Don't Dress for Dinner

Now playing in Waterfront Theatre on Granville Island.

Being in downtown, I decided to splurge a little and decided to go to a play--my time seeing a play on stage. The evening didn't start that amiably. I was totally lost after getting off the 98 B-Line, not realizing from the Translink map that Granville Island is UNDER the Granville Street Bridge. Due to the mishap, I arrived at the theatre late and was almost not allowed in. I have to say though, it was a pretty enjoyable play, but I'm not sure if I would feel the same if I had paid the full price instead of the half price. The script was full of wit and the set was great looking. The character of the Cook was my favourite: a quick thinking opportunistic bitch who is also a Cordon Bleu :). My only complaint is how packed and fast most of the play is. The resolution in the second act is like a machine gun; I wish it slowed down in certain bits so I'd have more time to digest the lines.

"The International Baccalaureate is un-American"

Emphasis added by moi:

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0620international0620.html

'International schools' idea dies; legislators describe plan as un-American

Pat Kossan
The Arizona Republic
Jun. 20, 2007 12:00 AM

Everyone agrees: The world is shrinking.

Businesses need people skilled in world languages and economics. The government has gaping holes in diplomacy and intelligence. Universities are begging for more students with sophisticated learning.

It all gives credence to a bill in the Arizona Legislature to create international schools to help make students globally competitive.

But, in the end, the bill died. As its supporters learned, "international" is a dirty word among some at the Capitol.

Key leaders there suggested the bill was un-American and part of a slippery slope to a U.N. takeover and the end of U.S. sovereignty.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Mark Anderson, R-Mesa, would have put three K-12 schools in the northern, central and southern parts of the state, where kids would begin a second language in kindergarten, and set up new international programs at seven high schools. Big business and universities pledged to partner with the schools. First-year costs would have been $2.3 million, or less than 0.02 percent of the proposed state budget.

Wisconsin, Kansas and Ohio have launched similar programs.

The bill took some twists and turns:

• Some Arizona legislators were so opposed to the bill that supporters changed the name from international schools to American competitiveness project schools to appease them.

That didn't sway Sen. Ron Gould, a Lake Havasu City Republican.

"What I'm assuming is that they changed the name, trying to get us to be less objectionable, as if, you know, a rose by any other name is not as sweet," said Gould, a member of the Senate's K-12 Education Committee. "There's a lot of us here who are not internationalists. These schools actually have kind of a United Nations flavor to them, and we're actually into educating Americans into Americanism, not internationalism."

• Sen. Karen Johnson, a Mesa Republican and chairwoman of the K-12 Education Committee, never let the proposal out of committee. Johnson instead brought in a professor from Bethany Lutheran College in Mankato, Minn., to educate lawmakers on the dangers of a popular international studies program, the International Baccalaureate. The 37-year-old high school program offers rigorous courses and diploma programs in schools worldwide, including 759 in the United States and 12 in Arizona. Its goals are intercultural understanding, community service and preparation for university work.

"The International Baccalaureate is un-American," Allen Quist, who served in the Minnesota Legislature in the 1980s and ran for Minnesota governor as a Republican in 1994, said in a phone interview. He said that International Baccalaureate's links to the United Nations are disturbing and that its sense of right and wrong is ambiguous.

It teaches students to see the American system of government as one of many, not as the only one that protects universal and God-given rights to property, to bear arms and free speech, Quist said.

• To get around Johnson, supporters took the proposal to the Senate's Higher Education Committee. The proposal eventually reached the House Appropriations Committee, which helps decide what bills get funded and how much. There, it ran into Rep. Russell Pearce, a Mesa Republican. Pearce recalled this week that his research on international schools in general found them to be dangerous, and he suggested their agenda was tied to the U.N., not America.

"Our schools ought to be focusing on education that we, as Americans, espouse," Pearce said. "We ought to concentrate on United States history and United States heroes."

So the bill did not survive its first round in the Legislature. Instead, a measure was put in the state budget authorizing Tom Horne, Arizona superintendent of public instruction, to seek private donations for such a program. Horne said he didn't need the authorization and plans to bring the proposal back for state funding next year. In the meantime, he'll look for private and federal grants to move the project ahead.

Horne has some experienced allies, including Richard Mackney, a 1977 graduate of the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale who has spent 30 years in international business, mostly with Goodrich Corp. He volunteered to help the Arizona Department of Education develop the schools proposal.

Like principals, teachers and students in international studies, he was surprised at some lawmakers' attitudes.

The value of the proposal is that average students could start in kindergarten learning a world language and preparing to enter rigorous international studies, he said.

