2008 Road Trip (Day 1) - Dallas, Texas

Tweet

19th & 20th Dec, 2008

We reached SJC by 2 pm to catch the 3.15 pm American Airlines flight to Dallas, Texas. The flight was delayed by 2 hours and departed only at 5.30 pm. No wonder why these airlines are in a deep mess. AA charges you for even the check-in of the first bag and doesn't even provide a snack during the flight. We reached Dallas at around 10.30 pm. We rented a car, purchased some groceries on the way and reached our hotel by 12.30 pm.

We had our breakfast and left hotel by 9.30 am. Our first sight seeing place was Ft Worth Water Gardens. It was in the Ft Worth downtown area. The Water Gardens was unique and awesome. We spent about 30 minutes there and left to the Ft Worth Botanical Garden. The Botanical Garden was almost deserted. I believe Winter is not the right time to visit this place. My kid was sleeping and so, my wife stayed in the car. My brother and I went inside. They didn't charge us inside the Botanical Garden. They charged $1 for the conservatory. The conservatory was maintained well - it had mostly tropical plants.

We then went to Reunion Tower. The tower was closed for maintenance. We had our lunch in that area and then went to Fair Park. Fair Park had all sorts of recreational activities. Some of them were closed for winter. We went to the Planetarium and to the IMAX movie theatre. The IMAX movie theatre was the best that I've ever seen. It had a half-dome screen. They showed an inspiring movie (Amazing Caves) about folks who go out on cave exploration. It was wonderful.

We started from there and drove to Shreveport, Louisiana for our night stay. We reached Shreveport by around 9 pm.

Tweet

New Hampshire Trip

Tweet

Oct 11th - 13th, 2008

New Hampshire trip totally changed my perception towards fall colors. I've seen fall colors only in pictures. I used to think that the fall colors shown in pictures are exaggerated and artificially colored using some software technology. Well, my perceptions were proved to be wrong during the New Hampshire trip.

We reached Manchester airport (MHT) on 11th Oct in the morning. The arial view from the flight was awesome. It appeared as-if someone sprayed colors all over Manchester. Fall season was at its best. I rented vehicle from Alamo (the rental facility was located within the airport. You can walk down to the rental car parking area). We headed to Boston, to visit my wife's relatives. You could see fall colors everywhere, even along the side of the highways. It was hard for me to resist my temptation to pull over and take some pictures along the road side. It took us about an hour and a half to reach Boston. We reached Boston at around 12.00 pm. We had a delicious lunch. We stayed there for a few hours and went to Rhode Island. We reached RI by around 6 pm. We wasted nearly an hour trying to find my friend's house in RI (Google Maps screwed-up as always!). We had a heavy dinner in my friend's place. My family & my friend's family left RI to Vermont. We reached our hotel (Yankee Village Motel), in Ascutney, VT by mid night. It was a decent hotel.

We got up early and vacated the hotel. We had our breakfast in one of the (actually, the only) mom & pop fastfood restaurants in that area. We first visited Ascutney State Park. It was just a few minutes drive from the place we stayed-in. The park was very beautiful than I had anticipated. Most of the trees had pale yellow colored leaves that were glittering in the sun. We spent about an hour there. We then went to visit Jenny Farm. Jenny Farm is one of the famous photo shoot spots. You can see several artists & professional photographers there. It is a must-to-see place in Vermont. We spent about an hour there and took some nice pictures.

We left Jenny farm to go to Woodstock. Woodstock is a very busy town. There were lots of places to shop & lots of activities going on in that area. We parked our car in Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller farm. We had our lunch there. My friend's wife had prepared lunch for all of us. It was so good to eat home-made food in the park. After having our lunch, we walked to a waterfall that was nearby. We spent sometime there and then left to Quechee Gorge.

