MB101 Accounting

新年快乐！！
Happy Chinese New Year!!

It's Chinese New Year again, most of my Malaysian friends here went back to their hometowns to celebrate the new year. As I had been celebrating Chinese New Year every year in Singapore since I was a baby (save for three years, but I did travel to Singapore in two of the three years at a different time for other purposes), this year I waited for my family to come to Singapore and celebrated the new year with them. Time flies as three days passed. Today they are travelling back home and I am back in hostel. As the family car drove off, I wish I could spend more time with them... Now have to wait till the end of the month... Usually I don't feel so homesick while I am here.

Last post I wrote about the incident in Japanese class, actually I felt better before even finishing the post. I went out while in the middle of writing the post to enjoy the Othello game down there, after I came back, it's gone! I did save a copy of it in my lappie, but I felt sort of lazy to type about it again. Why eventually I finished the post? Just for the sake of finishing the post, because, I think the post presents an internal conflict within myself. Anyway, it doesn't affect my enthusiasm in learning Japanese. Why bother about her?

While Japanese class is my favourite class this semester, the runner-up should be Accounting class. Both subjects are electives, that is, the subjects I choose to study. Why Accounting? I had been interested in learning some basic concepts about Accounting, although the interest is not as strong as my love for Japanese. In NTU, we have to clear at least one business management module. Since I have 5 compulsory subjects this semester (one of them has no final exam), I choose to take 2 more subjects, this makes me having 6 subjects with final exam (the one with no exam is Mastering Communication... I will probably talk about it in the next post).

When I first knew that the Accounting module requires us to do presentation in class (need to dress formal too), I was a little afraid... I know that I am not good in speaking. I was thinking of dropping the module because of the presentation and plus accounting, my workload this semester is a bit heavy (22 AUs vs 20 AUs last sem; I had determined that I won't drop Japanese for any reason). At the end, I decided to take up the challenge; anyway, it is a skill that need to be pick up. My group will be having our presentation on this Thursday (Valentine's day) and I got the hardest of the 5 questions... Apart from the presentation, I think accounting can be quite fun, too. (btw, our team tagline is... Falling in Love with Accounting...)

In real life, however, my spending is quite a mess. Ever since I came to study in NTU, I didn't even bother to convert the prices into Ringgit Malaysia (which, I think, is a good thing; it makes you feel bad after you buy something if you convert). I don't really keep an account on how much I am spending, apart from the bank statements that come every month. Since I am not a scholar, nor applied for any loan, that means I am spending my mum's money. Therefore, I budgeted myself to spend $500 a month (including hostel fees of $160 a month but excluding books and school fees). Excluding hostel fees, I have about $340 to spend a month. Initially I tried to keep track how much I am spending, i.e. by looking at the balance I have in the bank, but somehow I lost track of it sometime in January. On the first day of this month, I withdrew $50 from the ATM machine. Due to some partying and transportation costs, I spent almost all of the $50 in 3 days. $50 in 3 days * 10 = $500 in a month. That means I am overspending. I hope the fact that 1) February has 29 days and 2) Ang paus are received during Chinese New Year can offset the difference. But overspending is overspending; this is not good. Why Ι am thinking this?

When I was in secondary school, my mum gave me money every week and said: "This is your allowance for the week." This enabled me to spend the money for the week without worrying the money needed for the coming week, and save the surplus in physical cash. Whenever I saw the pile of money growing thicker and thicker, I felt a sense of achievement (mum said that I am too stingy to spend money). Now, she gives me money only when it's time to pay tuition fees to the university: "I give you $XXX, after paying the tuition fees you should have $XXX. Not enough money tell me; I will give you more." Actually she gave me enough money to last for about a semester. The absence of a financial controller of some sort makes me feel some uneasiness. Instead of seeing thicker and thicker pile of banknotes, I see the balance in the bank getting lesser and lesser (feel that I am not saving any...). Even though she always says "you can ask for more if you don't have enough", I don't want to spend money indiscriminately and then ask for more cash, especially when things are not easy for her.

I think that's part and parcel of growing up.