Must Watch This - Little Big Master

Did not even plan to see this movie but there were a lot of dogs at the pet shop and had to drop my dog off for grooming, so got a couple of hours to kill. Always liked Miriam Yeung and Louis Koo but the synopsis indicated that it was a heartfelt small movie about 5 kids and a kindergarten about to be shut down. Wasn't expecting much but no choice ...

This movie simply was spectacularly written, tight and no nonsense. It was crafted so well that you felt for each character deeply by the time it got only halfway. But boy you do cry ... but those were somehow "good tears", they were tears of empathy, hope,

deep human kindness, all wrapped in a rare level of honesty not seen in most movies.

It has to be the most meaningful movie I have seen for a very very long time. Everyone from 6-106 should watch this. It brings out the best in us, it explores what we all need is to open up and lend a helping hand, and that everyone no matter how small, have their own story to tell.

Amazingly, the wonderful storyline was based closely on real life events. You will see pictures of all the "real people" with the actors playing them during the credits. The kindergarten is still on going today and its enrolment has risen from 5 to nearly 60.

Young ones will benefit enormously from watching the film as they will be asking questions which all parents will gladly answer as they all point towards the goodness in human kind.

A+

Further Supply Coming To Dampen Oil Prices

(Bloomberg) -- The next big threat to oil prices isn’t from OPEC or Bakken shale. It’s Russian samovars, or teapots. 

Simple refineries that process crude into fuel oil are scaling back, because when oil prices slump, the government reduces the discount that these refiners -- known as teapots to those in the industry -- get for exporting fuel. They use less crude, freeing it up for sale abroad, which in turn adds to the global glut. 

Russia may increase oil exports by as much as 250,000 barrels a day this year, according to James Henderson, a senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies who’s followed the country’s energy industry for more than 20 years. That would equate to 5 percent growth in shipments, the most in at least a decade. 

“The pain Russia is feeling from low oil prices has made more crude available for export,” Henderson said by phone March 18. “Quite a few of Russia’s simple refineries could reduce their runs.” 

Rising shipments from Russia, which ranks with Saudi Arabia and the U.S. as the world’s biggest oil producers, would put more pressure on crude, already down more than 50 percent from last year. Falling energy prices and U.S. and European Union sanctions imposed last year in response to the Ukraine crisis have pushed Russia to the brink of recession, damping demand for refined fuel products in the country. 

Rattling Teapots 

Brent was up 74 cents to $55.17 a barrel at 3:26 p.m. in London. It slid 2.7 percent to $54.43 on Thursday. Crude loadings from Russian ports are 9.5 percent higher in the first quarter year over year, according to shipment schedules obtained by Bloomberg. 

Teapot refineries processed as much as 800,000 barrels of crude a day last year, Igor Dyomin, a spokesman for Russia’s state-run pipeline operator, OAO Transneft, said by phone March 19. A teapot refinery is one that produces mostly fuel oil rather than more premium fuels, according to Dyomin. 

Seven simple plants with a combined capacity of 1.2 million barrels a day are most at risk in the current price environment, according to Henderson. 

Maintenance Cuts 

There could be sporadic cuts to refining of 400,000 barrels a day during the next few months’ maintenance season, with much of the unused oil exported, putting more pressure on crude prices, according to JBC Energy GmbH, a Vienna-based consulting company whose clients include OPEC. 

The additional barrels would arrive as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, whose 12 members produce about 40 percent of the world’s oil, sticks to plans it announced in November to maintain its own output in response to the global supply glut. The move has yet to lead to a drop in production by the biggest non-OPEC countries. 

U.S. output, fed by growth in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling in the Bakken and elsewhere, has soared to 9.42 million barrels a day, the most in more than 30 years, even as oil companies scale back investment and the number of active rigs drops to the lowest since 2011. 

When crude prices slide, so too does the size of Russian tax discounts for exporting fuel oil that’s used by ships, power plants or further processing. Refiners save about $25 a ton selling the product instead of crude at current prices. The saving would be about $62 a ton if crude was at its 2014 average of about $100 a barrel, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. 

Downstream Agenda 

The possible growth in exports may be reversed because the refineries hurt by the current duty system are trying to get it changed. 

Igor Sechin, chief executive of OAO Rosneft, the world’s biggest publicly-traded oil producer, told Russian President Vladimir Putin in February that this year’s tax changes had changed the economics of refining, and sought state financial support for a refinery project. 

Russian crude exports averaged 4.84 million barrels a day last year, a 6.1 percent drop compared with 2013. The biggest annual increase in the past decade was 3.6 percent in 2009. 

Rosneft said in a January presentation that simple refineries that produce a high percentage of fuel oil are only marginally profitable at $85 a barrel and start losing money with Brent crude at $50. 

“When oil prices were high, it was profitable to sell fuel oil abroad and get a big tax discount,” Transneft’s Dyomin said. “We called it ‘spoiled crude’ because the product they produced was less valuable than the oil they used to make it. Now, the tables have turned.” 

