In transit

Finished reading <Slammed> over the weekend! It's about slam poetry. It's so good and I'm so inspired.

Here's my attempt, not good at all but I want to post it anyway.

In Transit

I've just graduated this year

Ending 16 years of formal education 

After all the assignments and exams and emulation

I was made to believe I could pursue whatever I want

I've just graduated this year

Before confronting the real shit

I went on a multiple trips 

To widen my horizons and have fun 

I've just graduated this year

After all the applying and interviewing
and the rejections and disappointments

I settled as time ticked away

I've just started work this year

I doubt myself everyday
about why I'm not good enough

To go after the things I want

I've just started work this year

I want to make a difference

I want to think and push my boundaries

I want to do what I like, is it so hard?

I've just started work this year

I should be enthusiastic and excited

Instead I feel jaded

Cause I can't land a job I like

I doubt myself and my abilities everyday

Is this what I'm meant to do, for the rest of my life?

Should I settle or continue pursuing is a question I keep asking

I can't make up my mind

Advice please?

Things she did

Sometimes I feel like I have the best Mum in the world. Thought I'll just write down some of the things she does for me so I'll remember next time:

1. Prepare breakfast for me. Sometimes it's homemade sandwiches, other times she'll buy bread from the bakery

2. Buy the things I want to eat! Told her I want to cook cold udon (after eating at Ten-Ichi @ Nex) and she bought me the dipping sauce. She also bought cockles for supper last night. I love shellfish!!!

3. If I tell her I want to cook pasta for dinner, she'll help me prepare ingredients by chopping garlic and deveining prawns and putting them into the fridge for my use later. She'll even help me wash the pan in advance. So when I come back, all I need to do is to cook!

4. Help me pack my luggage for overseas trip. Because I'm usually quite chill about packing, she'll be like "你这样晚pack, 来得及吗？” Then she'll help me pack x_x

Really appreciate all the things my parents has done for me! The next question is, what can I do for them? Hopefully I can come up with a good answer in 10 years' time. 

Of jogging and philosophy

It's been six weeks since I started jogging and:

1. I have finally hit 4km! Started with 2.4km and I have successfully increased my distance bit by bit. What I do is I will try to improve on my timing for a fixed distance for 2-3 weeks, and when I hit my target time, I increase my distance. Hoping to do up to 5km in three weeks!

2. I still feel like dying when I am jogging, especially when I am at the 40-50% mark. Sometimes I just regret my decision and have a strong urge to just walk back home. So far, I haven't done that, I guess I will feel even worse mentally if I really do walk back halfway

3. Realized I might need to cut down on eating spicy food. I had prawn aglio olio for dinner last night and afterwards my stomach was burning (even when it was 2 hours after I had the meal) due the excessive cayenne pepper and chili flakes I added for the extra oomph. It was as if the food was trying to burn its way through me. I felt even worse after I started jogging! I could even feel the burning sensation up my throat, damn disgusting. 

4. It's becoming a bit of a habit to run! I don't feel at ease if I didn't run twice a week lol. Hoping to maintain it for 3 months!

5. I start to be more conscious of what I eat because I know if I eat unhealthily, all my efforts at jogging will go to waste. Nowadays, I try to eat only half a portion of carbs for lunch, even though I know I will be hungry early evening. Because I know how much exercise I must do to work it off! Like yesterday, I drank a cup of milo and I took the first 15-20 mins of the jog burning away that one cup of milo! So much pain for a small pleasure :(

Philosophy:

1. Been reading a book called Sophie's World. It's my third attempt and I have reached the furthest yet. It's a book on the history of philosophy, presented in easy to understand prose. I've always been interested in philosophy because I've wondered about questions like "Who am I?" and "Do I have free will?"

2. After reading a section on Immanuel Kant, I found myself agreeing with him. He says that it is impossible to prove whether God exists, because we are a small small part of the world, and we have not experienced enough (because we are so small) to be able to come to a conclusion. And because humans have this innate need to look at everything with a "cause and effect" law, humans will continue to ask these type of questions.

3. The story plot is really quite ingenious! It's a little like Inception? Only it was published in 1990, before I was born.

End of my random musings! Thanks for reading

Europe Travelogue Day 10: Paris Disneyland

You can read my previous posts here:
Day -1, Day 1, Day 2, Day 3 , Day 4, Day 5 & 6, Day 7, Day 8, Day 9

On our third day in Paris, we headed to Disneyland! It was a distance away from the city center so we took a long train there.

Caucasians just weren't as enthusiastic as Japanese about Disneyland, as shown by the crowd numbers.

I have a confession to make. In this supposedly land of happiness, I started tearing. I was enjoying myself in Disneyland but I felt like I wasn't a child anymore and I felt sad. I was overwhelmed by the prospect of working full time until I am 60+ and I didn't want that. I don't want to be chained to my desk (which is what I am now sighhh :( ) I want to remain a young adult for life, and just enjoy myself without any burden. As I think back how I felt, I realised my thinking was very self-centred. It's time to pay back my parents for the 23 years of carefree life they have selflessly (they could have spent the money in so many other areas but they chose to spend the money on me) given me.

