If we just exist on an island with our achievements, it's a pretty lonely and unfulfilling place. The antidote is to become useful to others.

"I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times."

At present in many societies we have an epidemic of loneliness and associated depression. We think we are more connected than ever, but that is just a digital illusion.

Here is how to fight back!

My school was something like Hogwarts, minus the magic and girls. For the most part I didn’t get involved in the various activities the school offered, but the snow camp was one thing I couldn’t avoid.

In Japan as a foreigner, there’s not much chance of fitting in. The best you can do is not stand out too much. That’s OK though, I don’t mind enjoying Japan as an outsider.

I know what I wrote last time resonated with a lot of people, but I missed something important. I need to set the record straight.

Is life about enjoying the journey or reaching a destination? I think this hack allows you to do both at the same time.

You don’t have to go far from the tourist hubs to see a very different aspect of the city. I took a walk recently into some of the hidden corners of Sukhumvit.

There’s two ways to learn things in life. The first is through trial and error. Each time you make a mistake ideally you learn something and then you can improve the next time. Second, and the way to save yourself a lot of time, is to learn from others. Since I started to focus on investing I’ve done a lot of both. What follows are some of the principles I’ve learnt.

The first question I get when I tell someone I work as an investor is, “what do you think of bitcoin”? The second is, “which stocks should I buy”, or “how do I invest in the stock market”?

I’ll answer those questions in this post.

This topic comes out of my recent experience living in Bangkok. At first I was conscious of the need to make new friends, but gradually I got sucked back into lone wolf mode. I became pretty isolated and eventually started to feel anxious. Here is how I changed things and you can too.

Everyone was totally soaked, so I figured to make any impact I’d have to adopt a special approach. I’d take note of who shot at me, calmly take the hit while making sure my gun was at full pressure, then deliver a piercing burst of cold water into their ear or in between the eyes. Women and children were spared.

The wife is doing all the talking. I try hard to hear any response from the husband. Amid the surrounding thrum I can hardly hear a thing from him other than the occasional affirmative grunt. She talks and talks. He says nothing, arms crossed.

Time moves slowly on the walk. It’s not hard to imagine the scholars of earlier times strolling along in their brilliant kimono, tweaking their latest poems.

A man about my age, perhaps a little younger, walked by with one of the building managers. A petite woman, I’d seen her taking people through the gym on level 10. She dashed into the office to get her phone and the pair exchanged details. To what end I wondered.

If you can work out a way to earn even half your home salary online, you can afford to live a good lifestyle in Thailand. But to what end? Is it enough just to get by?

In my street I’m constantly hailed by scantily clad women as I walk by. After a week they are starting to leave me alone, but if I slip up and make eye contact I still get some kind of musically voiced pitch thrown my way.

Something had to give. That something was inflation, which like a sleeping dragon we managed to wake up after much poking.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what led me to investing, but I think there are a few critical pieces of the puzzle that I’ll list here. Perhaps they might help you if you are still searching for your place.

I start this blog not in the hope of any material reward. In fact I really don’t expect it to gain much popularity. But I have the urge to share what I’m learning as I journey through life. If it makes a difference to even one other person, then this blog will have been a success. It seems a shame to confine all the amazing things that I discover about people and the world to my journal and not share it with anybody. So here it is then.