In between start and end

So I wasn't able to achieve all of my 2021 resolutions... and I kinda expected that. My intention was not to check as many boxes as I can from that list. It was to just get myself moving closer towards my bigger goals and with that, I can proudly say that I've succeeded!

My 2021 resolutions were

1. Graduate with at least 3.5 CGPA

2. Build micro habit system

3. Upload more kpop covers that I did in 2019

4. Rebuild that emergency fund

5. Upload a blog post at least once a month

The only goals I didn't achieve were those which were no longer my top priorities as much as I thought it was.

Sure, I love to have myself upload a post here every month. Trust me, I did draft something each month. But I guess, there's just other things I wished to spend more time on than writing a post for the sake of it.

A lot of things happened and I kinda lost touch from them since I didn't record the events at all. Well, to me, that is somewhat a good sign because I used to write when things get tough to vent out my frustrations. So when I write less, it also means that I am less stressed.

All in all, I'm truly happy this year. My life received so many intangible blessings and intrinsic satisfaction. I learnt a lot about myself. I achieved so much within my own capacity that matters a lot to me alone. It just felt good to be happy about yourself on your own. I kinda stop worrying wanting to show people what I can do and what they might think of it. Sometimes, I get proud of myself for doing things for myself. I just love that I am always my own priority, as selfish as that sounds oops.

But it's true. My ultimate goals won't matter if I'm NOT doing those for myself.

So to end the year, here are my 2022 resolutions that I'm not putting much thought on in listing down because I already have the bigger picture in mind.

1. Finish 3 self-help books.

2. Invest RM5000 in total.

3. Limit my spending to lesser than RM600 per month.

4. Reach 3500 skips a day.

5. Be more generous with friends and family.

6. Complete a Javascript course.

7. Complete a Laravel framework project tutorial.

8. Fast every Monday and Thursday for 6 months (excluding Ramadhan month).

I do have more smaller goals but I'm putting the hard or almost impossible ones here so that I am more keen in pushing myself further.

It might seem a lot to focus on in that list, but I've actually been partly doing all of those in my life already. I'm just enhancing what I've already been doing so that I could stick with it longer to reap more benefits in the future.

I'm so excited for the upcoming year. I'm saving so much for a travel trip and hoping I could save the amount I expected by the end of 2022. Pray for me!

On an ending note, I pray that everyone reading this have an amazing and blessed year ahead! InsyaAllah~

Dropping by,

After finishing internship and going through all that, I was lucky to be offered a job by my internship company - KPMG. 

Funny thing was, a day after KPMG called me, another company decided to proceed me with the next interview stage. Talk about timing. Didn't even put much hope on the first round!

However, I declined the follow-up interview invitation on the spot and had a hard time moving on with it, because as much as I'd like to work in KPMG, this company actually aligned more with my career interest... Long story short, I think that regret lessen after finding out how much KPMG is paying me my starting salary haha. Also, the fact that I am still part of the development team is actually good enough. 

I respect people who moved on with all their interviews and end up with multiple job offers, because interviews (especially multiple stages) is actually very mentally taxing and if I managed to secure one good offer, you best bet I don't want to go through the rest of the trouble only to decline it later.

Now, the department told me to start next week which means that I only have like 3 weeks break from my 6-months internship. Honestly, it's quite sad but I guess, I should feel relieved that I don't have to worry about job applications any further.

I stopped applying mid-August and all those companies got back to me within a month - some earlier than the rest. I had interviews while I was busy finishing up my internship report and presentation, but thank God for work from home. I literally scheduled the interviews in-between my meetings.

There's a lot of lesson learnt from the entire process, which somehow helped me to understand my rights as an employee better. I'm glad I got a taste of how hard real job interviews can be. I highly recommend fresh grad to savour the different experiences BUT didn't say it was gonna be all rainbows and sunshine.

If there's one thing I got out of all this, it would be to give your best in every single job application. Treat each one of them like it's the only job you want while applying, without seeing desperate. The results might be in your favour if you show them how great of a match you are.

For now, goodbye job interviews, goodbye my last ever student break... Hello, adulthood and commitments.

Dropping by,

Thinking of recommending some songs I got hooked to on a daily/weekly/monthly basis. And well since blog is my only safe haven, why not share it at the place where nobody usually comes right? 

Disclaimer: Like any other commitment-related stuff, I can't promise that I will have a part 2 onwards BUT I'll try my best to not ditch it so soon hehe.

Song Pick is basically a series with a list of song recommendations that I've recently discovered and enjoyed for the past month or so. I think my music taste is very typical pop genre and a little ballad depending on my mood. I do listen to hiphop and raps, but often times when I do listen to those it's either because someone recommended it to me or my favorite artists have something to do with it. All in all, I hope you can give some of them a listen!

When I first heard this, I thought it was just a nice happy summer song. But when I wanted to sing along with it, I realized that behind the summery vibe the lyrics were actually very motivational.

I'm currently in the phase of feeling insecure as a fresh grad, so this song literally came just in time to tell me that "it's okay if you don't have anything you want to do and it's okay to walk a little slower".

This song has an English ver. as well, but to me, Korean lyrics are best when you understand the actual phrases they use. Not gonna lie, I kinda felt reassured about my life after listening to this.

I'm so biased with this recommendation lol. This song is by the three PENTAGON maknae a.k.a the trio who produced a lot of other PENTAGON's songs. Kinda like the 3RACHA of PENTAGON if I can steal that idea haha.

Cerberus is the 3-headed dog who guides the gate of hell according to the Greek methodology. Basically, they're comparing themselves to it since they're the viscous trio.

I like when a song has a good hook and this one definitely has that! At Kino's part (0:42)! 

