Election season is here, and somehow, i'm thinking about it in a slightly different way. my fundamental stance hasn't changed, but i got to thinking about why some people (be they ruling party or opposition) want to get into politics. how many of them really want to serve the people? most MPs in the ruling party are holding concurrent appointments - CEOs, directors, ministers, even. makes me wonder how they carve out the time to be down on the ground. and yes, i know the most common answer is "they don't".

on the flipside, why do some people join the opposition? it could be that they can't make the cut for the ruling party, and/or they want to do things differently. i can respect that. but after looking at some of the candidates, i can't help but wonder if a certain few are only in it for the lucrative MP allowance (last i heard it's $16 000 a month). listening to some of their speeches and campaigning platforms just has me shaking my head. example: the candidate who has an anti-LGBT agenda, supposedly to help curb the falling birthrate. does he realize that his policies won't help? i mean, nothing the government or anyone could realistically offer me would motivate me to have a kid. hence, i question if he's really in it for the greater good. side note: there's an interesting story of how he denied being gay when asked about another opposition leader, even though the question had nothing to do about his orientation. is he that insecure? although he's married with kids, he is from the generation when gay guys had to "act straight" and raise a "normal" family. not saying that he's definitely gay, but there's a possibility. after all, excessive denial is usually internalized homophobia. or it might be PTSD from an unpleasant experience. whatever it is, i'm happy that he's not contesting in my constituency.

honestly, do i expect things to change significantly? no, not really. the ruling party will still stay in power, that's for sure. it would be a refreshing change if a few more GRCs and/or SMCs went to the opposition, which i think is not unrealistic to hope for. i think the biggest thing that gives the opposition more credibility is that more prominent figures are joining it. i mean, a senior counsel, a professor who's world-renowned in his field, and all the younger talent, too.

just for fun, i was thinking if i could make it in politics. don't worry, i'm not delusional - i know the answer is a resounding "no". knowing how superficial singaporeans are, i know i'd get flak for (1) my appearance, and (2) not looking members of the public in the eye when speaking to them! and that's not even factoring the gay thing in yet. do you know when was the last time a gay candidate tried to run? i think it was in 2011 or 2016, i forget which. do you know what happened to him? he moved to new zealand. i don't know exactly why he moved, but i'm sure the anti-gay climate here was at least a point of consideration for him. so...yes. i'm definitely better off as a private citizen.

also wanted to mention something that happened on saturday, which made me feel a little bit bad. since L was going to end work later than usual, i took the opportunity to drop in on my aunt. all 4 of the kids were there, and they decided to have a screaming contest for some reason. cue ear-splitting shrieking, which got me annoyed enough to yell at them to cut it out. so here's the thing. i quite literally grew up with my cousins, who are these kids' parents. when we were growing up, i always considered them to be basically siblings, and my aunt and uncle (their parents) as a second set of parents. problem is, i don't know if that closeness carries down to my relationship with the next generation. for the record, i'm not saying that i want it. just that i wonder if i'm overstepping boundaries by scolding kids who are not mine. am i thinking too much? possibly, because i wouldn't think twice about telling random kids off in public if they were being stupid. perhaps the problem might lie with me being too intolerant of kids. whatever the case is, i'm happy that my generation is no longer beholden to the ancient definition of success as having a happy family consisting of a wife and kids. i'm plenty happy as it is now.

good news - next week is a short week. labour day on thursday, plus my work from home days, means i'll only be in the office on monday and tuesday. still have tuition on saturday though, despite it being polling day. it's kind of a bummer. L gets the day off, lucky guy. but i suppose having class is more good than bad for me. since i'm not salaried for tuition unlike him, no class means no money for the week!

-random thought of the day: Remember to vote after tuition next week.-

Days and weeks are blurring together, and time is just flying by. i'm 3.5 months into probation, with another 5.5 left to go. the training phase is also wrapping up; i think it officially ends with april, and we'll be held to a higher standard from may onwards. it's quite terrifying, but it's a necessary step for our growth and development.

that's all i'll talk about, as far as work is concerned. my idea for this post is more like a "check-in", of sorts - to figure out how i'm doing in non-work areas, whether anything is off-balance and needs addressing. as a whole, i feel ok...but i know that there are areas i could be improving on. one such area that immediately comes to mind is health and fitness. i mean, i feel fine, but i know that the weight has come back, to almost pre-JET levels. clothes are feeling tighter, i'm just feeling less fit in general. a lot of it is due to lifestyle...i'm now sedentary at work instead of constantly moving about, and environmental factors (weather and crowds) discourage me from being active outdoors. but still, that's no excuse. now that i can't get my steps/exercise in during work, i'll have to make time for physical activity outside of the office. that will start this wednesday. i'll go to the gym nearby. it's literally a 5-minute walk from home, and i've been putting it off for longer than necessary.

