Moving Along

Apropos e*'s post about moving on, I have to confess that 4 months into the job and I already have the desire to move on. The company culture just isn't me. Too fussy about minute details. Too squabbly. And most of all very very Gen X. Read this article recently about Gen Y's at the work place. While I've always hated such type casting, I for once can identify with being a Gen Y. Some of the points mentioned:

• Do not respond to the traditional command-and-control type of management.
• Have a speak-your-mind philosophy
• Care about work-life balance
• Embrace change
• Comfort with technology
• Crave constant feedback

On the other hand, there's the feeling that the situation is the same in most work places. But I do not feel like I can do anything to change the status pro quo.

Sigh. I miss my MENG project days. I think I just miss projects where you have a sense of mission and of achieving something. And I don't feel like I'm a highly qualified clerical officer to an indecisive bunch. I'm probably exaggerating this somewhat. I just feel like I need a clearer direction of where my life is going. So if things don't work out here, my next career choice is to be a consultant. Or a financial analyst. Or a not-very-rich tai tai.
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Moving in a Month

Didn't have much time to blog lately. No further progress towards my impending marriage. I'm starting to think we can stay going-to-get-married for the next five years. Oh fine, may be not. The 'rents will probably kill us first (using the ever powerful incessant nagging) before that happens. I'm kinda waiting for the big move to the new place so I can hold the registration ceremony there. It's not that I'm hoping to have this romantic I don't know what there but that's the only way I can get registered on a weekend.

Somehow, all the things I wanted to say seems so boring. My life just sounds boring. Either that or I'm just horrible at making them sound terrific. But I guess it's hard to make reading, playing table tennis and being in love sound fantastic without risking sounding too cheesy. One thing that would really make it all better is having my own kitchen. We are both missing my erratic cooking and I really hate to cook in someone else's kitchen. Ooo, this weekend, I'm looking forward to cooking chili con carne!

Will also be furniture shopping for our rooms in the new place this weekend. We already have some key pieces in mind like the platform bed and L-shaped sofa but the rest of our rooms are still unknown. Well except the wall color which me and his mum decided on yesterday. I hope lavender doesn't come out too gay for the bedroom. The lounge/games room will be a neutral magnolia. The bedrooms have this yucky sandy brown parquet floors which I really wish could be stained black or dark brown but that would set us back by probably two thousand dollars ++.
My conclusion is that I'm so not an interior designer. Shall see if I get inspired this weekend. Must remember to bring my camera out!
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Wedding Rings

We bought wedding rings on Saturday. We probably made the trainee sales assistant's day with that transaction. Not that she was very helpful, mind. I already knew the design that I liked. I saw it at another branch earlier where everybody was too busy attending to the $200 purchases *oh I think this bracelet is too delicate* to care about the potential >2k sale in a ratty t-shirt and cargo pants. I did give them a fair chance sitting there for 5 minutes totally unattended feeling like a moron.

Actually even at this shop, there was a couple looking at wedding rings who was hogging the display. So it was a good thing I knew what I wanted. While we paid for our purchases, the same couple was *still* seated there. Starting to wonder if we were too quick in purchasing it. We *did* visit several jewellers prior to the purchase. So anyway, the ring is not ready yet and it probably looks like any other wedding ring so I'm not gonna post a pic. Embarassingly, darling has the same ring size as me. I shall happily conclude that he's way too skinny instead of the contrary.

Yeah so the ring comes with this dazzly diamond thing. The bright side (pun unintended) is that i won't have to endure awkward outbursts of "Oh, you mean it's a wedding ring? Where's the diamond?" Not that I would have cared. Eat sparkly diamond glare. So the ring I liked came with the stone. I guess I could have asked for the male version which doesn't have a diamond. Didn't really strike me at that point in time.

Women must be magpies reincarnated.
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Time, anyone's best friend

After work has started, spare time has become a most precious commodity. Seriously, I won't trade them for the biggest diamonds in the world. Well, unless I can sell the gem and live off the proceeds w/o ever having to work again. Hmmm....*rubs chin slowly*

Okay enough of my crazy Monday-induced fantasies. It's not that I'm extremely busy. As of now I still work only regular hours, 8:30 to 5:30. Later on, 7/8 appears to be the norm but even then it's still much better than the hectic, insane hours my dear e* lives through. But the transition from being a time rich, cash poor student to a time poor, cash still poor working adult is still quite a shocker. Before I graduate, I'd shudder at having only 2-3 hours every night of R&R ( rest and relax).

Now, after one month, I've gotten used to it. I no longer spend as much time surfing the web for manga (mainly because I don't have unlimited broadband :o( ); I spend about 15 minutes watching telly; and the rest of the time I can read or play FF on the Gamecube. Weekends are usually a whirlwind of activity. Saturday mornings are reserved for chores (i.e going to the bank/ post office); Sunday afternoon is gym time while he plays basketball. The remainder is either visiting warehouse sales (I just got this gorgeously soft Elle leather mules for S$30!! Yay me!), borrowing thrashy magazines from the library or just more R&R.

The weekends usually make me reluctant to go back to work coz they are so much fun. I guess that's why I'm reluctant to spend any of that time on something as boring as making marriage arrangements. We *did* go shopping for platinum wedding bands.

Anyway, I can only do the solemnization thing on a weekday. I think it can be done on weekends but only if you purchase their package things (?) The website isn't particularly helpful. Somehow most webpages in Singapore/ Malaysia are like that lots of flash and colour but totally lacking in useful content.

Anyway, we are both hoping to get by with the simplest of weddings. I think our parents are more eager for a grand wedding than we are. Will keep you guys posted on what we decide on. If it were up to us, we'd just get legally married and dinner with a couple of close friends. And no fancy wedding gown or silly posing wedding photos. I think I will actually consent to having some flowers though. Sunflowers to be exact.

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Btw all, I'm going to go register our marriage soon. Like when we can find the time. *doodeedoo*
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Finding my Freedom

I was quite unhappy the previous time he brought his friend home to play on the console. They would spend hours playing and generally lose track of time. I’m always uncomfortable in the presence of strangers especially if they are strangers that belong to someone I know. Even if I’m in my home, I manage to feel claustrophobic. That time, I just sat and sulked, hoping that he will somehow realize it. Which he didn’t.

My chest tightened. I got sad at my own inconsequence and then angry. But I never really did anything about it. I just kept quiet and fumed inside. (Imagine how bad my blood pressure must have been!) I thought I couldn’t do anything. After all, how do you ask a guest to leave without being offensive?

So all this while that I’ve pegged myself in, I never realized that freedom was so easy for the taking. It did not dance in flashy ads or hide behind a banyan tree. Somehow, I just never saw it. I just suffered silently and let the anger bubble along painfully. Today, it was different and I am happier for it. I never realize it could be as simple as saying “Okay, I think you guys should stop”. How silly I am.

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The Blues

It’s been one week at work. I’m still waiting for them to shuffle the portfolios and give me something to do. So meanwhile, I’m just sitting around reading anything I can lay my hands on. But it’s starting to get boring. I wonder if the fact that it’s Friday makes me want to leave more eagerly than usual. Or maybe it’s been a whole long week of monotony.
Man there’s so little time left when you start working. Everything has to be cramped into the measly weekends. No wonder people suffer from Monday blues.
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The LongDue Update

Last Friday was my first day of work. I believe I can summarize my job with four dreary words: long hours, low pay. I don’t really like the people from HR. Most of the general staff I’ve met there are really inefficient. On the other hand, I guess that’s why they are stuck in that kind of job. If they were deserving, efficient but merely uneducated, they would have already moved on. At least we have a car now, so getting to and from work is a lot faster than it would have been.

His parents also bought a condo around their area with the intention of parking us there. Forever. (Update: The deal didn’t go through for various reasons. So we are stuck in the same condo. Forever!!! Not.) Maybe they are already imagining cute little unborn grandchildren running around them screaming "Grandma" and "Grandpa" (Or maybe even "Gramps!"). I shudder to think of it. So essentially, we have been bribed to stay close to them even though our work place is really at the other end of the island and it would have been so much economical to get a place there.

I guess I should be happy that I’m marrying into a ‘good’ life. But I’m not. Some people might dream of marrying a rich prince/ heir/ person, stay at a condo instead of a crummy HDB and drive cars instead of slumming it on public transport ( we still take buses when there is a direct bus to our destination. Parking is troublesome). I guess I’ve probably done my fair share of dreaming of marrying some rich guy and living the life of a tai tai. I really can’t remember. Right now, that just seems so absurd, not to mention boring. After all, I didn’t go through all those years of education so I can sit around diligently being unproductive.

I don’t know if this is a result of being in love, but I find myself easily contented with simple things. Like being together. Like a cow.
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It's over!

Finally finally finally, the project is over! This week past by with a frenetic pace. I've been practically living in the school labs. Besides the times when we break for meals, we've been working and working and working.

Saturday and Sunday: Working on presentation, running tonnes of simulations. Results turned out to be rather disappointing
Monday: Presentation. Went pretty well. But was so long that the profs were falling asleep
Tuesday & Wednesday: Writing up and more writing up
Thursday: Proofreading and making corrections
Friday: Printing and then binding.

