(almost) 3-month update

It's been nearly 3 months and I'm on track for keeping my weird New Year's resolution so far.

Total amount of money spent on clothing, entertainment, stationery and art supplies, bike supplies, and eating out: $377.54.

Total donated to church, Fistula Foundation, Doctors Without Borders, and World Vision: $403.50.

I'm not trying to brag about being a generous person but I'm trying to make the point that even on a relatively small wage like a grad student stipend (my monthly take-home salary is slightly above $1100), you do not need all of that money. It's entirely possible to spend as much on helping other people as you spend on keeping yourself happy.

When I hear people complaining about being "poor college students", I want to give them "a tight slap", as Malaysians say. Except in a very few cases, if you're in college you are by definition not poor. Even if your family is poor, probably you're getting a scholarship equivalent to tens of thousands of dollars per year. Being able to attend university, and especially graduate school, is a huge privilege that's only available to a small fraction of the world, and if I hear you complaining that it makes you "poor" I WILL SMACK YOU.

(hmm...if you look in the sidebar on the World Vision donation page, the pie chart showing expenditures shows that their overhead is 14% of revenue now. It's gone down since the last time I looked. In a world where Christian organizations are often accused of being profiteering and corrupt - sometimes correctly - it's good to see good stewardship.)

I love Microsoft Money because I tend to be disorganized...before I started keeping accounts, the $ would disappear and I'd wonder where it went because I didn't think I spent frivolously often. Turns out the little things add up.

Also, MS Money revealed that I eat A LOT of food...around $160 a month or so in groceries, that's $40 a week. And it's not like I'm some kind of fancy gourmet...I'm just HUNGRY and I like fresh veg.

Lina's upkeep is really cheap so I'm waiting for it to build up before I find an animal welfare wildlife conservation organization to give "her" share to.

2008 New Year's Resolution

I don't normally make New Year's resolutions (e.g. "I will not bite my nails" has been a historical failure since age eight or so) but I've come up with what I think is a viable one this year:

• To match any amount I spend aside from regular groceries, household, and toiletry supplies with donations to NGOs doing food aid, health, education, social justice, or women's issues - both secular and Christian.
• To match ALL spending on my cat with donations to animal welfare (not animal rights) and wildlife conservation organizations.

This way I'll probably spend less money this year on silly stuff and waste less time Internet shopping.

Maybe it sounds a bit extreme to some people but I've found since leaving home and starting to earn my own money at age 18, that the less stuff I buy, the less stuff I want. Materialism is a self-perpetuating lust, and most of the hobbies I really enjoy require very little material.

Other things I'd like to do:

• Write at least 2 short fiction stories and submit at least 1 to Writers of the Future or a science fiction magazine.
• Draw more, and spontaneously.
• Reinstall Creatures 3/Docking Station on my computer and start tinkering with the CAOS (Creatures Agent Object Scripting) language.
• Call parents and sisters and "small" boy more often (sometimes I forget my brother has a phone because he never calls me...)
• Clean my bike more often.
• Cook for my boyfriend and make him take his vitamins regularly.
• Watch more movies.

It's gonna be a personally interesting year...my project is going to get into animal studies...I'll have to write a thesis and hopefully graduate...my parents just got transferred to Penang...two of my London cousins are getting married in the summer so I'll finally have a chance to go to England...a couple of Phases kakis are getting married in Malaysia...another couple is having a baby, which makes them the first friends my age to reproduce...my boyfriend is taking 2/3 of a year off school for an internship...his mum wants to show our respective cats in the summer (TICA lets you show household pets)...

Et cetera. 'Tis life. =)

Free rice!

Cool stuff: a website called FreeRice that throws multiple-choice vocabulary questions with adaptive difficulty levels a la GRE at visitors, and simultaneously allows them to donate ad revenue to alleviate starvation by showing small banner ads under the questions. I answered 30 right and 3 wrong and am at level 46/50 so far *syiok sendiri.

Have a go: