ASB, T-Shirt, Shopping and Money

Posted on January 3, 2008 in: Life Experience, Myself, Shopping

I came back at 11 something last night and was too tired to write down the events that entrailed. So yesterday, I when to check out my ASB. I was glad that I got around RM700 of profits out of the whole sum, meaning I had a little over RM700 extra to spend on what I’ll be buying before flying off to New Zealand next month. It’s sad that my long break is finally coming to an end, but at the same time, I’m glad that I’m now a second-year student. Getting through the first year was tough; I hope I’ll do a lot better this year. I withdrew a small amount of RM1,500 from my account to buy some stuff.

Back to the topic at hand..

After going to the bank, I picked up a few blank shirts I I ordered for t-shirt printing purpose. I hoped to settle the order of 20 t-shirts and 15 mugs before next week. Once I’m done, I may be able to get a clean profit of around RM10 per shirt and RM8 per mug. That’s already a lot to me. Sounded a lot for 20 t-shirts, but those include design charges for 3 different designs. While designing is fairly easy, completing a satisfactory design is definitely not. Especially if your customer is very fussy :P

And then I went shopping (again)! Initially, I wanted to find a new luggage but later decided to buy one in KL instead. Spent Rm135 on a set of affordable women suit (suit, shirt and long skirt), RM112 on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, RM20 on two cheap black tank-tops and RM105 on lingeries.That made a total of RM372, so I still haveRM1128 left. I think I’ll go buy some sports wear with them. And the luggage. And maybe, a new mp3 player. Mp4 makes no impression on me because I don’t like to watch videos or anything on small displays (as I blatantly expressed in one past blog post). So now, the important stuff left to buy are:

  1. Sony Vaio CR 23/GN: RM4,488
  2. Motorola V9: +- RM1,500
  3. Sony DSC-T20-B (RM1,199) or the DSC-H3/B (RM1,399)

Aaah! Lots of money! Feel so sad to watch them flow away from me :( (

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A Wet New Year and A Musing

Posted on January 2, 2008 in: Blog Updates, Musing

The new year premiered with accompanying rain and freezing cold temperature the whole day. Just when I thought the rainy season is finally gone, today’s continuous rain made me think otherwise. It felt so nice to sleep under my favourite thick comforter, and leaving the bed was the hardest thing to do. Last year, January kicked off with glaring sun, but this year it’s the total opposite. I could barely do anything without a sweater too. You can say that my tolerance to cold weather sucks.

I didn’t do much today. Slept in, write, read, eat, write, surf, read, slept some more. Visited a number of interesting blogs today. Well, it’s hard to keep up with all the interesting blogs after disappearing from the blogging world for so long. Hope I’ll get the hang of it soon.

The rain made my brain go into what I call the ‘brood-and-muse’ mode. It was on a whim that I wrote the latest entry in Stylish Geeks: Anticipating Malaysian Virtual Scenario in 2008. All that I wrote there was based on my observation and my own experience, coupled with my hopes. There’s one thing I forgot to mention in the entry – local-based online advertising. Last month, I wrote about ‘junk ads’ flooding Cari.com.my and some other sites. I hope 2008 will get people to be more mature. No one is going to believe ads like ‘Fire your own boss’ or ‘Make $10,000/mo without working’. Those ads are absolute eyesores. Like some Japanese people said, ‘there’s no such thing as free lunch‘. We only gain what we deserve.

Malaysian sites developers, especially the Cari.com.my team should monitor the ads being put up in their classifieds directory. I’d say more than 50% of the ads are not at all relevant to category listings.

Also, I’d love to see how local advertisers like Nuffnang, Nufflets, GrabMyAds and Advertlets compete in the growing virtual community and online advertising network. It’s not surprising if more similar companies announce their presence in the near future.

One more thing… I’d like to welcome Adi to the Caramel Toffee family. Hope we can be friends :) His new blog is not ready yet, but later on, you can always have a look at http://adi.carameltoffee.net.

Laters~

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2007 Round-Up, 2008 Resolutions

Posted on December 31, 2007 in: Life Experience, Motivation, Myself

I can hardly believe that in a few hours, I’ll be leaving 2007 behind. Basically, this also means that I’ve almost used up my 3-month-holiday not doing pretty much anything. Okay, not true, I moved around a lot. I shopped a lot too. But that’s that. My sources of income this holiday are limited to only my part-time designing projects and my t-shirt projects. That aside, 2007 is a memorable year for me. Why?

