Waiting in the rain

There are things which is out of our control really. Our smartness could only save us occasionally but not always.

I'm waiting for the Jockey to remove the car which blocked my car.

Actually what I wanted to say is that my grandma had been diagnosed with cancer. This feeling sucks. In the 25 years in my life I have never experience losing someone so important. She has only a few months of life (in which she didn't know the fact that she has cancer).

I broke down emotionally when I heard this news on a Thursday night (the past Thursday) and I kept thinking how I should treasure my time with her. How else should I do to make her feel happy? 

She is someone who is so kind to take care of other people before herself, and this has been consistent throughout her life. I have never seen someone so selfless. Everyday she has been thinking if we have taken meal etc. She just never gave up asking that. All she wants in her life is to see us being happy. She does not have a goal for herself, you know,  like typical traditional Chinese whereby the female responsibility is to take care of the family only. This pure kindness implanted into her principle in life.

That's her greatest strength, but also greatest weakness too. She does not know how to take care of herself properly. When she is in pain,  she will hide it from other people because she knows that she is going to incur huge expense for going to the hospital. What a joke...... Too bad that she does not have insurance.

How dear is dear? I was always given slightly extra attention from her because she raised me up since I was born, from feeding me to take me home from school. Plus the fact that I am her eldest grandson. This bond is so strong that I am so afraid to lose her.

My mistake. I have not been a very good grandson. I did not cook for her, nor stay home to really sit down and watch drama with her. I am always in my room doing things which deemed to be unnecessary. The most I have done is to have meal with her everyday, which I think it is insufficient. Right now it is even harder for me to spend time with her due to my workload. Mon to Fri I work overtime and I will be home late; Sat and Sun I have classes from 9 am to 5 pm until June 2013. I think I have got to work within this limitation. She might not live until June.

Her wish for me to hope that I can get married before leaving this world. Man this is challenging. I am not that kind of people who will want to get married young (I dont even have a gf now). So I often remind her to live longer so that she can see that day coming.

How would you feel if you see someone like this leaving you soon?

Discipline, discipline, discipline...

After so long,  I never thought that lack in discipline could be one of my major weaknesses. Seriously I need to work it out.

Reason for saying such: I have been allocated some amount of work during the weekends (it is actually every weekend). But I have not been working it out properly; I always been procrastinating them. With the coming months of work and study routine,  I wouldn't be able to cope. Then it will lead to the downfall in my life. Consequence of not being discpline would then strike me down.

Time to be organized!

Hello?

This is my first time writing a post with my smart phone. I would not have done it if I'm not using Samsung galaxy note 2 Thanks to its huge screen.

At this point,  the update on my career job is that I have already resigned (finally) as a fund accountant. It's not that I resign without getting myself a job. I got an offer for being an analyst for a venture capital firm. That's a hoo ray for me I finally get a step closer to my dream job. Hopefully I can get valuable experience with this company.
It is also nice to know that I would work in s normal shift hours again. It really Sucks to work in a night shift. I used to think that working at night is gonna be cool but after having to experience it,  it changed my mind completely. First reason is that you will have a shorter weekend. By the time when you are awake,  half of the Saturday had already gone. You might think that you could get up earlier on Saturday,  but it is not going to be productive because you are going to be so exhausted. You would not have the mood to do anything. Second,  I'm playing badminton every Sunday at 11 am. It simply feels so hard to get up that 'early'. And it Sucks so bad because you won't have the energy to play well. Oh well...

As for love life,  I thought I found myself a partner for life already. But in fact,  I'm don't really feel ready to go into a relationship yet. Dunno is it because I don't love her enough or simply because I lost the motivation to date. Maybe it is not the age yet for me. There's just so much to be done like achieving career goals and studying at the same time. So I guess there should be no hurry to getting into a relationship now. Oh,  most importantly,  I don't feel that I'm matured enough yet, for many reasons.

There are people out there who easily mistakenly taking best friend as girl friend. It is like they are converting the comfortable feeling for being together into love which I don't agree. Then this short term feeling well be gone and converted into commitment. You guessed it, this commitment would not last when it turned into control due to lack of proper communication. I believe I don't not have a good credibility to say this but this is what I have observed in my friends relationships. I simply don't see the passionate relationship in them. My perception of relationships is more like westerners, less like traditional Chinese type.

