I was just having a discussion with my friends yesterday night, and I was being the usual motivated and super positive self. In fact I was brimming with enthusiasm and ambition that I wanted to infect everyone with it. I just wanted to discuss something that came up last night, and I’m not going to push my views on anyone. I’m just going to state what I just generally think.

Whenever people talk about money, we always end up with this one sentence that can be expressed in many different ways. The crux of the sentence is:

Health is more important than wealth. If you’re not healthy, then there’s no point in being rich.

Of which I wanted to scream and shout and protest.

I think health should be a given. Personally if I have such ambitious dreams, I want to be able to enjoy the fruits of my labour. But that is not the point. The point I wanted to make is that we have always been so brainwashed in our heads that money is bad. You don’t believe?

Why do we call someone filthy rich? Filthy is a negative word. Why don’t we call them wonderfully rich?

Why do we call a rich man a bastard? Why do we always think that rich men are rich because they are scheming shits who con money out of loyal hardworking people?

To put it simply, we have always been negative about other people’s success. When someone gets good grades, we call them a mugger. Nerd. Only know how to study. A rich man’s son is a spoilt brat. A rich man is a bastard. Someone with low morals.

But is that true? I want to challenge that notion. Being rich is a perfectly normal thing that you and I can attain. We can become rich, but we shouldn’t set ourselves up for potential failure by giving excuses to say why it’s alright that we cannot be rich. By repeating negative things about being rich, we are subconsciously telling ourselves that, “Hey, being rich is something bad. I don’t really want to be rich anyway”.

Back to the health statement, I think that should be taken for granted. Almost everyone understands that being healthy is important so that we can enjoy wealth. It’s not really a new argument or point of view anymore. We shouldn’t say things like “I rather be healthy than rich”. Why should we do that? Why can’t we be “both healthy and rich”? Reach out to the skies for more. Ask, and it shall be given (like in Proposal JDrama).

When you really want something, the universe will serve it on a platter for you.

So I think being healthy is a given. Anyway health and wealth are not two mutually exclusive things that you can have one or the other but not both. Health and wealth can co-exist peacefully. It’s not like we get to tell God that we can choose between health and wealth. God is not that petty. He can and will give you both if you know how to ask.

Some people have this opinion: “I just want to be healthy. I don’t need to be rich”. Well that is a perfectly fine statement and opinion. In fact, there is nothing wrong in this statement. Everyone has a choice of how they want to live their lives. But can I just put a little idea into your head now? Why don’t we just aim to become rich? After all, though simple living is all right, there’s no harm having more money isn’t it? You can donate to your favourite charity, start your own foundation (like what I am planning to do). You can create scholarships and encourage more Singaporean talents. You can donate to cancer research. You can build a hospital. You can build schools in poor 3rd world country. Donate books. There are so many reasons why you should become rich. No one says you have to become rich for yourself. You should not need to feel guilty thinking about being rich.

But if you continue thinking that “I don’t need to be rich”, you’ll never be rich. Because you have programmed your mind to think that rich is something that you don’t need. Personally for me, I need to be rich. There are so many things I want to do. I want to set up my own foundation, for what I still have no idea. Maybe I shall donate to education. Maybe to medicine research. I’ll see what gives me the most satisfaction. Maybe I would encourage more local entrepreneurs. Maybe I will build homes in poorer countries. Maybe I’ll fund students on overseas CIP trips. There are so many reasons the world is telling me for me to want to become rich.

This is reaching the end of my lengthy post, and I hope I have given you some food for thought. It is all right to keep your own views about not needing to be rich. It is not wrong and never will be. But I hope you’ll just think about it, and decide for yourself whether I make sense or not. But if you think I make sense, and you resonate with me, do drop me a comment. I like to make more friends who desire to achieve the greatest success in the world.

The future never seemed entirely real and I never saw the need to prepare for it. In the past, I’ve always bumped around in schools, getting acceptable grades and moving on, without actually knowing what exactly I want to do. This is probably a similar experience that many Singaporean undergraduates feel. Many of us just go through the education system and pass it, but the education system does not really allow you to discover your potential or discover your interest in any area.

