I hate being poor

I'm bored so I decided to blog.. even though I have nothing to blog about rofl
Trying to study for exams early this semester; I really wanna do well for my last 4 courses in uni.
Currently sitting on A- for one paper, and A for my other paper in coursework so it's really motivating me to do well for exams. And also my GPA is embarrassingly low..  ><

Sigh.. I'm so poor lately. Really need to find another job.
I'm not getting any student allowance/living costs this semester since I'm only studying part-time, and I only work at the bar once a week so my savings are slowly bleeding out..
I keep telling myself to just find any job to get income, but I really wanna find something that I'm actually interested in like event management.
Applied for an event manager job but it's been over a week now and they still haven't got back to me zz..
And it's quite hard to find part-time jobs in event management, and most of them require lots of experience which I don't have :(
And so many birthdays coming up.. can't even afford to buy presents ><
Maybe I should just go back to acctg jobs but I hate acctg!! And asif I'm not gonna get enough of that next year.. boooooooo

okay I have nothing else to write about except complain some more so I will just end this post now
LOL goodbye.

I miss you..

Sigh.. randomly started looking through my old photo albums on Facebook.. and seeing photos of me and my grandpa makes me wanna cry.

I miss you so much.. can't believe it's been over 2 years now.
I think I just especially miss you today, cause we were talking about people who ran away from home, and it reminded me of when you used to follow me every time I ran away from home.
Haha, I was so immature and unreasonable and 不孝 back then, but you never once got angry at me.
You always stood up for me to mum and dad, and you were always on my side.
I wish you were still here, wish you could come to my graduation next year, wish you could meet Brandon, wish I could tell you that I got a graduate job..
I wonder if you would be proud of me if you were still here..

Our family just seems different without you.
At family gatherings, it doesn't feel the same anymore..
Even yesterday when we were talking about my graduation next year, and how we wanna go take family photos next year at a photography studio, mum started tearing when she said if only you were still here.
We all miss you so much, especially grandma.
Even though it's not easy, I promise I will be nicer to her from now on haha, cause I know that's what you would want :)

I know you're always watching over us, watching over me.
I hope I'll make you proud, if not now but in the future.
希望您在天堂过的幸福快乐, 我们永远爱您 <3

Poker baby

ok so I'm kinda addicted to blogging now haha, actually I always have been but my other blog was private so nobody could read it.
I just felt like when it was private, I could write about whatever I wanted, but when you know people will read it, you kinda change how you write and what you write, you know what I mean jellybean? lol

Anyways so I got a new part-time job today!
I was just scrolling down student job search yesterday, and I came across this 'Poker Dealer' job. It was for a poker table rental place in town, and they needed someone to deal at events & functions around Auckland.
I love poker, and I play it regularly so I thought why not? Plus the pay was pretty good at $20-$25 an hour.
Usually I'd have to apply through sjs and then call them tomorrow and wait for them to refer me. But in the job description, the guy said text, call or email him anytime so I went on his website and got his contact number and then I texted him saying I was interested. He replied almost instantly and told me he would give me a call tomorrow.
So he called me today, and we had a chat about my poker experience, and availability etc. He told me he primarily needed someone to deal at a pub in Manurewa every Saturday afternoon, but he would cover all my petrol costs. At first I was a bit unsure, since I thought it might be dodgy seeing as it's in South Auckland and all :p
But he told me to come watch him deal at a birthday function tonight, so I thought I would just see how it goes. And it was pretty fun actually, and he let me deal a few rounds too! I'm quite familiar with most of the rules of poker, but there were soo many little details I had to remember. For example, always hold the deck of cards in your hand rather than on the table, collect all the chips and stack them in the middle before I dealt a new card, raising blinds every 15 minutes, and I kept forgetting who's turn it was. My boss Leon was
really nice, and patient and he also taught me how to shuffle; he used this method which I haven't seen before, so now I have to go home and practice it haha,
But yeah it was really fun, so I'm pretty keen to continue. I have another training session on Thursday, and then I start work this Saturday! Excited :D

Other than that, I had to go uni today for a meeting with the uni clubs financial advisor to go over the financial review for HKESA. Ugh it's so annoying, they need so many documents and it's hard cause I wasn't in the club last year, so I have no idea what the events were, or how much they paid for every event and so forth. The lady was nice though, she sat down with me and we went over a checklist, so now I have to prepare some more documents to send her. She asked me what my plans for next year are, and I told her about my job at Fonterra, and she said she's worked at both a corporate and CA firm, and she said corporate is much better, which is exactly what my colleagues at my internship said too haha. Now I'm so put off working at a CA firm! lol must be super boring.

