Nostalgia? No!

Sharemarket Explained

If you have difficulty understanding the current world financial situation, the following should help…

Once upon a time in a village in India, a man arrived and announced to the villagers that he wanted to buy monkeys and he would pay $10 each for them.

The villagers seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest and started catching them.

The man bought thousands at $10, but, as the supply started to diminish, it became more difficult to catch the monkeys and the villagers stopped their efforts.

The man then announced that he would now buy monkeys at $20 each. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again. Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms.

The offer rate increased to $25 and the supply of monkeys became so little that it was an effort to even see a monkey, let alone catch one!

The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at $50! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now act as buyer on his behalf.

In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers: ‘Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has collected. I will sell them to you at $35 and when he returns from the city, you can sell them back to him for $50.’The villagers squeezed together their savings and bought all the monkeys.

Then they never saw the man or his assistant again, only monkeys everywhere! 

Welcome to the Sharemarket!

How the markets really work…

In today’s economic climate, these guys  seem ahead of their time, given that this was filmed in 2007.

BEACHED AS

Kristy’s Brief Travel Diary

OK so it’s been a long time coming, and Kristy has kind of been kicked in the bum by Pete and Vicky to get cracking on updating her blog again.  So this post is one she’s been meaning to do ever since they got back from overseas.  BTW One of the best experiences of Kristy’s life.  For anyone who has not ventured into the unknown and immersed themselves in a foreign culture, you should definately plan to do so….consider it your “Bucket List”.

(oh, by the way, I guess you’ve noticed by now, that Kristy is still trying to pull off this third person thing)

There’s no need to go into great detail because if anyone is that interested, you can always check out Pete’s Travel Diaries or for photos check out flickr.  They started with a few days in London catching up with some friends…and they both can’t say thank you enough to Con, Libby, Chris and Gerard for  putting up with them.  They then ventured down to Paris courtesy of Eurostar, and after some pain-staking wandering, looking for accomodation, ended up in some shoddy room which would not meet 1-star by Australian standards, then went to the Moulin Rouge that night…OMG LOVED IT!!!!  The Moulin Rouge that is, not Paris….her first Parisian experience and Kristy couldn’t get out of the city fast enough.

From here they trained it to Milan, landed late at night and found their hotel was waaaaay out in the ‘burbs….nice room though.  Next day they saw a little of Milan - Duomo being the main attraction, despite the visit causing them to nearly miss their train to Venice (small case of miscalculated timing).

Venice was the next stop, and gee was Kristy glad they had booked 2 nights in Venice….this is her favourite city in the world (thus far).  Now she’s not quite sure how to describe what she felt when in this beautiful city but it was certainly positive.  She loved the fact that there were no cars, trucks, bikes, scooters etc.  And the narrow alley-style maze of the floating city is awesome…they’d just turn a corner and see where it took them…it’s a great feeling when you’re just wandering with no destination or timeframe in mind.

After Venice, yes sadly they had to leave, it was Florence.  Now prior to their trip and even since they’ve been home, Kristy has heard from so many various people that Florence is the most beautiful city in the world.  Well, this was not her opinion but perhaps she just missed the beautiful part.  When they alighted the train, they found the international train station was filthy and the area surrounding it was no better.  There they stayed in a hostel which was not so bad but reasonably expensive considering what they’d paid for hotel rooms and apartments in the last two cities.  Given that they were not real keen on seeing Florence, they decided to take day trip to Pisa the following day, and this was worth the trip.  Pisa is a beautiful old city / town and they really enjoyed the trip.

From Florence it was onto Rome, where their hotel was in the bronx, and the room in the hotel looked like an old converted storage space.  Anyway, she’s not complaining, but it was the butt of their jokes most of the time they were there and it was at least comfortable and not too expensive.  Rome was fantastic, so many great sites to see and enxiting things to do.  Trevii Fountain was definately Kristy’s favourite and in fact, whilst she’s says that Venice is her favourite city in the world, the Trevii Fountain is definately her favourite individual site in the world.  It’s just fabulous, the way the fountain is actually carved out of the side of the building and and the detail in the scultpure and the cool water running over was just so relaxing, she could have sat there and watched it for hours.

 From Rome it was back to Paris, and any horrible opinion she may have had of Paris before, this brief visit changed her mind.  Paris is quite nice and houses some of the largest and most brilliant places Kristy has seen.  The Louvre for example is absolutely tremendous…Kristy & Pete didn’t have time to do the whole gallery, but they did check out as much art as possible.  The Arc de Triomph is ginormous, and the Eiffel Tower is really a site to see….no they didn’t climb it.  Kristy doesn’t do heights, and the Duomo in Milan put her off any more elevated sites for the rest of their trip. 

After Paris they trained it up to Calais and crossed to Dover via the Cezanne (Sea France ferry), and from Dover back to London.  She had to admit, by the time they were on their way back to London, she was a little relieved and felt a little more relaxed.  She just never fathomed how difficult it could be in a country where you don’t know the language…mind you, the travellers knew enough to get by, but Kristy would love to live in one of these European countries for 3-6mths and learn the language through necessity, because you’d be amazed at the extra linguistics they picked up just in the short time they were there.

As for London, she can see why so many Aussies go backpacking and end up staying there….the culture is not unlike Australia, and Kristy suspects the transtition from Oz to UK would be reasonably seamless.  By this she means it’s an English speaking country so there’s no language barrier, the public transport is amazing, the cost of living is comparable with Oz but in different ways, and you’re likely to run into any number of other Aussies at any  given time, so that shoud ease the homesickness a little (maybe).

 Anyway, so Kristy’s next post shall be her travel tips…stay tuned (but don’t hold your breath, you might turn blue)

Try Third Person!

OK, so Kristy recently had a conversation with an old friend and the conversation steered toward the topic of “talking in third person”…don’t ask her how they got onto the topic, but anyway being the clowns that they are, they decided to try it out, and she has to admit it’s pretty damn hard to maintain a conversation speaking in third person.  To continue the theme, Kristy decided to try and write in third person, which is the reason for this post…..and she has to say that it is just as difficult, if not more so, than speaking it.  Maybe she’ll try and write all future posts in third person, but at this rate I think she may lose interest.

For anyone who hasn’t tried it, Kristy highly recommends grabbing a friend…obviously one who is open to being a clown, and attempting it….

So, despite the fact that she doesn’t really have anything to say of any value, here is a blog post essentially about nothing, and only written for the sake of testing the waters with writing in third person.

Rock Paper Scissors - Rochambeau (roshambo)

Theree are many names for this age-old game…see the Wikipedia Entry for Rock Paper Scissors…but I couldn’t get past this snippet of argument emailed around some time ago. I must say that there is some familiarity with the argument and style of writing…whoever wrote this is a person of my own heart.

Eurofighter Drag Race

Top Gear Fans will love this….. 

Check out Richard Hammond driving a Bugatti Veyron in a one mile race against a Eurofighter Typhoon jet.

Awesome huh?!

I’m not a dancer….I’m just drunk

There are so many times that I could use this phrase, and anyone who knows me can confirm that.

I know this drunk driver clip has been round the traps a few times but it’s great.  Check out this dude’s dexterity…amazing for someone so intoxicated.

I don’t know if I can dance this well after a few drinks, but I would hope to god that my choreography is a lot better.

Frozen in Grand Central Station

Check out this clip from maniacworld.com

Frozen in Grand Central Station, New York.  More than 200 people prank the public by freezing at the same moment.  Everyone around them was completely stumped and in awe at was happening.