Nicholas M Ong

The past weekend once again demonstrated the volatility of stocks and blue chips trading. Though the dollar did strengthen pushing all the major indices upwards for 2 days at least, the steam isn't keeping up with the record rise in hedging on commodities. It was only last weekend that the precious yellow metal lost $25 (2%) in loses. It was on $912 per ounce. It was only late last ...

I'm not having the best week here in Hanoi. There are a lot of things on my mind. Mainly personal stuff. I did take some pictures of the Sword Lake when Tuan Anh and myself went to a cafe for drinks after lunch. It's a much smaller lake compared to the West Lake. It was nice and windy from where we were but the pictures are not of ...

It's been a relatively quiet week yet. I spent much of the weekend recuperating. Somehow, I found aspirin works better than paracetamol. Anyways, I have to give credit to the Halida beer too. Had 8 cans in the afternoon. that was enough to allow me some much needed sleep. I turned down GH's invitation to visit some museum somewhere. I figured it was best I rested in the ...

It's the first time I'm visiting Hanoi. Very different from places like Jakarta or Kuala Lumpur. On the streets, the main mode of transportation is by motorcycles. It is not uncommon to hear horns blaring every few seconds. Apparently the roads here are mostly on 2 lanes and even at cross junctions, there are no traffic lights. Horns become the main means of warning oncoming vehicles at every ...

It's been awhile since I last heard this song. Something just spurred me to leave it on repeated play for the past 2 hours. Bu Zhi De - Dreamz FM. Easy listening but... not for the best of moments... Lyrics (literally translated from Mandarin to English): 除了想你 除了爱你 Chu le xiang ni, chu le ai ni Besides thinking of you, besides loving you hu ~ 我什么什么都愿意 hu ~ wo shen me shen me dou ...

I guess I need to apologise for the non-updates the past 2 weeks. Life was just chugging along and then stuff amongst stuff started happening if you get what I mean. Anyway, this is a short post to let you folks know that it might be awhile before I'm back here on regular posts. I have been informed yesterday that I will need to travel to Hanoi, Vietnam ...

It's as real as it can probably get right now. WordPress 2.5 is on the verge of being released as the next update after v2.3.3. Apparently, the folks over at WordPress decided to skip v2.4 and go straight to v2.5. Honestly, I'm not sure what difference does it make between the 2 versions. For those of you who are interested in taking a peek at how the ...

In my last post on the surge of oil prices, I received a comment which made me realise that some of us may not be aware how the rising price of crude oil will impact our daily lives. I decided to post some information on crude oil and catalytic cracking which takes place in a typical oil refinery. Crude oil is separated into fractions by fractional distillation. ...

At new record highs, oil looks ready to break the USD110 barrier. My prediction of oil reaching USD120 by October '08 seems to still be very real. In other news, the DJIA moves upwards to what economist claim to be the highest single day climb since '02 after the latest news from the federal reserve and central banks to increase liquidity. Amidst the slump since November '07, this ...

Even CJ sent me a little something for my birthday (by way of a commission payout)... Not as much as I was expecting but heck, what's there to complain right? Pretty cool isn't it? Imagine you get a paycheck or two like that every month. What will that do for you? The weekend has so far been a nice one. To all who dropped me an email and ...