Mr. Bearbull
Visiting Venezia
By Ron Nathan
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 01:53:00 06/17/2008
Last week, I took the family to Hong Kong to celebrate my wife’s special birthday. I promised not to give away her age except that it was a golden celebration. We stayed at Nathan Road, named after my great-great-grandfather who was the governor toward the end of the 19th century. He must have been very good because they named the longest road in Kowloon after him and it runs for miles.
The flight was uneventful until the landing. I always get the seat by the window but I booked so late that we got three of the four center seats. Consequently, I was unable to see what happened. But we hit the ground with a resounding crash, the passengers screamed, the stewardesses were petrified and the pilot seemed to have difficulty staying on the runway. A nervous old lady sitting next to me asked, “Did we land or were we shot down?”
I discovered later that the stewardess had upset a cup of scalding coffee over the front of the Captain’s pants. For the remainder of the journey, he remained testy and his landing was far from genital. Prior to our landing, it had been raining nonstop for two weeks and on the previous day, the rain was so heavy that on the front page of the South China Morning Post was a picture of two men walking in the street with the water up to their waists. There were no buses, cars, taxis and only the subway kept running.
As we arrived, the black clouds disappeared, the rain stopped and we had six days of fine weather. Weather it was because of me, I don’t know. But when we left, the rain returned, there was a howling gale, the black clouds descended to 500 feet and the heavens opened up. The take-off was delayed and was very bumpy as we hit air pockets and dropped 200 feet.
The hotel was unexceptional and we were upgraded to a room with a bed. The bath was ideal for a four-year-old so we used the shower. We ate in the German restaurant several times because the food was excellent and they had Nazi Goering, the German version of Nasi Goreng. My wife had trouble with the Chinese restaurant as the menu was in French. One man choked to death eating long-life noodles.
My wife went shopping the whole time. We left Manila with two suitcases and returned with six plus three enormous hand carry bags. The highlight of our trip was our visit to Macau. My wife is terrified of water (she gets seasick in the bath) but I managed to get her on the ferry by telling her a ferry story about it being a plane, which flew a foot above the water.
We took the blue bus to Venezia, the most magnificent building I have ever seen. It is absolutely vast and must have cost a fortune with miles of beautiful carpets and chandeliers. The guest rooms were huge, the shops of the highest caliber and the whole surrounded by a canal, various squares and three Gondoliers rowing and singing. It did not really look like Venice but it was quite superb nevertheless.
The shops sold Murano glass, which is very beautiful. But the main attraction was the casino. Miles of very complex slot machines were occupied by mindless souls inserting coins and pressing buttons. How this keeps people happy is a mystery to me but they bring in 60 percent of the money. I went around the blackjack, poker, monopoly and baccarat tables and introduced myself as Bond, James Bond, but to no effect. Suddenly, a girl six feet tall on roller skates approached the entrance and was saluted by all the staff. “Who is she?” I asked. “Oh, she’s a high roller.”
We spent five hours there but frankly, I would have been happy to spend the rest of my life in such palatial surroundings. I took the opportunity to meet a friend and was introduced to his charming partners, with whom I hope to do some business. We had lunch on the 56th floor of the Shangri-La hotel. As the food was French, I recommended my wife to try the hors d’oeuvres but she said she didn’t like anything to do with horses. Anyway, the lobster was delicious and the conversation stimulating.
On her birthday, we went to her favorite restaurant and ordered a whole duck together with all the trimmings. To my horror, when I looked at the duck, two eyes looked back at me. I asked the waiter, a chow mein fellow, what it was. “Oh, that’s a Peeking duck. We finished with banana fritter, a good way to fritter away the last of your money.
At the airport terminal, I was standing on the travelator talking to my daughter, but facing her, so I failed to notice the end was nigh. Suddenly, I found myself flat on my back and wondering how I got there. A man helped me to my feet but I was completely unhurt. My daughter looked worried and my wife was checking my double indemnity accident insurance.
About two minutes later, the same thing happened, only to my wife. She was taking a photograph of Cheryl and naturally was facing her. She took the photo, then fell backwards. Six men and a crane were used to haul her up and there was a big dent in the concrete, probably because she was indented. Cheryl and I laughed hysterically until Beth became quite annoyed.
* * *
When on holiday, I forget about the stock market. I spent five minutes in the evening and five minutes in the morning noting that all markets were falling, particularly the Philippine Stock Exchange index down 6.75 percent.
Everybody was discussing inflation, a subject I wrote about for three weeks in succession, five months ago, when nobody was paying attention to it.
Happily, all my stocks are up. ATN remains at its high for the year and I hope to hear something in the next three weeks. PCOR has jumped from P5.1 to P6.20 and shareholders will receive P6.52 in cash on July 25. Lastly, just before I left, I bought LIHC because the chart suddenly gapped up and the volume increased from 10K to 3M. It is 40 percent higher than I bought it. I have no idea what it does, if anything, but if you are a chartist, you don’t have to know.
I have a new indicator, which goes from +100 to -100 and so has a greater range than the risk factor. It is very oversold at -70 so the market should rally in the short term. My congratulations to the analyst who predicted P1.54 for MEG.
Previous columns:
Bearbull strikes oil – 2008/06/11
Petron is still cheap – 2008/06/03
The spice of life – 2008/05/27
Greenspan predicts long recession – 2008/05/13
Stock index awaits inflation figures – 2008/05/06
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