The Tales of Carmensakura

  Yeah, in a way, I'm finally back. Yeah, I'm sorry for abandoning this blog for 2 two years.  It's just a lot happened in the past 3 years. Mainly, it's the pandemic.  Boy, that hasn't been fun for me at all.  I'm just going to be honest here because I promised myself that I'd be honest here. The truth is, the pandemic was my worst nightmare. I have always been a person who was anxious and my anxiety mainly was triggered by health related things. I was often sick in my younger toddler years. Although I don't particularly remember most of it, I think it stuck to me. I think the effects are clear.  So the pandemic was my worst nightmare come true. It's a little insane to have your worst nightmare and worst fear come true.  The stories you tell yourself when you were a kid. The fear you had. The biggest exaggeration of it. Most people can ignore theirs and say it won't come true. But mine did.  And it's a funny, funny thing. Well, less funny an

  I been watching some Japanese drama and it's been hitting home for me. I was watching one Japanese drama that happens to also be a comedy but I could relate to one of the main characters because our jobs were quite similar. We both worked in big corporations. We both had to analyse things. He and I were alike because we both didn't hate our jobs. We rather enjoyed it and took pride in the work that we did. But in a big corporation, when you are one worker in a sea of many workers, it's easy to be invisible and under appreciated. I completely understood that. When I was watching this drama, I had friends who were having an awakening. A friend of mine quit his job because he can no longer stand a job. The idea of working 9-6 disgusted him. He said we were wasting our time and time is our life so why are we doing that. It made me rethink. I am also working a 9-6. Am I wasting my time? And at that time, I did feel rather under appreciated. I was also wondering what am I doing

  I was watching The Farewell (2019) film and it made me feel alot of things.  I both related and didn't relate to this movie. This movie was a surreal experience for me. I am of immigrant and chinese descent. My great grandfather left China a long time ago. But I can't relate in that sense because my family is in the same country as I'm in. So I don't know what it's like to have family in another place while I am somewhere else.  But I admit it must have been hard on our immigrant ancestors to leave home. To make that first step. It's unfortunate that for my family, we don't know much about our history. Personally, I wish to know more. Maybe one day, I'll search for it. It'll be nice to see our ancestral home.  First of foremost, despite growing up in an Asian country where Asian values persist, I grew up with slightly leaning western thinking parents. Hence, I couldn't quite relate with my own culture as I growing up. It only got worst as I gro

  I just started watching the queen gambit on Netflix and it's about a girl who's a prodigy in chess. It makes me think a little because when I was younger, I was "good" at chess. I was nowhere as good as Elizabeth Harmon but I think I was above average. I could defeat some players but once I hit a more serious player or a better player, I'd probably be stumped.  This game was taught to me by someone at school. At that time, in my school, one of the parents was an international chess master. He was obviously obsessed with chess. He volunteer out of his own time to coach the chess club in my school. My school saw that this was something we could be good at, made every kid play chess and those were "good" would have to join the chess club. So I joined the chess club. I didn't particularly love it but I didn't hate it either. My parents knew I was playing chess at the time. They didn't encourage nor did they discourage. They just let me be.  So

I attended a virtual financial festival of sorts last weekend.  I was expecting to learn things.  But in the end, it was the same old thing being said. The reason for these sorts of things is to increase financial literacy. But what is financial literacy? To understand your money better? To handle your finances better? One of the main things that was said in the financial festival and everywhere else was that young  people should start saving for retirement or just saving for a rainy day.  I do admit that, yes, financial literacy is important. You should know how to handle your finances.  But I find it a little tone deaf sometimes to generalise an entire generation by s aying things like, you young people need to start saving. While some young people might need to learn to save, not everyone is in the same boat. Did it ever occur to some people that, there might be a reason why young people or people in general can't save? Maybe because we earn too little. Maybe because we have hug

There was a financial virtual learning festival thing done in my country. So I signed up with a financial planner.  Honestly, I wasn't expecting much. I had meet financial planners before from bank and it generally wasn't a great experience. The ones I met generally focused on how we wouldn't have enough for retirement or whatever your financial goal is if you only save.  So they'll always recommend investing. Investing isn't a bad thing. But the thing that always annoys me is that they'll try to sell their unit trust funds.  It annoys me because  1) their sales charge is high (but they won't tell you this because this is their commission) 2) they don't know which fund would do well so they can be recommending me a fund that tanks I'll be honest. I'm a little hard to handle for financial planners. I'm generally pessimistic. So when people ask me when do I intend to retire, I always answer, I don't intend to retire. I'm realistic enoug