Deep down in my mind, tucked away in some obscure corner, are facts that i know are important, but tend to overlook. things like "sleep is important", for instance. fortunately, my body has inbuilt mechanisms to remind me of that. unfortunately, the way it manifests may not always be the best. going back to about this time last week, i told L that my sleep was suffering because he was staying up late to game. the problem comes about because we sleep in the same room. even if i go to sleep earlier, his entrance will wake me up - it's been proven multiple times. on friday, he played until late again, despite me reminding him to come in early earlier in the night. that led to him waking me up as he came in, me being upset, not being able to sleep until 2:30am or so, feeling dead tired during tuition classes and generally being in a foul mood all day yesterday. i crawled into bed at about 10pm and woke up this morning feeling much better.

during the worst of it, i found myself wondering why he couldn't do something so simple and reasonable. it wasn't like i was asking him to sleep at 9pm, right? the thought that he was being selfish also came to my mind. see, i have to wake up at 7:30 to be in the office by 9-ish. even if i work from home, i've to be online by 9. whereas he typically leaves the house by 1 to reach his workplace at 3:30. so staying up late affects him less, because he can sleep in the next morning while i don't have that luxury. also, the game can be suspended in idle mode and battle is turn-based, so there's no excuse about needing to find a save point or anything like that. anyway, i hope he got the message. i am happy to be accommodating for most things, but there are some things - like sufficient hours of quality sleep - that i cannot compromise on.

as much as i hate to admit it, the thought of breaking up did come to mind. i think having thoughts but not acting on them is ok - that's being human, after all. but i also know that there are things that are not worth breaking up over...at least, not at the first instance. i think that this is something that can be solved by various means, with the least extreme being L takes what i said to heart and tries to sleep earlier; and the most extreme (just a step below breaking up) being that i move out.

one good thing that came out of this whole thing was that in my sleep-deprived state of mind, i went to read up on getting a HDB flat as a single. so it seems that i'm eligible for $40 000 in grants, because i'm earning more than $4500 a month. my research also turned up that the minimum down payment is 20%, so if i'm looking at a $500 000 flat (highly possible, given property prices), i'm expecting to pay $100 000 up front. as for flat type, i think a 3-room would be ideal if L wants to move in with me. that way, he can have a private space too. as for location, i'm thinking of somewhere in the east. not only is it near to work, i can visit my aunt more easily too! just doing some idle browsing, i've found a few flats that look good, but i haven't done detailed research yet. at least it gave me an idea of the price ranges in areas i'n interested in!

going back to first principles though...is it a good idea to buy a place? after all, i'm not going to leave it to anyone. google tells me that assuming i have no living immediate family, the flat goes back to the government. in that case, the logical thing to do would be to still have outstanding debt on the flat when i pass. but that's not possible because of the term of the housing loan. the next-best alternative is to have as little of the lease remaining as possible. i might consider the lease buyback scheme, but that's or way future me to think about. also, who knows? the schemes may have changed by that time. the main thing that scares me about buying a flat is that i'll go into huge debt. i'm not sure if it's me trying to convince myself, but i had the odd thought that going into debt would give me more motivation to work!

well, that's all still somewhat in the future...though it's drawing closer. i think the logical thing to do would be to wait until september, when i should hopefully be confirmed. i'll start looking in earnest after confirmation. it also seems that i may not need to wait for 12 months after starting work, because i don't qualify for that particular grant anyway! for now, i'll just keep doing my best for work. this past week was a little demoralizing, because my cases were below my mentor's expectations. guess i need more practice. on the bright side, i feel like i've improved in my writing style and way of thinking/approaching a case. while there is still a long way to go, i think i should also acknowledge how far i've come. go me! hopefully more things will click this week, and i'll get even better.

-random thought of the day: Early bedtime!-

Growth is not always linear, and sometimes there's even regression. thankfully, i feel like i've made significant progress. not in terms of number of cases settled, but more like in my understanding and approach. that's not to say that i'm ready to go at it solo, but i feel like i have a better idea how to write reports according to my mentor's expectations. although i'm still a bit worried - i just sent in a case today that i don't feel 100% confident about. but well, i guess we'll see what the feedback is. if i'm lucky, it'll meet her expectations for conciseness and we can move on to other cases! if not, she might scold me for not listing all the features to discuss. realistically, i'm expecting 3 to 4 rounds of edits/changes.

outside of work, life has been pretty routine - some might even call it boring! but i'm perfectly fine with it. one thing we did to kind of break the monotony a little was that we went to watch jurassic world this past saturday. it was a late show (ended at 10:45pm so we reached home around 11:30 and slept after 1am), and it completely wiped me out. i think the latest i can/want to stay out is maybe 9pm in unfamiliar settings, 10-11pm at more comfortable places like say, friends' houses.

some time ago, i was looking for rings for L and myself. a couple caught my eye and i bookmarked a few designs for future consideration. that was...last december, i think? fast forward 6 months, and the prices seem to have gone up by 50%! not sure whether it's the tariffs or because the christmas promotion is over, but i'm going to put off the purchase a bit more. while i would have liked to have them in time for our first anniversary, it's not like we need the rings immediately...especially since we have cheaper versions that we use every day. mine's been hit on bus railings, glass doors, my desk at work, just to name some things that come to mind, and it still looks pretty good. i don't recall any visible damage, but i'll check again later.

feeling a bit sub-optimal today. i think it's because of bad sleeping hours. L sleeps later because he starts his day later than me. and since we're sharing a room, it's led to me sleeping on average an hour later than i'd like. he's gotten a bit better about it after we had a chat, but i think it's not sustainable. hopefully it'll get better in the future. the plan is to sleep by 10:30pm tonight and see if i feel better tomorrow. otherwise i might just take an MC sometime soon. health comes first; and i'm slightly ahead of my KPI at work, anyway!

