BOREDOM and MOVIES

Haih..... It's really difficult to find job during holidays when every student is looking for job with very low wage expectation. Almost every outlet I went told me that I should continue trying because the chances of gettint one with so much competition is so slim. So far I have handed in so many application but only get two invitations for interview, both from fastfood outlets. Doesn't matter, I will keep trying until I get one. Hope it will come soon.



So, holiday's been about movies and internet, and a 6-day trip to Melbourne this coming Tuesday. I am eager to see Justina there, coz I'm wondering how this future doctor from my school is coping with her work and the prospect of getting free medical consultation in future, HAHA. I just called her today to waste some of my redundant phone credits, she seemed to be very excited to hear from me. This just proves how long we heven't been keeping in touch. Anyway we are gonna meet next week, something to look forward to in the midst of enormous boredom when I have no assignments to hand in and no studies to keep up.



Sigh....during semester I was looking forward to this winter break, and now I'm missing my busy days when commitments fill my day and ward off the boredom. Next semester will be busy and I need to give myself a good rest before starting a new chapter.



You might be wondering how I spend my time nowadays. Well, I go from shop to shop to ask for job vacancy.... buy groceries and snacks....download , borrow and watch movies.... and try some new cookings. I hereby present my most recent cullinary invention: FU YONG SIU PAU!!!!!





How does it taste???

IT IS LOVELY BECAUSE I HAVEN'T BEEN EATING THIS FOR QUITE SOME TIME.



No exaggeration here, but I am so proud of myself!





My Germany housemate is leaving. Very soon we would have a new housemate and I hope she wouldn't be a Malaysian (if this is the case, it would mean a 100% Malaysian house which is no doubt boring and unexciting). Oh yeah, the new swimming pool is opened and me as a gym member can now go burn fat everyday (if I want to). Yea!!!



I hope McDonald's will take me in for the job. I badly need one to move on. In Australia, experience is an advantage in job application and I wouldn't be able to fight for one if I don't start to gain experience by getting my first job.



Wow, this is such a long post. After coming back from Melbourne I would have more photos to show. My fren Ho Sheng keeps saying that my blog is full of words. All words and no pictures makes a blog dull, he said. Okay, I don't fully agree with this but I shall try to add more colours to the paragraphs I wrote. However I can't do this with no pictures in my hand (well, no new pictures because everything I have has been posted before).



Till next time.

~Love~

Some thoughts after exams

I read my fren's blog on Math exam.... Yeah it seemed most people are finding the questions really hard. The same with me... I might not get the kind of marks that i used to have for math, but I had similar experience in VJC, where I only manage to get a borderline 'A' for math paper. I hope my marks will still be good despite rushing through the questions and struggling to think of a solution for that one differential equation that i was clueless about. Frankly speeking i know how to do most of the stuff but given that i did so fast (coz we don't have enough time to finish so many HARD questions in 3 hours) i don't know how many careless mistakes there will be. I am certainly going to lose marks for that differential equation question and also part of the reduction formulae question because i didn't have time to complete the expansion as I was struggling to figure out the questions that i don't know.

Anyway that was over. I hope God will really help those who tried to help themselves..... The only thing now is to pray hard that the final result for me will still be good on a relative scale with others.

Now, holiday is here and i plan to have some work experience. I shall spend this holiday getting around and know more about this country. Am going Melbourne in early July for a short visit to my frens' place. That's gonna be really really fun. Time to take a rest, recharge so that next sem will be better. Okay, i shall go online and start searching for job vacancy now.

I am not going to think about results yet. New experience other than books and exams for my winter break!!

Review of First Semester in Australia -- My letter to Mei Lien (my S'pore fren)

I thought it would be good to show what i wrote to Mei Lien here.....

Mei Lien,

By now i can summarise what 'actuarial studies' means with fair accuracy. It's about calculating probabilities of something happening using all sorts of complicated maths, with the help of stats analysis (which can also be very complicated). By the way i just finished my math exam and it was SO SO TOUGH. I know how to do the paper except one bloody differential equation question which i was clueless about, but the toughest part is to do that paper in 3 hours (that's like 9 LONG questions with the highest level of difficulty. I don't know how many careless mistakes will there be because i practically did them in a rush. Omg the lecturer said that it will be fairly easy before the exam, but it wasn't true at all.

Anyway, where was I? Yeah, this is the nature of Actuarial Studies. One word to describe it, it is REALLY TOUGH and it takes a lot of self-discipline and self-belief to get through the whole thing. The first thing i studied was how to calculate the probability of a gambler in casino losing all his wealth. And i can tell you, the probability is ofter 1 or close to it and we can prove to you that this is the case. SO NEVER GAMBLE!! You will definitely lose.

Later on we started on all the insurance stuff, how to calculate a suitable premium, by considering a hell lots of factors, how to calculate superannuation funds, how to calculate retirement and death benefits, how to calculate the probability of a person dying and needs to claim from his life-insurance policy etc.. we are basically pressing our calculator all the time and doing stuff that non-actuarial students will never understand.

