Post No. 340. Wow.

I really hate auditing right now.

It made my life a nightmare 5 months ago, and now it's still making my life a nightmare.

For two Fridays in a row now my boyfriend has had to take a raincheck because of his work.

I do understand cause I saw first-hand how the auditing world was, but understanding doesn't make it any less frustrating.

And so right now, instead of having dinner with the boyfriend, I am studying for my test next week.

Joy.

But it's not so bad. I really like my lecturer for this unit, and I find the unit really interesting. And challenging.

Anyways, during class today, my lecturer was telling us about the upcoming test and assignment.

And he had this to say about our test next week:

"You don't have to study so much on VBA for the test because it's either you know it or you don't. And the questions tested are going to be easy, so if you're expecting difficult questions you will be disappointed"

And he was saying this so earnestly that the whole class couldn't help but just laugh.

If getting easy questions means being disappointed, I would like to be disappointed all the time, thank you very much. Lol.

Oh yeah, last Wednesday my exam timetable came out:


And thus, ladies and gentleman, this means that my last day as a Monash student (pre-graduation) will fall on the 16th of June.

It's definitely bittersweet. That's all I can say. =')

But since the exam finishes on the 16th, this means that I'll be able to watch most of the World Cup matches. =D

Checked out the Group Stages timetable, and saw that I won't be missing much.

In fact, I'll be able to watch Spain's first match since it'll be on the 16th. And the match is gonna be at 10 pm, so yes, I'll definitely want to watch that match outside to celebrate my freedom. Lol.

This also means that I'll have a month of lazing around doing nothing before heading off to the UK with the family in the middle of July. YAYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, Anis and I saw this on our way to Sunway this morning:


A RAINBOWWWW!!!!

We were soooo excited when we saw it.

It was definitely a nice way to start the day.

And apparently Liyana also saw the rainbow on her way to Sunway and got excited and took pictures too. Lol.

To me seeing a rainbow is one of those things that gives me unadulterated joy, and if getting excited when I see a rainbow makes me childish, then so be it.

At least it shows that I can appreciate the simple things in life. =)

Oh, this song is my current favourite song:



Yeah, so it's another Glee song. Lol.

I love this song. I've been listening to it on repeat non-stop for the past three days. And nope, still not bored of it yet.

I'm a bit busy right now, with the test coming up next week and assignment due in two weeks.

Will update when I have more time.

So sorry!!!

Oh, by the way, the boyfriend wants me to write a post on how he managed to win 4-0 against me when we played another round of Gin Rummy the other day.

So yes, I am being a gracious loser and I am conceding defeat. For now.

Next time I'll win again for sure. Lol.

Just my luck.

Yesterday was a day that so tested my nerves.

I got my first pay cheque after six weeks of working and I was grinning from ear-to-ear cause my pay was sooooo much more than I expected.

And I've calculated that the amount I'm getting per hour doing the RA job was MORE THAN THREE TIMES the amount per hour that I was getting in BDO.

And I've come to the realisation that I could make almost the same amount as my boyfriend is getting now if I worked full-time. Lol.

So of course when the class finished my first priority was to bank-in the cheque.

And then the stupid cheque deposit machine at the CIMB bank REJECTED my cheque.

The cheque would literally bounce back into my hand every time I tried putting it in.

My best friend, who was standing beside me, was flabbergasted because it only happened to me. Everyone else could deposit their cheques just fine.

So we had to put the cheque in this manual cheque deposit machine and I prayed so hard that the cheque would be cleared properly.

(Checked my account balance this morning and saw that the cheque was cleared. Thank God.)

After having lunch in Sunway, I had to send the car to Anis. Went into her college for a while cause I wanted to buy a cheap laptop sleeve cause I am sick of carrying my laptop in a sling-bag or backpack every time I have to lug the laptop around.

Bought the bag as quickly as possible because i wanted to catch the bus from Sunway College to Monash.

But just my luck, while I was walking towards the bus stop, THE BUS ZOOMED PAST ME.

