I’ve previously written a quick just look and go review for it, but since I find it awesome I shall just write a full one.

My brother has officially declared that I need to pay myself first. Admittedly I have not, however as the years in this company is slowly creeping from 2+ to 3, and I can no longer regard myself as fresh out of college – still Gen Y thank you, one of the need todos is probably to get me into a better financial situation. My mortgage and debts aside…

Firstly, was how simple Toshl was. In terms of overview, they have got it in the bag. I enjoyed looking at how much I had in overview. Just two graphs.

You see, a big problem which I do have with budget software was that the ones I’ve used so far are way too complicated. I really don’t want to upload my finances manually, create envelops of many things which I have to budget for, nor try to figure out how to add incomes in all variants. Who cares about income, I just need a budget for my budget…

This is for the iPhone app. But Toshl seems to cater for all sorts of other phones as well, including symbian. Yeah, Symbian… Think I got rid of all my Nokia shares the day they declared they were never going to make phones other then candycane, then they debuted the fabulous pink phones, and somehow never got back to that status again, wassup with them anyway?!

So here it is.

As you can see, I spent alot last month… But I was on vacation no? What I would change? I like the little cartoon dude to start buzzing me if I had spent too much or so. Or if I could see the proper breakdown of expenses in pie charts.

As a declaimer, the 4€ you see on God was because it was the only cash I had on that time, but there are 3 more services left of the month, of which I understand 60% of the message… Ik ga een Dutch Kerk toch? So expenses are tagged, really cute no? Except when you put à few tags and then cannot figure out duplicate expenses.

And then you can happily load things up the cloud, where you can analyze your expenditure on the computer. How cute is it? Except there isn’t much else to do when you are staring at it on the computer for some reason, would have preferred that it did more, but nonetheless.

So there you go, for a first start, Toshl’s free version has covered quite a bit of bases. I’m not sure about the paid version, and Toshl actually hasn’t even finished the development of the paid pro version for the iPhone yet so this is that much I can say.

Can you believe that I actually wrote this entire piece on the iPhone? It’s this new lifestyle experiment I set up, I got really sick of resizing photos on my computer and figured I want a mobile lifestyle and that computers should be purely for PowerPoint, and everything of mine is just going to be synced to the clouds…

And so, my Kindle cracked. Magically. Suddenly. Crazily. When I was in London. One moment John Steinbeck was on the screen, and the next moment John was in four pieces all over my e-ink. I doubt it was the crowded metro, nor the sweltering heat, but since I bought the Kindle for my 2Xth birthday present I wasn’t quite happy.

I called Amazon.

Which you do not need to pay 0.15/minute, which should be the case. Nor does it seem, do they outsource their customer care department because everyone speaks English there, also unlike some other companies.

That’s something I don’t get about companies sometimes.. stop putting you want a customer-centric (or add some business buzzword) organization, and to focus on customer services – and then outsource your customer service to India.

If so, just say this, we’re cheap, we offer almost zero to none customer service, and screw you, you’ll buy us anyway because you’re cheap – (This could almost be Ryanair)

So they agreed to replace my screen with a new Kindle. Apparently this wasn’t the case previously, but I’m half glad I wasn’t the one who required to have to settle a lawsuit with them. Else I would have said something along the lines of “I know the tech industry likes to tot about its magical devices, but mine just magically broke.”

So after International Priority Shipping and a little more I’m still on vacation drama later, I got my Kindle.

So here’s two fun facts about this new Kindle….

(1) It is supposed to have new awesome Pearl E-ink.

I cannot tell the difference, except it works great like the old Kindle. One is supposed to read better, but I think the old e-ink was fab enough. A little issues with their collection / foldering – would rather they let me arrange it via the Cloud instead of manual buttons but I can live with that.

(2) It is priced at 114USD but there is no ads! Apparently, another fun fact is that advertisements can now appear on the screensavers, which is actually sort of fun. But I was sent one of those – but since I’m an International customer, I don’t seem to get those ads.

Anyway, I’m still a happy customer. In the grand old razor and blade business model, I do like this razor still!

Lately, I’ve been in business books overdose. You see, I don’t exactly like being in overdosed, so I figured the best way to counter that was to just listen to books during my dormant durations, like in the shower, in the car, in the train, times where I don’t want to think.. You get the point. And since one of the companies which I absolutely love is Starbucks, I wanted to read the sort-of new book Onward by Howard Schultz. (This is the part where my Kindle smattered into 4 different pieces, but that is another story like I said) So, since I had nothing to read it from, I decided that I would just listen to the whole darn thing.

So I saw this particular book… let me grab an image here…

And I was like fine, oh great, Audible has this book, Amazon has a 30-day free trial and a book free of their gold membership, let’s just get the membership then! Well turns out (unfortunately), this particular book was not yet available in the international store… as with other books. Ok, so goes, how do I cancel this. And we know that the usual practice is to normally make sure it is totally impossible to cancel a membership…

Two things after that:
(1) Amazon let me cancel online – oh wow
(2) Despite not using any free credits, the customer service actually asked me if I wanted to claim my 2 free audio books prior to canceling my membership

In the tune of surprise delivering happiness.. I was like, oh wow. I didn’t even need the credits. You see, that is why some companies always get repeated purchases, and some others just leave a bad taste in your mouth.

