nirajkhanna.com

Anyone watch the last Canadian debate last night?  I almost keeled over in laughter.  Our debates are so low-brow, even compared to the U.S. debate.  Some favorite moments:

Layton to Harper (he was taunting him all night.  So funny): “Mr. Harper, either you’re not in touch with Canadians or you’re INCOMPETENT!  Which is it!?”

Moderator to Panel: “All of the parties here have condemned the conservatives for cutting Arts funding.  Do you think the Conservatives are BARBARIANS?”

Line of the night (still pissing in my pants):

Layton to Harper: “Mr. Harper, you’re the only party without a platform.  Where is it!? (pause for dramatic effect), UNDER YOUR SWEATER!?”.

Elizabeth May and Gilles Duceppe performed the best.  After getting used to Dion’s difficult-to-understand-at-first accent, he also started to make a lot of sense.  I think I’ll put “Review major parties’ platforms” in Omnifocus.

I have to say though, although we’re a commodity driven economy in Canada, I’m really glad we’re not going through the banking controversy the states are going through.  I like to think that there are different tiers of Capitalism for different kinds of entities.  The banks and mortgage insurers in the States seemed to have forgotten that they were in the “non-aggressive” tier of capitalism and acted more like hedge funds.  Their failure further solidifies my support of having strict investment and lending criteria dictated by the government.  After all, a bank is supposed to be safe.

Given the new TSA (US Border Control) crackdown on laptops and the number of laptop confiscations JB has read about, it seems like there’s an obvious business opportunity for short term laptop rentals.  As for getting to useful application, I know there’ s a product from Route 1 called a Mobikey that allows users to virtually log into their home network or terminal from anywhere without the installation of any software on a computer.  If you can get onto your machine remotely, you should be able to launch whatever applications you have on your home network.

Finally, some thoughts on the markets.  Firstly, yes, we’re in a recession.  During these times, cash is king as are tangible appreciating assets (cars and bicycles don’t count, unless their collectables).  If you can handle some market swings, the next 6-18 months are going to present some fabulous opportunities to build up your long term equity holdings.  Real estate could also be very interesting, even in this country.  Everyone is feeling the pinch from the markets and you might just be bailing out a couple that’s on the verge of retirement that purchased a home by assuming their investment income was going to cover their payments. 

Finally, pay no attention to the recent purchases of Goldman Sachs and GE that Warren Buffett just made for the following reasons: 

1. The reporters like to highlight that he made a $5 Billion dollar investment in Goldman and a $3 Billion dollar investment in GE.  Firstly, he invested in preferred shares of those companies that provide much better dividend returns than their common stock alternatives to a tune.
2. In the case of GS, his investment in the company got the the company up to an equity ratio of 18:1, which qualifies them to access the $700 Billion lending window the U.S. is voting on right now.  GS had every incentive to give him a sweet deal, not to mention that GS will be looking for capital in the coming months and it’s always nice to say “Warren Buffett believes in us.”  To be honest, this was a great deal for GS.
3. Warren Buffett’s investment portfolio is roughly $287 Billion.  That’s just his holdings and doesn’t include the investment cash he has floating.  His investments in GE and GS represent a mere 1.03% and 1.71% respectively of his investment portfolio (not counting the cash portion of the account which we’re not privy to).  To draw a parallel, if you had $10000 in your RRSPs and wanted to mirror Buffett’s investments you would be putting down $103 in GE (5 shares) and $171 in GS (1.22 shares).  To me, that doesn’t sound as big of a vote of confidence as is implied by these articles.
4. People need to know that Buffett is a focus investor.  A focus investor’s philosophy is to put a lot of money behind a handful of stocks.  Sounds to me that Buffett got deals he couldn’t refuse, but also couldn’t back the proverbial cash truck on.

Don’t be fooled, the markets are uncertain and any investments you make today are for returns you hope to see in 5+ years.  Warren Buffet’s recent investments only support that view, despite what some articles might have you believe.  I have to say though, day traders must be making a fortune.  Every big swing one way brings a swing the other way within the next couple of business days.  Wish I was stupid enough to play sometimes.  Must be that gambler in me :-).

When the U.S. dollar was tanking back in 2006 the brilliant idea of taking advantage of arbitrage in the used car industry came to me.  When I looked at prices, it seemed that the prices of high end cars had more variance between their U.S. and Canadian prices.  After talking it over with Laura and Yannick, I settled on buying an Audi S4.  The plan was to purchase the car and sell it in the Canadian market two years later to break even or take a small loss.  A little more than 2 years later and I’ve executed the plan accordingly.  The S4 is sold and I took a small loss on it (bigger than I would have hoped, but small enough for me to feel like I got a great deal on the car).  Surprisingly, I’m going through seller’s remorse.  I really loved everything about the S4.  The way it looked, the way it drove and the way I felt being in that car (I’m shocked that a car made me “feel” anything).  Selling it makes me feel like I’m taking a step backward.  Fortunately, Laura’s reminding me that although it might look and feel like that on the surface, it’s definitely the strategist’s move and I am, after all, a strategist.

