Went to Cold Rock Ice Creamery at 313 Sommerset and had an ice cream. I forgot the name of the ice cream, it’s the one that says Chocolate something and it has Tim Tams in it. The ice cream was rather expensive, $9.50 for a regular cup. It comes on top of this piece of waffle biscuit (is this what its called?) and there is a nice serving of ice cream.

But it was kinda a lot of chocolate, don’t you think?

It was still yummy though, but I’m going to stop eating chocolate stuff for a few days. Vanilla ice cream is still my favourite flavour.

It often puzzles me on how we refuse to see the right person when we have troubles. When we are sick, we go to the doctor right? Using his expertise, were able to gain a deeper insight on the problems that plague our body, and he might send us to a specialist if need be.

However this is not the same for our financial health. We do not see a financial advisor when we have questions regarding our insurance and financial planning aspects of our lives. Once I read on hardwarezone, a local popular forum, that someone has questions regarding purchasing of private shield plans. A financial advisor offered to help, but the threadstarters reply was that she dont need or want to see a financial advisor. And this reply of hers garnered popular support.

It sure is sad to see how the reputation of a financial advisor stink like that, but unfortunately I think that the smart man or woman would consult an advisor rather than asking clueless people on forums because they do not have any idea on the clauses in the insurance contract.

Whilst it is sad, nobody can blame these people for feeling that financial advisors are just out there to con their money. To put it simply, the name stinks. How many advisors are genuinely there to help a client? The number of people who do a fact find before proceeding to recommendations are considered to be extremely rare.

There are a couple of reasons why I would think that financial advisors have a hard time, and I believe that the industry has to improve for its reputation to go up. But the smart move now would be to find a trustable advisor to begin advising you on any matters.

1. It is easy to be a financial advisor
A doctor has to undergo specific training up to 6 years in duration before he is allowed to practise. An advisor only needs a pass in o levels? Furthermore, how convinced can you be of an advisor selling you an investment plan in a mutual fund if he has no qualifications regarding finance? Only a handful of financial advisors proceed on to get their CFAs. Can you imagine your advisor recommending you to select a fund, but he does not really understand how it works? Telling me it will go up does not convince me at all.

2. Lousy standards with respect to learning about new products
I have participated in the launch of new financial products. Advisors have to sit in for a few hours of lessons and then take a mcq test. Throughout the lesson, certain words are emphasized in a different colour to signify that it would be tested. When the mcq is being taken, people discuss despite being told not to. If our A levels are conducted like this, Im sure no one would have any faith in our qualifications. Similarly, how much faith can I put in my advisor if their knowledge on new products are built on shaky foundations?

3. Not following proper procedures
Do you know that advisors are supposed to get your financial details like salary, CPF contributions, dependents details, monthly expenses, existing insurance plans etc before recommending you any product? However, how many advisors truly adopt such a measure? How many times has your advisor called to say that theres this new product and arranges for a meeting? As opposed to having yearly reviews before saying I think this product suits your current needs or I have a new product, but I dont think it suits your needs at all. This layer of transparency and integrity would go a long way in improving the reputation of financial advisors.

Although there are many black sheep in the industry, there are good ones too. Ask your trusted friends if they have any advisors they trust. I do not like talking to agents on roadshow particularly because I do not know them enough to trust them. But the main lesson of the day is to seek proper help and never ask a completely untrained person for financial advice.

I have been sick and tired of Advertlets not paying me what it owes me, and after I have seen a fellow blogger complain, I thought action should be taken. Let’s all find out how much they owe from us, and collate a list. I’m sure the newspapers would have a field day when the list grows to a few thousand dollars.

Dear Advertlets,

It has come to my attention that your service towards bloggers could be considered as horrendous. Considering how your company lives off many bloggers, I wonder how much money has not been paid to them. Is Advertlet’s not ashamed of it’s stinking reputation?

I have repeatedly pressed for payment for my account since last year. As of July 9, 2009, Advertlets owe me a payment of RM103.08. On Feb 10, 2010, the debt grew by an additional RM101.07 to RM204.15. As of today, my account also has RM7.88.

This works out to RM212.03. Might I ask again, when is Advertlets going to pay me my money? Please do not use the lame excuse of needing time to process. Certainly you do not need a whole year. Please also do not notify me that the processing would be faster if I gave you all my bank account number, for I gave you all my account number twice and nobody obviously gives a damn about it.

This is the final straw and my final warning. This is also the final time I am trying to be civil towards your company. Even though the reputation of Advertlets stinks, I think there is room for more shit to be stirred out. I wonder how many people I can find whom your company owes money to? I wonder if the law would take pity on a sad internet company.

