flower pots to welcome spring/summer?

shd i get myself some flowers/cactuses to brighten up my place??
i think it would look nice sitting on the ledge in my house.
hm... but i have the blinds drawn every moment of the day, so leaving them there would be kinda useless ain't it??

reflections

and so, as 2010 is drawing to a close, its always apt to look back upon the year & see how things have turned out.
truly, this was the year of Restful Increase. managed to achieve 2 of my aims & i hope to achieve the remaining 3 next year! the year has passed by at a considerably constant pace. it was also a year of change. for me at least. stepping out of my comfort zone into something familiar, but yet unknown. i wouldn't say that my past 2 years in a***t has been all that bad. it did allow me a chance to grow & see the good & not so good sides of people. but of course, the good was more than the bad. made many new friends, friends whom i hope i'll still keep in contact with for many years to come. and let this be the foreshadowing of more good things to come! ^^

but of course, life always has its ups & downs. its how you take the downs that matter the most. there were times when i thought that it was almost impossible, but God always came through miraculously, meeting ALL my personal deadlines & criteria. seriously, i was almost going to give up, but He came through. :)

2011 is gonna be an even better year ahead & i can't wait to see what He has in store for me! cause i know that it is & it will be good! ^^

tick tock.. tick tock..

and so, with the exams looming in just 2 months time, i so need to start intensive revision. weekends make for good studying time, though albeit short. would love to put in more hours during the weekdays, but somehow, work + study just doesn't cut it for me. sigh..

many of my best buds have moved on, at a much faster pace than me.. though i did start earlier. i suppose its a case of slow & steady wins the race. hopefully my turn will come soon! at the time that i want it to come. am faced with 2 very attractive yet different choices & i've no idea which one i should choose. part of me just wants God to close doors that should be closed & open those that should be opened. but the other side of me wants to have choices.. well, just to say that i've got a choice. human nature is as such.

soon soon.. i can feel it.. i just have to be patient.. n i do need to learn patience. for it is not one of my best virtues.

그림의 떡?

원하는 것 돼게 많는데
다 얻을 수 없어

진짜 좋을 까
아님
그냥 나의 환상인가?

담에 한 걸음...
어느 향에 가면 좋을 까?

ambivalence

so, nothing's really been confirmed yet. i would like to say that it has, but nope, nothing's been set in stone. well, the best is yet to be. n i trust that it'll be so! do have an appt set up next week, though its something that i'm not really interested in, can't hurt to try i suppose.

have not really been in the mood to work for quite sometime now. although i haven't really been working my ass off. haha. i suppose this is what happens once you get past the stage of not caring. some ppl just seem very motivated. too motivated i would say. but whatever for? it has gone beyond my comprehension.

would like to clear the exams & hopefully get a nice relaxing holiday (read: winter holiday) before i start the next phase in somewhere great!

meanwhile, as always, its time to countdown to the weekend...

does this mean i get to go?

would be nice if everything fell into place just how i want it to.. :)

that tingly feeling of excitement, but yet a slight fear mixed with trepidation.. the potential in the what ifs & what could have beens..

a new start to everything in the new year.

sounds pretty good to me alright. :)

we shall see..

i'm quite confident that the weeks ahead are gonna be very exciting indeed.

to dream or not to dream

You wake up everyday and work from Monday to Friday, and often, Saturday too. If you finish work early, you and your partner go to your parents’ place for dinner and see your child for a few hours. If you work late, you buy a packet of char kway teow from the hawker centre but eat it at home because it’s too warm to eat there. You’re not crazy about the job but you know that if you keep at it, you can afford a car in 3 years’ time, and in 5 years’ time, buy a condo close to the primary school you want to send your kid to. Your conversations with people are either for the purpose of networking, work, or for familial obligations you cannot avoid. On weekends, you play golf with your friends at your country club or watch a movie with your partner. Once a year, you go on a ten day vacation to New York, London, or Paris, and when your children are big enough, Disneyland.

Alternatively, you wake up and you have no idea what is going to happen today, tomorrow, 6 months or a year later. Ironically, because of this uncertainty, all possibilities exist for you. You can be the Prime Minister of Singapore, you can make a movie, you can cook a meal you have never cooked before, eat at a place you have never eaten before, you can color your hair red, you can skip instead of walk, you can volunteer at the school you have always wanted to volunteer at, you can write a book, or you can have a baby even though you don’t have a maid. You have conversations with people who set your heart palpitating and your mind on fire. Your weekday is not so different from your weekend because everyday you are thinking, creating, and more important, imagining.

