The past week I have been reading up a bit on financial investments and watching several financial planning programs which were featured on television. The current debt crisis in Europe has sent the Euro plummeting to a new low. The US dollar too hasn’t really regained ground even though USA seems to be doing financially better then when the recession hit more then a year back.

How to grow your funds?

There are a few ways which one can multiply ones saving. I have been looking at various ways of investments and the risks involved using each method.

Invest in a college fund for each kid

In the last 10 years the price of tertiary education has increased tremendously. It easily cost around $200k to put a child through 4 years of university education these days. Multiply it by the number of kids you have and you need easily to set aside a min of $1M ( taking into account inflation) by the time our kids turn 20 years old. I really hope that they will be able to get grants and other forms of sponsorship when the time comes as I’m certain that we will not be able to afford sending them abroad to study.

Invest in Housing

Prices of houses here have been soaring the past few years. It used to be about $600-$700 psf as the average price. Today it stands at $1200-$2000psf for a private apartment. The prices are ridiculously high given there hasn’t been a drastic increase in the basic salary of an average salaried worker. This is certainly an option which we would have to consider deeply before doing the investment.

Investing in various financial instruments.

Investing in shares and related financial instruments does carry with it a certain amount of risk. I’m still monitoring the market and seeing which fund I should put my money in. Any recommendations?

May 25, 2010

Introducing Japanese through Music

Dominique Thoughts

Chage & Aska are one of the first Japanese singers who made me interested in learning Japanese. Back in the 1980s the duo were one of the more popular Japanese groups. Their songs could be heard on the radio and I used to listen to them when I was in secondary school. Since then I have moved on and listen to a variety of Japanese singers and am currently more into Korean pop songs.

Next term we will be touching on the theme Japan for one of our English units. I feel that it would be appropriate to give the students an introduction to the country through getting them to list to Japanese music. I could also use the same material which I prepare for the English class for my 8 music classes and it will lessen the time needed to do lesson planning.

Nowadays students are more into listening to pop and rock music then ancient classical music. To be able to capture their attention and interest lessons have to be packaged into byte size packages which have “Ommph”.

Music transcends through language and time barriers. A catchy tune or a melodious instrument stirs more interest then just passively looking at pretty pictures of the various places of interest in Japan.

I have picked out a few different Japanese Artiste to highlight to the students.

Ayumi Hamasaki is one of the leading ladies in J-Pop. I’m sure her pretty face and catchy music will certainly appeal to the older kids in my music class.

SMAP is one of the boy bands which I also loved listening to. Their song ” Lion Heart” is my all time favourite.

Through the introduction of these Japanese Singers to the class I am hoping it will help to stir their interest in Japanese Culture and the learning of Japanese as a foreign language.

If the students are interested we may even dabble into the learning of basic Japanese during the English/music lesson. It sure beats having to get the students attentively listen to Bach or Beethoven when I know that the majority are not inclined to classical music.