Here's My Story

What is worse than a knowledgeable person who refuses to learn from others? A less knowledgeable person who refuses to learn from others. - Me

A short update from my last 2-part post : (1) After reading some write-ups and comments in a forum and pondering over them for quite sometime, I've decided to cut down on investment in REITs. Main reason is the practice of the manager of REIT being rewarded for any purchase/sale of property, on top of being continually remunerated as a % of value of assets in the REIT. This could encourage some sort of churning, couldn't it? Of course in practice, a manager has to justify the purchase/sale. Nevertheless, where previously I thought of investing chiefly in REIT, now I am going to minimise the investment. I thought of arbitrarily taking the debt/asset ratio of 30% as a criteria for me to invest or not but later changed my mind because it is a tad low. So later I upped it to 35%. REIT with ratio lower than 35% has some room to raise fund via debt, rather than from rights or private placement which almost certainly lower the share price in the near future. This matters to me beca...

I was studying in Singapore, doing O Levels when I was 17 years old. I was staying at a hostel, with 2 public telephones. Yes, this was the pre-mobile phone days. Half of the time these phones were used by the residents, no doubt including those who missed home. I was staying in a room at the top of the building on the 4th floor. I had a roommate, whom thankfully I got along well with. There was no lift or escalator and so that meant I had to use 4 flights of stairs to get to the 1st floor. I was a big fan of Whitney Houston and so when there was a chance to win a pair of tickets to her concert, I decided to go for it. It was quite simple but required lots of patience and attention: call the radio station when they played a snippet of her song (they made it obvious that it was time to call). I tried many times (my roommate recalled my sheer determination), listening to my Walkman, rushing down with my phonecard and ran along (and sometimes jumped over a few steps!) the stairs to ...

Right when I was on the verge from fully recovering from the previous illness , I had another! This time, it was truly nightmarish. At one point, I told Ban that I wished I could "load game" i.e. to 'restore' the previous 'session' so that I didn't experience this new illness. I started having stomach discomfort, somethig akin to gastric or gas in the digestive track, right after I ate one of the apples I bought recently. Ate some bread later before going out for dinner. I also had something new during dinner: clams and fish maw in bak kut teh (on top of the usual pork and mushroom) and a dish of stir-fry sliced fish. After dinner, stomach still felt a little funny and so I took domperidone. Burped quite loudly and felt a little better. It was shortly before going out for supper that I noticed the stomach cramp, specifically cramp around the intestinal area. Decided to take buscopan and went for supper. First time to Snowflake at Uptown. I had their bl...

Not of the moon. It's my latest illness. Here's how it has permutated, in chronological order: Post-nasal drip. Slight cough. No runny nose or blocked nose. As (1) above plus accumulation and expelling of phlegm and worsening of cough. Phlegm is thin and white. Can't sleep properly. As (2) above plus sinus soreness, sorethroat, blocked nose and thickening of phlegm. As (3) above but cough's getting drier. As (4) above but no more blocked nose, dry cough worsens and phlegm turns yellow. Stop needing to periodically expel phlegm while sleeping i.e. post-nasal drip almost gone. As (5) above plus fever. As (6) above but no more sinus soreness plus a little runny nose with thick yellow mucus.

It's been about one-and-a-half years since I last needed to use the steroidal nasal spray Flixonase. However, circumstances have forced me to use it again. Here's how it happened: Early this week, I could feel I was having post-nasal drip and that was confirmed that night when I couldn't really sleep due to cough and the need to regularly expunge phlegm that was accumulated in my mouth. So as usual, I tried to take decongestion/antihistamine (Clarinase/Fedac/Became) and perform sinus rinse. Later, on the advice of a pharmacist, I also took Mucosolvan to help to think the mucus and Rhinathiol to suppress the cough at night so that I can sleep better. The result? Well, the good news is that the cough has subsided and I could sleep better. The bad news is that the rhinitis has worsen to the point that decongestion/antihistamine couldn't relieve the resultant headace. After taking paracetamol over a few days to temporarily relieve the headache, I decided I had to n...

About two and half months after the UPSR result , out of the blue I was asked to tutor my former student. I was quite surprised because there wasn't any discussion about it for sometime. Also, I am a little concerned about him having too much tuition, especially since he is already attending a Math tuition class. Anyway, I'll be starting the tuition on the first Tuesday of February. I will need to find out then whether, similar to last year, there are already workbooks available for me to use or I need to source out one myself. I would need to see the textbook as well. As for Ironclaw , it starts later today! I'm a little nervous since it's new to me and I'm meeting new people too. There are now 6 players! I'm looking forward to this and hope that it'll turn out well. Good luck to me on both fronts!