Since he was leaving Las Vegas, Eric was not worried about leaving the two girls alone in Sin City, so he simply put them on a plane to Los Angeles at the airport, and then rushed to Maryland with his entourage on the Gulfstream business jet of the Firefly Group. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

It was nearly two o'clock last night when he finally went to bed, and after the plane took off, Eric began to catch up on his sleep, and when he woke up again, the Gulfstream business jet had reached the skies over Maryland.

Located on the east coast of the United States, Maryland is located next to Washington, D.C., and is not very large, only a few tens of thousands of square kilometers. Looking down from the portholes of the plane, you can see large areas of lush woodland and farmland, and the landscape seems to be closer to the hills than to the plains.

Although it was just after 8 a.m. from Las Vegas, it was already 3 p.m. Eastern time when it landed at Frederick City Airport in northern Maryland four hours later.

Frederick City Airport is a small, unfenced, completely open plan with only two runways and most of the miniature propeller planes parked around it.

After the plane stopped on the runway, Eric walked down the gangway, wearing a cowboy hat and wearing a plain Jeffrey had already brought Chris and others to greet him, at a glance, Jeffrey seemed to be thinner, but his spirit was obviously more vigorous, if he rode a horse and hung the revolver at this time, he obviously looked like an old cowboy in the west.

As soon as he got closer, Jeffrey unceremoniously gave Eric a big bear hug: "Hey, Eric, you're finally here." ”

"yes, there's always too much going on," Eric explained, patting Jeffrey on the back and smiling, "Jeffrey, you look younger." ”

Jeffrey also laughed modestly: "Haha, everyone thinks so. ”

After a brief greeting, Eric hugged Chris again and teased: "It's the day after tomorrow, how do you feel?"

"Numb," Chris laughed at himself, introducing the two young men who followed him and Jeffrey as his cousins.

Eric shook hands with two young men who were probably his age but rather reserved, and Chris said, "Everyone is waiting for you on the farm, let's go." ”

Eric nodded, and with his assistant Peter Richie and four bodyguards, he left the airport in four cars from Chris and rushed to Jeffrey's farm.

Heading north along the highway that crosses Frederick, the surrounding rolling hills are even more evident from the ground, with woodland and farmland intertwined in early summer, when the greenery is full of life. Half an hour later, a few cars left the highway and walked less than five kilometers east to reach their destination, a small farm with about a dozen families, surrounded by Jeffrey's farm, about 2,000 acres, equivalent to eight square kilometers.

Along the way, Jeffrey was excitedly introducing the farm, saying that it was a farm, but in fact, only a quarter of the land was planted with crops such as wheat, in addition to a part of the dense woodland, the rest was pasture, and many horses, cattle and sheep could be seen in the distance, and the dozen or so residents of the farm were basically farm workers and tenants.

There were more than a dozen people standing on the asphalt road at the entrance of the farm, and after Eric got out of the car, he could probably recognize most of them, Joanna, Virginia and Emily and other women standing together, of course, there were three little ones, and the others were John Chambers, Steve Keys, Yoma Ollila, Ian Gnier and other high-ranking members of the firefly system, and the others were probably relatives of Chris and Emily.

As soon as everyone was about to say hello, a small figure called for Dad to pounce, and in the laughter of everyone's different expressions, Eric did not shy away from it, and hugged Emma affectionately, asking, "Have you been naughty lately?"

"No, Emma is very well-behaved," the little guy put his arm around Eric's neck and said crisply, "I've learned to ride a horse, Dad, let's go riding together, okay?" ”

"Oh, Emma is awesome, but not right now," Eric complimented, handing the little one over to Joanna, who came over, and then greeted everyone one by one, and got to know Emily's parents and some other relatives in Chris's family.

Most of the guests would come on the wedding day, and there were not many guests in the farm at this time, and after chatting for more than ten minutes, everyone dispersed temporarily, Geoffrey's house was on the east side of the farm, and Eric and Jeffrey and the others walked towards the residence together.