As such, no one actually knows what their goal in life is. Where do they want to work? What do they want to work as? Slowly as time passes I began to think about all these questions and find myself again. What do I really want to work as and where? How do I want to contribute to society?

Engineering, a boring faculty to outsides. People tend to think engineers are boring people who fiddle with equations and keep working on circuits, as in the case for an electrical engineer. People have better recognition of those who are in the medical field. Doctors, lawyers, etc. The profession that people will aspire to become. No one seemed to want to become an engineer.

But engineering is not boring. Engineering is as crucial as medicine and law will be. The state of comfort we all live in now are all powered by technology created by these wonderful people called engineers. The laptop that we use, the mp3 that lets us listen to our favourite songs, a house that won’t fall because the wolf blows on it, wireless internet, in flight entertainment systems, going from places to places in a car or an aeroplane, is all due to the magnificent work that engineers have done since the beginning of time.

Engineering is a professional job and it is important for us to continually have engineers to improve our lives. In the future, I want to contribute to this world by helping make people’s lives more comfortable. At the same time, I want to enjoy my life. I want to work for a company with good perks that I will end up using. I want to be groomed to take over management. I want to manage my team to improve on ourselves all the time, whether I end up in an engineering department or not.

In the future, people will be travelling on aeroplanes more frequently. People are starting to enjoy their lives by wanting to go overseas every year for a short vacation. Globalisation has resulted in companies going overseas to source for new opportunities. It is through one type of company where a pleasant journey begins, whether for business or pleasure.

In the future, safety on aeroplanes would be a default requirement. People will not sit on planes that have accidents. A near 0 track record will be necessary and possible. As such, what can one improve on other than safety? I want to make things more comfortable and enjoyable for everyone taking the aeroplane out or into the country. Since the aeroplane is the beginning of a happy journey, I want to make sure people will be comfortable and happy during the flight.

In a way, Singapore Airlines (SIA) is like the face of Singapore. When people come to Singapore for business or for a vacation, we want them to enjoy their stay here. The first impression of Singapore that they can possibly get is when they sit on an SIA flight to Singapore. If the journey here isn’t enjoyable, their first impression would be ruined and the journey won’t end up with everyone feeling happy.

Hence I think that working in SIA is quite a meaningful job to have. Whether you work as customer service, or as the baggage check in attendant, or the air steward/stewardess, or you’re the one doing up the in flight entertainment system, you contribute to a safe and enjoyable flight by the customer. I think I will love such a job. I really hope that I will end up there, and I hope I’ll be given opportunities to be groomed into management and have job rotation every few years. I hope to go through every different aspect of the flight experience, and make things work. I want to say I’m proud of my job. I want to take vacations each year on the flight that I helped improve, and I want people to praise SIA and through that praise Singapore.

There are many many things that need to be done before I can reach that part of my life’s journey, but I’m taking a step at a time, working towards that goal. I hope that one day I will be able to write here on this blog that I’ve accomplished my goals, and I’m proud to be working in my company. I hope they will recognize my talent and that I can contribute for a greater sense of fulfilment.

Life is great because of the goals one has, and because it is actually possible to achieve all in life that we desire.

I went to work in a temp job at NUH. Nothing much, just doing quite admin related work. I end up working alone. My friend couldn’t come today and they found someone else to replace him. The new person is coming tomorrow, which is weird because my friend can come tomorrow too.

Anyway it’s quite an easy job, and it’s nice to meet new people. And I get to earn some extra money too, which probably will go towards covering the cost of getting an iPhone or something. We shall see.

After work I rushed to Jap class. Now I’m quite tired and drained out. Have to sleep soon. Life is great.

I live in a condo and a few months ago they renovated the playground and exercise area. They included a standing broad jump area for people to test their jumps. This is the 3rd time they are redoing it and this is what happened:

If you cannot see what’s the problem with it, I’ve got a blown up one for you:

Where the hell should someone stand when he wants to jump? The contractor must be brainless to draw it this way. Either that or the management is brainless to not give the correct instructions.