Ok, confession time. I actually have not watched the last episode of Kingdom oops. But I'm already spoiled and know the entire ranking so it's fine. Don't feel like wasting 3 hours of watching iKON losing lol.

But since the final song was pre-released, I listened to this song before seeing their performance stage and boy, did I really like it. No wonder this song topped the charts so quickly!

My fav has to be Sangyeon's high note at the end. The live performance literally gave me goosebumps!!

Not a new song but I only properly listened to it after discovering it from SuperStar YG. It's one of those sad BP song. Not that they have a lot of it anyway but I really liked 'Stay' so this song has a similar vibe.

The chorus says it all.

My brother have been weirdly obsessed with Stray Kids after founding out they sang for one of the anime's ED (ending theme song). He was surprised upon finding out they sang 'God's Menu' and that I made a dance cover of the song last year(?). Then Kingdom happened so we talked about SKZ a lot since I also heard more of them from Kingdom.

Now, he's at that fanboying stage and his bias is Seungmin haha. Since they just came back with 'Thunderous', naturally, my bro made me listen to their latest album and this song was one of our common like. He isn't really into heavy EDM songs so I guess this song successfully made the cut. 

P.S. He also wasn't into 'God's Menu' actually boohoo. 

Not a fan of Wanna One but because I watched the web drama "Love Revolution", I decided to give his comeback a listen which I turn out to quite enjoy.

This is an old song by g.o.d so it sounds very 1st gen kpop. But my boys sounds good singing some oldies and if you like some Hospital Playlist OST vibe, check this one out for that same OST-worthy feeling. Best yet, it's on Spotify too!

Here's a video of the performance for a good view of their vocal harmonization.

P.S. If you didn't know, Hospital Playlist's OST are remakes of songs from the 90s too!

I guess Imma end the list here. Just keeping the list short one at a time, even though I have more on repeat haha.

Dropping by,

We have finally come this far. I'm almost finishing 6 months of real working experience without even stepping into the office at all or get to meet my colleagues in real life, but that's okay cos I really like working from bed home. 

I don't like to admit that I've changed BUT I definitely felt like my thought process changed so much compared to the first half of 2021. 

My performance during my internship wasn't exactly applaudable though. I never quiet stand out among the other interns and my image to my seniors were probably that I'm the kind to "only do as I told" or a "yes man". Honestly, I did only deliver what was requested and even so, it felt like I've done enough. I guess I'm not that ambitious after all haha.

However, I love that my job allows me to have a fair share of work-life balance. It's an unspoken rule that nobody messages outside of office hours and I really like that boundary.

During my free time, I've been really into self-development stuff, specifically investment and coding side projects. 

For the first one, I started from learning about personal finance to the benefits and strategies of investing especially for beginners and youngsters. For someone who likes to have plans, understanding more about healthy financial strategies and what should be the smarter money decision kinda get me into that mindset where I should act as if I am already making a big amount of money even when I haven't.

I also joined a couple of webinars regarding investments and even found good YouTube contents explaining more on the financial stuff, which opened my eyes a lot. I also started reading some financial books, though this one is taking me forever to finish but I am indeed making some progress which I'm still catching up on.

And on top of that, I've been trying to be better at programming whereby I started to play with codes based on my own initiative. Quiet scary at first but finally convinced myself to start somewhere.

At first, I started because of the pressure at work but then I found a really good tutorial by chance, which made me realize that personal projects don't have to be 100% original. Like I can literally follow a tutorial on YouTube, style it in my own way and call that mine. So, I've been trying to do that, even though it's quiet hard to keep up especially when I'm always stuck with errors related to different operating system (aka out of my control). The amount of troubleshooting is kinda tiring to say the least. But I have hope in completing the entire course so I hope I can share the link to this project in the future 🙏

Lastly, of course since I am left with a couple more weeks, I have started to apply for permanent roles and some graduate programmes. After talking to my team leader on some potential career paths and the different technologies, I don't think I'll be staying in KPMG after the internship just because I realized that they don't have the software structure that I wanted to learn more of. 

I'm still at that exploration stage and I'm glad that I kinda have something else that I can look forward to from another company. So, currently still hoping for a reply from some of my applications haha.

Despite the situation being very disheartening lately in Malaysia, I am very grateful that I am able to feel at ease from a personal level. I can only hope and pray better days will come, also days where I can meet my friends, have sleepovers and go karaoke cos damn, I miss singing my hearts out 😞

Side note: Please pray that I can get my internship report done so I can have more time for myself lol.

Dropping by,

I saw someone posted on Twitter, where she was encouraging SPM students to further their studies in computer science because being in the tech industry could guarantee you really good salary in the future. 

Despite some kind of truth mentioned, seeing how the quote retweets mostly talked about the stress and that it isn't worth the money at all made me ponder upon it. A lot of them also said how hard coding is for them.

Throughout my secondary education, I remembered the subject that gave the greatest satisfaction to me was accounts. Funny thing was, I only felt it towards the final revision classes leading up to SPM. It was the time I successfully balanced out my Kunci Kira Kira for the first time by my own effort. 

Being in the extra class with top students, I was always behind. Those who take up accounts as an extra subject were mostly those who guaranteed an A from it. Me on the other hand, was the total opposite, yet I remembered being super happy after I got my SPM results and glad that I stick through with it (despite my teachers countlessly asked me to consider dropping the subject due to my poor trial results).

Accounts was the subject which I considered paling berjasa to discovering my career interest.

When I was finding my path after SPM, like everyone else, I had a lot of doubts. After crossing out what I disliked, I ended up with either IT or engineering diploma. And because I kinda hated formulas and physics, I listed IT as the higher option.

