Bahahahahaha!

Tomorrow is my moment of truth. Getting raked over hot coals by three judges is always fun. I wake up every Saturday and think “Golly gee! Let’s wake up early so I can get half formally-dressed slog 20 minutes through the snow, and finish dressing at school, and then get grilled by the gallery!” At least good eats are on the horizon. Mmmm North 44. Mark McEwan is my hero. Yay! Happy CNY everybody!

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I have a lot of friends who are travellers. I don’t mean the “let’s-go-to-an-all-inclusive” type. I mean the I-just-went-black-water-rafting-in-this-glow-cave in New Zealand type.

It’s always interesting to hear their stories. What it’s like to be riding the raft in pitch black. It’s pretty crazy, but oh-so-fun.

Can’t wait to finish this semester. I’ll be on a black sand beach in less than four months. Oh yes.

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THIS is what is wrong with financial services these days. The other part of what’s wrong with it – “certified financial planner” versus non-certified? REALLY? You’re handing over your entire financial future to someone with these kind of credentials? EVEN THEN, who says credentials actually give you any sort of return? They’re all a bunch of money sucking leeches.

I recently went into Scotia to speak to my financial person here in O-Town. I made him run through his CV with me, politely of course. But no way was I even close to considering buying into the mutual fund he was pushing. Don’t get me wrong, I heard what he had to say because I want to be educated (along with several grains of salt).

None of my biggest goals in life will ever come easy. Making money is hard. Keeping money is harder. Making money make you more money – that’s when you’re golden.

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It’s election time in Taiwan and I’m following the media coverage. It’s strange how I feel such an affinity for a country that I wasn’t born in, never really lived there, and don’t truly understand. Although I guess something must be said that I do now hold its passport (through some loophole in the law that my dad discovered).

I guess it’s because I feel an affinity to the food. It’s the food of “home”. The memories of a 3 year-old child travelling internationally for the first time and being told that this is your family away from home in Canada. It invests something into you that I’ll never leave behind.

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Girl: What I have is an “international accent” when I speak to you.
Guy: You just sound like you have a stuffy nose.

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There’s this girl in my class. She’s articulate, intelligent and relatively respectful. Until it boils down to classroom etiquette. You see, she likes to eat chips. In class. While the professor is lecturing. In a class where there are only 11 people and the professor is standing 3 feet away from her!

Am I the only person who thinks this is wrong? I wince at every crunch, crack and rustle of the foil bag. Really? Class is not meal time. Plus, we only have one class a day for the month of January. I’m sure she does not have to make class-time as the designated daily chip-intake time.

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Sometimes you take an instant dislike to someone. What annoys me even more is the fact that I seem to be wasting time and energy by disliking this person. He just drives me up the wall with his pompous grandiose attitude in which he thinks the world revolves around him and God forbid that anyone else doesn’t think the way he does.

Life is too short to be annoyed. Let’s go bake cookies.

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Finding myself reading 8 hours a day again. This whole January-one-course-for-three-weeks is highly overrated. I feel like I’m back in exam mode. I barely did laundry and stocked my fridge before I was out running to the library.

Speaking of which, I should head there again now.

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Actually had to dip into the reserve LOC today. First to pay off my credit card, and second to pay tuition. I feel like I’ve crossed some invisible line and fallen into an abyss. The fact that I even had to use my LOC to pay of my credit card was a huge disappointment. It’s finally dawned on me. I’VE BECOME ONE OF THEM. I’m one of those people that I used to criticize, for the endless shuffling of one debt instrument to pay of another. Who lives like that? I’ve said before. Now, I DO.

It’s horrifying how with two clicks of a mouse, my bank balance is miraculously “positive” and my debts are suddenly gone. The power of magic money, obtained with nothing but a signature and a potential of what I may choose as a profession.

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Did you ever notice when you do online banking that the institution lists your assets first as cumulative total, then your liabilities as another cumulative total? It’s as if the bank wants you to believe that you have a positive balance in your liabilities. I think it would be much more effective if the bank set out your statement with liabilities listed in bright blazing red. Then reiterate your total assets against your total liabilities, where liabilities again are in red, but with a GIANT negative sign out in front. Then again, since when does the bank put consumers needs ahead of their own? I’m sure banks spend a fortune hiring a marketing CEO to come up with this format, after all my interest payments are what keep them employed.

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It’s a hard market to invest in right now. Not to say that I actually have any money to invest, but I can’t help but watch the market and weigh my options, hypothetically.

The best deal I could probably wrangle out of a GIC right now would be 2.25% on a 5 year fixed non-redeemable. In Canada inflation is 2.9% as of October 2011. It means for every dollar I’m putting in, I’m losing 0.65%.

My big-inc stocks that pay dividends have been hit or miss. Banking, traditionally a profitable stalwart long-term hold choice of many portfolios, has tanked since 2008. Citibank even issued a reverse 20:1 split, which effectively made me lose more money than was possible on the original value of my investment. Despite, having winners that pay a good dividend, my portfolio is still half of what it originally was when I started. Watching the markets these days is like watching a Chinese olympic ping-pong match. The back and forth sentiment is unbelievable.

Currencies are interesting, but too risky for my tastes. Plus, any second now, the Euro is going to drop off the map and leave the USD the single worldwide reserve currency available. Four years ago, I was thinking about liquidating my US GICs, believing that the USD would drop ridiculously against the Canadian dollar. Who knew three years later, the Euro would be imploding. Time to exchange the Euros I have left before they turn into wallpaper.

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