-random thought of the day: Maybe a day off would be a good thing...-

This time last year, i was in the UK, hoping that i could land a job and start my life there. unfortunately, it was not meant to be. i struck out the "unfortunately" because i don't think that i'm in a worse position now than i would be if i'd managed to find something in the UK. part of me wonders what if i went all-in on plan UK. but based on my brief time there, i don't think i would have liked it over there. well...like i always say, it's fun to imagine and hypothesize about the "what if"s, but what matters the most is this actual life i'm living.

don't have too much to update you all on, except that i met scary JC friend and another of our mutual friends for dinner this past friday. the last time i saw him was 6 years ago, when the three of us had dinner together as well. i'm not close to him, but i think it's nice to catch up once in a while. we had nice conversation over many plates of sashimi, and he was surprised to realize that both she and i didn't want kids. afterwards, scary JC friend actually let me drive her car home, before taking over and going to her next destination. i must be doing something right for people to trust me with their cars.

while doing my finances, i was reminded that i have a POSB account that i no longer use. it was my first bank account which i had full control over. i think i made when i was in secondary school? back then, having an ATM card was a big deal, because i could use it for NETS purchases. i distinctly remember depositing my saved allowance at the end of every week, back when the cash deposit machines could only accept notes that were $10 or greater. then, i'd go for retail therapy. nothing extravagant, maybe a tray of supermarket sushi or some cute but useless thing at mini toons or popular. the reason i still have $500 in there despite not using it for the longest time is because that's the minimum amount required to avoid the fall-below fee. logic says i should just close the account and deploy the $500 elsewhere - into investments, or into my UOB account which earns more interest. sentimentality tells me to ignore logic and keep the account because of the nice number (which i can still recite from memory now), in case i ever need a backup...all sorts of reasons that sound good at first but don't hold up to deeper scrutiny. i will give myself up to the end of the year to make a decision, although i think i'll probably make my mind up about it sooner than that.

decided to use the off-in-lieu from polling day to take a day off tomorrow. i realize that my attitude towards annual leave is perhaps not the healthiest - i'll prefer to not take leave unless i have to. and that usually leaves me with a huge amount of leave to clear before they expire, which is why i could disappear for literally more than a month when leaving JET. i've done the calculations...with my current 18 days of leave per year, i could take 1.5 days off each month. but i don't see the point in doing that, because it's not like i NEED time off every month, plus it wouldn't leave me with spare days at all. since i'm in my first year, i figure i'll aim to carry some days over. probably not the full 18, but maybe 9 or so? i'm currently at 14 days remaining this year, and we don't have any long trips planned, so it seems possible. maybe a cruise at the end of the year, but that's about it. well...there's still time to think about it.

as i mentioned in my last post, my immediate superiors are away the whole of this week. i'm still sitting on 5 cases, and i think what i'll do is ask some of the other seniors on how to present the report. i feel that there's a gap somewhere between my mentor's teaching and my understanding. i don't fully understand her considerations in the way she presents her reports, and while it seems clear whenever she explains it to me, i'll see a different case and not know how to do it. it's annoying, because this is supposed to be a foundational skill! if i can't get this down, there's no point even thinking about other more advanced skills. hopefully the seniors will be able to provide an alternative perspective, or at least a way i can broadly apply the concepts.

-random thought of the day: Returning the car tomorrow.-

Love it when things line up nicely! my friend's about a week into his 2-week overseas trip, and he's lending me his car again while he's away. L was scheduled to work this past sunday and thanks to that, i was able to send him to and from the venue. i must admit, i kind of miss driving. both the act itself, and the convenience that having a car brings. but i definitely don't miss the associated costs. $50 only got me half a tank of petrol! gone were the days when i could fill my car up from almost empty to full with $60. i'm due to return the car next monday, so i'll treasure the remaining time with it. still no plans to get a car of my own, though - the finances just don't make sense. well, i see the car situation now similarly to how i see my friends' and relatives' kids - i'm happy to have them for a while and maybe spend a bit on them, but ultimately i'm not tied down long-term.

stress at work's been relatively high. after talking to my group lead, i'm fairly convinced that a significant part of it is self-given. i tried to get a sense of how i was doing in terms of meeting expectations for learning, the way i handle cases, writing reports, etc. she didn't answer the question directly (choosing the very diplomatic "everyone's learning process is different"), but just based on that, i would estimate that while i could be doing better, i'm not on the chopping block at this time. thankfully, we just got through a gauntlet of 6 related cases, and i have some time to reset and internalize the learning points before starting on the next wave. i think i'm going to pause for at least tomorrow and take stock of what i've gone through so far, including compiling a "case log" for future reference. my group lead advised that i start it while i have a relatively few number of cases under my belt, and i think there's wisdom in that. can you imagine having to go through 100+ cases and cataloguing them!? i have about 15 and i'm already having trouble remembering the details for some of them. just have to remember that (1) haste makes waste, and (2) sometimes we have to rest momentarily so that we can travel a much longer distance. i'm grateful that my superiors really seem to be the nurturing kind (even if my mentor does scare me somewhat). as long as i don't repeat any more mistakes, i think i'll be good.

