market ? Despite all signs of life in the property market, I still suspect we are not out of the wood yet.