graduation rewards

these are what i will be getting myself as reward when i graduate (if i do!) by dec. this is bait for me to work really hard. wooohoo.. and i think it'll be timely as i reckon my kanebo skin care should be depleted by dec. after all the raves about this skin care range..i am tempted to try. but it comes with a hefty price tag..which i will budget into my bonus distribution.

i am such an extravagant. but it's just once in a blue-purple-pink moon..so let me indulge! =D

*dearie please read this post! hahaha.

term 2 cleared

the picture tells nothing of what i want to write about..but i thought it is a cute picture that reflects some happiness.. and that's exactly what i am filled with now.

happiness. relief to be more exact. yayyyyyyyyyyyy.. i cleared EVA.. it is merely a pass.. nothing to boast about..but i am thankful to pass because the assignment was very challenging..and the paper wasn't easy.

so that wraps up term 2 of 2009. one credit, one pass and a happy tricia.

portfolio management was wonderfully delivered by dr ali over the weekend. there was not a single moment did i want to doze off despite feeling extremely drained from training and long hours in class. looking forward to attempting the assignment,...but i first got to clear my FIS assignment which is still half done. oops.

cpa pre admission test was nuts. 125 questions in 1.5hours. majority mcq with some short answers. i could not even complete the paper. i feel lousy after the paper ended.. something like fis in term 1.

i learnt alot about financial assets, funds..tried to use the solver.. i learnt about allocation of assets..and how it is adjusted according to our risk appetite..investment horizon.. required return. i've been running through what was taught in the 3 days and i have to say all these new information is mind blowing. that's probably because i have been this toad sitting in a 3 feet deep well, oblivious to all the things going on outside.

But no more is tricia going to be that country pumpkin..though i may look like one. =P jia you. i must work harder. learn. apply. grow.

marking progress

several things made some marked movements yesterday.

- some team issues were addressed. Will update the runners accordingly tomorrow. There are still details to be worked out so I’m hoping for more forthcoming response.

- trained with dearie at stadium yesterday and I managed to follow what he set out for me to do. Pleased with my timing, except for the 400m sprint at the end. When I reached the 300m mark, I could not even lift my legs. They felt like 2 anvils, which I was dragging over the last 100m. I only managed a 1.36 and (I know I shouldn’t have) I threw my temper. I raised my voice to tell him we have just done 10km of race pace, and another 400m sprint was crazy. =( sorry dearie.. I was just angry with myself. You are right, I am not conditioned to do that 400m..hence the lousy timing.

- managed to complete one longggg assignment question on yield to maturity. I need to make faster progress as the due date is drawing near. I need to sleep, eat and live FIS!

Icpas pre-ad classes start tomorrow again. I’ll be doing the cbd march again! Hehe. I am kind of looking forward to get out of tuas for now.

It will be a hectic thurs to sun.

Thurs – pre ad class. Revise for pre ad test on fri.
Fri – pre ad class in the morning. pre ad test in the after noon. Dinner at mummy’s! (that’s the best part of the day) last up, Portfolio class 7-10pm.
Sat – team training at MR (I missssss running at MR. Was just telling dearie I should have lost my ‘trail form’ as we haven’t trained at MR for almost 2 months.) classes from 1-8pm. Dinner at mummy’s, with dearie =)
Sun – training at ecp. Have to start at 6am to complete the 21km by 8am. Classes from 9-4pm. I reckon I will want to go home and sleep after which.

We are drawing very close to ahm and I must keep my form up. Dearie has been helping me to get my workout in place and he has been working hard too. Our aim is to do a personal best for ourselves.. and better the seremban timing.
Haven’t quite decided on scsm.. to do or not to do. Honestly a bit bored with it..but we are in pretty good form this year.. should we just go and do a good timing for keeps?

the ideal saturday

spent the ideal saturday:

1. went for a 20.6km run at rifle range with the team. It was a painful run but enjoyed the entire process.

2. got home by mid noon. napped for an hour. woke up feeling refreshed.

3. started on my fis assignment. got to pull my socks up!

