To My Valentine

Over the years, gradually, me and Dearest started celebrating Valentine's Day in a less and less conventional way. And this year, we decided to just treat it as a normal day. haha..

But she is still my Valentine, and will forever be.

To you, my Dearest, my love.
I dedicate this song to you.



如果爱上对的人，每天都是情人节。
而妳，就是那对的人。

Love,
J

Trying to get back to exercising

It's really fast. Just a blink of an eye, and the 1st month of the new year just flew by.

I have done practically nothing on my personal life. But I did get a lot of things going for the wedding. So, that's still something.

For the past 2 days (including today), I have been going home early (and getting to work early) so that I could do some exercise at the stadium before dinner. It's much better than exercising after dinner. Supposedly, it's healthier as I don't have to run with my dinner being digested in my stomach. If my secondary school biology knowledge serves me right, the digestive system requires blood to do all the digestive work in the stomach and intestines (and others?), and exercising would force the blood to flow to the muscles instead of the digestive system, causing the indigestion as a result.

Second of all, I get to have more time to myself at night, like what I'm doing now. =)

Viper Challenge @ Sentosa is coming up on 11th Feb, next next Sat. So I'm kinda training for it now, and hopefully the habit of exercising will stay.

Also signed up for the Spartan Race Super in May (I think), because of a Chinese New Year offered. It was on promotion! So I just signed up. And the price that I paid, seems really like a huge promotion. Let's just say that I don't think they meant for me to pay that price.

Work is getting more and more busy as the deliverable date draws nearer. But at the same time, I'm doing my best to be more productive and efficient at work so I could come home on time to exercise and to do my learning on mobile app development. It's discouraging to keep getting on and off this learning track, but I want to keep on going at it. I used to think that once the deliverable comes, work shall come first, and all the nights of OT will therefore take priority over other things in life. But to seriously think about this, I realized that work is not my top priority; exercising and learning are. That said, without the money that work brings in, I don't think I can survive too. haha.. I guess, OT is not my top priority.

I should also make a point to blog more often; to update more often on what I'm doing to live my life. That was the point of setting up this blog anyway. It's suppose to make me feel guilty every single time I blog and I realized I am still hentak-kaki-ing.

Get going!

Wedding Plan - Part 2

This post is a bit delayed, but I'm proud to announce that the wedding plan has moved to Part 2!

We have successfully booked our wedding venue last week at the Blissful Outdoor Wedding Show (BOWS) Jan 2017!

All in all, we have considered quite a lot of hotels based on our budget.

On the ground, we have visited around 4 hotels in total. 

Before we went down to BOWS, we already knew which venue we were going to take.

So when we reached BOWS, we walked straight to the desired booth and made our booking, ignoring all the aggressive sales pitching from all the other booths along the way. =p

It wasn't easy to finalize which venue to take.

The slots for some venues were already taken up when we enquire its availability. Singaporeans can really make plans that are very early (> 1 year in advance), or perhaps the date that we wanted was very popular.

Some venues are affordable with nice views, but the accessibility it very low (e.g. ONE°15 Marina Club).

Some venues are just too typical for our liking (e.g. AMARA, Holiday Inn Atrium). And also we didn't really like the ballroom that they have.

But for the venue that we booked, we had a good first impression once we arrived there.

I'm not sure how to describe it, but the feeling was so much better, and very different from the feeling of visiting the other venues.

This made us more certain of our choice.

And this is Raffles Marina =)

It was discovered by Dearest during our research, and she was very pleased with herself for finding such a place. haha... Though it's at the western end of the island, but the train stations will be up by our wedding to make it more accessible for our guests (hopefully, since LTA has been delaying it since late last year). 

Thus, the most urgent thing now has been settled.

Moving on to settling the more complicated stuff - Bridal package (which includes Pre-wedding shoot, Actual Day Photography, and Actual Videography).

I deemed this part of the wedding plan most complicated, because there are many possible combinations for getting this. We could go a la carte and get our own photographer for our pre-wedding shoot, and rent gowns from bridal studio, or we can buy off amazon or taobao. We could get the all-inclusive package from bridal studio which would cost us a lot more for the convenience and less hassle. We could get actual day photography and videography together as a package to get some discounts. And there are so many choices on the market to choose from!

It's not that time-sensitive, so we are going it at a slower pace than we were choosing our venues =)

#goTeamJC

Wedding Plan - Step 1

Dearest and I started planning on our wedding around 2 weeks back. So recently we have been rather active in researching for all the wedding thingy~

And just 2 days ago, we have gotten our potential wedding dates from the Feng Shui master!

This is our 1st step towards planning for the wedding =)

We were given 3 dates, but we definitely preferred the earliest one.

So now, we can start working towards that date. 

Hopefully the venue that we want would still be available by the time we confirm. *pray

This whole planning for our wedding is rather challenging, as it consists a lot of comparisons, and each with their own complexity. 