Most of us recognize the first story and its pursuit of the 5 Cs of “cash, condo, car, country club, credit card.” It is the Plan, which imposes a conclusion on you, and you work in order to make all the pieces fit. A bus stop advertisement I saw recently said it best: “We spend all our youth chasing money, and when we attain it, we spend all our money chasing youth.”

A Dream, on the other hand, carries you on its wings to worlds that your heart and mind have never known.

extracted from Popagandhi


i wonder, how many of us are actually brave enough to chase after the 2nd option. especially in this pragmatic society that is Singapore.

the start of something better, i believe...

am finally going for my 1st real interview tomorrow. though its not really sth that i'm THAT interested in, i suppose its a start!! n let it be the start of many more good things to come!

was re-reading some of the entries that kaye & myself posted back in 2008, when we were still in korea, and i realised that we were really happy with the life that we were leading back then. i guess that's y we keep wanting to go back somehow.. i don't know if things will still remain the same, 2 years on, but i would like to believe so. :)

for some reason, i feel more at home in korea than in HK, even though i've lived in both before. perhaps its the air pollution and the practicalness(?) of HK and its people that make me more adverse to living there? i should start exploring other countries soon. n 1st up, will be vietnam! but i don't feel as excited as i felt when i was going to korea/hk. maybe, its still a long way away from the trip for the euphoria to set in? or perhaps its just work. haha. i seem to be using work as an excuse all the time. actually, its the perfect excuse for everything. like how u want to get out of gatherings with people whom you don't really like, u can just say, oh, i'm busy with work. i've a deadline coming up. or if you want to escape those dreaded family gatherings, work is always there for you. its the perfect all encompassing excuse. :)

when can i get out?

on Singapore..

i came across this post while web surfing and thought that the ideas from this post were so beautifully written that I should share it with you guys. Any attempt on my part to reconstruct it would probably massacre and change the original flavour of the post.

so here goes...

Every once in a while friends and acquaintances, often those who haven’t stepped outside of Changi airport, decide to tell me their views on Singapore. Sometimes, they tell me it is such a beautiful efficiently run city. Some others just can’t believe how people can live in a place that has such a stifling government and care about nothing else, but their materialistic needs.

I don’t usually bother to argue. At the end of the day, its not my home country and my feelings of loyalty are, at best, stretched. But I can’t help but feel that Singapore is misunderstood. Singapore is the quiet girl in the class who gets straight As in the exams, but is never really popular in school because she is such a prude. Yet she tries really really hard to be the cool-kid. Her parents tell her that she should “seriously” have fun! Yet, they tell her that grades are all that really matters. The poor prude girl is really confused. Could anyone have known that beneath the pristine doll-like image, there is a silently troubled child, with a complicated and sullied inside, every bit as human as anyone can be.

People don’t see the real Singapore – the real Singapore doesn’t exist in the tall financial centers or the huge malls or the parliament buildings, where they make us believe democracy has some role to play. Singapore is not limited to the yuppies who aspire to buy the latest Porsche or the Armani-aspiring corporate mogul-wanna-be who couldn’t care less about what happens around them, as long as they get their 5 (or is it more now? )Cs. Thats just what is presented to the outside world. In fact, even many Singaporeans see themselves through those tinted shades.

If you want to see the heart and soul of Singapore, wander not through Millenia walk or Suntec city, but through the narrow roads of China Town or Little India or Arab street, or even the little parks around Bishan or Ang Mo Kio. The fat lady who sells you the Char Kway Teow or the little girl who brings you the ice kacang at the hawker centers, has a story to tell, if only if you had the time to listen. Singapore is not a land of boring, law-abiding people who don’t think and who work and walk like machines – its a place with as much life and emotion as any other, if only you would look beyond the surface.

If the heart of India is in her villages, the heart of Singapore is in her HDB flats. Thats where the dreams are dreamt and tears are wept. If the Singapore government doesn’t hear the collective sigh of the heartlands, they would miss out on reaching out to the real Singapore. And if they don’t let us see the real Singapore, we will all go back with our own false images. If Singapore seems to you like a land straight out of Pleasantville, its only because someone has put a thick filter which blocks out all the colours, somewhere between your eyes and the reality. And you know who that someone is. It is often one’s flaws that makes us human, and thus beautiful. As you desperately try to hide your flaws, you also hide yourself. Singapore, isn’t it about time that you let us see the real you?

