Painting

So tired after a month long preparation for an annual confernece, a weekend of bday celebration and coming back to the office this week for annual results... seems like work never ends.

I had so much fun with my friends last weekend... really not too much about celebrating my bday but a whole day of fun events with my intimate friends meant so much more to me than a "let's get together for a dinner" type of generic event.

We returned to pierre for a luxurious meal, and as always they blew me away with a series of taste buds stimulating dishes. Seriously the amount of work to compose a dish is far beyond one's imagination...although just the 5 of us occupying the restaurant pierre seems not to care too much about the margin he can make from us, and he felt pleased to serve the food lovers his creation. I felt bad bc I dragged my friends to spend the $ since in absolute term it is indeed a large sum that turn ppl away but it is considered money well spent for me bc I enjoyed every second of it. More details to follow on the menu and pictures.

My first time doing oil painting! My intention was to draw a traditional chinese painting with western technique but turned out the end product looks so much like a japanese painting...I started off with an extremely depressing background color and creepy branches and the combination looked like an inspiration from one of the tim burton's movies....gladly the flowers added more colors and energy to the painting, if not it would be a bad luck to start off a year... I particularly like the patch of whipped cream aka snow dripping off the bottom of the painting.. i can draw 3D picture, see how much one can do as a first timer!

Talent

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

Someone forwarded the link to me... one of the contestants at britains got talent Susan Boyle sang "i dream a dream" from my favorite musical les miserables...the song is great, I was touched the moment she started singing.

Do you buy into the argument that every person possesses a talent, and is a matter of time and luck to discover your hidden gift? Nowadays parents spend so much money to nurture the talent seeds, believing their kids are special and different from others...enrolling them into music lessons, painting classes, sports team, science camp...and at the end of the day when they grow older all the stuff they learnt in the past can only be the leisure in the future. Increasing their ability to play multiple instruments don't increase their likelihood to becoming a musician but using it as one of the competitive edge for future academic enrollment...You can argue that at least the kids are given the opportunities to develop their interests.. but a true genius find their own calling and that's fate that determines their path. To me is just the parents who are so convinced that their kids are gifted and not accepting the fact that most of us are just ordinary people.

Scary!!!! Risk is still there..

http://turnerradionetwork.blogspot.com/

The Turner Radio Network has obtained "stress test" results for the top 19 Banks in the USA.

The stress tests were conducted to determine how well, if at all, the top 19 banks in the USA could withstand further or future economic hardship.

When the tests were completed, regulators within the Treasury and inside the Federal Reserve began bickering with each other as to whether or not the test results should be made public. That bickering continues to this very day as evidenced by this "main stream media" report.

The Turner Radio Network has obtained the stress test results. They are very bad. The most salient points from the stress tests appear below.

1) Of the top nineteen (19) banks in the nation, sixteen (16) are already technically insolvent.

2) Of the 16 banks that are already technically insolvent, not even one can withstand any disruption of cash flow at all or any further deterioration in non-paying loans.

3) If any two of the 16 insolvent banks go under, they will totally wipe out all remaining FDIC insurance funding.

4) Of the top 19 banks in the nation, the top five (5) largest banks are under capitalized so dangerously, there is serious doubt about their ability to continue as ongoing businesses.

5) Five large U.S. banks have credit exposure related to their derivatives trading that exceeds their capital, with four in particular - JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, HSBC Bank America and Citibank - taking especially large risks.

6) Bank of America's total credit exposure to derivatives was 179 percent of its risk-based capital; Citibank's was 278 percent; JPMorgan Chase's, 382 percent; and HSBC America's, 550 percent. It gets even worse: Goldman Sachs began reporting as a commercial bank, revealing an alarming total credit exposure of 1,056 percent, or more than ten times its capital!

7) Not only are there serious questions about whether or not JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs,Citibank, Wells Fargo, Sun Trust Bank, HSBC Bank USA, can continue in business, more than 1,800 regional and smaller institutions are at risk of failure despite government bailouts!