I always give my gf more freedom. Freedom in the sense that I don't mind if she wants to hang out with other guy friend, as an example. I would opt for an equal life, for instance we have our time together but we also have our spare time do to whatever we want respectively. I will respect her as much as or more than she would respect me. In the traditional Chinese relationship,  I often see that the male is more dominant in the relationship.

Okay. Time to go. Just hope that it is not as confusing to read my post.

RIP Browny

Today marks the death of my family first dog ever, Browny (breed Chow Chow). I have my deepest regret over his death because I have only spent little time with him when he is still around. He has been single till his last breath and he never had any other companions to mingle with. I hope he will get as many companions he could ever dream off in his latter life.

It was a total shock that when I checked my face book and saw the post of my brother about our dog. I almost could not accept the fact. I called my grandma to ask if it just fainted or things like that, you know, like in denial. Just before I went to work today, it was still in his normal behavior; not even a single sign that he is going to leave us anytime soon (at least I didn’t feel anything strange). My grandma said before he collapsed, he kept walking around the compound of my house. He dropped his body on the floor, finding himself with no energy to continue walking, but he tried and tried, he forced himself to stand up again and continue his solitude journey. I guess he was waiting for something?

When my grandpa reached home from his work, went ahead for Browny. As it saw my grandpa, it collapsed and passed away. It is like it felt relief as he saw him, knowing that he will take him to the vet cure his sickness as usual. That’s the end of his life. I hope he truly felt great as the family still cares for him, seeing the rescue on his very last breathe.

My only regret is that I did not accompany him much. The only time I spend with him was right before I head to somewhere (work, hang out etc) and after I got back home. Everyday when I got home, he will be the first to welcome me as I work night shift as “security guard” when my family has already gone to bed. Every time when he sees me, he will definitely welcome with the shakes of its tail. He never failed doing that. Thinking about these clearly makes me miss him a lot. (FYI, I have yet to see his dead body as I am still at work at this time as I was writing this).

Actually his nearing death is expected as he is already very old. I think he joined our family when I was like 13 or 14? It has been 10 to 11 years of him in my life (wow, I did not even realize it). But I never knew the impact could make me blog it out. I guess I am not good at farewells.

I will not ever have any dog pets in my life. It will only make me feel regret at its death as I always will not have time for it.

I hope you have a good after life, Browny.

17th April 2012

Today marks the day of my single’s life anniversary. Yes, it is exactly 366 days I broke off with my ex. Why do I remember this date as if it sounded like she is still in my mind? Well, I remember this date because it was a PC fair day and coincidently there was PC fair going on last weekend (yesterday). My mind has completely lost her. Speaking of her, I hope that she is doing well with her new boyfriend in the United States. She is a very loving individual.

Let’s head back to the topic. Do I enjoy the life as single? Some part of it yes, some no. The yes is of course these 366 days is my freest life ever. Free from responsibilities for the other half etc. It is not to say that I am afraid of commitment, it is really because I have never felt so free in my life as I seldom stay on being single (now don’t you come and tease me by asking “wow, you have started dating since you were born?). The dark side of staying single, is of course, for such an extraverted person like me had to do things without any companion, which is kind of hard sometimes.

But the truth is, I am not sure if it is bad or good, I am already getting used to it. I have done things which I would not have done if I was myself a year back. I went to IKEA to shop alone, malls to walk alone, even weekend lunch I would do it alone.  It is really not because I could not find any companion, it is just that I feel like doing it alone sometimes. This change of me is really unforeseeable, which I think it may be good and it may be bad. The good is perhaps I am learning to be more independent? It sounded funny because I am trying to convince myself that all these are GOOD stuff.

After all these years I have showed interests in understanding human behavior. This was my hidden passion where I was not really aware of. The exposure of MBTI personality provided me insights on this issue and by far it is the most practical theory that I have never known of. I bought books from the US and have one of my cool friends to ship to back for me. And so, this is what I had been doing when I am free. To be honest, I have never be fond of books; I don’t read and I cant read for a long period of time. Surprisingly, this book is the first book that I would think that “oh no, it is coming to an end soon!”. I guess my intuitive feeling part is really strong, i.e. wanting to understand the depth of human behavior. Now I am learning to judge other people’s MBTI. Its fulfilling if I am able to judge them accurately because it gives me a sense of getting closer in understanding all sorts of human behaviors and the next step would be learning to how to approach them.

Why would you want to get an iPad?