4. cooked 4 teriyaki chicken burgers for a cost of $5. yummmmmyy slurps. that's what i call good home cooked dinner. =)

5. dearie and i went for a walk at the park connector. we walked for more than 1km before we thought we should bike instead! quickly walked home, pumped up the air of our mtb and took it out for a spin. It was a windy cooling evening so being out was perfect.

6. came home and had a nice ice cold coke light.

7. sitting here starting on my assignment again =)

8. turning in early for the day as we will be running tomorrow morning.

photos of our dinner.

we cooked the chicken and pan toasted the bread.

notice the added eggs too! dearie calls it ramly special.

and so this photo says it all =D

Post dated: Dearie's Bday 6 July 09

dearie eating longevity noodles. it is a must for dearie's bday. longevity noodles+2hard boil eggs!

i think i did a better job this year..compared to last. haha.. is it dearie?

mummy bought 2 brownies for dearie. brownie is dearie's favourite.. and we gotten these 2 from brownie factory (taka basement).. the top seller is yummy-licious!

posing for a photo before it disppears =)

i played and sang a birthday song for dearie. playing was off..singing was out of tune..but i guess it's the thoughts that count =)

hope you've had a good birthday. and for many more birthdays to come =)

Photos of junkyard

my "new" old workstation

antique pc. so antique there is a floppy disk drive!!

right next to wear i sit is this junkyard.

i couldn't take the dim crt any longer hence i swopped it with the lcd i was using. did i tell you how heavy the crt was =S

Seremban Hakka Mee

Photo of the must-try Hakka Mee at Seremban. It may look ordinary but it is delicious!

from junkyard to cbd

I composed an entry earlier this morning but all was wiped out because my pc went kaput and I had not saved the file. Sigh.

I wrote about my experience at shenton way. I wrote about how I missed the cbd march and longed to be part of the contingent one day. I wrote about coming back to a seat that has memorized my curves. While I fell back into the comfort zone I have demarcated, my pc acted up.

Apparently, the power supply has been cut off. With no warning, rhyme nor reason, the screen blacked out and the cpu could not be revived. I bade it goodbye and relocated to the seat opposite my current. Dearie called it a promotion and boy is it a promotion to celebrate about.

I now swear sisterhood with newspapers, boxes and empty files. My new position as “warehouse manager” allows me to work off a dim CRT, windows 2000, and a 391,536KB Ram (not sure how slow/lousy that is but I know my laptop has 3gb ram?). I tried to make it play some music but realize there is no sound output. Argh. With all that in consideration, it is perhaps a downgrade more than a promotion?

In another light, this seat is giving me another perspective to the office I work in. it’s a secluded corner and I have a wall on the right of me and half a partition behind me. Good thing I’m not claustrophobic; I kind of like the “security” the partition and wall are giving me. It feels more “contained” in some ways.

I am reminiscing the clattering noise of cbd march. I like the glitzy array of fashion ladies dorn and suave men all over the place. A little part of me questioned if I will one day be in that contingent.

You know, have an office over looking some parts of the cbd. Like May puts it “reserving seats with tissue paper”.. dressed in suit, pencil skirts, heels and coach bags. I just want to be a true professional. Work in a professional environment. Do some meaningful work. Make some important decisions.

I dream. And I can still hear the clatter of heels at the back of my head.

Seremban Half Marathon 2009

the race venue

dearie relaxing at the hotel (Seremban Inn)

Dinner. my silly idea..Oopss.

I deprived my dearie of good hawker food with this..but he looks like he's enjoying it hor? =P

My Champ! Mr Dearie Tey!

1st time i'm seeing a cheque with 3 signatories.

it seems like dearie is SHARING his prize money with me.. hehe..i'm trying to pry it out from his hands actually...hohoho

Dearie's impressive timing. V impressive for a 21k.

My timing. Not fantastic but my personal best.

Our lunch before departing Seremban. Ah Dee Lou Shu Fen. Yummmyyyy..but guilty la..( will post the Hakka Mee soon!)

I’m back! The trip to Seremban was fantastic and I enjoyed myself tremendously. Why?