Hopefully our efforts into all these research would help us to save some money for the wedding =)

Breakdown of fees involved in trading

So I emailed my broker the other day and he promptly called me to say that I will receive a mail on the breakdown of the fees involved. Save the trouble of me figuring it out 😁

Here's the breakdown!

Proceeds	$115.50
(1) Brokerage Amt	$25 (Min.)
(2) Clearing Fee	$0.03 (0.0325%)
(3) Misc Fee	$0
(4) SGX Trading Fee	$0.01 (0.0075%)
GST @ 7% for (1) to (4)	$1.75
Net Amt	$142.29

Jiayou to me on making investments!

My 1st experience of shares trading!

After setting up my SGX account and brokerage account with OCBC for more than half a year, I have finally made my first purchase of shares! >_< Although given by my age (of 29) it seems like a 'meh' kind of event, but I felt that it is quite a big step for me.

Recently I have been wanting to do a purchase as part of the list of things I want to accomplish this year. So on Thursday night I was going into my account and looking at just doing a simple purchase to understand the whole process of buying.

I'm not really literate in this area, but from what I have gathered, buying ETF stocks seemed to be a rather conservative and safe approach to familiarizing myself with the environment. So I went into my account, and took a look at what I think are the 2 prominent ETF stocks in Singapore.

1) SPDR Straits Times Index ETF (ES3.SI) @ 1.15
2) ABF Singapore Bond Index Fund (A35.SI) @ 3.00

I thought for a 1st purchase of trying it out, I would just buy the minimum number of shares at the minimum price. So I placed an order of 100 lots of STI ETF @ 1.15.

Some time on Friday, I received notifications that my purchase went through, and I have officially bought my 1st shares!

The total cost of the purchase was however a question. So today I logged into my OCBC account, and took a look at the amount to pay through the Electronic Payment for Shares (EPS). It was $142.29!

It came as a bit of a shock, but I recalled that there is a minimum sum of transaction fees involved. Determined to do a thorough breakdown of the fees, I did a quick search of all the transaction fees involved and see whether it worked out to be $142.29. But all the processing fees and brokerage commission didn't add up. My calculation showed that I should be paying more than $142.29. haha..

I guess I would just ask my broker for help on this.

It's one of the many first step.

Towards financial independence! Gambatte!

I AM SPARTAN~!!!

It's been over a week since my Spartan Beast @ Bintan on 19 Nov! while my body sores were gone after 2 days (thanks to my Dearest's massage), the rope burns are still recovering slowly... But I did it! I completed my first Spartan Trifecta! yeah~!

I'm sure there are a lot of other Spartan racers who have completed their first Spartan Trifecta with the completion of Spartan Beast @ Bintan. And I'm quite sure, we would definitely do this...

With the powers combined... I AM SPARTAN~!!

The race wasn't easy, and I didn't train enough to be prepared. So coupling these 2 factors together, the result was a 6hrs 48min race for me. Yes, it was a grueling 6 hours and 48 minutes of jogging, obstacles, getting scratched,  nearly cramped, slow jogging, cramped up so bad my toes curled up and I had to remove my shoes, walking, hurting my back from a fall, slow walking, and rope-burning my legs, and then this:

Flying kick to end the race!

This is probably the hardest race that I have ever did. Both longest, and the one with the most injuries. And on top of that, my last meal was at 5am, and I only ate my next meal at 7.45pm. The 1 small packet of energy gel (that costs $4) is of not much use -_-" or perhaps I just need to eat more of it. OR, just run faster.

I still failed at the 2 obstacles that have monkey bars and hanging loops, but I felt like I have improved from the previous time. And then, there was this obstacle which I have to hang by the rope to touch the bell...

They called it, the Tyrolean Traverse

I had to put my whole body weight on a single rope across my chest and groin area, and then slide to touch the bell. Every pull, I could feel the pain in between my chest, and at my groin. But I was determined to conquer this after my previous failure during Spartan Super, so I persevered. And I did it. Although at the last moment I lost balance and went under the rope, and in a bid to touch the bell, I unconsciously let go of the rope, touched the bell (the most important thing to do ), the landed on my back. Luckily the height wasn't that high, but still my back was hurt.

By the time I have finished and washed up, the main event area was rather empty. Before I went to grab my dinner, I went to the medical area to fix up my rope burns. As I was leaving, I saw a man being pushed out from one of the medical rooms with what it seemed like a mechanical pump on his chest, seemingly in a very critical condition. As I hoped for his safety, unfortunately, he might have been the one on the news whom passed away due to cardiac arrest. RIP.

Throughout the 3 races, what I enjoyed the most was conquering the obstacles (like the whole arena was a huge adult playground for me), and the sense of camaraderie that could be seen throughout the race. There would be people encouraging you when you're trying hard, even though all of us are strangers.
There would be people helping you to overcome those damn walls.
There would be people asking you whether you're alright when you fall, stop, or look like you need help.
And these people, racing alongside of you, suddenly became, comrades.

Aroo.