6/23/13

Checklist

After yesterday, I have settled some of the things that have been bugging me for awhile.
I guess after all, cost played the biggest deciding factor in my decision on where to study.
I guess this has been a recurring pattern since after high school.
Studying accounting in Kampar was after all a choice of cost.
Well that and an added benefit of having my friends with me.

I guess in the next half year I will be an actual student in HELP.
After 2 sittings of ACCA I finally get to have an actual student card once again.
I guess I'm a student now~
Haha.. At least a part-time student.

The haze is really terrible today.
I guess foggy environment is not as much fun as I anticipated.
Especially with the hot whether and the low quality air.
I immediately felt my throat dry up once I stepped out the door.
Hope it rains soon.

Half of the year has almost gone by.
I guess time flies faster when you're working.
I don't remember time moving this fast when I was a kid.

Slow down a bit please.
I haven't accomplished much yet this year.
A mediocre year seems to be imminent.

6/5/13

Travel

So I was looking at airline prices on AirAsia today, which happens to be the same day that cheap airplane tickets started to go on sale.. When I saw the price of RM200 per person to Taiwan, just a few days before Christmas, I kinda had the urge to buy the tickets then and there. Unfortunately the return ticket cost around 500-600.. For 2 people it would set me back like 1.5k..

Although it is still affordable, since working I kinda don't like parting with my money.. As a manager once said, when you OT think about all the hours you pour in not getting paid and stuff.. Considering the effort you have to put in for the paycheck at the end of the month, it's a lot of hard work that I would be wasting..

The alternative of Returning when cheap tickets are available would be waiting until the 17th, the ticket would cost 800 bucks for 2 people.. Damn was it tempting to disappear right after ACCAs and returning a whole month later..

Then putting in hotel expenses into the equation my plans were completely shattered.. On the other hand, i found that buying plane tickets with hotels together didn't vary far from buying tickets from AirAsia during promotions then adding hotel expenses.. So technically travelling at any time of the year should be feasible..

Then i started looking at Europe and USA and practically everywhere on t globe that i could remember.. thinking of a trip during Christmas made me think of travelling to the North Pole.. hours flew by as i search for useless information and half my dar was wasted without studying..

Really can't find my focus this sitting, I hope somehow I can pull through.. Anyways I found out Santa's PI box in Canada is actually H0 H0 H0, and the post office actually has a team to respond to all the Santa mail..

6/4/13

Bookings

I was wondering why travel agent websites like expedia.com, booking.com or hotel.com are able to offer lower prices for hotel rooms and still get paid a commission for any sales they make..

I actually called up a hotel that i was planning to book a room from and asked them, apparently they negotiate contracts for this arrangements, which made me wonder why any hotel would want to enter such an agreement in the first place..

Then I realize, hotel rooms are just like any commodity, the agents buy the rooms in bulk for lower prices and the hotel removes the uncertainty of not knowing exactly what future bookings will be like..

In order words: economies of scale~

But then this leads me to another thought, for service industry such as hotel, wouldn't removing this risk also remove any incentive to actually provide good service? I mean hotels are even giving out commissions to encourage agents to sell rooms..

I guess the the challenge would be on maintaining the motivation to keep quality up..

I think I'm going to post shorter posts more frequently.. annual blog post kinda defeats the purpose of having a blog.. Anyways there's an app to blog stuff so i guess i can type up a post more conveniently..

4/11/13

A dream


Every time somebody ask me what I wanna do when i get older/after studying/after auditing I would tell them my "dream". At first, my dreams kept changing. I guess i really want a lot of thing. But after awhile I settled on a long term goal, a direction, a specific "dream" that I liked the most.

Although this so called "dream" is very far fetch and hard to achieve, every time I tell it, it seems more and more realistic, the details grow more and more vivid, and I become even more clearer of what I am "dreaming" of.

Most importantly, I want to achieve it even more.

Each time I tell the dream, a little more details appear, I know more specifically what I wanna achieve. At the same time it seems to grow even more far-fetched and harder to achieve. The good side is it becomes even more worth it to pursue, and even less boring than the last time I told it.