After enrolling in Computer Science, I expected myself to be able to write codes and create some cool apps once I graduate. 

IT or Computer Science is a challenging course but what course isn't tbh. Still to me, it is one of the simplest compared to other science and math courses.

Most importantly, Computer Science is the only STEM course that lets you be creative without needing any artistic skill. That's when I realize you don't need to be good at drawing and painting to be creative because with coding, website interface is literally your canvas.

So to answer that tweet and the quote retweets, yes I think computer science brings a lot of opportunities these days due to the high demand and you should consider it if it interests you. 

But from the perspective of someone who doesn't have negative ideas off of coding, just like accounts, coding is really rewarding for me. I don't mean in terms of money, instead in terms of work satisfaction. 

In every small task you're tryna complete, it requires some sort of problem solving. With coding, finding the solution is often visually present in the form of success or error. 

Like Kunci Kira Kira, balancing the sheets was rewarding because it shows that my calculation was right. In coding it feels rewarding every time I got to clear out an error.

When you're just starting out, it sucks to repeatedly face the same error and I think that's why a lot of people find it difficult. Problem solving in coding is not just about finding the missing puzzle, it's about identifying why it raised the error and the most efficient solution that won't disrupt the other code pieces. In order to do that, you have to think of 1001 ways and attempt them before finding the one that is most suitable to your current project.

Going through that 1001 ways is the tiring part and the part which feels like you will never get the right answer. Also, the part where you might get sleepless nights from. I learn after coding consistently on the job as a software developer intern that you gotta embrace every error you get. Each error introduce you to another way in improving your code solution. There is no better teacher than your errors. Honestly, it's why practice is crucial in this field and I finally see that now.

Also, I think the pressure given within the organization and the team matters a lot. The difference between healthy pressure and toxic pressure can really determine your job satisfaction.

Here's My Plan or "목표가 생겼다" (literally "I Found A Goal"), is a 4-episode MBC mini-series starring some of our small rising stars, Kim Hwan Hee and Kim Do Hoon. 

It was released pretty recently on May 19, 2021 and I'm surprised how little attention this drama got. Even I happen to found it by chance through another web drama.

I felt a bit burdened when people ask for my opinion. I appreciate if people think my input could be some sort of help but it always gets to me that the advice probably was a good advice for myself but not to the person I'm advising.

Being an opiniated person, putting myself in a selfless position when giving other people advice is hard. When I told others to have self-control when I am struggling with it myself. Or when I advised to avoid impulse purchase but later proceed to do so myself. Or when I said it's doable but proceed to fail doing it myself. 

I felt worse for giving those advice than to fail doing the thing itself. It's as if I declared to people that I'm prone to be successful doing it, when in reality, there's so many variables to consider as well.

Sometimes I hardly remember the failures I had bcos it was never considered as failures. I only see the progresses and aim higher thinking there's never anything to lose. Then when someone came to me and ask me how did I do it, I... don't quite know. I can't recall how much I struggled achieving it and thus, I don't have an answer to that.

That is why I probably suck at teaching and explaining. Even in my current intern job, whenever I solve the issue and move on to a new one, I always almost never remember how I managed to solve it. All I remember is how complicated it was and how long it took me to figure out one small fix. So when my team leader asked me, what exactly did the code do, I will always freeze in silence. It's not that I didn't know because duh, I fixed it. But it's just that it was hard for me to explain because the whole process is so complicated in my head.

I tried to be quick on my feet for a simplified explanation but often times ended up with my team leader just reading line by line of code himself.

I guess that's how it is in life too. When there's so many variables to consider and an advice isn't just a lengthy yes or no, but instead an entire lifestyle to put into picture, things will probably be easier to show than explained.

Like self-control isn't only about avoiding instant gratification and opting for delayed gratification, but it should be about finding out why does it have to be later and not now.

When I wanted to buy a PENTAGON lightstick while I was in Korea and even had that in the top of my wishlist. I found out that it was out of stock in all the kpop stores there so the planned purchase didn't happen. When I went to their concert in 2019 without a lightstick, I thought I might as well buy it some other time as there wasn't a reason to buy it in the nearest future.

You can tell I've been eyeing it for a long time since. Even the Shopee store that I wanted to buy from later not only marked up the price after a couple of months, but they also turned into an official store recently. Which means that from not being able to use the Shopee coins, to now being able to save more using them. Despite not having a budget for it, I immediately bought it during Shopee's 6.6 opening sale because of how good the deal was. I thought it was an impulse purchase at first, but then I realized how much I've been waiting for a good reason to buy and I guess, the right time just happen.

To me, that was how my self-control looks like. It's not something you would want to hear when asking for an opinion whether or not you should buy something, right?

But even so, there's no obligation for you to take the advice. We're too different to have a one answer fits all. I guess what I'm trying to say is, no external validation should be more defining than your own opinion. At the end of the day, the best choice is the choice you made for yourself.

Dropping by,

Growing up as the only girl in the family is really nice. It indirectly means that there are no comparison between the prettier daughter, the nicer daughter, the cleverer daughter etc. Literally a blessing.

Gladly, I have 2 brothers who aren't any better than me in the aspects that I'm good at - which means I'm the better one in academic and rather at par with my brother in terms of our extracurricular. Heck I even entered a public speaking competition representing my school once while my brother represented his, and I won 3rd place while he didn't. Idk how that miraculously happened but in my eyes, I'm confident that what he can do, I can do better.

Sadly, my family really don't see me being the "better child". 

In fact, me winning a competition alone < my brother participating in a team competition, or 

me getting better CGPA and dean's list for 4 sem < my brother with 1 dean's list on the 1 semester I did badly on. Yeah, I get compared to and things I am proud of are degraded instead.

