I’m in Delhi right now.

I feel that I almost didn’t get there. Somewhat along the lines of:
19 Dec: Putting together 20 different documents because you get a business visa this is what is needed. Crap. In Singapore, this would taken a day.
21 Dec: Realizing that I was going to Milan, and the passport needed to be submitted
22 Dec: Was told that I need to have 10 working days, which put me approximately flying on the 11 Jan
23 Dec: Found out that I was classified as resident, this would take 5 days if done personally. Except I was going to go to Milan.
27 Dec: At consulate. Almost didn’t submit my application, lacked 2 pieces of documents which wasn’t stated. PM saved me.
29 Dec: Company travel desk telling me that 30th is actually a holiday for the consulate and it wasn’t the correct number of days. Helpline assuring me that I will get my passport back on the 3 Jan
3 Jan morning: Travel desk called courier 4x, exclaiming that I was going to leave on the 4 Jan and everything has been booked so it had better be on time
3 Jan evening: Travel desk told me that consulate will release the passport at 5pm closing
4 Jan: Still no passport. Arrived at Schiphol at 930am. Picked up my passport with the Indian visa, crossed the boarding gates at 1050.

Nonetheless, I am here in India, and I’m heading to Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. Its really great, because this is the first time that I’m ever in India. And my favorite thing to eat is roti prata (this is slowly not becoming the case as ít is becoming a little much after 5 days of roti).

I’m generally feeling the Beijing / Shanghai first project vibe coming back to me, except that time I was a clueless first project consultant and this time I’m on my own with the team here!

So anyway, it was on the second floor of the Stadsschouwburg in Amsterdam, with a champagne in hand and with friends, that I thought, yes I am still around today. 2011 is just about to end, and I am still here, my family is still in good spirits and health. I am going to finish everything that I started that Christmas of 2009…

Anyway, the plan for 2012 is crazy already and I love it. I’m going Delhi (If I can get that Indian visa by one means or another or fix some flights or another without a secretary) and I’m determined to go because I’ve had 3 needles stuck into me to get vaccinated for all kinds of things. Then I’m tripping over to Singapore to celebrate Chinese New Year with my family (and Maaike’s coming!). Then later, I’m hitting Boston.

Things I realized about myself in 2011 then vs 5 years ago when I first graduated from National University of Singapore with my EE degree realizing how normal I was going to be…

- I’ve become a much happier person

- I’ve become incredibly analytical/logical, and a whole lot less emotional ~ this came out much more when I was in strategy then when I was in engineering for some reason

- I still look like I’m 23

Actually I’m going to stop at three points now because I learnt from someone who knew a friend from Harvard B-school that when you make a statement you should stick with three points and hence every message coming from him has three paragraphs.

I wish everybody happy holidays and Merry Christmas..!!

Please continue to drop by to keep my ad revenue going.

The thing is, when I think of it, it has been almost two years since 500 days. Sort of like when I checked out on Eindhoven… and god knows what, and decided to camp out in Amsterdam.

And then, I went back to the Campus last Friday. The thing is, I still have so many friends there. But I guess, I just feel sad being around there. It was like I was just happy, and one day I was not.

Anyway, last weekend I went to ABN AMRO being semi pissed off. You see, since I got myself a house, I am perpetually broke. I decided to thus go prissy with the bank. You see, when you come to the Netherlands as an “Expat”, there is only one bank which provides any sort of English pages – namely ABN AMRO. And sure, I’ve been using it for 2 years or so. But right now, I’m in more of an experimental stage as I can read Dutch, I go to a Dutch church.. you know what I mean.

So then I decided to go prissy with ABN AMRO.

You see I’m not very happy with ABN AMRO for a whole host of issues (Note: If you are from ABN AMRO and want to hear all my grievances please email me at summerrainx@gmail.com).