The debt crisis is much greater than the government has reported. The FDIC`s "Problem List" of troubled banks includes 252 institutions with assets of $159 billion. 1,816 banks and thrifts are at risk of failure, with total assets of $4.67 trillion, compared to 1,568 institutions, with $2.32 trillion in total assets in prior quarter.

Put bluntly, the entire US Banking System is in complete and total collapse.

More details as they become available. . . . . .

Cupcakes

I felt that even though my work schedule was getting more hectic, I had the urge to generate more output from the oven rather than from my computer... what does that mean? am i starting to hate work now?

What make a sunday morning more like a sunday morning? a decadent cupcake that's too pretty to eat. This is my first attempt making cupcakes... not that big of a fan in the past bc the icing is usually too sweet to my taste. Ironically the cupcakes in HK are much better and innovative than the ones in US... babycakes and sift make some adjustments according to the asian tastebuds so not as sugary than the ones in the states.

I used the renown magnolia recipe to make the cupcake base, but added baking powder to puff it up.

I have to admit that my piping skill is not up to par.. I tried piping out pedals to resemable florals.. unfortunately they don't like that much like florals after sitting in room temperature for too long.. gosh i just blame it on hk warm weather.

For coloring instead of using food coloring, I made the icing with pistachio praline to enhance the flavor... what can possbily go wrong with pistachio!

The ingredients are quite scary to some of my friends.. yes, is mainly butter and sugar.. well just one occasionally wouldn't hurt.. but as a baker I probably have eaten two per days to finish the whole batch. I really need to pass on more fat to my beloved friends...

My next project is to top the cakes with chocolate ganache.. think it would be much more popular than just sugary icing.

Late night at work

It's almost 11pm and I am still at work. The good thing is I am still busy amid economic downturn; the downside is why I am doing this while I can get my beauty sleep.

My company has been spending a thousand something per week on fruit to feed 200 staff at my firm. I wouldn't argue against it.. although every firm is trying to cut corners here and there. I don't really eat banana, instead I turn these weekly fruit distributions into daily breakfast. Just two bananas yield a loaf of banana bread, I like my banana bread to be moist and chunky and rich with lots of chocolate chips and walnut, this is not where you should cut corners....



There's a popular japanese pancake place at admiralty called sakura street....although admittedly they are charging too much for a pancake, why not when I don't need to pay for it.. haha. My colleague is nice enough to buy me one since I have been working so hard. Tiramisu is the best flavor, with coffee jelly and chocolate cream. I also like strawberry chocolate and pear.


I have been watching a lot of American TV lately..since I am not interested in the Asian dramas anymore (I was recently mocked for not knowing laughing gor, and SO WHAT!) I am very addicted to American Idol, I thought last season should be the best since archie has the best vocal so far...I am so surprised by the number of talented people this season, adam lambert is my favorite by miles. I am actually eager to hear him sing every week. Don't you sometimes ask yourself why you cannot be as talented as other people? How come others are gifted while you are not and they can utilize their talents with such confidence? at the end of the day, everybody is not created equal.

How come HK people sing so badly? No single talent person exists in this tinny city? I remember there still some very good singers back in the 80s/90s but the new ones are just so bad.... they can't even find the note and I can't help myself but switching off the tv whenever "gen gor gum cook" is on, gosh, can't believe it is still showing.

Organized crime

Shocking! Forbes ran an article on how was goldman sachs at the center of the oil trading fiasco.

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0413/096-sachs-semgroup-goldman-goose-oil.html

We were so convinced that back in the 1H08 the commodity bull market was a bubble and was speculative trade by majority of investors...the surfacing of evidence of manipulative trade seems to pertain not to the majority of investors but to only a handful of high flying investment bankers. Including myself, there're so many believe that the commodity price will recover and value remains since it is a depleting asset. This may add to the skepticism of whether commodity should be a legitimate asset class due to lack of liquidity and abusive nature. Would the public starts pointing the finger on this organized crime, and investors start to discredit the commodity as an asset class?

Opportunities emerge during turbulence time, I really want to figure out a way to make good fortune before the economy starts to bottom out... probably wouldn't happen before 2011, or are we expecting worse to come....?