The lure of The Aircooled engine

Anyone who knows me will know my love of all things air cooled.  I'm not talking about al fresco dining here but the amazing concept of motor engines cooled not by water, but by air.

Since I bought my first VW Beetle in 1988 I have been hooked - old aircooled cars are not the most luxurious of cars, but they have charm to compensate.  Heating is either on, or off and usually tainted with the aroma of exhaust fumes, petrol and oil.  You'll always know where an aircooled car has been parked by the little spots of oil it marks its territory with (or more often the case with badly repaired engines a pool of oil).

They are however notoriously reliable, efficient and plenty powerful when built and maintained correctly.

Porsche famously went on to develop the aircooled engines, developing firstly a four cam, twin distributer model for the Carrera versions of the 356, and then the crowning glory of the 6 cylinder Porsche 911 engine which remained in production until the last of the 993's.

There were of course other manufacturers who built aircooled cars, the most prevalent being the Chevrolet Corvair, but nobody got it quite as right as Porsche.

Today there are hundreds of clubs, websites, forums and shows which cater for the aircooled lover, collector or hobbyist.  My favourites are Volkszone, DDK and The Samba.

I currently own three aircooled VW's and still regret the day I sold my beautiful Porsche 356.  I yearn to own an early 911 which are rapidly going up in price but are the epitome of aircooled ownership.

Mark Paine
Meyado
Singapore

Top 10 Best Things about living in Singapore

The F1 night race.  I just got my tickets for the 2013 race.  As a Lewis Hamilton fan I can't wait to see how the Mercedes performs in the city.

The night race through central Singapore makes for a spectacular event, and the orgainisation of outside entertainment is phenomenal.

Mark Paine
Meyado
Singapore
www.meyado.com.sg

Top 10 best things about living in Singapore

At 9...

Public transport

I can summarise this easily - SMRT are currently running an advertising campaign to allieviate frustrations surrounding the replacement of railway sleepers on the MRT (Underground).  The rationale, according to the advertising campaign, is that broken sleeps equate to a bumpy ride.  A bumpy ride will ruin your hair-do!  How thoughtful is that?

I've lived in some cities with great public transport - notably Madrid and Prague, but Singapore wins hands down, in my opinion for the best run public transport city.

Mark Paine
Meyado
Singapore
www.meyado.com.sg

Run for Hope 2012 Singapore

This Sunday is the annual Run for Hope, a charity run raising funds and awareness for Cancer.

http://runforhopesingapore.org/news/run-for-hope-2012-is-back-with-a-difference/

I will be participating in the 10k run along with some colleagues from work.  I don't hold out great expectations for a good time, but I'm looking forward to having some fun and contributing to a good cause.

Link

Mark Paine

Meyado

Singapore

International Adviser Magazine article on Mark Paine, Meyado

http://www.meyado.com.sg/images/pdf/international%20adviser%20article%20nov%202012.pdf

Diamond Jubilee Weekend

The UK will celebrate 60 years of Queen Elizabeth's reign this coming weekend.

Parties will take place not only across the UK, but the entire commonwealth and anywhere that British subjects abide.

In Singapore there are numerous parties at homes planned, as well as at the British Club.

It should be great fun!

Mark Paine
Meyado
Www.meyado.com.sg

Mark Paine Singapore

Mark Paine Singapore

Mark Paine is the Managing Director of Meyado Private Wealth Management in Singapore.

Meyado holds a license as a Financial Advisor in Singapore and is regulated by the MAS.

Mark Paine holds a Financial Representative license and is authorised to advise under the remit of the Financial Advisors Act in Singapore.

For more information about Mark Paine or Meyado Private Wealth Management in Singapore, visit www.meyado.com.sg

iPhone 5

With the imminent launch of Apple's iPhone 5 I'm wondering whether I ditch my iPhone 4 and keep pace with the market, or wait for the inevitable glitches to be ironed out before I make the leap.

As a user of Blackberry and iPhone I find both have positive qualities but neither achieves all I need them to do - plus I like to have a phone clients can reach me on and a separate one for the kids, wife and mates.

I'm also interested to see what Google will come up with now that it has the development potential with Motorola - how much would you like to visit their R&D lab?

I love technology, it just keeps getting better and better.

Goodwood 360

Last night I attended the Rolls Royce event to launch the extended length Ghost.  The additional 17 centimetres has been introduced to cater for the Chinese market, who prefer to ride in the back of their vehicles as opposed to European clients who prefer to drive.

What a fantastic event it was though, on show were the best of the best including one of the 100 anniversary cars, the electric Phantom and a beautiful drop head Phantom which sold (SGD1.9m)

Sadly I'm not in the market for one of the Goodwood produced models, but looking online I see that the predessor to the Phantom, the Seraph can be bought for under 30,000 pounds in the UK.  That's a lot of car for the money.  Probably a terrible investment though!

How about then a 1990 Silver Spirit for 10,000 pounds? 

However it has to be said that they would not be a patch on the post 2003 cars made in Goodwood - the perfect blend of German engineering and British design, craftsmanship and individual design.

10k Training

We have confirmed entrance for the December 4th 10k run in Singapore. We were too small to enter a corporate team as you needed 25 runners, but we've all entered and are now in active training.


This is a great example of our ethos of Helping People and Achieving Goals

More info here

Coming up this month

June 2011

This month I will be speaking at the ETF conference at the Fullerton Hotel on June 7th about ETF's for High Net Worth individuals.

http://www.artofindexing.com/asia

Saw a strange thing this morning

Straight road, 9am Sunday morning, sunny day, car ends up in a ditch...

I hope no one was badly hurt.