the sudden stress manifested itself in a bad dream...or at least that's what i think happened. it happened 2 nights ago, and while details are fuzzy, i remember that L got shot and killed due to an accident involving a firearm. most of the dream was spent processing his loss, and what me, his dad, and his grandmother were going to do from then on. i doubt we decided on anything before i woke up in a bit of a panic. oddly, he told me that he had a weird dream too, but it wasn't about me. i don't know - it's probably nothing, but given how inclined i am to believe in signs, i won't deny that it's got me a bit rattled. while i don't necessarily agree with everything the government says or does, i am 100% behind the tight gun control laws we have.

since my mentor and group lead are both going on leave (kids and june holidays), i'm going to be in a bit of a limbo. this freer time, plus since i've just submitted 6 cases, means i've got a bit of breathing room. perfect time to slow down and carry out plan internalization. see? things work out in the end.

-random thought of the day: -

Part of planning my finances involved thinking about when will happen after i pass. i suppose that the importance of having plans in that regard was also further driven home by my uncle's passing. i've had "concepts of a plan" about my will and all that stuff before, but i was recently recommended a good resource which helped me to define my goal a bit more clearly.

the resource is a book, and it's called "die with zero". quite a self-explanatory title, isn't it? of course, it's still not a foolproof guide, because we don't know when we'll die! although it did make me think - what if we could know? like, if we were to set an expiry date on our lives, say at age 80, 85, or something. even then, it's still not 100% guaranteed to work, because of unpredictably. like, someone who plans to end their life at 80 can get into an accident and end up dying at 50. but that's something we have to live with, i guess. the book didn't recommend euthanasia or anything, but suggested planning based on your expected/typical lifespan.

i'm still in the midst of reading it, but the takeaways i've gotten so far are: (1) we often overestimate the amount of money we'll need after retirement, (2) trade money for experiences, (3) experience things while we're still capable of fully enjoying them; (4) start giving away money sooner than you think. makes sense to me, but that's because of my unique life circumstance.

unfortunately, this goes against everything i've been taught, which is to save up as much as possible while i'm earning money. although it's sound advice, the issue is nobody really defines an end-point! so the impression i have is of people scrimping and saving every cent, only to die with tons of cash which then goes to their descendants. while it's one way to do things, it's not the way for me. going to need to re-condition myself there.

at this point, it might still be a little premature to open the floodgates and buy everything that catches my eye. after all, i still haven't passed probation (3 more months to go!) and i'm looking to get a place of my own in the near-ish future (aiming to finalize it within the next 2 years). i'll admit though, that i do feel like i should allow myself to spend a tiny bit more extravagantly. not to the level of michelin-starred meals every day, but like, feel less guilty about spending in general, i guess. but for now (at least until probation is over), i'm not going to actively look to spend more money. if it happens, it happens.

-random thought of the day: Sitting at new seat tomorrow!-

Spoke too soon about not dreaming about my late uncle. well, it's within 100 days of his passing, so i guess the likelihood was there. it does seem a bit arbitrary, this 100 day thing. i still dream of people who've passed years ago. another belief i've heard is that you only dream of someone while they're still stuck in the underworld, and you won't dream of them once they're reincarnated or ascended to a higher plane. if this is to be believed, i guess it's some comfort that i can't recall the last time i dreamt about my grandparents. i still remember them, of course, but they haven't stopped by my dreams for a while now.

in the dream, i was with my uncle at an airport. i'm inclined to say it was changi, and it would fit in with the theme. he looked healthy - more like the time where i visited him in NZ, compared to the month in hospital. my impression was that someone was planning to go to the US for a road trip, though i can't remember if it was either or both of us. we were at a money changing machine and he was trying to change a huge stack of NZD (bright orange notes) to USD (notes in red, white and blue). another strange point i remembered was that we had to hold down a button for the machine to dispense money. maybe a feature to prevent others from stealing the changed money? the dream was nice. i actually woke up forgetting that he'd passed, and only remembered that after properly waking up.

i kind of feel that my sleep hasn't been the best lately, quality-wise. one contributing factor is that i sleep late - i probably averaged a bedtime between 12:30 to 1am for the past week. another thing that doesn't help is that L sleeps later than i do. and even when i tell him to go to sleep, he'll turn off the light but keep watching shows on his laptop, which creates light and noise. it's definitely not worth breaking up over, but we will have to work out a solution. a possible alternative is that i move into the other room, or he watches his shows outside and comes in only when he's ready to sleep.

maybe it's my crankiness due to not having a good sleep last night, but i feel irrationally upset by this issue. could be because i'm one of those who needs sufficient amounts of good sleep to function and be personable. in L's defense though, he starts work later than i do, and so he can sleep in. plus, his rough patch at work is still continuing and it's affecting him quite badly. he told me before that when his mood/mental state is down, it manifests in him sleeping excessively - which i've noticed at least in the past 2 weeks to a month. perhaps most importantly, this is his house and it wouldn't be right for me to dictate his behaviour or where he can do what. should aim to have this conversation sooner rather than later.

