Buxfer

With a great deal of panic, after finally putting down my finances down into a proper finance tracking software (I’m using a free online service called Buxfer, optional to sign up under me if you click on the link), I come to the realisation that was probably experienced by a majority of the people who began to utilise some form of financial management/planning in their life: my expenses are way too much to be comfortable compared to my income.

I assure you that this is not an advertorial, but after browsing through several free online finance tracking services (I loved mint.com’s implementation and layout, but Malaysian banks are not supported :(, ditto with Geezeo), I found Buxfer to be useful in a Malaysian context because despite its inability to automatically perform data entry by accessing your bank account (I don’t want to go into detail how safe this actually is.. just visit its website for more info), it allows manual keying in of entries in a very simple and intuitive manner. In a matter of minutes, from my very brief data entry of ingoing and outgoing transactions since 5th January of this year, I am able to see a nice pie chart of how my expenses are flowing (you can tag your transactions to group certain things as well, like Food, Transport, etc).

I was quite hyped up two days ago during my first Introduction to Financial Planning lecture – our lecturer was unceremoniously 20 minutes late from a scheduled 4pm to 6pm lecture, however he was quirkily funny and managed to hold my interest for the entire duration of the lecture, something that’s rare ever since I set foot in college. He also said that even if we don’t become financial planners in the future (apparently our financial planning industry is still at its infancy, because not many people are willing to pay to have their finances managed), the knowledge that we’d gain from this course itself would be enough till the end of our life – we’d learn how to manage our debts, real estate funds, basic savings, etc.

This is EXACTLY what I’ve been wanting to learn.. something that’s actually useful in my life, and not regurgitating facts that I probably wouldn’t even get to use unless I specialise into that specific branch of studies and/or profession, or practise countless of calculus topics that I’m willing to bet I wouldn’t use after I graduate. >_>

Since we’re on that note about Tuesday, my current Tuesday classes are from 8am to 6pm (due to this week being lecture only, instead of three classes I only attended two), and thereon I had to attend my French class from 7pm to 9pm.. talk about hectic.

I asked the handful of collegemates that I’m sorta close to (literally handful, because I can count with just one hand wtf) if they want to have dinner with me at Asia Cafe ‘cause I didn’t feel like eating alone, but being diplomatic and completely reasonable, I told them that they didn’t have to etcetc since I’m not gonna force them.. so yeah in the end I ended up with a plateful of Millenium Chicken Rice for RM5.50 alone wtf.

Which in the end wasn’t too bad of an experience, since I’m gonna travel alone to New Zealand anyway.. *consoles self wtf (but that doesn’t mean I won’t be actively socialising with other travellers lah.. I hope)

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I was about to leave for Ding’s house yesterday at about 9.20pm plus when right on time, I received a text message from my Chinese teacher asking if I’m coming. I was puzzled because there sure as heck wasn’t any class that night, but it dawned upon me that there’s a meet-up under the banner of Mandarin Speaking Club at her house..

I quickly went there and well, it was quite interesting – two of the participants I’ve seen before as they were my ex-classmates (aunties wtf), and on learning that we share the same surname, this nearly 50-plus man (who looked young for his age) insisted that I call him 陈大哥 wtf (“elder brother Chan”.. sorry the joke is kinda lost if you don’t know Chinese =/ too many nuances I’m lazy to explain) while I’m 陈小弟 (“little brother Chan”). Hahahahha hilarious, in fact this became somewhat of a joke throughout the night.

Basically how this Mandarin Speaking Club works is, we have a topic and each participant has to talk about it – that’s the whole idea. Our teacher told us that she wanted it to be casual and less restrictive so that it would almost seem like a mamak session, which it almost was.. but 陈大哥 ended up talking the most and took most of the spotlight instead lmao. So I suppose for the next subsequent sessions that we’re gonna have, there has to be balance.

I went to Ding’s house at about 10.45pm, armed with my external hard drive and transferred files whilst I borrowed two of his Chinese books to read. I also borrowed a bilingual book on jokes from Ms. Lee, so these should keep me entertained should I be bored in Macau/Hong Kong tomorrow onwards.

Went back at about 12am plus.

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I’m leaving for Macau on AirAsia tomorrow afternoon – Ding’s flight was cancelled and even though his flight could be rescheduled from morning to afternoon, his mum decided to go in March instead. We could’ve somehow met in HK like I met up with Jess in Bali which I still think till now is awfully cool.. oh well.

I’m not exactly that elated about the cold weather that purportedly hovers around 10 degrees Celcius in Hong Kong (yeah, this trip became a HK trip instead – we’ll be spending out first 3 days in HK, and the last day in Macau only), and I guess the lack of excitement is good so I wouldn’t be expecting too much.

And here’s the irony – I’ve learned Mandarin for I dunno, 2 years or something now, and here I am heading to a Cantonese-speaking region where I wouldn’t get to practise it. -___-

I’m also bringing my laptop, although I don’t know if I’d be able to get online in HK. Our hotel charges an obscene RM15 an hour, so I’m saying fuck it to that and am bringing my thumbdrive containing the necessary WiFi-hacking tools to see if I could leech from nearby WiFi access points.