The report turned out to be just over a hundred pages and we had to print 11 copies of it. So our print job turned out to be ~1150 pages and cost ~$300 bucks. Luckily, the project is sponsored so it's nothing out of our pockets. I did hear that some other options had to fork out money to do the printing etc. What giving out our labor for free and still have to pay for it? Outrageous!

Anyway, I'm glad it's over. Sorry for not replying any mail for so long. I was so tired by the time I get back :{

So I still have a week left before commencement and another 1/2 week or so after that before I leave here. I'm gonna miss it but I'm also looking forward to going back. Esp all that yummy food. Gawd, I'm making myself hungry.

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The One Before

So my final exam in university has ended. It went okay. Now, I'll need to work full time on the project. Anyway, Baba in my last vent is really a nice guy. In fact, I couldn't ask for a better team member. I guess even when I complain, whine, get angry with people, it's sometimes really a heat of the moment thing. The good thing is all the negativity dissipates once I get a good nights sleep. (so maybe all that displeasure was really because I have a horrible disposition when I'm lacking sleep) The bad thing is when I sometimes act impulsively when I'm pissed off and I would really wish I didn't say or do the things I did.

In my case, I've come to accept that I complain about things because I am unable to cope with them. One of the good things about being able to talk to darling about anything is that I learn new things about myself when I'm talking about things I'm so used to doing. Because I directed his attention on me, I'm more conscious of how he sees me, hence, giving me a more objective view of my own actions.

So anyway, if whoever I wrote about accidentally chance upon this site, I'm deeply sorry for what I've said before. My own incompetence in dealing with certain situations is no reason for me to vent on others.
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It's sometimes hard for me to start writing. Most of the time I'm horribly dissatisfied with what I had and end up rewriting one paragraph several times. The most enjoyable writing I've done tends to flow directly from the brain to print, no silly sentence contruction woes etc. Of course that probably means that my grammer is worse than usual but... well... that's what spell checks are for? :o)

What I would really wish to do is to make any type of writing enjoyable. Or at least tolerable. I was struck with this idea after my exam today that during exams, I never seem to have a problem with writing. Perhaps I've been trained so well to answer questions that it comes naturally. So what I thought might work is to pose my writing pieces to myself as questions like "What is the purpose of this section?" and move on from there. It probably sounds silly but I think forcing myself to think about why I'm writing it sometimes help in giving myself clarity of thought. Will try this when I'm writing the report later.

One of the things about the report that I'm really trying to achive is to write like a kid. Not in terms of the content but the style. I've really hated reading papers and books whose main purpose appears to be impressing or confusing rather than enhance understanding. I've come to believe that we should write to be understood. If I can help it, I will not use jargon in my writing or yawn-inducing equations. I'm personally a technical person. I understand jargon. I love Maths. But equations still make my eyes gloss over whenever I see them. How would it look to someone without the same background as I do?

A common 'fault' I've found among the American engineering students is the desire to spew jargon. Maybe it impresses people in job interviews and thus grants them a better job. I personally don't like it. If an employer didn't hire me because I didn't use words he didn't understand, perhaps this is not the company I would be really happy in.

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Symptom #4

So I realized that symptom #4 is actually the urge to make repeated entries to my blog.

When he's around, I vent, complain, whine, discuss... basically talk about everything nitty gritty thing. And somehow after I've talked about things, I no longer feel the urge to even think about them in great details anymore. Which could explain why I no longer keep a diary after we got together. Which makes my pre-'him' days sound kinda sad. Like I have nobody I can talk to. Actually more like I won't want to bore other people with those silly little things.

Anyway, let me complain about my group member. Let's call that person 'Baba' (short for babaniang). Today, we were arguing about which methods we should use for the application. So Baba already implemented his way of doing it which I thought was a really bad idea. So we decided to ask our advisor about it.

It turned out that we could use Baba's way for part of the application, which is great news because it means that some preliminary results we obtained would still be valid and we don't have to rerun them.

What really irked me though was that Baba immediately said something to the effect of "see, I'm right' or 'yes!'. Uh-huh, right in front of our advisor. I didn't know he was so bloody concerned about being right. I personally don't care if I'm proven right or wrong. I just want to get the job done well. But obviously not so with him. I thought his little verbal victory dance was pretty rude. That, comebined with his customary condescending "If you insist, we'll do it your way" when I'm trying to suggest a better way of doing things, kinda royally pissed me off. Especially since he rarely listens to what I'm really saying, he just does whatever he wants anyway. (I'm probably being unfair to him on this part. It's really more about his other attitude problem)

Anyway, after furthur clarification, it turned out that we needed to use my idea for another part of the application (which was what I was really concerned with in the first place) aka 'Baba' was wrong. Childish, pushy dumbass.

Aaaah much better.
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Hopeless

I'm really hopeless. Here I am trying to convince myself that I'm okay even if he's not here. Still doesn't stop me from getting all lonely and missing him at every corner.

Sypmtom #1: Drowning myself in work
... is almost pathetic. Well, not exactly drowning but I've been working on some notes for our study group (basically a bunch of us bums who never catch up with the reading and decided to each do a portion of the readings), random research on stuff etc.

Symptom #2: Not very nice Top 40s music is also blasting in the background
... in a bid to distract myself from how quiet it is here. Soon I'll be reduced to talking to my soft toys.

Symptom #3: Things that I normally do for entertainment seems so pointless
Somehow can't seem to derive the same pleasure from reading stuff or playing Diablo. Ironically, when he's around, that's all I do and I don't actually spend more time with him...

Bah! Need to get myself out of this almost-funk. *grumpy* __________________________________________________________

Summer is around the corner

Summer's around the corner. Today's temperature was a sweltering 25C. 5 minutes out of my house and I was beginning to melt.

Darling has just left for Cincinnati to present his project to the sponsors. Mine is next Monday, on-campus, which is a relief since flying to Phoenix and back is a serious pain and waste of time. Well at least time that could be better used for other things. So today and tomorrow, I'll be all by myself in this room. I will miss him sorely but on the other hand, it's been a long time since I have the freedom to be responsible for myself and only myself. It's not that being a couple is burdensome but it's different when you can make decisions that are "For-Me-Only". I guess sometimes I do enjoy time by myself.

Not that I will be doing anything I won't be doing if he were around -- working on the project, playing Diablo II, browsing forums, etc. The feeling is just a bit different. Ah, and I can also blast teeny bopper (like Avril Lavigne) or techno (like BT, DJ Tiesto) music without feeling guilty for subjecting him to it :)

Most of the important things I have to take care of before I go home are settled.

1. Book tickets *Check*
2. Sending belongings home *Almost check*
- books are on their way but not too sure if the rest will fit in our suitcases
3. Liquidating other crap *Check*
- At least the big ticket items are taken care of i.e car, TV
4. Discarding items *Quarter check*
- I've been throwing some winter gear like boots, extra comforters away.
- Also arranged for a charity to pick up our PCs. Yeah, donated them away. Nobody's gonna buy 4 year old PCs
5. Taxes *Check*
6. Cancel phone, cable
7. Closing bank account, getting bank drafts
8. Pack!!!
9. Clean up stupid house so they won't charge us $25 per hour and hire someone to clean it
10. Return keys. Arrange to get deposits back

And then there's still my project to finish up. Bummer.

Farewell, baby car.

Today is the last day baby car will be with us.

In the evening, his new owners will be here to lead him away. It has been great fun driving around with him. He gave us the freedom to go out unconstrained by bus schedules. He is our first car. Well, it's really johnny's car but nevertheless, we both feel emotionally attached to him. It's funny how we develop feeling overs inanimate things.

When we first purchased him, we never thought he was the car we wanted, at least not in that color and not with the rear spoiler. If we ever get our second car though, I'm tempted to get one that looks just the same. (that would probably not be within the next five years given the cost of owning one in Singapore)
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Hair of Steel

It's quite amazing but did you know that hair can pierce your skin? Well, I didn't. Either the hair around my apartment is extremely tough or the skin on my feet is extremely soft. Given that I have been walking on my feet and developing nice protective layers of corn, I'll bet on the former.
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Seal the deal

Whoopee, will no longer have to worry about baby car. Finally gotten a firm buyer. After all that effort of putting up a website (with purty pictures and stuff. even had to endure a not so nice remark from darling saying it sounded so gimmicky. *huff*), placing a classified ad, making appointments for test drives and other stuff, it's almost over. Just need to finish the paperwork, tidy up the maintenance records to pass over to the next owner :) The car was sold at a pretty nice discount for the buyer but I was glad that I at least got the asking price I wanted.

One and half weeks more of classes and I will probably not be in school for at least another 5 years.

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The Friday Ritual

Recently, we've started this ritual of going to Wegman's on Friday evening for dinner. They have some really great wings at the food court and reasonably priced + yummy-licious sushi. There's also a new favorite of mine seabreeze salad which consists of fresh seaweed drizzled with sesame seed oil. For 15 dollars and some change, we enjoyed a really great meal.

