Back finally

Finally! I'm back from 2 weeks of Starhub roadshows and 1 week at a Buddhist camp. First, let me just briefly touch on my experience doing sales. From the depth of my being, I really enjoyed my time at the roadshows learning how to handle difficult situations and serving customers, albeit I would prefer having the luxury of serving each and every one of my customers to the max (which can't be accomplished at a roadshow). There were also embarassing moments when I make mistakes, but I managed to learn from them.

That aside, now on to the topic of my Buddhist camp. I must say it is utterly interesting since it served as a platform for me to rediscover Buddhism which I once was very involved in for about 3-4years during my secondary school days. The theme, doubtlessly, had to do with Buddha's teachings. However, I found the link to other non-Buddhist events extremely strong. Basically the idea is about the successful completion of objectives. In the Buddhist perspective, it is to attain enlightenment.

FAITH ---> EFFORT ---> MINDFULNESS ---> CONCENTRATION ---> WISDOM

I'm sure all these words look like they should only be used in the context of religion or spirituality. However, faith can be explained as interest/motivation. Essentially, when we want to achieve a certain goal, say have a harmonious family, we first have to possess the faith that such a goal is indeed possible.

With such faith and interest in the goal, naturally effort would arise to move towards accomplishing the objective. The next step would naturally be mindfulness of all elements which can influence the success of accomplishing such an aim. The next stage would then be to focus on the process itself and with the experience and analysis of the stages in achieving the aim, one would be able to find the wisdom of how to achieve the goal in the most efficient and best possible way.

I think I'll remember to use this process to check on my efforts in future so as to see if I am on the right path. Of course, I'll still be looking out for other processes to base my progress on. Most importantly, Buddhist knowledge proved once again to be useful beyond spiritual practice itself.

As I've been really busy, I didn't do any forex trading for the past 3 weeks at all. I left many open positions using my virtual account and decided to start afresh today. So I closed all positions, of which mostly are in the reds. However, due to the right expectation of USD/CAD going north, I still gained a profit of 200 bucks from a 10000 account. In any case, I'm grateful I didn't lose too badly as I still need my virtual cash to learn.

I've been on this backslide from the current project of establishing the relationship between news and forex directions. Haven't read financial news for the past 2 to 3 weeks. So I think I really need to understand my motivations and restart the experiment.