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.

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..

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..

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.

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.