If not clothing shopping would be this easy…

Still, decided that the way to go was to actually (and finally!) set up a budget. I went through a couple before succumbing upon this gem.. its called Toshl.

Toshl has one of the simplest user interface, and it not only comes for the iPhone, but a host of other mobile OSes as well. Furthermore, happily enough, it syncs rather effortlessly with the cloud to give you a breakdown of your spendings a month. I would say, give it a shot, so far (1 month), I pretty much give it 5 thumbs up! Check this out here.

Nonetheless, the Clarisonic is actually one of the best skin-buys I’ve bought for the “Use at home” care – or what they would term home healthcare. It is indeed expensive, but there were a couple of effects that I didn’t expect from it.

Firstly, the thing you notice after you immediately use it, is that your skin feels very clean – like in your pore clean, clean. Sometimes, cleanser feels like its sitting on the outside of your skin, and scrub feels like its tearing into your skin, but Clarisonic somehow manages to get this formula right.

Secondly, whatever you use – serums, infusions, the whole big deal, gets absorbed much faster – maybe the pores are all cleaned out – who knows.

Finally, I like the business model! It’s one of those razor / blade thing aka from the makers of the Sonicare. I just only hope that no big company comes to acquire this great beauty secret. The reviews for the Clarisonic are fantastic, and with smooth, smooth (La Mer aided) skin, its not hard to see why…

PS: Mia works well too – but the Plus just feels sturdy to the core.

Today, C was asking me if Groupon was a scam – as it was almost impossible to get a reservation in the restaurant she bought a coupon from.To me, Groupon is kind of a hit and miss affair, its great because you do get a good deal, but you also have restaurants who have just opened with no customers, and some which make your sushi as if they just learnt it in some sushi making class the day before. Definitely not for me.

Thinking that it sort of made some sense, I decided to have dinner at work with a groupon I bought weeks ago from Otto’s Kitchen. It was one of those impulse, its cheap, lets get it so that I can use it eventually when I’m working late in the office.

And man, wasn’t it a find! Otto’s Kitchen was a really good deal instead. For 7EUR I got somewhat of a set, the Coq de vin (Chicken Stew), potatoes, vegetables and a homemade cheesecake. They even delivered to Amstelplein for 1.25EUR. Apparently, the chef has been working for previous restaurants and it is quite evident in the quality and taste of the food because I was indeed impressed with the taste and more importantly, the price. If you are around in Amsterdam, go ahead and take a look, its actually worth a shot at Kinkerstraat 112.

As promised, I decided to review the Kindle 3 after ordering it for my birthday. It’s sleek alright, but here goes. I bought the Kindle 3 WiFi version with the leather bounded case from Amazon US. I found it really weird that I had to order this in from the International Store instead of the UK Store since I was obviously nearer to the UK. The nice thing was, that Amazon included all the taxes up front, so I paid approximately 150EUR for the Kindle itself, inclusive of BTW. As part of my pre-selection, I also went down to MediaMarkt to check out the other eBook readers, to find out that Sony’s eBook readers are more expensive, the iRex just didn’t look appealing enough, and the iRiver only came along with the Story touch version and was out of my range. So I just decided to go-Amazon anyway.

The Kindle 3 arrived speedily, approximately 3 days after dispatch from the US. And it arrived switched on and registered to your Amazon account. If you’re like me, and don’t get public WiFi at work, then you can manually transfer books into the Kindle via your computer in a very unprofessional drag and drop way. The screen is fantastic, it looks exactly like a piece of paper and do not expect to read in the dark at all. ePaper is indeed like nothing I’ve ever seen before, but this is obviously the best screen I’ve ever seen on any eBook reader, with a very fast refresh rate. A nice touch also, is that you can send PDFs to the Kindle, via email, and it will automatically convert these into your kindle during the next update. What I didn’t like too much, was how clumsy I was with the UI in the beginning, and how it takes a short time to figure out what to do. But I’ve handled the Nook before as well, and I think it all works this way.

Under experimental settings, you get a host of random things, one of which is the web browser. Note that even if you take a 3G version of the Kindle, you are only allowed to use the Wikipedia function. The web browser isn’t awesome. But still, looking at the New York Times and thinking this looks like a freaking newspaper, was kind of cool.

What I like most probably about the Kindle is its size – yes it is that light, about the size of a paperback. The design is also very sleek, and totally unlike the other eBook readers in the market. Like I said, since I already own an iPhone, I didn’t see the need to get an iPad which costed 3 times as much with all the additional features when work uses PowerPoint the most.

Should you get it? Well, if you read a lot – yes. With the exception of weird issues like not all eBooks are available, some only in the US market, etc. The Kindle store is great – and probably the reason why I bought a Kindle. The design and the look of the Kindle was a secondary issue to me. So say if I were to rate this I would say: 8/10

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 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!