The Saga of Manohara

Interesting developments lately for the Sultanate of Kelantan.

First it was the heart operation for the Sultan and then his aftercare in Singapore.

But who would believe, the movement of relatives of the Sultan to visit him in Singapore can spark off an untoward incident between the Sultan's son and the daughter-in-law.

In a lift at a hotel, the daughter-in-law refused to get out of the lift and alerted Singapore and Indonesian authorities that finally saw her whisked away to Indonesia with her sister and mother.

The sorry tale of sexual torture that surfaced was to sour further Malaysian-Indonesian relations brought earlier on by the naval stand-off in disputed waters.

Monohara Odelia Pinot,the beautiful Indonesian socialite, one of the 100 treasures of Indonesia, was fascinated by the attention of a Malaysian prince who married her at 16 years old. The fairy tale romance turned into a stormy affair which lasted only a year.

Let us see how the story will unfold.

Sharesmyway.com- Good Site

This is a good site for monitoring your stocks.

The website is: http://www.sharesmyway.com

Simply plonk all the stocks you have into a list and it will be a one-stop monitor for you.

Every time you get on-site just press,"Go!" and you have all the shares you are monitoring right on.

It's ten-minutes delay reporting.

Charming Jojo!

Jojo Struys. Impressive.

I guess she represents about 5% of the world population who is into this beauty-activity-energy harmony life-style.

Great looks and fine packaging. Seems to be of Caucasian descent. Nice voice,too.

Reading part of her blog suggest that the life of a celeb is really one non-stop merry-go-round on the circuit of entertainment from acting, dancing to modeling. Also, you must be seen to be current.

You must be the beautiful people to mix with the beautiful people.

I think Jojo is really hamming it up and living it up.

Good for her.

Must We Hurt our Foreign Labour?

Yes, there are among us that are animals when it comes to the treatment of foreign maids.

The dailies from time to time has highlighted many cases of such atrocities and maids have suffered painfully and silently under the heavy hands of unscrupulous employers.

There are some who has been convicted of such crimes and are serving their sentences in jail. Others are shamed and fined.

The flip side of the coin.

Maids that abuse kids under their care especially babies. They threw babies on the sofa just to hear them scream in fear and in pain. Some of them make the babies to suck their toes. Then there are those who used the house for drugs and lovers trysts when the employers are away.

Workers who steal from the employers, who do not conform to safety standards when working in civil work projects, who rapes and kill and there are those who run away with your babies and abandoning them. Closed circuit TVs have shown some of these wrongdoings by maids who just have no aptitude to do the work at hand.

We know all too well. The sympathies of the public will always be with the underdogs-the maids and the foreign workers in general.

As the Bible rightly say-we must protect our foreign workers; we must never exploit them and we must always treat them well as our own neighbours.

Similarly we would want to be treated well in foreign lands, don't we?

So which side are you on, the local employers or the migrant workers?

Job Cuts-The UK Scenario

I got this from the WWW this morning (9 June 2009).

This is the result of a quarterly survey by a recruitment firm on the hiring momentum of workers for the next three months(July-September 2009)

I think we can use such a model in Malaysia to help us to foresight the impending state of the economy in the near future.

The report stated that British companies expect to keep cutting jobs in the next three months,but the pace of job-shedding appears to be easing in some sectors.

They have seasonally adjusted net balance of -6 per cent of firms planning to cut jobs between July and September — matching the 17-year record low hit in the second quarter.

The survey has reinforced analysts' expectations for unemployment to keep rising for the rest of this year and to hit 3 million by 2010.

However, the weak headline number masked signs of improvement in some sectors. The utilities and community and social sectors plan to hire staff in the next three months and hiring intentions were flat in the agriculture sector.

Companies in the construction, financial and business services, mining and utilities sectors were less reluctant to take on workers than in the previous quarter.

Hotels and retailers, however, were their most reluctant to hire staff since 1992. And hiring intentions in all the sectors were worse than a year ago.

"While it is too early to say if the worst is behind us in the UK, it is promising to see a slower rate of decline in employer hiring confidence now emerge," said Mark Cahill, managing director of Manpower UK. — Reuters

So what about us in Malaysia?

Has unemployment figures in E&E and in the manufacturing sector abated or still throwing out people onto the streets?

Which sector has showed positive employment figures and which have stable manpower status? How are we coping with labour vacancies in the plantation sector?

I am sure the Ministry of Manpower is busy crunching numbers. Hopefully a set of good ones to allay the fears of the politicians that we are definitely on the way to recovery.

The Silversmith in Us

Malachi 3:3 says:

'He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.'

This verse puzzled some women in a Bible study and they wondered what this statement meant about the character and nature
of God.

One of the women offered to find out the process of refining silver and get back to the group at their next Bible Study.

That week, the woman called a silversmith and made an appointment to watch him at work. She didn't mention anything about the reason for her interest beyond her curiosity about the process of refining Silver.

As she watched the silversmith, he held a piece of silver over the fire and let it heat up.

He explained that in refining silver, one needed to hold the silver in the middle of the fire where the flames were hottest as to burn away all the impurities.