Thankfully I recovered from that after awhile and managed to enjoy myself. We had to leave early again because we were afraid of our safety at night.

Random thoughts after Interstellar

Just returned home from watching <Interstellar> and here are the random thoughts I had:

I am just a speck of dust in the universe. I will live and die like millions of people before me. I feel so insignificant and so do my dreams.

Why didn't I study physics in JC?! I didn't understand some theories/parts in the movie and it all sounded/looked so cool! Biology suddenly seemed very lame. My younger brother who is JC1 this year understood some of the theories in the movie because I remember him explaining random physics theories, which was also mentioned in the movie, to me now and then.

What is time? Why does it exist and how come gravity can bend time?

Why do I exist? Why do humans exist? Is there God somewhere? Or we think God exist because our brains are wired to think that there's a reason behind everything? I think that all humans want to feel special (or at least I do), and this "want" has driven us to search for meaning in life. Maybe there's just no meaning? Maybe we exist due to many coincidences.

I have so many questions I have no answers to. Questions I forget when the mundanity of life overwhelms me, but they do pop up time to time. I don't think I ever find an answer. But that's the beauty of life isn't it?

Europe Travelogue Day 9: Paris Again

You can read my previous posts here:
Day -1, Day 1, Day 2, Day 3 , Day 4, Day 5 & 6, Day 7, Day 8

For our second day in Paris, we went to Leon De Bruxelles for lunch before heading to the Louvre. Sadly I didn't take any photos of our meal but it was good! I had their set lunch, with a pot of mussels and free flow fries as my mains.

After lunch, we took a leisurely walk to the Louvre. This is the exterior of the Louvre, if you look carefully through the hole in the lower left of the picture you can see a bit of the glass pyramid.

So pretty!!! The glass reflected the clouds in the sky.

First thing to do when we got in to the Louvre is to go on a treasure hunt to see Mona Lisa.

Ask L to snap a photo of me with Mona Lisa. I had to squeeze all the way in. There is forever a crowd in front of Mona Lisa.

After seeing the Mona Lisa, we roamed the rest of the Louvre. The museum was larger than expected, and there were so many artworks on display. However, I couldn't appreciate it much because I didn't understand a single thing! Even if there was an explanation on the side, it was all in French, which I couldn't understand. So we just kept walking and looking at artworks without understanding.

After awhile, we got bored and we decided to call it quits at the Louvre. Headed out and the pyramid looked different. Transparent instead of cloudy. It's so cool that the pyramid looks different during different times of the day.

Right in front of the Louvre was the another Arc. I forgot the name of this one.

After the Arc, we were at Tuileries Gardens.

Pretty pretty flowers

There were a lot of random garden chairs available so we grabbed two and just chilled. The weather was good too! It was cooling & sunny at the same time.

After chilling, we took a train down to Galeries Lafayette, an upmarket departmental store. Headed straight for the Longchamp section cus L needed to buy some bags for his relatives. There was a long queue, and it was full of Asians. Didn't see a single Caucasian in the shop or in the queue. Guess Asians are super crazy over Longchamp bags!

The ceiling is so pretty!!! 

The whole place was just so pretty and atas. Sadly, I couldn't afford anything here. 

After some window shopping in Galeries Lafayette, we headed to Chez Chartier for dinner, which was known for serving cheap traditional French food. I didn't have pictures again cus I always think people will stare if I take my DSLR out and take some photos of my food. They would probably think Asians are crazy. After we filled our tummies, we took a long walk back (about 20 mins). We tried to minimize taking trains cus of our experience on the first day. Waiting time was long and we didn't feel safe.

That's the end of our second day in Paris.

Europe Travelogue Day 8: Paris

You can read my previous posts here:
Day -1, Day 1, Day 2, Day 3 , Day 4, Day 5 & 6, Day 7

After spending seven days in London, it was time to set off to Paris. We bought train tickets from the Eurostar (£39 = SGD 80), which will allow us to reach Paris in 2.5hrs. However, we missed the train cus I wanted to get some snacks from Marks&Spencer to eat on the train. I was duly punished for my gluttony! Contacted the staff there about our situation and for a few minutes I was worried we had to shell out another sum of money to buy the tickets again. My worry was unfounded as they put us on the next train at no cost but we had to sit on uncomfortable seats between the carriages.

So after two hours we arrived at Gare Du Nord station, Paris! Our hotel in Paris was just across the street from the train station, so we went to drop our luggages and went to find a restaurant for lunch!

My first impression of Paris wasn't great cus I could smell stale pee whenever we walked past any small alleys and there were some people hanging around our area who seemed like they were up to no good. Furthermore, French people do not translate anything to English!!!! While we were in the random restaurant for lunch, the waitress had to explain to us what each thing on the menu was because everything was in French. I had to use Google Translate! Made me feel so stressed up whenever I see an menu.