Haih.

So I ended up walking towards Monash (which isn't so far away from Anis' college) AT 1 PM with the sun glaring above me.

Oh and did I mention that I was also wearing a black top?

And then later when Liyana's boyfriend picked both of us up, we went to have a drink at the nearby Medan in Sunway while we were waiting for some documents that Liyana's bf wanted to copy.

I've been wanting to have some peanut-butter waffles for some time, so I was happy when we ended up at Medan cause they sold those.

So i happily went to the stall to order.

And then the person said the waffles mix was finished.

WHAT THE HELL.

Oh yeah, to complete my total FML day, my doorknob has been jammed for close to a week, so I can't open my door and I've had to get in and out of my room through Anis's room everyday (Thank God our rooms are connected cause we share a toilet).

So anyways, when I got back home, saw that my door was no longer closed shut, but now I HAD NO DOORKNOB, so where last week my door was perpetually locked, now it is perpetually ajar cause it just can't be shut.

So yeah, FML.

But I found a stopper to shut my door cause I know it would be SO difficult to get some privacy if my room's door is always open.

And if it's always open I can't exactly turn on the air-cond in the room. And I need all the cool air I can get with the weather being what it is right now.

Oh, last night while I was having dinner with the boyfriend, we decided to play Gin for a while cause he was annoyed that I've beaten him last time we played.

We played 11 games, and I won 7 out of those. Mwahahahahahaha.

He said I was just lucky, but considering the crappy day I had, I felt like I deserve that luck.

Plus I'm better at Gin than he is anyways. Lol.

So it wasn't such a bitter ending to a somewhat unlucky day.

PS: I'm currently reading a book called Book of Souls by Glenn Cooper. It's totally occupying my time right now even though I'm supposed to be studying for my test next week. Lol.

At this moment in time, I am trying to be a good (in no particular order) daughter, sister, girlfriend, friend, student, tutor and employee.

I wish I could split myself and please everybody.

Or maybe I should just take time out from pleasing everybody and just focus on me.

Opportunities.

I'm using Anis's laptop right now to check something out (she gave me permission to use the laptop while she's out, so not using this illegally. Lol.).

Today my dad was asking me what do I want to do once I'm done with Monash.

I said, "I don't know."

And then he was asking me, "Where do you see yourself in ten years?"

And I told him what I thought, "A CEO of a company. Or to be in a job that pays me more than RM10k a month"

I have not slaved my way through Monash these past three years just to be contented with getting a measly paying job.

I KNOW what I'm capable of, and I am so capable of climbing up that corporate ladder.

So I was having this conversation with Tisha cause we're both quite lost on what we want to do once we finish our last semester in Monash, and then she told me about THIS.

And I felt like this is something that I might enjoy doing.

And if you do get chosen apparently the pay is around RM3,000, which is so much more than what I'll get if I do auditing.

And if you do really well then you can be absorbed permanently into one of the departments and get fast-tracked.

For an impatient person like me, this program is VERY attractive.

And then i read about THIS program.

Wow the HSBC one is even more attractive. I can't believe they might send the trainees to the UK for the training program. And on top of the RM3,ooo they're paying you, there's a possibility of getting RM1,000 to RM1,500 of allowance!!!

So yes, I am seriously contemplating these options right now.

But I'm scared of the presentations that we have to do to get short-listed cause I might just screw that up badly.

I HATE PRESENTATIONS. T_________________________T

Ohhhh, and I looked at the Robert Walter Salary Survey for 2010 and some CFOs can get up to RM40k per month. Wow.

I will earn that much one day. Just wait and see. =)

Small update.

I had to send my laptop to the service centre yesterday, so I am laptop-less for a week.

Which means that I won't be able to update the blog much for the next week.

Oh and it doesn't help that I have a test on the 3rd of May, with my assignment due on the 12th.

And as much as it pains me to be doing them, I just realised that those would be my penultimate hurdles before my last paper in Monash, so it's quite bittersweet.

