Funny cheque

This is the best cheque I have ever received. I got $5 per draw for two 50 mL blood samples = $10 - okay so that's just a good lunch - but it says CD1d T cells on it!!!

(It was for a lab that studies natural killer T (NKT) cells and autoimmunity. The reason they need such big volumes of human blood is because NKTs are rare.)

Last year's resolution

Last year I made a resolution to be a one-man "matching grant" organization: I would calculate how much I spent on nonessentials (e.g. eating out, leisure items, fun events, clothing (unlike most girls, I tend to consider new clothes nonessential) and so on) and give an equivalent amount to charity, including women's organizations, food aid, medical aid, and Christian organizations. Also, I resolved to spend an equal amount on wildlife conservation and animal welfare as I spent on my cat.

(In the end I decided not to include what I spent on bicycles in the calculation, since my bikes are my only vehicles and therefore essential. This includes the price of the Fuji Absolute that was stolen, which I am STILL upset about. Bike accessories and maintenance supplies, however, are included the calculations.)

As you can see, I did a decent job on the first part of the resolution and an absolutely dismal job on the second. These were my mid-year reports if you're interested.

The $25 to the Four Lakes wildlife rehab was actually guilt money to pay for the care of a baby red-winged blackbird that Lina brought home once. Damn cat. (If I donated to Friends of Ferals and the wildlife rehab center, would they cancel each other out?)

Even though it was my resolution for 2008, I'm going to try to keep doing this, although I'm done with publishing my accounts on the Internet.

My resolution for last year was a proof of concept to show that you don't have to have a lot of money (e.g. Bill Gates) and you don't have to be a "real adult" (i.e. not still in formal education) to be a mini-philanthropist. I'm blogging this not to show off but to show that it's possible.

Resolution for 2009: Learn how to use Linux!!! I bought a secondhand HP TC1100 and installed Fedora on it.

Q2-Q3 report on New Year's resolution

OK so I'm not making very good progress toward hitting my New Year's resolution for the middle 6 months of this year. Also, any strange people reading this please note that I don't have a lot of money so I'm not worth kidnapping or robbing. Any undergraduates reading this, please note that grad students don't make much. =P

The other striking thing about this is that I apparently didn't do anything fun in July. And that's the month of my BIRTHDAY summore. Oh yeah, I was stuck in lab doing RNA preps.

Also, still not sure whether or not to count the price of my new bike that was stolen after one week =( If I don't, that actually puts me quite close to my goal on the humanitarian/religious side.

Regarding the animal-oriented part of my resolution, I at least owe the Four Lakes Wildlife Center some blood money for raising (successfully!) this goofy-looking little bird that Lina brought home unhurt back in July. It turned out to be a Red-Winged Blackbird, strangely enough. Princess Furball's not very expensive except that she had some vaccinations in the spring, plus I bought Heartgard. According to my coworker who's a vet student, heartworm-infected cats, unlike dogs, don't show a lot of symptoms...then suddenly drop dead.

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I got into the Amazon Vine program, which is a program where you get free stuff to preview if other Amazon users have rated a lot of your reviews helpful. (Nyah nyah.) One of the 2 books I ordered this month is Passing the Plate: Why American Christians Don't Give Away More Money. In the first chapter, the authors lay out the incredible things that could be done, both in the religious and secular humanitarian [which obviously can overlap] spheres, if even only people describing themselves as "committed Christians"/regular churchgoers gave 10% of their income to charity. We're talking BILLIONS of dollars here. We could literally change the world.

In the second chapter, they provide detailed statistics from several different sources on the dismal reality: Most people give little to nothing. Significant proportions of people who describe themselves as Christians, regardless of denomination, say they give nothing to their church or charities. Americans Christians do give more than non-religious Americans and people from countries with less religious influence, but still less than Americans of other religions (not that they do so well either).

The 3rd chapter presents nine hypotheses as to why Christians don't give more. The "we can't afford to" excuse is refuted with the billions of dollars spent per year on candy, beverages, entertainment, sport vehicles, cars, fast food, etc. (since the majority of Americans are Christian, it's reasonable to assume that a good chunk of this luxury spending is by them).

Anyway, from doing my accounts and reading this book, I realize I need to buck up. I don't want to be a person who goes through life making stupid excuses. Again, if we don't count the stolen bike, my original target is attainable.

Drat - I just realized that since I use Microsoft Money to keep track of my accounts already, I could have gotten it to generate this spreadsheet automatically...

Leaky pockets

OK I've finally done my accounts again for the first time in more than a month. My credit card and cash accounts are nicely balanced, but according to Microsoft Money, my checking account is $200 less than what sanity and Chase.com say it should be. The virtual money went MIA some time in June - I've traced some of it to MS Money downloading the same transaction twice in several instances, especially for cash, but I'm really baffled. I've looked through my checkbook several times and can't find any checks unaccounted for, so I'm sure it's not some long-forgotten check ready to bite me in the backside (that happened a couple of times during my freshman year of college when I was new to the world of having more than $5 per week pocket money).

Remember my New Year's resolution to match all spending on non-essentials with donations to secular humanitarian and Christian organizations? I'm still trying to decide whether or not to include the $400 I spent on my stolen bicycle in that. =(

If I do, I have no hope of keeping that resolution. If I don't, I'm doing pretty well.