I guess repeating dreams to other people really makes you clear what you want to achieve.

After I tell people what I wanna do, most of the time the listener would say something like it's good you know what you want in life, many people don't even have a direction. I guess to a certain point it's true. Sometimes I don't even know if this is really my direction. But i guess it's better than nothing.

Dream more, dream big, and pursue it. The last part is the most important part or everything will be wasted.

1/15/13

Wish


When I was a kid, a few days before my birthday, I would start thinking about what I wanted to wish for. It was always simple and clear-cut, I'd wish for the latest gaming platform of that year, like a PS2 or an Xbox. I always knew exactly what I wanted.

Today, I completely forgotten about having to make a wish, and I wished for so many things, none included toys or anything childish like that. In my mind there was so many things to wish for. I still knew what I wanted, but I want so many things. Ended up my wish dragged on and on.

All my wishes was serious. My wishes were also focused more on the people around me instead of just myself. And those wishes that are regarding my own self, they are for things that I needed to accomplish, instead of things I liked.

I guess getting old does that to you.

10/23/12

Convo

I kept thinking that the convocation was just a pointless event.
Just as a ceremony to signify the ending of a period.
Even for an ending, we did finish our studies about 5 months earlier.

When we were outside the hall and was lining up to get into the hall, I felt like it was primary school again when we used to line up before each class could enter their respective classroom. It was then that I realize there's at least a handful of people that I'm familiar with, and an even bigger lot of people that I recognize and used to study in the same hall with for the past 3 years.

Once I started asking everybody what were they doing now that they already graduated, everybody has gone on with their life, studying, working and even just resting. It occurred to me then that it could very likely be the last time we meet each other face to face. Sure everybody says to keep in contact and to meet up for drinks, but in reality people grow apart really fast.

3 years ago I remember that during the first few days I kept thinking how come people are so different from me. In fact most people are really different with the kind of people I used to mixed with. I was reserved at first, preferring to stick to myself. But after some time you'd realize that different personalities and interest are just that, and deep down we're all the same, we all worry about our results, we all worry about our assignments, we all worry about the upcoming mid term test. Even like the small stuff such as parking or the rain or what to eat, we all go through the same things for 3 years.

In the end when I realized that there was so many people that I had grow fond. There were so many people who were not in my life for 4 months, and it could be even longer until we see each other again.

I guess I'm really gonna miss you guys. I Hope that one day when we do meet each other once more everybody will be successful in their pursuits and happy in their life.

3 years isn't a really long time, but it really isn't a short time too. I guess the convocation was more meaningful than I expected. One thing is for sure, I will miss playing futsal with the bola kaki gang a lot. Playing futsal won't be the same without you guys.

Happy Convocation all my fellow grads~

9/24/12

The price of freedom

Here's an interesting thought, fully credited to my dear friend snoopy.

How much of a pay cut would you be willing to take for the freedom of going home on time and spending more time with your love ones? It is quite an interesting thing for me because, all this time I was thinking the opposite way. I thought that in the auditing line, "freedom" is very scarce, in fact I always thought that if you have too much of it, there's probably something wrong, i.e. your being lazy or your not putting enough focus on your work.

So my approach has always been to get the most out of my freedom. If I am not supposed to have it, I might as well make the most out of it. If I didn't have any freedom, but I have valuable experience that would help me in my career or in the future, then that would be worth it.

A breakdown of my thinking is roughly something like this:
At my age, freedom is bountiful, as they say all you have when your young is your youth. So it is worth less, because if I had all the time in the world, there isn't a lot of things that I can do (financial restrictions). In contrast to that, the youth do not have any experience, making it all the more valuable. So a trade-off of my freedom for stronger experience would definitely be a good thing to me.

But if you look at the other side of the story:
Your family and your friends aren't going to wait for you forever. Everybody's lives moves on. Someday you won't be a part of a friends life, today I am already experiencing that. There isn't anybody else to blame other than yourself if you grow old lonely. I certainly know I am the one to blame for losing touch with many of my dear friends.

