An overwhelming number of developments have happened recently as it relates to the past and future trips.  Let's try to summarize with the key stuff

Development #1:   Geopolitics Closes my Trading Account

The brokerage account that I use for my trading in Hong Kong decided to suddenly cease operations and move to Singapore.  Like many businesses, they cite geopolitics as the reason.  They call it the 'rapidly changing business environment' in Hong Kong.  It's very obvious what they're talking about:  Winnie the Pooh got his paws into the Hong Kong honey.  Truth be told this is nothing new.  The whole place was a ghost town in 2019, even before covid   Things haven't gotten better since then.  The fact that my brokerage pulled out of Hong Kong for their global strategy is frustrating but not a surprise.

What I ended up doing was a complex series of brokerage adjustments and trips to Hong Kong, but I sorted it out as best I could.  Not a day was wasted on this and I went through the entire application process with their main competitor.  Two more trips were made to Hong Kong for this.  What I did next was move a lot of my profits to an external account and will keep this as an emergency fund.

Trading has most definitely become a second job.  But one of my life coaches said it best for these kinds of situations:  "This is not a setback, this is a set up."  I will always remember her words for that.

Development #2:  Difficulty with Closing Cash Value Life Insurance in Canada

My life insurance contact back in Canada said it's no longer possible to open a term based policy because I live in China.  He tried to be helpful at the time but things didn't work out.  There are probably loopholes around this but I'm not going to bother.  Instead, I decided simply to cash out the insurance policy back in Canada.  Easy right?    Whole life and universal life is one big scam.  But try getting your money out.  It is a major hurdle as I learned earlier.  For now that capital potential is just going to have to wait.

Development #3:  Settlement with Stepmother

After long and complex negotiations with my stepmother, we avoided a court settlement and came to an agreement with her.  Against all odds, the law actually worked in our favor.  I don't know how my sister was able to pull it off with her lawyers, but she worked tirelessly to that end.  I can't thank her enough!  Long story short, my stepmother gets to stay in the house as a 'life estate' with certain rights.  Meanwhile we get the rights to own the house.  What that actually means in practice, who knows.  It's astonishing and sad that it took a legal battle to offset what I believe was my Dad's attempt to disown us.  It's even more amazing that we actually won.  Or did we?  I guess time will tell. 

Development #4:  Selling my Share of the Cabin

We also got the rights to own the family cabin.  My sister and younger brother have kids, so they use it and have obvious interests to pass this along to the next next generation, i.e. their kids, my nieces and nephews who are essentially Generation Alpha.  Me and my other brother travel the world, we don't have kids, and we no interest in this cabin.  So we negotiated to sell our shares to the other parties who will buy us out.  That was no easy task either.

Development #5:  Getting Thai Condo money out of the country

This is after all the main thrust of the journal.  The Thai condo proceeds are looking harder than ever to get out of Thailand.  I did a trial run by simply trying to withdraw cash from my Thai bank using an ATM card overseas.  It failed.  Next I tried doing online wire transfers to Hong Kong.  Also a fail.  It looks like my friends in Thailand were right after all.  A more adventurous route will need to be found.  Stay tuned to this journal for all that, but I have to keep the details a secret for obvious reasons.

Summary of Developments

A whole slew of developments has happened.  Some is great, some is not.  Put everything together, I believe this is a win and a setup for something better.  Over a period of time, eventually we'll get all this money into the market.