After dinner, we would head to Barnes and Nobles and browse through books/magazines/manga for the next 2 hours. This is usually around 9 by which time the store would be closing. So we walk next door to Tops and buy the week's groceries.

It's almost like a date and I really like it. I guess we never really "dated" much since we moved in together and see each other every day. But days like these are fun and I kinda regret that our time here is coming to an end. On the other hand, I'm kinda excited to go back too. I think I shall deem Friday nights our date nights from now on :)
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Liquidation

We're one step closer to selling our car. One prospective buyer has asked us to go for a buyer's check and I take it that she'll take it if all goes well. Hopefully that is the case and I will no longer have to worry about finding a good owner for my darling car. Yes, we treat the car like it's a little rombunctious baby. Well, more like a baby pet really. I think I will miss having him around.

The car currently consists of a significant portion of our monthly expenses but given the fun we've had with him, I think it was well worth it. I probably can't say the same for a car in Singapore. We've been relatively sedentary and our longest driving trip is the one to New York City. The car is more like a glorified shopping cart but without it, we wouldn't have access to cheaper groceries so that sort of covers a little of the cost of ownership.

Anyway, I've been trying to sell off some of the items we've accumulated so far. I'm practically giving them away (which I will do when I really have to leave). I've already pledged my PC to charity, on my way to selling the car, got rid of a few unused household appliances, sent off the few books with resale value... but there's still so much junk. Personal belongings like pillows and comforters that I still have to discard.

I feel somewhat guilty for creating so much trash. I think disposal of solid waste is going to be a really big problem and we should play our part in reducing the amount of junk we create. Next time I buy something, I will try and ask myself: "Is this something you will use until it break?" Somehow milking everything out of my purchases seems to give me as evident when my jeans literally fell apart
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An un-nervous phone call

I don't know if I have mentioned this before. I have a phobia of talking to people I don't know. This especially applies to phone calls to businesses where I almost never know who I'm talking to. The making conversation part is fine. It's the period between me grabbing the phone and waiting for someone to pick up that is really unnerving.

About a month ago, I picked up someone's cellphone. Being the kind soul that I was, I decided to give his (it turned out) mum a call. It was the only person on his speed dial whom I knew would immediately identify who he is. I was afraid. What if she thought I was some crook or telemarketer? On hindsight, that's pretty irrational, nobody thinks of anybody that calls as a telemarketer... When I did call her, I got her answering machine. She called back later and I missed it coz I'm such a cellphone noob that I almost never hear/ feel cellphone ring/vibrate. So I finally talked to her and gave her my phone number for her son to contact me. I was quite happy with myself for challenging this mental hurdle. Of course subsequently, I made darling pick up the phone when the son called.

But anyway, I just called up the local papars to place a car ad to sell our baby car. To my surprise, I was relatively nonchalent about it. Just pick up the phone and get along with the business. Granted, I had broken out in a light nervous sweat when I was done but I think my phobia days might just be over.
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The Pain of GUI

One of the class projects I'm working on has a big emphasis on GUIs (Graphical User Interface). The division of work in our team consists of darling working on coding the simulation while I work on the interface.

After pouring hours into some relatively simple user forms with graphs etc, I've finally realized the pain of all user interface designers the world over. The problem with interfaces is that if it's good, nobody will ever realize it. People only ever think about the interface when it's not good enough (Why can't I just drag and drop this? Should add this feature and that feature...)

I'm sure there are other examples where we take things for granted. Maybe like how we expect all cars to come with power windows and air-conditioning. Can you imagine that in the older days those were actually luxury items? Or another example may be air conditioned buses. Any more that you can think of?
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Test Result: Normal

Whee! The results of my urine culture came back to confirm that it is normal. I had deduced (and probably deluded myself) that it was so by virtue of the fact that I didn't get a call etc telling me it wasn't. That's great news. So I'm finally free of this pesky infection.

I was somewhat surprised by the really low cost I had to pay for the antibiotics though. For 10 Cipro pills, the pharmacy bill came to $2.53. I could have sworn it cost me more than $15 the last time round. Maybe it has something to do with the shortage of the said pill the last time with the whole Antrax fiasco. Well, I'm not complaining.

It would be nice of course if the test results came back a little earlier. Instead of 3 weeks later. I wonder how much of it is paperwork. If the campus healthcare system is representative of the US systems, they need to do much better than that. While I was sitting in the waiting room for my prescription, there must have been at least 6 people who walked in the door bearing some test results. Given the cost of human labor, they need a more efficient way than walking up the stairs every time a document needs to be transferred.
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Torn

4 weeks more of classes. Torn between being relived that school will be over soon and the fact that working life will begin. Of course the grey area between will be very much welcomed.

The last weeks of classes is also the busy periods where projects get completed. My masters project has been on track but somehow the work never stops coming. Right now, I'm performing some sensitivity analysis. The runs take a while so meanwhile, I surf the web and blog etc. It's kinda nice to feel productive while doing other things. I'm really hoping that I will at least enjoy my work. I'm not even sure which department I will be posted in yet. I might request to go back to network planning. The group there is pretty young and I've had a fruitful time there.

Recently, I've had the feeling that I have too many things I want to do but too little time. It's not that my schedule is packed. To the contrary, my class schedule is relatively blank. However, many of my tasks require indefinite number of hours with no immediate urgency. I know that I have to get my projects and reading done by the end of the semester but I can't quite get myself to commit a fixed number of hours each week working on them. Me thinks I need more discipline. Sometimes I get confused between how I should tradeoff my wish to relax and desire to succeed. Is the delayed gratification really worth the sacrifice of enjoyment now?

Sometimes I actually worry that I work myself so hard that I'm missing out on enjoying my youthful days. Conversely it could also be true that I'm just kidding myself and I should really be doing more than I am now.
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The Middle Path

Trendy. One of those things that will never be. To begin with, I hate following trends. For me, most things that come with a boat load of hype attached actually has their utility discounted. Movies definitely fall into this category. I remember in my first year of junior college, The Ring was the movie to watch. Everyone was talking about it. I wouldn't go near it with a 10-foot pole. (Granted, I was biased in the first place: Coz I hate horror movies. Coz I'm always scared after I watch it. Coz I think it's insane to pay to get scared shitless.)

I'm a late adopter of technology and trends in general. I'd never be caught dead with the latest gadget. I'm woefully uninformed about the new "in" thing. If I were in an American high school, I would be one of those bookish, uncool kids who get picked on all time. I don't see any real value in fitting in.

I'm a non-conformist yet I have also adopted the penchant of hiding behind the mask of mediocrity. There's a Chinese saying that promotes the middle path. I am guessing it was prudent advice for an era in ancient china when the prominent tend to get into trouble with authorities and the poor suffered badly(?).

I find it difficult to do things I think none of my peers or immediate friends are even thinking about. I instinctively tried to hide from someone I know in the finance class that I'm sitting in. On hindsight, there was nothing really wrong with me just sitting in. It's really not something to be ashamed of.

I also feel silly looking up facts about insurance, housing and investment products. I should be proud of myself for trying to be more financially savvy. Well I am somewhat proud but it still doesn't ease that weirdo feeling I have when my darling asks me about what I was reading.

I'm just not comfortable standing out from the crowd I'm in. Even if the crowd is of size two.In that particular case, the fact that his opinions matter more than most is important. I guess it's related to my inability to speak up in class often. When you speak in public or do something different, you subject yourself to the scrutiny. And I'm not up to it. Yet. I guess having thought this out and identified it here, it will be easier for me to overcome it in the future.
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An ode to my mum

The women in my family are savers. Well, maybe by "the" women I only mean my mum and me, and also my aunt. My sister doesn't seem to fall in this category but that may have been a result of that period when our household was just eking by.

I've been very close to my mum ever since I was a wee kid. Being close to somebody inevitably means that you pick up a lot of their habits and philosophies. I would have turned out very differently if I had a working mum who comes home too tired to care. Not to disparage the efforts of all working women, I can't deny that there are definitely potential advantages to having a stay at home mum. Working mums just don't have the luxury of time.

Anyway, in our household, my mum is the chief finance officer. She determines how much to spend on which item. Usually, her own needs are the last in line. At home, I rarely even see the leftovers; my mum eats them for lunch. She works like the Google founders who are working for $1 except without the lucrative stock options. Mums have it really tough.

All that aside, I think I've picked up her frugal habits. I grew up in the generation of consumers yet I find myself reluctant to consume. While most people are cashing out on their future with the use of credit cards, here I am thinking of how to save my measly first wage even before I start working. I don't mean I will be a penny pincher but somehow the idea of budgeting and accomodating all my needs have become more of an intellectual exercise. After all that's what operations research is about, looking for balances between tradeoffs and getting an optimal allocation.

Sometimes, I get on a high just from learning new things. My sponge of grey matter is surprisingly thirsty, even after all these years of sometimes boring formal education.

