The One with the Financial Advice....

Met up with my "financial advisor" yesterday.

I took out the one policy i bought,
and queried about the parts in the annual statement that i wasn't clear about.

At the end of the day, I think i understood the statement more than she did.

"oh..actually this one, is not important. It only confuses pple, so usually i won't explain it"
"yeah but i want to know."

(more mambo jumbo and round the bush talk until i was quite convinced she didn't know it too so i let it go)

"is this amount monthly or annual?"
"annual."
"but it can't be. then the amounts don't add up at all. where did $1000 go to?"

(more mambo jumbo stuff without really answering the question. I still think it's monthly because only then will the numbers add up.)

"wah, actually, you're a very detailed person."

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Exactly.

I think she started the Q&A thinking it's another one of those explain-financial- statements-to-chinese-oriented-aunties-who-can't-read-official-letters session.

so i had to sit through a few minutes of a very general explanation of the policy and the obvious terms in the statement.

I can understand english pretty well thank you. i was looking for a complete dissection of the statement, where every number is accounted for and i understood exactly where every cent went to.

I'm quite disappointed because she didn't seem to understand the statement thoroughly. Worst still that she BOUGHT the same one for herself, and she's an ADVISOR. The least she could do was to understand every number on the annual statement for herself.

i think in the end she was quite disappointed too,
because i made it quite clear that i didn't think it was wise on my part to get that policy,
and it was quite likely i won't be buying another from the same company because their charges are too high.

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The line between a financial advisor and a financial sales agent is quite a clear one.

It's all nice and dainty to call yourself an advisor, and you're out to help pple plan their financial future, but at the end of the day most of these "advisors" are really just sales agent out to sell their products.

Most of these products are good in the overall sense. If i put in 40k and get back 80k in 30 years then that's not bad. But if there's something else i could put my 40k in that can generate 100k then as a financial advisor you just lost me 20k in opportunity cost.

I can say that every "financial advisor" i've met so far are really sales agents. what they're pitching to me isn't bad, but i'm quite sure they were more concerned about their pockets than mine, whether they knew it or not.

So the next time someone says he is an advisor, spare me the phoneyness.
and stop talking in a summarised rosy storytelling manner.
show me the numbers and proof.

most stuff out there is intrinsically good.
the devil is in the details.
it's just like religion!

The One with the ME

when is a ME not a me?
when it can stand for Mechanical Engineer.

so i sent out an office email the other day,
telling everyone to "HOLD THIS THING FOR ME".
the caps was to show the importance of holding it for me.

ten minutes later i got a call.
"Yo is that a typo? why hold for M.E.?"
"what M.E.? hold for meeeee, hold for meeeee."

another ten minutes later i heard the M.E. exclaiming two tables away.
"HOLD FOR M.E.? why HOLD FOR M.E"
"Meeeeeee. Meeeee. Not M.E. MEEEEEEE" i shouted back.


At least this was better than an MSN session i had with Jen years ago.
i was telling him about this guy, ending with

"He's in ME."

and then i added hastily,
"erm, that means he is in mech engineering. not, you know, in me."

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In the space of 3 days,
i met up with classmates from primary level to JC level.

it's my life flashing before my eyes that's what it is.

for months and months nobody remotely suggests anything about meeting and then suddenly everyone wants to meet over the same weekend.

i'm dead tired now and i have a headache from drinking too much wine so i'll keep this short.

cyrus, ann-ma and i were talking about some random stuff about exercising and cyrus suggested that ann-ma take up dragon boat racing.

"why don't pple do canoe-ing instead...it's a bit...more cool right.." i chipped in helpfully.
"dragon boat pple are all gays and butches..." ann-ma added.
"gays and butches, haha, a bit too much team spirit!"

so both of us went on and on while cyrus listened and laughed with us.

halfway through the night, eugene slapped cyrus on the back and asked,
"so how's your dragonboat practice?"

jialat.

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The JC class had dinner at Vivo and then popped by St James.
our next stop will be Gotham Penthouse,
the place with the "2 a.m. lapdances".
hmmmm.

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the primary school "reunion" was a down to earth affair as usual,
just the way we all like it.

technically it wasn't a "reunion" because the bunch of us meet up all the time when we feel like it.
it's quite a miracle, really.

10 of us.
that's one third of the class.
there were even more but some couldn't make it.

known each other since 11.
some i've known since 7, which makes it a 20 year reunion.

and the venue for this grand reunion?
the basement food court of some old shopping centre at east coast.
where we all gathered for a good steamboat meal.

i went home quite happy that night.
it's not often you get to be a part of a group of rowdy good natured pple,
arguing over who to get the precious 3 pieces of scallop,
filling up the whole food court with noise and laughter.

