MacHeist has come with a new nanoBundle, which is absolutely unattractive with the exception of Tales of Monkey Island. Unfortunately, I played Monkey Island on the iPhone and was absolutely addicted to it until I finished. But I can’t fathom forking out money again for the game and having other apps which I’ll never use lying around…
Alice in Wonderland has got to be one of the shows which I’ve been waiting so long for.
I love:
- Whimsical & Gothic
- Tim Burton
- Johnny Depp
So yeah, that kind of sums of what I like…
Today, my pelt went to see its maker. I first bought my chinchilla more than eight years ago at Park Chinchilla. I remember that day pretty well, it was Chinese New Year and my dad agreed to buy me a chinchilla. Thats when I saw you.
You was standard gray but your fur was a graduation of gray, really pretty. I was going to choose between you and the bigger girl but I thought I would take the small thing, you were only 300g and stayed that way for a while. We used up all the money in our pockets and paid a grand total of 520 dollars for you and the cage. I thought that was alot of money. We took you home in a cardboard box and I tried to touch you all the time whilst you were lying in the box and you ended up crying. We tried to do so again whilst you were in the cage and all you did was cry all day.
There was a big problem when taking you out to play. I remember. You were so afraid of everything we initially took a big chair where you could come out and you were shaking all the time. I eventually managed to hold you all the time and you were happy running all over the place as well as balance on my shoulder whilst I walked around with you. I hated life but your furry paws were the one thing which made me happy. Every time you got sick I brought you to the vet. You were always so happy when you had raisins in the morning. You loved licking the benebec which was good for your stomach. You were always all over the place at the vet, pretending not to be sick. But yes I knew you when you had that stomach ache. Or wet eyes.
I love you.
After a great adventure of house hunting when you don’t understand the language that well, I finally got myself a new house.
Half-baked Dutch when you are making a reservation at a fancy restaurant
vs.
Half-baked Dutch navigating the legal and financial consequences of buying a new house
I thought to myself about the time required:
Time taken to buy a house: 6 months
Time taken to decide to buy this house: 3 minutes
Time taken to mentally convince my family that I was going to do it: 3 days
Total number of houses looked at: 5
Total number of houses I took a trip for: 3
Order of house which I bought and finally got it: 2nd
Time taken to get a mortgage: 2 months
Time taken to move into my new home: 5 days
Of course since I was still contemplating should I buy a house before I actually even bought a house – which was that 3 minutes in contemplation. I’ve concluded that people who regard me as unable to make decisions just really don’t know me at all. When I know, I do. When I’m being a fluff bunny, you know that I just don’t. 
If you live in Singapore, you might be interested to get a Credit Card, because we are *almost* a CC-nation. I call this almost because as much as I’ve been putting my card on the table, at least we don’t get the “you don’t need to sign if its less than 25USD” and stuff like that.
There are two cards which provide the most perks and would probably roll of the lips of locals: Citibank and UOB. Since I’ve done the whole route couple of years ago, I just happen to have a grouse.
When I first qualifying for my first Credit Card, the first card I applied for was a UOB Lady’s Card. And the every single other flashy cute looking thing from DBS, Standard Chartered, Citibank, ABN and what have you. I’ve since canceled them all, and kept the Lady’s Card. Which I’ve kept and used for the past four years.
Lately, for known reasons – my Dutch Credit Card which had a very low limit – bounced in New York because I was traumatized after being almost blown up on Christmas Day and decided to well, shop and shop and shop. I decided to just upgrade to a UOB Lady’s Platinum Card. Kind of like playing on the stronger currency, whether its Singapore dollars or Euros.
UOB has been a pain.
Did I mention that I’ve been a paying customer to them for the past five years? And that I’ve never missed a bill? And have almost always used their Credit Cards?
The sequence of events goes:
(1) I apply for a Lady’s Platinum, I’m far beyond their stated minimum income. I need to settle this before I fly off from Singapore.
(2) I send in three of my latest monthly statements.
(3) After two weeks I have no reply.
(4) I call UOB Call Center and they said they would call me back when they have found my application.
(5) They didn’t call me back.
(6) Few days later I receive a letter stating that they need more documents. I say that I have a werkgeversverklaring in order for us to get a mortgage from the bank. Its in Dutch, but they say its FINE.
(7) I email my werkgeversverklaring to them. They call me the next day saying that it is in order. No news for next few days.
(8) I call them again, and they say its a foreign language and ask if I have something in English.
(9) I don’t have anything in English, and retrieving it takes more time. They already have three months of salary in English! Did I mention that I submitted this application weeks ago to get the card in Singapore and I’m not going to let them fly a Credit Card from Singapore to the Netherlands.
(10) I decided that I’m not wasting all my time talking to the UOB call center. I just tell them settle it or I’m just going to cancel all my cards because this is getting stupid.
I get a call by Zen, who is settling the whole case. He seems to be helpful and he would fix this. He calls me (finally) to say that UOB is couriering me the card. Tonight. Anyway, we’ll see, at least he’s trying, so I’m going to update this possibly tonight I hope.
- As promised, I got the card. Lets see if they managed to link it up to my Internet Banking in time. -
I think another thing which crossed my mind is the JooJoo pad when the iPad was released. Since this was made my Fusion Garage, which is a Singapore based company, I thought I would say a few things about it.
- The JooJoo pad has a lawsuit on it via TechCrunch. That’s kind of scary for consumers no?
- The JooJoo pad is only available in the US. No idea why.
- It costs 499USD. The iPad costs 499USD for the cheapest model. With no option for 3G.
- The UI looks like they took alot of notes from Apple.
- It has 4GB of flash memory. Ouch.