on the bright side, this week at work was good. we had our official last day in the training room on wednesday. while i'm looking forward to the move, i'll also miss being "protected" in the training room. i also had a very productive call with my mentor and group lead yesterday to discuss my upcoming cases. we took about 90 minutes to go through 6 cases. but the time investment will be worth it if we get to send those cases out after minimal revisions. i also went to ask for more work, which resulted in my boss assigning me an additional 5 or 6 cases. first impression is that they look manageable - nothing like the nightmare that my past 2 cases were. i think it's good that we got together to work on the cases, because it also gives me insight into how they think and what key words or features they're looking out for.

in another stroke of genius, i figured out how to move my yen! so as you may know, i transferred my savings from JET back to my DBS account. thing is, i kept it in yen because of the horrible exchange rate. while it's a safe strategy, the problem is that i have money sitting in the bank doing nothing - not even gaining interest! so i've been looking for things to do with it. among some options i considered were: buying japanese shares, converting it portionwise, or just waiting until the exchange rate got better. in the end, i decided to move most of it to my brokerage account on the account of (1) zero transfer fees (thank you DBS! not sponsored, but in case anyone from DBS is reading, i'm open to discuss sponsorships), and (2) my brokerage account gives a small bonus for fresh funds deposited. it's by no means enough to make up for the forex loss if i were to convert the money back into SGD now, but my idea is that gains from the stock market should make up for the horrible exchange rate. don't worry, i'm not picking stocks this time. let it be known that i do learn from my mistakes! i'm doing the warren buffet strategy for the lay investor - park money in the S&P 500, and forget about it. it seems to be paying off so far - i'm up about $2000 since i started 3 months ago! of course, this is all still unrealized profits, so nothing is set in stone yet.

on the topic of financial wins, i didn't realize that it was time to pay annual fees for my credit cards. i only spotted it when i saw an unusually high bill for a card i rarely use. turns out that the fee for my main card was also charged a couple of months back, and i didn't notice it amidst the multitude of transactions. luckily, UOB has this automated annual fee waiver feature on their app that allows you to request for a waiver within 120 days of the annual fee being charged. i requested it for both cards, and both went through just like that. i'm making an exception and paying the annual fee for my DBS card, because they give 10 000 bonus miles with payment of the annual fee. or rather, i should say they give the rewards points equivalent of 10 000 miles. it's only worthwhile because these points don't expire. so i'm paying about $225 for 10 000 miles, meaning about 44 miles per dollar. i see that as a win!

still feeling a bit low-battery now, and the horrible heat/humidity isn't helping. L went out to meet his friends for lunch, and i'm standing by to see if he wants me to go out later to meet him for a movie or something. even if we don't go out today, i think i'd be fine just rotting at home. no tuition today since it's a public holiday, so i'm appreciating this small blessing. while it does mean that i'll be earning less this month, it feels nice to have a full 2-day weekend. should make the most out of it. whether that means going out more or staying at home to recharge, i haven't decided yet.

-random thought of the day: Building another keyboard!-

Bad day at work today. ok no, it wasn't BAD bad, but it would definitely not register high on the good-o-meter. well, a not-good day was bound to happen sooner or later, and i guess RNG just chose this day.

so what happened was that my mentor...not exactly scolded, but reminded/warned me that i was forgetting a lot of basic concepts. i feel bad because we should be past this stage already! worse is i'm one of the few that has prior experience, so such stupid mistakes are less forgivable to me. i don't know if it's linked, but my group lead also swung by later in the day to check on me, and suggest that the 3 of us (her, my mentor, and i) start sitting down together to discuss my cases before i actually start on them proper. i'm undecided how to feel about this. just taking things at face value, they seem to be looking out for me and trying to find ways to help my learning and development. but the suspicious side of me thinks that these 2 events didn't happen on the same day by coincidence - they're doing this to say that they did all they could before finally giving me the boot. i know that the possibility of my suspicion being true is low, but it's not zero. still, i will choose to believe that they're more nurturing than the accursed IP firm. having said that, it's no excuse for me to keep messing up. hopefully this bad spell will end with submitting these 2 cases, and it can be a fresh slate moving on.

the silver lining is that we got allocated our seats! we tried to settle it within ourselves yesterday, but someone was a little slow and got left with a not-good seat, which that person didn't want. since the condition attached to us settling it ourselves was that the seating plan had to be unanimously agreed upon (which obviously didn't happen), we proceeded to ballot for seats today. for some reason, the ballot came down to me and another guy to be split between that same bad seat and a pretty decent one. i lucked out and got the pretty decent one. it's actually an improvement over the seat i chose for myself yesterday, because the seats i'd shortlisted had been chosen by other people by the time i came back from the shortlisting! so...we're set to begin sitting at our assigned seats starting from 2 mondays later. i'm quite excited at the thought, mainly because we'll have an additional screen, which should (hopefully) boost productivity. i've already dropped in to say hi the people sitting nearby. they also appear to be nice, but then again, everyone in the office does.

as usual, blogging kind of dispelled my funk. while i'm still not back to equilibrium mood/feeling yet, i'm feeling a lot better than i was before starting this post! part of me is tempted to just ask my mentor about whether i'm at risk of losing this job, but i get the feeling i should just keep my head down and my nose to the grindstone. might as well fix what i have control over, instead of worrying about the what-ifs.