Anyways after that, I went with Brandon to get his regalia. He's graduating next month! yays! I still remember how stressed he was during the final months of his masters thesis, glad that's all over now.
I'm pretty excited about my own graduation too, but that's still a year away booo :(
hmm I wonder if I should get him something for his graduation haha, maybe I'll see if I can find a graduation panda since he loves pandas, hehe we have a panda family now it's pretty cute (3 of them are from me) I should take a photo and upload it next time XD

My blog looks so dull so I shall upload some photos today :)

my mum sends me the cutest txts lol.. 

yummy beef noodle soup from Grand Central Food Court in town! It's one of our favourite places to eat now, as they have lots of authentic foods from Japan, Korea, Vietnam etc. The pho is especially good! :)

lol he's such a poser..

Graduate job!

Got an offer for the 2014 Fonterra Accounting & Finance Graduate Programme!
pretty stoked.. until they told me that my first rotation is gonna be in Hamilton lol
sigh but beggars can't be choosers I guess and I know I should be grateful about such an amazing opportunity.

Fonterra is New Zealand's largest company, so working for them will definitely look good on my CV, and it'll open doors to international opportunities, since there are offices all around the world. Particularly in China, as it's such a big growth market, so maybe I'll even get to work in Shanghai for a bit in the future!

Anyways the programme is 2 years, and there are 4 6-month rotations in different areas of accounting & finance. I told them I was more interested in management accounting, so hopefully I'll get to do more in that area! They're also obviously a NZICA recognized company, and they told me they will provide lots of support for my CA (Chartered Accounting) exams, which is good. I actually didn't expect to get the job, cause they told me they were only taking 4 accounting & finance graduates so I guess I'm pretty lucky.

It's been a long and tiring process though. First it was the initial application, then the video assessment, then phone interview, followed by numerical, English and personality tests, and then finally the assessment centre, which was the most daunting. It was the first time I've ever been to an assessment centre so I was pretty nervous. They had it at Rydges Hotel, from 8am - 4pm so it was a looong day.

There were 3 main assessment rounds: interview, group work & individual presentation.
I thought the interview went pretty well; they basically gave me an overview of the company and the work I would be doing, and then asked me a bunch of behavioural questions which weren't too bad, cause I've had some interview experience already. The group assessment and individual presentation were harder in my opinion. For the group assessment, we had to work together as a group to analyze a case, and discuss recommendations, and we basically each had an assessor who would watch us during the whole thing, to see how we work in a group. Mine was sitting directly opposite me, so I kept trying to avoid eye contact with him haha, but I had actually already met him during the mix & mingling session before, and he was pretty nice!

Afterwards, it was the individual presentations. We were each given a case and one hour to read and prepare for it, and then we had to give a 10-minute presentation on it. 10 minutes is seriously so damn long; I doubt mine was anywhere near that but it went okay. They asked me some questions afterwards, and I just tried to bs my way out of it haha. My health science knowledge actually helped me heaps, since Fonterra is focused on nutrition and health and all that so yeah, I guess this job is pretty suitable for me!

My parents are pretty happy for me too, they keep telling me how proud they are of me haha, and they said they will come visit me in Hamilton regularly. Guess I still need some time to get used to the idea; I'm just scared that I'll be so lonely since I dunno anyone there and there's like nothing to do there! But I guess I can come back every weekend so maybe it won't be too bad. Maybe it's a good chance for me to learn to be more independent :)

And I'm very happy that I don't have to do anymore graduate applications! yay no more online tests!!! And now I can spend the rest of this year doing part-time work in non-accounting areas. I applied for a poker dealer job hahaha so let's see how that goes, hope I don't turn into a gambling addict if I get it LOL

Stressed

Coming up is a very stressful week.
Hoping everything will turn out okay :)

Eyelid surgery

So this is the blogpost that I wrote in China, but didn't get around to finishing XD

Wasn't gonna blog about it but then I thought what the heck, everyone's gonna notice when I go back to Auckland anyways so there's no point hiding it.

And I thought I'd share my experience, in case anyone reading my blog is/has been considering to get it too.