Universities and businesses have promised to use these Arizona schools as laboratories for school reform, sending scholars to help teachers and creating internships to help students build careers. Then, businesses such as Goodrich, Intel and American Express could find executives they need in Arizona and not look elsewhere, he said.

"Then, we say, 'Hey, Arizona state Senate, what were you talking about, that this internationalism destroys Arizona?' " Mackney said. " 'We've just shown you that you were wrong.' "

Actuaries on CBC

Most boomers aren't saving enough for retirement, actuaries say
Last Updated: Thursday, June 14, 2007 | 5:00 PM ET
CBC News

Only a third of Canadians hoping to retire in 2030 are saving enough to guarantee a comfortable retirement, according to a new study that looked at how baby boomers will likely fare in the decades to come.

"The message for most Canadians in their early to mid-40s is they will need to save more if they expect to enjoy an independent retirement," said Normand Gendron, president of the Canadian Institute of Actuaries, which sponsored the study.

The findings were not encouraging for many of those born in the early to mid-1960s. People in that age group who are counting on only one kind of savings to fund their retirement will likely have to work past age 65 or increase their savings to avoid financial hardship.

The study — which was carried by a research team at the University of Waterloo — found that it tended to take some combination of personal savings, RRSPs, company pensions and home ownership to fill the gap left by the "modest income base" provided by such government retirement plans as the Canada Pension Plan and Old Age Security.

Growing equity in a home is an important retirement savings tool, the authors said. So many boomers will likely need to count on their homes to help fund their retirements, the study's authors recommend that mortgage interest on a principal residence be made tax deductible, as it is in the United States.

"We found that home equity can make a significant contribution to narrowing the gap, provided your home is paid for when you retire," said Steve Bonnar, one of three actuaries who directed the study. "Yet while home equity is important, on its own, it is not enough to close the gap."

The study's findings — that most boomers are off course for a well-funded retirement — are at odds with the perceptions of the boomers themselves.

A survey the actuarial body carried out in April showed that 55 per cent of Canadians aged 40 and over feel confident they'll have enough accumulated to retire comfortably.

The actuaries' figures suggest that many Canadians will get a nasty surprise once they leave the workforce.

"Many people don't have a good grasp of how much money it takes to pay for a comfortable retirement," Bonnar told CBC News Online.

He cited an actuarial rule of thumb that it takes $20 of capital to provide $1 of annual pension income. Assuming it takes $23,000 a year to pay for necessary living expenses, that means it would take almost $500,000 to provide that, he said. That can come from a mix of personal savings, home equity, or a company pension plan. Only part of it will come from government retirement programs.

"There's a message for those in their 20s and 30s," Bonnar said. "That is to think broadly about saving for retirement. You can't start saving too early."

So I did some research and apparently "Stephen P. Bonnar" is from TP in Toronto. His comment intrigued me quite a bit: how the heck did he get to that figure? Googling revealed an article at StatsCan which confirmed my memory that the current life expectancy for men and women is about 80. So assuming a normal retirement age of 65, that's only about 15 years of pay outs. Hmmm.

I obtained the UP94 (male) table along with the AA projection scales (male) from the SOA website. At work we usually project to 2015 so that's what I did too. The result I get at any reasonable interest rate is definitely less than 20. I should also mention that UP94 with AA_21 says an age 65 should live to about 83.

I finally got something close to 20 when I decided to assume that there is no interest and there exists an inflation of ~2%.

Eureka.

I knew the $20 figure is absurdly high from the beginning and is way too conservative. A statement that's more realistic and surprising is $1 saved in your early twenties is equivalent to $1 of ANNUAL pension income.

Moving

While packing, I can't help but pause at that stack of letters. That large and unsightly stack of rejections from the many institutions that had promised to offer monetary assistance to those with "high academic merit", "high community involvement", and various other buzz phrases.

I was pretty depressed near the end of my high school days. There were many around me who received substantial amounts of money from various schools and even governments, while I was only awarded scraps worth a couple thousand. And this excluded my childish and poorly handled flurry into the world of romance.

Anyways, because of the lack of scholarships, I was quite troubled financially: will I have to use loans? I told myself from the start that I will not and should not burden my parents by making them pay for my post secondary education. While my sights then was (and still is) at actuarial science, SFU became the most attractive choice for me because of their Open Scholarship. To this day I still think UBC sucks because of its total lack of scholarships in the undergraduate level.

I still had doubts; there was the problem of maintaining a 3.70 CGPA. I had no idea how difficult it is to have a 3.70 at university, and my doubts deepened after my first university midterm. But it turned out that 3.70 was a cake walk and I rebounded to an A in 232 despite an average midterm. So with the Open and subsequently the Alumni, a few tutoring gigs, and along with my inherent frugality, life was good; I was for sure going to graduate without accumulating a cent of debt, though my net worth will be practically nil when I graduate. This was when my flight of fancy ended and I smashed against a brick wall.