-random thought of the day: Things are not always as bad as they seem.-

How do you follow up after such a heavy post? it'll be 2 weeks tomorrow since my uncle's passing, and if i'm being honest, life has just gone on. no dreams about him, no supernatural sightings or encounters (he was an atheist, so i'd actually be surprised if i were to have an encounter!), just days passing by. writing that last sentence got me thinking, though...if one were to leave some form of imprint on earth after their death, would their religion/beliefs affect how it manifested? i remember a year or so after my maternal grandmother passed away, i tried to stay up all night. the two events are unrelated, and present me thinks all-nighters are overrated. so, anyway. sometime in the middle of the night, i saw what i thought was a floating ball of light. it wasn't glowing brightly, just like a glow-in-the-dark sticker that needed recharging. it hung around for maybe 10 seconds, then disappeared. young me thought that it was my grandmother's spirit. older me thinks that it may have been a floater in my eye. well, i don't suppose i'll get a definitive answer to that. chinese superstition says that the soul sticks around on earth for 100 days before moving on, and it's only been 13. so there are still 87 more days for something to happen. while i'm not expecting anything, the probability of something happening is infinitesimally small (because we don't have definitive conclusions about the afterlife, or if it even exists), but not zero. i'm not holding my breath, though.

over these past 2 weeks, i've had a bit of trouble at work, in the form of not writing a report up to my mentor's expectations. i think something got lost in communication, or i'm not understanding her instructions clearly enough. thankfully, that was resolved after talking to her face-to-face this past monday. it's kind of annoying that i don't have a good read on her yet. i guess she's just a little brisk in the way she talks, which i don't mind - but it affects my reading/perception. i'm very grateful that she outright said that she feels that my learning is important, and she is really detailed in explaining her points. i'm still not at her level when it comes to analyzing patent applications...but then, i've had less than a year's practice compared to her 10 or so. i think i have to learn to accept that this company is more forgiving, and not be so paranoid about receiving scoldings for bad performance. having said that, i also know that i can't afford to drop the ball too much. as for overall progress, i appear to be on a good trajectory. i have an estimated 6.5 points now, and i need 22 total by the end of september. not counting the remainder of may, that means i have 4 months to get 15.5 points, which works out to about 3.9 per month, or 1 per week. definitely doable. i just worry that i'll be loading more work onto my mentor, because she has to check my work before it goes out to the client. i should probably practise what i preach and communicate with her - ask her if she has a preference for how frequently i submit work. that's a conversation for next monday, where i should also ask if she'll be taking leave in june, so as to better plan my submissions.

another exciting thing happening soon in work is that we're slated to be moved out of the training room and into the office proper. some desks have been cleared for us, and we have to indicate preference and/or ballot for them. i have a few preferred spots in mind, but apparently they're in high demand. i know there's one in particular that i want to avoid because of my own weird superstition, but i think i'd be ok with any of the other options. have to take another walk around the office and rank my preferences. there's actually one right beside my mentor, but that's not really going to be a factor for me when i make my choice because she only works in-office one day a week!

tuition is going well, but i kind of feel more like a babysitter for the sec 1 kid than that i'm actually teaching him anything useful. when i raised my concerns to my friend, he told me that the kid's mother is ridiculously happy with her son's results, and to just maintain what i'm currently doing. ok lor. i mean, if the parents are happy and the kid is doing decently in school, i guess that's all that matters. i feel more productive with the sec 2 kids, but the challenge there is that they're all from different schools, and covering different topics. despite that, they seem to have done well for their mid-year exams as well (barring the usual careless mistakes), so that's a relief. i think i want to ask my friend if i can move to just teaching higher-level chemistry and physics next year. while the actual content now is easy, it's difficult to make the explanation understandable to kids with no or limited background knowledge. or i might just stop it altogether after this year. the extra money is nice, but there's this sense of dread? trepidation? when i think about waking up early on saturday morning and commuting down just for 4 hours. granted, those 4 hours nets me about $180, so i guess it's just how much i value my time.

something negative happened today, and i need to process it. background information: between L, his dad, and me, we don't really have a roster for chores or duties. like, if i see the laundry basket is full, i'll run the washing machine. or if i see the laundry's dried, i'll take the clothes down and arrow L to fold them...stuff like that. although i will say that L's dad does most of the chores. cleaning, washing, laundry, dishes, i don't think there's anything he doesn't do. so what happened here is that i put my guild shirt in the laundry basket, and L's dad put it in the wash. unfortunately, he also put the shirt through the washing machine's dryer function, and the heat caused several decal letters to peel off. heart pain! what kind of salvages the situation is that it's the same shirt i messed up in japan, when i tried to iron back on some of the finer structures in a decal that was starting to peel. so...i'm not feeling great about it, but i know that that shirt is old and it's bound to happen sooner or later. anyway, i have a second, newer shirt in a colour scheme that i like better, so i'll be washing that myself. better to remove risks as much as possible. i wonder if my guild will do a third print run of the shirts?

i think that's all i have at the moment. things are going pretty well, and i really don't have anything to complain about at this point. just hoping that my next batch of cases will increase my mentor's confidence in me. i guess the fact that i'm looking forward to work more than tuition is quite telling. looks like this job may be right for me after all. now, to pass probation and cement my role here.