Oh yeah, while talking to Liyana just now, I've come to a realisation that I always end up getting a HD for the units that I take with my current lecturer.

So I am really hoping that the trend will continue. =D

In this lifeeeeeeeeeeeeee

I think yesterday was a proof of how random I can be.

While I was driving back from breakfast with the boyfriend, I suddenly thought of this game that Tisha taught me last time called Gin Rummy. Mind you, I've not played that game in AGES.

So I asked my boyfriend whether he has played it before. He said he has heard of it, but isn't quite sure what it's about.

After sending him back, I went back home, watched the latest episode of Glee and then went on a quest to rediscover how to play Gin. I even downloaded a version of the game just to refresh my memory. Lol.

So met up with the boyfriend again later in the afternoon, and after failing to go to KLCC because the parking was full, we ended up going to the TGIF restaurant in Wangsa Walk Mall, where I taught him how to play the game.

We ended up playing for one and a half hours.

I think we've just found a new favourite card game. Lol.

Oh yeah, I read about the Icelandic volcano eruption that left so many people stranded because most of the Europe air space is affected by the ash spewed from the volcano. This means that most probably my grandparents' trip to UK this Friday would have to be postponed, which is such a pity cause they have been looking forward to this trip for a long time.

I just hope right now that my trip to the UK with my family will not be affected, because my dad said that there's a possibility that the disruption could go on for months. =(

And the other day I read this article and it was just too funny not to post:

EXPLODING BREAST IMPLANTS RECALLED

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahabananahahahahahaha.

Oh, by the way, I was testing a theory I read on MLIA a few days back where apparently if you insert the word 'banana' in the middle of a string of hahahas, no one would realise.

So did you guys see the word 'banana' first time around in that hahaha string?

I bet you didn't. Hahahahaha.

Oh, I got my assignment question for my unit a few days back and I realised that the due week is in three weeks.

So I have to start working on it soon. Might not have so many posts anymore then, or I might have more posts, depending on how I'm feeling about the assignment. Lol.

Musings.

I think when my sister and I are bored we can be very dangerous.

Like how one day we started talking about how men were always the one inventing or discovering stuff.

Like how Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb.

Or how Benjamin Franklin discovered electricity.

Or Isaac Newton discovering the force of gravity.

The telephone? Invented by Alexander Graham Bell. If he didn't win the race to file in the patent for the telephone, the 'inventor' would have been another dude by the name of Elisha Gray. (I seriously thought Elisha Gray was a woman. Haih.)

The airplane? the Wright Brothers.

Windows PC? Bill Gates.

The iPod? A bunch of male engineers, headed by Steve Jobs.

The modern car? a German engineer named Karl Benz.

Even the microwave oven was invented by a man. Haih.

And let's not forget the genius Leonardo Da Vinci, who is a gay man, but still a man nonetheless.

And men did many 'firsts', too:

First person to go to space - Yuri Gagarin.

First person to set foot on the moon - Neil Armstrong.

First person to climb up Mount Everest - Sir Edmund Hillary.

And in history you have all these men like Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, Christopher Columbus, etc, etc.

And then it got us thinking: WHERE ARE THE WOMEN?

The only few names that we could think of were:

Hatshepsut - one of the most successful female pharaohs. Even then she's not the first.

Queen Isabella of Spain - Established the Spanish Inquisition. SCARY WOMAN.

Marie Antoinette - No idea why she's so famous, except for being the controversial Queen of France.

Amelia Earhart - First woman to fly a plane. And then she disappeared into oblivion. Literally.

Joan of Arc - led the french Army to some important victories. And then she got burned at the stake at NINETEEN YEARS OLD.

So Anis and I realised that we don't know that many famous women because most of the popular ones seem to be more infamous than famous. And the famous ones always end up having terrible luck at the end of their lives. -__-

And we have come to the conclusion that while all these men are busy inventing and conquering the world and whatnots, the women were too busy taking care of the households and raising babies for these men, hence why they did not have the time to go discovering things.