But I'm always told that they love us equally, yet they don't act like they do. Are parents always this hypocritical?

I didn't even realize it hurts my self-esteem as much as it did until years later. I always thought I should do better and show more impressive results then maybe, they'll see my capability and acknowledge it one day. And honestly, in my 23 years of life, that almost never happened. Yet I never stopped trying my best anyway, bcos I reap what I sow. What I do today is for future me to gain, not for my parents or anyone else.

It's when I realize that my parents will never celebrate my achievements with me despite how big or small it is, that makes me stop hoping. It's nice when people tell me that my parents are so supportive when they let me do whatever I want, but little do people know, they really don't care what I do. And I get hurt by that too.

The bright side is that I'm forced to grow up faster knowing that they aren't an option for me to turn back to. 

It's funny how families don't have to have a constant argument or even be broken, for it to be hopeless. But at the end of the day, they are always our biggest weakness and I genuinely despise that.

Dropping by,

This post isn't to sound like I'm bragging nor it's meant to sound like I'm romanticizing my job. It's just my personal takeaway after 2 months undergoing the internship. I know my past few posts has just been all about my internship lol but bear with me. 

My first month went by pretty fast, maybe bcos it was WFH since the beginning of my time here. But everyone in my team is very welcoming and helpful. It was easy to connect with them so I never felt like I was struggling alone. The work style of my team also really suit my personal work style - fast response, frequent update and easy to ask questions with little to no misunderstanding. I just really like how everyone is always quick on their feet. I always hated when people don't take their work seriously (*cough* uni assignment group *cough*) and I'm glad everyone is so professional with their work here.

Despite being in a developer team, my company (KPMG), isn't a full-fledge software house. We are just a small software team and I can tell my seniors are also learning as they go through each project. To me, I really like that. I like how I don't have to be perfect and that we are all in the same boat despite our experiences. It helps to know that they can understand me if I'm stuck anywhere with my task considering I'm new to both the project and the programming language.

Another thing I'm grateful to my team is how they give me a lot of flexibility with my work. They seem to always understand me being a little slow bcos I'm still inexperience and they never push me too hard to complete my work. Of course, I also try my best to get it done ASAP so that I can do other work but it's the fact that I don't feel pressured, which makes it more enjoyable. There isn't too much of unrealistic expectation which is also good. The most they expect is for us to get the job done within the time given and that honestly goes without saying lol.

I'm also pretty blessed to start off with the tasks that I'm most familiar with. This is pure coincidence that I am assigned to do front-end and ended up continuing doing so for awhile. Then after that only am I assigned to the more complicated back-end. But even so, everything happen in small steps and I can really feel things are naturally making more sense as I go. It makes things less overwhelming and more interesting the more I do it.

But one thing about this job that may make or break it for some people is the little guidance you are expected to receive. I guess coding a project in a team forces you to not only understand other people's code but also requires you to straight away implement what you've learn without much time to go in-depth. Your knowledge is bound to be in small patches and you should be okay with not knowing everything. If you dwell too long on fully understanding one thing, you'll end up delaying the team and nobody wants that.

The key to cope with this kind of work environment is to jot down all terms and hints the seniors throw at you. You are kinda expected to understand the complicated terms they are using but there is no wrong with not knowing them too. I get that it gets reaaally overwhelming when you hear a bunch of new words and different complicated ways to solve something you thought was simple, but it helps if you take it all in first without questioning everything and slowly Google things one at a time. Don't stress yourself with all the new terms - worse come to worse, you'll just end up asking your senior again and again. But naturally, you'll come across the terms again and it'll make a lot more sense for you to figure it out that way.

The last reason why I enjoy it here is because of the never-ending task they have. This is one of the things that scares me initially. Like am I able to cope with working on multiple projects and all? But I guess they're manageable as long as you are discipline and work on your time management. It definitely isn't impossible. It just requires some sacrifices like having to study and make up to your time being slow at work, during non-work hours. As an intern, the worse thing that can happen to you is either not learning anything or not having anything to do. But out of  45 days at work, I don't have anything to do for only 4-5 days and the rest of the days, I'm literally grinding. I like that the culture is fast pace and it really sets the expectation high on my future career path.

Admittedly, this is the kind of environment that really suits me. It's weird to say but I really do feel like I belong working here. There are some imposter syndrome going on but I just consider it as a normal thing to feel and that everyone is bound to feel that at some point in their working life.

Last tip: Get involve in a local community of programmers! I learnt so much after joining a Telegram group consisting of programmers in the languages that I use. It's a good place to know the people in your industry.

Dropping by,

Yesterday, I hanged out with my uni friends and it had been so long since we met that we straight talked about how internship has been for us. To think that we are already on our own separate path instead of just separate classes is such a weird feeling. Reminded me of how strange it felt when my high school friends are doing totally different things after graduating high school. Technically, I did spend an entire 5 years with these friends since my diploma, like it did with my high school friends, so the feelings were very deja-vu to me.

What was more amusing is that, we took different courses in degree but we somehow ended up interning in the same job position. My internship is literally the exact one for my course. Therefore, my other 2 friends, ended up in the same position bcos unlike me, their skillset really suit this job as a developer. Previously, these friends of mine represented my university for a software competition so everybody around us knew that they really would suit developer jobs despite their respective courses. Which really makes me feel like I don't belong due to my lack of skills, but at the same time I'm really grateful as this is like a dream job of mine and I didn't had to try as hard as them to get it.