Still have to match spending on the cat with donations to animal welfare and wildlife conservation though...Princess Hairball got some vaccinations and heartworm preventative in May that cost quite a bit.

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I'm still sad about the bicycle, and I still look at all the bicycles I pass every day to see if one might be mine.

I can has munny!

I got my Economic Stimulus Payment from the IRS today. This is why it's good to do your taxes early.

The amount was slightly more than what I actually paid for the Absolute DX. At this point I probably will get another bike anyway from a friend of a friend (which one, and how much I pay, depends, since my dear potato boy has lined up several people who could sell, lend, or give me one).

So that means some bastard is riding around town on my economic stimulus payment.

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I was walking along Babcock today with Steve's bike, scanning the bike racks. Then some guy zoomed by on a silver blue hybrid with skinny tires. I chased him halfway up Bascom Hill, hid behind a tree while he parked and went into a building, then went to scout his bike. It turned out not to be - it didn't have a distinctive cosmetic flaw that mine came with, and had much more "honest" wear and tear than anyone could have put on mine in a week. Call me crazy, but that bike really isn't a popular model in Madison. That's the only specimen other than mine I've seen so far, while there are plenty of Fuji road bikes and the "Crosstown" comfort bikes.

Bank rant

WHY IS HSBC MALAYSIA SO MUCH MORE DAMN BLOODY MAFAN TO DEAL WITH THAN HSBC USA?!? MALAYSIAN BANKS SUCK!!!!

Seriously, HSBC is a multinational company...I can understand if their brick-and-mortar banks are run differently but why the toot can't they integrate online banking into the same system with the same type of security procedures?

I have this stupid dongle from HSBC Malaysia that generates a key that's required to log in to the website, and I'm terrified I'll lose it. Not only that, but I didn't use my account for over a year (I was here since December 2006, obviously) and it went inactive...which means that I can't even log in any more.

According to the website I have to go to my local branch to reset my online access...but if I was physically capable of going to the Bentong HSBC branch I wouldn't need to see my account on the internet.

To make matters worse last time I wanted to send some money home so my second sister, who was in junior college in Singapore, could go on a literature trip to the UK. HSBC USA said I couldn't do a wire transfer from my online savings account to my parents' HSBC Malaysia account. So I had to wire it from my Chase account instead...and guess what, the documentation from the wire transfer said it went via...

...HSBC USA.

Stupid banks.

(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.

Hot tub

Last night we had the Grad Christian Fellowship's women's retreat in New Glarus, which is a cute little fake Swiss town. I'm sure they had real Swiss immigrants back when it started in the 1850s, but now it's a tourist trap.

The two speakers were the Assistant Dean of Diversity and a sociology prof, who'd known each other for about two years professionally, but were each extremely surprised to find out that the other was Christian when we invited them to come and talk. Sociology and Asst. Dean of Diversity...go figure. I think in some fields - surprisingly, not the life sciences - announcing that you belong to an organized religion is like coming out of the closet.

The Chalet Landhaus is really nice but also awfully expensive, which is why the women's retreat is in February (off-season). But it's made of wood, has well-heated rooms, etc., plus a Jacuzzi. Someone commented that "if I had one of these in my house, I would be so relaxed." Well, there's a reason we don't have Jacuzzis in our houses:

Grad students aren't supposed to relax.

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One thing that Dr Turley mentioned was that she'd grown up poor (as had Dr Sanchez) and she'd been taught to hate rich people. (Look at the 5th item on her publication list, by the way.) I definitely didn't grow up poor, but our family was more or less lower-middle-class, and I wasn't taught to hate rich people but to look down on them - not explicitly, obviously, as my dad's a pastor, but you pick up on comments about spoilt kids, corrupt politicians, pampered housewives, nepotism, etc.

It drove me nuts to hear my Bengali friend, whose family in Dhaka had servants and drivers, insist that they weren't rich. It drives me nuts to hear my boyfriend, whose family has 4 cars total and whose parents own their own very nice house, insist that they're not rich. Not by relative neighbourhood or USA standards, maybe, but by the standards I grew up with they look like close to millionaires.

It's becoming very uncomfortable to me to realize that with the level of education I'm going to end up with, and the type of job that I'm probably going to have, I will be joining the ranks of the "rich people". I don't want to have to deal with investments and stocks and all that bullshit, and if there are any children in my future, I have an absolute horror of them growing up to be privileged brats. Maybe I can pull a John Wesley and give most of it away to continue living at the frugal-but-far-from-desperate lower-middle-class level that I'm used to.

Steve won't like it though. He wants his own aeroplane. We'll have to hash something out.

I can has munny bak?

When I'm tired and out of sorts I tend to lack self-control and end up doing stupid things on impulse.

Like, last Friday I had a cold and went home from work early and skipped the GCF fortnightly meeting, which was a pity because my friend Krista was giving a talk. Steve was a sweetheart and came over to make broccoli cheddar soup for me, which was REALLY sweet because he doesn't normally cook.

But then after he left I kind of went crazy and stayed up till 1:30 am doing my taxes. I was very exhausted and felt terrible, but I got my tax returns done! (haha suckers)

(Look at those eyes...that's what I mean when I tell you this cat is sexy.)

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. =)