This one is kind of humorous as the person mentions so much about having an attorney to process everything yet you’d think the smart thing to do would be to let the attorney do all the communications as well. I guess scams and spam can’t make too much sense.

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From - Wed Feb 28 12:42:22 2007
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Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2007 16:18:21 -0300 (BRT)
Subject: Contact Me Now Mr Huang Yanxiong!!!
From: “Huang Yanxiong”
Reply-To: huang202089@yahoo.com.hk

Mr. Huang Yanxiong
Hang Seng Bank Ltd.
83 Des Voeux Rd. Branch,
Central Hong Kong,
Hong Kong.
Tel/Fax: +852-301-01462

Let me start by introducing myself. I am Mr.Huang Yanxiong credit officer of the Hang Seng Bank Ltd. I have a concealed business suggestion for you. Before the U.S and Iraqi war our client General Ibrahim Umar who was with the Iraqi forces and also business man made a numbered fixed deposit for 18 calendar months, with a value of Twenty million Five Hundred Thousand United State Dollars only in my branch. Upon maturity several notices was sent to him, even during the war early this year. Again after
the war another notification was sent and still no response came from him. We later find out that the General and his family had been killed during the war in bomb blast that hit their home.

After further investigation it was also discovered that Gen. Ibrahim Umar did not declare any next of kin in his official papers including the paper work of his bank deposit. And he also confided in me the last time he was at my office that no one except me knew of his deposit in my bank. So, Twenty millions Five Hundred Thousand United State Dollars is still lying in my bank and no one will ever come forward to claim it. What bothers me
most is that according to the to the laws of my country at the expiration three years the funds will revert to the ownership of the Hong Kong Government if nobody applies to claim the funds. Against this backdrop, my suggestion to you is that I will like you as a foreigner to stand as the next of Kin to Gen. Ibrahim Umar so that you will be able to receive his funds.

WHAT IS TO BE DONE:

I want you to know that I have had everything planned out so that we shall come out successful. I have contacted an attorney that will prepare the necessary document that will back you up as the next of kin to Gen.Ibrahim Umar, all that is required from you at this stage is for you to provide me with your Full Names and Address so that the attorney can commence his job. After you have been made the next of kin, the attorney will also fill in for claims on your behalf and secure the necessary approval and letter of probate in your favor for the move of the funds.

There is no risk involved at all in the matter as we are going adopt a legalized method and the attorney will prepare all the necessary documents. Please endeavor to observe utmost discretion in all matters concerning this issue. Once the funds have been transferred, we shall share in the ratio of 70% for me, 30% for you. Should you be interested please send me your private phone and fax numbers for easy communication, you can and I will provide you with more details of this operation.

Your earliest response to this letter will be appreciated.

Kind Regards

Mr. Huang Yanxiong

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Talk about anarchy. Looks like virtually everyone with investments today was affected. Looking at some of the investments I had it didn’t seem too bad as while I’m not usually too much of a stock guy, I do it for the long term. The worst I had fell by about $1.30 a share. Just look at these charts that they showed on the news which kind of sums everything up:

Apparently this was due to a lot of the Chinese stocks that fell as result of fear that the government would step in and slow down the market since it has been rising so rapidly. The next few days will be interesting to see how many people start selling out of pure emotion.

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This is one of those little things that most people don’t really pay attention to which actually came up when I had a casual get together with some friends. While we were walking around, one person was buying drinks and snacks here and there whenever something piqued his interest. For example, if we walked by a Starbucks he figured that he might as well buy a cup of coffee or if there was a Tim Hortons that he’d buy say a quick snack. The interesting thing is that he openly admits that it is not so much that he is really that hungry or thirsty but rather he had some change in his pocket and figured that he might as well use it up. For those who don’t know, here in Canada we have coins instead of bills for a one and two dollar amount. One dollar is called a “Loonie” and two dollars is called a “Toonie”.

For myself when it comes to loose change, at the end of the day I personally just store it away as it is a little too inconvenient to constantly carry it around. I must have hundreds of dollars in loose change that have been accumulated so far and is ready to go to the bank. It makes me wonder what I would have wasted all that money on by buying something impulsively like say from a vending machine. I suppose the more interesting thing is trying to understand exactly what makes some people feel that they have to spend their pocket change just for the sake of using it up as oppose to say saving it or using it in a more productive way. This is definitely one of those little things that add up I guess you can say.