Kevin, who was carrying Virginia all the way, passed by the center of the farmstead, Eric noticed suspiciously, a group of people who were obviously agents were checking something around, and looked at Chris curiously, John Chambers and the others must have brought some security, but they should definitely not be so public.

Eric didn't need to speak, Chris understood his confusion and explained, "The president and his wife will come over then, these are the Secret Service people." ”

Eric raised his eyebrows slightly: "You invited?"

Chris shook his head and said, "I received a call from the White House three days ago, and it said that the president and his wife happened to be free on the 20th, and Washington was very close to here, so, you know, I couldn't refuse." ”

Eric smiled, not saying anything.

In addition to John Chambers and other business executives who have already rushed over, due to Chris's connections in recent years, there will definitely be heavyweight business leaders such as Warren Buffett who will come to Chris's wedding on the wedding day. When the time comes, the business executives gathered in this small farm, just the firefly system, control the total assets of more than $200 billion of enterprises, and the two in the White House can even attend other people's events as long as they donate a Zhengzhi donation, so they will naturally not miss this opportunity to exert their own influence.

Although Eric will not completely disengage from politics, he will not be too active in making friends with the top of the government. But the other party took the initiative to come up, and he would not refuse either, and it would not hurt to have a good relationship with the president.

Many wealthy Americans have the habit of buying land to become farmers, and Ted Turner, the majority shareholder in the media industry, is one of the largest private farmers in the United States, owning tens of thousands of square kilometers of private land. Jeffrey's farm was also taken over from a merchant who originally used it as a summer retreat, so there was a very fine brick and stone villa in this farmhouse for living, which was not only beautiful in appearance, but also had a lot of rooms, more than enough to accommodate a dozen or twenty guests.

However, at this time, the villa was mainly inhabited by relatives of Chris and Emily, and John Chambers and others were arranged in several other residences.

Eric naturally also belongs to the kinship level, so he also lives in the Jeffrey family.

After settling in completely, it was already evening.

The day after tomorrow is the wedding, and there are still many trivial things to prepare for tomorrow, and everyone simply gathers in the evening and rests early.

Although I want to take a break from my busy schedule, it is not too easy to do after all.

Early the next morning, it happened to be the new week, and Eric had just gotten up, and before he had time to eat breakfast, Peter Ritchie brought over a document along with several specially marked newspapers.

It turned out that after nearly a month of review, the federal court in San Francisco, California, officially rejected the request of Sony, EMI, and BMG to ban the sale of MP3 audio format players. The official press conference will be officially held at 9 o'clock Western time today, but the news has been revealed in advance and has landed on the important pages of major American newspapers.

In less than two months after its launch, Firefly Electronics' Fireflyer has sold 250,000 units, far exceeding the promotion speed of portable players such as Walkman and MD Walkman, and this is because of the limited production capacity of Fireflyer.

Due to the popularity of Fireflyer and the widespread social impact of the use of hunger marketing, everyone realized the huge potential of the Fireflyer player as a possible alternative to mainstream portable players, so the entire music industry has been closely watching the possible reaction of the federal court in San Francisco, starting with the joint lawsuit filed by Sony.

Chris also got up early and got the news.

It was just after seven o'clock when Eric and Chris walked along the path around the farmstead, flipping through the San Francisco federal court's lawsuit against the three Sony companies.

After reading the thin few pages of the document, Chris rolled up the paper and put it in his hand, and said to Eric: "Sony will definitely not be reconciled, although after this case is dismissed, they will not file the same lawsuit in a higher federal court for useless work, but they will definitely look for other breakthroughs." ”

Sony Group's current market capitalization of more than $50 billion is mostly supported by portable music players and related ancillary industries, and it is of course impossible for Sony to give up on curbing Fireflyer so easily.

Eric is not too worried, it can be seen from this lawsuit that the United States is the home of the Fireflies, and even if Sony finds any breakthrough, it will be weakened by its own away disadvantage.