First stop: Arc De Triomphe

The interior of the Arc. Subsequently we saw more Arcs but I guess this is the most famous one! Arcs are built to celebrate war victories and commemorate those who died.  From the building of Arcs and refusing to translate anything to English, I deduce that they must be very proud of their culture/being French.

From the Arc, we walked the underpass to Champs Elysees. The Arc is just in front of the famous shopping street. As you can see below, the Arc is at the centre, with a lot of roads converging towards it. The road was quite chaotic because there were no traffic light around the area.

 Champs Elysees. The street looks prettier than Orchard road, with the Victorian style buildings

Of course we couldn't miss out Laduree!!

MMMMM... Actually I can't remember the taste already, but I remember I liked it better than Pierre Herme.

Last shot of the Arc

We walked in the direction of the Eiffel Tower as it was nearby. The river next to us should be the Seine river.

Since we were hungry, we headed to Aud Petite Sud Ouest first! L looking at the menu.

For starters, we ordered Foie Gras with truffle sauce. I can't remember the price but it was only around SGD 20+? For three thick slabs of foie gras with truffles!! So worth it! I want to eat it now :( But I can't cause it would cost me a bomb in Singapore...

We both ordered the duck confit, it was so crisspyyy!!

After our tummy were filled, we walked to the grass patch in front of Eiffel Tower and took some photos! While I was right in front of the tower, it felt so surreal! I have seen photos of this famous structure so many times and never thought I would be to see it in the flesh

We reached the Tower at about 7pm. The sun was up for a long time during May and it only turned dark at like 9pm+

Lots of people chilling around and Middle Eastern people (not sure, but they looked Middle Eastern to me) earning a quick buck by going around selling Eiffel Tower souvenirs and wine. I was a sucker and I bought a miniature Eiffel Tower, which lights up.

We stayed till it lit up at like 9pm!! So pretty! We quickly left after that because we were worried about our safety. I felt less safe in Paris compared to London.

We walked to the nearest subway station and took the train home! I hate taking their trains!! Their trains and signs are so confusing, worse than in Japan. That day, we had to wait 30 mins for the train to come! We were so worried that the last train left already, but thank goodness it came after 30 mins. So freaking long!!! Only cool thing about their trains is some of them are double decked!

That's the end of Day 8 in Paris

"Should I buy insurance?"

Has this question ever crossed your mind? As we come of age, insurance is one of the things we have to think about.

My answer to this question is, it depends on the type of insurance. I would buy casualty insurance which would pay me when an unexpected incident strikes, but I definitely would not buy any investment-linked insurance.

I think casualty insurance is useful because the probability of the something bad happening is low but the downside is large. I am willing to pay a small amount of money a month for a peace of mind. The insurance payout can offset the trauma I'll likely feel if an unexpected incident occurs so I can sleep well at night, knowing that I won't suffer a large loss if something untoward happens to me or my property.

Then, lets move on to investment-linked insurance.

In an investment-linked insurance you pay the insurance company a fixed sum of money per month/year, then you get back a big sum of money after a long time. Basically, the insurance company will help you invest your money in the markets, then pay you the returns + principal a few years later. Most of the time, they invest in bonds and stocks.

So why don't I like investment-linked policies?

1. Do you know that insurance agents take a cut of the premiums you pay as their commissions?  I believe they take around 50% of the premium you pay for the first year, but the cut they take will slowly decrease as the years pass.

This means that the money they invest for you is lesser than what you paid for, and this will result in a lower return because of the power of compounding.

An example:

Let's say you invest $4 a year for 10 years, assuming a return of 10%, you will receive $70.12 at the end. Rate of return = 12%

If there's commission, you pay $4 a year but they'll only help you invest $2 for the 1st year , $3 for the 2nd year, then $4 for the rest of the years. You will receive $62.57. Rate of return = 10%.

By giving your insurance agent a commission, the return of your investments fell by 2%.

2. Insurance companies take your money and invest it in the bond and stock market. Do you know you can do the same? Why should you pay them to invest your money when you can do it yourself. Just set up an account with any local brokerage and you can invest in the same securities as they do!

Insurance companies are usually very conservative. To mimick their returns, you can build a conservative portfolio as well. Invest your money in blue chips like banks (OCBC, DBS, UOB), SPH, Singpost, SIA... These companies are very stable and they pay out dividends every year. Take the dividends and reinvest. You will likely get a higher return when you DIY compared to the insurance company. This is because they need to pay their employees to run the investments. If you invest in the market on your own, all the dividends GO TO YOU. And naturally you get a higher return. Simple as that.

In view of the two points above, I would definitely recommend you to DIY! You might think that you don't know the stock market enough to invest. Then my advice to you: it's time to read up! Investing in stocks and bonds is a good way to prepare for your retirement. If you just keep putting your money in bank accounts, the bank's interest rates never fight inflation & you will slowly watch your money erode away.

Of course, I am not saying there are no downside risks in investing in the stock market. Two ways to minimize the risk in my opinion are to to invest in blue chips (which have a very low probability of collapsing) and diversify. In other words, don't put all your eggs in one basket!