One common thing about us is that we enjoy learning about coding and have somewhat complicated logical thinking, which makes this job very fun for us. And I really like how all of us can relate with the job that we're doing although our company's software structure are very different from one another. 

IT is a really interesting subject bcos you can never really know too much. There's always different kinds of frameworks and software and practices that you have never even heard of before. There's so much experimenting and new ways to do stuff, which both scares but excites me at the same time.

My friends and I have very different style and approach to our working life. For example, I'm mostly working from home and so far it has been fine for me. I think I've learnt to adapt and structure my life around it ever since online classes. My recent semester's results have definitely convinced me that I can manage. The diploma internship that I had was also enough for me to feel how working in office should feel like so I don't really crave much for it.

However, my friends have yet to experience working at an actual company because previously their internship were only within university settings, so this is a totally new experience for them and they like it more working in the office. There are still lots of setbacks from all of our experiences like having half of the team working in the office and another half at home, or having no team and just one superior, or having difficulty in getting enough guidance bcos everything is done virtually. I think there's gonna be some gain and some loss anywhere you ended up in.

The thing that makes me so glad is how I'm happy despite how confusing things are and I get to challenge myself while doing a job that I'm so scared of. I also really appreciate my team leader bcos despite having so many meetings and calls, he still took the time to teach me the little things and spend time answering personal calls bcos I'm just always lost and confuse with how things work - coding or not. I think having a helpful leader is important to ensure this online thing works well and I can tell from first hand experience that people who guide you well are the one who would give better result to your growth, given you allow yourself to be guided. 

It's better to be the stupid one who don't know what to ask because you don't know almost anything yet willing to learn, than act smart when you are just as clueless, bcos at least you're opening more eyes to different ways of thinking and approaching things. The more experienced you are, the more you don't realize how newbies sees things so people tend to assume they'll understand it all. But it's your job to let these experienced people know that you don't understand and ask for extra guidance bcos being quiet isn't what's gonna make you grow but being uncomfortable is. Although I always felt uncomfortable to disturb my team leader over petty things these past 3 weeks, I also know that he needs to know where I'm at to help me, so raising my concern becomes my responsibility in determining my own growth.

It's always faster to ask help than dwell on the problem longer than you should. A lecturer of mine used to tell me, "If you dwell on the question for more than 5 minutes, you are in a big trouble". I used to think that it was so stupid to just give myself 5 minutes to have things figured out especially when they're unfamiliar, but if I take that advice with a grain of salt, it does make sense. I shouldn't dwell too much alone bcos asking for help will not only solve it faster but there might also be things you misunderstood earlier and would never realize that unless you speak up. I think that's what makes asking questions a great piece of advice.

Tips to be less scared when asking question: Everybody starts with not knowing everything. It's okay to be at the start.

Dropping by,

I started my first day of internship with the hope that I am gonna be doing something IT-related yet far from coding and all those stressful moments trying to debug errors... only to find out that I am doing exactly that. For the next 6 months!

If you've read my Internship Application Story, you'd know that I am an intern, or Vacation Trainee as they call it, at KPMG Malaysia.

Stepping into the company (even though virtually), I can really feel the sense of belonging and very friendly working environment at this place. One of my favourite things about this company is how structured things are, but some might say otherwise because even though they might tell you the things you need to know early, this company sure doesn't tell you a lot.

It's my first time working in an MNC company and a firm as big as this so I'm both impressed and weirded to know that they really go all out to take care of their image. I won't go into detail bcos that'll be a little P&C but just know that the security and branding is their top priority. Like they really value those. There's even few assessments we have to pass for them to ensure that.

Moving on to what I do here. After meeting with the Head of Department on my first day, I was then assigned to a team. Basically it's a team of software developers and testers. So obviously, now I will be trained to do just that.

It's both interesting and scary to me bcos I really am not confident in my programming skills. Like it's the one thing I'm most insecure about. But I don't particularly hate it. In fact, I enjoy coding - granted I understand what I'm doing. And what's more fascinating is that I'll be working on a project that does not even use the programming language that I am familiar with haa

Instead of the good ol' PHP, I'm now forced to learn to program in Python. I'm actually really scared when I heard of Python because it's such a new and advanced language... while I'm just here being basic. It's one of the languages that I find difficult to approach at my current newbie level but now I don't really have a choice.

Frankly speaking, this current situation felt like a dream to me. It's weird that I was hired without them actually knowing my exact skills, but I am actually very thankful for that. It means that I have been given the opportunity of life to try out the one career I've always been very scared to try. I'm actually very excited to see how much I can grow through this internship because I can already feel myself making a little progress after just a week.

As a CS or IT student, one thing that your university (at least for me) don't teach is how the people in industry setup their working environment. I feel like this should be a class of its own. How can nobody ever teach me about Git? I've heard of Github a lot but how come nobody ever tell me properly what it is and how it works? It's such an important tool to collaborate when you code with a team. I've always been curious to know how people "compile" their codes especially when there's more than 4-5 people in a group (like it is in university) so it was very interesting to find out that Git was the answer.

On top of that, I am currently working from home unless told otherwise and it seems that it's gonna stay that way for sometime (or even til the end of internship, who knows). Surprisingly after getting my life back in the last sem, I don't feel too stressed out about it. In fact, I really like wfh.

For example, I'm usually very sleepy by noon and I remembered how I used to sleep in the toilet at my previous internship bcos I couldn't keep my eyes open in front of my laptop and was too embarrassed to sleep at my desk. Then at lunch, I used to worry a lot on where to eat and how much I'm gonna spend on food for the day bcos eating out will cost a lot and I don't want to spend too much of my already-limited-internship-allowance. And when it was time to go home, I used to always feel weird if I go home earlier than the permanent employees bcos it seems that interns need to stay longer every time (even when we literally have nothing else to do lol). Lastly, commuting to work. Commuting is one of the most tiring part of working. Not only does it take a lot of your time doing nothing, it also means that you have to leave your house way earlier which equals to less sleep time. Personally, that is my least favourite thing about working in the office!