health kind of links to family, because a relative is going through a health crisis at the moment. this is one of those times i regret that i'm not the kind of doctor that can be useful in this scenario. it stings even more because the relative has cancer - and despite spending 4 years making compounds to kill cancer, nothing i made can safely be used in a human body at this point. all i can do is offer generic advice and information, which may not even be relevant if the chemotherapy isn't in my research field! well, what i'm going to do is to leave the medical treatment to the qualified professionals, and if asked, i'll share what i know about cancer.

on that note, i had lunch with my aunt, uncle, and cousin's family yesterday. it occurred to me that i haven't really been spending time with them, what with life flying by and all. it made me wonder if i could do more to carve out time for them - L's workplace is reasonably close to my aunt's house, and since i finish work 2 hours earlier than he does, i could go over to interact with them while waiting for him. i realized during the lunch that it's quite rare for not-immediate family to still be this close, and that if i want to maintain the closeness, i should put more effort into it.

mentally, i think i'm good. nothing causing me significant stress. L and i are doing well. no doubt we have disagreements still, but they're resolved with laughter instead of shouting or vicious words. forgive me for blowing my own trumpet, i do think we're getting good at this life partner thing. i'm looking forward to our next major milestone, which is living alone - just the two of us. for the record, his dad is amazing, and me wanting to move out is not due to him or anything he's done. the reason is that i want a private place for just the two of us. i think even after we move out, L will still want to meet his dad regularly for meals. and if he forgets, i'll remind him. cliche as it sounds, i'm of the belief that parents shouldn't feel (or be made to feel) like they're marrying their children off. rather, they should feel like they've gained an additional child in their child's spouse.

so far, it feels like i'm moving in the right direction. but it also feels like i could be doing a bit more. stretching myself, if you will. reminder to self: all in good time. i don't need to rush things, especially if rushing results in things going beyond what i can handle. after all, there's still so much more to go!

-random thought of the day: Theme of the year idea!-

Continuing the theme about finances (this will be the last post on the topic, i think), i want to talk about my misadventure into the stock market some years ago. this was back in 2017 or so, when i was still in grad school and was thinking about how to make some passive income. i signed up for a preview of an investing course, and unfortunately, got FOMO-ed into paying a 4-figure sum for the full 3-day course. the course did contain useful info, but a lot of it was common sense. for example: your returns will be based on (1) your initial investment and how much additional money you subsequently put in, (2) the duration of your investment, (3) the market conditions like interest rate and change in share price. doesn't take einstein to see that, right!? and while i do think it was a waste of money, i also learnt that i was not ready to dedicate a significant portion of my time into analyzing annual reports and financial statements to decide which share to buy. although the price of that lesson was way too expensive.

after the course, i thought that i would at least start buying some stocks, just to overcome the inertia and actually DO something. being young and overconfident (aka. gullible), i didn't really do my own analyses, but bought shares of some of the companies used as case studies in the course...to the tune of a 5-figure sum. before going on any further, i'd just like to say that while it's a big sum, losing it won't like, kill me. more importantly (and i really have the course to thank for this), i never invest beyond what i can afford to lose. so i can sleep well at night without the fear of margin calls. in fact, i think i specifically chose to disable margins for all my accounts!

today, for the first time in...a very long time, i tried logging in to my trading accounts. my portfolios there don't look good. but that's to be expected for someone who basically bought shares arbitrarily. good news is, i do have ONE stock that rose in price by 50% over 8 years! bad news is, it's one of the stocks i spent the least money on, so my returns are not fantastic. i'm taking it as positively as i can, thinking that it at least helped to offset my losses somewhat. the plan, as far as my stocks are concerned, is to sell off whatever shares that tanked, and channel the funds into index funds. that will take a while, since i need to regain trading authorization after not touching my account for too long and letting it go dormant. on a side note, i realize that i can trade singapore stocks on my independent trading account! the commission is 10 times lower than the banks are charging, so that's something to consider.

