New Year Power Pack

Happy 2006! The New Year is here and it is seven days running. I am packed and all ready to go. Where, I am not sure. I will just go along on my intuition and see where it all leads me.

20 years (10 from my past, 10 from my current) of my existence has certainly had me accumulating quite a bit of barang barang. Stuff I didn't imagine myself owning. Those old photographs dug up were nostalgic. And all that dust. Where do they come from?

As I do intend to travel light, wherever it is I am going, it is auction time. Sell I did for all my valuables and not so valuable. All this has taught me lessons I will never forget . Lessons like how some industries work (like the rag-and-bone and recycling trades), pricing and valuation mechanisms, where to get the best value for your goods, the invisible but thriving secondary market and bargaining for the best prices.

The next time you think you are buying something brand new like a photo-copier cartridge, think again. It could be recycled material packaged in an aluminium foil.

We are churning out waste faster than we can safely dispose of them. And it is not our fault really. Updates in models and technology have all contributed to the problem. It amazes me how paper waste in particular is being generated everyday. The printouts, receipts, bills and documents. Coming back home from my resale appointment alone saw me carting off no less than 10 pieces of trash paper.

Above all, it has taught me too that I should buy something and consider its resale value immediately thereafter. I will also not keep goods which are no longer working. Nor should I keep spares. There were bad buying decisions and wrong fits . All those free gifts and twin packs have made my spring cleaning so much tougher too.

It pains me to see the avaricious trader fattening himself on wealth, feeding off poor proletariats like meself. This is a cold, greedy and heartless place as far as I can see. A Canadian couple came calling for bargain sales and I am impressed with the wife. She is one smart lady and her husband is one lucky chap to have gotten her. If more women cold be like that and serve to be good and wise counsel to their other halves, the world would be a better place.

My house is stripped down to its barest. I am sleeping on the floor on a single mattress. It was like when I first moved in where I nestled down on a comforter laid out on the floor. But this has aggravated my back and I wake up, painfully aching. Not to mention the 37 or more trashbags, each weighing the size of a woman, which must have worked my lower back to its death.

The appointment for a resale transaction left me in a foul mood. The resale levy if I choose to buy another flat directly from the housing authorities was a hefty 25% with 5% compound interest. 5% compounded? Even fixed deposit or savings interest rates is at an all time low of 1% or so. And compounding it only compounds the situation. This is analagous to buying a bouquet of roses on Valentine's day and 10 days later, telling your recipient he has to pay for it with compound interest at 5%.

So a prized bouquet costing S$10 would be with compounded 5% interest after 10 days works out to easily $16.00 or more. This is in a matter of days, mind you.

I was told it is a penalty. Penalty for what? What did I do wrong? It isn't as if I am buying a house like I do stocks on the equities market for capital trading and gain. If I did, I would have sold off days, weeks, months or years earlier. Not wait the decade I had.

People buy houses to live in and if it should appreciate, good. We sell only if circumstances force us to. Financial , personal or otherwise. Like a retrenchment, a financial downturn , a move to start a business or migration. Or a death or a need for smaller or bigger premises.

Furthermore, the time bar imposed on occupational requirements before selling off, ranging from a year to 7 years, which in my case is a MOP of 5 years, is penalty enough. This is a double whammy if anything.

With a surplus of 9000 units (most already 5 years old) and more new ones being built for the 5 room or bigger categories, I can't see what the housing authority has to lose, opportunity costs being the taxes and mortgages they could have collected, to sell them off at 30-50% discounted prices to needy residents like myself rather than letting them stand empty. Wake up HDB!

A call to a property firm had its receptionist making up all kinds of lame excuses for its directors being away at meetings. This is crap. It is akin to the public sector where the top management is never accessible as they are all busy at meetings throughout their working lives. Baloney!

Speaking of which if you are a CEO of a domestic monopoly, please do not blow your horns like you are some international bigshot. Even moi can do the job. All I need is to think up creative ideas to wring money out of my consumers who have no where to go anyway. I don't think we are any different from developing countries in borrowing from IMF or the World Bank or ADB.

I am so tired with the all co-ordination work tying up with different organisations, I am zombified at the end of each day. Losing a pawn ticket and having to make a statutory declaration is hassling enough without a bitch of a Commissioner of Oaths boring down on your nerves with her ever-changing time schedules. She got my swear words into her cheebye face.

What a disappointment "A Chinese Tall Story" was! Simpy trash and I will never watch a Chinese movie again ever in my whole entire life.

Ok, my first blog of the year and I hope you find my first-hand experience revealing and invaluable so you can learn and react when you are next faced with the same set of circumstances.