Agnes' Birthday Surprise

Recently we got the honour of surprising Agnes as it was her birthday. We waited till 12.30am in the morning and then about 12 of us crept into her house and surprised her! We brought cake, pizza, lots of Coke and a fun-filled spirit with us.

As the night passed we progressed towards a game called Partini which was absolutely fun. It was a game that combined the skills of acting, mime-ing, guessing, tossing and writing all into one game. The scores were really close but in the end we lost by 1 point only which was still an honorable lost.

During the night, everyone looked quite happy as we were eating away at the Cake and Pizza. Here, Ze and Jolene looked happy they got their slice of cake. Who doesn't love cake??

Even though the rest of us were at the best good friends with the birthday girl, the four of these people at the top photo are the closest of friends. Always blessed to have good friends right!

Birthday celebrations are enjoyable because of what they are, we get to get together with some of our beloved friends and celebrate a moment that will only come once every year. Perhaps we should live our lives like a birthday everyday. Because who are we to say that a tomorrow will come?

What scares me most, however, is that during my birthday all of the friends I love are together in one concentrated place. So much risk! Any finance professor would tell you that that would be unacceptable. So I guess a thought to ponder is that are all of us risk-loving in certain situations? Like when the expected benefit of your birthday party is worth the risk of having all your beloved friends in one location alone.

FMAA Corporate Cocktails

Last night I went for the FM Double "A" Corporate Cocktails event. It was nothing short of spectacular.

The event was held at 501 Bourke St, RACV City Club, in a nice well-decorated ballroom. The most enjoyable thing about the event was that I got to meet with so many like-minded people there and so many of my friends whom were really interested in the real deal, investment banking, were there as well having fun with me.

The real reason I was there was to mingle with my future colleagues from Goldman, as some of you might have known that I will be doing an internship there (and hopefully get a job offer after) and I wanted to catch up with them. Not just because of my job prospects but because I missed chatting with them. They were really driven and like-minded and honestly there are few people in this world that I can truly connect with.

It was a real surprise to see many of my students there. As I am tutoring 2nd year macroeconomics, many of my students (in 2nd year) would naturally go to events like this as it was a great opportunity to mingle around future employers and colleagues. So, I think I must have seen like 6 or more of my students there. It was truly a pleasant surprise. I also saw my tutor as well, Matthew Miller who teaches me Corporate Finance, and it must have been a pleasant surprise/awkward moment for him as well.

The event saw Mr Saul Eslake there who was the Senior Chief Economist at ANZ bank, a well respected economist in the business world. His speech was really candid, and I mean really straight-forward. He might have forgotten his audience for a bit as he was talking about the financial crisis and pointing fingers at banks and the greediness of bankers (most of the attendant employers there were the investment banks) but nonetheless his speech garnered a great big applause after.

After the event, coming home, the event brought some sense of excitement to me as I couldn't sleep well and was thinking about all the possible things I could do when I grew up. As some of my readers would know, my dream is to be a respected fund manager. And there could possibly be nothing else I would want to do when I grow up. That is why hope is so wonderful now, especially when I am slaving through many hours of CFA and mid sem exams (which is finally over!).

So, as a last word, never stop dreaming!

Jeremy's Birthday Celebration

So recently it was my good friend Jeremy's 20th birthday celebration. This is a picture of his wonderful family that has been good friends with me and is the closest family I am to in Melbourne, Australia.

Jeremy's birthday party has been nothing short of fun and much games played including Wii, board games and puzzles. Everyone who came to his party had to solve a puzzle before they could enter the house. And ironically the answer to the puzzle is the key they have to find to let themselves into the house.

After all the games and delicious bbq-ed food, we sang him a birthday song and watched as he blew the candles on his birthday cake which I believe was home-made. His mom is actually quite a good cook indeed!

Overall I managed to reunite with some of my friends and made some new friends too. As Jeremy is doing med, most of his friends there were med students and it was one of those few parties that I go to that Commerce or Science is not the dominant degree in the room, in this case it was Medicine.

So to my good friend Jeremy, I wish you a happy 20th Birthday party!

Mid Sem Fever

No, I actually don't have a fever. But recently there has been so many mid sems and assignments, I am drowning in mid sems that is why I called it mid sem fever.

