I met up with three very good friends today for brunch, friends who I knew back from my secondary school days. We were secondary school classmates, and three of us (one couldn't make it) backpacked Europe together back when we were 21 years old. Since then, we have travelled together occasionally, and we have always made it a point to meet up at least twice a year - once during our birthdays (usually August since our birthdays traverse July, August and September), and once during Christmas or New Year. Usually though, we meet up more often than that - for a quick lunch on working days, a dinner if it so miraculously happen that we are able to knock off from work while the restaurants are still open, for some shopping on a Friday evening, just to chill out at the park, for a concert or, when we were feeling particularly health-conscious, for brisk walks and runs.

My secondary school years were not my happiest - simply put, there was a serious mismatch between my personality and the school culture. When I left at the end of four years, I was determined to leave it all behind me, sever all my ties so as to speak. I chose a junior college far off the beaten track where I knew none of my classmates, and very few of my schoolmates will go. I chose a course that I knew none of my science-and-maths-mad and Mandarin speaking schoolmates will ever dream of signing up for. I had good friends in my secondary school - these three girls among them - but I wanted to leave everything behind and start afresh. It was for the best, I thought.

My friends did not think so. They left me alone for a while - for the full two years that I was in junior college in fact. I hardly heard of them, let alone see them, so different were the social circles that we were then moving in. I wouldn't say that I miss them terribly during those two years because while I do think of them occasionally, I was enjoying myself immensely in junior college. However, my friends got back in touch with me when we entered university, and it was as if we had never been apart.

They gave me my space when I needed space to recuperate, and once they figured that I have sulked enough, they came after me, grabbed me and held on.

We are four very different girls, but somehow we became very good friends. I never knew what I did to deserve such strong and steady friendships, but I give thanks every day that I have them. Thank you my dears, and here's to the next 17 years of friendship (and more!)

P.S. I am leaving this unlocked since I know you girls read this sometimes.

Not very long ago, a friend of mine asked me to consider pursuing a Master of Law in Tax at NYU.

I was interested. A few of my friends had gone down that path - it seems to be a good springboard out of Singapore and I always wanted to go NY. The big obstacle was the fees.  I could just about afford the fees, but not the costs of living in NY. My friend pointed out that I had financed my undergraduate education via bank loans, and I can do the same with my postgraduate education. It is different, I retorted - the bank loan for my undergraduate education was interest-free until six months after graduation, by which time I was settled into a nice-paying job, the bank loan for this bears interest from the date of draw-down, and even a person as bad at numbers as I am know that you don't fool around with compound interest. I would have exhausted my financial reserves and gone into debt just to pursue a post-graduate degree. Pssh, my friend said, the starting pay of a new lawyer in NY is so high that you'll pay off the debt in no time. And he was right - even now, after six years of working experience, my pay is less than the starting pay of a NY lawyer in a big firm (even after their pay cuts and pay freezes). And in those days, it seems that law firms in NY were hiring anyone who breathes.

Still, I hesitated. I had just got out of debt at that time, debt that I did not incur, but which I still had to pay. I had a brother in university, who I was partially responsible for financially. I have semi-retired parents. Given the circumstances, to take a year off and then come out of that year in debt seems foolhardy. It was a difficult decision - the heart says, go. the head says, you can't. And there is no right or wrong decision on this - either way, a price must be, and is indeed, paid.

Looking back, as the consequences of the decision are now increasingly apparent, I am wistful, but I know that even if I can, I would not have changed anything.

We live with the consequences of our decisions, and all we can do is to smile, grimly or otherwise, and move on with our lives.

The article that inspired the ramblings above.

I admit it. I am a member of the Facebook group "I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar". I don't think I am fanatical about proper grammar - I am from Singapore after all, a country whose meek and obedient citizens have gleefully resisted the government's call to use proper English instead of Singlish (an utterly fascinating but (to non-Singaporeans, incomprehensible) mixture of English, Mandarin, Malay and other dialects).

Nonetheless, virtually nothing riles me up as much as reading a badly drafted document, email or blog entry full of slang, bad grammar and spelling errors. My guess is that as English is not my mother tongue in the strict sense of the word, I had been taught to respect English the way many people are taught to respect Maths  (just as 1+1 = 2, so it is always "you are" and never "you is"). 
 

( I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar )

Exams are over. The last paper on Advanced Financial Accounting was tough - what on earth are the consolidation entries for a downstream sale of debt securities whose fair value is higher than the amortised value, and sold at an unrealised profit? Evil evil... it is nowhere as evil as the question she set for our presentation question though - accounting for debt securities held as AFS which is denominated at a foreign currency, and there have been changes in the exchange rate as well as massive declines in fair value of the debt securities. Took my team almost a week to solve the question, and it was so painful... though I have to say that right now I have almost committed the definitions of FVTPL, AFS, HTM and Loans & Receivables to memory!! But hey, she gave my team an A for the presentation, so that helps mitigate the Fs I have gotten on my two quizzes, which is something I guess.

Assuming I pass my two papers - Accounting Theory (a waste of trees, and definitely environmentally unfriendly) and Advanced Financial Accounting, I will have successfully completed my Master in Professional Accounting. And arrogant though it may sound, I am darn proud of myself - a girl who used to fail Maths with depressing regularity from primary school all the way to junior college actually getting an accounting degree - it doesn't come easy you know?

The next question is - what do I do now? In a way, things are falling into place - I had promised my bosses that I will stay on in my current job till the end of 2009 and with this lousy economic climate it does seem to be a smart move anyway. It is no pain to stay on - I like my bosses, I like my job, I like my colleagues and my pay is good, so really, no complaints here. Hopefully, however, the economic climate will improve by 2010 - much as I love this place, I really think that it is essential for my career development to get some overseas experience - Singapore is too darn small!