In order to accomplish my goal, I had to complete my degree quickly to minimize the fixed costs such as the student activity fee. I tried and had success with taking five courses a semester and I became bold; I felt bold enough to take five courses with ACMA 310. I was completely confident about my academic abilities; university really wasn't too hard at all when compared with IB. The brick wall was the second midterm of 310. It had an huge impact on me and it made me doubt whether I can really move forward in act sci. I put a lot of effort into that midterm and I walked out feeling like shit. It was probably a bad idea but I attempted to finish my linear programming assignment in the library afterwards. My mind was white and I became totally confused and angry at myself. I tried for half an hour, staring at the same exact question and wondering how the fuck can one obtain the minimizers after solving the primal. Am I not smart enough for act sci or am I really just an idiot like the rest of the population?

The latter thought was quite fleeting as I aced my other four courses at the end. Nevertheless, I completed 310 with my ego bruised and decided to take my first semester with only three courses--though whoever thinks 320 is only one course ought to be lynched and shot about fifty times. I got through it with a lot less drama than 310 and I saw the experience as another ascent after having hit a bottom. Mind you I was still scared shitless by every midterm and final, but the difference then was that I've since developed a fairly tight group of friends and I expected to get owned. Everything was nice and swell again; eventually I was recognized by the department and I was even offered a coop job on my first interview. My financial worries finally disappeared in complete certainty as the pay cheques flowed in.

It's funny how everything always seem to turn out for the better in the end for me. I was about to shred these letters into strips; I sorted them into the "to be shredded" pile along with all my PBC pay slips and BMO bank statements. Yet at the last moment I stopped, reflected, and decide to pen this post. And I am glad.

Because right now, I am again at a dip of the roller coaster that is life. After having experienced a wide spectrum of what it is like to be an actuary, from writing exams to working in an insurance firm and now in consulting, to academic successes and being respected by peers, I am uncertain about my future. The thought of sitting in a cube for eight hours each day massaging data for the rest of my life is repulsive, though that had been my goal since the day I stepped on campus--get in quick and get out quick so I can start raking in the money. I didn't expect my weekdays to basically become something which I typed on MSN today,

"...get off at 5ish.. cook, do all that jazz probably [by] around 7, [leaving] only about 4hrs of personal free time and then u have to hit the sack and go back to the grind life...lol."

This isn't exactly what BeAnActuary.com advertised.

So in midst of the harshness of reality, it's nice to have a few mementos to remind oneself, that life, sometimes, does have its sparkles. And to remind myself that perhaps I worry too much; as we Chinese say, 船到橋頭自然直.

LOL crap now I feel like a complete emo after writing all this drivel...

A Kinematics Experiment

High school physics folks--but experimentally verified in style by the Japanese. I think the ball rolled towards the truck in the end because of back draft.

Mutual Funds Suck; ETF FTW

A while ago I was contemplating whether I should switch most of my mutual funds to ETF because of the obvious advantage of a lower MER. With my portfolio size in mind, the initial investment of brokerage will be recouped in one year and from then on it will be pure profit. Initially, I was surprised to see that both of my Altamira index funds actually beat their respective iShares ETFs. However, I realized my mistakes tonight. One of the Altamira funds is actually indexing the TSX60, not the TSX Composite; for the other, I forgot to add in the ETF's dividend. Time to start converting!

Also ING has started a new promotion: 4.25% for new every dollar above your account balance as of May 31. That means I'll need to move my money back to ING from PC :P.

Money management is so much fun :).

w00t Fun Weekend

Hey thanks everyone for visiting my apartment yesterday. It was awesome. Thirty 67 cents cheeseburgers, Tim bits and other finger foods, imported beer, a Korean (Art of Seduction) and a Singaporean (I Not Stupid Too) flick, and enjoyed some sorely missed AC :).

I wish I remembered to take pictures earlier though...

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!!SPOILER!!
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Afterward I went to watch Spiderman 3 with Josh. Crazy fights; the best fight scenes out of all the Spiderman movies. Overall it is weaker than the second film, which is still my favourite in the series. The second film had a tight, focused story on Parker's struggle of being a hero and his desire to be with MJ. This film's theme is all over the place: revenge, forgiveness, the responsiblity of having a great power, and even an urge for humility. A total bombast. The switch was totally unexpected for me because both of the initial films had a centralized theme, making the film potent. Nevertheless, if I were to forget ALL of the lazy deus ex machina (shit there were A LOT!!!), the climax scene of Parker hitting MJ and his subsequent rejection of the symbiote, did manage to have its intended effect on me. So overall, I still liked it :).