There is no absolute answer to many questions in life. I know that I have already made this decision. I sold my freedom, I can't help it, I'm a workaholic. Maybe all the terrible tales of OT-ing for weeks after weeks aren't entirely true, but if it is, I'm entirely ready for it.

I remember a friend used to tell me that it's not the quantity of friends you have, but the quality of friends you have. I'm glad I have a bunch of friends that really put up with me throughout all these years. I can be a lousy friend sometimes.

I can only hope that next week will be a good start for me. After a half month hiatus from auditing, I can feel the rust in my brain, my thinking is a lot more slower and I'm missing a lot of stuff and making a lot more mistakes than I should. I'm really lucky to have two weeks to warm up and prepare~

9/14/12

Short Story

A long time ago, there was a family of three, two parents and a little girl. Both parents worked really hard, the father owned a business in the market and the mother helps out from time to time. The little girl would go to her kindergarten and spend the rest of her evenings at home playing with her toys. Sometimes her mom would be home early to take care of her, occasionally this was not the case.

One day, the little girl came home from kindergarten as usual and started playing with her toys. She was alone that day, but she was used to it. Business was really picking up and the occasional lonely evenings started to become the norm for her. Her parents always told her never to open the door for strangers. For some unknown reason, this had slipped her mind.

As she was playing with her favorite dolls, she heard an unfamiliar voice calling out her name. This seldom happened, as they lived in a small house at the outskirt of town, their neighbors were mostly the wildlife that inhabited the forest. Out of her curiosity, she opened the door and followed the voice into the woods. The voice kept calling out to her and she couldn't resist the temptation of companionship.

Later that day, her parents arrived home, shocked that the main door was left open and their kid was nowhere to be found. They immediately went to the nearby village and mobilized a search party looking for her. The sun was beginning to set and the parents started to panic, for all they knew the little girl may have been kidnap or even murdered. The search party prepared torch-lights and started moving into the forest.

Their search did not bear fruit, it was close to midnight and still not even a glimpse of the little girl could be found. Many of the villagers had given up hope and return to their homes, they still had to work the next day. A number of the parents close friends continue on their search, they kept believing that they would find her even though they were only a few.

It was close to four in the morning, when everybody was exhausted and ready to give up, in their mind they knew that the chances of finding her, dead or alive, was close to none, nobody was ready to admit defeat though. Suddenly, the sound of a little girl crying could be heard. They hurried their pace, running towards the sound, and found her sitting behind a tree trunk, her eyes red from all the crying and her face pale as snow, she was clearly very frightened too. The search party disbanded and everybody went home.

After the little girl recovered, her dad asked her how come they were looking for so long yet they couldn't find her. The passed the spot where they found her sitting at several times, it was under a very distinct old tree and they did not saw her near that area at all. The little girl said that she saw the search party many times, in fact she cried out as loud as she could but nobody could hear her. She was tugging at the villagers clothes but there was no response. It was as if she was invisible.

They decided to move away from the forest and never spoke of this story ever again.

_________________________________________________

I can't remember where I heard this story from. If I remember correctly, it is one of those story that grown-ups told kids so that they would not open doors to strangers. Recently I was reading about the Slender Man, a part urban legend and part fictional creation. It has long arms and a tall, thin body. Sometimes it would have many arms, sometimes it would have tentacles, depending on which story you hear about him. He doesn't have a face nor any hair. He stalks children and appear in their dreams, sometimes driving its victim insane before he kidnaps them. Recent literature suggest that adults are not immune to his interest.

Anyways, Slender Man sounds exactly like the character that adults would use to scare children so that they behave, which is also why it reminded me of this story. But about the story, I don't remember any details about the thing that took her away. However I do know that you aren't supposed to called out the names of those that you know when your close to the forest. They probably aren't related but thought I just shared a story.

A lot of details about Slender Man are, I believe, made up, what I do know that could be true is that he is an old urban legend probably from Germany. I think what he does is that he brings you to the afterlife so that you can avoid a nasty and horrific death. Well, that doesn't sounds too bad, doesn't it? But if your interested in scaring yourself, feel free to download the free game "Slender", links below:

Downloads:

http://slendergame.com/download.php

Official page:

http://www.parsecproductions.net/slender/

8/20/11

Seems like there's a lot of things on my mind before I fall asleep.