I hope my mum is as happy as I am about how I've turned out. My gradual independece forged a big part of my philosophy but it was built on the foundation of good sense that she helped mould. One of my goals in achieving financial freedom is to provide her with a well deserved retirement and provide for her future as she did mine.
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Moving Out. Again

So there was my annual dose of sickliness. It's like a whole years worth of sickness bundled into one. I guess it could be a sign of healthiness. If you're healthy, normal illnesses glance off you like
pebbles on a bullet-proof vest. So if something manages to penetrate it, it should logically be more powerful than your average sickness.

I'm now back to typing normal posts instead of those dumb cryptic one liners that I came up with while I was suffering from insomnia.

With only 5 more weeks of classes and less than 2 months before I depart for home, I'm occupied with the more mundane things like projects and packing up. I *think* I have relatively little to bring
home. I mean, besides a half dozen books, I only have my 1 1/2 wardrobe of clothes to get home. (1 and 1/2 because my clothes has spilled over and taken over half of my darling's territory) So I'll
ship the books home and the clothes should fit nicely into my two suitcases. Easy-peasy.

On the other hand, I have noticed a propensity for underestimating the sheer volume of things I possess. So we'll see how my optimistic estimation turn out this June. Trying my best to liquidate my other stuff before I leave as well.

You'd think that after all these years leading the nomadic life, I should be a pro in this whole moving around business. Well, I'm not. The whole logistics of moving home and then out again to Singapore is actually a fair bit of pain.

Johnny and I are thinking of moving out together. For one thing, his place is too far away from work. Of course we would also love to be able to have the privacy our own place would afford us. Even if it is rented. After so many years of living together, we can't really contemplate staying apart like normal boyfriend and girlfriends. It would mean I can't cook homely meals for him anymore. No more hugs and kisses as and when we like. We would probably have to meet outside fairly often instead of chilling on the couch. So economically and time-wise, we are probably better off renting a place. The pressure of staying with in-laws is too much for me to handle.

All this means that we have to find a reasonably priced flat or apartment to rent before we can afford our own place. I wonder if the company would actually provide me with a housing allowance. I have a sneky suspicion that won't be the case. I'd be lucky if I can get reimbursement for relocation expenses.

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Insomnia is a horrible disease.

I officially caught a cold. Wonder if it was the light fever that kept me up the whole night worrying about everything under the sky.
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Why do we hide and wait for a special someone to find us?
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Break is over.

Dead tired.

5 more weeks of classes.

2 projects.

2 finals.

A good grey period.

And then a new phase in life.
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Pro-choice vs Pro-life

For the last 15 years, a brain-damaged Florida woman has layed on a hospital bed with a feeding tube attached.

Her name Terri Schiavo and she is in a persistent vegetative state.

For the past seven years, her husband and legal guardian has fought bitter court battles with her family over whether to remove her feeding tube and thus allowing her to die.

While she did not leave any written wishes if she were to be incapacitated, her husband contends his wife would not want to be kept alive artificially. Her parents, on the other hand, argues she had no such death wish and believe she could get better with rehabilitation.

It seems however that this saga is coming to an end. The feeding tube was removed last Friday under a state court order. Depending on which camp you subscribe to, you see either a woman liberated of the pain of living a meaningless life or one whose last hope of living is being snuffed out "barbarically", as her family describes it.

I have always been a big pro-choice supporter. In fact I still am. Yes, life is precious but I do not believe that it is something I would want to preserve at all cost. Especially if the cost is independence and dignity. If a pregnancy is unwanted, I believe it is better for both the mother and the child-to-be that it is aborted; if a disease renders me unable to communicate either via speech or bodily gestures, I would rather be dead. Is it not more painful to watch myself deteriorate to someone unrecognizable and becoming a financial drain for my loved ones than to die?

I agree though that legalizing euthanasia or abortion presents certain opportunities of abuse. I most certainly do not want to see young women treat abortion as contraception and disrespect the santity of creating life. Nor do I wish to have elderly folks forced into euthanasia by pressures from family and relatives. But I believe these are issues that laws and regulations can work to prevent.

After all, aren't our justice systems based on faith that it will be able to differentiate between the good and the bad?
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Fragility of Health

So what have I really been doing the past few days of spring break? I've been wanting to blog about a tonne of stuff but somehow always lose the momentum to do so.

One of the things that struck me this week was Vyanne's post about her eyes. I know I'm hardly the age to start feeling so but one's health is a really fragile thing. It is also very personal. Perhaps it is a case evolutionary bias against disease but I tend to keep health matters private. Maybe it's just my age old habit of not divulging things that I *think* are unimportant because it seems so pointless.

But today, I'm gonna ignore that little voice in my head that overwhelms me with whispers of "Nobody really cares" and perform my civic duty (riiiight). So boys and mainly girls, today I'm going to talk about Urinary Tract Infection (UTI).

[UTI] is a common infection that usually occurs when bacteria enter the opening of the urethra and multiply in the urinary tract. The urinary tract includes the kidneys, the tubes that carry urine from the kidneys to the bladder (ureters), bladder, and the tube that carries urine from the bladder (urethra). -- Urology Channel

Symptoms include back pain, blood in urine, inability to urinate despite the urge, fever, frequent need to urinate (apparently we urinate about 6 times a day) and painful urination. There's also a distinctly strong smell in the urine.

I had UTI two years ago and have been nurturing a simmering UTI for possibly more than a year. The first time, I was burning up with a fever for days because I had a kidney infection. Since then I've been having morbid thoughts of kidney failure but apparently that is quite rare. Plus I have two kidneys.

I just saw a doctor last week about my second UTI infection. I really should have seen a doctor sooner but I was really in denial. I kept hoping that the problem will go away. Plus, the symptoms were so mild, I could generally ignore it. So this Tuesday, I went back and had a repeat urine culture taken. Apparently some of the bacteria last time were resistant to the antibiotics I took. So this time, they are making sure they kill every last bit of it.

Well, it's been three days after I finished my medication and I don't seem to have the obvious symptoms of UTI. So far so good. Maybe it's the cranberry juice goodness doing the trick :) (supposedly cranberry juice inhibits microorganisms from adhering to the urinary tract) I feel so relieved that I'm finally doing something about this nagging blight on my health.

So in the future, if any of you experience any of the symptoms above, don't be shy to see a doctor like silly ole me. Apparently, one in five woman will get UTI at least once in their lifetime.
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Market Efficiency

Suze Orman is "an internationally acclaimed personal finance expert". She has quite a following among the US crowd who listens attentively to her talk shows and peruses her books on personal finance. Her advice are commonsensical and quite useful especially for those who live in the US. I wouldn't mind having someone like her I can ask about Singapore/ Malaysia finance matters.

So she started a blog for her new book, Young, Fabulous and Broke. In one of her posts, she was arguing for indexing, specifically index funds. To illustrate her point, she had a link to a fund expense calculator. I'm personally a big proponent of index funds and ETFs because of the low expense ratios that they boast. The rationale behind indexing is that the market is efficient -- information is freely available.

The Efficient Market Hypothesis states that at any given time, security prices fully reflect all available information. [...] if markets are efficient and current prices fully reflect all information, then buying and selling securities in an attempt to outperform the market will effectively be a game of chance rather than skill. -- Investor Home

As several analysts have point out however, markets in developing countries are usually inefficient. Savvy investors can then take advantage of this inefficiency and find deals that other people have missed. This means it is indeed possible for mutual funds in these countries to outperform the index. It seems to be the case that the Singapore market is inefficient. The Shenton Thrift fund beat the STI index by at 4% annualised over their respective lifespans. Using the calculator, I found that with the typical 1.5% ER of a mutual fund, it needs to outperform the index by 1.5% to achive similar returns. Given that one can do dollar cost averaging with mutual funds, I guess a good fund can prove to be a good deal.

My original plan was actually to build an index only portfolio. After these considerations, I guess I shouldn't disregard mutual funds totally.
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Investment Account Part Deux

After consulting with darling, we've decided not to start an online account here. Not only is it hard to know if I can purchase index funds here, the cost incurred is not insignificant. So I guess my next move is to do my due diligence on Singapore brokers instead.

Meanwhile, I also need to decide if I really need a financial planner (FP). I would love to have someone I can throw questions at instead of having to do my own research. However, planners in Singapore are commission driven, making them more like glorified salesperson. There is obviously a conflict of interest when their primary goal is to sell me products that yield them the most commission instead of ensuring I get the optimal return on investment.

Putting aside the fact that I do not like salespeople, there's also the fact that the planners allocated to small fry like me are probably not as experienced. Given that they are probably do not have a lot of experience and that I am really pretty intelligent, there is a high probability that a planner assigned to me will be less analytical and possibly less knowledgeable than I am. Haha, that sounds pretty snobbish. Not that I care. But it's funny how truths about your own intelligence or wealth invariably sound more like a boast than a statement of truth. Plus, it's my money we're talking about :)

Anyway, one of the few advantages a planner has is the tools they have access to. If only I can get my hands on their planning tools, I probably won't need any of them. Or I could look for the so-called independent planners. Sadly, no such thing as fee-only FPs in Singapore. Yet more research needs to be done.
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Investment Account

In an effort to diversify my future portfolio, I am planning to have a portion of it invested in US. One of the easiest ways to diversify it seems is to purchase mutual funds or Exchange-Traded-Funds (ETFs). Historically, mutual funds have been underperforming the index. The evidence appears compelling enough. With that in mind, I've decided to build my portfolio around index trackers.

