January, 23, 2006 archives

celia and i went to see capote at the arclight on sunday. it is easy to see why philip seymour hoffman picked up the golden globe for his performance, because it is pretty amazing. i was also really impressed by the sound design (and score) — there was a lot of effective use of just ambient noise.

after the movie, we tried the cream puffs at beard papa at hollywood and highland. they’re very tasty, but they aren’t the same sort of revelation as a fresh krispy kreme donut.

once upon a time last february, i went to purchase some shares in an exchange-traded fund and through my own extreme incompetence accidently ended up with shares in etf, an emerging market telecom fund. it wasn’t a lot of money, so i figured i would hang on to it for a while to see where it went and maybe it would at least recoup my transaction fees.

once you subtract out the transaction fees, it is up 19.3% as of today.

which is something i’m very happy with — but i’m also happy that gld, the fund i meant to buy into (and did), is up 20.5% over the same timeframe.

if only every one of my investments worked out so well.

last year, i gave to médecins sans frontières (doctors without borders) at this time of year because of the tsunami in south asia. thankfully, there’s no tragedy motivating me this month, just the belief that it is a great organization that deserves support.