The next time someone talks to me about Singapore, I just wish they would talk about not just the concrete buildings or the super clean streets or the democracy that doesn’t seem to be, but something less superficial. Lets talk about the heart of Singapore, shall we?


extracted from Silenteloquence

busy week ahead

its gonna be a very busy week ahead!

tues: CFA Derivatives Lecture
wed: Macquarie Warrants Seminar
thurs: gathering with ex-classmates
sat: hooked on flea #2 @ Homeclub
sun: 노래방 with kaye

when i'm free.. i'm really too free. and the opposite is true as well..

i dunno if i prefer working or schooling. with school, you get all the complications, angsty moods, emo ppl and exams. i can't say that i miss all of that, but i do miss the camaraderie that my JC class esp had.. i think JC life was the best out of all.

work life is gd cause i get to earn $$. but the lack of personal time is seriously bad. >_< even more so cause i'm in a***t. sigh.. i need to get out soon.

Markowitz Portfolio Theory

i never thought i would be studying such stuff again.. and voluntarily too!!!

Expected return:-

Where Ri is return and wi is the weighting of component asset i.

Portfolio variance:-

where . Alternatively the expression can be written as:


where ρij = 1 for i=j.

Portfolio volatility:-

For a two asset portfolio:-

Portfolio return:
Portfolio variance:

the things i do to get out of audit....

reminds you of a very bad day in finance class, doesn't it???

i now have to dreg up what is left from stats/finance class during JC/NTU days & try to put them in practice...

thank God i have till Dec...

the wheels are set in motion....

now all we can do is wait.

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

2AM 조권, "가인과 사귈 땐 남몰래"


[티브이데일리=최준용 기자] 2AM 멤버 조권이 가상커플 ‘브라운아이드걸스’ 멤버 가인에 대해 언급했다.

조권은 오늘 방송된 SBS TV '좋은아침'에서 ‘가상 커플에 대한 주변의 관심이 부담스럽지 않냐’는 질문에 “큰 관심이라고 생각하기 때문에 좋게 생각한다”고 밝혔다.

이어 “정말 가인과 사귀라는 분들이 많지만 우리가 사귄다고 해도 공개하겠습니까? 만약 그렇게 된다면 몰래 사귀겠습니다”라고 밝혔다.

또 “사귀고 안사귀고의 문제는 우리 둘만의 문제이기에 많은 분들이 사귀라고 해주시는 것은 그만큼 큰 관심을 받고 있다고 생각하기에 정말 좋습니다”라고 덧붙였다.

한편 2AM 멤버들은 오늘 방송에서 “데뷔할 때도 그렇고 지금도 god를 롤 모델로 삼고 있다”며 “아직은 멀었고 더 열심히 노력하겠다”고 말했다.


"2AM Jo Kwon says that he'll keep it a secret if he were to date Ga-In"

2AM's member, Jo Kwon mentioned his fake wife, Brown Eyed Girls' Ga-In during an interview with SBS's Good Morning on the 9th of Feb 2010. 'Despite receiving a lot of attention from people around us, I don't feel burdened at all. Its good that we're receiving so much attention.', said Jo Kwon during the the interview.

In response to the question if he would date Ga-In if the chance arose, Jo Kwon said, 'Even if i did, I would keep it a secret. The decision to date is between the two of us. But i'm happy that so many people are concerned about our relationship.'

Meanwhile, the members of 2AM expressed that they'll continue to work harder despite having attained success.



personally, i think that both of them are dating.. judging from their behaviour n actions.. hahah. but we wouldn't know, would we? Jo Kwon's one secretive guy indeed....

estranged from normal-cy..

been reading through my seniors as well as my ex classmates' blogs and am, dare i say it, envious of the life that they are leading right now. coming from very much an Arts background, where literary reads, art and music were the norm, i never expected myself to end up in something so practical like accounts. perhaps its reality that scares me. somehow, i have always envisioned myself doing the thing that i love and not what i need. money over enjoyment, practicality over dreams. is there really no space for dreamers in a pragmatic society such as ours? whereby money, fame and fortune are the rules of the game?

we were allowed to dream, allowed to imagine ourselves travelling across the world, exploring, eating and enriching ourselves through our travels. we saw the world through the pages of books. but it was not enough. it left us wanting more. sadly, graduation saw us grow up, don suits and ties and enter the rigorous working world where cash is king.

perhaps i'm jaded, or perhaps its resignation.. i really don't know..