(careful sarcasm ahead)

So the day finally arrives. For years now I've had to listen to the 'sages' and 'wise-ones' prattle on and on about being in this story since the begining. The guys go on about how first they discoverd fire, then suffered the Dark Ages and finally they went and bought some ECU shares for like .005 cents. Oh "Young" whippersnappers like me rememeber the Chithouse days, but only really when it started to fall apart... aparently there was a golden time where all was peaceful, fairies kissed the ECU investors every day and ECU moved up and up on multiple positve drill results...

...but then the Rats and Clowns invaded and ECU became a dark place. The wiseones fled their Chithouse lair and went in search of a new home. They founded this valley and in this valley wisdom did reside. Many of us took our time finding the valley, but eventually we all settled in for a very long, very dark and forboding winter. ECU moved from being the darling of the venture to being the dark ugly mutt of the TSX. We bonded. We huddled and we fret. We yelled and ranted, we celebrated (very occasionaly), we pondered conspiracies and we searched the moon for answers. At the end, we looked at what we had and we raised our fists to the heavens and cursed the lack of fairness in it all.

But now old wise ones - we can ALL claim to be here from the begining. From now on we ALL got here and bought the AUM gold for some piddly ECU beans & will be able to tell the story to future investors who only start riding this bus at 100$ a share.

I for one would like to plant the flag of founders and am very proud to share it with new and (very, very) old investors alike. And a hearty welcome to any 'super old' AUM investors who are befuddled by this sudden influx of scraggly refugees. We may look rough, but we'll help to make this the best investor forum and the best company one could hope for.

May we all get filthy rich. May all the OLD ECU investors live long and prosper.

Soul.