The Woodstock of Capitalist: Berkshire Hathaway AGM

The few interesting things that happened to me, between my 8^th April post and last paper on 9^th May.

 

Part 3, and also the last :

For the uninformed, the Woodstock festival exemplified the counterculture of the late 1960s – early 1970s and the “hippie era.” Many famous musicians of the day appeared during the period. It is widely regarded as one of the greatest moments in popular music history according to wikipedia and my dad.

So, for an event to be considered to be the Woodstock of capitalism, it has got to be pretty defining right?

 

I am very interested in Warren Buffett, and have been reading up on his books about his investing philosphy  (keenly anticipating his bio on the 29^th September). I am very inspired about how he improvised Benjamin Graham and came up with his success investing style, his thoughts on being frugal(relatively) and his laconic humor( go read his annual reports). So I had to know whats going on in Omaha that weekend and it was especially helpful that I suscribed to The Motley Fool.  

 

The event was from 3^rd to 5^th May at the qwest center in Nebraska. Hotel rooms and flights were packed by the sheer volume of Berkshire( or Buffettologists). There was a  Q&A session between shareholder and Buffett and Munger that day and question raised were related to their Bershire Hathaway subsidiaries. Some touched on environmental issues, others on the current recession and Buffett’s investment decision, and the replies were pretty funny most of the times. The entertaining videos on CNBC is pretty cool and helped supplement the experience of the event. I will want to own Bershire Hathaway shares sometime in the future, beginning with the b-shares for the AGM tickets and it’s fantastic compounding value.  

 

Something I thought was very interesting was that the many millionaire in town were borned by owning Berkshire Hathaway shares in the early days, he has helped these people attain financial freedon and will be donating a large sum of his fortune to charity posthumously. What a great guy!

 

                                                          

 

 

 

Library these days ain’t what it’s used to be

The few interesting things that happened to me, between my 8^th April post and last paper on 9^th May.

 

Part 2: AMK library

 

  For the period I am studying for my exams, I have been going to Ang Mo Kio library on a regular basis. The reason I chose to meet up there with my study group was because it is at a central location and is “supposed” to be conducive; but I got more than what I had bargained for.

 

I have nothing against AMK library, in fact, I used to go there occasionally to borrow books until I somehow managed to incur a 13 dollars fine; which I am pretty sure was due to the books that I returned didn’t get scanned properly when it was deposited in the return bin. It is a very good studying location in the morning but the nightmare begins sometime during 1 pm.

 

Around 1 pm would be the time taken by schooling kids between 11-17 of age to take their lunch and congregate at the library. They would sit between shelves and get together at various corners and start chattering loudly. Some individuals might be more adventurous, they would take out their hand held game to play, play with items like a LIGHTER or carry on where they has left off from their last date.

 

Initially, I thought I was the only one who was aware of the cacophony of chattering but I guess I was not that unique after all. When I looked I around, I could see faces of some people frowning when they are reading, occasionally giving the kids disapproving looks. But there was this one time when a group of giggling and squealing Chinese secondary school girls got it from an Indian lady. She went “Can you shut up or not!!!!” I wasn’t exaggerating with the 4 exclamation marks. For a brief moment, silence reigned supreme in the Indian section, and I am quite sure all the other readers were heaping praises on her telepathically.    

 

Later, I was discussing with Deepak about behavior of kids these days (outside the library), what I distinctly remembered was that there was this fear of authority during our time; you don’t really find people unabashedly chatting in library.

Has times really changed? Such behavior wasn’t just limited to kids or teenagers, there were parents playing hide and seek with their child between the shelves and even reprimanding the child openly (and loudly). I am quite shocked at this degradation of basic manners because I though it was a basic levels of human decency and politeness to be considerate.

 

What I though was like changing the layout of the library so that there is a separate level for teenager and adults, another solution could be studying room with partition to singular study desks to discourage talking or even additional discussion room to segregate those kids from those who require silence. I was wondering about the measures that were taken by the NLB to curb such occurrences, however, one thing I am sure is that the regular announcements over the intercom doesn’t work.

 

 

Another 1st: Annual Report & Dividends

The few interesting things that happened to me, between my 8^th April post and last paper on 9^th May.

Part 1: 11^th April

Today, I found a pleasant surprise lying in my mailbox; it is the 2007 Annual Report for Banyan Tree Holdings. For the uninformed, I have bought Banyan Tree shares at a distressed price (and yes, I am a value investor), my current paper gain is in excess of 15%.

Banyan Tree has hotel and property operations, they also manage spa, gallery and designing operations. Their existing operations are mainly in Southeast Asia and Australia, with future developments in America, the Middle East and PRC.

I will be receiving my first dividends sometime in June; it is a small sum, further reduced by POEMS dividends charges (dammit!). Banyan tree has done a good job in maximizing shareholder value so far, pity that markets sentiments on rising oil prices has beaten down this counter.

What I thought was impressive was that they had a societal marketing concept, their 2 initiatives are the green imperative fund which provides financial support for environmental initiatives and environmental protection AND the natural resources conservation initiative with the aim of reducing water and electricity consumption by 10% for the next 3 years. They are also challenging themselves to plant 2000 new trees annually, drive greater awareness of climate changes and concurrently reducing their carbon emissions. I don’t know about you, but I would be a pretty satisfied customer if I am unwinding in a Banyan Tree or Angsana resort, knowing that a portion of the consumer dollars goes back into protecting the environment.

That reminds me of my plans to go turtle riding in RedangJ, I heard from many of my friends that excessive tourism is hurting the coral reefs there and nothing will be left in time to come.

You can click here for their corporate video, enjoy!

                                                              

                                                 

                                           

Challenging times ahead

My exams are finally over; the entire last month schedule consists of mugging at AMK library with my study group, Deepak, Kyaw and company. One thing I noticed is that a long study break has its cons too as I got burnt out at the last week; but I am not complaining as they time was well-spent.

 

But now it is time to get to serious business. I will have approximately 2 whole months to myself and I have to optimize it. My agenda for this break is pretty simple: complete my Spirit of Enterprise project before the 15 June deadline, earn some bucks by working at my aunt’s company during the day and go for my real estate ESST training in the evening during the month of June.

 

Beyond all this tasks, I would like to start reading again; learning makes me feel all good and smart. I realized that I had to give up several of my activities like attending my church group, drawing, reading and sports during the course of my study break; that is a rather startling (and bad)discovery: I just cannot manage my time well! And that’s going to come back and bite my ass when I am juggling real estate, club activities and my studies next semester.

 

One reason is that I feel contributed to my bad time management is that I try to study with every moment I have, I am under the impression that all other activities will deprive me of my studying time so I just cut themL.

 

 I guess I have to study more consistently next semester to prevent this feeling of insecurity (hey, this sounds awfully familiar!); this will help given my real estate and club commitments. I don’t want to face this issue when I am working in future and become a dull, fat uncle (sorry, no offense to all dull, fat uncles out there!)

 

This brings me to the issue on why I didn’t manage to allocate my schedule this semester better. The reason would have to be my enormous commitments as a project group leader. I realized I am a perfectionist (partially due to my above mentioned insecurity as well) and expects a lot out of my team mates as well, and that led to couple of conflicts with some individuals along the way; thankfully nothing personal. That clearly points out that my intra personal skill needs some polishing, so it’s back to basics: time to read Richard Templar’s The Rules of Work