1. Seremban is only 3 hours drive away from Singapore. The travelling wasn’t that taxing on dearie =)

2. The food was absolutely fabulous! We tried the famous must-tries: Tow Kee Hakka Mee and Lou Shu Fen..yummy yummy.. we could have eaten a good dinner but thanks to my stupid suggestion, we ended up eating tortillas and bbq chicken.

3. Dearie brought me to the movies! We caught Obsessed. The movie was mediocre but the company made all the difference =)

4. Both of us did a PB during the race =) Dearie came in 10^th in the men’s’ closed category with a timing of 1.28 while I came in 12^th in the women’s open at 1.56. Dearie won rm100 prize money! Woohoo! It was a hilly run but the route was good. Not so crowded.. traffic was ok.. and the whole race was well organized. Best of all, the weather was great; cloudy and windy. Perfect. (dearie must write the race report!! Because he ran with a KENYAN lady! Wooow!)

Sham’s training really paid off as I know how hard I was running.. and I could rake up my energy to sprint towards last 1km. I didn’t expect the route to be so hilly.. from the start to the end it was slopes never ending.. the mr trainings were good.. the np hill runs came in helpful..and the track training.. made a difference. Something I thought I should have done, which I did not, was to train 21k at race pace. I have taken the 20k runs too easy for the past months.. it was only last week’s 17k did I start to run harder.. I think it wasn’t suffice. It’s ok, lesson learnt. Will be taking a different training strategy towards AHM.

5. Dearie brought me shopping and we got some good deals in our grocery and toiletries shopping. I got 2 pairs of shoes at 20% discount at vincci too.

6. The hotel, Seremban Inn, which we stayed in is value-for-money. It's very clean, the service was good, located very near the race start (less than 1km run away)...the bed was very comfy.. all for rm80. Thumbs up!

I enjoyed this trip immensely.. thank you dearie for everything.

This race gives me good momentum up to AHM. I’m going to work harder for a better timing. =) dearie, you must jia you too!

running in pace

Dearie ran with me yesterday. I started with 7 laps and he paced me for 13laps. I targeted to do 8km in race pace of 45mins..and I achieved it! Dearie kept encouraging me to keep the pace and at every lap he would tell me my timing. That really helped me tremendously to keep pace and listen to how hard I was pushing. He also reminded to keep my breathing regular and calculated my km/h pace (I’ve got no idea how he could compute that) He helped me achieve a negative split timing =) some pointers I got from this session:

- my race pace is 2:17min/lap. To keep within 1-2sec frame is the target.

- breathing is very important. I gasped during my 8-10^th lap and it affected my pace.

- training must be at constant speed.. dearie kept emphasizing that. Constant. Constant constant. Oki. No more chionging at the end for me in the next few weeks’ training to come. I must know that it is the half marathon I am training for, not 8km race.

- do more warm up. Because I think I used the first 1km to warm up my legs and hence I was stressed out at the end of not being able to hit target. and yes..got to relax during run.

- rest is important. I was exhausted from the long weekend and I was not able to run properly on Tuesday. i was practically dragging my feet along 3km. sleep is king, indeed!

Dearie went to register for school today. It was funny listening to him rant about getting lost at campus. That's a problem i wish i had..haha..but my school is so small, it's difficult to get lost.

Over the radio a couple of days ago, it was reported that in the years to come, HALF of Singapore population will hold at least a degree. Having a degree will soon become a Norm.

As I re-read the earlier parts of this post, I like that parallelism I can draw from running in application to life. Knowing pace. Rest. Constant speed. And I think knowing the end point ranks most important of all.

cookie tin savings

with the lowering of savings rate from 0.125% to 0.1%, i might as well keep my money in the cookie tin than leave it in the bank.

it's time to invest your money instead of leaving it in the savings account, losing value. if inflation is 6% p.a and interest rate is 0.1% p.a, you are effectively losing 5.5%p.a value of whatever you put in the bank.

no wonder the recent singapore bonds issue was over subscribed.

it must go UP!