I'm still somewhat undecided between index funds and ETFs. The prime advantage of an ETF is its low expense ratio. However, some index funds in the US also come with comparable expense ratios and more importantly, no sales commission whereas ETFs incur brokerage fees. It also appears that Vanguard Index funds are performing slightly better compared to ETFs because they use "futures to boost their returns".

Acting towards that goal, I was thinking of starting an online investment account with about 10k to purchase ETFs in US. These are long term investments to be kept for at least 10~15 years. Need to keep in mind that 30% of any dividends that I receive from US shares will be withheld and paid to the IRS. If possible, I would really prefer non-dividend paying funds since capital gains are not taxed. Don't think it's quite possible though.

Since I'll be leaving the US in a couple of months, I'm trying to make sure everything will go smoothly. One of the things I have to consider is the cost of transferring the equity from US to Singapore. I would have to transfer the stock to a Depository Trust Company (DTC) and then to the Central Depository in Singapore which then transfers it to my Singapore broker (which I still have to shop around for when I get back)

Or I could keep the online US account, which would give me the freedom to trade US shares without going through a Singapore broker which charges significantly more.

Under consideration:

Ameritrade - $5 per trade, $25 transfer to DTC
Free Trade - Free first 20 trades, $50 brokerage transfer
Scottrade - $7 per trade, free 3 trade from referral, appears to have no transfer fee but I'll need to check.
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The very thought of purchasing shares with my own money makes me nervous. But I figure if I'm going to make mistakes, I should do it when I still can. It's frightening but also exciting to be taking charge of my own finances. I do wish I have somebody knowledgeable I can confer with though. Learning it by myself is pretty rough. I don't really have confidence.

My only consolation is that even the "experts" are not really that much better off. They too do not know if their decisions are right. Need to learn more. Fast.
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Nurturing the Child in Us

Students fail to perform and parents start playing the blame game. Fingers start pointing at the education system, the social climate, the teachers, violence on TV, video games, porn... Rarely, if ever, do they consider their own role and influence on their child.

A recent study based in the US showed that Mormon teenagers fared best in school. The same study also showed that conservative Christians and [...] Protestants bested Mormons in [...] their high rates of belief in God. It would seem that their academic performance is not a result of being more religious .

Mormon parents "expect their children to do well, they invest in their education and encourage them to perform services for character building rather than for pay."

In contrast, Asian parents often portray academic diligence as a means to wealth, a good life and all that jazz. In his secondary school days, when my brother slacks off, my mum would overtly threaten him with the possible future of making roti canai (or roti prata if you're Singaporean). I can't say if it is the right or wrong approach since the kids in my house all turned out okay.

Perhaps it is because we did not fall into the trap of believing that wealth is the most important accomplishment to life or more simply, that wealth measures success. While we not well-off and had some difficult periods during the 80s recession, we were never really lacking. Sure, I probably wouldn't mind having more spanky toys and dolls but I never really felt the need to own anything in particular.

I attribute this lack of material desire to those tight years when my dad was working as a cab driver. We were going through all my mum's emergency funds that she had prudently accumulated and one of the things I learnt then, was not to ask for anything. I was about 10 years old. I grew to derive pleasure from window shopping alone. Trips to stationary shops were one of my greatest treats. I would look enviously at all the fancy pencil cases I knew I could not afford. But I never asked my parents for anything. At least not as I remember it.

I believe that it is important for a child to develop strong internal believes especially when they are young. Many young people today are led by their hedonistic desires. Together with the easy availability of credit, this has resulted in an increase in bankruptcies among the young in Singapore, as well as the US and UK. The lack of a strong set of principles, I believe, is also what leads to mid-life crisis as people find that what they've been pursuing -- wealth -- is not as important as they thought it was, leading to a restructuring of their life-long goals.

People need to stop blaming external forces and expecting governmental or educational reforms to fix their problems. Instead, try some introspection and identify problems that really arise more from within than without.

Exercise and Walmart

I ran around the track while my darling was playing basketball. Today, I chalked up a total of 4.4 km. Well I only ran 2.4km, the rest was more walking than anything else. I figured that since I was there, I might as well work out instead of reading a book which I could do at home.

I still have 150 pages of this book I was supposed to finish by Sunday. I could blame it on my final exam which turned out to be extremely easy or the fact that I was reading a lot of other articles online, but I really shouldn't. I need to learn discipline. Or at least the ability to set realistic goals. Well, actually I still have 2 more days but I don't think I can masticate the rest of it by then. I really like this book and I would like to let myself savor it rather than finish it just so I can put a check against my list.

In lieu of my exam, it was slightly anti-climatic to find the questions to be almost exactly the same as the practice final. Granted, she did not provide solutions to the practice. It still made my effort in studying moot. I guess it's kinda like purchasing insurance to hedge against the uncertainty. Or more like I know I would hate myself for not studying if studying would have helped.

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Grocery shopped at Walmart just now. It's amazing how a 1lb 12 oz pack of sandwich meat that costs $7.99 at another supermarket cost only $3.98. That's a 50% difference!

I don't see why so many US people are against Walmart. Is it a us vs. them, little guy vs the evil corporation thing? Or is it something else? As I see it, they give good value to consumers even if they do so by bullying suppliers into submission. If it was really unprofitable for the supplier, they could always not serve Walmart right?

There are complains that Walmart and the big chains put the little honest grocer out of business but people conveniently forget that Walmart started small too and grew because it was successful.

As I see it, the neighbourhood grocer and Walmart really serve different niches, at least it seems to be so in collegetowns. Small grocers have higher margins because people pay a premium for the convenience. They also tend to have more variety compared to Walmart which only stock one or two of the most popular brands. When I shop at Walmart, I always feel that there is a lack of choices in terms of brands. Walmarts are usually much furthur away from residential areas due to their sheer size, making them inaccessible to people without cars and also adding to the cost of shopping in the outlet.

There is also the quality issue, not concerning their groceries but things like apparel and some toys. The clothes there looked obviously cheap and had a stiff, papery-coarse look to it. (Some of the teen clothes looked pretty decent though); The ninja turtle action figurines I saw there were also visually of lower quality compared to what I saw in Target.

Well the company has earned so much negative goodwill, that some guy esteimated that "[e]very third store Wal-Mart tries to build faces community opposition". Of course this coming from a guy who runs a Web site devoted to challenging them, you have to take it with a pinch of salt. [Source: Let Me Count the Ways People Don't Love Wal-Mart]

I'm personally of the mind that the market should decide what's good and what's not. I don't particularly like or dislike Walmart. (After all, it's just a place I buy cheaper groceries from) but Walmart obviously has something to contribute to society. If people think they don't pay good enough wages, go work somewhere else.

Spring Break

It's Spring Break again. Putting the words "American" and "spring break" together never fails to conjure images of wild Mardi Gras parties and exotic locales like Cancun, Daytona Beach and South Padre Island. After all, these are the places where the Girls Gone Wild series, known for putting "old-fashioned Daytona debauchery" on film, get their material.

Spring breakers are notorious for their hedonistic indulgences: sex and alcohol. While these students bring great economic benefit to the local economy that they visit, the disturbances often dismay the residents.

In South Padre Island, a manager of the Padre South Resort reports the damage he's seen during Spring Breaks.

Wall, who manages Padre South Resort on South Padre Island, has seen spring breakers shatter mirrors, take bath towels and crush lamps during drunken wrestling matches.

Still, the layer of tortilla chips, which had begun to creep into the hallway outside, was memorable as much for its scope as its slovenliness.

"I couldn’t see the carpet. It looked like a straw mat," he said. "These guys had not a clue they were supposed to clean up the carpet."

[...] "I don’t know if their parents had the talk with them, but condoms aren’t supposed to be filled with water and thrown off the balcony," Wall said.

The incidences of drunken brawls and accidents also increases dramatically over this period.

So given all that historical licentiousness, what are my plans for Spring Break?

Looks like I'm just going to sit at home, read my books and enjoy some home-cooked meals (cooked my yours truly of course) First, I'll try to make my spaghetti with ground beef less oily.

Spaghetti: It's as oily as it looks.

It's cold

While spring is definitely in the air and the temperature has tamed somewhat, the warmth in our house has once again mysteriously seeped away.

I have a sneaky suspicion my landlord turned off the heat to save on heating costs. Hello! Spring break isn't even here yet. There are still people in this house and *one* of these people happen to have an exam today. I find it so annoying that I woke up multiple times because it was freezing in my very own apartment. This is tenant-abuse I tell you. Abuse!

I have a good mind to leave the water running. Bah, pissed off.

Four years off the scale

It's been more than four years since I've measured my weight. Today, I finally obtained the verdict of 3 years and 7 months of the American diet.

It looks like mom was right and I did gain weight. The scales now pronouce me a good 122 pounds which is equivalent to 55kg. I think at the end of J2 I weighed about 114 pounds (52kg). So while I did gain weight, it's not quite the Freshman 15 that college kids or at least those in my uni were supposed to get with our orientation package.

