The First Step
“Getting off the wrong side of the side of the bed” is but a result of laziness.
Many people fail to realise that the first thought and action they partake in right after they wake up can largely determine their mood for the rest of the day. Studies have shown that people who do not actively practise starting their day positively mostly spend the rest of their day rather negatively. Along with this negativity breeds many undesirable traits like irritability, short-temper, susceptibility to frustration, despondency, lack of enthusiasm, declined effectiveness and productivity, etc.
There are many ways one can start the day off well and calm, which is to simply indulge the very first thought and action in the one thing/person you love the most. For some, that activity could be anything from a morning jog or meditation, to even as simple as a morning greeting of well-wishes to all the people you love. The most fundamental logic is that when one starts the day feeling good within oneself, the leverage of the mind comes into effect, and one starts to feel that the rest of the day progresses well (provided nothing radically different happens in the day itself). Also, the perks of positivity far outweighs being “emo” all day long. I’d feel motivated to face the challenges that come by during the day; I’d tend to maintain a cheerful and bubbly disposition in hopes that it will bring laughter to the people around me; I’d be able to become the pillar of support when my loved one feels down and frustrated.
I, for one, start my day off thinking about the one I love, and I’d make a simple effort to text a good morning message before I get out of bed. Knowing that I have someone I love so much keeps me going for the rest of the day.
————————————–
How do you start your day right?
Renew
I haven’t posted in over 2 months, so I figured I’d try to get back into regular posting again.
To sum up what has happened ever since the previous post…
1) Losing and finding love again. I learnt a lot about myself and how I interacted with people close to me; lessons were learnt, and a necessary end gave birth to something greater :)
2) My results for the previous semester exceeded my expectations. I was really thankful that I managed to get a Pass for my Commercial Law paper given the emotional circumstances I was in at that point in time. Also, I was overjoyed that my accounts and microeconomics papers both got a High Distinction, and my statistics paper had a Distinction. From this year on I aim to maintain this standard, or even raise the bar for myself. I’ve also realised a deeper interest in accountancy itself, the feeling’s just one word: Amazing.
3) We started gymming together weekly since December. I aim to get more and more actively involved in sports with the one.
4) Christmas and New Year came, the very first time I got to spend both festivities with the one I love. Up till then, I never had much luck to be attached during most festivities. I wish to celebrate future Christmases and New Years with the one, and for that one to be mine for life.
5) School started in the first week of January. The 3 modules I’d be taking are Financial Acct, Management Acct and Business, and Company Law. I’m so gonna trump these 3 modules. Goal: Full score GPA!
6) This is probably the most important priority in my life apart from my studies. To offer the best I can give to a relationship for life.
Clearly, having not posted for so long, I feel that I’ve grown rather rusty in blogging. Hopefully I’ll blog more often from now on…
———————————–
Everyday is a fairytale :)
Happy
I LOVE Leona Lewis, and ‘Happy’, the first single off her sophomore album ‘Echo’, has been growing on me ever since it was released.
The youtube video above shows her performing ‘Happy’ at the America’s Got Talent finale. I have to admit I was wow-ed and deeply engrossed throughout the video at her AMAZINGLY pitch-perfect performance. It was so incredible I could actually feel the song emancipating from her!
——————————-
Whipped up a sinful plate of fried rice for my lunch today, at the same time scalded my finger by accident when my right ring finger brushed against the hot frying pan! I simply love spamming italian herbs seasoning in my fried rice. The seasoning not only enhances the aroma of the fried rice, it also brings out the flavour of the ingredients due to the pleasant contrast in the taste. What is lacking is olive oil though, which I couldn’t find anywhere in the house. I’m pretty sure if I used olive oil instead of the usual “knife-brand” vegetable oil, the aroma and taste would be further enriched, yummy!!!
Reminder to self: western herb seasonings largely ALWAYS go well with olive oil.
——————————-
We all just want to be happy, don’t we?
Pang Sigh
Exams exams exams… We all know how terrible it is to have to mug anxiously before, and during the exam period itself, trying to squeeze as much information as possible into our brains. When it finally ends, the first thing almost anyone of us would do is to “breathe a sigh of relief”, figuratively of course.