Japan Should Be Buying $300 Billion Treasuries

This is a timely article. Yes, Japan looks to be on track to buying another $300bn of Treasuries this year alone. Largely thanks to the almost zero yield on Japanese government bonds. That will further support USD strength and depress the yen. But more importantly, it will actually give room for further QE and may actually delay the raising of rates by Fed, particularly should China follow in Japan's strategy.

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Bloomberg - Yields on Japanese debt have been pinned near zero ever since the Bank of Japan embarked on its latest attempt, in April 2013, to end the two decades of stagnation that followed those go-go years. Europe isn’t much of an option, as yields turned negative this year on the region’s own quantitative easing. 

So why the U.S.? For one, with the Federal Reserve poised to raise interest rates, Treasuries offer the highest yields among debt from the world’s most-industrialized economies. Then there’s the dollar, whose meteoric rise against virtually every currency has made U.S. assets even more appealing. HSBC Holdings Plc says Japanese investors may funnel $300 billion into Treasuries over the next two to three years, double the pace of the nation’s purchases since 2012. 

“The BOJ is crowding out private investors,” said Yusuke Ito, a fund manager at Mizuho Asset Management, which oversees $33 billion in Tokyo. “They have to find alternatives.” 

Mizuho’s overseas bond unit, which stepped up buying of Treasuries in mid-2014, has signed up more clients looking for higher-yielding alternatives to Japanese debt, he said. 

Japan first began to exert its influence in the U.S. government bond market more than three decades ago, when its booming export-driven economy produced trade surpluses that it then plowed into Treasuries year after year. 

Creditor Nation 

Japan has since built a stake of $1.23 trillion, making it America’s second-largest overseas creditor, just behind China’s $1.24 trillion. 

For the U.S. government, maintaining Japanese demand in the $12.6 trillion market for Treasuries is more important than ever, particularly after China pared its own holdings last year by the most on record and as the Fed prepares to raise rates. 

The good news is that Japanese purchases are poised to accelerate. Of the $500 billion that investors will pull from Japan’s debt market to put abroad through 2017, about 60 percent will flow into Treasuries, said Andre de Silva, HSBC’s Hong Kong-based head of global emerging-markets rates research. 

Much of the allure has to do with the U.S. tightening monetary policy at a time when more than a dozen nations around the world are cutting rates or increasing stimulus to boost growth. The European Central Bank this month followed Japan in buying government bonds to pump money into its economy. 

Yield Premium 

As a result, 10-year Treasuries yielded as much as 1.2 percentage points more than the average for Group of Seven countries last week, the biggest premium since 2006. 

Compared with German bunds, the advantage reached the most in more than 25 years. The U.S. 10-year note yielded 2.09 percent as of 7:20 a.m. in New York. 

“U.S. Treasuries are more attractive than other markets,” Yoshiyuki Suzuki, the head of fixed income at Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance Co., which oversees about $52 billion, said from Tokyo. Fukoku has lifted its foreign bond holdings, composed mostly of Treasuries, to more than 20 percent of assets at the end of December, from about 18 percent a year earlier, he said. 

And it’s not as if investors in Japan have much choice at home. Under Governor Haruhiko Kuroda, the BOJ is buying 80 trillion yen ($659 billion) of debt a year, pushing down yields and constricting available supply. 

The BOJ already owns more than 20 percent of Japan’s government bonds. At least 60 percent of the $8.28 trillion market, including notes due as far out as a decade, yield less than 0.5 percent, data compiled by Bloomberg show. 

Forced Out 

“They are forcing everybody out of JGBs and into something that’s higher yielding,” John Gorman, the head of dollar interest-rate trading for Asia and the Pacific at Nomura Holdings Inc., Japan’s largest brokerage, said from Tokyo. Treasuries will be among the biggest beneficiaries, he said. 

Japan Post Holdings Co., the largest owner of the nation’s bonds after the central bank, and Government Pension Investment Fund, are already making the shift. Together, they hold about 218 trillion yen of local debt, equal to $1.8 trillion. 

The banking unit of state-owned Japan Post increased its holdings of dollar-denominated debt more than 40 percent to 7.12 trillion yen in the fiscal year ended March 2014. 

GPIF plans to boost overseas bonds to 15 percent of its 137 trillion yen in assets from 11 percent to boost returns, and trim its allocation to Japanese debt. Spokesmen at both companies declined to comment on their holdings of Treasuries. 

Buying Power 

Hideo Shimomura, the chief fund investor at Mitsubishi UFJ Asset Management, which oversees $66 billion, says he’s not about to dump his Japanese bonds for Treasuries. That’s because the central bank’s bond buying will cause prices to appreciate and more than make up for the low interest payments. 

“The BOJ purchases are powerful and will completely support the market,” he said from Tokyo. “People may come back to JGBs. I don’t think the market will become bearish.” 

Japanese government bonds, which have fallen in March and February, posted their biggest annual returns since 1999 last year, index data compiled by Bank of America Corp. show. 

The Fed’s rate increases, which traders anticipate will start by September, may also leave Treasury investors vulnerable to losses. Forecasters surveyed by Bloomberg say 10-year yields will rise to 2.7 percent in the coming year as the Fed boosts borrowing costs, based on the median estimate. 