-random thought of the day: Take time to process emotions.-

Retired cousin (who's now semi-retired, but that's something for another time) messaged me late last night (sunday) with the news that her dad (my maternal uncle) passed away. although i wrote this post on 12 may, it's not my place to jump the gun and talk about it before the news was officially broken by my uncle's immediate family. so, i decided to hold off publishing this post until i saw some form of announcement, which came in the form of a touching tribute on facebook, as well as a post on (semi-)retired cousin's blog.

to start, this uncle is the husband of my maternal aunt, so we're technically not related by blood. add on the fact that he was overseas for most of my life while i was growing up, and i guess you can see why i never really grew super close to him. but it's not like we were strangers either; we did spend time together on multiple occasions. i can probably count those instances on one hand, which may be why my memories of those instances are a little more defined than say, all the holidays i spent growing up with my cousins, which got kind of blurred together.

i plan on recounting those memories, of course, but i thought i'd talk about a bit about my uncle before that. i first heard of him as a child, before even meeting him. the first thing i remember someone telling me about him was the nickname "mustachio tiger" - fitting, because he had facial hair (one of the few adults i knew that did), and was born in the year of the tiger! i seem to recall rumours that he was strict with his kids growing up, but don't quote me on that. anyway, i'll elaborate on how my impression of him changed as we interacted over the years.

our first time meeting was...a long time ago. i don't know the exact date or even the year, but i do know that it was in singapore, probably sometime when i was in primary school? i know it was in singapore because it was at their place in tampines. we went over for lunch or dinner (i'm inclined to say dinner, but really have no solid memory to back that up) and while i don't recall any real interaction with him, i recall exploring the house while the adults talked. as it is with most of my memories of childhood, the details have slipped from my mind a long time ago. like, i couldn't even draw you the layout of the flat even if i tried! anyway, i think that's when i first knew he worked for SIA.

although he wasn't a pilot (his role was grounded, something about cargo, i think?), he subsequently got posted overseas to various countries. first india, then new zealand, then the US, after which he retired back to new zealand. that ties into memory #2, which was going with my aunt and cousins to visit his family in auckland, new zealand. it was december 2000; i know this clearly because i got my PSLE results while i was overseas, and someone (an uncle? older cousin?) pranked me into believing that i only got into the affiliated secondary school, instead of the (better) school i actually got posted to. another reason it was memorable is because it was my first-ever trip by plane, and we got bumped up to business class for the return flight. i was a little anxious going, because the image of him being fierce was still present in my mind. during the stay, i found him to be kindly but with that "don't mess with me" aura - although that could be from my imagination more than anything. he was an awesome host, taking us on road trips (on one of which the quotable quote "jesus was born on chirstmas day...and so was i!" was uttered) and to tourist attractions, including the luge, where i lost control of my cart and ended up scraping my elbow and knee. we'd reach home in the evening and spend a few hours just gathered in the living room, being together. the adults drinking wine (i believe he was the first person to show me how to use a corkscrew!), and i had L&P soda. it was also during one of these evenings where i made the faux pas of asking how much he earned. in my defense, it was a genuine question borne out of sheer curiosity while wondering how a career in SIA would pan out. i had no intention of comparing it to anything or anyone. that was also when i learnt that he smoked a pipe. i don't think that i equated the contents of the pipe with the contents of cigarettes at that time, so i thought it was quite a distinguished habit. but knowing what i know now...no thanks.

we definitely got closer during this trip, and even exchanged sporadic emails for some years(?) after. i forgot where exactly we were when it happened, but i remember calling out for the others to wait for me when we were walking across some hilly terrain. he was beside me then, and told me "don't ask others to wait, catch up to them instead". i won't say that it's become my mantra or anything, but i feel like that did somewhat influence me. of course, subsequent life experience has taught me that there's no shame in asking for help when i really need it, but i guess his words to me that day kind of explain why i'll at least attempt to give problems a shot on my own first before approaching others. another thing that happened during the trip was that he offered to be my mentor. being young and ignorant, i had no idea what a mentor was, and i think my aunt or someone else who i asked told me that it just meant "teacher". stupid me at that time promptly associated it with "schoolteacher", and i guess that's why i never really consulted him or sought his mentorship the way i'm doing with other mentor figures that i met later in life. although i wonder what would have happened if i'd approached him with my life problems and/or asked for his opinion regarding big decisions growing up. would i still be the same person and on the same path as i am now?

memory #3 wasn't in person, at least i don't think it was. i seem to recall it being over facebook messenger or email. this was after JC, probably during or after NS. he asked about my university plans, and mentioned that he'd be willing to sponsor my university education if need be. since i was going local and had the tuition grant to cover most of my fees, i didn't take him up on the offer. i still wonder why he made that offer specifically to me, and (to my knowledge) none of the other cousins. maybe i'm overthinking it, but i think maybe he saw a bit of himself in me. more on that later.

this next memory is probably the most significant one, and it took place in may/june of 2013. i'd just finished my last undergrad exams, and as was the custom, was planning a grad trip. since i had australia as a destination already, i thought why not go visit my aunt and uncle in new zealand, where they retired to? they welcomed me with open arms, and upon learning that i was only intending to spend 5 days there, my uncle asked why i was only staying for such a short time. that led me to extend my stay to 3 weeks. not my smartest move, because as you'll see from my posts at the time, i felt that there really wasn't very much to do there! still, it was a nice change of pace where i got to experience a different life - working on his country home, planting garlic, cutting down tree branches, that sort of thing. perhaps i could have asked to borrow a car and go around the area myself, or spent some time exploring the city on my own, but i was still rather unadventurous at that point in time. that was also when he evaluated me as a guest, proving that habits from work do carry over into retirement. in fairness to him, he asked if i wanted to hear his evaluation, and i said yes. at that time, i was older and perhaps saw things from a less exaggerated perspective than a child would. so, to me then, my uncle was perceptive and asked interesting questions which made me think. we also celebrated my achieving second-upper honours with dinner at a fancy restaurant, courtesy of (semi-)retired cousin.

