Here's My Story

After the good experience at Hokano , Ban and I tried Arata which is just next door. It specialises in udon and you can view, via glass panels, the chef making the udon. For a change, I'll start with what Ban had: udon with sliced pork. He did top up with some other dishes. He said it was ok but the all-important fact is that he's willing to have it again :) Yay! I had kitsune udon that also came with 2 slices of omelette. The kitsune was as sweet as expected. The soup was clear, not oily and with simple taste. The udon was firm but not hard. Overall, I liked it. Ban and I each had an egg as topping. It looked plain and tasted normal like hardboiled egg, which was a little disappointing. I had this as my topping. The char siu had significant amount of fat. It was juicy and not dry like most char siu I had. I sent my compliment to the restaurant about this. Worth it. Ban had this as topping. Sorry, I forgot to write down his thoughts and I can't reme...

Much has happened since the last update  but I'll take a break to jot down this thought: Through a marriage, my ruler, the King of Andalusia, is also now the King of Bavaria, a kingdom that was part of the Holy Roman Empire ("HRE"). Unfortunately, this kingdom is scattered all over HRE. HRE, understandably, wants it back and so I've been under regular attack from HRE. These days, I am busy putting out rebellions (especially during change of ruler, aggravated by existence of far flung land) and defending against HRE who takes nearly every single opportunity to declare war on my rebelling vassals. I can't help but be reminded of the situation in Ukraine. A rough comparison (reality in bracket) is as follows: There was a change in the ruler of Bavaria (change in Ukraine's government) and shortly later the County of Gent (Crimea) took the opportunity to rebel against King of Bavaria (Ukraine's new government) to gain independence. The Emperor of HRE (Put...

It's been a year since I registered my business as a sole proprietorship. For some reasons, I thought that I had some grace period after the expiry date (12 March 2014). However, since I was going to be in Australia in March, I decided to renew the certificate earlier. It was a fortunate turn of event: I received a letter from SSM notifying me that my business cert is up for renewal and it has to be done 30 days before the expiry date @@ I vaguely recalled that the renewal can be done online. Several log-ins and online searches later, I concluded that the way to do it was to get the physical form, fill it up, scan it and upload the softcopy to the myPortal website for onward submission to the relevant authority. The problem was that I was in Seremban and had no access to a printer to print the form and to scan. Yes, I could go to SSM office in town to obtain the form but I still can't scan. I then had another idea: Yes, it can be renewed at any BSN branches and ther...

(continue from Part 1 ) Here are the dividend yields on cost for shares that I've held for at least 1 year: All of them fulfill my criteria of 5% dividend yield except for SBS Transit, where its price has dropped a lot compared to the my average cost and so unsurprisingly its dividend has also dropped over the years. Here's the breakdown of my portfolio according to percentage of amount of investment in each share counter: SBS Transit now occupies the biggest piece of the pie but still at a smallish percentage of 11%. This is due to my additional purchase of the shares when its price dropped to at least 20% below the average cost. Hmmm I should probably try to keep the percentage to not more than 10%. Here is the average cost of each share counter compared to its then prevailing price as at 12 March 2014: As you can see, price of SBS Transit has fallen by a lot compared to the average cost. I hope I'm not making a mistake here by continuing to invest in...

It's been nearly a year since my last review of my portfolio of shares. Since then, I have not sold any shares and have bought more (especially since I have more money to invest after the sale of my house): (1)  Bought more shares in Capitamall Trust, SP Ausnet and SBS Transit. I added more of the former two when their share price dropped sufficiently such that the then prevailing dividend yield was attractive. They remained strong share counters. As for SBS Transit, its share price dropped to at least 20% below my cost price (twice within the last year!) and that triggered my purchase. This share counter is a cause of concern. Apparently, the increase in fare (subject to government's approval) had not kept up with the increase in cost. Strangely, I can't find much chatter/analysis done on this company in recent years. After much thought, I decided to keep this share counter and top up on weakness in price simply because of its economic moat i.e. being the only publi...

