Bargain baby shopping 28 November, 2009
Posted by dear1dear2 in Baby, Dear1, Shop till you drop.add a comment
Yesterday was a public holiday (Hari Raya Haji) and long weekend so we decided to go shopping and bargain hunting for baby stuffs. We had a few goals in mind, namely baby cot and steam sterilizer. But before I get to the day’s chase, let’s take a look at the events leading up to the day.
Baby cot first. 2 weeks ago, we visited Metro at Causeway Point and saw this Shears Premium Wooden Cot going at $189 (usual $499 from Palmax website), comes with free mattress, an activity mat and a bean sprout pillow. At that time, we had not started looking at cots but we knew that the normal price of baby cots start at around $300. This cot was quite a pleasant surprise, and we both liked it for its price and no-frills design. It is not convertible to a child bed which suited our intentions as we did not want a convertible cot anyway. An older child can just sleep on a mattress on the floor; the cot will remain as a cot for younger siblings to use. But, we weren’t ready to commit just yet, we wanted to look around for more options.
After more browsing, we decided yes, the Shears cot is what we want. In the following weekend, we went to Orchard to check out the many storewide 20% discounts to see if there were any good buys. We chance upon the same baby cot going for $169 at OG with only free mattress. Hmm… Pay extra $20 for activity mat and bean sprout pillow? Bean sprout pillow itself is easily $10. Moreover, at Metro, we can earn linkpoints at 6% returns. So the final decision was to purchase the cot at Metro. We walked over to Metro Paragon only to discover that the cot wasn’t available at the Paragon branch. So no choice, we had to visit another Metro branch then.
Sterilizer. We first spotted the Pigeon Rapid Steam Sterilizer going at a discounted price of $95 (usual $125) at Kids Mall (IMM) a few weeks back. At that time, we also recalled seeing a packaged deal somewhere with the Rapid Steam Sterilizer, Starter kit, and 1 other item which we forgot, selling at $130 something. We decided to look around first to see which is a better package.
We were unable to find the 3-in-1 package anymore, so the promotion had probably ended. We decided to get the sterilizer at $95 at Metro to earn the additional linkpoints. But alas, Metro Paragon didn’t have it. So the decision was to visit Metro at Causeway Point to get both the cot and the sterilizer. Since Woodlands is rather far away for us to travel to after work on weekdays, we decided to go there during the long weekend instead. During the week itself, we passed by Kids Mall and Giant (both at IMM) and noticed that the sterilizer was selling at the usual $125. Was the promotion over? Did we missed it? Meanwhile, Tom & Stephanie (Westmall) was still selling it at $95. Hopefully, the promotion will still be ongoing at Metro.
So came the big day yesterday. We decided to visit Metro City Square Mall to buy our stuffs and also to check out the new shopping centre in town. But it was a disappointment. Metro there was pretty small and didn’t have either of the items we wanted. However, the kind staff at Metro offered to phone the Causeway Point branch to check on the availability of the sterilizer for us. Luckily, there was 1 last piece at Metro Causeway point. We quickly reserved it and would visit Causeway Point later that day to purchase the item. Heng ah.
Side track a bit, we visited Shen Kwong Trading at Bugis since we were already in the area to see what we can pick up. Shen Kwong Trading is a local distributor of baby clothes so we can get very good prices if we purchased from the shop directly. Its location was a bit hard to find as it is on the inner row of shops at block 269C opposite the Guan Yin Temple. Wandering aimlessly, we happened to spot this shop next to the public toilet with half closed doors. There was a stroller in front of it and a MTB just stepped out from inside. We peeped inside to see shelves and shelves and shelves of baby clothes and essentials linens. They were closing soon, hence the half closed doors. We quickly went in and picked out 6 baby shirts, 6 long bath towels, and 12 square face towels for just $21! Fantastically cheap! We’ll definitely be back to get more. From what we heard, they’re opened Mon-Sat, until 6pm.