We are all humans and humans complain. We whine about this and whine about that and we blame almost everyone but ourselves. We blame the train when we are late, but we never realize we could have just took the earlier one and there’ll always be a margin of safety. We blame the professor when we cannot understand a concept, when actually we are the ones responsible for our own learning.

Don’t you think that it gets irritating after some point in time when we continue to whine?

However, humans seem to be made to whine as a destress mechanism, so that we can unload all the stuff that’s pent up in ourselves for so long, and we won’t explode after having so much bottled up. The problem with this is that it allows us to be inefficient and get away with it by blaming others. As time goes by, we just get used to all these excuses, as I call it, that we just become unsuccessful. And we continue the vicious cycle by blaming other people.

What I see it is that the problem that we face isn’t painful enough for us to do something about it. We are just contented with sticking to the same kind of life, facing the same problem although we don’t like it. Just that the amount of dislike we have for the problem isn’t big enough to force us to change and adapt to the situation.

What I think we should do is to always reflect constantly and make sure we can do our best in all situations. Instead of blaming others and whining about our situation, we should change our situation and make life better for us. If everyone of us could be this dynamic, I think we would become a potent force. The problem is just that the majority is happy to remain as they are. Well I guess this is the same problem faced by many countries too.

I’ve just finished watching this very entertaining JDrama titled “Celeb To Binbo Taro”, which actually means Celebrity And Poor Taro. Taro is the name of the guy who’s very poor. His own wife died, leaving him with 3 kids. His kids are all very adorable and obedient, and are easily contented and optimistic when all they may eat are bread crumbs from the local bakery. He tries hard to work and earn money, but it is always only enough to pay part of the bills.

The celebrity in the title is Alice-san, the 23 year old fashion designer born with a silver spoon in her mouth. She has never lived poorly, and always has good meals. She lives in a hotel suite and she is worth 7 trillion yen. She has two people waiting on her full time and hires Taro as her driver one day.

What happens is the journey of getting to know Taro better and seeing how he lives. No matter whether he has money for food or not, his family is always happy and optimistic. Throughout the whole drama, a side topic is on Alice’s own previous love story and it links to the crux of the entire drama, when her parent’s company got took over by someone else and she becomes Binbo Alice.

Even then, Taro is still like a friend trying to support her and tries ways and means to think of how to get the money back for Alice. He ends up, expectedly, falling for her.

I liked this drama because I find it heart warming. The plot may not be a very solid plot, but it is already better than some station’s dramas. It is the process of having a rich girl learning many things like how to say thank you even for simple things like Asako’s (the chicken) egg every morning, as well as learning to get adjusted to poverty. Maybe it is the process where you get to understand each other better, get involved in each other’s lives, and suddenly finding that you’re worried about each other, that is the sweetest thing to me.

Maybe it just seems like a fairy tale and we all need fairy tales from time to time. But in reality, YES fairy tales can come true.

YES WE CAN. (Hmm..Only people who watched it can understand why I wrote it)
YES YOU CAN.

I spent my afternoon today helping my sister bake some cookies. I didn’t do much, just help put flour in, put chips on the cookies and watch them become real cookies.

I put a K there which represents my name – Kenneth. Or K for Kuchiki. Or K in maKi. K is an important letter in the English Alphabet.

This is what it became after it was baked. The cookie became more spread out and so the K was spread out too. I made cookies with a smiley on it, as well as one with and one with . And I also made one with a ’6′ on it, but it didn’t look that good after it expanded.

This is the mixture of flour, butter, chocolate chips, nuts and other stuff. Before it was baked you could smell a nice buttery smell already.

This are all the cookies that haven’t went into the oven yet.

This is the same tray after the cookies have been baked for 15 minutes.

We did two batches of two trays and ended up with 2 boxes of cookies.

And presenting… One of the box of cookies.

Somehow I find it interesting to be able to make stuff. Sometimes, maybe people don’t really need to go out to the movies or to the beach, but go to each other’s house to make something of their own? It’ll also be fun I think.

And here’s another self drawn kiddy drawing on dreams. I think it is pretty obvious.