Here they are:

- Cards and “Card” holders are crappy. I had my card replaced twice over before anything could get working. They have changed this (I hope)
- Wereldpas broke, but they wanted to charge 5EUR to replace this
- Internet identifier broke down and they refused to change it for me, charging me 20EUR for a new one
- Extra “Wereldpas” gotten from the YP package was a brought over from my student days, resulting in monthly charges for a year
- Their saving (prive) packages are more expensive then any other bank (ING, Rabobank, etc) simply because they throw in a whole bunch of services even if you don’t need them

And so on.. not to mention their customer service is really expensive and not helpful if you give them a call and their banks open on the hours where you work (ING opens till 7pm on weekdays). Anyway, regardless, ABN had a monopoly.. until of course I started to read complicated Dutch.

So since I was prissed one Saturday morning, I decided to just screw it and switch to ING. ING had a higher interest (2.3% as opposed to 2.0%), and they wanted to offer me 50EUR just to switch. Plus since I didn’t need a Credit Card anymore I didn’t want to pay all these monthly fees just to support my betaalrekeningen.

I don’t understand this. Tell me. So you put your money in a bank, and you get 2.0% rente. The bank lends out the money you lent them to other peeps at 5.0% for mortgages, 14% for creditcards, and so on… and then they charge YOU for using their services. It’s a great business model I tell you.

Anyway, I was determined to switch. I had all my incasso debiting off my account, I had a mortgage which was huge and ABN didn’t want to lend me such a big amount anyway. Until this. Well, the kind lady at the ABN Eindhoven, not the horrible woman on the ABN phone line which you pay 0.10 a minute and is put 5 minutes on call waiting mind you. She was really kind, at least to say the least, or at least tried, and asked what did I like about ABN.

Have to admit, there is only one thing (other than the kind lady). And it was literally an iPhone app. Yes you cannot believe me now, the ABN app is so superb it was like the redeeming factor that I literally stayed with ABN.

The thing is, have you ever had thoughts like that? You hate so many things about a company, but there is one thing which kind of wipes is all off?

The (dumb) ABN app could do everything I wanted a bank app could do:

- Transfer small amounts to other accounts
- Transfer easily from current to paid account with ease
- See all transactions straightaway
- Contact / call ABN

So there you go. If you breakdown the 3 most famous banks in Netherlands, and its yearly fees:

- ABN AMRO: 33EUR
- Rabobank: 22EUR
- ING: 16EUR

There you go, this has to be the most expensive app I have, I pay 17EUR per year… What do you think?

I like cut-and-paste, its so easy to just throw it anywhere… so in comes, Jewelry on the subscription model! I guess, if you think back on the Milkman delivering milk, then scale it on the Internet to some great model, you can get loads of fun ideas.

So what is Jewelmint? It’s this thingy which S started to get all excited about, because she saw this wonderfully beautiful bracelet called the Mumbai bracelet. I admit that it is nice. So I checked it out and it turned out that Kate Bosworth and her stylist design a bunch of pieces of jewelry every month, and they will send it to you (you can select as well) for 29.99USD a month.

I think the concept is cool, and reviews so far show that the jewelry is actually really well-made as well. And there’s this welcome code for first time buyers at: WELCOME50 for a 50% off the first piece.

I’m tempted right now, but are you? Luckily for my wallet, they deliver only to the USA and some parts of Canada, and I know the huge customs taxes I need to pay to get it delivered to the EU, but of course there is always Borderlinx and those mid-post delivery services. Here it is: Jewelmint

I think that’s a compliment by the way, if the consistency of coffee is so strong between each machine that all one can find are aesthetic differences.

So I’m a fan of Nespresso. It all started when I was literally seduced by the froth which the Aeroccino generated. And there, on my first pay check in my new (rented) house, I bought a Nespresso machine and never looked back since.

Of course times have changed, and now my family.. And extended family of course, has a total of 5 Nespresso machines. Tell me how on earth does Nespresso not have a fantastic CAGR which other companies aim to emulate? Single serve coffee is the new black.

