Chapter 19: Enduring Hardships
In the days that followed, I lived and breathed my studies. My laptop was always open, surrounded by a specialized dictionary and stacks of documents. Even sleep offered no respite—I constantly thought about concepts I couldn't grasp, sometimes jolting awake with an idea, turning on my laptop, and testing it out. This happened at least five times a night. Even in my dreams, I saw Mr Aunt, his disappointed gaze, her sarcastic remarks. It was pure torment.
But at least I wasn't suffering alone. Every late night I stayed up, I noticed Mr Aunt was also online, ready to answer any of my questions whenever I needed. Was this his way of sharing my struggles? Maybe he did have a conscience after all.
By the end of the first week, I had grasped the foundational technology. I visited Mr Aunt's house to clarify my lingering questions. As always, he only gave me thirty minutes before leaving me with two choices: go home or stay and work in silence.
At one point, Mr Aunt stepped out briefly. Curiosity got the better of me, and I decided to check his browser history. Most guys I knew either had a suspiciously empty history (wiped clean) or still had remnants of shady websites. I didn't expect much from Mr Aunt either. But when the history popped up, I was stunned—his most-visited sites were Google, Freelancer, and Odesk.
So that's why he was always busy. On top of lecturing at the university, tutoring rich kids, and pursuing his master's degree, he was also freelancing for international projects. Was he a machine or a human? The realization sent chills down my spine.
When Mr Aunt returned, I was already sitting obediently at my laptop, looking every bit like a diligent student. He seemed satisfied, perhaps even proud that he had chosen the right person. He resumed his work, and when Mr Aunt worked, he was so intensely focused that it felt like I didn't exist. Fine, I could focus too.
But after a while, a problem arose—I needed to pee.
The room was small, and using the bathroom would be… awkward. What if there was noise? I'd never be able to show my face again. So, I grabbed my laptop and left.
In the second week, I began analyzing and designing the system. Mr Aunt's proposed topics were intimidating, but the two easiest ones were Enhancing Human Thinking Ability and Personal Financial Management.
Developing a simple, lightweight, and user-friendly mind-mapping software? That would take at least ten years of experience. So, I settled on Millionaire Mindset—a financial management application.
No matter how much money a person makes, if they can't manage it well, they'll never truly be wealthy. I thought this idea was both practical and valuable.
The input would be the user's income. The output would be divided into different accounts:
NEC (Necessities)LTSS (Long-Term Savings for Spending)EDU (Education & Self-Improvement)FFA (Financial Freedom Account)PLAY (Entertainment & Enjoyment)GIVE (Charity & Giving Back)
If the income came from a single bank account—like students receiving allowances or employees getting salaries—it could be automated.
But if the income came from multiple sources, things got trickier. My solution was to create an interface where users manually input their earnings each month. Whenever they received money, they could log it into the system. At the end of the month, the app would sum it all up and allocate it across different accounts for the following month's budget.
For every expense, users would log the amount under the corresponding account. If an account balance turned negative, the system would automatically pull funds from other accounts—except for LTSS, which remained untouched. Any surplus at the end of the month would be carried over as income for the next month…
On the weekend, I went to my Mr Aunt's house so he could check my progress. He looked at my design analysis and shook her head slightly.
"This won't do, it's too complicated. A personal application needs to be convenient and easy to use; otherwise, no one will bother with it. You need to create an app that caters to a broad audience. It could be a successful entrepreneur or a student. Redo everything for me."
I pouted. Fix, fix, fix. Did Mr Auntie realize she had just dismissed all my hard work from the past week? The app had to be lightweight, easy to use, and practical, yet also compatible with multiple platforms: J2ME, Android, iPhone. On top of that, it needed to connect to bank accounts. Why didn't he try making it himself and see if he could do any better? Of course, that was just my internal monologue. I wouldn't dare say it out loud.
Fine, I'd fix it. I decided to camp out at her house so that if she wasn't satisfied, I could fix it right away. If he made me redo it after I was done, I might just smash my head into a pillow and call it quits. So there I was, glued to my laptop, my face buried in the screen. Occasionally, Mr Auntie glanced at my laptop before refocusing on his own work. Around noon, he asked,
"Are you staying for lunch?"
I was so deep in concentration that I barely registered her words and just nodded absentmindedly. But as soon as my brain processed what she said, I quickly responded,
"Uh, I'm not hungry yet."