The exchange rate as of now would convert RM212.03 to S$91.30. I hope to see this amount in my bank account by the end of the week.

Thank you for teaching me how horrible customer service can be.

A few months ago our education minister seemed to have suggested reducing the weightage of mother tongue in our school examinations, resulting in plenty of discussions that led to an apology of not choosing the right words which led to a misunderstanding. Recently our dear MM Lee also spoke on the topic of our mother tongue, highlighting the issue that very few Singaporeans actually manage to master both languages, and that compared to English, our mother tongue is used less frequently. English is still the medium of instruction in subjects like math and physics. He is also right to point out that university students do not get exposed to mother tongue unless we choose to take related modules.

I agree that most of us cannot master both languages, myself included. Ever since NS, I have had difficulty remembering how to write Chinese words, but I can type farely well. My vocabulary is limited to those that I use frequently; only when I get into a more poetic mood do I have an improvement in the choice of words used.

But like a friend pointed out, just because it is hard, should we stop trying? Although I was exposed less to Chinese ever since I became an undergraduate, I felt that I could better relate to the language, and accept the language more than I was in school. In fact, I discovered I enjoyed the process of learning the Japanese language in my adulthood more than chinese in my kid days.

Yes, perhaps I am much more older and more matured, hence I could enjoy it more than anything I studied whilst I was young. However this does not mean that no steps could be taken to possibly improve our current methods of teaching mother tongue.

Perhaps a revamp of the education method with regards to the mother tongue should be adopted before we give up and throw in the towel. For us Singaporeans should be more resilent and stronger than that. If the problem was the method, and we chose to give up now, we would be denying our children the chance to have a greater mastery of both languages compared to my generation.

Hence before we adopt the drastic measures of reducing the weightage of mother tongue, we should consider adopting better systems to teach the language.

The reason why I enjoyed learning Japanese is simple. I had access to the Japanese dramas, which, in my own biased opinion, is more entertaining that local productions. I loved the Japanese anime, and their songs are nice too. I loved visiting the country, and I loved the food. What this means is that I had viewed the language as a pathway to embracing the rich culture of the Japanese. Now that the focus is on the culture and not the language, learning becomes more fun.

So this is what we should do. Whilst we cannot transform china because we have no right to, what we can do is to make people interested in the Chinese culture. The stories of legends, history of the emperors, even popular works like Legend of the Condor Heroes etc could help in teaching the language.

myPaper has done it. In the paper, certain english words are in bold, meaning their Chinese equivalents would be shown somewhere in the article. Since reading newspapers is not what most students consider entertaining, I would suggest putting the focus on television dramas instead.

For a start, we could focus on dramas with potentially high viewership. Selected words in the script could be displayed in a different colour in the subtitles with their Chinese equivalents stated. Since these dramas are in the chinese language, pronouciation would be taught too. The list of words could be provided in MediaCorps website.

Additionally, we could change the system in the classroom, but since it had been discussed at length, I shall not mention it.

The point of this post is this: we should exhaust all means necessary to improve the learning process before deciding to play with the weightage.

Note: I know the proper word is Mandarin, but most of us use Chinese as if it was the right word to use. It has already become part of our language.

I can almost see it
That dream I am dreaming
But there’s a voice inside my head saying
“You’ll never reach it”

Every step I’m taking
Every move I make feels
Lost with no direction
My faith is shaking

But I gotta keep trying
Gotta keep my head held high

There’s always gonna be another mountain
I’m always gonna wanna make it move
Always gonna be a uphill battle
Sometimes I’m gonna have to lose

Ain’t about how fast I get there
Ain’t about what’s waiting on the other side
It’s the climb

The struggles I’m facing
The chances I’m taking
Sometimes might knock me down
But no, I’m not breaking

I may not know it
But these are the moments that
I’m gonna remember most, yeah
Just gotta keep going

And I, I got to be strong
Just keep pushing on

‘Cause there’s always gonna be another mountain
I’m always gonna wanna make it move
Always gonna be a uphill battle
Sometimes I’m gonna have to lose

Ain’t about how fast I get there
Ain’t about what’s waiting on the other side
It’s the climb, yeah!

There’s always gonna be another mountain
I’m always gonna wanna make it move
Always gonna be an uphill battle
Somebody’s gonna have to lose

Ain’t about how fast I get there
Ain’t about what’s waiting on the other side
It’s the climb, yeah!

Keep on moving, keep climbing
Keep the faith, baby
It’s all about, it’s all about the climb
Keep the faith, keep your faith, whoa

Life’s a climb, but the views great.

No matter how, we always have our own mountains to conquer, and in its place, another mountain. But we go on and on, to greater heights, cause that is what we are. Never ending determination to get what we want.

