A BAD end to January but a good way to start the Year of the Horse

A very lazy day today. We were out last night and enjoyed a superb meal. That is my excuse for sleeping in this morning. I was still first down to look after Lulu and she clearly didn’t have such a fun evening as she was suffering from a runny tummy this morning. She seems better now and has had a lot of fuss today.

I confined myself to taking pics in the garden and so there is nothing more exciting that a bulbul in the bath today. Avert your eyes if bath scenes offend you!

Splish splash I was taking a bath indeed. And just for fun, here is a very similar shot in monochrome.

I’m not convinced Red-whiskered Bulbuls look good in B&W but the water droplets look ok, if nothing else. What impresses me is the look of concentration. Bulbul RW must be taking it very seriously, careful not to miss any delicate areas. Those axillaries can be so tricky. I was thinking of putting some conditioner in the water but decided against it. Crabtree & Evelyn’s Bulbul bath gel? It has to catch on.

 

 

Another load of old (Chinese) bulbul bull

More dazzling light and more posers in the garden today so why not have another look at the Chinese Bulbul. Again no sharpening. As they were taken.

I regard these as my pay-off for having to spend time in a supermarket today. We had gone to Central for Mrs. Ha to finish her dental treatment, for me to pick up Lulu’s dog food treats and for both of us to have a celebratory lunch at Island Tang with a friend, whose wife has just given him a lovely baby boy. Their first child. As we had parked at IFC we had to negotiate all the fashion boutiques (failed) and the supermarket entrance (failed again). It took the lovely serving lady 25 minutes (I timed her) to do the ham, salami and cheese for us.

Then the drive home was beset by traffic jams due to the illegal taxi queue that seems to be permanent now along Convention Avenue. If it isn’t illegal it ought to be.  A curse on all of them. Let that curse be HSBC, whose shares I bought pre-results today only to see them fall 4.2% on release of the numbers. Oh well, just tuck them away for 10 years and they’ll be fine and we only bought 4,000 so its not going to kill us. Curiously the yield is exactly 4.1% so after the annual divi we will break even unless they fall further. In which case I shall buy more. I am a sucker like that. Never catch a falling knife, they say. And that is probably why I am so badly scarred. Still I have two shares in the fund today that are up over 5% and that’s why you have portfolios. Good old Tommy Cook. I bought in at 26p (not adjusted for the rights issue) and they know stand at 169.7p, a very nice multi-bagger.

And so I wind down another day and prepare for another assault on Mai Po tomorrow with John H. The alarm will be set for 5am. What will the future hold? Do I care? What will SCB’s interim results be like tomorrow? None of these questions will be answered in tomorrow’s blog. If there is one.

TTFN.