My exact thoughts 

I feel that in good forums (like the one you visited), we get to learn real stuff. Im forever grateful to the taikors and sifus from forums who guide me into property investment 4 years ago and I learnt more from these guy's real life experience VS books. At the end of the day, nothing beats experience and these guys were kind enuff to teach me stuff and learn from their mistakes and profits. This I believe has considerably shorten my learning curve.

Without forums, no TS, or even Maytower for me............... 

One word of caution here, there's always gonna be good sifus, and bad ones. Use your own judgement to evaluate the advise you get.

Free advice is always the most expensive advice

"free advices are usually very costly.."
.. there's some point to it.

that's why i don't name my examples.. it's a different way of learning, the principles are more important that explicit illustration (accompanied by figures to substantiate.. folks who have high gullibility and vulnerability would look closely for these.. and more so, from a stranger?!? what's the level of authenticity of it?!? what if i'm just a goofball who knows how to work some fancy figures and impress some "wooo,... waaa"?)