Oh how unfair this world was, once upon a time.

Fate.

The weirdest thing happened to me today.

I sat in the Monash library just now while I was waiting for Anis to finish her class.

So there I was, sitting on the red couch, talking to Idris and Engku, when one of the Biotech girls came over to join us.

I usually don't talk to them not cause I'm sombong or what, but just because I don't know them and sometimes I'm not good at making conversations with strangers.

So she was chit-chatting with Engku and Idris and then out of the blue she asked me, "Alia, you duduk kat Keramat kan?"

And I was like "Yeahhhh.........."

Obviously I was a bit confused when she asked me that.

After that she asked me, "Dulu masa tadika you kat Tadika Capital kan?"

Not a lot of people knew where I went to kindergarten, so THAT was definitely a bit freaky.

And then she continued "I dulu sama tadika dengan you. You were one of my closest friends masa tu"

My jaw just dropped. I was completely rendered speechless.

I seriously for the life of me can't remember who she is (and I feel so bad for that), but here is this girl who actually remembers me from SIXTEEN YEARS AGO.

I was befuddled.

And the strangest thing is that she actually recognised me from the first day she came to Monash.

The thing is, I highly doubt I look the same as when I was six.

It's just amazing to me that this person actually recognises me, remembers my name AND remembered where I used to live at that time.

Wow.

And there you have it, just when I thought life couldn't get any stranger, fate comes and smacks me right in the face.

Cars!

My boyfriend said this to me yesterday,

"You haven't blogged in three days."

So I'm dedicating this post to him just so he knows that I do have a new post.

Happy now? :p

The other day while I was in the car with Anis she told me this,

"Do you know that there's a Mercedes car that uses a joystick instead of a steering wheel for steering the car around?"

And the only thought in my head was "Heh?"

So I tried googling the car and found out that the car was a Mercedes concept car called the SCL600.


It's a nice concept, but so impractical because the joystick is in the middle, between the driver and passenger seats. Oh wait. Maybe it's driver-driver seats then cause both of the people sitting in front can theoretically drive the car. Possible problems that I can foresee should this concept car come into production:

• Users will probably have neck pains most of the time because they'd be craning their necks to judge how to overtake the cars in front while simultaneously trying to steer the car. Oh yeah. Utter joy.
  
• And oh, apparently the car DOES NOT come with pedals, so I have no idea how you're supposed to brake or accelerate
• side-parking, which is already somewhat torturous now even with steering wheels, is gonna be total hell using the joystick
• Ironically, I think there would be no joy in driving a car using a joystick. Even back when I was playing Midtown madness on my PC last time, if the steering wheel was broken, I'd rather use the keyboard than the joystick to drive my car around because frankly, using a joystick is so difficult when it comes to driving.
• And it still bugs me to no end that the controls are in the middle. I mean, even a pilot who has a joystick-looking thing in his cockpit has the controls right in front of him, NOT in the middle between him and the co-pilot (oh, slightly off-topic, I found out why a cockpit is called a cockpit HERE).
  

Oh, random fact of the day: apparently Beyonce can't drive. Hahaha.

Oh, and my dad was asking me the other day whether I could still drive a manual car.

And then I looked at him straight in the eyes and said,

"Papa, the last time I drove a manual car was during my JPJ test 5 years ago."

So yes, I do think that if I were to drive a manual car now, I'll be very panicky.

Plus we don't have any manual cars at home.

How I wish my dad didn't sell off his MR2.

Post 330.

At the dinner table yesterday my siblings and I were randomly taking about Glee and we were talking about the songs that they sing, like this one:

And then Anis said something to the younger siblings that was like a total stab to my heart:

Kakya and I are so old that we actually know the original Thong Song. And we used to watch the video on MTV.

OUCH.

It hurtsssssss.

It's just beginning to sink in that I'm no longer 21, and Anis uttering those lines was like putting a nail on the coffin. -______-

Thanks so much Anis.