Back to the chase, we drove all the way to Causeway Point to buy the Shears cot and Pigeon sterilizer which we had reserved earlier. It turned out that the discount on the sterilizer had already ended on 13 Nov and shops that still sell at the discounted price were clearing the stock from that promotional batch of sterilizers. We were lucky to still be able to get one on 27 Nov (2 weeks after promotion ended). Our total cost for these 2 items were $189 + $95 = $284. We purchased $280 worth of Metro vouchers and earned 2520 linkpoints, wow! That’s 2520 / 150 = $16.80 worth of linkpoints claimable at NTUC. Moreover, our purchase entitled us to redeem a free 2010 Sesame Street calendar and a Sesame Street umbrella. What a shopping trip, yeah!
So, what is the moral of the story? Yes, we made quite significant savings. But we’ve also stressed ourselves unnecessarily over the past 2 weeks trying to hunt down the best deals in town. We’ve also spent a fair amount of petrol travelling here and there, and also car park charges. Luckily, most of our trips were multi-purpose trips (such as attending weddings) such that we achieve multiple objectives per outing, thereby reducing our petrol/car park expenses per objective. The point here is that, we need to weigh the benefits of bargain hunting. If the savings is not significant, then it probably isn’t worth the effort making a dedicated trip there. So here are a few of our rules of thumb.
Bargain hunt only for big items that preferably gives savings of $20 or more. Also, string together multiple bargain items to buy on the same route to maximize the returns on travelling cost and time. Next, know the current prices of items well so that you know what is a good deal and what isn’t. And, Internet is your friend, check out the many websites that track promotions and discounts around Singapore and read discussion forums where users constantly update one another on sale events.
Lastly, contribute back to the community by sharing with others (through forums or blog posts) about great bargains and tips to stretch the dollar further. :D
-Dear1
OPC Calculations 26 November, 2009
Posted by dear1dear2 in Dear1, Dollars & Cents, Internet & Blog, Vroom Vroom.add a comment
Ok, I’m in a mathematical mood today so I’m going to test out the 
Let 
Let us consider the PARF of a normal plated car at each year within the lifespan of the COE of 10 years. For simplicity, we will consider integer number of years 
For an OPC, the 17000 rebate is deducted first from the COE, then from the OMV. Let us assume that 
Next, we substitute 
This equation shows us that if 
This means that OPC owners who got their COE at prices lower than 17000 do not enjoy the full 17000 rebate by virtue of the fact that they will receive a lesser amount when their car is scrapped. In the worse case scenario, the OPC owner will receive only 8500 in rebate if their COE is zero or near zero (i.e. $2 COE in Nov 08).
Of course, there are other factors to be considered such as the actual sale price of the car, the interest rate, amount of loan to take, length of loan, etc. This is only a very simplified calculation to find out the maximum and minimum rebates an OPC owner can get. Yes, in times of high COE, you get the maximum savings, but you might also end up paying more in absolute terms becos of the higher cost of the car and interest payable on loan amount. It’s like buying a brand-less backpack at full price of $20 or a designer brand backpack at 70% off the usual price of $1000. Sure, you saved $700 but you also just spent an extra (300-20=) $280 more than just getting the brand-less one.
Lastly, typing
-Dear1
Self-repaired my DS 24 November, 2009
Posted by dear1dear2 in Consumer Electronics, Dear1, Leisure & Games.add a comment
If you remember, I received my DS as a birthday present from Dear2 in 2007. It was really fantastic. I’ve always always wanted one of those handheld games since I can’t remember how young I was. As such, I have treasured this gift very much both because it was something that I really wanted and because it was a gift from Dear2.
For the past nearly 2 years, my DS seldom left my backpack as I carried my backpack to school everyday. I’ll always play it while travelling on the bus or train. Sometimes, Dear2 and I would challenge each other to a game of Mario Kart or Tetris when we’re travelling together. I can get pretty exciting. At home, we also play Animal Crossing with each other, visiting each other’s town and bring new furniture. We really had fun with our DS.
But unfortunately, my DS was dropped twice. I can vividly remember both times. Once at night, I left my DS on the bedside table, and I unknowingly threw my arm around while asleep and swept the DS onto the floor. Sad. That was the last time I left my DS on the bedside table. Nowadays, it goes under the bed if I was playing DS just before bedtime. The other time, I left it under my pillow, and in a similar fashion, I swung my arm under my pillow to cuddle up into a cosy sleeping position and swept the DS from under the pillow onto the floor. Sigh. Under the bed is the safest place for a DS to be.