Mine was done on Wednesday morning 6th Feb at Shanghai's No 9 Hospital.

lol I don't actually know why it's called No 9, it has nothing to do with the hospital ranking, as it's actually the best hospital in Shanghai. My mum's best friend knew someone who worked at the hospital and she arranged an appointment for me with one of the cosmetic surgeons.

I met with the doctor first on Monday, and he suggested that I cut my inner corners too to make my eyes look wider, and the double eyelid to look more natural. He then went on and said I should consider jaw reduction surgery because my face looks big..............lol I was so offended when he said that! Like actually he was so blunt but meh whatever I knew that he was just trying to make more money (even though my face is kinda big TT). Anyways, we set the surgery date to be on Wednesday, to give me time to think about whether I wanted to cut my inner corners too.

So on Wednesday morning we headed back to the hospital.

I was soo scared, like totally freaking out. 

I was mainly scared about the anesthetic injections, since I read online that they hurt like a bitch. But luckily Brandon and my family friend were with me and kept calming me down and said that everything would be okay. When we arrived at the hospital, we went to pay first. It was $4000rmb to get double eyelids and inner corners, + $1000 hong bao since it was Chinese New Years.. so it was about $1000NZ in total. I think it's a bit on the expensive side, since some people I know got theirs for much cheaper but I trusted in this hospital and my doctor, plus my parents paid for it so money wasn't really an issue ^^

After we paid, I had to sign a bunch of forms, and then it was surgery time.

Everything felt really rushed. But I guess looking back now, that was a good thing, as it didn't give me any time to be scared or nervous. As I walked down the hall to my operating room, I passed several rooms that were all open and I could see other people getting surgery. I think that freaked me out the most; it felt like a scene from The Hostel, as in every room, there were only two people: the patient lying on the bed, and the doctor bent over cutting into them, and you could pretty much see everything.

I'm not even exaggerating, my legs felt numb. But somehow I made it to my room, and the doctor told me to lie on the bed, and as soon as I did, he started wiping antiseptic all over my face. In my head I was thinking err.. I hadn't even got a proper consultation with him, and he didn't even ask how high I wanted my crease, but by this time, I was already super scared, and all I could say to him was that I didn't want my crease too high, and that I wanted it to look natural. And he said okay, and went back to cleaning my face.

The entire surgery took around an hour. He cut my inner corners first and then did my crease. It wasn't too bad, but the 4 anesthetic injections did infact hurt like a bitch haha. I had one in my inner corner, and one on my upper eyelid in each eye so 4 in total. After that, I couldn't really feel much, just some pulling and tugging.  Every five minutes he would get me to open my eyes to see what it looks like, and then close it again. I was still pretty scared; the whole time, I was just clenching my fists thinking to myself that it'll all be over soon.

After the surgery, the doctor bandaged my eyes and told me that I should leave it on for 24 hours, and then bandage it every night when I go to sleep, until I get my stitches out which would be in a week's time. The nurse then helped me outside to the waiting room, where we waited for awhile and then left. I couldn't see anything since my eyes were bandaged, but Brandon said that there were 5 other girls who also got eyelid surgery at the same time as me. It just goes to show how common it is in China.

When we got home, the anesthetic wore off and the pain started to kick in. But it wasn't too bad.. kinda felt like I got stung by a big bee on both eyes so I took a Panadol and tried to sleep. The next day, I was able to take the bandages off and I was pretty nervous because I had no idea what my eyes would look like. When I looked in the mirror, it was actually pretty scary. My eyes were so swollen and bruised.. pretty much looked like I had two black eyes. It made me quite depressed too, I'm so glad that Brandon was with me because I probably wouldn't have been able to cope without him <3

The rest of the week went by SO slowly. I had read on soompi from other girls who had got eyelid surgery that the waiting part was the worst. And they were right. I had to ice my eyes everyday for the whole day, and I couldn't go out since it was snowing in Shanghai and I didn't want to risk getting an infection. But 5 or 6 days later, it was Chinese New Year so I put on some sunnies and we went out for dinner. It felt so good to finally get some fresh air after being stuck at home for so long.

