Sometimes there are disadvantages of making your place of abode comfortable and technology supported because you end up not wanting to leave for work anymore. What would be better than waking up late, chat and surf in the internet for hours, eat anytime and anything I want, swim, play psp and watch tv? And far more greater than that is being able to see my kids everyday as they do their thing or just follow me anywhere I go. Everyday I wake up, I drag myself to take a bath and prepare for work because I wouldn’t want to leave my adorable little boy and handsome first born.

Actually, I am in the middle of a big decision right now, that is, to continue working or to stay at home. Well, actually I don’t really have a choice. Haha! Our monthly expenses are so huge that giving up my decent monthly salary and good benefits would mean a lot of adjustments and sacrifices not only for me but also for my husband and kids. Worse it could mean giving up our condo, transferring Marcus to a public school or cutting down our budget for food. Definitely I wouldn’t want any of that!

Choosing between two important thing is really hard, but what makes it even harder is when the one you really want is actually not the best choice.

Gary and I literally started out with nothing. We began our journey as a couple full of love in our hearts, plans on our minds but a few cents on our pockets. It was Gary who initially felt financial pressure as he was about to support a studying wife and a growing son. Ten years after, we could only laugh at the struggles we had just to have a decent life. That, I think, is the advantage of experiencing life’s challenges rather than having everything in place from the very start. Well it may not necessarily work for every couple, we were just fortunate and blessed that a lot of our sacrifices paved way to a better life. A better life for me now doesn’t mean that I am rich enough to stop working and stay at home to watch over my kids. My husband and I still have to work hard to be able to take home enough monthly salary. Neither does it mean that all our needs are already met that we need not buy anything anymore. It’s all about seeing our kids experience life a lot better than my husband and I did when we were young. Our kids are not aware that what they are getting right now cannot be easily provided by a minimum waged earner. And that selflessness is a virtue that we as their parents have learned over the years. Yes! We can now buy a lot of things that previously we felt guilty about, or that we cannot really afford. No! We’re not rich as not to think twice before we spend our cash. But with God’s blessings and continuous hard work, we’re getting there.

I have written this article a couple of years ago…
With some re-touch, finally I can post it on my own site.

‘I felt I could die happily 13 years ago, hearing the
confession of the guy who for months was the object of
my affection. He was not the boy-next-door-type, he
was never predictable, he was not ordinary… and our
story neither was.   

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I am wondering if my P550 per OT session is worth the one-hour therapy that Marcus is taking every Saturday. Btw, Marcus is one of those lucky children who were diagnosed with mild ADHD and has the luxury to undergo treatment. Lucky because we, as parents, were not ashamed of admitting that the boy has a disorder, we even seek ways to help him. Luxury because I must admit it’s quite costly. It maybe too soon to realize the effect because it has only been 4-hours worth (including the initial evaluation), so I am still keeping my fingers crossed.

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Last April 3 and 4, I attended this so-called refresher course in Hyperion Financial Management System. It was actually a beginner’s course for me as I do not have any background knowledge of this application system. We were asked to attend this seminar because definitely it is part of the audit universe. Testing the effectiveness of this system is critical because being employed in a business of acquiring, developing, managing and operating container ports and terminals worldwide, consolidation of financial information is vital.

The first few hours of the seminar made me realize how powerful the system is. Imagine, the unadjusted trial balance can easily be uploaded from SAP to Hyperion (that is if accounts have been matched) and the consolidated report can be generated anytime at any form management would prefer. If you would ask me why not use SAP for consolidation, the answer is simple, other subsidiaries do not have SAP. The seminar was going smoothly not until the subject-matter expert started explaining the system in detail. No problem with access, integration and other IT issues, it was the financial terms that made the blood as if drip from my nose. (nose bleed! Haha!). I was the only non-CPA in the list of attendees. This scenario reminds me again what the heck am I doing in audit? I barely passed my Accounting 1 & 2 in college. Yes I love math and I am good at it. But Accounting is something else. It is not really much on mathematics because all you have to deal with is plus/minus (debit/credit). The problem is what you put as debit may not necessarily be, given the accounting standards. I think this is the competency that I will never be (and never want to be) proficient with. The irony of it is that if I continue being an auditor, even IT auditor for that matter, I know that accounting will bug me for the rest of my life.