Tuition wasn’t as good as I hoped it would be. I feel rusty after the half year break away from tutoring, the syllabus wasn’t at my fingertips anymore. The struggled with some questions on topics which I didn’t deal with on a daily basis.. so I was stumped. Didn’t like that feeling to be honest.. and I know that if I want to get them all back, I had to do my homework of reading through the past year papers, understanding the formats required and prepare for each class. I didn’t like going there unprepared as words didn’t flow out of me like second nature. i don’t tutor as a profession.

It is not being fair to the student if I do not do my homework. However I am reluctant to commit from now till her exam in nov. the 2 modules next term will demand more from me.. hence I’m kind of stuck right now. I hate waking up feeling tired. I hate not being able to do my easy runs. I am not sure if I have the time to prepare for classes. The motivation to continue is the hope to see her do well in it and the monetary supplement I can gather from the effort.

I despise myself that I do not earn a comfortable sum of money that can eliminate the 2nd motivation almost instantly. i’ll give myself more time to reconsider on this.

I remember when I stepped into this company more than 2 years ago, I told my boss my plan in the next 5 years was to be a member with icpas. I wanted to go full force towards career progression. After working hard for the last 2 years plus, I looked back from where I commenced and I can tell myself I have progressed.

Nevertheless, the fish tank only has that much space and does not grow any bigger than it is. I continue to swim to and fro this tank right now; mastering the skills to glide and move swifter. Yet, this is something I hope I needn’t be doing in the next decade to come. Hopping out will take a lot of courage and I am not sure how much bigger the next tank will be.. or will it be the frying pan? but if I don’t try, I will continue to go round and round this tank. I do not count on the tank expanding in the short-mid term and I do not want to raise my hopes on anything. Nothing is promised and I doubt there will be anything offered.

Darn it on the economic crisis, sweeping away with it opportunities and career options.

Hang on tricia. 6 more months to graduation. 10 more months to get icpas and acca membership. Don’t give up. Don’t lose hope. It will get better.

I hope dearie’s career will gain leverage. Like ma always remind us, “remember we must not let others look down on us.” I hope to move up a gear too, once I gain momentum to shift out of the inertia state.

When things hit the bottom, it must go UP!

piecing things, one at a time

With the passing of every exam is a little victory for me. It is a small step nearer to the completion of the programme. How fast 1 year went past just like that. Dearie will be commencing his master too. Learning should be a perpetual process.

As much as many will argue academic qualification is not that crucial if you have all the working experience, but reconsider this: you are in the same selection with another candidate with the same amount of experience, but he has academic qualification which is one notch up from yours. He has the qualification that exposed him to a more specialized or wider spectrum of work. If cost is not a huge factor in selection, who would the organization shortlist? Qualification is not everything, but we have to admit it does play a part when you have to compete in the rat race.

I’ve been planning for 2010 recently. The obu degree is still something in my kiv tray; want to do it but a little uncertain how to go about doing so. Then again, most of the time, money is the key. I can pay a school to get help from a lecturer. Pay for supplementary classes on how to write a thesis. So it’s that simple, you just need the M-factor.

I intend to look into taking some short courses with tax academy. I feel having good grasp of taxation will be helpful in my career.

Things ought to slow down for me in the coming year. We’re planning for a kid and I’m a little saturated for long term studies. With the short courses that can be accomplished with the year, I hope I can make some changes to my career and build my family with dearie.

If opportunity does not knock for me to move job, I am thinking to take up some tutoring assignments if possible; just to earn a little more. Should all things come together well, upon obtaining the full icpas membership in april, there should be more options available.

FSA - Cleared!

i passed FSA with a credit. This is within my expectation as the test and assignment results were not fantastic. I was disappointed with assignment grades as Marilyn and I put in alot of effort into it and I thought our answers were pretty close to the solutions. But we only got a 73 for assignment. I got a 13/20 for test. The highest was a 14. To get a distinction i'll need 79 for exam..which is a little tough. But I'm glad I got the credit =)

More worried about eva. Really want to clear eva.

