Personal Update

I thought it would be a good time for a personal update since we're into our third month of 2019.

a) Work falling into place

At this point in my career, a broad strategy is falling into place.

This blog will remain fairly niche that will discuss the use of models in financial markets in 2019. If I get to do any quantitative backtesting, I may share some of my results and insights here. Occasionally, I will do an article that will provoke most readers - right now I am not done with Polytechnic students yet, but I would also talk about reforms to secondary school education. I don't need this blog to hit a large number of views, but I want to attract that few readers who appreciate the more abstract articles that I run every week.

The successful talk in Seedly has gotten me to think about these activities, that I do for free, as a means to drive more traffic into my courses. To promote more brand awareness, I have decided to make every public talk as unique as possible and integrate all the new stuff I learn from the latest books. Right now I am challenging myself to make my public appearances like the Avengers Movies, with content being standalone but a logical sequence for fans who attend previous talks. "Dividends are the Opiate of the Capitalist Masses" may be the working title of my next performance.

The freemium model for my talks should ultimately drive more brand awareness for my course materials that are undergoing a major revamp right now.

b) Spending has hit the roof

Coincidentally, my spending has hit a new high because of my toothache I had last month. My dentist had to perform a surgical extraction and I ended up paying $1,250 for the procedure to end the pain. Interestingly, everything seems to be deductible via Medisave, but I am very likely to make a voluntary contribution to CPF this year as $1,250 is a pretty hard hitting penalty for not maintaining proper dental hygiene.

I experienced another hit when I spent $1,130 on a new pair of spectacles. I figured out that I should not try to be frugal with something I wear 16 hours a day, and this time the spectacles were especially costly because I developed presbyopia over he past 4 years and did not want a separate pair of specs.

Otherwise, my spending patterns are usually dependent on new RPGs published. This month, Monte Cook Games released a PDF that costs $100 USD ! I have been wanting to read Invisible Sun PDF for a very long time because don't have the shelf space to accommodate the large physical product. Reading RPG books seems to be my only form of leisure these days.

c) My Creative SXFI Air

My Creative SXFI Air finally showed up and even though I was satisfied with my purchase, it did not result in taking any long positions in Creative Technologies.

The 3D Holography sounds great and was different from ordinary sound, but setup was quite painful and the use of the headphone was not intuitive. It took me a while to figure out how to get my bluetooth to work and I still cant get music on a MicroSD card play.

If Creative licenses this technology, I think another company will build 3D holography headphones that works intuitively and may even incorporate noise cancelling features. If a noise cancelling version of the SXFI Air arrives, it would be the headphone to end all other headphones.

d) What am I watching and reading

I watched Season 2 of Dragon Prince which was really good, but I am also watching Season 3 of Overlord which was quite a let-down.

I am also reading an excellent book called The Intelligence Trap by David Robson which will likely play a major role in future articles on this blog.