After a discussion with my parents last night, we decided that we’re going to downgrade to a smaller apartment. This has been debated for more than a year, but the decision was held back in favour of a wait-and-see approach. Various reasons have lead to our decision, but the bottomline is, it’s for the good of the family’s financial health, considering my parents’ age & the fact that my younger siblings still have years of schooling ahead of them.
Read the rest of this entry »
Time to take a look back at what I dreamt up six months ago. 
Jannah’s goals for 2008
- Know 700 Korean words by end 2008. My current Korean vocabulary “word bank” stands at 562 words, and I know there are plenty of words not recorded, likely because I haven’t even realised I know them.
700 is easily reachable within the year. Should I change it to 1000 then? Heh. - Read at least one book a month. Shame on me. I haven’t finished a single book this year! I think it has to do with the fact that I read mostly non-fiction, like travel, finance & IT. These books tend to be picked up whenever I feel like reading on the subject, and they’re hardly meant to be read from cover to cover, so I don’t end up “finishing” any single book. Maybe I should just read more fiction.
- Reach assistant manager position by end 2008. I’m working on getting there. We’ll see.
- Get my salary increased by 15% by end 2008. DONE!
- Have at least $5000 in savings by mid 2008 and $7000 by end 2008. DONE! The $5000-by-mid-year goal, I mean. I’m just going to let the money sit in the bank as my emergency fund (a liquid asset, as the finance people call it). Eventual target amount for this fund: at least 6 times my current monthly salary. I think I can easily have $7000 or more by the end of the year, so this one is looking good.
- Get my GPA up to at least 4.5 by end 2008. Considering last semester’s exam results, this looks pretty bleak unless I drop everything else & just study next semester. Haha. So I’m revising this goal to: Get my GPA up to at least 4.2 by end 2008. Imma work my ass off next semester!
Goal #4: Get my salary increased by 15% by end 2008. Check check CHECK!
My manager gave me the much-awaited letter yesterday. I already knew, as we had our salaries credited with the respective increments included, but was looking forward to the official announcement anyway. The funny thing is, before handing me the letter, my boss was saying that the company didn’t do too well (financially) last year, so the pay adjustment might not be much, maybe less than 10%. I was like, Eh? What is he talking about? And when I opened the letter, it said 15.4% increment. Haha. I guess Finance decided in the end to give that much.
So, I’m very happy. 
My family is happy for me, which makes me even happier.
Sometimes I find it hard to believe how much I’ve progressed since my career started three years ago. Back then I didn’t have any concrete goals or direction, career-wise. Luckily, somewhere along the way, I found out where I wanted to go, and here I am heading down that road with my heart in the right place.
My job scope will slowly become less & less technical from now on, so I’ll be spending some time formulating my career plan for the next one year or so. Actually, I’ve already started! It’s going to take plenty of time & work. But at least, I know I’ll be happy doing it.
Maybe one day I’ll reveal this top secret (haha, as if!) plan of mine here. Hee.
I went all out shopping for geek toys on Saturday. When we got home, tired from walking all over Funan (the parents & little brother followed me everywhere; bless their patient hearts), Mama pointed out that I’m only enthusiastic about shopping when it involves technology & gadgets. I couldn’t really argue.
At any rate, it was a fruitful day, as I managed to get all these:
- New aluminium casing for my 2.5-inch hard drive. It’s quite a challenge finding quality casings for SATA HDs, and I spotted a good deal – just $19.00! Speaking of HDs, apparently the Freecom Toughdrive comes in pink now! The pink silicon sleeve is just too pretty. Too bad I only needed a casing, not a HD.
- Pink Audio Technica inner ear headphones. They come in 5 other colours too, if you look at the website. Aren’t they nice?
- Hot pink hard shell for my MacBook. So. Freaking. Expensive. (Don’t ask.) But I’d wanted it even before I considered buying a MacBook. And it was the last piece in the store! And we’d already driven to Suntec City for it, so…
- Black Postball (again, for my MacBook). You know, those half-balls you place under your laptop for heat dissipation purpose. Again, so expensive! But I wanted something that I didn’t have to permanently stick on my MacBook, so… Hehe.