But seriously, who watches MTV anymore? Youtube's so much better. Lol.

Oh, by the way, I was looking up some journals about urban poverty in Malaysia and how it has affected the crime rate in Malaysia and whether there are data on the number of urban poor in Malaysia based on the races. I couldn't find the race-based urban poor data even though I spent the better half of three days searching for them. Haih.

BUT, I did find one journal article that I find somewhat....interesting.

I was reading through a journal article and then the first thing I saw was this:


Kuala LUMPA?

ARE YOU FREAKIN' SERIOUS?

Once I saw that I knew it was gonna be irritated by the article.

Sad to say, I was right.

I mean, the contents were good, but the grammatical and spelling errors made me cringe.

I mean, in some of the sentences there weren't even any punctuation marks. Seriously. -_-

I felt like I was re-doing my SPM and IELTS exam where they give a sentence/paragraph and you're supposed to see where the punctuation marks go or which words were spelt wrongly. It's like the Spell-Check on Microsoft Word was turned off.

Haih. I don't want to be so condascending, but when you're an academician, shouldn't you at least be concerned with where your punctuation marks are?

I mean, let me give a simple example that Wani always use to teach Zara on the importance of using punctuation marks.

See, without the right punctuation marks, the sentence "Let's eat, Grandma!" will become:

"Let's eat Grandma!!!!"

So yes, I think punctuation marks are important in scholarly journals.

But maybe not so much in text messages. Lol.

Alia's 22nd - in pictures.

My birthday dinner with the family at the Victoria Station on the 3rd since my uncle was jetting off to Bintulu on my birthday:

Oh yes, I look stoned. Must have been the after-effect from the lunch i had with Yana & nat during the day. Lol.

Zara was scared of the live lobster that the waiter brought to our table to show to her. Hehe.

My 22 Arsenal-themed cupcakes that my siblings surprised me with. I was sooo happy!!!! =D

Candle-blowing-cum-cupcake-icing-war session. Lol.

My gifts: =D

Most of the gifts that i received. As corny and cliched as this will sound, I love each and every single one of them. Lol. I even love the creepy Lobster card the kids decided to give me. Hahaha.

The kids bought me a new pair of earphones, which i am currently using right now. Yay!

A necklace from the boyfriend.
Thanks baby. I love it. I love you.
Thanks for making my birthday a special one. =)

Zara gave me a handmade card and what she wrote in the card was so sweet. =')

Oh, this is a video of me blowing the candles of the cupcakes (with the help of my siblings, of course):

Yes, if we sound somewhat abnormal it's because WE ARE. LOL.

So yep, it was an awesome birthday weekend. =)

My statement.

When I went to see Ms Adlina, I basically told her that I DID NOT like auditing, I'm NOT planning on going back for auditing and I am so thankful that I decided to do the internship instead of going into auditing permanently.

So she was listening to me babble on about the gripes of being an auditor (she was so friendly I couldn't help but start babbling my mouth off. Lol!) and she was saying that I should put a positive spin to the Internship Experience thing that she wanted me to do and talked about how doing the internship exposed me to all these things and made me think of other career options that I might go into once I graduated.

So this is what I've come up with that might be put up on the School of Business' Website:

Undertaking the internship program at BDO Binder has definitely been an eye-opening experience. The program has exposed me to the multi-faceted world of auditing and the working life in general, and it has also led me to ponder on the possible career paths that I might have once I leave Monash University. It has also given me the opportunity to incorporate what was taught in class into the tasks given. Overall, being an intern has been an enriching experience as it forced me to step out of my comfort zone as a student and to look at the world in a different light.

I never realised that I had it in me to come up with such a paragraph. I am so proud of myself. Lol.

And I'm not exactly lying in the paragraph, it's just that I decided to omit some facts.

That's business for you. Lol.

Oh, they might edit the paragraph to make it even more bombastic, so this paragraph might be the final product on the School's website.

I know nobody goes to the school website, but still it will be SO WEIRD having my name and this paragraph there.

Lol.