Finally, a brokerage account!

A few days back, my brokerage account finally got through! So now, officially, I can trade. Hee.

I'm no expert, but on the surface, it seems that because of the recent Brexit, the market is quite volatile. Might not be a good time to get into it at the moment. oh well, let me observe further and think through carefully how to go about doing this.

I guess in general, the route to being able to trade can be summarized into 2 main steps:

1) Get a CDP account

Download the form.
Prepare whatever documents are needed.
Send in through snail mail; email doesn't seem like an option.
Wait for confirmation of account.

2) Get a brokerage account

Choose which brokerage firm you want to open up the account with.
Go to the bank and tell the person you want to open up a brokerage/trading account.
Wait for confirmation of account.

It's that simple, though I took some time to decide which brokerage firm to open up the account with.

Might be able to open up accounts with different firms, not that sure. Anyway I got rejected by Standard Chartered Bank because on the form, it requires me to have knowledge on trading or financial background in order to open up an account with them. I have read on forum that you can just fake your way through and they won't be care, but I'm more inclined to say the truth and seek alternatives, even though the fees for SC is lower.

I have signed up with OCBC. So now on a daily basis, I get emails from my broker on market research. I have saved the emails that talked about ETF and dividends, because this is what I'm looking for in the long term. Will look into it in the near future!

Staying at home today because my throat is infected again.
This is the 3rd time in a short span of 2 months.
I'm beginning to think that the free flu vaccination jab is giving me more problems.
It might make me immune to flu, but it definitely doesn't make my throat infection less probable.

My attempt at another experience - Urban Attack 4!

Over the last weekend, I did another thing that I have never tried before in my life - attempting an urban attack obstacles course!

I signed up for it shortly after I have completed my Spartan Super (did it on 7 May 2016), which by the way, I have been trying to squeeze time to produce a video footage for the race. It will probably take some time (actually, it will take a long time because I'm rather busy during this period, with the project deliverable coming and stuff).

The night before I was quite excited about this event. perhaps a bit too excited, until I found it difficult to fall asleep. haha.. I was kinda worried about overcoming the obstacles, especially the monkey bars, but also looking forward to conquering them. I'm not that old, but I kinda feel like a young boy again, taking on these new experiences.

Dearest specially woke up early in the morning to accompany me to the event at Velocity@Novena to support me, to be my cheerleader, and to massage my sore muscles while we were waiting waiting for my 2nd run =)

Here's the 1st run!

I had some troubles getting over the curved wall; scrapped both my knees and elbows as I slided down the wall from the 1st attempt. Then I nearly failed at the monkey bars, twice! the shaking of the structure kinda makes me misjudge the position of the next bar. But luckily, I managed to not fall and still continue on! I was completely exhausted after completing the run, but it felt great! 2:02 min. not bad, not bad at all.

Took my time to rest and recuperate, with Dearest massaging my back as we waited for 2nd run.

The 2nd run was much more smoother, as I did a few changes to my run; giving myself more distance to get speed up the curved wall, reaching further to compensate for the misjudge of the shaking of the structure when I did the monkey bars. Managed to clear it faster! 1:45 min. Woo~

Though not enough to enter the finals, I'm more than satisfied to have completed the challenge, twice, and improving my timing on the 2nd run. $20 well spent~

Ever since I started on Spartan Race (Sprint) 2015, I seemed to have been hooked on getting myself challenged on these kind of events. Because I have already signed for the next one... which is...

YES!

I have signed up for Spartan Beast!
It will happen on 19 Nov, in Bintan.
I took a while to consider this, but finally I thought, wthell~
Dearest gave me her support for this also >_<

Looking forward to this race.
Aroo.

3rd book of the year

It took me a while to finish this book.
I probably bought this many years ago (maybe a decade?), but only managed to get into the habit of reading this consistently over the past 3 months after my second book.

The book teaches me to think more critically on the use of statistical methods on areas where single 'Black Swan' event could overshadow the long history of past events in terms of its impact. Like the financial crisis back in 2008 that the book kept bringing up.
I felt it was quite critical on the statistics that are being used now, and I felt it more because I'm a practitioner of this tool that he felt was bullshit (not in all areas, just those areas with the swans).

Most of the time I found it hard to understand and remember some of the terms that he used. Sometimes it gets rather technical. But overall, it was an okay read to ponder over the negative effects of the black swan and how to protect, or be robust against it, and also think about how to optimize with positive black swan.

Haven't been blogging much nowadays.
Kinda lost the momentum from the early stage of the year due to work.
And also, have been giving less (actually zero) focus on developing my Java skills.
The self-learning process is rather tedious and felt somewhat like wandering around in a haystack sometimes.
I am planning to get started on a Udemy course on Mobile App development to get my engine started again, and specifically in the area that I wanted. The purpose of learning Java was to help in my learning in app development, but since this course also teaches beginner in Java, I suppose it would be more ideal to dive right into this course than to continue on my self-learning, and unguided (except by the textbook) journey.

Wondering what's the next book to read on the train... hmm...

Best line from the book:

"Missing the train is only painful if you run after it."