I finally had the chance to breathe a sigh of relief, LITERALLY, for the first time in my entire schooling life just 2 days ago, 4th November 2009 at 1.15pm. It was the Business Law module examination, the craziest paper I’ve ever sat for, and it lasted for 3hr 15min including a 15min reading period at the start which meant 3hr of writing time. For the first time ever, I had to have my bankai switched on full blast for a whole 3hr paper, rushing through 5 law essays jammed with laws and cases and arguments whilst maintaining a certain standard in the layout of my answers, and making sure that the issues I raised were coherent to the questions. I finished the paper barely 2min before the end time, and at 1.15pm when I heard the usual “Please stop writing, your time is up” announcement, I immediately pang sigh-ed, literally a gush of air out of my mouth that had every intention of a real sigh of relief.
Never before have I felt so relieved after a paper, bearing in mind that this was not the last paper and that my one last paper (Business Statistics) is this coming Friday. It didn’t matter that it was not the last paper, but that feeling of freedom after the paper ended was definitely there, to the extent where it felt like the exams were entirely over. Thank goodness I know not to be complacent and to disciplined enough to wait till the exams are really over before I let my guard down.
Of the 4 modules this semester, this law paper is probably the one that I’m most worried about because it is all about writing essays with strong convincing arguments and using the relevant laws to support your points. This meant that students wanting to ace this paper not only need a good grasp of their English, but also need to be familiar with the application of all the laws and cases. Even though it was an open-book examination, I figured that I wouldn’t have enough time to keep flipping through over 500 pages of a law textbook. Hence, I decided to create my own concised “cheat sheet”, containing all the laws and cases covered in the syllabus in nicely tailored sentences/answers that can be directly applied into my answers, like how a gaming cheat sheet would work. It was a lot of work, and I got to sleep at 5am, just 5hrs before the 10am paper. Studying alone just wasn’t enough, extra preparation was absolutely necessary, and it was all worth the effort.
I need to be thankful for the fact that the cheat sheet worked marvelously for me. Instead of flipping through 500 over pages, I had all my “answers” neatly packed, like a delightful platter of sashimi, in just 17 pages. Also, popping down 2 bottles of chicken essence over breakfast really helped to keep my brain alert and awake throughout the whole paper, hence the “bankai mode”.
I’m satisfied that I did my best for the paper, and whatever result I eventually get would definitely be a real gauge of my ability to analyse the scenario, identify the issues, raise my arguments, and support my arguments under a tight time constraint.
3 down, 1 to go~
———————————-
Note: For the uninitiated, pang sigh is a word play on the colloquial hokkien term “pang sai”, which means “to pass motion”, or to put it crudely, “to shit” :)
Brainless People
I haven’t blogged in 7 weeks and thought that I’d try to sweep some dust off my rant-box…
The semester 2 exams finally began yesterday, with my Prices and Markets module taking the lead.
I was quite pleased with the paper, because it was very similar to the previous year’s paper which I went through the same morning. The only real difficulty was time management – we had a mere 2hrs to finish 4 long questions, and I seriously mean LONG. I cleared the 1st 2 questions in 1hr 15min, and when I realised I had only 45min left for the next 2, I went into bankai and, thankfully, managed to finish the whole paper with my desired standards of answers. Distinction at least I hope??
—————-
One constant routine I’ve picked up since my JC days was to take a bottle of Brand’s Essence of Chicken before the paper.
Regardless of whether I’m prepared for the exams or not, I cannot deny the fact that this little bottle of nutritious drink really does keep me clear-headed and alert in the mind throughout my papers. Think of it as Red Bull for the brains, only healthier, not sugar-laden, and won’t make you fat.
I remember last semester, just before my Macroeconomics paper, I took a bottle outside the exam hall. There was this unknown dude standing near me with his classmates. When he saw me popping the bottle down, he laughed and bitched to his friends, saying,” What’s the point of drinking that now? If you aren’t prepared, not even this will save you.”
I found that statement rather rude and tactless. Is it your damn business what I use it for? Also, you must be stupid enough not to know that people take it to stay VERY alert during their papers, not as a miracle drink that will automatically give them grades. I finished the paper early enough to check through many times, and got a decent Distinction for that paper. TAKE THAT ASSHOLE.
—————-
1 down, 3 to go. Damn you Business Law -.-”
Going Home
Some friends posted this youtube video on facebook.
Honestly, I cried watching this.
This video isn’t just about dementia, it’s about living with dementia in the family. While some may say that such a thing wouldn’t happen to anyone in their family, who’s to be absolutely certain of that? Of note, elderly dementia is very relevant to anyone, to families, and people only start to realise after it hits. There is no cure for it, not even prevention for it, just gradual. Why wait till it happens and we start to regret, when we can learn to stop being complacent and show more concern right now.