Ace wo nerae, or エースをねらえ in Japanese, means “Aim for the Ace!”. This drama is about this girl Oka Hiromi, who joined the Nishi High School tennis club after seeing this girl (nicknamed Ochoufujin, お蝶夫人) play gracefully on the court. She’s a total newbie, yet the new coach Munakata Jin took notice of her persevering spirit and made her one of the players representing the school for competition. Naturally this means the more qualified seniors are unhappy about the arrangement and seeks means and ways to make Oka feel bad.

The beauty of this drama is in how the coach spends time and effort grooming Oka, and even though Oka does not understand the coach very well, she continues to come back time and again after running away from tennis. Eventually Oka understands the coach’s feelings and at the end of the entire drama she made it as a representative of Japan to go to America to play in the Youth Cup.

We might find ourselves running away from time to time, not understanding what is going on. We may doubt and question ourselves in the choice we make. Oka frequently asks herself why she chose to play tennis. What does tennis mean to her. When Ochoufujin asks her to choose between tennis and herself, Oka initially chooses Ochoufujin, but realizes that she loved tennis so much, so she returned.

Sometimes life gives us challenges, and we may feel dejected for a moment. But as long as we truly believed in ourselves, and we truly worked hard for our goals, we will reach there. Even if the world didn’t believe in you, you have to believe in yourself. The world doesn’t owe us a duty to believe, but we can make them believe. With perseverance and hard work, one day we’ll achieve the things that we are aiming for, and then everyone would be forced to believe.

Ace wo nerae, minna.

This is the results of today’s run. I did not maintain my fitness over the years, hence I took too much time to run. By right my normal speed is more than 10km/hour, and today I only managed 8.49km. Indeed different from when I was in NS. Guards would have disapproved. What happened to 10km in 50 minutes? Or 5min per km.

After the run my legs were a little like jelly. The last time I actually ran 10km was probably in NS. Since 2006! That’s a long time. And I am happy I can still run 10km on a whim without properly training for it.

The road to 42.195km is long and tough, and there are many more obstacles to clear before I can reach that level. 12km, 15km, 21km and then going on to 42.195km. Lots of training and preparation, plenty of things to learn.

Ganbarimasu.

Today marks the end of my 24 weeks in DSTA. A good 6 months of industrial attachment; a truly wonderful experience. Although the technical knowledge gained isn’t a lot, I actually got exposed more to what DSTA does and the field of project management. It would be a nice place to work at, and I am interested in project management as well. I guess in a way it would be good for future management roles.

24 weeks isn’t exactly a long period of time, but neither is it short. In a way I was waiting for the weeks to go by and for my attachment to end, but to be frank, most of the time I didn’t need to count the weeks. They just went by easily and oh its week 22 already. After the NTU interns finished their IA at week 22, the countdown to my last day was a little unbearable. There was no intern to talk to, and I was finishing up on my work. Each day was slow because I kept quiet in the office.

And by finishing my IA, I can now stick to my iPhone and not change phones at Sunday night. I can bring my camera phone around!

Anyway at night the EE3001 project team went out for dinner at Crystal Jade @ Holland Village. It’s the xiao long bao buffet so we kept ordering the xiao long bao. Actually we didn’t really keep ordering, cause we ordered like 20 at one shot. Each containing 5 xiao long baos. For the other steamboat stuff, my table only ordered a single round. The other table also gave us all the prawns. I ate like 7 prawns in total.

We spent the time chatting and planning for the next outing. It was enjoyable, really, to sit down and just enjoy the talk. One topic that emerged was the $9500 starting salary for banking jobs. And that’s the pay for fresh graduates. Totally insane. Yanling said that if one has passion, then follow the passion, else can go into banking. I joked that my passion was money. Keira knew it wasn’t. So she asked me. But I didn’t say anything.

Money is still undoubtedly important isn’t it. Enough to sway decisions. Considering that there are so much in life to pay for. The future MBA course in a local university, which costs about S$50,000. The future house. The future car. Taking the money for investments to plan for retirement. Having money to actually make sure the family is comfortable and that I would be able to give a proper headstart to my future children. Money undoubtedly plays a major role in each phase in life. We can’t run away from it. But money might not be the sole deciding factor.

The sense of purpose is another deciding factor. What do we want to do? Would we want to feel that yes the job is meaningful. There’s just so much things to think about. Luckily there is still one more year left before I have to face everything.

Keira gave me a keychain thingie for my birthday. The zanpakto of Kuchiki Byakuya. How apt. Just the thing I need to remind me to work hard for the remaining two semesters.

Ganbarimasu. Let’s get a good job and start planning for retirement.