I am very blessed to start my internship at home. Some might say it's a bit of a loss bcos internship is usually the best time to build connection with the people in the office and they're not wrong. However, not having to worry about the reality of things like transportation, lunch and getting tired at work, also allows me to focus and enjoy my skill-based work more, which is the main reason of doing internship. 

Having done an internship before makes me see things in a different light and it might not be the case for everyone, but so far it's been good for me. Also a different work field might require more presence in the office than others, and fortunately my line of work suits wfh a lot.

The only bummer is that you can't see how busy your seniors really are and thus, you tend to expect a quick reply like how they would give if you were to ask them face to face. But they're already helpful and responsive enough for me, so it's not a huge deal and I appreciate them for that. 

I'm expecting a lot out of myself during this internship and I hope I can get somewhere with my programming skills. Gotta let myself be as dumb as possible yet still sounding somewhat favorable so that I won't annoy my seniors too much 😅

Dropping by,

Reporting for the last time about my uni life. The (somewhat) last update for it is that... MY RESULTS ARE OUT!! 

Have you ever been in front of the cashier and realized the item that you chose was over your budget, but felt too bad to say no, so you just pay for it?

I bet everyone face this once in a while. Most of us becomes a deer caught in the headlights whenever this happen. And from my personal experience, here is what you might be thinking at that time:

1. You didn't know you can say no.

2. You're afraid you'd trouble the cashier.

3. You're afraid the line will become longer if you say no.

4. You don't want to sound like you can't afford it.

Despite either one of the reasons or all of the reasons above, you don't have to feel bad for changing your mind and decided not to pay for something.

I have worked as a cashier before and people change their mind all the time. If it's not what you order, or you simply don't want to pay for it, you have all the right to say so. FYI, most of the cash system (or commonly known as POS - Point of Sale system) have a cancellation function. It even have a refund option for when you did pay but then realize it wasn't as you expected. Those are literally basic functions in a sale system.

I have heard my friend telling me that she didn't know cashiers can cancel or change customer's order after scanning or keying it in. She thought it was a permanent action and she have to pay for it once it is keyed in.

That is so not true. But one thing that might be true is not every staff have the access to cancel or change the item after keying in. Some system requires extra verification for doing that but it probably just take a couple of minutes to resolve it with their manager/supervisor and trust me, they've probably experienced similar situation because of their own mistakes before. So, don't feel bad and be firm on your request.

Recently, my brother wanted to use up the money in his e-wallet to pay for something that have a discount if he uses it. We chose our menu and when the cashier keyed in, it was a couple of sen more than what we expected. My brother felt bad and he told the cashier he could top-up some of the money first. Upon hearing that, I scolded him instead. He currently have RM7 and he needs to top-up a minimum of RM10 just to pay the extra sen - which was totally not worth it.

So I told the cashier that we'll change our options instead because we didn't have enough in our e-wallet. And this happen while there were at least 3 people queuing up behind us. It's not that we are being fussy, but it's our right to pay for only what we want.

In those situations, sometimes being frank could make them understand you better and gladly help you with your requests. After all, when it comes to money, we all could relate to a certain level.

One of the biggest cause for this is usually when the price tag and the price during checkout are different. If this is the case, don't feel bad to say, "It's okay, I'll just put it back" instead of regretting for paying more on something you think don't even worth that much.

The amount of times I felt bad for not being there to stop my friends from overpaying is surprising. And I don't think it's just the people around me, so I hope the next time you are facing a similar situation you can think to yourself, "I don't really have to pay" and politely put it away 😉

I hope you can make wiser money decision in the future, thanks for reading!

Dropping by,

This post will be about why I rejected Petronas' Internship offer. 

So, my experience with Petronas' hiring process was very... brief. 

I didn't have an interview. I simply submitted my resume and applied at their website, then got an offer letter in my e-mail 3 weeks later. Not as much to tell as KPMG's, huh?

Before coming to a decision, I have consulted and talked to more people, about this than an average person would, in accepting an internship offer. As my aunt would say it, "It's a very nice problem to have" lol... but jokes aside, both offers indeed is huge especially for the start of my career.

I'm gonna divide the advices that I got into 2 parts - advice from people who don't know KPMG and people who knows KPMG.

Commonly, everyone agrees that Petronas would look better in my CV - no doubt. So why do I still reject Petronas?

First, everyone who doesn't know KPMG obviously know about Petronas. Personally, I didn't know what KPMG and how big it is before accepting the offer too. So I understand where all of these advices are coming from - the big name. Nobody bothered what will I be doing, everyone only cares about the company. Well, if I didn't want to think further, Petronas is clearly the best bet.

When I posted the news on my IG story, I got more DMs asking about Petronas than I did with the KPMG offer. A lot of them advices me for long-term sake to join Petronas. Now, let's just hold it right here.

Next, the people who knows KPMG. This is where I hear great advices from people who actually talks about the working environment. It's a great place to gain experience because of the amount of projects they have. Which is why the learning curve is steep and why there are chances of me climbing up the ladder faster.

According to my aunt who's working in Petronas, the reason I didn't get an interview but straight to the offer letter is because if an employer/supervisor sees my resume and are interested, they could immediately send an offer to the candidate and that's normal. Funny in my previous post, I was being skeptical on companies that don't conduct any interviews...

