anyone still reading this?

i have neglected this blog while i was busy preparing for the exam which took place on 23 june. the preparation process felt really long. swapping story books for notes was difficult. having the discipline to sit down every night and study for an hour didn't come easy. all well worth the effort when i received the email notification that i passed.

i'm almost done with what i set out to do this year. while running yesterday night, i began to wonder what to do next year. what other skill set do i want to hone? what other knowledge do i want to acquire?

and so, the first book i have finished reading after the exam was barings lost. barings and nick leeson are somewhat history but this case awakened the whole concept of rouge trading. much of it fuelled by greed; people blinded by the mere pursuit of profits, which coincidentally (or uncoincidentally) is correlated with risk. professionally you call them traders but in truth, they are nothing more than gamblers. do you believe jp morgan's recent loss arose merely from hedging transactions? i can smell the whiff of speculation in it like durian in a room.

let's see. time to get on some work for mummy. next book up is the rape of nanking. i'm always kept busy!

do or die

prepping myself for a tough week ahead. 3.5days of course. will have to travel back to work on 3 our of the 3.5 days. tuesday i'll have to rush down to smu for the revision class.

the week is going to be an exceptionally long one, making the weekend something really worth looking forward to.

we gotten a new luggage bag for the upcoming trips. 2nd half of the year is definitely going to be alot more exciting with all the trips lined up. with dearie doing all the planning, i'm just going to lie back and relax. =)

back to studies. i'm trying to give my do-or-die effort. i'm not even going to give retaking a chance, nor am i going to be ill prepared to give certainty to failure. i'm going to pass this and on the first attempt.
you can do it, tricia! to think i'm giving up all my other books for now..just to read my notes.. i have 5 books - 3 on my desk at home, 2 in the office, lined up to be read and i'm telling them "wait". i HAVE to pass!

the lost daughter of happiness

the flowers of war film deviates quite a fair bit from the book. i thought the writing lacked depth. maybe lost in translation?

i won my side of the bet with dearie. i finished the book this morning, in 2 days. =)

i'm starting on this next book by yan geling, tomorrow. hopefully this will be better than flowers of war.

i wonder if dearie will want to take a bet again with me? 2 days for this too?

after this fiction book i'll probably go for the history books written on nanking. non-fiction books may just be a better read?

flowers of war

 we watched this movie by zhang yimou on sunday. this led me to the book from which the movie was adapted from. dearie popped by the library yesterday and got me 2 books from yan geling.

we put a bet on whether i'll be able to finish this book in 2 days. i'm proud of my progress during my morning trip to work. 50 pages done of the 250 pages book. i might just be able to win the bet. 

book that took a long while to come

after the rules of influence, i read 2 mags. fortune mag with its annual fortune 500 ranking of US companies.. but i think what i found most interesting was the in-depth coverage of HP and its past CEOs down the history. It just proves that a leader can make or break an organisation.

my next book is this - playing the REITs game. something i have been wanting to read but the book went missing in the library for a while. so it's finally found, probably was sitting on someone's desk and he/she forgot the book belongs to the company..

i'm down to my last 3 lessons and that will mean dearie will not have to eat any more prata dinners soon!

books that leave me indifferent

 just to quickly update on the books i've read. finished the ikea edge this morning. i feel indifferent with this book..like the clutch.

looks like another book i'll end up feeling indifferent again. why is our company library stocking up on books that talks about how nice the weather is..how pretty the flowers are..and how busy our lives is.

maybe i'm a more intense person who needs more exciting reads.

running far

i miss running marathons. i miss going for long runs.

suddenly feel like signing up for an overseas marathon.

clutch

traders guns and money is a great book! onto my next book from the company's library.

i've got 3 books from the library..plus many other ebooks to read. the to-read list is never ending!! 

not at all magnetic

done with the magnetic culture book. i didn't like how the author tried to weave his company into the book.