A few days after that, I went back to the hospital to get my stitches out. And I had no idea that that experience would end up being worse than the actual surgery. We went quite early in the morning, so there wasn't that many people. But man, nurses in China are nowhere near as nice as ones here. I guess it's kind of understandable since they have to see so many patients a day and it must be pretty tiring but there was a little girl in front of me who was getting her stitches out from a cut in her hand, and she kept crying since she was only like 5 years old! But the nurses were so mean; they kept telling her to be quiet and to stop crying because it was giving them a headache. Felt so bad for her; she must've been terrified. But anyways, when it was my turn, I hopped onto the bed, and the nurse used some kind of tweezers and started plucking the stitches out from my eyelids. At first it wasn't too bad, but when she got to the inner corners, it was so damn painful. I always thought my pain tolerance is reasonably high; like I've never been that scared of injections or anything but man, I was literally crying from the pain. The nurse said it was more painful for me since my stitches were much thinner so it was harder to pull out, but afterwards when she got to my left eye, she accidentally tore my inner corner and it even started to bleed. I remember when I came out of the room, I couldn't stop crying (just from the pain) and it scared the shit out of my bf and my family friend haha, but I was all good after awhile.

So yeah.. that was pretty much my entire experience with eyelid surgery. It's been almost 2 months now and the swelling has gone down considerably. There is still some swelling, and scarring in my inner corners but hopefully that will disappear in the coming months. I've started using Bio-oil on my inner corner scars; hopefully it'll work! But yeah.. even though it was quite a scary experience for me, I have no regrets. A lot of people didn't seem to understand when I told them I was getting it, including my parents (but they have come around now) but it's really just a self-confidence thing. I feel more confident about myself now, and it feels so good not having to use eyelid tape anymore! And it's been fun experimenting with make-up too. So yeah, I would definitely recommend it to other girls.. the only thing is it's important to do your research. Try and do it at a big hospital in a big city, and find a credible doctor who has lots of experience.

So here are some photos.
This is what I looked like before surgery; taken around 2 years ago (the only photo I could find with no eyelid tape and make-up!)

And this is after surgery; taken last week with light eyeshadow and eyeliner.

Grad application season

hellooo! haven't blogged in so long.. I've been meaning to finish my blog about my eyelid surgery but then never got around to doing it.. (does anyone actually wanna read that? XD)

I think this month has been the most stressful month of my entire university life.

Good that I chose to do 2 courses each semester, or else I would truly be dying right now.

WHY IS IT SO HARD TO GET INTO A GRADUATE PROGRAM?!

I suppose it's because of the thousands of people graduating every year; all wanting to work at a big corporate company.. but seriously I didn't expect it to be this hard.. and time consuming!
There's the initial application stage which takes at least an hour; some of them require you to write paragraphs about why you want to work for the company, and what are your extra-curricular achievements and you have to change your cover letter every time, to show them that you've put effort into tailoring it just for them. Then after that, it's the stupid psychometric online tests, which is the worst part for me.
They're not hard or anything, just a verbal, numerical and logical reasoning test, at high-school level. The thing about them is that they only give you 15 minutes to answer 20 questions in each test! That includes reading all the freakin passages in the verbal one and all the charts and tables in the maths one! Which leaves you like less than 30 seconds to answer each question..><

And then if you get through that, you may have to do more online assessments like the simulation one I just did for ANZ which was basically a bunch of videos that you had to watch, about work situations and then choose the best and worst solution. I thought it would be easy, like 'What do you do if you catch someone stealing?' 'A. Steal with them, B. Report to the manager, C. Don't do anything' or something similar, but nope! All the options seemed right and all the options seemed wrong! How are we supposed to know these things when we haven't started working yet?!

Then if you actually make it through all that, this is where the real stuff begin: Interviews.
First it's a phone interview, where they mainly ask you behavioural questions like 'Describe a time when you had conflict with one of your colleagues' or some shit like that, and then if you do well enough in that, they'll invite you to an assessment center, where lo and behold, you spend the whole day doing more assessments.. yay :D
And finally if you've survived all of that, then you may actually get an offer to the program.

And that's just for one application to one company. Imagine doing that ten times T_T
It'd be okay if you actually made it in the end, but what about when you made it all the way to the interviews and then you get rejected.. feels like such a big waste of your time.
It's like a never-ending assignment.. and I've barely just started.

Already got rejected by two companies sigh.. I'm so scared to check my e-mails now in case I get another rejection letter. I don't think I deal well with rejection. It makes me super depressed and moody and I end up crying and feeling dumb and useless, and lose motivation to keep going ><
But I have to keep going.. I have to keep telling myself that I can do this, and that it'll all be worth it in the end.