Regarding the career growth, Petronas don't usually hire permanent staff. In order to cut down cost, they prefer to hire contract employees. And the department that I got which is ROVR, is a department under Petronas Dagangan that deals with the transport of fuel. It's unclear where would I fit in, but I kinda get a gist that my role might not be as interesting as what KPMG has to offer... somehow.

Actually both job descriptions are quite vague and I've heard daunting opinions on KPMG's but that is another thing I would have to try for myself to see.

On top of my aunt's advice, my uncle also had a fair share of advices on KPMG. 

From an experienced person's point-of-view, KPMG provides good training for their employees albeit it being very fast-paced. Which if I am an intern, is a better opportunity for me to learn and rack up on experience. For a start, it's not important for me to care on just the "name" because experience is what increases my value as an employee. Undeniably, even my aunt admits that Petronas also looks for an experienced person in hiring and people from KPMG is also favored.

Considering KPMG and Petronas are just as reputable, choosing one with a better career growth within the company seems like the better offer. As much as Petronas does sound better in a glance, I have to say that Petronas' offer does not really seem impressive, especially when I won't even be working at their HQ in KLCC lol.

Tbh, if I was comparing Petronas with some other small company, I would immediately accept it. But the dilemma isn't that, so wow it was a tough choice. 

My reasonings might seem all over the place but I hope this explains why I rejected such a great offer. If KPMG ranked 4th in 2020's M100 ranking, Petronas ranked 2nd... not a big difference but what did I do to deserve such fancy offers 😵

Dropping by,

Week 14 in the last semester might be the most stressful semester for some. 

Thank God in between the hectic Week 12 and 13, I was busy completing the tasks for Week 14 in advance AND had the free time to apply for jobs (had 2 months before the internship). Probably the most efficient I've ever been in my entire life #selfpatontheback 🤭

One of the jobs that I applied to was KPMG Malaysia and that was sent together with other big companies like Astro, Roche, Zalora and Petronas. Personally, I sent these without the slightest bit of hope that my application would get through. It was kinda like the places that I would only dare to dream of, but I sent anyway because this time around I have a criteria on the internship placement that I'm looking for.

FYI, this is my second internship. The first one was during Diploma and that was back in 2018. That internship was amazing and I met amazing people especially my dearest intern friends that I clicked so well with. It was really fun!

However, I didn't really like what I do there. Mainly because I didn't do any IT-related tasks, which was a huge bummer for me who have always been enjoying what I study. Not being able to taste the real working experience from what I study, or even surround myself with it, was upsetting tbh.

So I made some clear outlines of what I am expecting this time around. I'm very goal-oriented so here is my personal checklist of the job that I look for.

My Diploma internship salary was pretty satisfying which was RM700 so it was never my plan to settle for anything lesser, simply because I wanted to aim for an upgrade. If I could get that amount for doing an internship totally unrelated to my course, why can't my own major's internship give me more, right?

By now, it's pretty clear that I wish to do what I study so hard in. Therefore, my least expectation was to just be in an IT department, whether that be front or back end development. Even though my interest lean towards the planning and documentation aspect of development, I honestly didn't mind that much.

I sound so ambitious saying this, but I am. Having been in a small company before, made me wanna aim higher. I didn't mind being just a photocopy kid if it could mean that I can experience a different working environment. Taking up Diploma before, gave me the advantage to do 2 internships and I take this as a privilege to try different spectrums of my line of work in hope that I could see which kind of working environment suits me best. I'm a believer of trying things out for myself over someone else's judgment.

Of course a lot of people would agree with me on this. Having a security especially after graduating is one of the biggest concern for graduates, so I don't want to look into companies that are clearly not offering career growth from the get-go.

Basically those 4 are my only criteria in looking for a company. With that in mind, I applied to a total of 24 companies - twice as much as I did for Diploma.

And how many calls did I get back?

At the time of this offer... one. Just a single callback.

Honestly, it didn't felt that good. A lot of my friends got offers pretty fast, some didn't even go for an interview. Tbh, I am skeptical on those that don't have interviews. It speaks volume on their professionalism but let's not talk about that since I'm not an expert.

So the one I got a callback from was - as you know it - KPMG.

On a usual Wednesday evening, exactly a week after applying, I was scrolling my Twitter while laying on my bed when I got a call from KPMG's HR department. The person asked if I was free, which I clearly was so before I know it, I was engaged in an ad hoc phone interview.

I was literally trembling out of happiness on top of nervousness, while trying to sound professional answering the questions one by one. At first a lot of the questions were expected like introducing myself, my CGPA and SPM results and what are my strengths. There were also company-related questions like what do I know about them, did I apply to any other Big 4 companies and why did I apply here. Because it was ad hoc, I literally didn't even know what a "Big 4" was. Yang aku tahu Big 4 kpop je la. Obviously the interviewer calmly explained to me what it was, but I didn't know if I was leaving a bad impression or not for the lack of awareness 😮

Then I was asked on tougher questions (in my opinion) which was skilled-based, like what are my proudest achievement, my co-curricular activities and any past projects that I did. Frankly speaking, I'm not amazing at what I do. If you expect an IT major to be good at programming then that person isn't me. Of course, I know that IT is more than just programming but other than that as a "past project", I literally have no other thing to show, if that make sense. I managed to divert the failures into what sounds like a great project that started and ended with a definite purpose. In short, my IT projects were all great ideas that failed.

One thing that made KPMG stood out to me was the unique hiring process.

For one, they conducted a personality and psychometric test as you are applying. Basically, there are a total of 6 tests. 3 tests on personality, career and favorable work environment, then the other 3 are on cognitive ability like reading comprehension, logic and maths test. The latter 3 are hella tough especially because there were sooo many questions within such a short amount of time.

