Ubiquitous

It’s Official!

// June 18th, 2009 // 16 Comments » // Academic

I will be going to Cornell next year! We got a nice financial aid package (appealing for more due to recent changes in my parents’ employment) but it’s decided! I’m super excited Thanks for all of your well-wishing.

Right now I’m trying to find cost-effective ways to get to Ithaca, New York from Vancouver, Canada. After a lot of searching, the best we came up with was to drive down to Seattle, fly to Philadelphia, fly to Newark, then fly to the Ithaca airport. Oh my goodness! I guess small towns and their tiny airports do have drawbacks. But what the heck, I’ll be able to say I’ve been to half a dozen US cities now.

I will keep you guys updated on this little ol’ journey of mine.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Summer Schedule

// July 22nd, 2008 // 13 Comments » // QOTW, Work/Volunteer

It’s easy to sum up my summer these past few weeks in Vancouver: working two jobs, sleeping as much as I can, splurging on end-of-summer shopping sprees, hanging out with friends, and having angsty momenets when the thought of university creeps on.

Technically, the first job I had this summer was working as an assistant in a travel agency, booking tours to Whistler, Banff, and wonderful filled-with-the-glories-of-mother-nature places in British Columbia. It was a parttime job that paid $10 an hour (ha! stil higher than what most of of my classmates are getting) with a short-tempered boss. Even though the job was as relaxing as it comes (and in the process allowing me to learn loads about the international tourism industry), I didn’t feel like it explored my full potentials.

So after three days of melancholy and lots of Facebooking while the boss was away, I quit that job and took up a fulltime job offer as a business receptionist in a furniture manufacturer.  The pay is a bit higher here but more importantly, I actually had a really nice girl train me and show me the ropes of the business. While the employment title sounds easy, it actually entails all the duties and responsibilities of the office manager. I’m in charge of ordering supplies, emailing pricing quotes to customers, overseeing the process of the furniture production from cutting to assembly.  I have a chance to walk around and examine all the cool pieces in the warehouse (reminds me of IKEA). So for once, I found a job I actually enjoy doing!

On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings, I have a five hour shift at an inbound call centre which coincidentally is a few metres away from the furniture place. That job was mind-boggling at first because the centre uses an elite computer dialing system with way too many bloody keyboard shortcuts. The companies’ clients include doctors, real estate agents, and government branches, who reroute their phones to our call centre after business hours (we run 24/7). So everytime someone calls, say a closed doctor’s office, we get the call and a screen pops up with prompts and message boxes and such. It’s AWESOME when there are no calls and the five or six people in the office are just sitting there reading. Maybe I’ll bring my laptop next time and watch a movie or something. Getting $50 bucks every night for that, pretty sweet!

Just for the hell of it, I want to work at Starbucks on my free evenings (can you say no life at all?! I don’t even know how I managed in that tight schedule of mine to lavishly spend on meals and shopping sprees - where is the time?!). I calculated that I should be making $5000 - $6000 bucks this summer. Ahh… financial independence is on the horizon!

QOTW: Do you have a summer job? What is it like? What do you plan to spend your hard-earned wages on?

Popularity: 5% [?]

Brainstorming

// July 13th, 2008 // 11 Comments » // Online Experience, Personal, QOTW, Work/Volunteer

Is it just me or has blogging/commenting died off now that summer has rolled around? I know I’ve been wandering around the four corners of the world (okay, more like two) so Ubiquitous has taken a backseat.  I’ve got to get back into the “blogging habit” again, instead of just staring in awe at all the fashion pieces in my Google Reader feed.

Anyway, I’ve been doing a lot of brainstorming in the last little while, about possibly starting a small (read: minuscule) business. Blogging for money does not count. And no, I’m not dropping out of university silly. It’s just something small on the side that may need a lot of time and effort at the startup, but will eventually just self-propagate forward while bringing in much-needed revenue. I had it on my to-do list this summer to form an idea and a structure, since I’ve got all this post-IB free time/utter boredom.

The obviously possibility is doing something design-related on the Internet. Whether it’s providing web design service, selling premade layouts, or - if I must stoop so low - selling teen-bopper glitter graphics (brb, need to puke). Watch me go underground and resurface as some ditzy fourteen year-old selling BlEnDz & gLitTeRz of Keira Knightley… or was it Ashley Tisdale who’s in fashion at the moment?! Lmao. *shifty eyes* Okay that HOPEFULLY, won’t happen.  As for the other options, since I haven’t even bothered to fully customize the layout for my BLOG, I doubt I will proceed to design others. It’s no that I’m bad at coding or designing (I’m rather proud of my contribution to Youth Parliament as the Minister of Internet Affairs - what an er… interesting title *cough*), it’s just I’m not sure it’s my calling. I’ve made a meager amount $1200 bucks doing web designing in the last few years. A lot of the sites I did were volunteer/non-profit work, so I didn’t charge for them. I could still take on contracts, but this isn’t what I’m looking for for an enterprise.

The next idea is something that a friend has been pitching to me on MSN for the oh… past 2 agonizing hours. Ladies and gents, don’t you find yourselves under attack once you let the world know that you can put together a website? What my friend wanted was a niche site that works as a rebate program for large businesses such as Ebay, Amazon, or Chapters. Basically, we link products on our page and offer discounts (original discounts from the Giants mentioned above, sort of as affiliate marketing) to a target audience which we decided will be college students. The margin between the two discounts is our profit. I told him that from a business perspective, it’s a good and simple idea. But from the programming/e-commerce standpoint, it’s just not worth the effort. What we have to consider are Search Engine Optimization, PageRank, site programming, manual updates (eep!) etc. I’ve always been the pessimist who believed that little business startups do not win when they 1) compete against or 2) work with big corporations, a lesson taught by experience. Oh I miss the naivety shown in my peers which I used to possess.