I was amazed by the fact that love and a simple promise to get food was the sole reason that kept the ah ma from forgetting about her grand-daughter, and that bolstered her determination in trying to get home just to give the girl food. To act on to even the simplest and most trivial of promises, that’s how true love empowers people.
~
Love never forgets.
Bumped
Today’s the day where I had my first Semester 2 test, mid-sem test to be exact, on Microeconomics 1 (Prices & Markets). I only have one thing to say about it: whoever set the paper, is a BITCH. What the hell’s with all the ambiguity, in a 20 question MCQ test!?
Example 1: A question mentions that the income elasticity of Fashion Furniture (I can’t remember the exact name, but these 2 words are definitely part of it) is positive, and asked what kind of a good does it produce. The choice of answers included: normal good, luxury good, inferior good, substitute good. Based on the notes I have taken in class, as far as what we have covered, a positive income elasticity includes both normal and luxury goods, although the magnitude to determine accurately which 1 it is was never covered in class. Moreover, the question does not even state any further clues for us to determine whether it was a normal or luxury good. I chose ‘luxury good’ due to 2 reasons. A) The name seems to appear like a luxury good more than a normal good, and it’s furniture we are talking about, not 2 differing-quality brands of biscuits. B) Income Elasticity = (change in quantity demanded of good/change in income)*(summation income values/summation quantity demanded values). For income elasticity to be positive, the resultant division of the ‘change in quantity demanded of good’ over the ‘change in income’ needs to be positive, which would mean they need to complementary in signs (either both negative or positive). In such a case, if I were to draw the demand curve for this, wouldn’t it be a perverse demand curve where quantity demanded rises as income rises? In the case of perverse demand curves, there is a likelihood for the good to be a luxury good due to either the bandwagon effect, the snob effect, of conspicuous consumption, where an increase in pricing will increase the quantity demanded for the good (or vice versa).
Example 2: I can’t remember exactly all the choices given, but this question asks for the definition of Producer Surplus. This is probably the most debated question in class after the test ended. All 4 answers given were unlike the definition I learned in my notes, that is ” Producer Surplus is the amount producers receive over and above the minimum price that would be required to induce them to supply the good”. The answer I chose was “the difference between what the producer needs to receive and what consumers are willing to pay”, which is obviously wrong. Another answer was clearly the definition for Consumer Surplus so I shall not go into that. That leaves the 2 answers that has left us in a debate over which is right; “the difference between what the producer needs to receive and what the consumers actually pay”, and “the amount producers charge consumers over and above what the consumer is willing to pay”. I’m just boggled…
Example 3: This question tells us that a price increase in the price of apples will result in the quantity demanded for oranges to increase, and asks us what relation do the 2 fruits have. Obviously the answer would be that the 1 fruits are substitutes. However, the choices given to us included both ’substitutes’ and ‘close substitutes’. Again, both of these answers mean at the very least that they are substitutes, yet then question does to give any further clue for us to determine which answer to choose. I chose ’substitutes’ as the answer, although in reality ‘close substitutes’ seem like a plausible answer too.
Who would’ve thought a 20 question MCQ that lasted for a mere 50min would trigger such a dramatic response from us. The lecturer had better go through the questions PROPERLY after the results are out.
There’s still Business Statistics test this saturday, and Commercial Law test next saturday…
——————————————————–
Moving away from schoolwork, I had an annoying encounter on bus 970 today, at about 5.50+pm. I was seated beside this auntie, and it so happened I saw her press the bell before her stop. As the bus was about to reach the stop, I moved my legs out so that she could move out of her seat easier.
You know what she did!?!?!?
That fucking fatso auntie used her behemoth ass to bump forcefully onto me, bouncing me off my seat, before “gracefully” sliding her watermelon-sized ass across the seat to get off the seatS.
She’s just plain lucky my mind was preoccupied thinking about the test questions from earlier, otherwise I would have given her a verbal lashing on the spot, JmaX style.
Hey woman, if your arse is too heavy, go for a liposuction, or get a cab next time.
WOW
It’s been awhile since I blogged, ah heck!
I have something total-fuckingawesome-ly COOL to show you guys, check this out!!!
JmaX is finally 21!
OH EM GEE!!!
I can’t believe that I’m already 21!
Honestly, this year’s birthday bash(es) have been the biggest, and best in my life so far, and it’s far from over yet!
[photos will be up on fb, and some here soon~]
