Student Friendly Adelaide

Another thing I like about the City of Adelaide is that it is very friendly to students. Its city library, which I wrote about in a previous entry,  is very accessible and has a fairly good collection. It promotes concession (or student discount) tickets not just for transportation, but also in cultural events. 

Here's another pleasant surprise we got recently. My wife and I watched Angels & Demons last Thursday and the attendant at the box office charged me only A$6. She said students get to pay a bigger discount in the whole month of May! 

Typically, watching a movie in Palace Cinemas in Adelaide costs about A$12-20. There are also the annual French and Spanish film festivals -- but unlike in the Philippines, these ones in Adelaide aren't free. 

Microfinance, Social Capital and Gender Equality

This is the paper on microfinance and poverty that I wrote to complete my course in Economics of Development, taught by Mark Wessel. Thanks to Mark's guidance, I gained a deeper understanding on poverty, inequality and its relation with the financial system. Some of my friends interested in microfinance asked me to share it with them, so I'm putting the file up for download.

Yunus has always been an inspiration to me, so when Mark required us to write a paper on a country and its economic issues, I seized on the chance to write a study on Bangladesh and microfinance. This is the result. If you use the paper, kindly link back to this URL. If you like or dislike the paper, please post a comment.

This paper aims to understand poverty from the framework of development economics, using Bangladesh as a focal case study. We will do this by answering the following questions:

1. What economic and social factors contribute to inequality and poverty in Bangladesh?
2. What specific issues did microcredit address in Bangladesh that the formal financial system did not?
3. What lessons can be drawn from the experience of microfinance as a tool for alleviating poverty?
   

Read or download file at Scribd.

Thinking Micro: Poverty Alleviation through Microfinance, Social Capital and 
Gender Equality in Bangladesh by Ruben Canlas Jr is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Adelaide City Library

Yesterday, I finally had my membership activated at the Adelaide City Library, and I am very happy I did it. I signed up for the City Library during the Lord Mayor's welcome party for international students, but only had time to activate it yesterday.

All I needed to activate it were:

• An ID showing my date of birth (I used my Philippine driver's license; a passport will do nicely too).
• A letter addressed to my registered post address (I used my bank statement).

After that, all I had to do was use one of the computer terminals to search what I wanted. The CMU Australia library being limited, I needed an alternative to buying books. The City Library turned out to be a treasure trove of supplemental readings.

We can borrow up to 30 materials (if what I heard from the librarian is correct!). And you can have them for a month. Here are more fabulous discoveries about the City Library system. I am sure you guys from the First World have these amenities (the Philippines doesn't).

• Audio visual materials: aside from books, they have DVDs, CDs and other stuff you can borrow.
• Self checkout: bypass the librarian. Get the books (or library items) yourself, scan your ID barcode, then place the items on a platform that auto-detects the books (via RFID sticker in the books).  The machine prints a receipt and you can leave the library.
• Online catalog and reservation. Search the library collection via their website (available here). Request the items via the website and specify where you want to pick them up.
• Pickup. The City Library has various branches scattered across the city (mine is on Grote Street). If the book you need is in another place, you can request it online and they'll drop it off to the library branch you specify.
  
• Online renewal. If you want to renew a book, just go online and do so!
• Returning books after hours. To return books after office hours, just drop them off a slot. 

I've actually been burrowing and borrowing books I need for school. After that, I'll be borrowing non-fiction and fiction books I was thinking of buying. This saves me money!