Valorous Halcyon

Yesterday marked my 23rd birthday! While I could not quite put all my thoughts into words, I will try my best. If you have been following this blog for the past few weeks, I hope you will have noticed the increasing efforts I have put in to continue updating the blog. I have made this a commitment that I will update this blog at least once every two days, sometimes even more. This change, coupled with exercising every morning and reading every night after work, compose part of my transition process into the working life. This is the power of Habit! But I was trying to break one of it. The night before when my mom asked me on the time to wake up yesterday morning (since she's currently car pooling with me to work), I told her, "Early (it means we will depart from our house by 6:15am)". Understandbly she did not seem happy because then she will need to wake up early at as early as 5:30am. But because of my laziness and I was trying to give myself a break, I decided not to...

Dear readers, If you are following me from Facebook, you would most likely have known that I have graduated from my undergraduate degree and slowly transitioning into working life. Everything seemed so smooth as I went through 3-week On-boarding Programme without much problems, but only constant inspirations being poured out over and over again from my colleagues. How blessed more can I possibly get? Never had I got the opportunity to get close with many of my fellow scholars colleagues, but this 3-week On-boarding Programme was nothing short of awesomeness and close kinship built. First week spent on the Outward Bound School was very inspiring, and turned out beyond my expectation. Only three words can be concluded - friendship, inspiration and teamwork. Part of the reasons why OBS was beyond my expectation is due to the structure of activities planned. Most of them if not all, were catered in such a way that ignites the teamwork spirit in us and from within build bonds...

As busy as I have been appearing to be, I'm going to keep this short and... sweet?  I'm thankful for everything that has happened throughout last year, and there are indeed lots of happenings which I acknowledgingly failed to update. But here are the top 3 that left the most vivid impressions throughout my Summer 2013.  2013 passed by me swiftly and now the first quarter of the 2014 is slipping by too. What prompted me to update this blog was my ironic nature to keep record of happenings in my life.  As I have started planning for the much anticipated Summer 2014, I see the necessary step to note down a few important updates of last summer before I completely forgotten any of them.  #1st Update: Brighton Day Trip with churchmates and friend (10 June)   Short summary, the fish and chips is of the best value for money! Cheap and tasty. Oh, and some memorable shots!  My travel partners (Cherrie, Mei Yeen and Christine)! =)  Backing t...

Hooorayyy!!! My exam is over, and let me tell you how I felt immediately after the exam. I felt happy ostensibly like many other friends, but honestly I felt really empty inside, for all in sudden I didn't know what to do after one whole month of nerding, burying myself with notes and past year papers. I actually felt so emo on the day after, thinking hard of what should I do. All in sudden, I thought of playing Texas Hold'Em Poker in Facebook. I bumped into playing poker a week before (just a day after my Economics Paper 4 exam), and I started to learn how to play. But the hard thing comes after learning. Learning how to play poker can be done in less than 10 minutes, but to master it takes a whole life! Just in case you don't know what is poker, poker is a card game that involves betting based on the two cards that you are holding distributed by dealer. You are required to put a blind (minimum stake) into a pot (if you decided to play that hand), and to call/raise/fold ...

Continue from the previous post, I will write everything about the final day of the orientation programme at Lanai (which was yesterday)! The final day, in my opinion, was the most enjoyable yet challenging day! Although there was none of the bank staffs invited to share their experiences like the days before, but I've learnt quite a lot from the activities conducted yesterday. I woke up relatively late compared to the previous day in the morning (7.30am), so I sort of rushed through everything and went to dining hall to have had breakfast. Again, the cakes were always there in every meal! =p  After the breakfast, interesting things happened. We had discussed about a project on the day before yesterday (Saturday), and we were supposed to give presentation based on our own character given. The case scenario was this: In 30 minutes, a passing comet will destroy all human life on Earth and resulting in a period of cold and darkness for the next 3 months, or maybe even longe...

So I'm back after 3 days 2 nights staying at Lanai Kijang!!! Just in case you still don't know what is Lanai Kijang, it's a resort owned by the Central Bank of Malaysia (BNM) to accommodate visitors attending events organised by the bank, staffs coming from other states and delegates from abroad. It's located at Jalan Dato Onn, near the Headquarter of the Bank and of course the Bank Negara KTM Station. Alright, so back to my second day's story! I hope you guys do enjoy the previous post and oh, it's updated with nice pictures grabbed from one of my close friends, Gracey aka Nemo! =p new nickname ha! xD Credit to Gracey! =) Lanai has been quite famous for its awesome sumptuous food menu and I bet you guys really can't wait to see a few pictures of it! =p Here you go~  *again credit to Grace! =) The Residence Hall (Dining hall)! Awesome right? =D  Nice diversity of cakes!!! It was one of the favourites where everyone tried to grab! =p Oh a few ban...

Finally!!!!!!!!!!!!!The day that I've been waiting since last year!!! yeah that's right the Orientation programme organised by the Bank! Since last year the Bank staffs didn't manage to organise one for my batch's scholars, they included us along with the juniors! No matter what, the first day was quite fun!!! But I left my camera at my laptop's bag (was at Lanai Kijang by then), and we were at Sasana Kijang (another Bank's building) for the whole day. So yeah, too bad no pictures, yet. But I will definitely post up later, if I managed to get some pictures from my friends. =p Taylor's scholars in June 2010 intake! =)  The itinerary today started off with ice breaking planned by my college's scholars, and it was quite fun. Well done people! Nothing much in this slot for me to talk about, otherwise would be quite boring. Next slot was the one that I'm going to talk a lot now. Apparently it's so much more interesting than the ice breaking s...

I've been having holidays for the past... 2 months? And I'm going back to school pretty soon, cause most of the A-Levels students have finished their A2 or AS, and that juniors are starting their classes again, on 25th November, just to resume their A2 syllabus. Thank God that I've finished the whole A2 syllabus, but yet I almost forget everything since my brain has been shutting down for the past few months. The only subjects that remain slightly fresh in my mind are Maths and Further Maths, due to the preparation for Cambridge interview and test. But that was more than a month ago! I hope I still know how to prove all the Calculus formulae (chain rule, product rule etc), for fun! =p What? Stop staring at me like I'm crazy or something for learning how to prove those! O.O I had to, cause I couldn't prove anti-derivative of 1/x is ln x, during my mock interview. I've learnt most of the proving's since then, but none of them was being asked during the ...

    Oh so yeah the trip to BNM was really awesome and eye-opening! Thanks to INTI Actuarial Society for organising it! There was a talk given by four actuaries who are working in the bank, and they started off by mentioning about roles of appointed actuary. Appointed actuary is the actuary who is working for his/her own company, and at the same time providing reliable information to the regulator which is the bank itself. Basically appointed actuary is the highest paid actuary in the whole actuarial team, but of course he/she would be the one having lots of work that worth the lucrative salary he/she gains.     It is also responsibility of an actuary to determine the size of actuarial reserve—money set out for long term claim life insurance, to sustain the guaranteed claim to the policyholders should any loss occur, by using suitable statistical methods and mortality table or life table as they call it. One of the roles of actuary working for the regulator...