So since I was so curious, I started to learn about what makes Nespresso, well, great. You see, Nespresso is a typical blade and razor company. It is under the Nestle Group, but it is run like a separate entity. When it first patented its machine and capsules in 2002, the machines (in which they partnered with various companies like Magimix and Krups) was priced quite high. Since then, Nespresso runs regular promotions about twice a year, like most other companies, so that they can suck you into this great cycle of I will save money on my Nespresso at home, rather then a Starbucks at my local store.

So their super simple model is:

(1) Razor: Machine (Promotions, whatever)

(2) Blade: Capsules (Limited edition, never goes on sale, etc)

Let’s ignore all the touchpoints and CRM and whatever. I know I’m paring it down a bit, but I’m a consumer, so I have to admit, I feel that great sense of satisfaction fishing a capsule off my wall every single morning for my perfect brew of perfect coffee.

So since these capsules are the bread and butter. I was somewhat surprised to find a pack of Douwe Egberts capsules with a tiny *can be used in Nespresso machines on the shelf. Apparently the patents which were on the original capsules, expire in 2012. (Normal patents have a 10 year shelf life)

But well, I just had to just try it – since I know that other companies will definitely follow suit. So this is what I think.

Conclusion: Light years away

Why? I can think of 10, but let’s just name 5 in some random unstructured way since I need to get off the train soon…

(1) Bad, environmentally unfriendly packaging – why plastic + plastic? I’m not sure about you, but I don’t want to know what plastic under pressure and temperature which makes a espresso is actually doing to my health in the long run (once a day = 365 cups a year at least). Furthermore, it just looks not pretty.

(2) Acidic is off. For some reason, and I’ve realized this with the Senseo cups I drink now and then, is that DE is really harsh on the taste. It feels slightly that you’ve burnt the bottom of your cup

(3) Lack of variety. There are 4 varieties on ED’s plate as compared to at least 16 non-counting the limited edition blends from Nespresso.

(4) Bad location of channels. Hello? I found this is some really specialized coffee store in which I would never have gone to if not my brother wanted to look at some fancy teapot. Where is the placement at the departmental store.

(5) Unequal branding of ED capsules and Nespresso machine. This is all gone weird. You see George Clooney and wild young things choosing their nespresso’s over him. You wave your super exclusively leather embossed club badge (which my dad loves by the way) at the counter to show that you are an exclusive club member. And you do not want to drink out of plastic little ugly cups. Besides, they cost a fraction of few cents lesser then the original ones.

I’m just wondering why on earth did ED do this. Is it to ride on the wild side with Nespresso’s great CAGR growth? I mean, they got it all wrong on so many counts I think this shows even if your patents go off, and you have clueless competitors, you will still be the market leader no matter what.

Update: 23/7/11:

Okay, ignore the channels part, I have just seen this in Albert Heijn, and since you can possibly not want to wait for your Nespresso capsules to be delivered or running to the boutique then possibly it could be a better bet.

I would then, also say, Nespresso should try pushing harder on it’s subscription model a little harder. Either add more perks so that people will always have capsules in the house, or include free descaling equipment every 6 months if you take up their subscription.

But after discovering Nespresso, I started donating my coffee money to Nespresso instead:

Starbucks:
USD$(3.50 * 200) = USD$700 = EUR500 a year!
Nespresso:
EUR(150 + 0.35*200 + 50 (milk)) = EUR270

Which meant I saved about EUR230 (Which went to La Mer – darn, I really need to buy more Estee Lauder stock)

Which lead me to, discovery of the day!

I could do that with Bubble Tea! My mom brought me the pearls so I have no clue how to create it, but its just really easy. You just literally boil the pearls which turn from flakey brown to transparent Bubble goodness.

And since tea is just so dirt cheap (you don’t need expensive tea because the milk is just going to dilute all the tea fragrance anyway), it’s like saving a huge load on pearl milk tea!

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!