Okay, well, all seems bad. I’m half thinking of a few things on this. Had you started off on a clean slate designing the JooJoo pad, it would probably have been to reanalyze the 200USD possible price point and stay there. No need for a 12″ screen, screens usually cost the most, to push down the price point. And don’t use flash as an excuse, the percentage of people not buying an iPhone because it doesn’t support flash is probably a 0.00000000000000000000002458% (You get the idea) or something. I still think the whole general idea of the JooJoo was a good idea, competition is always good, but the price point (and the lawsuit) isn’t too bright as of the moment.
On the 27th January, Steve Jobs announced the tech world’s worst kept secret, the Apple tablet PC, after Seth Godin, random publishers, leaked China replicas and every thing else pointed to the fact that Apple was indeed developing a tablet PC. On 28th January, I decided NOT to blog about it, didn’t have a clue on what I felt about it.
So here it is.
Do I need an iPad? No.
Do I want an iPad? Probably yes.
Why do I want an iPad? Probably need to think about it, maybe when my MacBook reaches a ripe old laptop age of 4 years, which in computer years means 100. Probably.
Ok. So here’s why I probably want an iPad. I have a feeling its going to be a love-love situation just after buying my iPhone, what I thought I didn’t need, I just felt in love with. Now nothing, even if you pay me 100 bucks to use a Nexus One for a year, would I give up my iPhone.
(1) Games. I hate the App Store. I really do. I’m spending money on Cluedo, GTA Chinatown Wars, and all sort of time wasting stuff because having the App Store with its 170K Apps is easy to download. So, what are the possibilities of the iPad? I used to bring my MacBook everywhere, now I’ll just bring the iPad everywhere.
(2) Home. I have a feeling somewhere deep inside me, I’m a control freak. I want to know how many calories I’m using. I want to know how much money I’m spending to the last dime. I imagine controlling my television, heating, lights and whatever using a tablet PC, just like what we used to envision. We would know how to regulate energy in the home, or if having the room at 3 degrees more would cause a great change in our electricity bill.
(3) Work. Its weird. iWork? I don’t know about this, but I rely on Keynote that much to give good presentations.
(4) Size. Is perfect. Giant iPod? Is great.
Why won’t I buy it now?
(1) Camera. I probably need one. Eventually.
(2) Price. 16GB on an iPhone is insufficient for me. I have too many photos and videos I want to bring around. I like the 64GB model with 3G. That’s going to be expensive. I might have to wait for my MacBook to literally start working like a snail first.
(3) iBooks. Has that tiny print to show that it is for the US market only. Along with downloading of movies and what have you not which we outsiders in the international market do not have. I would buy this over a Kindle though.
(4) Instability. Uh. I’m not going to be an early adopter of code adopted for the iPad.
I think that’s what I can think of for now. Ignore the name iPad, everyone hated the name MacBook Pro when it was first announced, but now MacBook eventually is well sort-of-okay. And even if it was called iHippo, iGraffic, iWhatever, you would have bought it anyway. Names are only important when establishing an entire product line, read: RAZR.
After settling my passport / driving license / and other what-have-yous I finally have time to blog. Anyway, I’m back in Singapore for Chinese New Year, the first time since three years I’m actually back! I’m usually back twice a year, but CNY is a date in the middle of nowhere (February anyone?), so I’m quite happy to be actually catching it this time round.
What’s up here?
Well, firstly, my favorite hair stylist Uncle Sunny (Kimage Funan), decided that I should be a redhead without consulting me. He also assumed that I was 21 years old which made me very happy – so I let him do whatever. I think it was his ploy, but whatever, I haven’t been so red for a while, and it IS Chinese New Year after all. No curls this time round, I couldn’t bear the thought of sitting six hours to digital perm my hair this time round.
Next, I hopped over to Toa Payoh to buy furnishing / decorations for my new house. And I managed to get two Philips LivingColors mini for only 135SGD! Assuming 1EUR = 1.97SGD, that’s an incredibly good deal. My train of thought was this: Oooooh, they are selling LivingColors here for 99SGD a pop, and they are selling it in Holland for 99EUR, I need one. I go to the counter, oh, you can get this for 80SGD, but if you buy two, its 135SGD. That’s like only 30~EUR each! Anyway, the lights are awesome and designer, just the way I like them.
Till then!
Lately, I’ve been questioning the validity of statistic probabilities and how “that would never happen to me”. Well, funny thing is, three days ago, I won the lottery.
Oh yes, in Singapore, we have 4D, you choose four numbers and then if you are on of the twenty three numbers announced three times a week, you win. The probability of that happening is like 0.23%. Last time I bought 4D was eons ago, because I just don’t gamble. So I just bought the number of the house I just bought… and I won! Okay, it wasn’t much, but imagine the probability of actually winning. Or ending up in a plane with the Al-Qaeda’s plan to bring it down.
Now, I don’t believe in statistic probability anymore. If its an outlier, I better start planning for it.
I am in Singapore! And I finally got my order of the Uncommon cases for iPhone as well. Well, it rocks – sort of. Well, I half anticipated a case which is non-generic and what nobody has, and apparently there it was, my black and white Sadoko like princess imprinted on my iPhone case. It fits to a tee and covers the edges of the iPhone which my previous case did not do – and hence the onslaught of ugly marks. I really like it.
However, the dock area is weird. Its protruding and didn’t let me dock properly on anything possible – including the Vestalife Ladybug II speakers which I really wanted to get. Oh well, there, I saved a bunch of money for my speakers now. At least for now.
PS: I can’t wait for the announcement of some sort of Apple tablet on the 27th January too!