unfortunately, that would be what i consider my last substantial interaction with him. after that, i saw him only once or twice more in person when he came back to singapore for short visits, and we exchanged messages maybe a couple times more? suffice to say we didn't have much contact after that trip. perhaps it's because he's been physically far away for most of my life, it doesn't seem to register that he's gone. while i'm feeling sad at his passing, it's definitely not at the level of what my aunt and cousins (his wife and kids) must be feeling now. i understand that he kind of changed while trying to get used to a different life in his retirement years, but the silver lining is that he got to spend lots of quality time with them (and with other family and friends on video calls) in the month-ish leading up to his passing, leaving good memories behind. (semi-)retired cousin tell me he was back to his old self that she remembered in the month or so that he spent in the hospital.

feelings time. as mentioned before, we weren't exactly close. i'd say he was a level closer than the aunts and uncles on my dad's side that i only see during CNY, weddings, and funerals. it kind of baffled me, why he would volunteer to be a mentor for me, and offer to sponsor my university education. even more so when i don't think that those offers were extended to any other cousins in my generation! perhaps he thought i needed the extra help? at the risk of main-character syndrome, allow me to hypothesize a bit here. i think that we were a bit alike, in an odd way. see, i remember asking a relative (i forget who exactly) about this uncle, and the relative replied that he was a little eccentric. i'm sure there was no ill intent. that's also how i found out what "eccentric" meant, by the way. and i guess that resonated with me a bit, as i was labelled a weird kid in secondary school. it's a label which i didn't like at first (teenage issues of wanting to fit in, right?), but grew to embrace as i got older. i don't know enough about my uncle's history to cite any examples of eccentricity, but i do know just from the time we spent together that his thought processes and analyses were a little different. he was also extremely insightful, probably honed through years of management experience, and knew what questions to ask. i hear he was good at maths, and tutored my aunts when they were schooling - which explains his highly logical nature. although he was opinionated, and sometimes blunt to the point of not taking other people's feelings into account while speaking his mind, he wasn't a bad person - not by any means.

he was also really stubborn. this could be interpreted positively as perseverance, or negatively as obstinance. that's another thing which i think we have in common! it's not exactly good in this case though, because from what i understand, he'd been feeling unwell for a while (i hear for the better part of a year), and only agreed to seek medical attention in march when the proverbial excrement hit the fan. i'm inclined to say that the behaviour was borne out of his generation's upbringing and the expectations laid upon them - notwithstanding all the flak they get nowadays, boomers are incredibly tough. i guess he thought it was one of ailments that he could power through...except that he couldn't. while it would be in poor taste to reduce my uncle's passing to just a lesson in seeking timely help, seeking help before it's too late is definitely an important takeaway from the whole thing.

in the immediate future, the family has requested privacy, so i'll just check in with (semi-)retired cousin occasionally. looking a bit further, i'll plan to head down to NZ maybe later in the year, or early next year to pay my respects. i hear my uncle will be buried somewhere really scenic, which suits his nature-themed retirement life. depending on where everyone is (physically and in life stage) at that point, i might bring L to meet (semi-)retired cousin. not sure how things will change, but if that meeting happens, she might be the first family member that i'm introducing him to.

ending off this post, i guess there's really not much more for me to say. i'm grateful for this uncle's presence in my life (as briefly and sporadically as our paths intersected), as well as his generous hospitality despite us not being all that close. i'm happy (as happy as happy gets, considering the circumstances) that this was the catalyst for my cousins to start burying hatchets. last i checked, i was told that everyone is doing ok, which is just about all we can ask for in such situations. now all we can do is let time do its thing.

-random thought of the day: Nothing today.-

About a year ago, i wrote about how presumptuous it was of me to assume that i'd plan well enough to publish my JET reflections post before leaving japan. seems like history repeating itself, because i'd planned to do a "one year post-JET" post on 30 april, which was the date i left japan and landed back in singapore. it's now may 4th (happy star wars day, by the way), and i'm only just writing it now. again, my hubris! thank goodness there are no consequences here aside from self-imposed ones.

hard to believe that it's only been a year since JET, especially when you know that i've already been back to visit the town! contrary to how it might seem, i'm not trying to reassert my presence there. it just so happened that my kids were graduating, and i had to send in a form. i don't think that i'll go for next year's ceremonies...not for the big school, at least. but that's a consideration for the future. like i was saying, it doesn't feel like just one year. if i had to estimate the time, i'd say maybe 18 to 24 months. i guess being too free makes time pass more slowly. those 8 months of unemployment felt like forever.

perhaps the reason the span of one year felt longer is because so many things happened. getting used to living in singapore again, then leaving for the UK, trying to find jobs there, it not working out and coming back, getting used to living in singapore for real this time, that whole fiasco with GD, meeting L and starting to date, applying for jobs, meeting L's dad, finally landing a job, the cruise, getting used to the new work routine. writing it out makes me feel like i've come a long way in the past 369 days! the best part is, there's still so much more to come. of course, no guarantee that it'll all be good, but that's life, isn't it?