XX strategy is good..and MY company does this and that.

hey if it's a book then just write a book. if you want to market your company, go air it on TV or radio. i reviewed it with 1 star on the library portal. that's for the reiteration of strategies that i already see being practised in the marketplace.

next up is this book. dearie got it for me from his school's library. it's a recommendation from a banker our organisation works with. i started reading some pages of it this morning and it looks pretty interesting. downside is the fonts are a little smaller than the usual, so it takes some adjusting to. small fonts are not too helpful when you are tired. i was drained this morning, so i gave up reading before i reached redhill. fortunately i found a seat, so instead of reading my way to work, i got a few eye-shut moments of rest.

i'm done with the questions on my fixed income handout but i've still got a small stack of forex readings and questions to work on. these are something additional i got from the lecturer, which i thought will be good practise.

alright. back to work now. thurs. classes tonight. fri and so near to weekend.

after pricing, we start building

done with the price of everything. it's a pretty insightful book. it's like an amplified version of how your brain makes decision with the "price" we put on things and choices.

i took about 3 days to finish that. not too bad.

moving on to this book now. as you can see, i'm reading quite a diversed range of books these days. i believe it helps build my general knowledge..and it helps me from being "bored" of any one topic/subject.

after this, i have 3 e-books lined up. switching back to my kindle, provided there are no new books in the climb library.

we watched the vow on sunday and i'm itching to read the book. can't find it in dearie's school library..i'll just wait for it to get more mainstream..

oh ya, the price of everything talked about the price of piracy and free. i am so guilty of piracy because i always want to read for free. the truth is, there are no free lunches in this world!

can it be priced?

This is the new book i am reading. more than a quarter done with this. i like the perspective the author introduces. how alot of things can(not) be measured with a price.

there are another 2 books which are in progress at the moment. it's hard reading them on the go because they are alot more technical and requires one to sit down and go through the calculations..so as to fully make sense of the books. so i think i will leave them for the weekends..when i am at home and can have the luxury of sitting down to read and scribbling out the workings on paper.

rainy day. no run in the morning. raining non stop. i think we'll do RR instead of MR tomorrow. we hate mud on our shoes..hahaha.

less cash for more time

i think quitting the part time job was a good move. i feel i have alot more time to do the things i want and needn't rush over weekend.

weekends can be spent more meaningfully these days.

saturday dearie and i helped out at mummy's. it was really hectic from 5.30pm till almost 10pm. we both smelled like bbq cuttlefish after that..but i thought lending a hand to my mummy was good. she will seldom ask..the shop is currently short handed..our extra pair of hands would have meant something. =)

sunday. we spent morning running at MR, despite the long Sat night. glad we did so..and we rewarded ourselves with wanton mee at pek kio. we could take our time to queue for it..slowly savour the food.. chit chat..without having to rush off to work. we grocery-shopped at ntuc for a while and headed home. took a 2hr nap which really charged us up. feeling refreshed, we started our work. for me i did my revision for the first 2 lessons last week.

i cooked a simple meal for dinner. john bought us all koi bubble tea - my first cup ever! i got to tinkle the ivories for about 40mins and made a good deal of noise.

it's about 10pm now. wanted to work on the presentation slides for a while and head to bed soon.

i thought it was another good weekend spent. no part time job is good! not that i earn alot from it anyway.

face the problems

while i am worried for the problems at the shop, i am sure she will emerge through it. i think problems make us stop to reflect how things are being done now.. maybe there are ways to better streamline the processes, shed unwanted stuff and bring things down to a more manageable load. don't run away from problems, face them.

there are more regulatory items on the list to address. i have sorted one of them out and i will help her shoulder more. quickly wrap up the accounts for apr.. file the necessary returns.. do up the required mandatory registrations and roll up some new reports to churn the necessary quarterly returns.

this weekend is jammed packed. going back to help brief another new staff taking over the part time position. dropping over mummy's.. pick some toiletries up.. revise through my notes and complete my homework.. minute the agm for my own reference.. work on the financial ratios to be presented over meeting. dearie and i are going to hibernate at home on sunday after the run.

i'm really thankful dearie has been helping to shoulder the housework. big hugs!

after the fool

fool's gold is a GOOD book! enjoyed reading it.

now onto something less fun..

i've got 2 technical books sitting in front of me..

and i reserved 3 more books from the library which should reach by next week.

