Things I Learned Lately

When I was at university, people always told me that working life is more difficult than student life. I didn't believe them, until now. Here are some of the things I have learned in the past few years:

Chocolate always helps.

Sitting on my couch, huddled under a blanket while eating chocolate always makes me feel better.

There will always be things about people you dislike.

I have a lot of friends, but from time to time I find myself getting a little frustrated by their behavior. It's not that I am perfect but some days it gets hard to be friends with some people. I guess at some point, you have to accept that nobody is perfect and making do with your friends' quirks and eccentricities is part of friendship.

Always save for a rainy day.

I picked this one up from my Dad. His favourite line when we discuss money (over MSN - my Dad's cool like that) is "Save for rainy days". In Malay we say "Sediakan payung sebelum hujan" meaning that you should prepare an umbrella before it rains. I try to save money every month - I do have months when I don't save a cent, but most of the time, there is some transaction going into the savings account. I do try not to obsess about it though - I'm not sure about my bank's interest rates - seems to fluctuate quite a bit, so I don't worry about it. As long as I am saving, I'm fine. Hopefully I'll get to buy an apartment by the time I am 30. *fingers crossed*

Plan your finances.

I don't have the spreadsheet with my daily expenses - I tried and failed miserably many times. However, I have successfully managed to plan my meagre salary enough to avoid the "N days to salary countdown". One of my fears is living from paycheck to paycheck.

Be careful what you wish for.

Sometimes, when you get what you wished for, you start to feel that you were better off before you got your wish.

No matter how bad things get, life goes on.

I have days where I am totally down in the dumps. Yet somehow, someway, I find myself still being able to do work, go shopping, walk in the park. I keep thinking I can't do it, I can't move on from the crap that is surrounding me, yet I still manage to do it. So there has to be some form of magic left in life that lets you move on with the next day despite today being such a bad day. You ask yourself "can it get any worse?" and it does get worse, but then a few days later... you are back in form, doing things as if nothing happened a few days ago. That is the beauty of life - it keeps on going. Either that or I have really short term memory.