I think it was during one of those drops that the lower screen started spoiling. The screen produced a yellow tint and discoloured everything. Soon, the resolution started reducing and I would see missing horizontal lines and vertical lines. I would say the resolution reduced to about 1/4 the max. There were no dead pixels however. Some time after that, the screen started flickering up and down, but it would stabilize after some ‘warming up’ so I was still able to play my games. Things took a turn for the worse and the lower screen gave up completely and wouldn’t even light up. I would turn to playing GBA games becos they only used 1 screen and my top screen is still working perfectly. This whole deterioration process spanned over about 6 months or so. But it was clear, I needed to get my DS repaired.
I brought my DS to a repair shop and asked for a quotation. It was going to cost about $30 or more for parts and labour and I would need to leave my DS there overnight. Hmm… I certainly do not want to leave my precious DS with some stranger overnight. So I began looking for new alternatives. I turned to my favourite DS accessories website – Dealextreme.
I also looked up some DS repair videos on Youtube to get an understanding of how DS works and how do I go about disassembling it. Surprisingly, I found this video of a young girl, probably about 10 years old, give a demonstration of how to replace the lower screen for the DS. So I thought, if she can do it, so can I. I ordered all the parts that I needed from Dealextreme – a replacement lower screen, a trigram screwdriver, a replacement touchscreen (just for good measure although my touchscreen isn’t spoilt), and a set of screen protector (because my lower screen protector was already badly scratched). The total cost was about $20, and since Dealextreme owed me $7 from a previous transaction, I paid only $13 for this shipment.
The actual instructional video that I followed to repair my DS.
The parts arrived last week after some delay and I sat down to repair my DS right away. Following the instructional video found on Youtube, I disassembled my DS and replaced the lower screen as well as the touch screen. All this took about 1 hour to complete for a complete first timer like me (don’t understand why the repair shops require the whole night to do it). At this stage, I suddenly became a bit skeptical. Maybe it wasn’t the screen that was spoilt. Maybe it was one of the video processors in charge of rendering the lower screen that was faulty. Then I would have wasted money buying all these replacement parts. Too late, I just have to turn on the power to find out.
Yes! It works! It was indeed a faulty lower screen. Haha.
I quickly applied on the new screen protector and began playing my DS again. I miss those DS games, GBA games can be a bit stale. My lower screen hasn’t looked this gorgeous for so long. I realized how much rubbish resolution and eye strain I’ve been putting up with for the past how many months. Getting replacement parts is this cheap and self-repairing is this easy. I should have done it a long time ago. Damn procrastination. #@*%!
Hopefully with this repair, my DS would last me another few years. Playing DS together with Dear2 is really fun. Although Dear2 always beats me at the Tetris Push challenge but I just enjoy playing together with Dear2. :D
-Dear1
Taime Warehouse Sale 22 November, 2009
Posted by dear1dear2 in Baby, Dear1, Shop till you drop.1 comment so far
Our loot from the Taime Warehouse Sale – The biggest buy is the Capella stroller at the back, still in box. :D
Taime Pte Ltd held a warehouse sale just a few days ago, 19-21 Nov 09. It was a Thursday to Saturday, and it was in Bedok. So the best time for us to visit the sale was on Saturday, and that’s exactly what we did.
We took our OPC car out promptly at 3pm on Saturday and drove all the way to Bedok. We stopped by Baby Kingdom first to check out the prices to keep ourselves current with prices. We have been eyeing this particular stroller for some time now and had already more or less decided on the Capella S705 2009 model with the 5-point harness. Baby Kingdom quoted us $350 at best from the usual price of $369. After looking around a bit more, we left for Taime which is just a stone’s throw away across the PIE.
Wow. Taime warehouse sale was great! The major brands there were Capella, Chicco and Lucky Baby. There was at least a 20% discount for most items, 30% and 40% for some other. Some items were nett price which also featured substantial savings.
