Reading through the resolutions pakdokter listed down at about this time last year, it looked like pakdokter made little progress at accomplishing the stated objectives. Pakdokter's golf handicap remained at 25 and the plan to go back to playing the saxophone did not materialise. Luckily for pakdokter, the waistline had remained the same!
a memorable tour of Rajashtan on the
Palace on Wheels in March 2010...
2010 was remarkable in the amount of travelling pakdokter did. Three of the trips to places pakdokter's partner had wished to visit or re-visit for so may years were finally made. Kerala was visited in January, the Golden Triangle of India was revisited in March, this time on the Palace on Wheels train, and finally her wish to celebrate her birthday and our wedding anniversary on the the day of the 'Palio Races' in Siena, Italy, was realised in July in addition to discovering the beautiful island of Sicily. We visited Rastam in Japan twice, the first in September, to celebrate his birthday and followed by a trip to Hakodate in Hokkaido, and the second one in December, when Raena managed to come home from Edinburgh and go on to Tokyo with us for a memorable family reunion over the New Year.
celebrating pakdokter's partner's birthday
and our wedding anniversary in Siena in July 2010
the Palio Race in Siena...
And apart from this, pakdokter's usual golf outings with the STAROBA, RSGC and the Royal Lake Club groups to regular haunts of Jakarta, Medan, Bangkok, Pattaya and new places like PekanBaru, Hua Hin and Miri and Dongguan in China.
Bogor Escapades with STAROBA Golf Club...
Pakdokter had exited the stock-market in late 2008 before the crash but had re-entered rather too early in 2009. By the end 2009 pakdokter was mostly on the sideline and reacting to the many predictions of (and waiting for) a major correction in 2010, had remained mostly side-lined in 2010. As such by the end of 2010, pakdokter had at best made a gain of only 5%. On the other hand, pakdokter's asset management consultant had remained fully invested throughout the year (which at times made pakdokter very anxious in anticipation of the predicted major correction.) She turned out to be right as at the end of the year the portfolios she managed had made a 35% gain!
She deserved and had earned the management fees due to her.....
Pakdokter's best investment decision was to put some funds into the Australian Dollar Fixed Deposit in early 2010 which when pakdokter redeemed in November gave a return of almost 12%. And returns from properties were also steady and reasonable.
On the other hand pakdokter was quite disappointed with the few mutual fund/unit trust consultants who were mostly evasive throughout the year. And the mutual funds returns were mostly negligible. For such high initial fees, pakdokter is really having second thoughts about investing in more mutual funds. It is better to just leave the funds in the few PNB/ASNB funds and take the regular annual returns.
So what to expect of the new year? Well, if pakdokter fails to again loose some weight, hopefully it will remain where it is. There are several travel destinations in pakdokter's mind and hopefully these will be accomplished. Pakdokter will have to curb the obsessive-compulsive habit of buying books faster than pakdokter can read them. There are still too many unread books on the shelf. And hopefully, pakdokter will also be able to spend some time again with the children in either Edinburgh or Tokyo.
No comments:
Post a Comment