Evripides

We're in Athens, Evripides Hotel. It's a name of a Greek God. Most hotels are named after Greek Gods.

It's raining today. Biajee dropped off the laundry in the morning. Arnold is playing with me in the lobby where there is WIFI internet. If you have a Dell computer, you can press Ctrl+Alt+down arrow at the same time and get amazing result from the screen. Arnold taught us this today. I cannot wait to get back to the office and do this to all my coworkers. Arnold taught us this today. I learn something from my son every day. Of course, Ctrl+Alt+Leftarrow and Ctrl+Alt+Rightarrow will be very amusing as well, but we favor Ctrl+Alt+downarrow best because it's Arnold's discovery.

We had dinner with the Chinese Consul last night at a very nice Chinese restaurant (大富豪酒店). We're going there every day during our stay here.

The maid didn't clean our room yesterday so we run out of toilet paper. We arrived yesterday morning at 3 am. The plane landed around 2 am. After we picked up the checkin bags and took a taxi to get here, it's 3 o'clock in the morning. Taxi cost 70 euros.

I made a few phone calls from the room yesterday and the bill was 16.5 euros this morning.

We took a day tour in Frankfurt on Saturday. It's horribly expensive. We paid 170 euros for 2 people and they charged us for drinks at lunch: 6.50 euros for a bottle of water and 4.90 euros for a glass of coke. Don't drink if you are with a tour group in Germany. It's the most expensive water I've ever had, even worse than that in Belgium. We don't fancy German people a lot after this tour. Everywhere we go, they try to over charge us and they didn't even take us anywhere. We went on a boat that goes along River Rhine, but I slept on the deck most of the time.

Lufthansa is a good airline. They gave Arnold a baby bassinet to sleep in for the sector from Denver to Frankfurt. Biajee was in heaven. He never knew such things exist before.

10 Day Diarrhea

Today is the 10th day of Arnold's diarrhea. Biajee and I each took a day off last week. In order to take tomorrow off, I have to stay late and finish a lot of projects tonight. Arnold gets sick once every month on an average statistical basis. Both Biajee and I have to work around his schedule.

I now fully understand why some people make mistakes, why some people are never on time, why the world is not perfect. Having a baby can change one's mind a lot.

We bought an Elmo for Arnold's birthday and Biajee hid it somewhere in the house. I don't think Arnold is sophisticated enough to understand a pleasant surprise yet. We will only celebrate his birthday by ourselves this year, because it's the day after we come back from Greece. I think birthday is a family thing. Most American people like to host huge parties for their children's birthdays though, just so the kids can receive a lot of presents.

A good thing is that I can go to the gym with Arnold tomorrow.

SPSS

I've been wanting to learn this software ever since I graduated from the business school. None of the companies I've worked for were willing to spend that much money on this software.

I'm meeting with their sales rep in an hour to discuss our business needs and objectives. It's very expensive - $200k for five licenses and a 20% maintenance fee every year. My boss has still not decided yet whether we would make the investment or not.

It's a software for statisticians, widely used in banks and insurance companies for delinquency, risk and churn analysis, etc. It should be somewhat useful in our business as well when we choose which customers to send marketing information to or how to retain customers, etc.

Of course I've studied a little bit of SAS, a more advanced and more expensive software on my own. But without real world practice, all the readings of programming will just be in vain.

Biajee stayed home with Arnold today. Arnold has had loose poops ever since Saturday and was finally thrown out of school yesterday.

Ethics

Nebraksa Furniture Mart is wholly owned by Warren Buffet. He bought it one year on his birthday with a $60 million check. Shareholders get discount purchasing from them on the first weekend of May. This is a seasonal business peaking on the stockholder meeting weekend.

One question was raised on gambling during this year's BRK meeting. Buffet said that he wouldn't mind people gambling on the stock market at all. It opened up opportunties for investors. Munger said that gambling (casino) is a dirty business and that nobody would see Berkshire being part of that any time soon.

A lot of tough political questions were raised during the meeting as well. A few Indian ladies from Klamuth River in California questioned Buffet about the shutdown of the old dam by his wholly owned subsidiary. Another gentleman was furious that Buffett donated his wealth to Bill Gates and Melinda's Foundation instead of to women's abortion's organization.

Ethics is the most important thing in one's life. It's more important that we bring Arnold up to be a nice person with strong morales than a rich jerk who is smart about how to manage money.

Romance

I found some Hawaiian pictures in Berkshire Hathaway's roll of film. They look better than the ones taken with the digital camera.

During the 2007 BRK annual shareholders' meeting, a 17 year-old boy, who had been attending this stockholders meeting for 10 years in a row, asked Buffet what he could do as a young man to invest smartly, whether he should get an MBA degree or not.

Buffet advised him to read as much as possible, which wasn't a surprise to us at all. Buffet also pointed out that investment on paper is like reading a romance novel - it's not the real thing as dating. You need to put real money in and gain some investment experience and then decide whether it's your cup of tea or not.