For 2009 however, I am thinking of studying French and starting on the CPA Australia programme. I was at the CPA Australia information session a few days ago - and it doesn't look too difficult - nothing compared with the SMU MPA programme at any rate, especially since I can do just one module per semester. The tricky bit is finding a mentor, especially since so much of my work is confidential and privileged so I need to figure that one out - maybe there is someone in my firm who is a CPA and willing to act as my mentor? I will need to discuss this with my bosses. I need to figure out the CPA SIngapore requirements as well - I have six years of experience working in tax and trusts, even though I have not worked under a CPA except for about a year, so I am not sure how that works out. If I need to take a series of exams for the CPA Singapore qualification though, I'll probably opt out - I want an international qualification that can bring me places (CPA Australia should help me with finding a job in Australia at the very least, and that will be a step towards my goal of getting a PR in another country), and if I want a Singapore qualification, I much rather take the STEP qualification -  I can do the thesis route rather than doing the entire course since I have sufficient work experience and it is probably much less painful and more relevant to my work in any case.

Right now, however, I am enjoying myself! I have quite a lot of vouchers from my credit cards, so I managed to get a 3D2N stay at Swissotel The Stamford at a really great price, and since I was staying in town (Swissotel is right smack in the shopping district), I was catching up on all my shopping - I finished my Xmas and CNY shopping already!  I also found information on the wine fridge that I have been meaning to get since last year - so that will be next on my shopping list. I am considering getting one of those OSIM massage chairs for my parents - my father has been longing for one for years (since I was a teenager) but we never could afford one until now. I need to do my sums and see if I can get one for him, especially now that he is retired and spends most of the day watching cable TV - yes we finally got cable as well and my parents are now glued to the TV everyday. My brother claims that he only manages to watch TV after midnight nowdays, and I still haven't watched anything on cable yet - and at the rate the TV is being hogged, I wouldn't get a chance!

The real treat is my stay at Changi Village Hotel with its absolutely fantastic spa and beautiful swimming pool, as well as the great food just outside the hotel and the beachside boardwalk :-) I have a long-overdue appointment with my hairdresser as well later this month (she is such a dearie, I've been going to her for hair services since I was in university, and she knows that I only go around three times a year, this year though, I been so busy that I haven't seen her since Chinese New Year!)

It'll be back to work next week, and to be honest, I am quite looking forward to a year in which I can focus on my work and not be constantly distracted by demands from the MPA programme - hopefully the next year, tough as it may be economically, will be a good year for me professionally as I integrate my accounting knowledge into my practice, and as I lay the groundwork for my eagerly-awaited leap out of Singapore. Yay!!!!

There has been a huge debate going on right now in the blogsphere on the right of Singapore citizens to education at a local university (see Mr Wang Says So at here and here, Molly Meek is here and there are tonnes others out there). The debate ranges has focus on the tension between two schools of thought - that every citizen who meets a minimum standard should have a university place, and that lowering standards of admission to the universities by excluding foreign applicants (who presumably have better results than Singaporeans too - we are not even talking about post-colonial mentality here, given that the foreign talent are usually not from our ex-colonial masters) will devalue the worth of the degree conferred. 

The latest article from the Straits Times (see the abbreviated online article), suggests that there is difficulty filling up places for engineering and the hard sciences. Since I read the full report in print, I will set out the part on allocation of vacancies between Singaporeans and foreigners here:

"The ministry also allayed parents' concerns that foreign students were taking away places from local students, saying that they are only given places after local students are taken into account. It said it has a cap to limit the number of foreign students to 20% of the total. In practice, the universities admit fewer foreigns tudents in courses where there is strong demand from Singaporeans, and more in other courses."

To be fair, this does allay my concerns somewhat. Nonetheless, I do not understand - just how difficult is it to see that demand for engineering and pure sciences will drop, and demand for the others will increase? I belong to the class of 2002, and we entered the working world at a time when the economy was wobbly at best. The worst hit were the science graduates and the engineering graduates. Some could not find jobs for months. Even now, in my post-graduate class, there are many engineers who are seeking a career change as they realise that their jobs are deadend jobs with very little prospects. And they are not the only ones I have met. Almost all my cousins (who are much older than me) with degrees are engineering-trained. Not a single one of them is an engineer today. It seems to me that the market simply cannot absorb that many engineers, and most have to switch to other jobs at some point in time simply to ensure financial stability.  Why do we need so many young engineers then? The writing should be on the wall for years - it is time to down-size the engineering faculties and focus resources  on the other courses. Accounting, law, economics, finance, product design - these are skills that are needed in today's economy. Engineering is important, no doubt - but it no longer occupies the dominant position it used to have. And the youngsters of today know that, having seen what their seniors had gone through. The question is, why haven't the universities, the government?

Education has been on my mind quite a bit recently. My Econs project was on whether education actually improves the output of an economy. Recently, there was a mini-hooha in the Straits Times due to the results of a survey about elitism. Apparently our students believed that academic ability, ability to speak and write good English are distinguishing features of the elite, as opposed to family wealth. To think I was once as naive... I really need to blog about that one of these days, after the exams hopefully. And of course, my alma mater, who has become noticably more friendly now that I have graduated (as opposed to the old days when I was a mere student), contacted me recently asking me to do a survey, one of the questions being, will you ever consider donating money to the institution.  Add to the whole mix  that I am actually doing part-time graduate studies at the moment, well... education issues just seem to take a life of its own... 

But anyway, the point of this post (before going back to my Management Accounting project) is to record yet another interesting article from the New York Times, about education of course. It is about how some of the elite universities in the US are opening doors to low-income candidates. Amazing what they do in the US - the article is reproduced below. Why can't we have newspapers of this quality in Singapore? Sigh...