  1. My 1st year as a University of Auckland student
  2. I finally hit the big 2. I turned 20 in September, 2007.
  3. My niece and nephew now like to play with the less sociable (with kids only) me
  4. My English is improving
  5. I passed all exams and assignments
  6. 2 weeks of School-based Experience in SMK Bandar Tasik Selatan
  7. Funny how I struggled for proper, advanced Malay words during my Malaysian Studies (Ethics) assignment presentation. That’s how badly we’ve been pressured to communicate in English- so badly that we stutter in Malay. I wonder where all my public speaking wits went off to.
  8. I actually freaked out and almost hyperventilated right after doing each exam paper (last finals).
  9. A few *ahem* guys expressed their interests in me. But I declined them. I’m simply not ready to open up a place in my heart for anyone. Study (and blogging, ha!) comes first.
  10. I finally have my own cards to be used for online shopping! Public Bank Visa Electron and Tune Card are great!
  11. My domains stylishgeeks.net, geekdom.info, junjou.info and carameltoffee.net were registered – in that exact order. I’m really happy with the names.
  12. I made a total of US $2,586 in online activities. Small sum, but I’m happy!
  13. I lost 7 kg in 2 months with simply eating less and counting calories!

That’s for 2007. My hopes for 2008 are:

  1. Focus more on my studies. Get the desired A’s and first class degree.
  2. Find semester jobs. At least one is enough. NZ $465 is a small sum to live by. Not fair how $800 went to the accommodation only. Not counting mobile and internet bills yet. Aargh!
  3. Make more money online. Write more, play less.
  4. Update Geekdom.info as often as possible with everything learnt in a day.
  5. Update Stylish Geeks, Junjou and Caramel Toffee once a day or once every two or three days.
  6. Increase creativity.
  7. Increase blog readership.
  8. Write more useful and meaningful content.
  9. Submit quality assignments.
  10. Lose some more weight.
  11. Make lots of new blogger friends.

I hope to be able to realise all that in 2008, especially the ‘making lots of blogger friends’ part. It’s kind of lonely on my own in this big space, you know… That, and HAPPY NEW YEAR, darlingtons!

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Imported Posts From Vox

Posted on December 31, 2007 in: Blog Updates

I signed up at Blog Backup Online last night to backup my Vox entries so I can import it into this site. However, when I imported the XML file, only 10 entries show. The other 39 were only titles with date and time posted. What happened to those entries? I deleted the ‘title only’ posts and now I only have entries from December 2006. Well, I hope I can fix this soon.

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Of License, Banking & Shopping

Posted on December 30, 2007 in: Life Experience, Shopping

Lots of things happened today – both good and bad, but not really bad. I’m trying to get back to the way I write blogs in the good old days – by sections. My friends once told me they like that style of mine, so I’m trying to start it again.

The Trouble With Renewing Driving License
My driving license expired on December 27, so I thought it would be good to go and renew it today. Papa suggested I renew it for two years to make things easier, and I chose to follow his plan. The three of us (Papa, Mama and yours truly) headed for JPJ HQ to renew my license, but unfortunately, the counters won’t be open until 2.45pm (it was 12.25pm when we arrived). Break from 12.25pm to 2.45pm? That’s quite long a period. I was like ‘what the heck’ and we decided to go somewhere else first before coming back to the HQ. Just outside the building, we met my driving instructor. He said that even if we wait, I wouldn’t be able to renew my license anyway. The server is temporarily down, and whatever devices the have in the building were currently out of service. %*##$#*@?? I was fortunate, though, my instructor offered to renew my license because he’ll be coming back to the HQ a few more times this week. I’ll just have to go and collect my license from him when it’s done. Thank God! That’s one problem down.

The Trouble With Registering For Public Bank Online Banking
Unlike other cards (at other banks), registering for PB Online Banking required me going to the customer service representative, filling out a registration form, and waiting for a loooong time. No, it didn’t take more than 5 minutes to get the ID and password to access their online banking facilities. It’s just that more people keep coming to the CS table even though it’s occupied (by me!), and the rep finished theirs first because theirs were more complicated and involved a lot more pen-slashing and signing. Um, next time, how about doing the fastest and easiest and definitely less complicated first? Move from basic to complicated, you know, like David Ausubel’s receptive learning theory… I wasted more than 40 minutes when it shouldn’t be more than 10 minutes, 15 minutes maximum if you count the time I spent reading the terms of use and filling out the simple form. And the ID and password can only be used after 24 hours. Great, more waiting.

Shopping at KB Mall

My New Jacket!

Alas, the best event of my day. Spent around RM350 for a Voir/VJ Jeans jacket with faux fur neckline, a knee-length Institute skirt, a cute yellow Institute long-sleeved t-shirt, and a white Nicole blouse with black vertical stripes. Cheap huh? Of course, the Institute skirt and t-shirt went on an 80% discount and the Nicole blouse got 50% discount. Only 10% discount on the jacket, though, because it’s one of the ‘New Arrival’ items… Click the images for full view.

Shopped Institute Skirt

Nicole Blouse Institute T-Shirt

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