i realized i didn't really talk about CPF in the previous post. after doing some reading, i'm of the opinion that i should be able to use it to make my money grow even more. in case you're not singaporean (or singaporean but don't care), CPF is split into 3 components: ordinary account, special account, medisave. money from the ordinary account can be used to help pay for your housing loan, and the interest for whatever's in there is 2.5%. the special account has an interest rate of 4%, which beats most banks, if not all. as its name might give away, medisave is used for anything medical - hospital bills, insurance policies. while this all sounds amazing, the downside is that the money in CPF can't be taken out until retirement. and even then, there are some terms and conditions. my main objective as far as CPF is concerned, is to have the retirement sum set by the time i'm 55, at which point compound interest should do the rest. the current estimate is $426 000, but i wouldn't be surprised if it rose to $500 000 or more by the time i reach that age. i'm being kiasu here; that amount is if i want to receive $3000 or so per month for life starting from 65 years old. if i do my investments right, i might not even need it!

the other nice thing about CPF is that contributing to it also results in tax benefits. if i contribute a total of up to $8000 per year to any of my CPF accounts, i get an equivalent tax relief. based on what i saw from IRAS, my goal is to stay under $80 000 taxable income using reliefs. that's a good target for my current salary, i think. just in case someone who reads this has a mistaken way of thinking - never say no to a raise. you might be in a higher tax bracket, but you still take home more money. so the idea is to kill two birds with one stone - contribute to my CPF account for both higher interest and lower taxes. seems like the best time is to do it as early as possible based on how interest is calculated...but the problem there is that i'll have less money to invest elsewhere (and to spend, of course).

thank goodness today was a work from home day! i had the luxury of waking up a little later, having a nice breakfast with L, preparing his water bottle (cup, actually), and walking him to the bus stop. it's a small thing, but i enjoy it. he's going through a rough patch at work now, so all the more i should be supportive where i can. funny, i remember jedi master telling me i was being too giving in my  relationship with the ex, and me resolving to take more. seems like history is repeating itself, except that L deserves whatever i can do for him. to his credit, L is giving in his own way, with letting me stay with him as the biggest example i can think of. so it's not one-sided. also managed to get a couple of errands done, like taking the recycling out and returning a USB cable. did you know that some USB cables can only be used for charging, while others can be used for both charging and display? i just found that out earlier, when i connected my laptop to the monitor using the USB cable i bought, only for nothing to show up on screen. good thing the shopping platform allows returns! it also means that i'll have to use my existing cable, which is just a touch too short. good thing too, that i can get a replacement cable in  a few days. how did we ever get by without online shopping?

-random thought of the day: Work is getting a little tougher.-

Optimization should be a familiar process to most chemists. of course, that's in the context of reactions, to try and get the best yield or enantiomeric purity or whatever. today, i'm going to do a different kind of optimization - that of my finances. while i've made some baby steps in setting up accounts and channelling money into different places, i still feel that i could be doing more/better. due to privacy reasons, i won't be disclosing exact figures. might do something like percentages or ballpark figures, depending on which i find makes more sense as this post grows.

starting from the basics, i suppose an important question to ask is: what's the end goal? that'll give me something to work towards. to determine that, i suppose i have to consider my unique circumstances. as mentioned, i don't intend to have kids. L says he wants to adopt or something, but we'll have to work that out in the future. at this point, i'm working off of the basis that kids are not in the picture. and if that turns out to be the case, i won't have to worry about leaving anything for anyone. who would i leave things for, anyway? my nieces and nephews? my friends' kids? let's see...if i were to live to the median lifespan of 80 for singaporean males, that would be about 43 years later, by which time they should be more or less self-sufficient, and maybe even have kids of their own! so let's work on the assumption that i will just be planning for L and myself. probably more for him because from a purely statistical point of view, he'll outlive me since he's younger.

next, when do i want to stop working? the current statutory retirement age is 63, although if we follow the trajectory it's currently on, it might rise to 70 in 30 years. while i can see myself working at this job forever, i think i will want to take it easy (well, easier) in later years. considering i'm working in a skilled office job that pays decently, i think a retirement age of 60-65 would be reasonable. let's say 60 for the sake of planning. that would mean 15 years of living without a salary, ie. i have to accumulate enough funds to live for 15 years, minimum. at that time, i should be debt-free and i don't think i'll be spending all that much, so let's say $2500 a month? that means i need...$450 000 for my entire retirement. honestly, that's less than i thought. the fact that i don't have to spend any money on kids is really going to help me save up more quickly! just for fun, if i saved 100% of my salary, i could accumulate that amount in less than a decade. it's impossible to save every single cent of course, but just an interesting tangent.

