I received a brochure from an English enrichment class near my home. I was super impressed because of the great advice it gives to students - Show, don't tell. Basically that advice - for good writing to students - means that instead of saying that John is smart, you say everything that describes why he is smart. In other words, you show, you don't tell. I'll probably write something that goes like this: John can solve problems at a snap of a finger; problems that normally take others a good while to figure out.
I was pretty impressed! I thought...
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Monday, November 05, 2012
Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear
I was having lunch with my wife and I happened to chance upon this car with a very special wording imprinted on the side mirrors. It's not the first thing that I came across this particular phrase but it's the first that I've seen printed on the side wing mirror itself. I don't think it's pasted on the side wing mirrors as I did not observe signs of a sticker's edge anywhere. I could be wrong though. Here's how it looks like:
If the words are...
Sunday, November 04, 2012
THAT which is sacrificed to the god of Aphorism
As work begins to wind down, I started reflecting more on the articles that I read on other blogs. One of the articles struck me as worthy of further reflection, and so I mused more on it. The article talks about how compounding can be magical in the way that a seemingly small sum of money that is put aside will grow into a gigantic sum over a long period of time. There's a story of this lady Grace Groner who, shall I say passively, put a small...
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
I'm a true neutral druid/wizard!
Did this survey to find out what my alignment and class is for the D&D role play found here. It's a humongous 129 questions survey - pretty long - but it gives a very detailed result which I put it below. Have fun, and do share the results if you did it :) Sadly, I'm no longer a ranger class now, haha!
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True Neutral Elf Druid/Wizard (2nd/2nd Level)
Ability...
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Singpost's quiet rise
Singpost's shares had been climbing up steadily, but especially so after the announcement of the new thompson mrt line. At least it seems so to me. The volume of the shares transacted daily also rose up appreciably, whereas in the past, this is usually a quiet counter. Out of curiosity, I went to dig up some figures to see how much the postal building at the affected Thomson Road Post Office located at 246T Upper Thomson Road is worth.
From commercial property guru site, a mall shop, 99 yr leasehold located at Upper Thomson Road is selling...
Thursday, August 30, 2012
How to borrow ebooks from NLB
Some of you may heard that our very own national library board (NLB) had begun lending out ipads with books preloaded inside or downloadable from the library site, in order to encourage the younger ones to take up reading. While I reserve my judgement on whether it's a good thing using ipad to encourage reading before children actually learns to read good old boring books, I think libraries going the way of lending out digitized content is actually...
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Kindle dx graphite edition review
I very recently bought a kindle graphite dx. This is the newer version of the kindle dx that I had and it comes with free 3G, a usual 9.7 inch display but with the newer e-ink (pearl) display. The 3G really works and I can access a very basic web browser with it. Don't expect to do fantastic surfing with the browser because the refresh rate and loading speed, at least here in Singapore, is rather slow. I'm sure if I'm residing in US and with the...
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Online loans
Online Quick Loans—Great Solution to Overdrafts
Payday loans are now one of the most convenient ways to borrow money. Banks offer loans with low interests however; approval takes some time because of several factors. Cheapest pay day loans UK offer online quick loans to borrowers who need loan for emergency situations. People have been using bank loans but recently, payday loans have become relatively popular than banks. “Cash loan instant” is now being chosen by people to get immediate money without undergoing long process and extended wait.
Payday...
Wednesday, August 08, 2012
Diablo 3 hardcore
There's this game called Diablo 3 by Blizzard that I'm spending quite a fair bit of my time on. Having played the normal aka softcore mode using all the different characters available, I thought I'll try the hardcore mode for the wizard character. They said it's going to be a wild ride and it sure is. In hardcore mode, you can only die once and if you do, your equipment that you carry with you when you die will be erased. The gold that you kept...
Friday, June 29, 2012
Is it fair?
In my neighborhood there are three stalls selling economic rice. They are all selling around $4 each plate. One day, the stall that I've been buying for the past 4-5 yrs decided to change their price. They decided to import better rice and meat and fresher vegetables, with a catch of course. The catch being that they will reduce the quantity of the rice, the meat and the vegetables by about 1/6 of the original amount and it'll cost the same price. Despite being complained by consumers all over the neighborhood, the stall refused to budge with...
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
The hen, the pig and the man
A man has two best friends, one a hen and the other a pig. However, he is unsure what their level of commitment that they have towards him. For all he knows, it may just be a one sided friendship. So one day, he asked a fox for help. The wily fox agreed and set to action immediately. On the pretext that the fox had kidnapped the man, the fox asked the hen and the pig to put out their most valued possession that they have in order to raise the money to pay handsome ransom to the kidnappers.
The hen clucked and said that she would give off 5...