When I visited iSmile Dental Clinic , I noticed the two Japanese restaurants that are on its right: Hokano and Arata. After checking with a friend who are more familiar with the area, I kept a mental note to dine at these restaurants. First up is Hokano. As with any new Japanese restaurant that serves sushi, the benchmark I use is the salmon sushi. I also ordered white tuna sushi. The sliced salmon fish was thick and its size was appropriate for its price tag of RM3 each. The white tuna was sweet and juicy but with small amount of rice. It cost RM5 each. I'll definitely have these again, especially the salmon sushi :P The salmon avocado handroll tasted good but small for the price of RM6. Don't think I'll have this again. Ban and I shared a bowl of edamame (sorry, forgot to take a photo of it) which was fresh but not sweet enough. It was, however, a large amount for only RM4.50. I tried to go there again but it was close (on Tuesday? Gosh, I better make sure)...

For quite some time, Melbourne has been my choice of transit to Canberra (come on Canberra, build an international terminal!) for a few reasons: Chief reason is that its international terminal building is not separated from its domestic terminal building like Sydney There are many more flights to/from Canberra and to/from KL compared to, say, Perth There are flights with appropriate time of arrival at Canberra and KL Air Asia X late last year launched flights between KL and Adelaide and as expected had cheap tickets for its inaugural flights (horrendous experience yet to be told). After confirming that Adelaide airport housed both its international and domestic terminals under the same building, I bought a return ticket. Here are my thoughts on Adelaide airport Building looked new (good) Far fewer people than Melbourne (good) But negated by fewer immigration and custom check counters (bad) Small and so could get to departure gate quickly (good) Fewer choices of food ...

Normally, if we're headed to Tropicana City Mall for dinner, inevitably we'll dine at Sushi Tei because it has Ban's favourite dish (and the only favourite dish!). So, it was generous of him to agree to try this new Korean restaurant. Thanks, honey! ' I love their interior design and decorations. It had a subtle modern look. They probably had traditional elements but I do not know enough to recognise it. Plants looked green and healthy, giving a "alive" feeling to the place. The restaurant itself was spacious and neat. So comfortable. This is the "Korean No. 1 Coffee"...which tasted quite normal. Nothing special. I ordered Japchae, which is a sweet potato noodle - a dish that I love. I'm always on a hunt for such noodle at Korean restaurant and often than not it would be the determining factor in whether I'll dine there or not. In fact, I do check supermarket for it as it's easy to cook. This was delicious but a ...

Ban: My honey has mysterious ritual *wavy gesture with his hands in front* Me: Whaaatt? I would think I'm the least mysterious person because there are usually reasons for all my actions. Ban: Unfathomable reason! *waves his hands above his head* Me: *laughs* Ok, why don't you tell me what this mysterious ritual is and I'll explain it. Ban: Every Sunday lunch, you want to eat at the corner food centre opposite CIMB Bank. Me: I like the lou shu fan kon lo and char kuay teow there. They open only during lunch. Since we have chap fan for lunch from Monday to Saturday, that leaves only Sunday to eat at that food centre. Ban: OoOoOohhhh. I would never have figured it out. Me: *laughs* I'm quite sure you could have if you had thought about it a little harder. Ban: Unfathomable reaaaaasonnnnnn *waves his hands above his head* Me: *laughs*

It is quite normal to feel a little anxious before my trip to OZ. Need to make sure I pack in the right stuff, including items I'm ferrying for my sister. Need to make sure tickets and boarding passes are printed. Bring both local and foreign currencies. So on and so forth. It helps that I make a list. However, this time, I feel more anxious than usual, so much so that at times I feel like not doing such long distance trip any more. I tried to rationalise this feeling and concluded that it's due to work. There is an ongoing project that was scheduled to reach a milestone on Friday, 28 Feb. However, this could not be achieved because the client disagreed with our resultss (what's new?!). Now it'll drag on until at least 7 March and thus eating into my vacation time. To be fair, I did give a buffer of 2 weeks i.e. until mid-March to completely finish the project. It just that it would be great to finish the project as expected so that I can spend my precious vacatio...