Ma bought me a jade pendant and I have been wearing it since. Maybe it's placebo..or maybe it's bringing me more luck. Dearie and I need more of that! =D

Thank you dearie for staying with me through the exam. Will treat u to a good meal when I get results for my eva. hahaha.. if i pass eva then got treat! I'll stand by you when you start school in Aug. =) We take turns to be each other's keeper.

i like being at home

I love being at home. I can do so many things which I have wanted to do but haven’t got the chance to.
I took leave today to catch up with my revision for tomorrow’s exam and I did the following too:
1. cleaned the house as ma and wendy are coming tomorrow. I cleaned it this morning and I will clean up and prepare the beds for them this evening. Do a quick sweep and ensure we have the place comfortable for them to stay.
2. washed the sofa covers and sun the cushions. With such good hot weather, I sunned dearie’s smelly pillow and bolster too!
3. signed up twitter! I’ve got twitter!
4. go through the eva slowly. Do the additional questions..and do up the notes to be brought into exam
5. I like studying without the lamp. I like to study with natural light – I haven’t got the chance to do that because I either have to study in the evening or in office most of the time. It is so so so nice to read notes under natural sunlight. I can’t describe that feeling. But it’s nice =)
6. study without fear of being caught. I study in the office, under constant fear of being caught and warned again. But I feel at least I am making use of my free time to upgrade myself than to read i-weekly stuffed in between the file. Heh.
7. blast the music and sing-along. Haha. Ka-ra-oke. For my case, when I sing, it’s ka-ra-not-okie. =P

p.s: i took the photo on the left of this entry. how's that? it was taken at labrador park. the dusk was beautiful. i wanted to cut the photo into better 1/3s proportion..but i like the bottom which shows the boulders hence i left the proportion as such. do comment on it so i can improve =)

let it be

Let it be.

I’ve been immensely affected in the last 1-2 weeks and in the quest to understand things better, I think I have accidentally stirred trouble that was better done without.

After talking it through numerous times with dearie, I resigned to the truth that life is and will never be fair. And hence, I am better off adopting a “let it be” perspective than to fight to understand the why-s and how-s.

For the first time in a long time, I am not looking forward to Thursday training. i used to look forward to Thursdays earnestly. I packed my bag for training early on Wednesday evenings. I rush to finish up my revision and assignments early so I can make it for Thursday trainings. Yet, today I am giving myself excuses not to be there.

However, I will still be there because I feel the incident yesterday was something I must apologise for. And there should be a closure to things. No matter how things will turn out, I still want to be there to understand and listen.

I have submitted leave for tomorrow as I do have to catch up with my revision and also rest.

Yes, like dearie said, I’ve learnt something from the episode and walk away from it stronger. He is right, after all, running is just a small part of life.. family, career and friends are more important. I can’t be running competitively all my life. It’s just a season that will soon pass. This has been something Isabel told me repeatedly but took me long to truly understand.

i’ll be taking my cpa pre admission course in 2 weeks’ time. My new term starts next week. 3 more modules. I’ve completed the required acca performance objectives.

I really like what dearie said this morning, “it’s not about how fast you run, it’s about how much money you have”. This is true. In this world, it is true.

These should be my priorities in life. Put in the big rocks which encompass the main priorities first. The smaller stones and sand can come in later. Just like our dream to run the biggest marathons in the world – those can come in once we establish our career.. our family.. we can do it any time in the next 20years to come.

I thought I have smelled a fresh breeze of air. What have I been doing in that box? =X

And that shall be the agenda for the day. Find out. Close case. Let it be. Move on.

Friday, do intensive crash course revision. Saturday, go for exam. Go watch transformers with dearie (complimentary of Citibank!) Sunday, spend time with family. =) and ya, I still want to do some running too..because we have made some mental goals for ourselves that we are working to achieve!

Yay! My mind feels a lot more free now. And my shoulders feel less burdened. Alas, I can smile and say, “let it be”. =)

clarify, understand, peruse

There have been things I have tried to investigate and understand better, but I am not getting much information up till this point in time. I am not sure why it is taking so long for feedback but I feel we have taken pro-active steps to seek answers.