I kept going for courses lately and they belong in two broad categories. One is for my Great Eastern Life Planner Training, and the other is to fulfill my desire to understand more on the stock market. Hence I was having a busy and albeit sometimes fruitful and sometimes unfruitful way of spending my time.

For Great Eastern I have been clearing 3 courses. I cleared on last Tuesday and Wednesday. It’s called Life Planner Excellence Advancement Programme 1 (LEAP 1). Another one on last Thursday and Friday I had the Sales Advisory Practices to ensure that we don’t mis-sell. Given the climate now that the DBS High Notes 5 screwed up so badly, it is important to sell plans to people who actually have a use for it, and is suitable for them.

Then I just completed the 2 day course today called Life Planner Excellence Advancement Programme 2 (LEAP 2). The second day is really boring because different departments came to give talks about how they are supporting the agents etc. I think some stuff can be self-read.

Last saturday I went for the Technical Analysis course for stocks and today I went to attend the free seminar preview on the Millionaire Investors Programme which is focused on the Warren Buffett method, which is value investing. I really do believe in it because it makes sense, and it has been tried and tested by the 2nd richest man in the world. However the cost of the full 3 day course is too steep for a student, so I didn’t sign up. It costs about $3000 for the 3 day course. No doubt that it would be extremely useful, but maybe next time.

Nonetheless I still have great admiration and respect for Mr Buffett. I would want to read up more about him and get more knowledge on my own first. It really feels great to have a long term dream and goal to look forward to. I will achieve my dreams and life will be greater.

I was bored, so I took out my tablet board to draw. I wanted to draw my dreams, and make it a series of different blog post. This isn’t really my dream. Just that I thought it looked nice. But there’s only one part that’s part of my dreams. Can you guess what?

I know it’s a kiddish drawing, but that’s the limit of my artistic talents. I know if I want to I will be able to draw a much better piece after much effort, but I don’t see the point to. I think kiddish drawings have their own appeal. Haha.

And my friend Ko Ko draw this:

Lol. I was going maki ga-ga for a few days. And it’s due to this photo which I’m like WOW.

可愛いでしょう？

Recently I began to watch this comedy drama called Binbo Danshi. In english, it just means the poor man. The lead character Kazumi (acted by Oguri Shun) is this really stupid idiot who started off lending money to everyone who needs it. He treats everyone for meals even when people offered to pay. How did he finance this expenditure? He borrowed money from the loan company. In a way this is fitting since I am reading up on finance related stuffs this holiday.

When he discovered that he had owed a million yen, he got a huge shock of his life. He just got accepted into a company and if the company learns of this, he would be fired. With this problem, he went to make a loan to this rich man nicknamed Omuomu who loaned him the 1 million dollars. In this way, the loan company can be repaid and the loan company will not go to his company.

Over the few episodes, he actually returned the 1 million dollars, but had to reborrow the money due to stupid reasons. Even when he returned the 1 million in the end, he continued to borrow a larger sum of money to help this guy that he knew. Although he is a stupid idiot, he is actually very cheerful and helpful, and changed the lifes of the people around him.

This drama gave me some things to think about.

Firstly, debt is a very bad thing. When you add in insanely high interest rates, the money can never be returned. Sometimes when you just happen to spend and spend without checking your credit card debt, you can rake up a huge bit of money which is extremely hard to repay.

Secondly, there is a story narrated by Omuomu. He cares about money the most, more than human relations because of this girl he loved. The girl worked hard and supported him whilst he was studying to go into law school. Eventually his girlfriend needed money for an operation, and the poor him had no money. His girlfriend passed away due to him being poor and then he worked hard to have a lot of money. I felt upset because I do not ever want to end up in a situation where I have no money to give my loved ones the operation that they need. In this world today, money is really an important thing. It is always better to have the money to afford the best medical treatment, than to have no money and watch your loved one die in front of you. Even Kazumi had the same problem when he was young. His elder brother died of an illness and even young Kazumi took out his piggy bank to save his brother, but the brother passed on before Kazumi had the chance to give his mother the piggy bank.

Binbo Danshi, although a comedy, actually has many lessons of life regarding money. It is always important to learn about money and how to have effective money management.