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My flatmate and I are suffering because the clothes dryer/tumbler in our flat has broken down - it still spins but doesn't heat. We have communicated this problem to the property manager's office but there has been no reply so far, as though we had been triaged at category 5. It's sad - I've had to resort to third-world-like drying of clothes the old fashioned way - by hanging them up to dry. The thing that makes it worse is that we are not supposed to hang any clothes out to dry within sight of the main road, as stated by the strata rules of this building.... grrr ....
Work
Work today in the surgical ward was hohum. I had so much free time, at one point I was following a physiotherapist around. I even had time to insert an intravenous cannula for someone on one of the other teams. My surgical registrar jokingly told me later "don't start any new trends now".
Finance
The rise in the price of gold continues to surprise me, especially in the timing thereof. My call options in Normandy mining which were going to expire worthless this coming Thursday, suddenly became quite valuable. Today I called my futures broker again for what must be the second time this year. Times are a-changin'. My online stock broker has got to be happy with me though - they have made quite a fair bit in brokerage from me these past few years and especially this year.
Financial topic of discussion today - the US Dollar. The latest trade figures show the US ran another record trade deficit, running at close to US$1 billion per day. Put this together with consecutive cuts in interest rates from Alan Greenspan, a slowing economy and not entirely a good outlook for the near to medium future for corporations and you have a very curious situation. If the US were any other country, the combination of rising trade deficits, lower interest rates and a slowing economy (the trifecta, as it were) would lead anyone to believe that that country's currency would have to fall to reflect what was happening.
Instead, in the good old U.S. of A, rising trade deficits and a slowing economy are taken as good signs - it must obviously mean that consumers are buying more (from overseas, presumably) and that the worst must soon be over (the bottom is in, the bottom is in).
This state of affairs cannot last, just as Dutch tulips and South Seas shares were overvalued some centuries ago, gold was undervalued in September 1999, oil was underpriced at under US$10/barrel not so long ago and as the NASDAQ bubble was broken above 5000 around March 2000, the world will come to realize that the US Dollar has been in its own little bubble mania and will punish it accordingly.
The problem with this, of course, are that the US$ is the world's reserve currency and that financial bubbles tend to burst rather than deflate slowly. It's not going to be a pretty sight.
Got gold?