Here's My Story

 

Recently, I purchased flight tickets to Australia. As usual, Ban prefers seats with extra leg room for long flights and I of course will get the seat next to his. That usually means purchasing two seats at the emergency exits, which aren't many. After comparing fares over a few dates, I settled on a certain date for the SYD-SIN-KUL flight on SIA. The next step was filling in passengers' details, which took quite sometime because I had to make sure our details were correct. Also, this time, my mother is travelling with us and so there are three passengers. After submitting this, the next step was to choose seats. However, there weren't any suitable seats left! Gosh, here I thought I was early in buying tickets. So, I had to start all over again to select the next best date. It would had taken a longer time to repeat the process if SIA app hadn't allowed me to save passengers' details. I had the same problem when booking the KUL-SIN-MEL flight. I wish airlines allow u...

   I find this fascinating because it looks like a building shoved into three of them.

My mum's passport expired years ago. Few months ago, I was looking up on the internet on whether I could still apply for passport online. It seems that it was possible but additional steps were needed if current passport had already expired AND damaged or lost but, as you might have noticed, nothing about passport that's expired but not damaged or lost. Shockingly laughable. I then phoned the immigration department at Seberang Jaya. The officer said that mum could still apply online but he advised us to walk-in because there was a special lane for senior citizen. It would be fast and easy. Mum just needed to bring her old passport and her IC. Photograph would be taken there too and so no need to bring along passport photos. So, Ban and I brought mum there soon after her visa to Australia was granted. However, halfway there, we discovered that she forgot to bring her old passport. Panic set in. Ban, who was driving, asked me whether we should turn back home or not. I asked for s...

Recently, I went with my sister to Maybank to open a joint account. The first checkpoint was the counter at front. The officer noticed that our addresses aren't the same in our ICs (which shouldn't be a surprise for adults!) and, in response to her question, we didn't bring our birth certs (whoever had thought of that?) She was doubtful whethere we would be allowed to open a joint account (huh?) but nevertheless she let us try out luck. We were surprsied and I remarked that previously, I had no problem opening a joint account with my mum. She said (something like this), "Maybe previously it was possible but now maybe not. Still, I let you try". Now, that, to me, was already a reasonable response (regulations/SOPs do change overtime) and it put her in a good light because, instead of saying no, she was letting us try our luck. However, she ruined it by saying, "If you don't want to give to me (your business), I'm fine with it." and gave us a rathe...

 This stall, at Sunway Mas Commercial Centre, was so popular that the piegons were queueing up as well. 

In a previous post , I pointed out the absurd minimum amount of investment required to buy bonds compared to shares. I recently discovered that the minimum amount to purchase US government bonds and Singapore government bonds is just around USD 1,000 and SGD 1,000 respectively, the final amount dependent on the price and vested coupon. This is good news! US government bonds were rated AA+ while Singapore government bonds were rated AAA. Unsurprisingly, the yield of the former is higher than the latter. I bought some of the former.

This sounds so right: (may not be verbatim) Why I feel freedom of expression is so important, especially in our country, is because it underpins our rights, and access to all other rights, right? - Vilashini Chandran during the BBC World Service's World Questions podcast on "What do Malaysians think about freedom of speech?