New Beginnings

Priya asked me the other day "Are you on Facebook?" Duh !!! I am bad enough keeping track of what I have on my plate, and do I need to add something more? Quite confident that hers was a passing question, I just said No. And I expected her to drop talking about it. After all, she is quite content not going on any of these social networking sites. How wrong I was? Before long, she was spending hours. She showed me the 'wall'. She got a kick out of connecting to so many of her past friends. She was happy being online. Damn !!! all along, I thought I was the one who should be on the internet the most.

Anyways, tough times don't last forever & tough people do. So I decided to come back. To my Blog. It has been ages. And yes, I was expecting the counter to still be a measly one. It was.

Quite a number of things have happened since I last popped in. Lot of hair on my forehead has disappeared. Moved into a new home and loving it. Made new friends. Reconnected with others. Started gym-ng (Nope - did not add a pound). Did new things at work (yes - moved beyond screens and charts.) Thanks to some like-minded folks, I was inspired to read books. The big ones... you see, the ones that are about 500+ pages long which tell you to do things which you never know you will, but still keep on reading in the empty hope that you will do them some day. And for a change, I finished them.

Got into the stock market. Burnt my fingers. Am licking them, but am hooked to buy more. You see, Warren Buffett inspires me. But that niggling thought persists.... he was right for the past 40 years, and what if this time it does not pan out the same way? Priya asked me the other day "I never ask how much you put each month into the market. How much have you made so far?" I explained to her that investing in stocks was a 20 year plan & the fund is more for our retirement and golden sunsets. "How much have you made so far?" she repeated. I explained that in these depressing economic times, one does not talk profits, but how many more units can be bought at a lower price. I heard "How much have you made so far?" for the third time. I replied "I have lost less than the 55% market fall over the past 12 months". She was silent. For 2 seconds. And then said the most ominous words I have ever heard "You can live for the golden sunset. I live for today. Since you are allowed to lose money in the market, I am allowed to double my shopping budget from now". Grrrrr. My retirement age just moved up 10 years.

That is it for now. Next time, I promise there will be more pictures.

Cheers