read on!

fool's gold

this is the book i am currently reading. i've left out 3 other books in between this and investing in reits. 2 of 3 are really thin books and the 3rd isn't really worth the mention.

i will start my fics classes at smu this evening and i'm looking forward to it. the fight to get enrolled in this course was not an easy one.

recently had this "on-the-spot" feeling.. dearie said i've only "stood" there for 1 year and to progress will probably take more than 1 year.

i just want to find meaningful things to do. make the best out of my stay here.

apple

reading the newest edition of fortune magazine which was honoring great entrepreneurs.

steve jobs was first on the list.

i like this:

"... on the day Jobs launched the Macintosh, a reporter from Popular Science asked him what type of studies Apple had conducted to ensure there was a market for the computer. In a nearly offended tone, Jobs retorted, "Did Alexander Graham Bell do any market research before he invented the telephone?""

i think that only works for people who have that "i've got nothing to lose" attitude. bravo!

DBS CEO earned pay package of $8.8m in 2011

wow..all the talk about ministers' pay being high.. this is what i say is high.

how about translating some of that enormous pay package into a few more basis points of interest for us. the interest we earn on our savings account isn't even sufficient to cover a meal. i guess dbs probably could use all that liquidity, lent it out at 2-4% to corporates, pay us a pathetic 0.05% and keep the rest for these kind of pay packages.

more reits books

this is the new book i'm on this morning. i'm just devouring any reits books i can get my hands on. target to finish it by end of this week or early next week.

for the first time, i managed to borrow the latest fortune magazine from my company's library. hahaha..that is for diligently camping on the library portal every morning!

sale-frenzy weekend

The weekend was well spent. Dearie and I attending this private sale at Mandarin Orchard and we were absolutely appalled at how so many Singaporeans grabbed thousands of dollars worth of branded handbags without batting their eyes. I felt like some pasar malam sale!

We went into a frenzy picking of bags too. Ended with about 5 to 6 of which 3 of them were for myself (the initial plan for to find something for mummy as present). I held onto a prada bag for a good half an hour, made John help us check out the prices on the prada Italian website (we were clueless of the prices of prada bags to begin with) and then finally decided to drop all the bags and walked out of the ballroom empty handed.

Dearie thought I looked disappointed and offered to buy me whichever I chose. I rationalized hard and came to a conclusion that such events can lead to impulsive buying. I thought I will probably walk out of it thinking why did I buy this/that?

The first question I asked myself was, “is it really cheap?” though the advert was brazened with the big 75% off words, it was not necessarily applicable to ALL the bags there. In fact, after checking the original prices, we concluded it was not cheaper than Italy and not very much cheaper than what you could have gotten in the boutiques. Then I asked myself, “given that it is not very cheap, is this what you would have gotten given a choice?” dearie picked an orangy-brown prada wallet for me. honestly, given a choice, I would have gotten a pink one. last but most important question, “do I need it?” answer has to be no. so we walked out, not any richer but not $1.8k poorer.

We went on to taka to find something for mummy and at the same time chanced onto a good buy. I got 2 bags from dearie, a lot prettier and cuter.. and in leather.

Managed to accomplish a fair bit of other things too. dearie and I caught a separation at cathay. We did our rr and mr runs. Visited the library and got 6 books. We went to pek kio for a good brunch on Sunday. I managed to complete mummy’s accounts for feb. cooked curry for dinner. Played the piano. All in all, I thought I spent my time well.

It’s the start of the week again, not one that is too long I hope. I finished one of the REIT book (short 70 pages) on my trip to work. let’s see what else I’ll put up for read next.

new treasure trove found

reading the adapt book gave me such a headache. gave up on it. argh. i hate a lousy read.

dearie brought me to the np library today. wowowowow..it's like a treasure trove! i borrow 6 books just today. enough to last me for 2 months! =D

i'm going to start on the book on REITs. I'm hungry to learn more about the business my company is in.

we spent a splendid day today. got my mum 2 presents and she likes them. =) we ate..watched a separation.. shopped (i've got 2 new bags courtesy of dearie!).. it's a good day!