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This was such an interesting conversation that came up I thought. Now the person told me that he had a credit card debt that had been accumulated because of Christmas and other things which gave him a debt of over $3000+. Now while he did not have cash funds that were immediately accessible to completely pay it off as he has it locked in for a set amount of time with plans that guarantee a small interest gain, overall he had more than enough funds to do so if cashing out was an option.

Now here came the interesting part. With the $3000+ credit card balance he mentioned that he would be paying over $500 a year in interest penalty which is about $41.67 a month. While I suppose that is not that much money when you think about it, in my opinion it is a bad habit to even have that debt in the first place and so I would be looking for a sensible way to get rid of it as soon as possible. One of my suggestions was that if one of those plans that he had was maturing I would be looking to cash out right away to pay off the debt or to find out if there was a penalty option in taking it out early if it made sense.

He then indicated that the credit card debt was manageable and so there isn’t really a need to do that. My immediate response was that with the amount he invested with those guaranteed gaining plans and considering how low the rates are there is no way it would come close to the $500 a year he would be losing. For example, for these types of plans a lot of people say invest $1000 to $2000 and gain maybe 3% for the entire year. The best case scenario here is an extra $60 for the year. Does it not make more sense to pay off the debt? That example seemed to have opened his eyes afterwards.

I guess the important thing is to really understand your own finances as oppose to simply distributing your money in an emotional way rather than a logical one. Investing in this case might make you feel better as you can say to yourself at least you are doing something, but if it doesn’t make sense based on your situation then you are only digging yourself deeper into a hole until you solve the root of your financial problem.

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Well, the conference is over and as promised I will post up my experience on the event. In general, I went there mainly to try something new and to possibly meet new people. I attended the conference with a friend which made it easier to find things and it was more interesting this way as we were able to discuss about each of the events right after. For my friend he actually wanted to learn more about blogging and to gain some practical knowledge about the topic.

There were some interesting sessions that took place which offered an insightful view on how there seems to be a lot of people who are trying to use and promote blogs as a way to expand communication and interactivity in some ambitious ways such as schools having their students use blogs as a way to track one’s progression. The keynote speaker was done by Anil Dash who is one of the earlier bloggers as he started one back at around 1999 and the topic was mainly about is view on why blogs are important for the Internet as they help to promote communication and interactivity I guess you can say.

For myself the most interesting session was one that dealt with the legalities in blogging such as a company wanting to force you to take down posts that they feel are harmful to their image. Too bad it was on the more general side though where it was mostly law terminologies that were explained as I would have been more interested in hearing about cases along with the end results and how the decision came about.

Ironically, one of the sessions that generated some interesting comments and details was about love and online dating which I didn’t think I would learn much from aside from hearing about people’s love stories. Now obviously most of those dating sites make money off subscriptions. An interesting comment that came up was that a person who worked in the industry talked about how it is in the best interest of a matchmaking and dating site that you not find your perfect match as if you do they will lose revenue as you will no longer need their services. I guess that isn’t too shocking when you think about it, but it was interesting to hear it.

On an interesting business note one of the speakers was Markus Frind, who resides here in Vancouver, and happens to own and operate the popular dating site plentyoffish.com.

For those who don’t know, what he did different was that he made his site free for everyone to use and instead of relying on subscriptions to generate revenue he made money from displaying Google Adsense ads. This is kind of old, but for those who never seen it he posted this image of a cheque that he got from Google for the month of February 2006 as he earned over $900,000 Canadian:

if you want to journey into the world of web publishing, though I think most people have an account already. I guess it goes to show you that being different can be the key to success in many cases.

Overall, the conference was a very mixed bag in general as both my friend and myself agreed that it kind of felt lost many times where certain speakers didn’t seem to be very confident in presenting about a certain topic because public speaking didn’t seem to be something that they had a lot of experience in which got the best of them. Another thing we noticed was that while some of the speakers were knowledgeable about a certain subject compared to a lot of average people, it was not necessarily to the point where they were able to answer questions thoroughly/accurately. This at times caused some misinformation which was kind of a shame I thought such as a person saying that Google can’t index pictures from normal websites but rather only on blogs. The interesting comment my friend made was that this conference actually made him less confident/comfortable in publishing a blog as a new user as he felt many of the sessions at times got too technical for him. It can always be improved upon I guess.

Interesting experience nonetheless and I met a lot of new people who I will probably bump into again in the near future.

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