The leg of the dining room chair landed on my toe finger while I was feeding Arnold the night before we drove to Omaha. I went to Urgent Care last week while it was still purple, swollen and painful. Of course I missed all the soccer games for the rest of the season. It's still fatter than other toe fingers, but the NP said nothing was wrong with the bone. So why can't I walk normally yet?

Warren Buffet

We learn from the best. This is true in every industry and field. If you want to stand out, you need to learn from the best in this industry or you'll forever be mediocre.

Warren Buffet never put any money in tech stocks because he didn't understand it. There are plenty of areas that we can find good companies: retail, sports, apparel, education, oil, transportation, raw materials, etc. I'm simple-minded and if a company's value vs price is great, I wouldn't mind which industry it is in. Well, I do. I would never put money in Philip Morris (MO) despite its kicking-butt performance financially.

Woody Allen had a good point on open-mindedness, "I can't understand why more people are not bi-sexual because it doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night."

Patience is always a virtue in the stock market. I have the tendency of buying too early and selling too early. I still haven't fixed this mistake so far. Even my dad advises me to HOLD a good stock instead of selling it.

Bill Gates

Our pictures of Bill Gates came out quite nice. He was much better of a ping pong player than Warren Buffet. Of course Biajee and I still regret that we did not buy Microsoft's stock last summer. It was a golden opportunity that we missed. We knew that Windows Vista was coming out, we knew the stock was at its 52 week low, yet we didn't chip in.

Though the advantage of the stock market is: you don't need to kill yourself if you miss out a good opportunity. There are always tons of them lying there waiting to be discovered. If you skip a good one, you'll only need to find a better one.

It's bull market now. The index in China went up over 4000. My dad said it'd soar through 5000 soon. He's got 25% return on his portfolio from January till now. What a shame if I cannot beat him! He doesn't have an MBA degree. He only has an undergraduate degree in Physics from Beijing University. I'm so mixed up with people of Physics major my whole life. I hope it's a good sign on my zodiacs.

Omaha

The story went back to Valentine's Day this year. I bought one B share of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) stock for Biajee as Valentine's gift so that we could all go to their annual shareholders' meeting in Omaha, NE.

What an unexciting place to go to! The drive was boring, rainy, windy and miserable. I had thought Kansas was the worst state I've driven through, but Nebraska topped that with no question.

We both took Friday off and started out at 7:13 am. Friday night was the cocktail party at Borsheim's. The diamonds there looked so wonderful that we didn't even dare to inquire the price. Bands were not as disgusting as those sold in Zales. We need to look for a nice piece to replace the one I lost in Castle Rock, Washington. Biajee will let me wait for as long as possible so that I can at least feel guilty for my absent-mindedness.

We had free soft roll cones at Dairy Queen, a wholely owned subsidiary by Berkshire.

Saturday was the meeting. A cartoon movie was shown at 8:30 am for an hour. Then it became non-prescreened open forum questions for Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger till 3:30 pm. No publicly traded company has ever hold such event for the CEO to answer any tough questions raised by shareholders directly. Biajee even registered to ask Warren a question, but time went out before it came to his turn.

All the stockholders are grateful to Warren and Charlie for their intelligent management of the assets of Berkshire without charging 2-4% fund management fee. BRK itself operates just like a fund. I don't understand why people are willing to invest in funds and be charged enormous management fees. If I had invested in a share of BRK stock when I first came to the United States, the asset would have been five times its original worth now.

Sunday was the fun day. We had free brunch with drinks first. Warren Buffet played table tennis with Ariel Hsing, the 11 year old US champion. So did Bill Gates. Bill is one of the big shareholders of BRK and he is on the Board as well. Bill and Warren played bridge after the table tennis. They were with in arm's reach of Biajee, Arnold and me.

Some people worship movie stars, singers and athletes in life. My family is just thrilled to be able to see the two richest men in the world. It's once in a life time experience. And we'll be there next year as well. I hope we can short BRK stock someday. Warren himself welcomes that.

(Biajee is downloading pictures of Bill and Warren. More on investment and our 2007 BRK Annual Shareholders' Meeting later.)

L'atelier

Sunday was my birthday. We went to L'atelier Restaurant in Boulder to celebrate. It's a French place owned by a chef from Czech Republic.

We had escargot, the French snail, assorted meat from Germany, Italy and France and crab salad for starters. We always found the starters in Western Restaurants more tasty than main courses.

I ordered filet mignon for main course while Biajee ordered a mixed platter with duck leg, veal and steak. Arnold behaved really well throughout dinner. He was in high spirit for the whole day, like he knew it was mom's birthday.

Biajee's favorite dessert was creme brulee while I ordered chocolate bag. Desserts in French restaurants have phenomenal presentation and flawless taste.

"The chef is really good." Biajee wiped his mouth satisfactorily.

"Where shall we go for Mother's Day?" I winked at him.