Looking back at a year of studies at the Open University

This will be a series of posts over a week or so.

I'm currently between courses and thought this would be a good time to reflect on the year that rushed past. As an adult student with business experience I felt that I could take on a fairly high amount of entry level coursework to start with, then reduce my study pace as needed at higher levels. My plan was to study 120 points with the Open University, including three 10 point 'starter' courses intended for people who haven't studied at uni before or haven't studied for a long time. This was in parallel to work commitments (37 hour week according to contract, in practise it's about 45 hours), commute (3 hours per day unless I can work from home) and maintaining somewhat normal social relationships with my girlfriend, family and friends. I also have some hobbies and investments to manage so there was always going to be a need for compromises.

So, how did it all turn out? It certainly wasn't according to plan! Probably the most disruptive moment was the panic call from my girlfriend that she was being evicted by her landlord with an hours notice. No contract, very shady business as it seems the landlord was cheating on benefits claims while making money on renting out rooms. While playing nasty with the landlord might have been satisfying, what was really needed was an urgent solution so that my girlfriend would have a place to sleep that night. A good friend of mine agreed to help and within 2 hours of the first call the move was complete and I was no longer living on my own.

Previously we had been seeing each other about 3 nights per week, leaving me with 4 nights for studies and other commitments. As soon as she moved in there was some level of disruption each night, ranging from having dinner together to trying to go to bed at the same time. Maintaining all of these things as much as possible was probably beneficial from a 'healthy living' point of view but anything that requires getting into a productive state of mind ('the zone') was far harder to complete. In the end I wrote most of my essays in the middle of the night while she was asleep. Reaching my academic targets was still possible, but I think it hurt the relationship more than if we had remained living apart. Up to 4 nights of dedicated study without interruptions was more productive than up to 7 nights with interruptions and pressure to finish by a certain time.

Please visit http://www.libelreform.org/ and sign the petition. The Singh case is a disgrace and UK libel law is becoming a tool to silence free speech by imposing legals costs 140 times the European average. Reform is needed immediately.

#libelreform twitter tag.

May already

Clearly blogging is not a priority for me ;-) University work is again taking precedence, three courses have now been completed and I'm starting three more.

BRW is up 20% and Severfield-Rowen is up 21.8%. IPO and RCG are both down, the gains in RCG were wiped out shortly after the Hong Kong introduction. Lloyds has increased to 111p, a 64p increase from the purchase at 47p.

Continuing to hold all shares, no selling planned. If RCG continues to fall I will top up, maybe double the holding, as long term prospects look excellent. Need to look into the option of buying shares in the UK and transferring to HK for disposal there.

Belated update

Been busy with studies so this blog dropped down in the priority list for a while. During the break I have made only one trade, buying 2000 shares in Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY) at 47 pence on the 23rd of January. Currently the share is trading at 91 pence but the intent is to hold it long term rather than cash in. I'll revisit this once results are published, but my expectation is that a sale in 2010 or 2011 would be much more profitable than a sale now.

One of my earlier purchases, RCG, has now been introduced on the Hong Kong exchange. This has been a long time coming and appears to have been a good move for the company, with the share price increasing rapidly to 23 HKD. The London listing is also climbing, with the price right now sitting at 77 pence. Clearly I started buying the share too early, but overall my holding of 5000 shares is up 27.8%. Those who bought in at the bottom will have more than doubled their money.

Thought for the future: what other Chinese companies on AIM might benefit from a Hong Kong listing?