remember i said that one way in which japan changed me is that i'm more understanding/compassionate? i think i'll take that back, because idiots in singapore don't deserve compassion or understanding. it's different if they're neurodivergent or special needs, but most instances of inconsiderate behaviour that i've seen stem from selfishness/self-centeredness. like the woman who barged into the MRT as soon as the door opened to reserve seats for her family. the thickness of skin to do that and still be able to hold eye contact with other commuters...disgusting.

later in the day, i had a minor physical altercation with an older (mid-40s) guy, but i won't go into detail because i don't want to remember it. doesn't do my heart good. although if i know myself well enough, i'll still involuntarily recall it. i was (still kind of am, actually) angry about it, but after i came home and told L what happened, he reminded me not to do anything stupid. sure, i could have beaten the guy up to the point of dislocating a few joints, but doing so would jeopardize my entire life for that brief satisfaction of inflicting pain (that he deserved) onto him. weighing the two, it's totally not worth it. i was again reminded that i have more to lose now, and that my actions affect the people i care about. not that they didn't before, just that i care more for this person. i'm sure that L would definitely manage if i went to jail or whatever, and he might even stick around if i were an ex-convict, but why go there when it can and should be avoided? also, martial arts are only to be used as a last resort. we were still far from "last resort" territory on that occasion. so i will take comfort in knowing that i put my training and life experience to good use, and was the bigger person.

it did get me thinking a bit...are there other reasons for why i should be the bigger person? there's a common anime trope about how a character doesn't get offended by others, never takes things to heart, and that's because he sees others as inferior. like, "whatever the sheep say or do doesn't bother the lion". i've thought about whether i can adopt that approach, but i don't think it's right for me. as i've said before, i don't feel anything puts me above other people, nor other people above me. things like money, status, or higher education don't make someone "better" than others. and you don't need riches or advanced degrees for simple things like thinking about others and not being a nuisance. 

speaking of history repeating itself, the election results were not hugely surprising. i wish that certain outcomes were different, but i'm ok with most of them...except the one where a literal 卖国贼 won a seat in parliament. i'm grateful that our professional and personal paths won't ever cross, because so far, nobody outside of his political party has put in a good word for him. and for a former minister to barely eke out a victory (margin of 1-2%, i believe) against someone standing for election for the first time, i think that says something. but at the end of the day, he won, and will likely be protected by gerrymandering electoral boundaries being redrawn in future elections. all i can say is, kayu is really kayu.

well, life goes on, as it always does. for me, that means work tomorrow, where i hope that i'll be able to send out a case, and have a discussion with my mentor about a couple more. don't think there are many major events on the horizon, save a guild chalet in 2 weeks. it's nice to meet my guildmates every now and then. i feel it's amazing that despite meeting them online, i'm closer to them than to some of my real life friends!

-random thought of the day: Think of the bigger picture.-

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?-

Spent the entirety of today doing nothing with L. by that, i meant we both did nothing, and not that we did our own individual things separately without spending time together. maybe i should have said "with L, doing nothing". yes, that would have been clearer. but yes, today was a complete rest day for us. i slept in until almost noon, and we spent the entire afternoon plus half of the night watching netflix. it's not good, i know, but i really do think that we needed it. personally, i felt that this week was more draining, possibly because we had to be in office for all 5 days. plus, i'm spending half of my saturday giving tuition, so working 5.5 days a week. honestly, it's less of the work and more of the commute that's draining. good thing tomorrow's a public holiday, plus we're back to the hybrid arrangement again (at least, i think we are)!

this past week in the office, i've had several attacks of impostor syndrome, which manifested in doubts about my performance, wondering if my mentor was actually upset at me, fearing that i wouldn't pass probation...the whole schtick. one of my colleagues too, said she was feeling demoralized because her mentor mentioned being worried about her (lack of) knowledge. i hope we're just at the valley of the dunning-kreuger curve. a few others and i tried to reassure her, saying that we were still in training and perhaps the mentor's expectations had been unfairly high because the colleague in question did work in an IP firm before. i should take some of that advice myself!

L and i were lazy to the point of not going out for lunch with his dad today. we usually go out for lunch and/or dinner on sundays, so i was quite surprised when L told me his dad went out to buy food for us. he also cooked a mean fried rice for dinner! that's a dish i still want to try, if only to erase my failure to make it in japan. it got me thinking that he shows his love in ways that i find different. i'm not comparing him to my dad in the sense of "who's better" or anything, it's just different, is all. like, he will buy dinner for L on workdays, and even drive down to L's workplace to pick him up. i'm not saying that my dad wouldn't do that for me, but it's just something that perhaps i chose not to practise. another difference is that L's dad is really disciplined, like his routine is the same regardless of weekday or weekend - wake up at 5:30am, sleep before 10:30pm. unfortunately, sticking to that routine means that he's unavailable for late night things. example: L and i took a grab home when we came back from japan. i don't think that means he loves his son any less, just that he has boundaries which are perfectly reasonable. makes me appreciate my dad and my aunt more, especially since i know how much my aunt does not just for her kids, but for the extended family as well.

going to say something stupid here...life's boring, and i love it. i think this is the "building" part of "building a life together". the day-to-day interactions don't seem like much, but i'm sure they add up. interestingly, i tried browsing some NSFW stuff one day, just for the hell of it. and i realized that while i still can appreciate a good-looking guy, i don't really feel like i'm missing out by not getting to do stuff with them, which is an interesting change. most importantly, i've never once thought of picking any one of them over L. must be true - love is all you (i) need. 

-random thought of the day: Long weekend!-