List of Mid Sems:-

i) Derivatives (done)

ii) Macroeconomics (done)

iii) Corp Fi

iv) Industrial part 1

v) Industrial part 2

But I realised that having exams brings me closer to God. I always ask for His help during the time when I need Him the most. I guess this is the time when usually I call out to God, hopefully that he blesses me when I sit for an exam.

Derivatives and Macro went well, I was glad, although I have to say that silly mistakes throughout my whole life has costed me thousands of marks. I have to keep remembering... do not make silly mistakes!

But it is easier said than done.

So recently I was doing the Problem Set for one of my subjects when I was just casually emailing my lecturer about what to expect and how to think in order to solve the problems.

Our conservation grew over time because something I said had sparked an interest in him and then that led to more things and more things. Until the point where he trusted me to have worked enough on the problem to give me partial solutions to the problem set when the test wasn't even finished yet!

This was the first time ever chatting with my professor who trusted me so well that he could give me the answers. I mean, I could do so many things with those answers, yet he trusted me. I felt trusted.

I used to hate this subject alot because it was so complicating and I had to go and pick this subject which coincidentally was the most difficult subject in the department. Nevertheless, after this incident, I felt like this subject wasn't bad after all, and I actually managed to improve my math by a whole lot after half the semester into this subject.

Right now, I am feeling that this subject has made a 360 degree turn from being my worst to my favourite!

Merdeka Celebrations

Yesterday was our beloved country's Independence day. It has been more than 50 years since we became independent from the British and gosh, what a journey it has been. From nothing but villages and side shops and stalls, we have grown to become an internationally renowned country and especially within Melbourne, us students flood the streets.

So being very Malaysian myself, I decided to celebrate this Merdeka with some of my beloved friends, namely Kelvin, Ze Ying, Yvonne, Kien Loon, Chin, and many others that came along too. We met up at College Square Swanston where we were playing this drinking game late until 2am, when we celebrated Merdeka. It was at 2am because Malaysian time it would be exactly 12am there, which marked the beginning of Merdeka Day. The drinking game was quite stupid but very fun. We played the game called "Ring of Fire" which basically meant a deck of cards scattered around a bowl, and we had a different rule (which had to do with drinking) for every type of card.

It was memorable in the sense that we had alot of fun drinking and laughing our heads off. But most importantly we celebrated Merdeka! Being apart from my beloved country for many years now (four and going), I have not lost the passion for my country. Being away actually gives you a sense of realisation that how lucky you are to be a Malaysian. And I guess I always will be. Malaysia, we are proud of you.

Kenjisan Investments Annual Dinner

Recently Kenjisan Investments had our annual dinner together with all the partners. It has been a wonderful 1.5 years since we started this partnership together. I feel proud and grateful to have all such wonderful friends/partners such as them.

Our dinner was held at MyCube at 122 Lygon St as they served some really authentic Malaysian food. The dinner was worthwhile on its own and our meeting progressed even better, I had to say. We had a lively discussion on mainly two topics, that is, whether we should sell a current holding in our share portfolio (it had appreciated about 20% already since we bought it) and also about the general market conditions in the periods to come.

Our partnership now stands at 12 people, and we have grown exponentially since we had started. My hope for this partnership is that it would be something meaningful and a wonderful association with the 12 of us as the original, founding partners. From what I can see, we have a good path ahead, and we have already achieved to a certain degree one of our aims - to instill a passion for investing and a degree of skill at which our partners are able to successfully pick superior investments over time.

3 Cheers for Kenjisan Investments.

Nicole's Engagement Party

Recently my good friend Nicole Kee got engaged to Chris Wang. It was quite a shock actually for me, because one day she just told me out of the blue. She was like "Josh I want to tell you something." I was like "What?" and she goes like "Oh I'm engaged."

It has been already 3 years plus since I have known Nicole, and she is actually the first of my closer friends to get engaged! So on that note, congratulations for being the first! If you asked me 2 years ago if I would be shocked that one of my close friends were going to be engaged in 2 years time, I would definitely have laughed at you very hard because it was so unbelievable. Nevertheless it happened.

So Chris if you are reading this, remember to take good care of Nicole! And thanks for the great party at Sante, Crown. We all really enjoyed it and would definitely be one to remember!