Little things

Today, an elderly lady came up to me while I was washing my hands in the bathroom and said: "You are so pretty!"

It was so cute and I just felt this instant heartwarming feeling inside me.

It's the little things in life that makes us happy :)

Life

Just had a super long d&m with my mum..
At first it was just me asking her for a Vodafone top-up card lol (cause she always has an endless supply of them for our business XD) but then we started talking about life and the future
She told me that she and my dad are planning to expand our business.
At first, I didn't really think it was a good idea since they're getting quite old now, and expansion just means more work for them.. but then she told me more about it, and I kinda came around to the idea.
She said that once the business expands, then they can hire a manager to deal with all the employees, and she and my dad can just step back and take on a more higher management role.
So that they don't actually have to work so much everyday.
And then I got all excited and said that maybe if our business does really well, then in a few years they can just retire and I can take over and run it, since I do accounting anyways. Cause it'd be such a shame to just sell it, after they put so much hard work into it.
But yeah.. that's thinking too far for now lol

My parents honestly inspire me so much; they are my biggest role models.
They work so hard everyday.
And they're 50 years old now, and still working.
I keep telling my mum to just retire already and enjoy life, but she keeps saying she won't retire until my brother starts university or gets a job.
Since we came to NZ almost 20 years ago, my parents have never ever taken a proper break or holiday longer than a week. Well my dad used to go China every year for business, and each time it would be a for a few months, so at least he got a break. My mum never did.
I always tell people that my mum is a superwoman. She works 5 days a week, sometimes as early as 7am to as late as 11pm, and she still takes care of all the housework.
I think my mum is actually a workaholic; like she even told me herself that if one day she retires, she's not gonna know what to do with her life anymore lol
But still.. I still wanna earn enough in the future so that they can just stop working, and go travel the world or something lol

My mum also told me something that made me so sad sigh..
My first piano teacher that I stayed with for maybe 6 or 7 years, just came back to New Zealand.
She used to live here, and she was married to a Japanese guy.
But then I think that guy used to hit her, and so they got divorced.
Then she met another guy who was 10 years older than her; he was a businessman and they went back to China, got married and had a kid. I remember a few years ago, my mum telling me she was pregnant and I was so happy for her.
But just last year, her husband died from a heart attack, so now she's a solo mum, and her child is only 4 years old. And apparantly her personality has completely changed; like she doesn't talk much anymore ><
Life is just so unfair sometimes.. I don't understand why bad things always happen to good people.
She was one of the nicest people I have ever met.
I still remember when I first started playing piano, she gave me so much encouragement and support during all those years of piano competitions, recitals, and most importantly my piano exams. Like lots of teachers nowadays are just focused on business and earning money lol, not saying all of them are! But like my second teacher who opened a school, she was always late to our lessons, or on the phone during our lesson, or just charging fees for everything.
But my first piano teacher was just a genuinely nice person.
lol I think I disappointed her since I failed my diploma exam, and then I pretty much quit piano zz.. kinda regret giving it up now

Anyways on a brighter note, I have finished exams!!
lol dunno what to do now haha, trying to look for another job cause I'm so broke.. lol I feel like I'm always complaining about being broke XD
But lots to look forward to this inter-semester break!
So many birthday parties coming up, including my own (which I need to start planning), and I'm going on the HKESA camp which should be fun
And yes I need to start fixing my sleeping pattern from now on.. don't think my body can take this unhealthy lifestyle anymore ><

Blog looks so boring so here's some photos of my new baby Air hehe

So in love! Best laptop ever

hehe got a pink keyboard cover!

Midnight thoughts

so I randomly woke up at 4am and can't get back to sleep.. so annoyed cause I actually slept early tonight in an attempt to fix my retarded sleeping pattern

sigh.. 

anyways it's exam period right now so I'm super stressed.

even though I'm only doing 2 papers, I managed to still leave everything till the last minute.. yes bad Sarah never learns her lesson :(

also quite depressed lately.. well not depressed but just sad in general cause it feels like it's breakup season.. everyone around me is breaking up and it makes me sad..

even couples who have been together for years are ending things for good and so it makes me doubt my own relationship, like what makes me so confident that my relationship will last..

I know it's stupid but I can't help thinking that.

I used to be so naive and believe that love conquers everything; as long as you love each other then you can make it through anything and nothing else matters (lol I think I watched too many idol dramas when I was younger) but now I realized that that is absolute bullshit

I think I have actually been influenced alot by Brandon lol dunno if that's a good thing or not :p

After being with him, I feel like I've become alot more cynical and pessimistic about the world but I guess I have also matured.

zzz I just miss believing in true love and fate and happily ever after 

maybe that's why I'm so obsessed with Fei Cheng Wu Rao lately 

like even though I know it's semi-rigged, it kinda makes me believe in fate again; that it's possible to find that person who truly completes you 

nothing lasts forever, but you wish some things could right?

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