Here's My Story

Here are the dividend yields on cost for shares that have paid out dividends: For ease of calculation, I've changed the method of calculating its denominator and it's erring on the conservative side i.e. likely underestimated. There are 9 share counters with dividend yield less than 5%. ST Engineering is still yielding than 4% since the last update  and it was just above 4% 2 years ago . Hmmm I'll observe for one more year given the change mentioned above. Kingsmen Creative and Silverlake Axis are also put in on my red list haha. Saizen Reit will be delisted soon. Keppel Corp is experiencing hardship due to downturn in the O&G sector. Hopefully things will pick up soon. The overall dividend yield on cost weighted by invested amount is now 5.6% but partly affected by the change in calculation method. Here's the breakdown of my portfolio according to percentage of amount of investment in each share counter: Compared to a year ago , I've severely ...

Time had been hard since the last update . Good new is that recently I managed to get tenant for my condo in Singapore. Yay! I still prefer to sell it though, given the extremely unfavourable tax rate on non-resident. Due to absence of rental income for the past 8 months and the huge additional income tax that IRAS asked me to fork out, I had no choice but to divest some shares to pay for my expenses: (1) Sold remaining SBS Transit shares since the first tranche of bus services was awarded to a foreign company. It would appear that being the incumbent was not good enough to win the tender. Morever, its dividend yield was still low. Managed to gain profit from this. (2) Sold some Sembcorp Industries shares simply because it was the largest component of my share portfolio then. Unfortunately, due to momentary glitch I ended selling twice the amount that I wanted and hence I have very few shares left. Sembcorp Industries is still struggling amidst the fallout effects of the low oil...

It was only in the immediate previous campaign that I "discovered" these statistics and only in this campaign that I made use of some of them. Yes, as shown before in map format , Catholic was the overwhelming dominant religion in this campaign, in terms of realm size. Hardly a surprise since my realm, Empire of Alba (the largest realm!), HRE and Mongol Empire were overwhelmingly Catholic. Shocking statistics: Hindu was the next dominant religion and the only other religion with 100 moral authority. Oh yes, Shia and Sunni had fallen a lot in this campaign. In fact, the heretical Sunni religion, Yazidi, was the most powerful Islamic religion here. Orthodox Christian was almost wiped off. Instead, its heretical religion of Paulician was 3rd most dominant religion, mainly due to Byzantium Empire. In terms of realm size, I had the most by far (1214 vs 734) :) In terms of demense size, it was my indirect vassal, Earl of Carrick, that had the most. His predecessors...

There's a new game mechanic that was new to me: threat level. I've reached 100% threat level a few times @@. Every now and then, especially when they wanted to arrange marriage with someone in my court, some rulers temporarily left their defensive pacts. I would quickly checked whether they were rulers that I had been wanting to declare war on as that would be the chance to do so without triggering the defensive pacts. As often as possible, I offered to join vassals' wars to minimise increase in threat level and avoid triggering defensive pact. The yellow coloured land is my land i.e. Empire of Alba. The light grey coloured land belongs to Christian defensive pact states while green coloured land belongs to Muslim defensive pact. At one point, when they were still around, there was also Pagan defensive pact against me @@. This significantly reduce the expansion of my empire. This shows land of "direct vassals". My direct vassals consisted of some ...

We informed Dr D  that my dad decided to undergo radiotherapy for his leg at that hospital ("MM Hospital"). The quoted fee was RM500 cheaper than that at Dr A's hospital ("Adv Hospital") i.e. RM7500 vs RM8000. So recently, we arrived there in the morning where they took a "planning scan" of his leg as well as some blood for tumour marker tests. Surprisingly the total fee, including the tests, was just over RM3k. Much cheaper than quoted. Something about using only a "fraction", rather than a few fractions @@. We also requested to speak with Dr D because we were not clear about why she suggested doing chemo later rather than now. Despite her busy schedule, she managed to squeeze us in, patiently explained to us till we were satisfied, and did not even charge us for that! My dad is comfortable with her because not only is her explanation is detailed, it is also clear to him. To summarise, her points are as follows: (1) My dad's canc...

So we met Dr A and here's what he said: (1) Re my dad's red eyes: nothing to do with cancer but need to seek help from an ophthalmologist immediately. (2) Re my dad's left leg: almost certain there's cancer on the neck of the left femur. As at now, it's not endangering the bone but if left untreated, it can cause fracture of the bone and that will be catastrophic since it's a weight-bearing bone. "Strongly" suggested radiotherapy to treat it. (3) He was worried about the spot in the lymph node near the right kidney bed. So at this stage he recommended chemotherapy that helps to control the growth of the cancer. There is usually no or only mild (and hence tolerable) side effects. He, however, did advise us to take a little time to consider whether dad wanted chemo or not. We asked what's the expected remaining life. He asked whether we really wanted to know and which party wanted to know. My dad confirmed that he himself wanted to know as h...

When I'm at my younger sister's home, I volunteer to read storybooks to my nephew each night before he sleeps. Usually, he'll ask me to choose books that I haven't read. Recently, I read this book: I know that my sister chooses books that are age appropriate for her children and so, as expected, the words used in the book are of course simple to me. However, the way it is written and its content itself effectively convey powerful message about showing your love and care to your loved ones while they are still alive. Although this is not a typical light-hearted children story, it is done in a gentle matter-of-fact manner. It's realistic too, as I'm sure many dog owners would agree :) You can read some reviews here in Goodreads .

Here's the interesting bit: some of these sandwiches were priced at RM12.20 from the ala carte menu. So basically, Subway was paying customers RM0.30 to take one of these drinks. Mispricing? Or competition was simply too strong that they had to do this?

We followed Dr A's recommendation back in February and here's the results: (1) This time PET/CT scan showed more findings. There were mostly "maybes" and even those that were "likely", we didn't know how serious they were. We consulted the public hospital's urologist, whose team knew we were doing this scan. Based on the report, the urologist said there was indication of cancer in the right kidney bed and the left leg, and thus the cancer had "progressed". Recall that they had all the while stuck to the notion that there was cancer somewhere in the body and chemotherapy was recommended . Incidentally, my dad started feel pain in his left leg almost a month ago but this was confounded by the fact that it occurred at an old injury site. When we told him that we got 2nd opinion from a private oncologist (for some reasons, they didn't have record of all the information we gave them earlier!) and therefore was doing follow-up tests,...

Size of my realm ("Alba"): Emperor of Alba was my primary title. When I created the Empire of Britannia, it was renamed Alba because, apparently, it's a Scottish thing. As more and more non-de jure land drifted into Scotland, my percentage holding of the de jure Empire of Brittannia grew ceteris paribus and eventually enabled me to create that title. Otherwise it would had been a slow progress because only England left unconquered within the empire. Incidentally, I had never seen Byzantine Empire this small! They lost Kingdom Greece and Anatolia to Muslim rulers, which later triggered crusades by the Pope. I started off as Duke of Moray and my initial thought was simply to support my king. However, I discovered that, for reasons unknown to me, I had a claim on the title King of Scotland. When I also realised that my army is slightly larger than the king's, I created a faction to install myself as king and then pressed my claim. Surprisingly, the king willingl...