There were many people in my life that I came across with asked if they should get an iPad. I will then throw the question back to them, why would they even need one?

Many of them could not provide a good answer for it. They simply say “because it is fancy having one”. I really agree with that sentence of fancy having one. As you bumped into someone using iPad in a party, or as you are shopping and you see someone holding a tablet like that, would you think “I wish I have one too!”?

To really think about it, there is really no reason for us to get an iPad unless we need to perform a presentation to customer/clients, showing them products in a very creative and professional way.  An iPad is a tablet device which categorized in between a personal laptop computer and a cell phone. What it simply means is that it can’t perform up to the level of a laptop but it provides more than a cell phone. So you would not want to carry and extra item with you always unless you needed to right?

The story is going to turn to 180 degree now. To a gadget person like myself, I would certainly look into the possibility of getting every type of gadget I could possibly get. But this is product has the least priority in all my other gadgets. I would still get it for various reasons.

First, I am not the type of person who complains about carrying an extra item wherever I go. I had been bringing my DSLR camera everywhere I go, literally (please don’t be sarcastic to think that I would even bring it to toilet). When you see me in shopping malls, hanging out anywhere, you would see my DSLR bag hanging around my shoulder. The only time when I do not bring my DSLR camera is when I am going into a theater. So, carrying an extra item certainly won’t burden me as much as other people do.

Second, I view it as a convenient thing to perform my daily task everywhere I go when I have some free time. Especially when I have to wait for friends who always late to a meeting, or queuing to get ticket for movies, or being stuck in a massive traffic jam where literally you are like parking on the spot etc, I would certainly find it useful. Right now, I enjoy reading books. I am on “Why Mars and Venus Collide” and I find that there are so many things about relationship that I did not know.  Having an iPad, also known as a good reading tool, I will certainly find it beneficial. Of course, there are some other conveniences as well. I could easily show my friends pictures I have taken, editing them right on the tablet (there is a new awesome app created by apple to make editing picture so convenient), play games, reading articles/news whenever I want.

Having these two reasons are sufficient enough for me to get one given that the price isn’t that expensive (I am just going to get a lowest range, 16GB with 3G). Plus, I will feel good to think that I own various types of gadget. Perhaps some people would think that I am a rich brat who just simply gets anything that I see; they are just totally wrong. I would not get something if there is no reason to get it. In addition, I fully utilize all of the gadgets that I owned, like literally. I won’t get anything if I were to put them into dust. I am always happy/ never regret getting something that I bought.

So, I am looking forward for the new iPad to be launched in Malaysia. Most likely next month it will hit Malaysia I guess.

How do you handle your disappointments?

I believe everyone has their own way to release/get away from their disappointments. What is yours?

Today, I face one of my disappointments at work. To be honest, I seldom have disappointments about my work other than its routine nature.

I have this desire that I hope to be a mentor of a new joiner in my team. I have spoken to my only senior in the team and she says why not? She is absolutely fine with me guiding any new joiner that is going to join our team in the foreseeable future.

Today the new joiners came to the production floor and introduce themselves. My senior is not around and the other experienced fund accountant (labeled as A) led the new joiner and have us all introduced ourselves. “A” introduced him to his new mentor, which is another experienced fund accountant (labeled as B) who has more experience (to be truth, I have the least experience in the team because I just joined the firm for six months). Well, she did not do it on purpose as she really did not know that I was hoping to be a mentor, so things were cool.

Then I spoke to A after the new joiner left after introduction, asking her if it was the manager who assigned B as his mentor. She said no and it was her decision on that matter. So she then knows my intention for asking. She said she thinks that I am not ready to guide the new joiner. Instantly, I felt upset and offended at the same time. I wanted to tell her that it is not what she thinks about me if I am ready to guide, it should be me myself who think if I am ready.

To be honest, even though I am the newest in the team, but it does not mean that I am not capable of calculating the daily net asset values (NAV). I am able to justify all of the daily NAV impacts accurately.

Unfortunately, the B fund accountant is really the best among us and he has not guided any new joiners. I am absolutely fine with him guiding the new kid simply because he has no pupil in his 2 years tenure as a fund accountant (well, unlike me, he never wanted one). Probably it is just because the fact that I am not guiding the new kid is not within my calculation. Again, it comes back to that, expectation. I was really excited when I saw the new kid today, he is an Indian guy, and I greeted him with thinking “Hey, you are going to be my new disciple”. Unfortunately, he will not be one.

