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Sunday, May 18, 2014 - 23:42 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

Spend Spend Spend

Nike still produces the most immersive adverts (though the point-of-view camera's just a little old by now):


With delicious parody


Football roundup - City's won the league, Arsenal the FA Cup, Atletico Madrid the other league, a local former Remisier King bought Valencia (after a previous attempt for Liverpool, despite being a United fan), and FIFA's slowly coming to the realisation that having grown men run ceaselessly under the desert sun for two halves of forty-five minutes might not be the brightest of ideas. Also, Man vs. Ham's concluded with the barest of profits for me - 3538 from 3500, while Mr. Ham's at 1648.50 and disavowing the whole enterprise.

And for those with some time on their hands, Panini has an official World Cup online sticker album, to reprise those primary school trading days. Let's see, first pack contained Boubacar Barry and Kolo Touré (Ivory Coast), Mario Götze (Germany) and Alan Dzagoev (Russia), and half of the logo.

Looking forward to who United are going to get with their rumoured £200 million transfer kitty, but for even half of that, I'd expect several big names. A season without European football will be a slight stumbling block, but given that so many regulars are leaving, their places are there for the claiming...


Gadget Damage

Following the smartphone upgrade, I figured that I might as well smash my pocketbook at one fell go. First was a casing and tempered glass protector for the Mi3, which I am happy to report installed perfectly as promised by pre-alignment with sticky tape. That setup done, give the glass a careful wipe, rip off the film, flip the protector over and hey, presto!

Next was a 27-inch monitor, seeing as the four year-old 23-incher had gained an irritating scratch (my fault, I was trying to wipe it). Incredibly, my mum managed to get an extra ten bucks off the offer price, although if we are to be honest, the margins on many classes of electronics are huge, if quotations from Internet retailers are anything to go by.

Just for example, a HDMI to DVI-D cable could go for some S$5 on eBay, but was about thrice that at all the brick-and-mortar shops I happened by; apparently, the good folks over at Sim Lim Square have also realised that, and one of the advertisements by the escalators warns of possible "poor quality" goods from shopping online - which may be contributing to all the "for rent" storefronts. Indeed, for many products, the only reason to make a trip is if you want it now.

With my main data drive beginning to produce a troubling clicking at intervals, I also plumped for a replacement before permanently losing stuff that I would regret, and got a WD Black 4TB just in case. After a false start, cloning went without a hitch with Macrium Reflect, using an external enclosure over USB, with some additional housekeeping (conversion from MBR to GPT, to access capacity over the 2TB limit) done with MiniTool Partition Wizard, both excellent freeware.

My old self would probably have gone for the budget option (about S$206, compared to S$330), but some things are just not worth it to save too much on. That said, the 200GB Barracuda that made way is probably close to a decade old and still usable, though with 1TB portables (such as the one my dad had lying around) commonly available, it clearly belongs to another time. Indeed, I've got to wondering if those 2.5 inchers can be used as primary storage on USB hubs, with games, video and other demanding applications relegated to a single high-performance SATA connection.


It's Happening

One of the joys of being nice to hamsters (or pets in general), is that there can be no expectation of repayment, and no misunderstandings involved.

Mr. Ham: *enters from the fourth wall* Hey, aren't you making us out to be freeloaders?

Me: Well, it was a private comment. I think.

Mr. Ham: I'm still offended. Say, you wouldn't happen to have spare change lying around, would you? There was this party last night, which might have gone slightly overboard, and I'm a bit short... why, thank you. *tosses proferred offering into cheek pouch* I'll return it next Tuesday, or Thursday, as usual. *winks* There's a good mate, cheerio, pip pip, eh? So, what's new in this delightful island-nation of yours?

Me: The message is getting to the rooftops, if not the state-owned media, but it could just be an accident of timing; five culprits have been rounded up, but between their daring high-rise hijinks and the incumbents' zombie brigade, I know what I would rather see more of - and I'm not even for graffiti.


Meanwhile in Russia (not recommended)...


Mr. Ham: Is is just me, or have your flagship organizations been displaying a woeful lack of imagination across the board?

Me: Well, there's no prize for creativity like there is for rent-seeking here. Still, there are some hints that they're beginning to acknowledge the inadequacies of the CPF, which probably would not have come about without online impetus - which brings me to one entertaining Facebook interaction between a leading raconteur and one of my former professors.

The charge in question was that of the CPF Minimum Sum being raised due to Our Most Successful Investment Firm's US$40 billion loss back in 2009, which was (correctly) pointed out to have been earned back in the following years. In this sense, then, the target of attack was perhaps opportunistic and not on-the-point. However, as we have previously analysed in some depth, this does not mean that there is nothing to be concerned about.

Now, Ngerng must be proud at having drawn an official rebuttal to his accusations, which are unsurprisingly rehashes of the same well-worn lines, as dissected before. They are, for example, insisting that the pension fund is adequate, once more with reference to the imputed-rent paper of the HDB-flats-are-appreciating-assets school, even as the median monthly CPF Life payout from three years ago was just S$260, which to be fair is probably enough not to starve on... barely.

Note that Myth 4 repeats the "adjustment for inflation" excuse, while we have seen that neither inflation nor retirement years have increased anywhere close to the same degree as the Minimum Sum. Myth 3 for its part reiterates the "guaranteed and risk-free" mantra, which as we have demonstrated with actual risk-free rates, is a losing deal for citizens both ways - they don't share in surpluses during the boom years of financial cycles, but have their rates slashed in downturns (though this is likely untenable in the current political climate)

It then goes on to explain how Our Most Successful Investment Firm supplements the national budget through Net Investment Returns Contribution (NIRC), which from perusing the footnotes of the linked source, comprises "up to" 50% of the investment income from the remaining assets, which naturally begs the famous question - what happens to the rest of the 50% or more that remains?

Mr. Ham: Well, it is only natural for Most Successful Investment Firms to have Most Well Remunerated Directors, no?

Me: *sighs* Look, I don't even care all that much for that, or the well-known fact that they acquired government assets probably at well below cost as indirectly acknowledged, or that the largesse might now be going in the other direction with the government considering picking up the tab (again) for Our Die Die Also Must Successful Investment Firm. The thing is, how long can it continue like this, with higher aspirations somehow becoming the new bugbear?



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