The activity of mergers and acquisitions (M & A) is often said to be the sign of a last stage of the bull market. It certainly has been crazy this year, I have lost track how many acquisition rumours on the market.

I can only remember the following: Rinker (to be acquired by Cemex), Coles (not sure whether the KKR acquisition is still going on), Symbion Health (considered to be taken over by Healthscope), Qantas (which is the current hot news), Alinta (Babcock and Brown will be fighting it out with Macquarie Bank). I’m pretty sure there are a lot more there.

Macquarie bank seems to be quite active in pursuing M & A, with being involved in Alinta and Qantas acquisitions.

Should we be cautious now? M & A activities are not necessarily a good thing for the economic in whole (at least that’s what I read from Lee Iacocca’s Straight Talk).

Boring or stressful, a wise observation from Karen Ng. If I have to choose between the two, I’d go for the boring one I suppose.
Can I get a boring but well paid job please? Hang on, that’s my old data entry job!! I believe that’s the best position I’ve ever had in terms dollar/hours and even dollar/effort. Come to think of it, there are some perm data entry jobs for $45k, that’s a lot of money for not doing much!
Never really been into a stressful job, unless maybe when I was teller-ing for WBC. But even that, it’s still ok, I don’t think I’ve ever dragged myself to go to work.
I just realised how much I blog about job, money and stuffs, was wondering when people read this blog, will they think that money, success and job are all that matter for me? Hm, well maybe they were (or are?), but having experienced the sudden death of my dad, it does put things into perspective a little bit more.

I still wonder why my friend is so overly confident about making money from trading options. I mean he’s never even traded shares before. Where does he get his confidence from? Is it by reading 2 option books, going to seminars and subscribing to an option report? He is thinking of quitting his day job and do trading full time.
But the problems are:n1. Lack of experience, as mentioned he never traded before. He’s got some theories of course, he keeps on repeating that it’s all just about employing risk minimisation strategy, I thought to myself if it were that simple a lot of people would have quit their day job and trading from home. n2. Options trading is a zero sum game, for every option traded, there’s will be a wi
er and a loser. Now what makes him think that he’s a better trader than the rest?n3. Under capitalised. The biggest factor whey amateur traders crashed and burned. Especially when you HAVE to trade for a living. Also given that options is a leveraged instrument, it’s just becoming worse.
Common sense would suggest that he keeps his day job, build some capital, try some paper trades, give a reasonable time frame to get a hang of it (I would say few years), keep the possibility that he might not be suitable for trading open. But as someone said common sense is not so common.
I really concerned about my friend, I don’t want to come across as being too negative.. I mean he might be able to succeed in his trading endevour, who knows? But my judgement told me that he’s not going to especially when he HAS to make money out of the market. That’s a terribly huge task to ask the market to supply you with an income. But if he did end up failing with this trading endevour, how will it be.. I better start praying for him.
Which leads me to another thought, I guess the underlying desire to trade for him is to be able to be his own boss and make lots of money. Isn’t this greed talking? I really can’t understand why he thinks he NEEDS to be rich. Why? He doesn’t need to. He’s a christian too, shouldn’t he know that he’s already rich in God’s eyes?
This is what happened when people read Kiyosaki books and take all of the rubbish (among the good things) in the books without questioning.

Hm, I think I had enough of mourning. I can’t believe it affected me that much. I envy my sister, she isn’t as emotional as a person compared to me. She seems to be able to cope better.
This year, is the first time I had to use a tax agent to do my tax return as the deadline is too close and my tax this year is quite complex. Quite complex as the agent had to amend his final calculation twice. Uni assignment is due tomorrow, I’ve done half of it whilst in Indo, couldn’t be bothered to spend too much effort on it at the moment. Boss asked me to have a look at some payment gateway stuff, really don’t feel like doing it, the document contains quite a lot of information. Will go to a karaoke outing at Rusmin’s in half an hour, I guess they are pulling this one to cheer me and Thomas up.
Really feel like going back to Indo for good. I guess with the departure of my dad, going back to indo is more of a possibility now.
The past is history, the future is mystery and present is a gift, so someone said. My dad is now history, my employment is a mistery as I need to find a new employment soon need to start something new, at present I have to look after the close ones. Present is a gift, another day for my mom, grandma and auntie to know God, if they choose to.

Saudara2 tentulah telah mengenal baik papa saya dalam berbagai kapasitas, sebagai adik, kakak, teman maupun dosen, perkenankanlah saya pada hari ini untuk berbagi sedikit mengenai papa saya sebagai seorang ayah.
Papa saya itu adalah orang yang pendiam dan mungkin cenderung kaku, hal ini memang telah saya konfirmasikan dari teman2 baik papa dan murid2nya. Papa saya tidak pintar berkata2. Tapi sebagai seorang ayah papa saya itu sungguh memperhatikan anak2nya. Kalau saya telpon dari Sydney, pesen minta dibawain cover mobil ataupun pisau cukur, papa saya mau pergi mencarika
ya buat saya.
Akan ada banyak hal2 yang akan saya rindukan, akan saya kangeni dari papa. Mungkin yang paling ngangeni adalah pertanyaan2nya pada waktu di telpon. Papa saya adalah salah satu orang yg tidak kreatif dalam berkata2. Kalau di telpon, papa selalu mengawali percakapan dengan