That’s the story. I felt really frustrated at the time the A told me that I am not ready for it. I mean, how would she know that I am not ready? Perhaps she thinks that the fact that I have just 6 months of experience.

How did I handle the frustration? I kept it to myself. I was angry, but I did not have the intentions to destroy anything. I channeled all of the frustration within myself. Of course my facial features could not manage to hide all of them; I remained silent for a while. Within my mind, there were all these crazy thoughts that were looking for non-physical ways to hurt/annoy the A. Things like for not responding to her questions, not going to volunteer to help her out in the daily production, etc. You know, small little things like that running throughout my mind.

Well, I don’t like myself being like that. I need to learn to be able to embrace things better, especially all of the unwanted things that are not in my calculation/expectation. When I looked back at this event which happened just yesterday, I felt that my EQ level is not there. I am hoping to increase it. The question is how? I think I need more moments like this and write them down each time I faced them.

I have seen some other guys who really channel their angers through destruction of items. I think they would feel better after destruction of each item. I have never reached that kind of stage though. However I really believe I won’t behave such a way.

I remember when I was in high school, like when I was 13 or 14, I used to tear, squeeze the unwanted papers with my fist, making them looking like a throwing basketball and toss them into the dustbin. Then my best friend Li Ching, who actually picked up the tossed paper from the bin and re-fold them into 4 folds (half with horizontal line in the middle, and then half again, making them small enough so that it could fit into the bin). She said this is one of the good anger management exercises that we should practice. By doing so, she believed that we would not channel our frustration towards the item. I find what she said to be so significant that I have always folded them into 4 folds before these papers enter into the bin since then. Now that when I looked back, I felt that perhaps this led me to be less aggressive.  

Gadgets

My old camera Nikon D3000 and also my companion when I was in the US.

My new lens Tamron 17-50 mm f 1/2.8bought together with my new Camera.

My kit lens that comes together with my old camera, Nikon 18-55mm F 1/3.5

All time favorite watch, Casio Edifice.

All time favorite laptop bought in year 2009. HP Pavillion 17'inch Core i7 Windows 7.

New HDTV 720p, Sony EX420 32'inch. It has a great output quality. Range medium class in Sony series. The size is just right for a monitor.

Just another view on it.

iPhone 4s 16 gb. Been waiting for it for ages before finally bought it.

New tripod that could really hold a heavy DSLR camera, Manfrotto. Firm and steady.

Funny that I brought this in. Texas Instruments BA II Plus Professional. Calculator of my soul. Need it to pass more CFA examinations in the future.

Favorite companion when I go for jogging, iPod Shuffle 1 gb. It has battery power of more than 10 hours and it never fails to play any song that I insert in.

My old camera Nikon D3000 with its Flash unit. Taken by Canon 60D.

My new camera, Nikon D7000. All time favorite. Best camera year 2010 & 2011. Best value money. Many people have praise the quality of pictures produced by it. I bring it everywhere I go and it never fails me by constantly producing an output that is better than my previous one.

Best flash unit that I ever owned, Nikon SB-600. It makes all portraits so beautiful. I carries it everywhere I go too together with Nikon D7000.

Logitech best mouse ever, Logitech Performance MX Mouse. It can perform many tasks unlike any other mouses. Looks great and elegant. Best thing is it is rechargeable with just a USB connection. It works even on glass surface.

My favorite speakers, Logitect Z-5 speakers. No need to plug into any cords, just a simple USB will do. Even though the power only comes from the USB from your computer, you will be amazed by the output it carries. Elegant & awesome.

My fighting and racing gaming tool, Logitech. Wireless and works perfectly. I never need to change the battery since I bought it in early 2010 (though I seldom use it).

Best keyboard ever owned, Logitech K800. Independent on any batteries, it is solar powered. Slim and elegant.

First external hard disk, Hitachi 240gb.

Second hard disk, Western Digital 320gb.

Third hard disk, Western Digital 2tb.

It was my favorite companion before my DSLRs. It small and convenient, yet giving good pictures quality. It is in top 10 best compact camera year 2010.

I call this the titan cooling pad, Cooler Master. Bought it Low Yat year 2009 and it never fails to work even until now. Best part is it has extra USB slot to compensate for one USB slot for using it.

My first wireless laser mouse. Gave it to my brother already since I got the one from Logitech during Black Friday.