Our total bill at Taime, what a steal! We should have bought more…
We went directly to the Capella section and found the stroller going at 20% discount! That’s definitely the cheapest price in town, we bought it without a second thought. We also bought some other baby items that were on sale, including some foam play mats, a rubber cot sheet, nail clippers for baby, swaddleme, and a stroller clip fan. The final total price was less than $369, which made us felt as if we bought the Capella S705 at normal price and got everything else for free. Haha…
We left Taime warehouse and got lost in the private residential area. Hahaha… Luckily, we managed to find our way out after about 10 minutes of roaming. We went over to Blk 704 nearby to try out the Xiong-ge chicken rice that was featured on Buzzing Cashier 2. We went there before the last time we visited Baby Kingdom but the long queue turned us away. Luckily, this time there was no queue and we got our chicken rice immediately. Not bad, the chicken rice is quite tasty. But is it worth 1 hour queuing time, probably not.
Next, we set off to the United Square Baby Fair organised by Motherhood magazine. We arrived at 6.50pm, just before the start of the baby bottles giveaway event. We quickly joined the queue to get our free bottle, and also get our free sample copy of Motherhood magazine. The bottle was quite cute looking with 2 cute giraffes printed on it. But the quality of the material used to make the bottle was quite dubious looking that made us decided that we’ll not use it for baby but will instead put it in our display cabinet. Dear2 also didn’t like the idea that both the top and the bottom of the bottle can be unscrewed.
We shopped around United Square further and found this shop Mums & Babes that is having this bottle exchange program. Trade in any old baby bottle and get to buy a new 5oz Medela bottle for $6.90 (UP $10.90). We knew that the 3 5oz Medela bottle set costs $31.50 (before 15% off) at Baby Kingdom, which meant that each bottle would cost (31.50×0.85/3=) $8.925. $6.90 sounds good enough. Now, where can we find an old baby bottle to trade in at a time like this? Hmm… Oh wait, we did have a bottle in our possession. Hehehe… And so, we traded in our free gift bottle we collected just earlier and bought the Medela bottle at the discounted price. Yeah.
So that’s it for our eventful shopping Saturday. We’re glad that we’re finally buying all the baby stuffs (and all at fantastic offers too!) and getting ready for our baby’s arrival. Dear2 has been somewhat stressed lately about our ill-prepared-ness. I suppose Dear2’s mummy instinct is starting to kick in. Gee… Hope that this shopping spree of ours did calm Dear2 down a little.
Also, our car really did improve our lives and brought us much convenience. I couldn’t imagine us going to so many places if we didn’t have a car. Not to mention carrying so much shopping loot home. The stroller alone took up most of our boot space, can’t imagine us taking public transport with it. Dear2 is also having some hip pains which made long bus and MRT rides a difficult thing for her. Glad that we bought our car in time for Dear2’s pregnancy.
There’s still much more shopping to be done, hopefully we can get everything at good prices. Today, we’re going to Mothercare to get some toys at 15% discount, and going to OG to take a look at their 20% storewide sale, and going to visit Aussino 50% discount Baby Fair again, and probably drop by Metro to see if we can earn the 6% rebates worth of linkpoints. You see, we can use our Passion Card to earn 9 linkpoints for every $1 spent, and 150 linkpoints can be exchanged for $1 at NTUC for grocery shopping, so that’s 6%. :D
Hooray to year end festive shopping season!
-Dear1
Pampering Each Other 19 November, 2009
Posted by dear1dear2 in Dear1, For Him For Her.add a comment
Just last weekend, we went shopping at IMM. We strolled past the Levi Strauss shop and they were having this $39.90 each for a min purchase of 2 jeans promotion plus an additional 5% discount for Citibank credit cards. Sounds like a good deal! But Dear1 current has about 5 pairs of jeans, 2 of which were recently bought (iirc, it was Nov 08). Yes, 1 year old jeans is considered new to me. So despite a number of my jeans shrinking in size due to a recent change in washing powder brands (read: Dear1 is getting fatter), I didn’t even consider the promotion for a moment. After all, why buy new jeans when I still have 5 (barely) wearable pairs? Save money.
That’s the way with Dear1. Dear1 is an engineer by training and by personality. Dear1 doesn’t see the need to spend money on clothes or keeping up with fashion. Dear1 gets his tops and polo-ts from event gifts. Dear1 gets a new pair of running shoes only when the current pair begins to let water seep in from the soles. Dear1 is just extremely stingy when it comes to spending on clothings.
(On a side note, Dear1 likes to spend on new handphone, new camera, new LEGO, new board games… U get the idea.)