- And of course, the MacBook itself! One word: gorgeous. (Pictures coming up in another post.)
I also played with the iPod Touch at epiCentre@Suntec. This is not good, because now I want it even more. It’s too awesome for words. But I’ll wait a month, like I told YB. If I still want it then, I’ll start putting money aside & buy it only when I can afford it – golden rule of personal finance!
One funny thing I notice whenever I go out shopping with my parents: salespeople expect one of them to be paying, instead of me. Like yesterday, when I’d decided on the MacBook purchase, the salesman looked at Papa & asked, “May I have your card, sir?”. Then the daughter, who looks like she’s school-going age, takes out her card to pay. 
I felt him taking a good hard look at my face before bringing my card to the cashier. Ohoho. He was probably slightly paiseh over his mistake, but hey, who assumed that my dad was paying when the one haggling with him over the price all along was me?
Not that I was offended. The salesman was great, actually. He approached me first when I looked like I needed attention, and immediately went on to introduce the prices when I said I wanted a MacBook. He could tell I already knew the product, which is great. (One of my pet peeves is salesmen who assume you’re a tech idiot just because you’re young & female.) I got a few freebies from him, including a free upgrade to 3GB RAM costing $99.00! How fantastic is that? I wasn’t even planning to get a RAM upgrade. He even gave a discount on the Postball when I asked for it, even though the price was clearly fixed already. What a nice guy. So tell me if you want to purchase a MacBook, I’ll bring you to the store where he works & we can haggle for a good deal.
Now Jannah is one happy & relieved girl. Couldn’t care less about the results right now. I just want my life back.
I’m back in the office today and surprisingly NOT flooded with a tsunami of work. Which is not at all good, because it means the worst is yet to come. The only other Java developer on my team will be making his exit in a week, so I’m going to be dumped with his work. And I’ll be left alone again. Damn him.
So I’ll have what, seven, eight projects to handle starting June. Plus a new project coming in next month. If that’s not overloaded, I don’t know what is. Good thing my manager knows that very well, and makes it clear to the other teams that Jannah is indeed overloaded (so bugger off & don’t try to include me in every single project, thanks very much).
Despite that, I’m still looking forward to the next couple of months because:
- No school -> more leisure time, more SLEEP.
- More money will be rolling in – pay adjustments take effect this month!
- I’m switching from Windows to Mac, hopefully never having look back.
- I signed up for the Korean language course I mentioned before; classes start June 11th.
- Real planning for the HK trip in November will begin!
The whimsical side of me is considering taking drum lessons. Haha. Just for fun, and as an outlet for stress. The other time I came across a poster advertising a 3-month drum course at a little music academy near home. Well, we’ll see about that.
Last bit of randomness: I want an iPod Touch!
Just logged in to my internet banking account and saw “Visa Platinum” under the Account Summary section. I was like, “Uh?” Apparently, my credit card application went through. I wasn’t even notified! Okay, actually, we’re lazy about checking the mail, so maybe the card already arrived without me even realising it. I’ll check later. But you know, that was fast! I only mailed in the application a week ago.
Anyway, I just got my very first credit card. Hee! Now I can cease charging to Papa’s cards whenever I shop online. And I won’t have trouble travelling on my own again, especially for business. Yay.
The prospects of getting the promotion I want this year are looking very, very good at the moment. Surprisingly, this time around, we could see the results of our staff appraisal. And even more surprisingly, I scored A on almost every component, and my manager had praises for me in the comments section. (We were graded on a total 13 performance areas & personal qualities.) Was rather amused, as I’ve never thought of myself as being stellar at work. Because I started out at a relatively young age, lacking even a basic computer science degree that everyone else on this job has, my survival method was to simply strive to be on par with everyone else without making too many mistakes. I’m still without a degree, and I’ve made many mistakes along the way, but things are okay after all. No, in fact, things are more than okay, and thank God for that.
So I am looking forward to a raise soon & a promotion sometime this year. If I’m lucky, I’ll hit my target 15% increase even before mid-year! Maybe I should’ve set it at 20% instead. Hehe.