Not my money to spend

I suppose this has been the case for many years now. Like most of my colleagues (if what they claim is real), our salary is gone before it enters our account. How so? Credit card bills, installments and whatever loans that you currently have. If you have standing instructions to pay them then its deducted even before it goes into your account. So what is left can also be considered as not your's because if you need some sort of transportation to work, the money that you need to spend is not your's as well because it has to be paid to get you to the place which will pay at the end of the month. Its such a vicious and tight circle that you almost cannot get out of :(

I was offered to go on a trip with a friend to Sabah. I was so excited that i quickly checked airline ticket prices and try to find the best rate. Nice, its just RM500 for return trip. Since the offer was that i would be given free accomodation and perhaps even some free meals so RM500 for a well needed vacation is considered cheap. Then it struck me when it came to paying, i don't have the RM500 to buy the tickets because the money is not for me to spend ...

When i went for a haircut just before CNY a few months back, the hairdresser commented that my hair is thinning and seeing his opportunity to try to sell his treatment package, he offered to do a free hair scan to show the health of my hair. I have done that scan before and know the advices so i fast forward him to intro me the products and the whole package would be something in the region of RM900 for 10 treatments or so. Judging from my facial expression, the hairdresser quickly change his approach and tried to sell only the shampoo + tonic package which was somewhere in the region of RM200. Seeing that its CNY and i have not really checked the damage incurred to me for the festive season, i can only decline. After CNY, i came to realize that i was over-reaching much more than i thought and eaten into a budget which i cannot refill :(

Last week there was a promotion going on in my company's foyer. I found an interesting and very useful item. So i asked for the price of the item and was quickly taken aback by the price tag (after discount) of RM100. Ok, im not going to fork out RM100 for something which i will not be using too often. My colleagues who were with me at that time told me that that was a cheap price to pay. They bought their's for more than RM100 albeit a different brand. I can only politely give a smile back to them.

After lunch, they tried to convince me to buy the item again saying that its really cheap and i should get one. I just could not take anymore of this so i just went ahead and told them the truth that my money now is to prepare (if required) to bribe the headmaster of the school which i try to enrol my son into.

These people whom i have described before in my previous post that they always claim not rich can somehow always manage to afford expensive stuff usually the sums are >RM500 and claims that its CHEAP but when they really need to spend on the other necessities, they will be reluctant to part with RM1 or RM10. For me, wherever possible i will be reluctant to part with RM1 or less. Perhaps they came from a better off family before so they are used to buying those branded stuff. However the strange thing is, most of them are not that is why they are not willing to part with RM1 on necessities but would much rather spend their hard earnedsaved money on the branded stuff.

My current goal now would be to ensure that my son is able to enter the school of my choice NOT because its a good school but rather the distance. It would be convenient in the future if need be to fetch him or to go to his school. Anyways, chinese schools would be expensive anyways so i need to prepare as best as i can. More years of not my money to spend still ...

1000 Chinese Characters

I was once told that if you could memorize 1000 of the most used chinese characters, you would be able to read a newspaper without much problem. In view that i am a banana who is enrolling his son to a chinese school, i must be able to understand or able to teach him if he asks.

There has been several incidences where he asked me to read to him what was in his books but i was unfortunately and very disappointed with myself that i am not able to comply to such a simple wish :(

Since i do not have a co-pilot anymore so i have to suck it up and take up the challenge of learning one of the most complex language ever created with more than 50000 characters in its arsenal. Although i am not totally illiterate in chinese but i fall way short of 1000 characters. Perhaps at a max, i could get around 50-100 characters which is not good enough sometimes to read even the headlines =_="

With a little help from Google, i managed to find this site which offers a flash card like interface to help you learn chinese. I hope to be able to memorize the 1000 characters so i may be able to read a chinese newspaper or rather more importantly, able to read to my son :)

A long time coming

Pfft, can't believe its May and i just started my wishlist :p Seems reasonably achievable

Air-conditioning for the house
Pretty straightforward IMHO

Fix my car's external problems
Though its only bringing me to the LRT station everyday but i want it to look like its old self not the current dented here and there :(

Goodbye Tiger
To be finally able to leave

Really say Goodbye?
No explanation necessary

To weight <=75kg
The below chart shows that im in the overweight section :(



Use my passport again before it expires
As straightforward as it can be ;)