Quechee Gorge was about 45 minutes (?) away from Woodstock. We reached there by 4.00 pm. Surprisingly, they didn't have any entry fee :) The Gorge looked OK. It was not all that great. The hike to the bottom of the Gorge was nice. We took a few pictures there. There is a miniature golf facility opposite to Quechee Gorge. We watched people playing m.golf for a while. Then we started our drive to Plymouth, NH. It took us about an hour and a half to reach Plymouth area. Most of the places along the highway was deserted. Plymouth had some decent population. I was surprised to see Walmart, Burger King etc in Plymouth. We stayed in Red Carpet Inn & Suites, Plymouth for that night. It was a good hotel (complimentary breakfast was not all that great).

We got up early, had our breakfast in the hotel and went to White Mountains area. Kancamagus highway was gorgeous. You see colors almost everywhere. We first visited Flume Gorge. Flume Gorge was majestic and beautiful. The hike was a bit demanding (especially, when you carry a 2 year old kid on your arms :)). We spent about an hour there. We then had several stops along Kancamagus highway. There were not many great options for dining in that area. We grabbed sandwich along the way. We reached Cog Railways by around 2.45 pm. It was amazing to see the steam engines pulling carriages over the steep Mt. Washington. We concluded that our Dodge Caravan isn't fit enough to take us to the top of Mt. Washington. We decided to return back to Rhode Island.

The commute to Rhode Island took nearly 4.5 hours. We had dinner at my friends place. We slept for about 5 hours, woke up at 2.00 am, got ready and drove to MHT airport. We reached Mancester by around 4.45 am. We had about 2 hours for the flight. We boarded the flight at 6.45 am and reached SJC by 11 am.

This was a very relaxing trip. We didn't do lots of driving. We had time to admire the nature.

(Note: It is hard to find an accomodation in Vermont/New Hampshire during fall season. I would recommend anyone planning for a trip during the peak fall season to book your tickets in advance. You can look at my NH-Vermont trip planner, for the places to see.)

Tweet

What goes up, comes down & What comes down, goes up

Tweet

You throw a rubber ball up in the air. The ball goes upto a certain height and comes down again. You throw the same rubber ball down on the ground. The ball touches the ground and bounces back up again. You can see this pattern in stocks also.

When AAPL was trading at $90 in 2006, many felt that it was overvalued. But, the stock kept going up & up until it reached $200 in late 2007. In Dec 2007, many felt that AAPL can easily go to $250 or $300. People strongly believed that buying at $200 is a bargain. Analysts were throwing crazy numbers. But, what happened in 2008?

After the financial meltdown, most of the stocks lost their value. AAPL came back to $90 again in 2008. AAPL nearly lost 60% of its value. It is hard to believe that AAPL, the dream stock of many hedge funds, is trading at $90. Now in 2008, many are betting that it would go down even further because of the poor economy.

There is no 'perfect' time to buy a stock. Any stock that goes up, will come down again. Any stock that goes down, will come back up again. (Ofcourze, the company has to stick around, till the recovery ! :)). If stocks were uni-directional, then nobody would be trading stocks. Don't make emotional decisions when you buy or sell stocks. Develop a plan and stick to it. Don't be greedy or over-optimistic.

Tweet

Do you have a diversified portfolio?

Tweet

Have you worked in a team? A team may contain people with different set of skills. Each one of them bring a unique value to the effective functioning of the team. Same goes with stocks. You need to build a portfolio that has a "mix" of stocks from different market segments. That way, if one of those segments is adversely affected, the other stocks can still continue to do good. Portfolio is all about minimizing risk and diversification. During tough times, diversification really helps.

Let us take for example you've invested all your money in Semiconductor business. If a market analyst predicts that the "semiconductor market" is going to be really dull for the next few years, your investment would loose its value all of a sudden. On the contrary, if you have built a diversified portfolio spanning tech, energy, finance, commodities etc., your investment value would not be eroded.

Building a diversified portfolio is like constructing multiple strong pillars/columns for a multi-storied building. Even if one of them goes bad, the others would be holding the structure. It would give you enough time to repair or replace the bad columns.

Tweet