Private use only

The following are my thoughts only. They are put on this blog for family members' perusal and not designed as investment advice.

CDL - (Canada Land) company which has its investment in China real estate. I like the connection to China even though the risk is that control is not in Australia. CDL is going ex dividend Aug 16. It is an investment which should be long term as it is raely traded and one might find it hard to sell if money is needed in a short term.

SNE - (Somerton Energy) A company which missed bankruptcy by being taken over by its ex partner Beach. My hope is that Beach had a good reason to save this company and these become reality soon.
Of course Beach itself - BPT - whould be a decent investment if you are looking for longer term investment

MEY BMN - (Marenica & Bannerman) These two uranium hopefuls are on my watchlist. I believe that uranium prices will rise as the world economy gets back on track and China is looking for more energy.

ASB - Austal is a shipbuilding company and according to some reports may be on the verge of signing a big contract. If this should happen there could be a decent increase in its shareprice.

NTU - this has been a stock I have long followed; but got disenchanted when french Avexe decided not to support a recent capital raising. Now its apparent why: the company is shifting its focus from uranium to rare earth minerals. I am back in hoping that the recent chinese interst in this company will give it futher lift. NTUOB are 15c options with a fair bit of time to run.

iphone 4G

As my mobile phone contract is about to run out, I was considering replacing my now aging Nokia N95 with an Iphone. The news of the new Iphone 4G got me thinking of waiting for its Australian release. On researching however I am now considering whether to switch to the EVO 4G from HTC. I have had favourable comments about HTC previously but always thought that Apple has the better applications. As I do not use the camera often perhaps the fact that EVO has an 8meg camera versus a 5meg from Apple is not that big a deal but an extra hour of battery life may be. Iphone is said to have HD display which should make viewing a better experience.

Being avid fans of "MASTER CHEF" I thought I'd finally cook one of their innovations. Bomba Chorizo just got my mouth watering; however we do not deep fry. So I followed their recipe and baked the prepareed dumplings.
They were bedded on braised leek very similar to the recipe, but we added a most delicious tomato based red bean and shitake mushroom sauce. No salt or sugar is added to my cooking. I use a lot of onion and herbs in my cooking to avoid my food to be too bland. In the sauce was Parsley Sage Thyme and Bay leaf.

is this the tail end of the GFC?

Managing our small super fund has again become a headache. After successfully dragging it out of the mire; May proved to be dismay. But when I woke up this morning I heard that the Dow Jones crashed 300+ points. One can only cross one's fingers that June doesn't become an abyss.

I came across this while trawling cyberspace:



The next time you hear a Politician use the word "Billion" in a casual manner, think about whether you want those 'Politicians' spending YOUR tax money.

A Billion is a difficult number to comprehend ... but an Advertising Agency recently did a very good job of putting that figure into some perspective:-

A. A Billion seconds ago it was 1959.

B. A Billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.

C. A Billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.

D. A Billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.

E. A Billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our Government is spending it!

Uranium - whereto now?

Now that it looks as though the Gobal Financial Crisis is becoming a dim memory; I wonder what will happen to the price of Uranium?


Stockmarkets have recovered and the Chinese economy is still powering along. Oil is now trading around the $80 mark; well above its two year low. Yet the price of Uranium is still hovering just above $40. China is numerous nuclear reactors, has more on the drawing board and is planning even more. These will all need fuel.

PORT LINCOLN

Three nights/four days in Port Lincoln - we really enjoyed our stay there. It's just a 45 minutes flight from Adelaide; We flew the new Qantas service. They had very cheap airfares - hence our decision to go there. First impression of Port Lincoln came via our taxi driver. He was as friendly as most of the locals we dealt with. The city comes across a clean and pleasant. With about 14,000 inhabitants it is a busy little town which appears have adopted the cafe society judging by the looks of the many cafes in the shopping district. There seems to be a bus service but we chose to ignore it and walked to caught a cab.

www.menulog.com.au/port_lincoln
www.visitportlincoln.net/

The above statue is situated at the foreshore. It depicts "MAKYBE DIVA" the Port Lincoln horse who won the Melbourne Cup, Australia' premier horse racing event, not only once but three times.

www.makybediva.com.au/

The Hotel Port Lincoln was everything we expected including friendly service. The room was the cheap variety and fitted out for disabled yet we had no complaints. The hotel has a swimming pool and a gym. Sharky's bar is a public bar with TAB facilities which we patronised for our first lunch. The shared hamburger was very nice and filled both of us. The hotel also has a bistro and a'la carte restaurant. We had a "light" dinner at the Bistro, ordering a platter and a baguette. More than enough to fill us and well presented - highly recommended. I'd also recommend the hotel for the accomadation.

http://www.portlincolnhotel.com.au/

There is no shortage of hotels within walking distance of our hotel. The Tasman Hotel has their "nights" - we caught the pasta n pizza night. For $10.90 you get to eat all you can - a choice of penne or spaghetti and two sauces: bolognaise or napolitana. The salad bar (included) was sufficient. The pasta/sauce was rather nice; I'd have it again if we should revisit Port Lincoln.

On our second day we walked and managed to end up at the Cove Marina. This would be the place you'd aspire to to live in if you were a Port Linconite. It has a great looking hotel with an outdoor dining area which sits over the water. Unfortunately we must have struck a bad day as I felt the service was well below expectations and my wife saw JUST the meal on the specials board only to be told that it was yesterday's menu. We ended up sharing a seafood platter which certainly was delicious and worth the $30.

There are two chinese reastaurants in Port Lincoln - we lunched at the Ming Inn. The restaurant had a recent makeover which I rather liked. Kinda minimalist with that chinese touch, but I thought square backed chair would have topped off the design. Service and food quality matched the good looks of the place.


When we found out that there was a restaurant which won best seafood restaurant in Australia we had to try it. Del Gorgio was always well patronised when we walked past it. We only managed to get there for breakfast - they serve a beautiful breakfast.

On our last day we thought we'd try the Pier hotel for lunch. Reasonably priced counter meals with a huge serve of very good food.