I thought about how the answers will affect things. If we want to move ahead, the focus becomes increasingly important. We will post the questions up for open discussion tomorrow; should we not receive a feedback electronically by today. We have wanted to approach it discretely, but I think we will have to resort to more explicit means. It’ll be an amicable discussion - for the purpose of clarification.

Ultimately we want to understand how certain decisions were made, what the expectations are and what the team’s direction is.

It should not be that difficult to answer I reckon?

Taking a leadership position is not an easy task. As I look at how tpl leads our finance team, I must applaud her for a job pretty well done. from the way she handled the tusra treasurer position; understanding the situation from 3 sides, it is impressive. During our department meeting, she shared with all the struggles and difficulties faced during audit.. she set the timeline for reporting for the next 3 months and gave us broad view of what is required from the department. There were some operational issues raised and she advised us to collect concrete information and quantify the issues. This will aid when we want to gather departments for a meeting to iron processes out, at least we will not be pointing at blank air making accusations. =) to me that is a very sound and proper way to approach problems.

Leading a department requires transparency. It requires clear direction and communication. I find my perspective of tpl changed a lot after working next to her for the last 6 months. I’ve learnt a lot and these will be valuable experience that will path my way to a bigger role.

English Lyrics to Mi Mancherai

Mi Mancherai (I'll miss you)

I’ll miss you, if you go away
I’ll miss your serenity
Your words like songs in the wind
And Love, that you take away.

I’ll miss you, if you go away
Now and forever I don’know how to live
And joy, my friend, goes away with you

I’ll miss you, I’ll miss you, because you go away
Because the love in you is dead
Because, because...
Nothing it’s gonna change, I know
And inside of me I feel you

I’ll miss you, I’ll miss you, because you go away
Because the love in you is dead
Because, because...
Nothing it’s gonna change, I know
And inside of me I feel you

I’ll miss the immensity
Of our days and nights,us together
Your smiles when it’s getting dark
Your being naive like a little girl

I’ll miss you, my love
I look at myself and I find emptiness inside of me
And joy, my friend, goes away with you

more things i found out

- Il Postino is an Italian movie (i want to be a pirate and download this movie but i can't figure how to use bittorrent. argh!!!)
- The talented lady who played the violin in the first AOL clip is an American violinist,Lucia Micarelli, with Italian/Korean parentage. She's only 25 this year. Wow..impressive.

Mi Mancherai - Josh Groban

i've been hooked on this song. it's beautiful. from what i found out, it's the song from a movie, Il Postino.

this is the song with the excerpts from the movie.

Mario Ruoppolo is a young man in an insular Italian fishing village where time moves slowly. Since Mario's seasickness doesn't allow him to fish, he is given the job of postman, delivering mail on a bicycle to only a single customer, the famous Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. After a while, the two become good friends. Neruda has been exiled to Italy because of his communist views. In the meantime, Mario meets a beautiful young lady, Beatrice Russo, in the village's only cafe. With the help of Neruda, Mario is able to better communicate his love to her through the use of metaphors. The two are later married. The poet Neruda and his wife are allowed to return to Chile. Some months after Mario makes a recording of village sounds for Neruda. Years after Neruda come back to the island as a tourist, he finds Beatrice and her son in the same old cafe. Through her, he discovers that Mario had been killed a while back. He was going to read his poetry at a large political gathering in Naples but was killed by police intervention. Beatrice gives Neruda the recordings of village sounds, which also record the sounds of police brutality leading to Mario's death. (synopsis taken from IMDB.com)

ahhh..i want to watch this movie!! (yes, more than transformers 2)

2 down 1 last one

eva assignment has been submitted. -heaves a sigh-

fsa exam is over. -heaves a bigger sigh of relief-

i have done all i could have done into the 29 pages of assignment. it was the best shot.

fsa was do-able, though not fantastic. it was a good mix of standard and challenging questions. compared to the sample exam, it was a notch up. but again I gave a best shot in the 3 hrs and 10mins allocated.

no regrets.

last one up. eva exam. i'm feeling more jittery about it but i want to make sure it will be a shot comparable to the last 2 i've taken.

the best shot will ensure i finish the term with no regrets. =)