I’ve attached some pics that I took when I first picked up the car.  That was such a cool day.

Giddy like a 12 yr old girl.

Two grown men giddy like 12 year old girls (co-starring Yannick).

Taking a bend and oversteering at 180km / hr:  Bliss.

Laura and I went out on Saturday night to a house party and I got completely sloshed for the first time in my life.  While I remember having a good time, I don’t really remember why I was having a good time.  When I woke up, 2 hours past my Club Championship Qualification tee time, I had a splitting headache along with the sensation of wanting to hurl, although I didn’t give in.  After calling the golf course to be informed that I had been disqualified from the competition, Laura gave me a summary of some of my drunken shenanigans, some of which I can share with you:

1) At 1:30 a.m., I was telling Shawn to follow women into the bathroom, because that’s surely what women want when they are asking for directions to the bathroom.

2) By 3 a.m., I was telling anyone I could find about my plan to get my body fat down to 10% from 16%.

3) By 4:30 a.m., I was telling people that I grew up on the mean streets of Ville St-Laurent.

4) By 5:30 a.m., I was giving Doug shit for being a 26 year member and having a 10 handicap

There’s more, but the rest is just too embarrassing.  Two things I learned from that night: I have an extremely tolerant and awesome wife in Laura and being drunk is definitely overrated.

I can’t imagine what that’s like.  I just saw Michael Phelps win his 7th gold medal, but how the Serbian, Milorad Cavic, lost is simply unbelievable.  Cavic’s hand was about 6 inches away from touching the last wall and Phelps was an arms length away.  Phelps lunged for the wall using a butterfly style motion and Cavic, probably letting up a bit, didn’t keep his head down to extend his own lunge, allowing Phelps to touch the wall 1/100 sec in front of him.  How do you go to sleep after training for 4 years to lose by a fingernail on what is most likely a mental error?  When he sees that replay, he’s going to want to kill himself.  I hope the Serbians have good sports psychologists on staff :-).
P.S.  I know I haven’t updated this blog as much as I promised.  I apologize for that.  It seems I didn’t know what I was getting into and I did a poor job of estimating how much time and energy I actually had available to commit to this.  September should be better, but Omnifocus should also help me somewhat.

So I’ve missed a few days of blogging. A recap of my last few days:

- Saw the Dark Knight Premiere, 12 a.m. show. Was definitely worth the wait. Heath Ledger’s Joker is brilliant. The movie is much heavier and darker than Batman Begins, so I’m planning to watch it a second time with Laura sometime later this week. Anyone interested in joining us?

- Laura and I finally replaced our “office chairs” with real, ergonomic and comfortable office chairs. Got a great deal at Bureau en Gros (Staples for the rest of the world) and found out that they negotiate on office furniture. Cool.

- Saw my physio therapist for my back. Turns out, my back is fine. This diagnosis was that my lower body is just over-rotated, and thus my back muscles are pushing on my sciatic nerve. Doing the exercises she recommended allowed me to hit 50 balls without pain yesterday, so that’s encouraging. Still, this experience helped me realize that if I ever want to perform at the elite level of golf that I aspire to achieve, I need to re-dedicate myself to fitness.

Finally, I’m back on the GTD horse. My office has been a mess for some time and again, I found myself having to remember my to-do items in my head, neglecting my Omnifocus. After re-reading the beginning of the book, I found out that I was under-utilizing my calendar and over-scheduling my to-do items. For example, I gave the task “Watch Ricardo Semler’s presentation Leading by Omission” some arbitrary due date. I thought it was a good idea at the time, but given that I have roughly 120 tasks that I’d like to do but don’t have to get done, I was constantly going into my daily Omnifocus and rescheduling about 65% of the tasks. That conditioned me to to go numb to Omnifocus since I learned most of the daily tasks were tasks I didn’t have to do or couldn’t do, effectively killing my productivity system. I’m in the middle of re-organizng my tasks and hopefully this 4th GTD iteration will be the most effective yet. I think the biggest cause for being on my 4th iteration of this effort is that I didn’t take the time to read the book in in its entirety, a mistake I won’t make this time. Although the first chapters talk about the concepts, I’m finding the instruction provided in the later chapters of equal importance, if not greater. If anyone is serious about being more productive and effective with their time, this book is a must.

nK

Identifying an opportunity (i.e. hitting a ball almost fully submerged in water).

Focusing on your target

Visualizing the result

…

Learning from failure (here, my good friend Joel learned that not even he is powerful enough to bend the laws of physics).

nK.

When I saw this in the San Francisco Safeway, I’m pretty sure I let an audible “Holy Shit!” out. There are two things one can learn from this pic
1) This is why the average American is so terribly out of shape.
2) This picture is a fantastic example of why a frame of reference is necessary when photographing the extraordinary when it comes to size (or speed). Given the lack of one in this photograph, I have no choice but to explain that the cake was probably 8-10 inches high and 6-8 inches wide. I’ll try to remember that next time…

nK.