"Actually, if I were Nobuyuki Idei, I would immediately abandon this useless move that is doomed to failure and decisively promote the development of digital music players. Although we already have a big advantage, Sony can still pose a threat to us if it is determined enough. ”

Chris said: "Maybe Nobuyuki Idei has this idea, but it is even more difficult for him to push for a concrete plan. Sony's corporate structure is too fragmented, the hardware department has the interests of the hardware department, and the entertainment department has the interests of the entertainment department. ”

Eric looked at Chris with a smile and said, "Do you think I'm too scattered about the fireflies?"

Chris didn't answer the question directly, but said, "Victor and Bill have mentioned to me more than once that they want to bring the online music store back to Firefly Electronics. ”

Eric asked, "What do you mean?"

Chris said: "Yahoo currently has nearly 50 million registered users in North America alone, including more than 5 million users who use the YahooPay platform to realize online payment behavior, which is the basis for online music stores to sell 1 million songs in 5 days. ”

Yahoo's registered user resources began to accumulate almost after the release of the Internet Explorer browser and portal in 1992, and it took five years to develop to 50 million users, and the huge registered user base is also Yahoo's most valuable resource. If Firefly Electronics operates its own online music store, there is no reason for Yahoo to open up its user resources to Firefly Electronics without reservation.

Chris clearly sees more than Firefly Electronics' Victor McNelly and Bill Olsen. Or, Victor McNelly and Bill Olson know this, but as managers of Firefly Electronics, they are instinctively more inclined to fight for more interests for their own companies, even if those interests even hinder the overall development of the Firefly system.

To put it more seriously, selfishness is the nature of all human beings, and this cannot be changed even at the end of the world.

Shaking his head slightly, Eric said, "Let's not talk about this for the time being, how is the operation in Southeast Asia?"

"We're nearing the end of our positioning, and we're probably able to open $3 billion in short positions, mostly in semi-annual FX contracts," Chris said. ”

It's late May, just over a month before international investors launch an attack on the Southeast Asian monetary system, and the size of short positions against the entire Southeast Asian monetary system may already exceed $100 billion. $700 million to establish a position of 3 billion, which is only about 4 times leverage. Although it didn't meet Eric's expectations, he also knew that it was not easy to reach this level with the wolves looking around.

Speaking of this, Eric remembered about Apple and said: "One more thing, I met Larry Ellison the night before, and he is currently raising funds to buy Apple, and I think this is a good opportunity, so I agreed to invest some, well, about $300 million, which is this money in the foreign exchange market." ”

There was a hint of surprise in Chris's expression, but he quickly regained his composure, after all, this was not Eric's first unexpected investment move.

However, he still said: "Regarding Larry Ellison's desire to buy Apple, there has been news in the circle more than once, but the other party has not made much substantive action. He and Steve Jobs, Apple's founder, were very good friends and had always wanted to get him back in charge of the company. But," Chris smiled and shrugged, "Eric, I don't know what you think, I still don't recommend you do that." Although constrained by the anti-monopoly case, Microsoft will not kill Apple, but with the current strong position of the Windows system, it is difficult for Apple to have much room for development unless it takes the initiative to fall into the Windows camp. ”

"Actually, I'm more optimistic about Jobs' return, so I agreed to invest this money. As you may know, Steve Jobs was a paranoid, and I've always felt that paranoia is always more successful than others," Eric explained, "and Apple itself has a very large fixed asset size, and even if it does go bankrupt in the future, we won't lose much." ”

Chris nodded and said, "Well, I've been taking the time to keep an eye on this recently. ”

Eric teased, "So, you're really not going to go on your honeymoon with Emily?"

Chris gestured around with his eyes and said with a smile: "The scenery here is good, we plan to stay here for another two weeks after the wedding, it will be regarded as a honeymoon, and we can accompany Dad." ”

The two chatted like this, and before they knew it, they had already wandered to the end of the path, and in front of them was a dense wood, and it was said that there were wild boars in it, and they must not be able to go any further. No sooner had they turned back than Joanna's sister, Eva Pakula, beckoned them from a distance, as if it was time for breakfast, when Eric and Chris hurried back to the farm. (To be continued.) )