In light of the ever-plunging stock markets lately, here’s some funnies:

CEO –Chief Embezzlement Officer.

CFO — Corporate Fraud Officer.

BULL MARKET — A random market movement causing an investor to mistake himself for a financial genius.

BEAR MARKET — A 6 to 18 month period when the kids get no allowance, the wife gets no jewelry, and the husband gets no sex.

VALUE INVESTING — The art of buying low and selling lower.

P/E RATIO — The percentage of investors wetting their pants as the market keeps crashing.

BROKER — What my financial advisor has made me.

STANDARD & POOR — Your life in a nutshell.

STOCK ANALYST — Idiot who just downgraded your stock.

STOCK SPLIT — When your ex-wife and her lawyer split your assets
Equally between themselves.

FINANCIAL PLANNER — A guy whose phone has been disconnected.

MARKET CORRECTION — The day after you buy stocks.

CASH FLOW– The movement your money makes as it disappears down the toilet.

YAHOO — What you yell after selling it to some poor sucker for $240 per share.

WINDOWS — What you jump out of when you’re the sucker who bought Yahoo @$240 per share.

INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR — Former investor who’s now locked up in a nuthouse.

PROFIT — An archaic word no longer used.

Was in south-central Kentucky recently, flew into Nashville and drove up to Bowling Green, en route to Jamestown. Lots of flat road, nice 70mph speed limit. Small towns. Boring. My 1.5 hour commute each way to Jamestown probably contributed a lot to my lack of sensitivity.

Not sure what’s in Bowling Green (where I stayed, closest Marriott hotel to Jamestown) - aside from being the Corvette factory. Took a peek at the privately-run National Corvette Museum. Ho-hum, nice if you like Corvettes… a lot. Bowling Green has a lot of corvettes, no surprise here but it was kinda cool to see a corvette on practically every corner.

Food selection - the usual selection of average chain restaurants. Skipped the handful of fancier restaurants in town - wasn’t in the mood. So far, Chili’s is tops, Applebees and TGIF vying for the We-Serve-Crap award. Decent hot-wings place called Buffalo Wild Wings.

Well, aside from the usual weekly doses of Bleach and Naruto, I’ve started to follow Soul Eater and Blade of the Immortal as well. Good stuff, adds different variety and seems to be faster paced while Naruto and Bleach just drags on and on lately. Soul Eater is a little wacky and funny, I like the different twist it adds to the Death God beliefs. And how can anyone not like Blade of the Immortal? He has too many weapons stashed away!

I proposed. She accepted. YAY ME!

Finished watching the anime series - Death Note. No idea why this is one of the highly rated series of all time. It was average. Only managed to complete all 37 episodes because it was just 37 episodes. By the time I ran out of interest, I was on episode 26.

Movies - The Dark Knight. Yes, it’s good. What more can anyone else say?

The Andromeda Strain - a 4 hour mini-series based on the Michael Crichton book. Quite entertaining, tries to impart moral and ethical lessons about mankind and greed.

NBC sucks in Olympics coverage… again. The announcers can’t stop yapping. A LIVE Broadcast is NOT Live when I can read the results already on CNN, BBC and MSNBC. No one can keep track of what’s on which channel at weird hours. Online video streaming coverage? Uh, it’s a repetition of what is played on TV (time-delayed of course, only available after the normal TV broadcast). It’s really irritating but US residents have no choice. Would love to stream video from the BBC except it is geo-ip locked to the UK only.

Am in Lafayette, Louisiana this week for work. Since I’m here, I’d sample the local cuisine!

Blue Dog Cafe - for dinner, I had a cup of seafood gumbo and the fried tilapia filet. Wasn’t too bad, fish could have been tastier (on second thought, I shouldn’t have had the tilapia). Gumbo was alright, expected better, maybe one with sausage next time. Service is excellent and the decor is quite nice. The bread came with honey garlic butter (it tastes better than it sounds).

Prejeans - Top scores for decor, I could get used to this look. Air conditioning works everywhere around here, it’s so hot, that’s a good thing. Ate the crab cakes for lunch. It’s one of the best I’ve tasted, simply wow, has a bit of crawfish in it, which makes a world of difference. The crab cake came with this odd round fried thing that had some okra sauce on it, looked like eggplant inside. It wasn’t the best thing to chew on. On the other hand, dirty rice is quite tasty. Had the southern fried catfish for another lunch visit, along with a cup of their gumbo. It’s pretty good (the gumbo). Perhaps I was tired of all the fried foods, the catfish was crispy and tasty but I never finished it.

