Penny Stocks?

Today at work, during the break, I was talking to one of my coworkers, and for some reason, our topic was about investing in stocks.Neither of us were very knowledgeable in trading stocks, as even though I was educated in finance (major mandatory), and we were just sharing our stock investment stories.

Oh, now I remember why - he first brought up the topic! He told me that he got some stocks this morning, and I asked what it was. He told me, "Kodak"

So, Kodak's stock price went up a little, from about $0.61 per share yesterday to $0.81 today - which is about 35% increase. We started sharing our investment stories, such as I told him that I usually do not follow financials and put money in for personal reasons - for example, I bought AIG right before they were going out of business, because they were sponsoring Man Utd, which is one OF my favorite teams.

Of course, after speaking of all these investment stories and Kodak stocks, our discussion was mainly for penny stocks.

What are penny stocks? These are often called as Cent stocks in other countries, and means stocks which are less than $1.00 / share price. Penny stocks usually concerns investors, as today the Internet makes stocks to be traded easily and scams/frauds to be done more easily as well. Whether to invest in penny stocks? It's your call (of course, after abundant research)!!

File Sharing is Religious??

We are speaking of the newest religion in the world. Typically religions have long history behind it, whether its Christianity, Buddhism, or supernatural traditions. There is a new religion in the world today, recognized as a religion by the government, as of January 5th, 2012.


The Church of Kopimism became officially recognized in Sweden.


This church claims that information is holy and copying is a sacrament. It further adds that information holds value, and the value multiplies by copying.


I personally agree with what the church claims, but as a Catholic I cannot agree to an item being holy and an action to be a sacrament, other than what I've been taught.


Don't get me wrong - I am not trying to preach or anything, and I do respect other religions. I'm just saying that the words 'holy' and 'sacrament' in this religion's statement.


The statement that this church puts is great - information does certainly have value, and that's why we play the informatics game/war or spying on each other, etc.


Some information is better to be hidden, but many types of information are helping the society, the world and supports humanism when shared.


For example, when there was a natural disaster, people see and hear about this specific information (in this case, news) through TV, Media and the Internet, and they support people to recover, promoting loving other people.


However, share of information and file sharing may be considered different - but who knows how file sharing may help the society as well?


It would be interesting how this religion revolves in few years, when the technology is keep improving.


For more news and information, you can certainly Google it.


Below is the article that I read.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/247315/file_sharing_church_of_kopimism_becomes_officially_recognized_in_sweden.html

North Korean Exodus?

Well, in my opinion, ever since previous US president G. Bush started calling North Korea the "axis of evil" people are more aware of North Korea (or Asia in general) before.

Just a short story of something happened in my middle school - during US history, when we were learning about the World War II and the Forgotten War (at least I think that's what the topic was... my English wasn't good that time), our teacher gave us an in-class assignment of identifying countries and coloring it in its allies.

I was the only Asian boy in that class, and there was another Asian girl in the class - two Asians in a small town's middle school, not bad, huh? Supposedly, all girls went to her, and many boys came to me, asking about countries.

They started asking questions - pointing at Japan and asking if it was Korea, and when I told them it was Japan, they asked back pointing at Taiwan saying that they thought it was Japan. Now I think about it, it's fairly understandable, because I would be still confused with Eastern European countries.

Anyway, to continue the North Korean Exodus, during the Forgotten War, a man buried gold bullion in South Korea before forced to move to NK, and his grandson, about 60 years later, escapes from North Korea for the gold - what a dramatic story.

This is actually a true story, which is currently in progress. A man escaped North Korea in 2008, and now he is claiming that there is gold bullion of about 88 pounds.under the backyard of a temple in South Korea.

The outcome would be very interesting. Personally, best wishes to this guy trying to claim his family's gold.

So, make a name.

It's been a while since I started living in the US as an immigrant - more than a decade now. May be a short time for many people, but to me personally about half of my life. For past a-bit-more-than-a-decade time frame, I never considered having an English (or more of an Americanized) name.


My name has always been a difficult thing to me and people around me - easy to some people but difficult to say or understand to the majority.


Some places an accent in my name - even though there shouldn't be any, some, especially Germans or of different language area do not even know how to read it.


What really ticks me off is when I'm ordering for take-outs from the restaurant - to make it easy, I give name "Jay" then 9 out of 10 times whoever on the phone writes it down as "Jake." Maybe my pronunciation was horrible? I thought Jay was quite English anyways...  Whatever, so be it.


Jake is the name I then chose, at least on WWW world. Had a journey of about three months last year, trying to get a name - I wanted something very unusual and unique yet still English. But when people started writing down "Jay" as "Jake," I thought Jake may be an easier name to say, understand and write down.


Not much thought afterwards, but my English name will be Jake from now and on, and probably a name I will use for ever, whether I like it or not, following the flow. And honestly, I think it's a good fit for me, whatever the meaning of it is (except it seems that my mom doesn't really like it for whatever reason).