My first semester exam, hm.... was really an experience. All papers are super hard. For maths i thought i can get good marks before the paper. But now i think HD is not very plausible (it is only possible if i did very very little careless mistake on the parts that i knew, and you can imagine how accurate the answer will be given the rushing way i answer them). I will be grateful if i get D for maths really, coz it is the toughest paper I had ever seen (the second toughest being the mid year math paper in VJC, in which i narrowly manage an 'A'). Other subjects are also hard, but i hope my result will turn out good considering all the hard preparation i put in.

Okay, hope to hear from you.

Xin Yin

My life is temporarily loaned to EXAMS

What a life!!Have been studying like mad for the past few days because finals is REALLY next week!! No life at the moment other than munching snacks (to kill the boredom, am promising myself to go gym everyday after exams to burn away all those extra calories) and books and notes and calculator. That's the nature of an Actuarial degree, the concept of opportunity cost. We are forgoing our lovely time in uni in return for (possibly) a decent income after we graduate.

OMG, I am actually having a mental block on what to put in this weekly blog entry. All i can think of now is I have to cram all the stuff into my head and make it last until the last paper is collected. I am telling myself to be patient and time will pass fast and very soon it will be the long-awaited winter break which promises new experience and excitement.

Due to the away-on-loan blogging mood I have nothing much more exciting than what you have seen in my previous entries (for at least two or three weeks), unless you want to hear me complaining about the pilling notes to mug (S'pore slang for memorize, had since learned it after a short stay in that tiny island).

Just bear with me for another week, fellow readers.

Love,
Xin Yin

First Birthday away from home

Well, I typed a wonderful blog entry on my first birthday away from home but sadly it didn't get posted on because of the sucky connection. Now I couldn't remember what was said in that post but would hope that this one makes a good substitute.



4th June nearly always fall on school holiday, so it was always celebrated at home in Taiping. But this year's was different and was a whole new experience. I am away from all the comforts at home and am here in Marsfield, a suburb of the well-known metropolitan city, Sydney. It didn't start well in the sense that, well, I felt truly stressed-out since morning with uni work, and was unfortunate to catch a mild cold in the morning due to the weather which was freezing cold.



I went to gym after uni for a brief workout (I don't have time, but I am trying to control my weight, which has undoubtedly risen because I eat a whole lot more than I do during summer, which is one bad thing about winter--it makes you fat!!). The emergency alarm rang when I was panting on the treadmill. "Evacuate now! Evacuate the building!Evacuate now..." We left the building for 5 minutes, only to be told that it was just a mistake and there was no fire whatsoever in the building.

At 10.30, Shir Lynn knocked on my door and I immediately knew what was behind the door. I was quick enough to say thank you before they manage to wish me happy birthday, which is a whole new style of responding to a surprise. Coolest.....Yup, Joy baked a truly yummy lemon cheesecake. They bought me a genuine addidas sportswear (not from petaling street) and Martha gave me a lovely jumper. Haha, their wishes in the greeting card were both creative and thought provoking.

That pretty much described what happened on my first birthday away from Malaysia. The only shadow that overcovered the joy in myself is the looming final exam. Nevertheless, I had a good day!

A state of craziness

Woosh.....You guess how I spent my Saturday this week??? I went to gym in the morning, worked hard to prevent myself from gaining too much weight. Winter's officially started and the cold weather always make me hungry. I never feel this way back in Malaysia and would have got pissed off if I were to eat the way I eat now in Malaysia. But here, when the temperature is around 10 C and I just came back from uni, tired and shivering, eating is the first thing in my mind. That's why people tend to grow fatter in a four season country. I promise myself to go gym everyday after exam (now don't have much time coz exam is near) to get my weight back to normal. Feel so sick everytime when I stand on a weighing machine.

Yeah, and after coming back from gym, I vacuumed my lovely room, and thence started my marraton catching-up-with-lagging-uni-work, until now. I never work like this, even in SAM. But I guess this is really what EVERY actuarial student has to do to survive the course. Exam is near and the lectures are still going on, new topics are introduced to us at bullet-train speed and we are expected to learn 90% of it on our own, basically. Back in college and high school the last month, at least, before final exam was usually for revision and consultation, as the syllabi were done way way before finals, but it is a wholly different story in uni. We are two weeks from exam and the new materials are still coming in, faster than ever. If you ask me how I feel now, I would only say," THIS IS CRAZY!!!".

Nevertheless one good thing is that I start to think all the maths and insurance and probability and spreadsheet that shape the actuarial course are somewhat fun. Hope to build on from here. It's a matter of taking the suffering and laughing it off at the end, just like what Brian Chu (my ACST151 tutor) confessed: "All the compound interest stuff will appear in your dream because you encounter it EVERYDAY. And you can imagine how interesting my undergraduate life was, and I have just recently got back my life..." He's bright and yet he suffered, and I guess that's what Macquarie Uni Actuarial Studies is meant to be: it's about taking the bitter and interpreting it as sweet.