Life was like a box of chocolates.

    I was just having my morning tea before Hakim asked me,'apa nak jadi dengan negara kita nie Fie?' I know that I am hours away from boarding the flight that is home bound, but funnily enough, I was entirely caught of guard by such a serious question. Silently I though to myself, this is definitely not the right time to do this.  Of course I do have my own views, if you know me well enough, you'd know by now that I make it an exercise for me to come up with an opinion on issues, old habits I guess.  Well anyway, just to answer Hakim's questions, two major issues were pointed out, the rise of the younger generation leaders in our country, as well as the issues pertaining to the rise of the middle class. But after giving it much thought the moment I got back in KL, it suddenly occurred to me that these two are actually inter-related. They were both borne out of the same thing, given that I am thinking of growth as following a timeline. They are both sym...

Earlier this month I embarked on a brief tour around some of Europe's famous places. For two weeks, Nik and I went from Budapest to Bratislava (this is the capital city of Slovakia, just in case some of you are wondering. It is not so much of  a famous place, but because we were around the area we thought what the heck, lets pay this place a visit), then we went off to Vienna before setting foot in Berlin, Germany. Initially we were supposed to head to Prague, Czech as well, but due to the heavy flood we decided not to take a chance with it. In a nutshell, I would have to admit it was a very fun and exciting trip overall. Surely the places there were very beautiful indeed since Nik being a photographer, he managed to shoot very awesome shoots of them too. These are of course in his possession, so sadly I am not able to share it with you., I'm afraid. What I can share with you are the takeaways I got from the trip though. Expect to see A LOT of museums in Europe. Apparent...

Last year I read Aleph by Paulo Coelho the day I finished my exams, this year he published yet another book, the Manuscript Found in Accra. Being a big fan of his books, surely I did not want to miss this chance of having finished my exams so early in May to read this new book of his. Unfortunately to my surprise, this new book of his is way shorter than his previous books for some strange reason; it was only 111 pages when I read it on my iPad. But I reckon it was meant to be as short as it is not much a novel given its narrative style.   There was not much story woven into it, the book in its entirety is about the words of a Greek guy, known as the Copt to the people of Jerusalem during their last days before the holy city was invaded by the French army in the name of the Pope in the month of July in 1099. He told the people of Jerusalem who began to crowd him where he stood, “I am a learned man, and yet, despite having spent all these years restoring antiquities, c...

Like I promised the other day, I am here to write about my 2 nd year experience. First, let us start with the academics. Back in September, I had quite a struggle deciding what modules to take. My first choices were MSIN7003: Organisational Change and ECON7006: Economics of Regulation, but because MSIN7003’s lectures clashes with my Macro lectures, I had to let it go. Then after a few days of looking and asking here and there, I finally decided to go with ECON7010: Economics of Development and up to this day, I am glad that I did.        ECON7006 This is where I learnt about how to regulate a monopoly business, because the stylized fact is that a monopoly does not act in the best interest of the public, or as we economists like to say it, monopolies are bad for social welfare. I was exposed to the ways how the regulators here in the UK, namely OFWAT, OFGEM, CAA come up with a practical framework in order to make these monopolies work for the betterment of the ...

Forgive me for such a long absence, I've been meaning to write for a while now, unfortunately I did not manage to find the right time to do so. My exams are already underway since the past couple of weeks, in fact I have only one more paper left for tomorrow, my economics of regulation. Fear not, I have done my fair share of revising for it, it is painstakingly scary since I personally view this to be my most dreaded subject this year. The subject is interesting since it involves a lot of real-world examples, but that is also why it is scary, more on that later. Last week alone I had three exams, one on Tuesday while the other two were back to back on Thursday and Friday. As soon as I got back home from doing my macro on that Thursday, I decided to go through my micro for tomorrow over some coffee, when all of a sudden my mom sent me this: I have a new cousin!  This surely was unexpected, but for some strange reason it managed to carve a smile on my face, at a time whe...

Last Sunday, March 3rd, my cousin came to visit me here in London. She was on her way back from the States where her husband had a business meeting of some sort. This was one hell of an experience for me as it was the very first time I had a family over, so yeah I was kind of excited about it (besides the fact that my mom would be mad at me if she learnt that I did not treat family right, plus this was actually my first time as a tour-guide. Shocking, I know, having been here for almost a couple of years, but I'd never once been the one to bring people around for a tour, guess I am that lazy, huh. To the left is a screenshot of what I had intially planned for them the night before. I had to admit, I was pretty nervous the night before. One of my biggest worry is not being able to wake up on time tomorrow morning to receive them in Heathrow since their American Airlines flight are scheduled to touchdown by 7:45 AM, ona Sunday! So, being someone who is famously known as incapa...

Later yesterday I went for a talk organised by MACFIS, it's about microfinance. I think that the talk was part of their whole trip to Grameen Bank in Bangladesh this September which at the moment, I have no intention of joining, but nevertheless, having formally studied development economics this year, I decided to go for the talk, just to see what new things about the field I might be able to pick up. Honestly though, there was supposed to be another talk given by my macro lecturer in UCL at 5pm about the relevance of maro researches with the real-world scenario, hence it quite a dilemma for me to choose which talk to listen to. So, about the talk. Overall the talk was pretty brief but direct to the point. It all began with a presentation from MERCY Malaysia, an NGO which more or less functions like the Red Cross or something like that. The lady invited us, students to actively participate in their cause, helping people all around the world. In a way this was some sort of an eye...