I have been assigned to bake pumpkin pies for my Toastmaster’s club Thanksgiving day party (that’s tonight). (Actually, I volunteered because I thought a pumpkin pie would be relatively easy, and I love pumpkin pies…) A little background, my toastmasters club decided to have a sort-of Thanksgiving feast instead of our normal Thursday evening meetings. Just so happens, Thanksgiving is on Thursday. Works out well. Well, it was decided that the Americans in the group do the cooking to show our non-American club members what an American Thanksgiving would be like.

This post is several days late. Sorry. I went to Shanghai on Sunday (Nov. 11) to attend a BCP (that’s Business Continuity Planning, for the 99.99999% of you who don’t know) conference. The conference lasted 2 days (Monday and Tuesday). Normally I’m not a huge fan of Shanghai, primarily for two reasons: Shanghai people are generally rude. At least, more rude than Beijingers. Shanghai is unacceptably expensive. We’re talking approaching prices you’d pay in Hong Kong or even Tokyo for a beer.

I’ve decided to stop using Netvibes in favor of Google Reader for my feed reading purposes. Google Reader has improved quite a bit since it was first released (at that point I deemed it as unusable). I liked Netvibes’ customizability, in teams of colors, etc. But the “openness” of it is of no use to me (using 3rd party apps, etc.) I essentially just used it for reading my feeds. I much prefer the way Google Reader formats my feeds (I used to use NetNewsWire back in the day when I used my mac, and liked it) - Google Reader sort of follows the method of NetNewsWire.

I ran out of deodorant, so while shopping at Carrefour (the French Walmart) on Saturday, I thought it would be a good idea, since I was there. We searched everywhere in the cosmetics/personal supplies area for my brand, and couldn’t find it. COuldn’t find most the other brands for that matter. We asked an employee where it was, and they told us: “Oh, that’s a seasonal product.” So, people don’t sweat (and smell) in Winter?

Essentially, you can, and (potentially) profit from it. Those of you who hold a negative view on China, your time has come. There’s a new ETF called ProShares UltraShort FTSE/Xinhua China 25, which, according to ProShares’ Website: UltraShort FTSE/Xinhua China 25 ProShares seeks daily investment results, before fees and expenses, that correspond to twice (200%) the inverse (opposite) of the daily performance of the FTSE/Xinhua China 25 Index. That (basically) means - If the Shanghai market falls (ok, the Index, but Indexes are supposed to follow the market, no?

What’s wrong with people? Originally uploaded by chrisdrum Not only are people smoking in the men’s room, but they ash their cigarette on the partition wall. Arggghhh!