Option number three will be left for future considerations, as I missed my opportunity this summer. In succint terms, I would basically purchase bulk quantities of unique and trendy goods (purses, handcrafted random things, cards, ipod covers and whatnots) as well as raw materials from China at a very discounted price - haha knowing all the hidden meccas with cheap goods really come in use now - ship it over, and sell them online either as is (Ebay) or remade (Etsy, for the raw materials). I will start small of course as I can

• Ship in my own luggage whenever I go back
• Get my friends (I swear 1/2 of the ppl at my IB Prom are in China right now) to store it in their luggages, and pay them a small service fee
• Or ship in bulk containers - isn’t that what Walmart is doing?! Lol.

Hmm… now that I wrote this down, it sounds like I’m about to open my own Online Dollar Store. OKAAAY! I seriously need something totally less lame/cliché/financially impossible. All those ppl on Etsy who are becoming rich with handcrafted items one sale at a time - I really admire them.

I could always try some subscription thing, start a new magazine (oh boy!), join affiliate networks (read: SCAM!!), or well… get a job.

QOTW: Have you ever wanted to start a business (of ANY sort)? What kind of ideas did you have and how did they turn out?

Popularity: 6% [?]

Tuition Woes

// April 6th, 2008 // 35 Comments » // Academic, QOTW

It’s official, one more month until the dreaded May IB exams. I have 8 exams in the first week, 3 in the second, and 5 in the last week. Then I’m hopping on a flight to China =D

So if I die from the internet, you know why.

Also, I decided that I will be attending Berkeley next year (go bears!). I saved this as a draft yesterday, and it’s surprising how quickly opinions can change. Right now, I’ve hit some kind of rut in regards to my future and in particular, my post-secondary education. I really don’t know what to do. Tuition and living expenses at UC Berkeley costs over US$40 000. Let me break it down for you.

COSTS AND EXPENSES

• Housing for a year: $10 999 (Cheapest possible as I will be living in a triple, which basically is three people squeezed into a room meant for two to save money, a basic meal point plan is included)
• Registration and fees: $8 384
• Non-resident tuition: $19 620 (this one’s a killer)
  
• Books and supplies: $1 000 (they gave an estimate of $1200, but if I buy all second-hand, I might cut it down a bit)
• Personal expenses: $800 (again, this is almost half of their estimate, I think I can manage if I keep clothes buying and eating out to a minimum)
• Transportation, Medical, Miscellaneous: $700 (I’m trying to see if my current insurance covers the U.S.)

——————–
TOTAL: US $41 503 per school year

STUDENT RESOURCES

• Maximum parental contribution: US$10 000/year (this means emptying out their retirement savings, and putting the $200 000 they owe on the apartment and the car on hold)
• Estimated summer earnings: $2 800 (working at average $10/h full time for two months, minus tax)
• Estimated school year earnings: $2 000 (working at average $12/h 4h/week for seven months)
• High school scholarship: $1 000
• Pending Bank of Montreal Student Loan: $10 000 (this is their max, I doubt I’ll get all of it)
• Pending BC Government Student Aid: $5 000 (this is also their max, haven’t seen any one get it yet)
• Relatives’ contributions: 3500 Chinese Yuan –> $500

——————–
TOTAL: US $31 300 for the first year only

STILL NEED: $10 203*

*Assuming the impossibility of no extra expenses. In my second year, the university will provide some financial aid but the bank interests will go up, aack. My parents’ contributions will be cut by half and I’ll probably work two jobs in the summer.

To fill that void, I have been applying to every single scholarship I can get my hand-on (hate the fact that most of them either say “American citizens only” or “will be attending Canadian institution”). I’ve also started writing letters to local businesses and other banks/boards/anything-with-a-mailing-address in the hope of securing some - any - donations. Berkeley has been sort of a dream school and it’d be devastating if I miss this opportunity due to financial struggles. In addition, I’m very conflicted between my aspirations and placing such a heavy burden on my parents.

My friend (who’s going to USC and came within a hair of winning their scholarship, but didn’t) and I came up with the following ideas to get some funds:

1. LEGALIZED CHILD PORN - any takers? Yes yes? Now hiring actors. Hot people only =D
2. A Facebook application that takes the world by storm, hoo-hah!
3. Bank robbery - acceptance offer could be rescinded on criminal record, never mind
4. Selling CDs of the film my friend made in IB Film at $5 each - he sold 4 copies already, only 7996 more to go!

Some of them still need a little bit of fine-tuning XD. In the mean time, I have two questions/requests to ask of you dear readers.

QOTW: can you think of more ways to pay for costly university tuitions?

And see that little orange box in the sidebar that says “Donate”? Any amount, no matter how small and how big, will be greatly appreciated. The donor’s name and any other info you like posted will be permanently posted on my site. A heart-felt thank you from me to you!

UPDATE

• Thank you Momo for the first donation ever! Everyone go give her some love =D
• I now have a progress bar in the sidebar, documenting my progress.  Amounts added include online earnings (not part-time jobs or anything mentioned in resources), additional scholarships, and donations.

Popularity: 5% [?]