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the RGS reunion was a little weird.
too many pple I haven't met for too long a time i guess.

but it was ok overall.

nice to see mrs carmee lim still as hyper and enthusiastic as ever.
jumping up to sing 3 songs in the super high pitch voice she has.

in the past 10 years she has opened 2 businesses, joined informatics, joined mindchamps and became the president of dunno what association, amongst others. After she finished listing everything i heard someone quipped, "gosh, and what have WE done in the last 10 years?"

some old teachers were back there as well.

there was thecla trying to convince me the food sucks.

"it's ok what."
"it sucks!"
"what did you eat?"
"this..this..and that."
"why you pick all the ones that look so pale? can you choose those that look...fresher?"

there was jacky with the 6 month old tummy.

"you're pregnant??"
"acutally i'm just fat."


and then there was sha-na (i don't remember her full name), who looks so different now.

(sha-na walks past thecla and I).

"is that steph yap?"
"no....it's that..you know...the short hair...basketballer..."
"sha-na?"
"yes!"
"no la"
"ya la!"
and she proceeded to scream at the top of her lungs "Sha-na!"


Going back to RGS always makes me feel like i should be more than who i am.
i guess it can be used as a driving force,
but it's not a very happy feeling.

oh well,
i have issues,
and i'm not even referring to all the wine and hoegaarden and bourbon i've drank in the last 3days.

Flavour of the Moment

Went to the lib the other day to borrow a book just so i could read some hours away while waiting for an event.

10 min in the library and i ended up with "live your passion, keep your paycheck".

it isn't that fascinating but it was good enough for me not to return the book immediately after the event, as i orignally planned.

Some ideas came up while reading the book.

I realise i could venture into medical writing and freelance programming!
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why medical writing?

because i like to write, it's part of the reason why i'm blogging at 3 ++ am.
and from what i see so far, writing well (as in, just using proper english), is not as common a skill as i originally thought.

i see pple at work writing really weird emails. either that or they take several hours to write an email with 15 lines.

and some of them are americans.

anyway, since (1) i like to write, (2) i have some interest in medical device engineering, and (3) i think explaining complex theories in layman terms is an admirable skill, i should just marry the two interests together!

Just did some research on the field. it looks like a lucrative one too, internationally at least. but it's hard to break in.

i think i'll start by volunteering a medical writing article for my company's newsletter.

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i just finished yet another software program at work.
this time it is a mac address generator!
just key in the start and end address, and the number of addresses you want in that range, and it'll list out all the addresses you need.

comes with password access, log records of users/date/time and the addresses they took, and a warning system when you're near the end.

unfortunately it may not be used at all.
since we found a commercial off-the-shelf computer system somewhere in the office that can do something like that.

it's ok though.
i wanted to do it just so i know it can be done.

there's another project i'm not involved in where they're doing it manually.
like really calculating and printing each mac address one by one and keeping track manually where they stopped.

i think it's terrible.
in this time and age, and especially since we are "engineers", we should minimise manual work as much as we can.

investing time into creating a program is worthy because you only do it once and you save hours of subsequent manual work, and there is also value-add because you learn something along the way.

oh well.

i'm pretty satisfied with the latest one because i did it in 2 work days flat too, after the customer issued a 2 week ultimanium.

which brings me to the next thing:

i should do freelance programming!

i can't do it professionally because i know what i know is just the tip of the iceberg. Pro programmers out there know so much more than i do. By freelancing i could learn along the way and get some money out of it.

then again i just did research (again) and there are too many experts out there. either that or the project is out of my current scope of knowledge. Just bidded for one though. see how it goes.

and then i have another brain wave.

i can't compete with the big players out there, but maybe i can start small!

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so whoever is reading my blog, including all my talented friends in whatever industry you're in,
tell me your workplace frustrations!

Especially things you think is a "big waste of time" and could be automated!

i'm especially interested in the education industry since i have many teacher friends, and there've been so many complains about the infamous "admin" work.

perhaps things like keying in grades manually into the PC?
or writing comments for every student (even though this really should be personalised to each student, i guess you can't really come up with 400 unique comments).

LET ME KNOW!

what about teaching your students to program? in a one hour session, just to get them started? obviously there are pro computer teachers out there, but i know enough to get pple started on simple stuff, and obviously i don't charge pro fees.

i could even throw in free singabola juggling balls! wow!

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my samsung phone broke down, so i had to use my backup Motorola PDA phone, which i didn't like cos i can't do one thumb sms-es. instead i had to painstakingly poke out every letter which doesn't appeal.

So pple at work saw my "new" phone, and started complimenting the "new" phone while condemning my samsung phone, until i went "i like my samsung phone! this is the old phone!"

i think the PDA one is in vogue now cos it looks like the apple iphone.


anyway, my friend just gave me a great idea the other day.

i was asking him how to bluetooth my mp3 player so i could use a wireless headset (which i found together with the motorola phone)

he suggested i just get a 2GB memory card and use the motorola as an mp3 player! which is a much more convenient way of doing things!

yay!

off to play with the bluetooth headset and transfer music to the phone.

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btw, don't forget, if you have any lobangs for medical writing and/or programming, tell me about it!!