I'm actually more surprised that I'm not tubbier than I am now, given the things I eat and my sedentary lifestyle. Even more surprising to me is my lack of real dismay over the weight gained. Granted, part of my brain is attributing some of those pounds to my pair of heavy jeans and shoes *grinz* I guess I'm really over that phase of my life where I'm unhappy with how I look.

I've also decided that I will not have a weighing scale in my home in the future. No point in purchasing something that will only be used once every 4 years after all. My brain it seems has grown accustomed to looking at each of my possible expenses critically and weighing (pun not intended) the returns of each investment. Yes, I'm horrible. I know :)

Updates

Heh heh was playing with that gender determining software that vyanne's friend used on her blog text. It appears that my writing is predominantly male. When it did turn out female, the results were usually marginal. Looks like I write with an androgynous/ male style.
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My favorite pair of jeans from U2 is falling apart! As I was patching up a little rip, I found that it was so threadbare on the buttocks that if I bent over, I would be mooning someone. *sniff* Looks like it has lived past it's usefulness. Looks like I'd have to say good-bye to it when I leave the country.

This is my first pair of jeans that is so well worn it is falling apart.
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Went to the portfolio management class. The material was pretty interesting. The lecture today was dedicated to showing how mutual funds consistedly underperformed the market.
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Spring break is next week. My last spring break. Once again, I will be burrowing into my apartment. Hmmmmm. Warmth.

On the other hand, there's only 5 more weeks of classes after spring break. Still have my Master's project to work on and write up. Finished one part of the interface for my clustering algorithm. Next, I'll have to interface my demand analysis and put the two together. And then there are other projects. That's not even counting my own reading project and investment planning self-study.

Final Exam and my New(relaxing) Class Schedule

I really should be studying for my final exam that's on Thursday but since I really have no other commitments till then I figure I could relax a little.

Well, I sorta have to do the bulk of my studying by tomorrow night since I have to return the textbook on Wednesday. I initially ordered the textbook online and the fool website that took my order had to tell me a week later that actually they do not have it in inventory. Since this course is only 7 weeks long, I was reluctant to place another online order which would take up to 2 weeks to arrive. I didn't want to buy the brand new book from the store either coz it's a freaking $150 for a really really hefty book. The book itself is probably about 8lbs (~4Kg). The cost of me shipping that home would be more than grotesque.

So I ended up borrowing the older edition from the library and saving some cash. The problem with a library book is that somebody could place a recall request and I would have to return it. Luckily for me, (and unluckily for the dude that recalled my book), the book is due the day before my finals.

Anyway, I've dropped my supply chain class and confirmed that I still have the requisite credits to graduate. The course was just too much work for 3 credits. I'm glad I even have the option of dropping it instead of being stuck in it. Granted, I had to "pay" for that option by going for classes religiously for the past 6 weeks or so, but I also manage to learn the crux of the problem that ails supply chains. So I'd say it was time well invested. So onward with my reading project and personal finance self-study. Tomorrow, I will drop by at the B-School portfolio management class.

Something Special

She ain't too pretty, she ain't too tall,
In fact she ain't too much of anything at all.
I don't care what the people say,
They're going to find out some sweet day.

She is precious, she is charming,
She is so innocent it's really disarming.
And just one look at her face is good enough for me.
- Eric Clapton, Something Special

I don't understand the concept of being special that preoccupies most women today.

I don't understand that craving for a carpet of luscious red roses or a fey, dreamy and ephemeral wedding nor the preoccupation with the so-called bad boys.

Indeed, I prefer my life and love grounded in reality. Indeed, just as the romantic encompass the impractical, I am the paradigm of all things practical and thus unromantic.

I don't need someone else declare to the world that I am special. Especially not with an irrational frivolous use of wealth. I would rather have two books than a dozen or roses that wilt within a week.

I don't need to feel unique in the sea of hoi polloi. I am unique. I have always been different. I didn't choose to be different. I just am.

Most people feel the need to fit in -- try to be nice to everyone, do the things they are expected to do, say the things they are expected to say and even ask the same stock questions about life to give it a philosophical edge. They are the trend followers. Some try to break out of the trend. Most emerged different but in the same manner. They are different within a limit of tolerance. Of course those who go beyond that have probably gone to a madhouse.

The trend followers have become so efficient at fitting in, that their sense of self is threatened. They start to question if they are really a result of their externalities and experience what is now known as a mid-life crisis. In their attempt to seek for the internal source that powers their selves, the need for individuality and uniqueness is roused.

Unable to subjectively evaluate internal evidence with any conviction, they seek outward confirmation.

Advertisers sensing this need, latches on and stokes it. One prime example of that is the DeBeers "Diamonds are forever" campaign. While diamonds are indeed the hardest substance on earth, it really doesn't have much intrinsic value. When push comes to shove, it is just a pretty rock. The reason why diamonds are expensive is demand exceeds supply and Debeers which has a monopoly in the diamond industry can easily squeeze the supply to a trickle.

To increase the demand for their commodity, their advertising campaign sets out to convince people that diamond rings are a necessity for a betrothal. In the pre-"Diamonds are forever" age, engagement rings are not iced. As we can see, their campaign was a success.

Thus love, invariably linked with diamonds, now comes with a dollar valuation. To clarify, I'm not saying that love can be bought with money. What we are seeing in society is that people are expected to express love with irrational use of money.

The story usually goes like this: A man loves a woman so much that he is willing to irrationally pay a hefty price on trifles like a pretty stone in order to please her. The woman, upon learning that there is one who love her so deeply, feels that surely she must be unique and special in some way and her self-doubts are assuaged.

Because I am different, I do not feel the need for irrationality. If lavished with such attention, I think I would feel burdened. Such extravagant waste would disgust me. But because I am different, I find that most people do not understand my lack of need. They see it as justification for not receiving. I just laugh at their small little world.

Sometimes, it is difficult to not be understood. Sometimes, I almost wish I was not different. Not caring about fitting in leaves me in the orbit of society. I maintain my anti-social stance, afraid that one day, I will laugh in their faces and receive cold uncomprehending stares.

My Music Stats

1. What is the total amount of music files on your computer?

5.3 GB. 3.8 of which are from my free Napster subscription that the university bought for us. Those will be gone when I gradute :( On a totally irrelevant note, my manga folder is at 8.5 GB.

2. The CD you last bought?

BT - Emotional Technology

3. What was the last song you listened to before reading this message?

Not too sure really. Could be some Sheryl Crow song. Or Roxette. Or S Club 7. Or DJ Tiesto. Or BT. Or Eminem. Or Fat Boy Slim. Oh wait, maybe it was Rent? That's the trouble of shuffling my song selections. Well, I can tell you the song I'm listening to now is Wouldn't It Be Nice by Beach Boys.

4. Write down five songs that you often listen to or that mean a lot to you.

Rockafellar Skank - Fat Boy Slim -- gets me in a nice groovy mood

Rest In Pieces - Saliva - It's a great song. Call it love at first note.

Roxette - I've been playing their song on repeat for years.

Def Leppard - Vault album -- also been playing this on repeat since secondary school (high school) days

Sil Suffisait Daimer - Celine Dion -- I don't even know what she is really singing about but I love the way it sounds.

5. Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?

Nobody. No one else I know who owns a blog reads this blog. Plus, I don't really particularly care what other people listen to :P

Disregarding Sunk Costs

Somehow my weeks fall into this pattern of relaxing - busy -relaxing which explains the lack of posts during the weekday. Tuesday and Wednesdays are invariably homework nights.

Well not so anymore. I've decided to drop the supply chain class that I've already taken for half a semester. I took it as my "for fun" class. Since its fun factor isn't as high as I thought it would be, I shall henceforth declare my efforts for the first half of the semester as sunk costs. Since my half semester course is also coming to an end, I will be free as a lark to do as I like, beginning next week.

Things that I am considering:

• Dropping in on investment and asset allocation class
• Reading the investment textbook I just borrowed
• Reading my 5(!!) books from the library
• Cooking: chilli is top on my list here.

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I have one whisker on my left cheek. I am officially a cat.

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"Don't sweat the small stuff"

For as long as I can remember, that has been my guiding motto in life, through times of pain and doubt, as well as joy and happiness. My outlook in life also warranted several comments, from both guys and girls, that I think in a very masculine manner. Comments like that makes me want to either laugh or cry.

Self-Delusion

There's this guy who has been complaining about being unemployed. The same guy also admitted that he tries his darnest to get by with the minimum amount of effort and hence barely graduated with a string of D's. The same guy also had a job. But he quit because he decided that the remuneration wasn't worth the emotional and physical effort required for it.

I don't know. To begin with, I'm surprised he even got a job with his academic results. If I was an employer, I can only conclude two things: 1) this dude is relatively smart but is indolent or 2) this dude is plainly dumb. Actually, in my opinion, if you're smart but simply can't be bothered, then you are really pretty dumb. Either way, those are not desirable qualities to have in a future employee.

So by some stroke of luck, he got a job. Great. Happy ending. But then he decides that he's too good for the job. And now he's moping because he can't find another one.