Cafe Vermillionville - Haven’t eaten out this well in a long time. This upscale restaurant is in a big old house. Looks fantastic, great atmosphere. I thought I was stepping into a B&B. Being a weeknight, service was excellent, there were hardly anyone in the restaurant - a couple, small family and a larger table of friends. Could hear all the conversations. Tried the appetizer sampler. Deep-fried cajun alligator tail … not bad, a tastier squid. The crab cake was a little too mushy, slimy … it oozed every time I cut into it. Prejeans has a much better crab cake (I like it chewy and packed with goodness). The small bite of sausage was pretty good and some stuffed crawfish fried ball thing was decent too. The entree was a 6oz filet mignon. Remember, most restaurants (non-steak specialists) will overcook their meat … so I asked for mine to be medium rare. It came out just slightly under medium, no blood. Suits me fine, soft and tender, topped with some kind of crawfish sauce as well.

One thing I’ve noticed is that, all these restaurants serve excellent bread! It’s a universal trait - fresh, hot and crumbly crust with soft innards.

Hub City Diner - had breakfast here before leaving. Nice place, great 50’s diner look-feel-style. Food as expected, it’s breakfast, what do you expect? This place gets busy tho, tried to come here for lunch and it was packed.

Spent 2 weeks in Malaysia! Took nice photos and chilled at the beach. Ate a lot, relaxed. Miss the food already!

Watched the movie Wanted at one of the better cinemas here. It was luxurious, comfy and amazing! Each row has pairs of reclining seats, separated by a walkway and fold out tables. Regal and Loews need to catch up with the times! No more free seating either, pay and select the seat.

Townhouse is sold!

Seattle weather has improved, no more rain, sunny weather for weeks now. Almost getting too hot.

Lots of things happening! Don’t know where all my time went!

What’s going on, Seattle weather? It’s June 12, no more rain storms! It’s windy and cold. It’s even snowing in the mountains! Time for sunshine and warm hot sun!

Changed jobs. It’s a good thing. Finding new things to do, plenty of opportunity and growth. Have already done many things I never thought I could do in my former position. Compensation is acceptable (ok ok, will it ever be enough?! doubt it) , it’s the experience that I’m in for. First job that requires extensive travel. So far, it hasn’t interfered with my personal life and I’m ok with it. Just have to figure out how to maintain my exercise regime at the same time.

BTW, check out glassdoor for user-submitted reviews and salaries. Pretty good site, it can only get better with more submissions.

Heading to Malaysia for a couple weeks. Looking to have a great time, schedule is quite packed, will try to relax as much as possible. Will get some tailor-made clothing done - jeans won’t cut it in the office anymore, need to be a little more presentable. Will be going to Perhentian again - that’s going to be fantastic.

Listed my townhouse for sale, it’s been a few weeks and I’m getting irritable. Feedback shows house looks great, fantastic, priced right …. where’s the offers?!

Together with Alice, we’ll be getting a place in Bellevue too. Completion end of this year! Pretty excited about it. Great location, size and has pretty much everything we want.

Down with my 3rd cold of the year, I won’t miss another flu shot again, I can tell you right now.

Cooking. I’m good. Congee with a roasted chicken from the store is easy and amazingly good. Learned a couple new things to cook as well. Can’t wait to get back to a gas stove with a large vent hood. Asian cooking tends to stink up a place without proper air circulation (not to mention, that smoke alarm!).

Lucas has messed it up again. What on earth is up with the Tarzan bit? The kid magically learns how to swing from vine to vine?? That’s about equal to Jar Jar Binks in Star Wars Ep. 1.

Less investigative work this time around - the alien theme was a bit of a let-down. I guess I wished this movie would be more like The Last Crusade (less like Star Wars Ep 1 and Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind). It was surprising to see how quickly they went down the river, past 3 waterfall drops AND entered the secret location to discover El Dorado within minutes. No funny business, traps or puzzles at all. Hmm, even The Mummy series was more entertaining - it stuck to the similiar storyline. Crystal Skull was all over the place.

A pretty big disappointment to me.

Had low expectations for this movie, all the cheesy, tacky cliches etc. Surprisingly, it was pretty good. Funny and entertaining. Jack Black brings great character to any role he plays. Most of the funny stuff came from him. Final fight sequence was pretty good (it’s cartoony obviously) especially the ending (the finger!)

I seem to be a sucker for what’s supposed to be crappy movies. Lots of cheesy dumb scenes but the humor is funny. Lots of good jokes about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The ending was a little silly but then again, the whole movie is. Silly funny.