My HDTV when I was in the US. 32'inch.

My first iPhone, iPhone 3G. Kept me company all the time when I was in US. 

My Drake basketball achievements, from various events.

Wand of Lord Voldermolt, bought it in Harry Potter theme park, Disney World, Florida.

Wand of Neville Longbottom. From Disney World as well.

Best sound output, the Sennheiser HD 555. You can hear the singer's breathing with it. Must try it in order to understand what I am trying to say.

My old tripod which kept my company when I was in the US. The quality is pretty standard thus it worn off after a year or two. When I put it with my D7000, it could no longer support the weight, thus almost destroy my new camera. I put it aside, letting it idle.

Update: Career

Now that I have finally passed the CFA level one examination. I am proceeding to take the level two in June 2013. Yup, it is next year. No point taking it this June as I am pretty confident that I will fail as I wont have enough time to study with my working hours. Actually my working hours are not long just that it is really tiring with those daily deadlines. Plus, I am already started studying a little now. Due to its wide range of studying materials, its better for my brain to absorb if I study earlier.

I got confirmed on the very first day when I stepped into a complete six months. My manager even told me that I will get confirmed prior to the confirmation & performance evaluation interview. I am not surprised for that as I will think that I have serious problem during production if I don’t get confirmed.

So, days after confirmation, I have decided to pursue my dream job as financial analyst with other companies. I called for another face-to-face interview with my manager to discuss about my resignation. He suggested to me it’s better not to leave the company right now because the job requirement for financial analyst requires a minimum of one year related experience. And with my current job it provides me with the necessary experience in order for me to advance to my dream job later on. Yeah, he was right about that, I don’t see any financial analysis job out there in the market that would to hire fresh graduates. My manager has been in this financial industry for like more than 20 years, I have no doubt that his explanation is true. Also, he would arrange me to a different team to learn about different financial products like over the counter swaps and so on. He added that he will assign some project based work for me, aside from my daily routine production, in order to enhance my qualification as an analyst. After the interview, I dropped my idea of resigning at this time. It is just another 4 more months for me to complete (on June 1^st) one year (plus the two months termination notice it would add up to 1 year on August 1^st), so there is no harm staying. 

He really hopes that I could stay because of a number of reasons. First is that he said I am doing above average and hope that I could continue to provide more help/idea to the team. After all, I have provided a few mini ideas to improving team efficiency throughout my probation period where others did not seem to bother (I am serious about this, they just want to do their job and go home). I am not sure if he said this in order for me to stay for his benefit, but I weighed it too, I could potentially benefit from him by learning from him through the side projects.

He did actually help me in performing excel macro. The commands in visual basics are really different and its not something that I could learn in days. He taught me a different approach to learn it. After all, he really put effort in explaining to me. Great! Today I applied some of the visual basics to improve one of my team daily tasks, voluntarily, and I did it. The team is going to use it tomorrow (hopefully). I am really excited about this new skill; it would really simplify complicated stuff, works like miracle.

With this, I believe I have put my quarter life crisis, phase 1 to an end. I have regain confidence and looking forward for more improvements. I really want to thank those who play a part in assisting me.

Movie: Limitless

Recently I have watched a movie called Limitless. As it title recommends, it tells us what will happen if we could unlock all of the access to all parts in our brain, basically to achieve our fullest potential. If your hidden potential is a very smart person, with that drug you will be smart.

However, it seems to tell us that only drug used is able to unlock all paths in our brain. Well it seems to be only the way to do it as we will never access to 50% of our brains despite we maintain a superb healthy lifestyle that no one on earth could ever do that (simply because no one can tolerate with such a diet or sometimes people have no choice but to force them to work in order to make a living).

In that movie, a street wanderer could transform to a brilliant broker (which generated a profit of 2 million USD from 12,000 USD in 10 days) then to a senator through the drug used. As you might have expected, great power comes with great consequences. When the drug is not consumed in a timely manner, the user will suffocate to death. The movie ended with the actor found ways to duplicate the drug for his own use.

Personally, I do not like the way it ended. What is the moral of the story? To encourage people to consume the drug and find ways to duplicate it? It would have been better if the actor finds ways to cure his addiction and yet lived. If so, it also would have been a little more interesting.

I would love to unlock the paths in order to have the access to every single unit in my brain too. Through this movie, I thought I could learn some tips to do that. Just rather disappointed, a little.