What I found most laughable was that part of the reason why he hasn't found a job yet, as far as I can gather, is that he "insists on getting work that pays reasonably in the IT sector". It's not that he can't find a job. He just doesn't want one unless it's cushy, pays well and comes with little work.

Seriously, he needs to evaluate the worth he can bring to any company. I don't know what gave him the confidence to think he deserves all that. Bolstered by his unfounded self-esteem, he decided that the reason he in unemployed is not because his qualifications are mediocre at best or that his expectations are too high but because of "employment discrimination" whereby employers favor foreign talent . Now isn't that the classic excuse.

I'm sorry but I can't find much sympathy for someone who is basically a bum and expects people to court him like a king.

I sometimes envy the amount of confidence people can generate about themselves. Most of the time, I find that they are also the saddest people in the world: not knowing their place in the world, they perpetually feel mistreated, even victimized, not knowing that they were the ones to cast themselves into that position.

News: Virtual Girlfriend

Talk about loser. Some nut in this software company somehow thought it was a good idea to sell a subscription based virtual girlfriend.

The article goes like this...

MEN, are you tired of the time, trouble and expense of having a girlfriend? Irritated by the difficulty of finding a new one?

Mr Eberhard Schoeneburg, chief executive of Hong Kong software maker Artificial Life, may have found the answer: A virtual girlfriend named Vivienne who goes wherever you go.

[...]Vivienne, the product of computerised voice synthesis, streaming video and text messages, is meant not only to bring business to Artificial Life - she will be available for a monthly fee of US$6 (S$10), not including the airtime costs paid to cellphone operators or the price of virtual chocolates and flowers [... which costs between] 50 US cents to US$2.

Firstly, one of the reasons this software will not sell is that it is damn loser. It claims to be able to let users test out scenarios with a virtual girlfriend before the real thing. Which basically means that if you buy her a gym membership, she will get offended. Dude, I can tell you that without even asking for a cent.

Second, the subscription fee is inhibitive. Not only do you have to pay US$6 a month, you have to pay for her chocolates and flowers?!? Also mentioned in the article is that the program limits users to an hour of playtime a day. Seriously, I'd rather pay for a Tamagotchi and play all I want, paying nothing more than the initial cost.

It's just amazing the things people think they can sell. This dumb software company that is actually throwing money into this junk is going into my blacklist. Then again, you never know, if people would pay thousands of dollars for a grandma-looking LV bag, maybe they will pay for subscription girlfriends as well. If I see anyone who bought it, I promise to laugh out loud in their face for being such a loser. Frankly, I think paying for porn or prostitutes is a better deal.

Plans for the Future

With the semester half over, I've begun to think about graduation. Well actually, at the beginning of this semester, I was already thinking about post-graduation.

I spent the past week wolfing down information about investment and this morning, woke up at 8am ( my system is all geared up for waking at 8am no matter the day of week. Bastard) and spent the next 2 hours reading about the CPF system (equivalent to social security) in Singapore, mortgage rates, procedures for marriage, permanent residence (PR) , ... the likes.

The impending shift to the next phase of life somehow roused the innate planner in me and I'm taking great joy planning for things that can only happen after 3 months: how to spend my monthly income and marriage.

As you may or may not know/remember, me and Johnny are planning to get married within the next year or two. Before "I do", I have to first get MoM's (Ministry of Manpower) approval because I worked under the Work Permit scheme on my internships at SIA. Next things on the list would be marriage and PRship. Not necessarily in that order. After *THAT* comes the application for a HDB flat.

So my schedule for the rest of the year should look something like this.

|****May *** |***June *** |*****July *****| ***** August**** | ***** Sept *****|
Graduate --> Moving ---> Start job/ MoM's approval ---> Registry of Marriage --->

|***Oct***| ***Nov ***| ***Dec *** |**** Jan 06 ****| |--------->|****April 06 ****|
PR application ---------------------> Applying for flat --------> Renovations --->

|**** July 06 ****|
Moving into new home

This is just my most optimistic estimate of course. Looks like even at my most optimistic, it will still take another year before I have my own place. Anyway, both our parents do not even know we are planning to get married soon. Not that they will disapprove. Not like it matters even if they disapprove. Marriage is a personal affair after all. Oh and somewhere in between all that I would like to have a small wedding reception for close friends and family.

One of things we really want to push for after graduation is to move out together a.k.a cohabitation. We've already been cohabiting for the last 4 years so it's natural that we want to stay together. The beauty of it all is that his parents and my mum knows we are staying together. My dad doesn't even know who I've been staying with. When he asked if I was staying with a Singaporean, I just said yes. No elaborations.

Well even though I say I do not care for my parent's approval, I certainly hope they would because life would be less painful that way. I wonder how they would feel, to have both daughters marry in the same year.

Anyway, looking at my penchant for planning, I was starting to wonder if I should start a new career path after paying off my bond doing something related to that. Maybe be a financial planner. Will definitely look into this if I find my work boring.

Unhappy Singaporeans Marrying?

A Reuters article titled You're a Pain, But Let's Get Married Anyway claimed that in a recent poll of 700+ couples who planned to wed, 39% of them said they were unhappy. Are there really so many couples who are going to marry someone they don't even like?

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Singaporean couples may not be happy with their partners but they will still marry them anyway, a global survey on relationships shows.

The poll of 716 couples who planned to wed showed that 39 percent were unhappy in their relationships, the highest proportion of nine societies surveyed by a U.S.-based marriage and family therapy organization.

The poll is the latest unflattering survey of ardor in a wealthy population that chases what is known in local parlance as the Five C's: career, condominium, club, credit cards and cars. [...]

Among those in the survey who consider themselves unhappy, most cited disagreements with their partners on a number of issues, or said they disliked their partners' personality or that there were problems communicating effectively. [...]

Olson said couples in Singapore -- an island of 4.2 million people -- may be suffering because of a reluctance to speak their minds about problems to avoid confrontation.

"They are afraid to say what they think and are afraid to disagree," he said.

My first reaction to that was the survey was phrased in such a way that most Singaporeans misunderstood the question. I mean by unhappy, they could really mean that they wish their to-be-spouse could be more [something] or less [something], instead of what the article implied that they do not feel happy being together with their partners.

I mean seriously I don't seen the 40% of couples who are about to get married looking unhappy/grumpy or marrying for money etc. It really reinforces my belief that self-reporting surveys are bad indications of what the actual situation is.

News: International Aid

Reuters reports that Sri Lanka has decided it needs to tax inappropriate aid that has been sent to them in order to discourage them. Among those items were winter jackets.

COLOMBO (Reuters) - Tropical Sri Lanka is grateful for a deluge of tsunami aid
but said on Friday it drew the line at used winter jackets, blankets and other
second-hand clothes and would tax unsuitable aid to discourage it.
[...]

"I think they have been sent with good intention. Maybe they
thought Sri Lanka was on the South Pole,"

Just a week ago, there was another article in Reuters talking about the inefficiency of international aid.

LONDON (Reuters) - Red tape, inefficiency and nepotism mean that only one
fifth of international aid actually gets to the people who need it, aid agencies
said Monday.
Not only that, but 40 percent of international aid is spent
buying overpriced goods and services from the donors' own countries

[...] "First and foremost, they need to spend aid where it is needed -- on
poverty reduction -- rather than channel it to their own consultancy and
infrastructure industries and geopolitical allies," the report said.

[...]"Donors tend to be more concerned about the success and visibility of
their project or program than the success of a country's development plan," it
said.

It reminds me of charities where wealthy people donate with a flourish to gain positive publicity. Granted, somebody did benefit from the generous sum. But the current international aid system is a bucket with holes; nations are choosing to plug their favorite holes at the front of the bucket while leaving the ones behind neglected.

This scenario also mirrors the case of the National Kidney Foundation (NKF) in Singapore. NKF is the charity with the highest visiblility in the island (what with its charity show etc) and the amount of donations they procured represents a significant portion of total donations whereas smaller charities are barely eking by.

Monsters From My Mouth

When we chance upon each other on the street, our faces colors up, rising us from the black and white faces of the hoi polloi. In that moment, the world pales and fades into nothingness and we kiss like newborn couples. When we go on our own way, shoulders brushing, the world blinks back into reality and we merge back into the facelessness.

It's sometimes almost silly and embarrassing the way we act in public but that does not deter us from what we do. But the same lips that deliver sweet kisses also pours forth monsters that I really am ashamed of.

Closer observation of my behavior suggests that the closer a person is to me, the worse the treatment they receive. Total strangers might irritate me, but I would not utter a word; my darling don't even need to anything to get an harsh earful. Funny though it might seem, it is really because I care, even if I might be totally misguided.

In the case of the stranger, even if he is detestable, I can't muster enough energy to give him negative feedback because I don't care what happens to him. Unless of course it is in my interest to do so (i.e reminding a queue-cutter that the line is behind me not in front).

When it comes to people I'm comfortable with, I sometimes say the cruelest things. Yesterday, I lamented to darling that he isn't *ambitious. He's such a easy-going, path-of-least-resistance guy that sometimes it frustrates me. After some thought, I realized that if he really were the ambitious type, I would probably never have fallen in love with him.

