Last Posting for 2011—Hardly Worth Reading Really
The clock on my computer shows 10:51 p.m. and it is the 31st of December so I thought I would put up one last posting for 2011. But what should I post about?
My wife and I are home alone. She is watching episodes of Downton Abbey on her notebook. I started watching Van Helsing on one of the free-to-air channels but even though it has Kate Beckinsale in it I just could not get into it. Anyway I have seen it about five times and I think I have the DVD somewhere.
Just because I got to write Kate Beckinsale that is all the excuse I need to include a picture of her in the post. I understand she is actually going to be in the next (4th) Underworld movie—which must be due out soon because they have been making it for some time now.
I tried calling a couple of friends but they were busy. One was involved in a New Year’s Eve card night and the other has gone to a church-based BBQ out on someone’s farm.
My wife tried coaxing some other friends to come around and have a casual chin-wag out in the pergola as the New Year approached but they had sort of arranged to do something else.
I have had a quick trawl through the first five pages of Digg to see if there is something to whip up a quick posting about—something positive preferably—but I could not find anything. There is just the usual negative stuff about all the economic issues that we have to face in 2012. Right now I would rather not read or think about those. As it is my superannuation fell nine percent in 2011. That is depressing enough without thinking about how much further it is likely to fall in 2012.
Even moving it into ‘cash’ in the superannuation managed portfolio does not save you because the way the funds invest in cash is by buying bonds and they have fallen as well.
One thing that is really confusing is real estate in Australia, and particularly in Perth. One week you read that 2011 should be the end of the slide and that 2012 is likely to be flat for the first six months and then prices should start to trend up in the second six months. Then you read in the Financial Review that real estate in Australia, and especially in Perth, is still ‘overheated’ (don’t you love it when they use words like that?) and a further correction of at least another five percent is likely through 2012.
Truth is I think they are all just guessing and they really have no idea what is going to happen in the property market. I think that the real estate market people themselves are trying on the approach that if they keep talking up the market enough at every chance they get then people will start to believe it and their talk will become self fulfilling and the market will start to curve back up. Who knows? That might even work.
I see on Digg that there are 18 new mobile phones due to be released in the first quarter of 2012 (that they know of)—one of which may (or may not) be the real iPhone 5 (but nobody really knows for sure). Does anyone else but me think that new models of mobile phones (‘cell phones’ for my American readers) are being released too often? It seems every time I go to Engadget and scroll down through the IT stuff being released that every third or fourth item is about yet another mobile phone.
And in fact, just because I can here is another picture of Kate.
Well I guess at this point I will post this up and then I will go and get a nice cup of coffee using my Nespresso machine and watch the New Year’s count-down on the TV. I have been shaped and my Internet link is running at 256kbps so my postings take a little while to send up. At least at midnight my Internet connection get reset back to full speed so that is something to look forward to in the New Year already.