I think being in a government is a tough job. No matter what you do, there will be people complaining about your governance. As long as someone’s life is hard, they will complain. When you say CPF is there to provide for old age, they will complain and say people now know how to save. When you say the purpose of raising GST is to help the poor, they only think of how raising GST will increase the prices of the goods they are buying.

As long as you are at a higher position over someone else, you will be bitched about. Even in the working environment. Sometimes it might be due to a miscommunication, but most of the time people at the bottom just bitch to feel better. Even managers, yes, as long as there is someone above, most people will complain and complain. There is just no satisfying everyone.

The CPF is there to save money for you. Just treat it as auto saving 20% and more (since there is employer contribution). Even if the government give you the money, you will still save the 20% up in the bank isn’t it? This is because you want to buy a house etc. And the interest rates in CPF is 4% (conditions apply. Only first $x in OA), which is better than the pathetic 0.01% in banks?

Put it simply, the government cannot end up in a situation where retirees have no money and start asking money from the government. When that situation occurs, the tax money would be used, and hence now we get a situation of the young paying for the old. CPF is NOT taking the young’s money to put in the old’s account. We cannot afford to have everyone on social support, so for those idiots who cannot save money properly, the rest of us have to suffer the inflexibility. Yes some of us might be able to generate better returns, but sadly most of us cannot. Hence for the majority, it is logical for the minority to have to sacrifice. Balancing the needs of everyone and the needs of the few is a delicate task the government has to do.

On another topic, how many times have we seen fellow Singaporeans take up our minister’s quotes to make fun of? Especially the one about social support, about how much do you need? Hawker center food, food court food, or eating in a restaurant.

I don’t think our minister was wrong at all in saying that. For a person living on social support, how much does one really need? Do we need to give them enough money so they can have a super comfortable life? Eat at Jacks Place everyday? Watch movies at GV Gold Class? As long as they have enough to live on, with a roof over their heads and food to eat, I think, we have done our part as fellow Singaporeans. After all, we work hard for ourselves, not to benefit other people who don’t.

Sometimes I wonder, what is the government’s role? We elect representatives of us as our leaders, to go to places like the Parliament and discuss things for the benefit of the country. However, might I ask, whether their role is to represent public opinion and implement popular policies for the masses, or to move with unpopular policies that will inconvenience the masses but is good for the country subsequently? Both are logical. And what is popular with the masses might be detrimental for the nation.

Take for example, National Service. If we allow the citizens to vote, we’ll probably scrape it. But is it vital? Is it really needed? I don’t know the information the government has, but I guess they do look into it and determine if we have this level of threat existing in the region. But I guess it is always good to question the government, so there’ll always be a thinking process there. But sadly most of the questions are noise. Lacking in standard and are mostly whine.

Should we inconvenience the minority who know how to save for the majority who don’t?

Should we implement NS to deter aggressors or cancel it to lessen the inconvenience for the Singapore born males.

Should we invite FT to play for us in sports, so that the excitement generated would be good enough to produce our own talents in 30 years time, or should we use our talents now who might not win anything, hence not generating enough excitement and not changing the situation? FT now and local later, or local forever?

They are all difficult choices to make, and so many things to think about. But at least when I am able to feel secure about myself and my future, and I can live happily here, to me, I guess that’s great. We’re already so fortunate compared to other places. Caning vandalisers, hanging drug murderers. Cruel? Draconian? I guess, I like this Singapore.

I finished this JDrama a few days ago, and the time spent from the beginning of the drama at episode one to its ending at episode 9 took me almost 6 months. This is because the source for the stream was really bad and it took very long to load the parts. Thanks to Dom, I got to watch the rest of the episodes from episode 5 onwards without any lag.

Hotelier is a drama about managing a hotel. The hotel is facing a crisis as there is a person who is looking forward to take over this hotel through the acquiring of the majority of its shares. The guy’s personal reason for doing so was rather childish in my opinion.

Anyway, he hired a takeover expert who has successfully engineered several takeovers in the past. The expert then stayed in the hotel silently to evaluate the hotel.

Through a series of fortunate events, he fell in love with the Assistant Manager Odagiri (played by Ueto Aya). But his identity was eventually exposed and there were some confusion on Odagiri’s part as she was loyal to the hotel for being her home all these years, and on the other hand she had feelings for the expert.

Eventually after lots of ups and downs, the expert switched sides and saved the hotel.

Notice that I didn’t really remember the names of key personnel, and I didn’t give more review to this drama. This is because the drama isn’t really exciting, and it was slow at some points in time. Had it not been Ueto Aya’s work, I would probably not have finished this drama. Probably this is another reason why it dragged beyond 6 months. I guess people can skip this drama?