Or take my project teammate. He's an easygoing guy as well and I'll tease him mercilessly about his spelling errors, him being such a CS major etc etc. Of course I really meant it as a joke and my comments are really not personal. But my ill choice of words sometimes twists my meaning. Like when I said 'Let's get rid of that thing on the slide. It looks stupid'. After that, I was mentally banging my head against a stone wall for being so callous and insensitive.

I've always enjoyed my own frank way of interacting with people. That is until I found out that I'm really stingy with praise while being lavish with my criticisms. To those who've been on the receiving end, I'm really sorry. I think I should really try giving a proportional number of praises and criticisms according to how I really feel about a person.

The way I've been communicating have given me trouble in the past. I had felt so wronged and victimized. People who misunderstood me thought me, I quote, "arrogant", "a liar", "secretive". For years, the verbal backlash caused me pain and a lot of self doubt. Was I really good enough for anybody? If a person shows me a happy face, does it really mean he/she enjoys my company? Is there really something fundamentally bad about me? These doubts went against my own belief of myself as essentially true and frank. How could is be that I was thought a liar when all I ever did was try to be honest?

Barring the case where I have been deluding myself all along, I come to the conclusion that I had hurt them with my words and thus lost their trust without knowing it. Subsequently, each unexplained action interpreted in an unfavorable light; each wrong word was a mark etched against my character until all that can be seen is a marred and distorted image.

These monsters I unleashed taunted me for years and finally, finally, now I can banish them. But I can only hope that I can restrain myself from releasing them again.

* ambitious not in the I'm satisfied with my job and wouldn't mind being a janitor for the rest of my life sense but more like he wouldn't actively do things that might get him promoted.

a2e: The story of two biking enthusiasts

This is a blog I think e* will really enjoy. These two Singaporean guys are cycling from the Artic (Finland) to the Equator(Singapore), hence the name a2e for their blog. They've been cycling for 7 months and are now at Ubekistan. They even have a logo for their journey.

Their planned route:

Aug 04-Dec 04
Finland. Estonia. Latvia. Lithuania. Poland. Czech Republic. Slovakia. Hungary. Slovenia. Croatia. Yugoslavia. Romania. Bulgaria...

Jan 05
Turkey.

Feb 05-May 05
Georgia. Azerbaijan. Caspian Sea. Turkmenistan. Uzbekistan... Tajikistan... Afghanistan... Pakistan...

Jun 05
India Himalayas

Jul 05-Aug 05
Nepal... India...

Sep 05 ... 2006
Myanmar... Thailand... Laos... Vietnam... Cambodia... Malaysia... Singapore

[Most of this is taken from Mr.Brown]

My Bookshelf

Created a new blog to keep track of my reading progress and reviews/thoughts.

Feeling productive today. Finally did some of my class readings, some stuff about personal finance and finished Ignorance. Milan Kundera has yet to disappoint me with his thoughtful stories.

Personal Finance

One of my recent goals is to learn enough to start investing once I work. I guess if I had been interested at the beginning of the semester I could have taken a portfolio class instead of the classes I'm doing now. Well, if that was the case, I would have had to sacrifice some of the classes I like especially since I'm really overloaded right now. So I guess I will have to make do with self-help books and doing readings in my spare time.

Somehow, I feel a little silly for wanting to know. Well, not exactly silly but maybe somewhat out of place because people I know are not really concerned with these things. At least not yet. On the other hand, there are kids out there who are investing in stocks and starting new businesses, all this while in university. I don't know if it's a really smart decision since I've read at least one blog where such a person's school work is suffering enough to be considered borderline. By borderline, I'm guessing it's close to failing. But I guess the point is, looking at these people, some as young as 22, taking charge of their own finances, I feel a slight twinge of envy.

Also, being devoid of financial and investment is probably going to cost me in the future in terms of either brokerage fees (since I would have to get a full-service ones) or bad decisions (because I don't know any better). The thing about brokers/ financial planners or whatever you call them nowadays is that I know they are usually no smarter than me. They might also provide me with advice that is misguided or worse, there might be some vested interests (i.e commissions) involved. And as I've always said, if I don't have time to do it now, I never will.

With that, I will try to hunt down some of these readings like A Random Walk Down Wall Street, by Burton Malkiel. Cheers to all my barrage of silly new resolutions.

"A blindfolded monkey throwing darts at a newspaper's financial pages could select a portfolio that would do just as well as one carefully selected by the experts"
Burton Malkiel, author of A Random Walk Down Wall Street

A Hidden Resolution

I have a resolution for the year. After a long hiatus of not reading books, by books i mean anything that is not related to a class, I'm trying to bring myself back to shape. I used to keep lists of books I've read every year. It was like some kind of personal trophy, pat on the back. Don't get me wrong, I don't read to chalk up the number of books I've read. I've genuinely enjoyed reading most of them. I've started another list for the year 2005. My goal for the year is a measly 30 books. The stretch goal that I really hope to achieve is 40. I think that was how many I used to read before.

Books I've read so far:

The Two Swords (Ra Salvatore, 12 Jan)

The Godfather (Mario Puzo, 31 Jan)

Fairy Tales by The Brother's Grimm (The Brother's Grimm, 28 Jan)

Therese Raquin (Emile Zola, 4 Feb)

The Chosen (ChaimPotok, 18 Feb)

Ignorance (Milan Kundera, Work in Progress)

So that's at least 25 more to go, which comes to about one book in 11 days. I should start scouting for books that I have been wanting to read for a while.

When I was in my voracious reading phase of life (triggered by hostel life that was devoid of mind-numbing entertainment like TV programs. esp in Eton where all the Orang-dari-negara-besar hogs the TV and watches all those damn soaps), I was surprised that a significant percent of adults haven't read a single book in years. It was inconceivable. Not even a self-help book? Or thrashy romance novels? Whatever disparaging remarks I've made about those genres, they are still books.

At that time, I couldn't imagine my life without any books in it but as I find myself reading less and less, I realize how easy it is to remove books from the equation. In those bleak days of literary starvation, I wasn't even reading the news. Then recently, I was overcome by this desire to learn about anything I can get my hands on: from random home improvements to personal finance, from beauty care to the latest technology... Well, the rationale is that if I don't even have time to read up on these things I probably never will.

Quote of the Day:

The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German dramatist, novelist, poet, & scientist (1749 - 1832)

Blog-Hopper

The grueling week ended well. Homework was done with minimal sleep loss; the presentation was well-received; our project in on track. The tight schedule of the week was somewhat unreal to the extent that even though I know it was Friday (only because I know I went through Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and because all my work had been done), my mind did a doubletake when I realized it was really really Friday and the weekend is here! So I ended the week happy and satisfied. Well, not so happy and satisfied now because I've spent my last 4 waking hours reading from the screen (plus the first typing of this post was lost because I reset my cookies and had to re-sign in to blogger. grr...)

So what have I been reading? First, I went through my daily dose of blog-hopping -- checking blogs of friends for new entries and satisfying my voyeuristic tendencies reading about the life of strangers. If you're like me and have a tendency to blog-hop, you should be aware that there have been cases of spyware spreading through blogs. Once you're at an infected blog, you do not even have to click on anything to get infected. What happened is that blog owners downloads a program that purportedly adds some functionality to their site e.g adding music to site. Unknown to them, the JavaScript code that they put in their blog to obtain that functionality has malicious code planted in it. (CNet News: Spyware Infiltrates Blogs)

Visitors to Blogger's Blogspot.com network have complained that they were exposed to infected sites when they used the "Next Blog" link. [...]

Visitors to Blogger sites at Blogspot.com say they have been targeted with pop-up ads seeking to deliver malicious code to their computers. One ad erroneously warns people that their computers are vulnerable to spyware and prompts them to click the ad to protect themselves. Clicking the ad launches a download that infects a machine with spyware.

At least one Blogger visitor has charged that his computer was hit by an automatic download that did not require him to click on anything to become infected.

[...] [O]ne major culprit of malicious code was a service called iWebtunes.com, which lets people add music to the Web sites in the form of a couple lines of JavaScript code. Bloggers using Blogspot might embed the iWebtunes code into their template and then pass on the spyware unwittingly to visitors to their site.

iWebtunes will likely get a fee each time it spreads the spyware or it might benefit from the sale of advertising. The bloggers, on the other hand, will get nothing.

I've always hated personal sites that come with music. Not only does it inflate the page load time, you are also subjected to the person's brand of music which could get highly annoying (esp when it is on repeat mode) Hopefully this will actually put people off having music on their sites and thus do the world a whole lot of good.

So how do you protect yourself if you like to blog-hop like me? One option is to use Mozilla Firefox instead of IE as your browser. Another is to set the security settings in IE so that it deactivates JavaScript and ActiveX . Another good practice to keep your computer free of malware is to update your antivirus and scan your computer regularly. There are two web-based virus-scans which I highly recommend TrendMicro's House Call and Panda ActiveScan.

With that I wish you all happy blog-hopping.