Lately I feel happy, and this feeling felt foreign at first but slowly I'm getting used to it and I'm kinda enjoying it.

The last time I remember this feeling was in Senior 3, everything was perfect, I had the passion to wake up everyday and finish the day thinking how perfect it would be to freeze the time in place.

However shit happens, and it sucks too. Seeing friends become distant, changes that were initially hard to adapt to but you'll get by. Doing the things that you enjoy less and less, doing the things you are tasked with doing, and if you don't learn to enjoy it your life really gets miserable.

I remember a point in last year that it was raining heavily in the middle of the night, everybody was sleeping and I had this strong urge to smoke a cigarette and drown my sorrow with a bottle of Heineken. I didn't really care if it drives people away or if it makes me die earlier, I felt lonely and unhappy and I didn't mind shaving a few years off.

Somehow I got through and things started to turn brighter.

Right now, I feel happy, it seems my frustrations are controllable and my life is filled with activities that keep my passion burning. Of course they aren't all exactly the way I planned it to be, I'm not playing music anymore but I'm falling in love with sports. I'm with a band of merry friends and those that I wish were still close to me are at a bearable distance. I'm loving a person that loves me so much. Maybe it's just cause it's the last year of my university and it seems I've adapted quite well.

If only things don't go out of control again. Perhaps it's because of my previous experience, I don't want anything to change, I don't want to have to adapt all over again, I want things to be just the way it is, even though i know it sounds absurd.

Whatever, right? getting mushy-ier so I'll leave things the way it is.

4/3/11

好久没写部落了噢..

之前会坚持写部落的习惯..
可是慢慢那股热情消失了..
其实不是因为没东西好写..
而是太多东西写,
不懂如何整理..

这四个月消失也没发生什么特别..
老了一岁咯~
正式能进赌场,
可是也没什么差别..
对赌任何东西的运都一向不好..

可是前个月左右看到学校有个营,
是关到不懂什么领导之类的..
学校有sponser两位学生去..
忘了是去哪个国家,
终止就是想到出国的,
又可能不用出钱,
就试下申请好了..

正要填资料报名那些时,
就看到要被录取要写个作文..
这小问题嘛..
平时写作文也只是吹水两三下写到美美交上去..
根本就是小儿科的东西..

可是..
我看到题目时..
完全想不出要写什么..
题目是:
"So far in your life, what have you done for our world?"
当然可能字不是一抹一样,
可就是这个意思..

然后我看着电脑银幕发呆了一段时间..
想出的就有一对废话..
好像..
喝饱装水拿去回收啊..
帮忙种过几棵树啊..
还有什么?
很少浪费食物..
很少乱丢垃圾..
就是一堆一般人都有做过,
没有一个值得让人欣赏或让人感到自豪的东西..

那时就想..
活了二十一岁我做了什么?
我做过什么?
然后我未来能做什么?

"人的本性是自私的.."
这句话我觉得有他的道理所在..
可是就算是为自己,
或是为身边重要的人,
或之类的..
有做过值得让人记住让人觉得厉害的..
任何有意思的东西..
可真的是少之又少..

当然我没要变成超人救这世界上每个需要救的人..
我也没要成为带来世界和平的人..
但是..

看回历史,被记载的人物都是因为他们做过的伟事..
如果一天我不在了..
我会被记得为一个做过什么的人?
当人家说起我,
他们会说我是怎样的人?

------------------------------

当我想写这篇的时候是日本刚发生地震的前一个礼拜..
然后看到那个namewee的we are nothing..
也想到很多人就是会被"世界末日“的思想被感染..
本身觉得末不末日我还是要过今天明天..
所以想了两下也没想了..
至于日本的事..
我有觉得同情他们..
也蛮难过自己什么都帮助不到..
结果还是决定延迟才打出来这片部落..
可是终于终于都写了.. =D