If that happened, it would result in a loss of about 2.4 percent for note holders, data compiled by Bloomberg show. 

Dollar Yen 

The dollar’s advance against the yen may far outstrip the losses from any rise in yields. 

For yen-based investors, the U.S currency’s appreciation boosted returns on Treasuries to 17 percent over the past six months, the most among 26 bond markets tracked by Bloomberg and the European Federation of Financial Analysts Societies. 

The greenback is forecast to climb 4.6 percent further against the yen in the coming year. 

“Investors will buy high-yield and high-quality bonds,” Hideaki Kuriki, a fund manager at Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Asset Management, which oversees $40 billion and bought U.S. 10-year notes this month, said from Tokyo. “That’s Treasuries.” 

"The Best Cake In Town" Has A Sibling

I am not even a cake person, heck I am usually the one shying away from ordering desserts at restaurants. 

Hence it will take a lot to convince me to eat a cake, even harder to like it, and even harder to rave about it.

Anyways, in one of my previous posting 3 years ago, I came across a cake that deserved to be called the best cake ever that I have tasted ... its called the La Joconde, or Mona Lisa @ the eccentric Tommy le Baker ...
http://www.tommylebaker.com/Tommy_Le_Baker/Welcome.html



the Mona Lisa, it is simply possibly the best cake I have ever tasted. Its layered, it may not look like much but its divine. Each of the layers presented different textures to the whole cake and yet somehow each contributed exquisitely to the whole experience. There is the soft cream, the ice cream smooth moose, the delectable rich chocolate holding the whole cake together ... its just a wonderful cake experience. I am not exaggerating if I say this is 10/10 for a cake.

Now there is a cake I had recently which blew my mind away ... go to Bangsar Shopping Centre 3rd Floor, and you will see a place that is actually a little piece of heaven on earth named appropriately, Just Heavenly.

 Most of the cakes are wonderful, but its the Red Velvet that yields orgasmic groans.

 Don't bother with how it looks. I was rushing to cut me a slice (this is my third Red Velvet cake in a week) with their plastic knife, hence it looks a bit "not nice". 

But believe me, it is so moist and the icing is the proverbial icing on the cake. Some of the other Red Velvet cakes and cupcakes have this kind of slight sourish tinge that does not completely gel with the texture and fast, which comes from buttermilk but the tangy-ness here is somewhat reduced in a very nice way. There has to be some cocoa powder as well cause you kinda feel that there is something chocolatey as well. 

The icing here is perfecto ... the ingredients are all there, so its a matter of using the right source of sugar, vanilla, butter,  mascarpone cheese, buttermilk and milk. And you can taste when people use premium products.



Nothing much to look at, but when you are that good, looks does not matter much anymore.

p/s as per usual, I do not know who owns the place, and have not been paid in any form or manner by the outlet/owner ...

Obama's Legacy

Despite the impressive stats, some still do not regard Obama's Presidency as successful. Most Republicans want him to be more proactive in dealing with ISIS. Mind you his team did hunt down Osama. Basically Obama's team was righting the wrongs and flagrancy of the Bush administration, and the Greenspan's "oops" easy monetary policy and the never wanting incessant regulatory oversight on OTC instruments such as futures and options. HIs Obamacare got a lot of nasty responses but a lot more people are now covered now, that needed to be, than before.

Well, She Is Really Good ...

Was never a fan of Lady Gaga as I thought she was gimmicky. But her duets with some old foggies on some American songbook list piqued my interest, still I was not converted. Seriously, the highlight of the Oscars, I nearly spewed my drink when she came out to sing, the white dress, long tresses,all very classic ... was waiting for something weird to happen ... but she was just amazing, salute!!! 

Julie Andrews took the stage and formally gave Gaga's performance her stamp of approval. "Dear Lady Gaga," said Andrews, in what might be the most surprisingly endearing line of the night, "thank you for that wonderful tribute. It really warmed my heart, it really did."

Yes Lady Gaga is seriously talented, and I recently caught her piano playing prowess too, amazing. The standing ovation at the end was warm, heartfelt and an acknowledgement of a great talent.

Breakeven Oil Price By Country & Production Types

Over the next couple of months, the production and inventory levels as reported in the USA might see significant drops as the number of US oil rigs has fallen 43% since last October.

In the second half of 2014, oil prices crashed. 

Brent crude, the international benchmark, fell from around $110 to a barrel to $60, while West Texas Intermediate crude fell from around $100 to $50. 

As the price of oil crashed, many wondered at what price oil projects would no longer be feasible. 

This chart. via Citi’s Ed Morse, shows that most major drilling projects are still under their “cash cost” breakeven level, or the absolute minimum price at which a project can maintain operations (if not necessarily make money). 

Clearly, there is some pressure in the oil space, as the number of US oil rigs in use has fallen 43% since its peak in October. 

The problem yet to be resolved, Morse notes, is that while these projects stay open, and production keeps up, a lack of capacity could push prices lower and eventually force some of these projects to shut down.

Read more at http://www.businessinsider.my/citi-breakeven-oil-price-2015-3/#RHLLklOteqYQ06S8.99