Actually, to be more exact, it’s investing in liquidity. According to my friends, it’s somewhat of a higher risk than other investment options such as bonds or unit trusts, but it probably has the highest ROI in the shortest possible time.

So, a few of us pooled a sum of money and passed it to one of my friend’s financial advisor who is supposed to help oversee the entire investment profile. The money that is pooled from individual is probably “affordable money”, in that, cash that we are prepared to lose in the event of an investment failure, but I supposed that’s how it’s supposed to be.

Of course, the optimists will think that we are supposed to expect good returns when we invest, but I would rather prepare myself for the worst. Of course, the returns, if good, can give us approximately 24% returns on capital, which makes out to be 2% p.m. - definitely better than our 0.025% (yes, that’s a fraction of a percent point) p.a. from our savings account. I don’t even have enough for a fixed deposit, much less talk about investments.

Since my portion in the pooled amout is so little, I’d not be expecting a lot of returns in absolute values, but at least it’s better than nothing. We are all supposed to meet the advisor this evening, but I think there are some changes. So it’s going to be this weekend.

Keeping all our fingers crossed

Attended a talk by Kevin on Youtube and beyond. The majority of what he covered can actually be found on his web, but it can generally be broken down into the following:

• Youtube and its communities 
• available video sharing sites and their services and restrictions
• available offline and online video editing tools
• crazy things that you can do, like lip syncing 
• beyond video sharing
• a little on Creative Commons
• Q&A which wasn’t (there wasn’t enough time)

I learnt a couple of things today: that is more than just youtube and google video; that there are video sharing sites that pays you (www.revver.com); that other sites offer you better video sizes but at the expense of a ready audience (youtube seemingly has a bigger audience to date).

I also learnt that there are fabulous sites that offers a zen-themed editing suite (read: minimalistic) that can let you crop your videos, amongst other things. Frankly, I am not a video enthusiast, although I tried to do some form of video editing - filtering out ads from my DVD-Rs, which I later realised wasn’t really worth the effort.

Then, there was a short primer on lip syncing (or something like that) which is pretty much like MTV except that YOU are the lead in the publicly taken movie. Apparently, there may be copyrights issues because the song doesn’t really belong to you. Nonetheless, it looks nice and sort of amusing to create an MTV of yourself lip syncing.

Speaking of which, I didn’t know that Singapore did not endorse Creative Commons, which means your materials are either copyrighted or they are in the public domain, but not anywhere in between. More information can be obtained from the Creative Commons website.

Lastly, there is the future of video blogging. Apparently, in the short clip “Strange Days” that was shown, it presented a futuristic possibility that instead of re-living though photos and videos, there would come a time when we can re-live the entire experience through extrasensory perception.

“And that includes when you are having sex”, cited Kevin

I am scheduled to visit SGH for my 2-monthly checkup. My therapist was afraid that the scar cells was starting to spread 2 visits ago, but the last visit confirmed that it was just false alarm. It seems like I am going to be on therapy for a long time.