Saturday, May 12, 2012
A frustrating week
I've had students who asked to stop the tuition once they did well for their exams or once the holidays are here. Usually I don't agree, especially for graduating students because I think the time spent with me is worth many hours spent doing their own revision, unless proven otherwise. I'm in this business too for the money of course, but there are times where I think the student is so well trained and I've nothing more to offer to them, then I would either reduce the tuition time or simply drop the student. I think that's only fair. No point...
Wednesday, May 02, 2012
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Be Brave.
A student of mine recently got 'scolded' by me. She was trying to solve a physics problem but she had no idea how to do it. I had a glimpse of her thinking when I asked her to think out loud. She said after doing this and that, she had no idea what to do. Then I realised that she is trying to figure out entirely the solution of the problem in her head before she even attempt it on paper. I told her severely that perhaps in simpler problems, the...
Thursday, April 19, 2012
What's the minimum salary to live comfortably?
I was wondering what is the salary that one would need in order to survive life here in Singapore. It would not be surprising to hear a wide range, perhaps from as low as 1k/mth to as high as 20k/mth. That's because we want different things in life and for certain things, we really do not want to do without because if these basic comfort levels are gone, then our quality of life also decreases. After all, we do not want to merely survive; we want...
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Changing market strategy?
Some people follow a market strategy of being a contrarian. This means that if others are buying, then you will be selling and vice versa. I think this makes a lot of sense, at least in theory. The hard thing is not about the theory itself, but deciding when the theory is applicable. If you look at a snapshot of all the available market theory, they will work in particular situations but not in others, hence to a beginner who is bombarded by a thousand and one market strategy, he will only get more confused after reading all these.
I am...
Tuesday, April 03, 2012
Sharing my monthly ritual
I just finished tidying up my month end accounts. I've been doing this for quite a while, so it didn't take too much time as all the necessary process had already been routinized and it's just a matter of clicking the right websites and recording down some numbers. Let me share what I do every month end:
1. Open up my excel spreadsheet. There are 2 books that needed me to fill up. First is the monthly expenditure. In the past I used to record all my expenses, big or small, onto that spreadsheet daily. But these days, I tend to consolidate...
Friday, March 09, 2012
Don't be obsessed over financial freedom
The title says it all. Do not be obsessed over financial freedom. Financial freedom is for the future, but in order to have a future, you need to have a present. What if one day, your present situation changes, would the financial freedom that you have in the future still be meaningful? For example, you planned nicely for a nice retirement at age 45 with a cash flow matching your expenses, but suddenly your life situation changes - your spouse left you, you lost control of your limbs etc - would the financial freedom that you crave for in the...
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Complementary opposites
I realised, by living with my wife, that we have different ways of looking at things. She could fuss over details that I wouldn't bat my eyelids over. Or I could crunch over the numbers before buying things while she just looks at the colours available. I think that's the thing that makes us, as a couple, interesting. It would never do to have two person who are too similar. Wouldn't it be boring? Of course, we cannot be too 'interesting', otherwise we would argue at everything and anything and living together would be near impossible. I see this...
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Selling mode
Throughout the entirety of this week and last, I was trying to sell of a good part of my portfolio. I sold off all my aims before the run up and all my sabana and all my lippomall. Don't be alarmed by the word 'all' - it means different things to different people. I sold all because the amount that I had in it is not big in the first place, so it is senseless to try to earn that extra few dollars by staggering it into multiple sell batches.
As to seller's remorse, I believe it no longer plagues me. I conclude that it is essentially an emotional...
Wednesday, February 08, 2012
Results announcement calender
Here's the result announcement for this month. I'll be paying attention to a few counters that are announcing their full year results. I wonder whether this is the thing that keeps STI awake these days and wondering what will become of STI when the excitement dies off.
...
Tuesday, February 07, 2012
The swan song of local bloggers
As the market transforms back and fro into a beast that is neither a bull or a bear (perhaps it had always been a hybrid chimera of sort - a bull with bear head for instance), I noticed that more and more old timer bloggers are slowly exiting the blogging scene. I say that with a tinge of heartache, because some of them had been blogging together with me since I started circa 2006 period, right near the peak of the bull market. 6 years had since passed, with each of them patiently and industrially churning out articles after articles, sometimes...
Friday, January 20, 2012
How I read (almost) 52 books a year
Since a lot of readers commented that they had only been reading 1-2 books max in a year, I thought it'll be a good time to share what I did to read that many books. First of all, let me add that in my opinion, reading many books is not as important as reading the right books. I rather read less books but books that are important and crucial to your mental well-being, than to say, reading many many books that are just trashy. But it's the law of...
Monday, January 09, 2012
Reflection on 2011
After doing my end of month accounting for the Dec 2011 and thus wrap up my financial year 2011, I realised that a lot of my networth was wiped out. Okay, everyone's definition of networth is different, so here's mine - it's defined as all my assets (includes cash, marked to market investment portfolio, whole life insurance cash value, mmf and cpf) but excludes my residential property. I also didn't include debts that I owed to the hdb because...
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