Secondly, I was actually given 3 different options on the job openings that they have during the interview. I apparently applied for their Cyber Security department when I applied for the Software Engineering position, which to me, was a bit confusing at first as security and software engineering are like two different majors in my university. The options that were given to me were Cyber Security which I assumed was a programmer, UI/UX designer and IT Advisory.

When the interviewer explained what IT Advisory was, I was so thrilled hearing about it. She initially gave only the first 2 options, but after that she asked if I wanted to deal with clients, which I jumped at and said yes! My favourite subject this semester is actually called Software Project Management and hearing that IT Advisory do exactly that in real life, was so exhilarating to just imagine. 

With that, they told me to expect a respond in 2 weeks' time - which if you aren't getting any other calls, felt like forever.

While playing the waiting game, I was doubting myself.

I feel such a hypocrite saying this but not getting any other calls was pretty disappointing, especially when you're already feeling incompetent on the one company that did got back to you.

After 9 days of waiting, I finally received the internship offer I was praying for. Alhamdulillah. KPMG is the one company that not only checks off all of the criteria I mentioned earlier, it's also so close to my house so going to the office is mainly not gonna be a problem.

I have a lot of great hopes for this internship. I hope it will give an even better experience than my past internship did. To my friends who are still struggling on finding the right placement, I pray you guys get what you aim for too.

Here I leave you with an office tour of KPMG Tower, which I found a day after the phone interview and made me go "I NEED TO WORK HERE" hahaha. Hopefully I'll be able to set foot here one day though, enjoy 😜

P.S. I feel even prouder when I found out KPMG is listed as the 4th company out of 100 in the Malaysia's Leading Graduate Employers Ranking in 2020 or known as M100. 

I might have a lot of interesting stories to share with you guys about my working experience this year insyaAllah 🤓

BUT THEN...

2 days after I accepted KPMG's offer, I got another unexpected offer from Petronas. Check out part 2 of this post to know the rest of the story!

Dropping by,

It'll be great if I can do this annually, so that I'll be reminded of each song's meaning every time. To be honest, this isn't as hard as I thought. Even though there were more songs that I liked. These are few of those songs that really lifted my spirit whenever I'm feeling emotional. 

This song was recommended by Wooseok himself in a pre-concert interview.

It speaks about life being like a domino - you always try your best to stand up but at times, you just kept falling down. It's a very personal song to Wooseok so he felt hesitant when they decided to release this solo in his collab album. But I'm glad he did bcos finding a personal song that is officially released on Spotify is so hard 😩

I could picture both myself and PENTAGON through this song. It's a way to tell someone to let me be, but please don't go.

This year, I've been personally convinced that people who are depressed or having a mental breakdown doesn't necessarily want to hide it. We wished that we could express our feelings too, and when we do, don't try to comfort us with words but just be there for us. I guess the moment you say words that stop us from sharing (because you think it'd be hard on us) is just making us feel more unaccepted. So just lend your ears. 

McFly has always been like that one friend who could relate to the inner me. Their music always touches my heart in a very personal way.

'Tonight is the Night' is about finally convincing yourself to break free and confront your worries tonight. It's a way of saying don't hold in any longer and just let everything out now. It's such a perfect song if you need some push to do something you're hesitating on.

This song sums up an entire episode of living with sadness, ironically in a very fun tune. When I felt really sad, hearing someone else share a similar situation gives me some assurance that I'm doing good enough. And that is what this song does. It gives that imaginary pat on the back.

This year is a beautiful mess for both PENTAGON and their fans.

'Eternal Flame' is a fan song and there's so much events that resonates with this song. Their first full album (Dr. Bebe's comeback) excluded a member - Yanan, while the latest album (Daisy's comeback) excluded another member - Jinho, so this was the only song this year and probably for the years to come that includes all of the current members of PENTAGON - which is very disheartening to hear as a fan. 

I love hearing fan songs and this meant more as it was made for us.

"Will the spring snow come?"
— Spring Snow (2019)

"Spring snow will come to us too"
— Shine+Spring Snow (2020)

"It always snows in our spring"
— Eternal Flame (2020)#PENTAGON #펜타곤 @CUBE_PTG pic.twitter.com/dWAFtLMprz

— 구름☁️ (@changgurie) December 18, 2020

I listen to this song so much this year since the day I discovered it. I like the verses in this song and it's totally how I view the people around me sometimes.

This song is about waiting for someone, maybe to be acknowledged or just to get some of their attention. It's kinda like how parents wait for us kids, going out and about in our busy lives yet patiently wait for us til the day we come back home. 

Or kinda how we are unsure of how people felt about us, at times we don't care enough about each other and I actually wrote a blog post of something similar called 'Frientimacy' and I think that is very much what this song is about.

The verse that caught my attention most was;

and another one (imagine your parents or loved ones saying this 😪);

This song is about dreaming big and believing in yourself. Even when success seems further to you more than everyone else, holding on to the hope that you'll shine someday should be your focus. There's a bridge at the end of the song that goes "I want you to be my light" kinda like saying, it'll be nice if I could have you along.

As a fan of 1TEAM, I do keep some hope that they'll be known one day. However, it's hard to keep up as an average group in kpop, where even those from the big companies are struggling. Anyway, this song reminds me of that hope of wanting to have a successful life.

My favourite line is actually the beginning rap;

I guess you can say, staying mostly at home requires a lot of self-comfort.

Those are my list of 5 songs that got me through 2020. Spotify song list aren't exactly accurate when it comes to emotional connection. Before I leave, here's my Spotify 2020 Wrapped just as my future record.

Dropping by,