Anyone can make it to the PGA Tour. Sounds absurd, I know. But if you think about it, it makes sense. If this guy can make it, I know for certain that I can at least reach his level of physical fitness, so that’s not an obstacle. In terms of age, Kenny Perry, the hottest PGA tour pro right now with 3 victories in his last 5 starts, is 47. So time is not an obstacle. The largest obstacle however is the mental aspect of the sport. Hitting a tee shot on the 18th hole with water on the right and trees on the left when you have a 1 shot lead in a tournament demands significantly more focus than the 18th tee shot with your buddies after a few beers. Learning how to win is something that can not be taken for granted. Just ask Michelle Wie. But this too can be learned over time as there are many local golf tournaments a golfer can enter. Moreover, playing with some cash on the line further helps simulate the pressure of a real tournament. So if I can meet the physical and mental criteria to become a PGA tour pro, what’s stopping me? Discipline. Discipline to practice my short game (I love practicing my long game). Discipline to work out my core, so I can hit the ball further, which will help me shoot lower scores. Discipline to play the right club for the shot, not the most fun club, or the club that I would like to hit. Deep inside of me, I have this wild aspiration to make it to the PGA tour. I’m convinced that discipline is what stands between me and the PGA Tour. So why haven’t I regimented myself accordingly?

nK.

I’ve always considered myself a strategist. I determine what options are available to me, weigh pros and cons (sometimes obsessively) and make a decision. It’s worked well for me. It’s worked so well for me, that at this point in my life it would take a fantastic set of occurrences to fuck things up. At the same time, I sometimes find myself not wanting any of what I have. The house, the car, the businesses. Probably because with them comes the responsibility and the weight of managing them. When you have “things” you always have something to lose. I seem to miss the days where I had nothing to lose. Life seemed lighter. Unfortunately, I didn’t recognize the advantages of having nothing. Instead, because I thought I grew up poor, I always focussed on acquiring wealth and didn’t pay nearly as much attention to living or experiencing life.

Btw, I say thought I grew up poor because in hindsight I never really grew up poor. Although I lived in a 3 BR apartment with my mom and grandparents, never having my own room until I moved out at 21, I never went without food (lots of food), clothing, shelter and some pocket money. I thought we were poor because my parents didn’t dress me up in MTV clothing: Reebok pumps / Nike Airs, Tommy Hilfiger polos, cK jeans, etc. For these reasons, I didn’t fit in prior to uniforms being enforced in high school. I also grew up in a poor neighbourhood, but I realize now that my grandfather’s choice of area had more to do with value than comfort. In actuality, I was richer than most, I just didn’t look the part. Anyways, I’ve digressed.

Don’t get me wrong, I love making money and I love what I do to make money, I’m just questioning whether I placed too much emphasis on it too early. I like to think that I’m talented when it comes to developing and creating businesses. Given my cup is pretty empty when it comes to travel and living a life where I have more options than obligations on a daily basis, self-made or otherwise, the concept seems romantic. Maybe I could take a few months off and make up on some lost opportunities. Time to strategize on what it will take to make that happen :p.

In some parallel universe right now, I’m complaining about the lack of structure in my life and how I’m tired of not knowing what tomorrow will bring :-).

nK.

Keith and Kevin have gone through the exercise of 1 blog post per day, and both tell me it’s a useful exercise to make blogging more of a habit so I’m going to give it a shot for 1 month and see what happens.

Golf

Kind of sucks right now.  I pinched my sciatic nerve last week hitting golf balls.  I seem to have a minor case of sciatica.  Basically, if I move the wrong way, it feels like I got shot in my lower back. It’s especially a downer because I was hitting pretty well and there’s an event at the club this weekend that is always a blast, but I can’t attend.  The one positive out of all this is that I seem to want to recommit myself to crazy fitness.  I guess I’m not in as good of a shape as I thought I was.  Time to train like Tiger :-).

Web Apps

I like to think I have good ideas for profitable web apps.  OK, really, I think I have some kick ass ideas for web apps.  But it started to annoy me that I had to convince technologists that my ideas were kick ass, because without them, I can’t even execute an online proof of concept, which would probably be more useful in getting people to believe in my ideas than my broken english.  So, I’m serious about learning Ruby on Rails.  Keith was over for the week and was kind enough to spend 5 hours with me on an app I’ve been wanting to build since December 2007.  As we were working, I was pretty impressed with how quickly Rails can get the skeleton of your app up and running.  But the biggest surprise was how quickly my developer skills came back to me.  Very cool.  We even did some work with CSS, which I had no experience with, but after a 5 minute explanation from Keith, it seemed pretty easy.  Applied it to the blog, so I hope you like the changes :-).

I have more to talk about, especially my dilemma on whether to buy Apple stock now or to buy after the US banking system collapses.  Seems like the right decision would be the latter, but that App store is going to be a mother cash cow for Apple.  Brilliant move to cut the price of the iPhone in half, reduce the barrier to entry, introduce the App store, make hundreds of millions.  Their stock should fly, I just don’t know how much the market is going to punish them for the crappy US banking system, rising oil and a weaker dollar.

À demain.

nK.