having worked out the amount i'll need, and that i have about 23 years to make that amount, i will need to save about $19 600 per year, or $1630 a month. this is a simplistic calculation that doesn't account for inflation, interest, or current assets/liabilities, but it's good enough as a ballpark figure. that sounds weirdly doable...easy, even! so that's the savings target - minimum $1630 a month. if i put that into the right investments, it'll be more than enough to beat inflation.

that's the start and end points set. now to look at the journey itself. along the way, i'll definitely have to spend money, and the biggest item i'll be spending on (literally and cost-wise), is a place of my own. i've run some numbers on the HDB website, and i feel comfortable paying about $1000 per month from my CPF for the housing loan, and that gives me an approximate budget of $350 000 to get a place. reasonable, since i'm probably looking at a 2-room single's place or a 3-room at most. if i were to take this option, my savings would take a hit, but my disposable income would not be affected while i'm working since the loan is serviced 100% via CPF. the key takeaway is that i need to pay off the loan before retirement. there are other things which i'm not considering at this time, like selling the flat at a profit after living there for X years. at this point, i'm not sure if i really want/need a car, especially with the proliferation of car-sharing services now. that's going on the backburner for the time being.

with all that in mind, time to look at strategies. not being a super financial person, my strategy is pretty simple - save and invest as the main idea, but also try to spend as little as possible. this comes in 2 forms: (1) reducing the total amount of money spent, and (2) making the most of the money spent by getting cashback, miles rewards, or whatever else. to that end, i have my UOB one card for general spending, UOB lady's card and UOB krisflyer card for specific scenarios. it's a bit complicated, but the idea is to spend up to $1000 per month (in transaction values of multiples of 5 and in a certain category - mine's F&B for now) with the lady's card, then switch to the krisflyer card for any other multiple-of-5 transaction. the one card covers everything else. as for bank accounts, most of my funds are in a one account for bonus interest, with $10 000 in a lady's account to unlock the higher miles tier. that can serve as "desperate times/last resort" funds too. i still have a decent amount of yen sitting in a foreign currency account, and the question is when to change it back to SGD? the problem is my yen isn't earning interest at all, so i'm kind of already making a loss with it just sitting there. i'm still not sure how to deal with it, but i have 2 thoughts right now. either i wait until a specific time, or i wait for the exchange rate to hit a certain value before changing it. another approach might be to change portions of it at a time...but i really don't know which would be best. i guess i'll monitor the yen, and probably make a decision within this year.

investment is much simpler - instead of trying to pick stocks or doing fundamentals analysis which really eats time and effort, i'm going to do something that warren buffett himself recommended, which is to buy index funds. the story is that he bet a million dollars that no hedge fund would be able to outperform the S&P index over 10 years, and he won the bet. so rather than ride the rollercoaster and worrying about my shares every day, i'm just going to park my money there and let time/compounding work for me. more of a lazy river kind of ride. having said that, there are still questions of when and how much to buy. the friend who introduced this to me told me that he follows a fixed schedule - just buy on payday. i'm thinking to do it at the end of each month (which is my payday, anyway), and to buy around $1500 worth each time, just to mitigate the transaction fees a little. since that also does kind of count towards my savings, i'll aim to save an additional $1000 in cash to beat the savings target. and while i've now done the maths and shouldn't have reservations to spend the remaining money, i'm still not going to go crazy with it. after all, i do have some more significant costs now and then (insurance, mainly) and who knows when i might get hit with an unexpected financial bomb?

all this planning might be a little premature, especially since i'm still in the probation period. but things look good, work-wise. with one notable recent exception (that's supposedly not due to work performance), nobody's been fired from this job; the people left on their own accord. based on how things have been going so far, i'm optimistic that i'll make it. would be nice if all 12 of us from the same intake passed probation together. i realize that i've become less judgmental since coming back from japan. one of my colleagues is, to put it bluntly, weird. and while i may still have the reflex response of "why's this guy so weird?", i won't ostracize him or treat him any differently. after all, it takes all kinds to make up the world. and i don't think he's a bad person.

sorry, guess i rambled on a bit too much this post. not like the financial information is going to be of any real use to anyone, unless they happen to live in singapore, make around the same as i do, and don't intend to have kids. but it did help to give me some clarity on the situation, which is good!

-random thought of the day: How did people ever survive working from the office full-time?-