The woman thought about God holding us in such a hot spot; then she thought again about the verse that says:
'He sits as a refiner and purifier of silver.'

She asked the silversmith if it was true that he had to sit there in front of the fire the whole time the silver was being refined.

The man answered that yes, he not only had to sit there holding the silver, but he had to keep his eyes on the silver the entire time it was in the fire. If the silver was left a moment too long in the flames, it would be destroyed.

The woman was silent for a moment. Then she asked the silversmith, 'How do you know when the silver is fully refined?'

He smiled at her and answered, 'Oh, that's
easy --when I see my image in it.'

If today you are feeling the heat of the fire, remember that God has his eye on you and will keep watching you until He sees His image in you.

'Life is a coin. You can spend it anyway you wish, but you can only spend it once.'

So, let us spend our life emulating the likeness of God in the things He does, to practice the values He preaches and we should be on our way to great Zion.

Berjaya Sports Toto- Is it Still any good?

I wrote this posting way back in 2007.

From the write-up I was surely in one euphoric mood.

The sub-prime came in 2007 and we are still in the throes of its aftermath.

So how did Berjaya Sports Toto (BST) shares fared after that?

Let us read what I wrote then.

"This is one great stock. It pays dividends aplenty throughout the year. For a 10 sen share counter, it is truly generous.

Throughout the bull-run, its price hardly advanced, straddling the RM4.60 to RM4.98 range.

When the bears came, it went down to RM3.98. When the tide turned, it was back to its pre-sell-down price of RM 4.78. Majority shareholders buy-ins plus Treasury buybacks propped back the counter. It is as if, nothing has happened!

Yesterday (26 March 2007), it went ex on a 3rd interim dividend of 12.5 %. The price was adjusted to RM4.64 and by 12.00 noon today, it still at its ex-price. Don’t you agree it is one great stock? Expect it to go back to RM4.80 soon.

I believed, in a sense, it is a cornered stock. The free-float in the market appears to conform to regulatory requirements but because of market dynamics, the free-float is no longer there. Many shareholders are actually locking up the stocks as ‘pension money’ and no longer trading on it. They are now merely happy recipients of dividends. As such, the majority owners and the Treasury now have free rein. They will operate to ensure the stock is at a price they are comfortable with. If it fell badly, buying starts and the moment there is increased demand; the shares are sold to meet the appetite of buyers.

If you have bought this stock in 2005, you would have received dividends and capital repayment. Let us worked out how much you would have gained if you had bought the stock at RM4.20 then, some months before the first capital repayment of 50 sen in 2005.

You would have to spend RM4,200 as start-up capital. There were two capital returns and that means you would have received RM1, 000 back. The balance of your investment will now be RM3, 200.

For the years 2005-March 2007 period, you would have received RM235.00 of dividends in 2005; RM510.00 in 2006 and RM250.00 so far for fiscal year ending April 2007. That will come out to about another RM990. We can expect a final dividend of another 12.5 sen before the end of fiscal year 2007. If that comes true then you would have received RM1,115 as dividend for fiscal year April 2006-April 2007. The balance of your initial investment will now be at RM2,085.

Suppose you decide to sell it now, you will get a capital return of RM2, 565. Therefore approximate return to capital from investing two years in Berjaya Sports Toto is about 17% after tax per year. This is great when you compare it with the current low bank interest of 3.7%"

So now let us look what happened to this counter after the write up above. I know it went down to RM4.04 at the beginning of 2009 but now true to the earlier 2007 prediction, it is still at RM4.88.

There was no capital restructuring since the write-up in 2007.

Let us look at how much dividends it has paid in post April 2007,2008 and in the first quarter of 2009.

Since the last dividend payout registered in my earlier post,BST had paid out another RM455.87 in dividend. Deduct this from your initial cash outlay, the actual amount you have actually paid for your 1000 shares will now be only RM1,629.13.

Looking at the current price of RM4.88, you have actually made a capital gain of RM3,250.

Again, just comparing the dividend paid in 2008, it actually comes up to 5.1% if we calculate that at the mean price of BST at RM4.50. This is obviously better than the 2008 bank rate of 3.7%.

You are in the jury, give us your verdict. Is BST a great shares or what?

Tree Kisser

What can you make out of this picture? I got in off the web.

It shows a pretty girl hugging and passionately kissing a tree.

Why do you think she is doing this?

Practising before the heavy date?

Need a hug and the tree was convenient?

A tree to remind her of a heavy romance?

Whatever it is, this is one interesting picture.

The Great Houdini

I actually knew very little of Harry Houdini, the world's greatest escape artist until I saw the movie called "Death Defying Acts" tonight.

All along, I thought Harry Houdini died when he failed to get out of a tank of water while being handcuffed. That misconception could possibly have arose from countless movies of magicians and escape artists I have seen and one of those plots could have confused me with how Harry Houdini actually died.

Harry died from a ruptured appendix when he was boxed by a young red-haired punk while in Montreal. In real life, he was the greatest escape artist ever until this day!

Guy Pearce and Catherine Zeta-Jones starred in this movie.