Friday, May 27, 2005

    After reading up on personal financing, I've decided that I should start planning to finance the expenses of my college education.

Cost

Tuition : 54 565
Food and Accomodation : 16 283
Personal Expenses : 6 000
(books, clothing, parties
driving lessons, sp prog)
Travel Allowance : 200
Insurance : 2 040

Total : 79 088 x 4 years = 316 352

Resources

FASS Scholarship : 66 470
Manageable Work Ability : 3 120
(5 hrs a week for 40 weeks,
using 10.25 US dollars/hr)

Total : 69 590 x 4 years = 278 360

Shortfall : 316 352 - 278 360 = 37 992

Estimated Bank Balance after NS : 10 000

That's means I will have to come up with about 6 750 each year to pay for my own education, though that's probably a generous over-estimate given the inflated costs listed above, and the underest. resources. In any case, I am only liable for 4 377 each year to the college, as in billable costs. The remainder are personal expenses, and on top of which, I can always take a loan from them, though it does come with an annual interest of 5%.

Well, I did politely turn down the mas scholarship, so i guess I should have understood the consequences of funding my own college education. To be fair, it is certainly manageable by most standards, and it really does give me the flexibility of choice after graduation. Moreover, there's always the Loke Cheng Kim scholarship that will be open for application, though that's really difficult to get, but i always relish a challenge =)

defining himself: Shawn

    Went down to Kinokuniya last weekend to pick up Jeffrey Sachs's "The End of Poverty", whereupon I chanced this fairly thick text about the end of man. Yes, not Man, man. The author is an acclaimed researcher at Oxford University, and he concluded after conducting intensive studies on the sex chromosomes that the Y chromosome is gradually but surely receding with each passing generation. In fact, it's disappearing so rapidly, so much so that in 50 generations, man will cease to exist. Taking his argument to its logical conclusion, he also proposed that females are higher on the evolutionary chain compared to males.

This may trip every chauvanistic nerve in each man, but evidence from our daily life certainly seems to be validate his point. Man are commonly associated with violence and brute strength. Women, on the other hand, are notably more organized and usually display a wider spectrum of emotions and feelings. Ability of expression can certainly be considered amongst the better indicators of evolutionary stage.

Biologically, females are technically self-sufficient, whereas that can hardly be said the same for males. Neuroscans have also shown conclusive evidence that females use a greater portion of the brain during information processing compared to males?

Interesting...

defining himself: Shawn