Posts from June 2005
June 28, 2005
He's not stupid, he's my broker...
Q) So when does $80 million dollars equal $8 billion dollars?
A) When you are a moron stock dealer at Fubon Securities, and there are no efficient checks in place to monitor your stupidity, and when there is so much money floating around that mistakes like this can actually happen.
"Fubon dealers made the mistake by injecting NT$7.7 billion from one of their international clients into the market to purchase various stocks issued by 282 companies at the highest prices of the day....
...Sources said that the dealer mistook the client's instruction to place an NT$80 million order for NT$8 billion. Many Chinese-speaking people tend to mix the terms of "million" and "billion."
Amazing.
BTW, in Mandarin, "80 million" is pronounced "ba chien wan" while "8 billion" is pronounced "ba shi yi". Do those sound similar at all?
June 21, 2005
Avril goes to college
Last night for some reason record company execs called and asked me to pick up Avril Lavigne and escort her around a small college town. Apparently she was thinking of going back to school, and it was my job to help her find a suitable apartment.
So here we were rambling around this town, looking at "For Rent" signs while she told me all the problems with her band, and her issues with her boyfriend(s).
She didn't want some lavish rock star hut, but was hoping to dye her hair brown and blend into coed life unnoticed in a standard issue college pad.
It started snowing, we had a couple of arguments, saw a few places, and ended up the evening laughing and eating hot pretzels from a pretzel vendor on the street.
June 19, 2005
Big 4-0
I got four really nice gifts on my 40th birthday.
1) I was walking my dogs, and found 6 balls in a field. (If you own dogs, you know this is a cool thing.)
2) I played with my new band, The Retrosexuals, to a packed house at the Living Room.
3) Christian gave me a big fat cigar.
4) My mother told me that she was very proud of me.
June 15, 2005
Bamboo
Bamboo shoot season
Lovely horn-shaped vegetable
Hot breakfast soup - yum.
June 10, 2005
Inside smile
Running a club, I meet a lot of people I normally wouldn't in daily life.
I get to feel the excitement of a new band playing in front of a new crowd.
I get to see people making friends, getting together, and doing cool stuff.
Best of all I get free beer. Sort of. I still have to pay for it in the end.
Yesterday evening I took a night off to meet up with the band, and toast Vitasoul farewell. We're all going separate paths. A nice year of monthly playing. I stopped by three different clubs, had a beer in each, and was surprised that they were all very dead.
I went back to my place, and it was full of happy, friendly, vibrant people.
That made me smile deep inside. Sometimes you forget to smile when you are so busy working hard to build something.
Butterflies
Jogging with the dogs
Butterflies slowly float by
Soon I'll be forty.
June 03, 2005
Again the rain
Again, the rain. Sigh.
The dogs hate it, me too. Sigh.
BBQ? Nope. Sigh.
June 01, 2005
Yoshinoya
FYI, starting today, June 1st, you can actually walk into a beef bowl place and get a bowl of beef. US beef has been allowed back into Taiwan, and Yoshinoya finally can have their beloved beef bowl back. (This means a lot to someone who often feeds himself at 4am).
I've never figured out whether it's pronounced "Moe's (like owned by one of three stooges) or Moss (like that guy out of Bonanza), but the one down the hill from me is open until 2am most days, which means that if I get out of the club early enough, I can catch the best burger in town, the muo si la bao or the Spicy Mos Burger. They have lots of jalapenos and 
