USyd

Just one more week left for Singapore. Having Singaporean food cravings already. Really sick of eating the stuff at Norton Street and Newtown :-( I would much rather eat my own cooking if not for the fact that the kitchen is 2 floors below :P

Just finished my accounting paper for the day, was manageable but didn’t go fantastically because of the time constraints. I hope I can get at least a distinction (let’s not go to HD). Next week is the killer M&A and financial modelling exams. I’m not too worried about the latter though cos I’ve already passed the exam from the mid term and project results.^^ Was really happy about the project grades for modelling (38/40!!). That was the hardest project I’ve had to handle so far in Sydney Uni and the effort paid off. While I hated the project when I was doing it, I’m glad for doing it at the same time too because of the exposure it has given me to Monte Carlo simulation, exotic options, portfolio optimisation, company valuation etc. In regular finance class we just learn two asset portfolio optimisation which uses simplified mathematical formulas. In spreadsheet modelling I actually get to see how multi asset portfolios are obtained through inverse matrix operations. Really cool. The Benninga textbook has really been useful and when I finally graduate I’ll try to make the effort to learn more of the stuff in detail.

Seriously, group work at USyd is such a pain. 80% of the people I have dealt with are one of the following:

1. Pure incompetent,
2. Apathetic to their studies and can’t give a damn about putting effort,
3. Last minute people who think they can actually produce quality work just before deadlines,
4. People who always tell me they are busy with this and that but can find time to have full day of entertainment and plenty of sleep (when there I am slogging till 2-5 AM in the morning)
5. Irresponsible freeloaders.

I guess it’s not hard to figure out that my ‘blogger’ status is more of a semi-hobby than a passion :p The truth is ever since I graduated from university in Singapore the desire to pen my feelings doesn’t come as naturally anymore. Even though I set up this pretty nice-looking (I hope!) blog, frankly I’m more interested in the design and implementation (Drupal) of it rather than the actual content. I could spend hours tweaking this functionality and adding this plugin and that but frankly the actual usage doesn’t justify the effort taken to implement. ^^

Nevertheless, I think the start of my Masters course in Sydney should warrant at least a couple of posts so here I am, more than a month since I reached here. To be fair to myself, I didn’t actually get internet connection till the end of last month (thanks Telstra, geez)..