So frequently, Dear2 needs to step in and renew Dear1’s wardrobe. Dear2 needs to convince Dear1 that he needs new pairs of jean cos he can’t fit into the current ones anymore. Dear2 needs to convince Dear1 that he doesn’t have enough pairs of socks and that some of them already have holes in them. Dear2 needs to convince Dear1 that superglue can no longer hold his only pair of sandals together so it’s time to get a new pair. Dear2 needs to convince Dear1 that a good pair of sandals cannot be bought for less than $10.
Dear2 has a lot of convincing to do. And it doesn’t help that Dear1 gets pretty defensive when it comes to the topic of buying new apparels.
But Dear1 isn’t stingy of all apparels in general. Dear1 just doesn’t like to buy clothes for himself. Dear1 enjoys spending on nice clothes for Dear2 and for baby. Dear1 is absolutely delighted to see Dear2 dressed prettily everyday. Dear1 very much want to buy a designer winter coat for Dear2 so that she would look trendy in our overseas photos.
The same can be said about food as well. Dear1 likes to eat 3 vege + rice = $1.60 for lunch at the school canteen. But Dear1 also likes to bring Dear2 to dine at Ichiban Sushi, Swensens or maybe just Mos Burger. And more often than not, it is Dear2 who thinks that dining out at restaurants is too expensive.
The point is, that at least for Dear1 and Dear2, we like to pamper each other. We like to spend a bit of time, money and effort to make the lifestyles of each other better. And in doing so, sometimes we don’t pamper ourselves. But that’s only becos its much more gratifying to pamper each other.
So, let’s pamper each other more, dear. I’ll let you buy new clothes for me, and you let me treat you to better dinners. After all, allowing our significant other to pamper ourselves is also a way of pampering them.
We bought the jeans. :D
-Dear1
Penang Trip Trivia 11 November, 2009
Posted by dear1dear2 in Dear1, Travel & Discovery.add a comment
Things you might not know about our Penang Trip. :D
- We decided and put together the trip in 2 weeks.
- We initially wanted to go on the Royal Caribbean Cruise departing 17 Nov 09, which would have called at Penang, but the cruise had a policy that didn’t allow pregnant women beyond 24 weeks. Dear2 would be 26 weeks by then.
- We initially wanted a 4D3N trip to Penang and check with the Krisflyer redemption system. There were seats on a Friday departure and Monday arrival, perfect! We decided to get our company leaves approved first before booking. The next day, our leaves were approved and we logged in to Krisflyer again only to discover that the Monday flight was fully booked, so we had to settle for the Tuesday flight instead and needed to apply 1 more day of leave.
- We had to postpone our gynae appointment from Tuesday to Thursday becos of the flight change.
- Krisflyer redemption got us free tickets only, we still had to pay for the taxes. The taxes alone were more expensive than if we had travelled entirely on budget airlines. But we wanted to clear off our Miles before they expire.
- We also checked Tune Hotel’s availability on the night before we applied for leave. The next night, it was about RM20 more expensive, we quickly made our bookings.
- Dear2 did all the transportation research. ‘Standard’ taxi fares, ferry fares, CAT shuttle buses, etc.
- Penang roadsides are not luggage friendly, too many ups and downs.
- We bought 24 hrs of aircon credit at Tune Hotel.
- We used the aircon timer function to limit ourselves to 8 hrs of aircon per night.
- We cancelled 2 attractions visits during our trip due to renovations (Komtar Observation Deck and Penang Hill).
- Penang Hill Tram was opened in 1923, and had a number of breakdowns in recent years.
- We walked through Lorong Selamat 7 times.
- Char Koay Teow chilli smoke is very irritating on the eyes.
- We have a yearly end of the year ‘retreat’ where we would review our performance and set our goals for the coming year. 2007 was in Bintan, 2008 was in Ho Chi Minh City and 2009 was in Penang.
- Dear1 had a new catchphrase – Tee Nya Kueh!
- Some bottled water were filled with Reverse Osmosis Water or Treated Pipe Water. Take note!
- We caught 2 mosquitoes that flew in through our hotel room window.
- We bought a packet of joss sticks to pray at the Goddess of Mercy Temple. It was the first time we ever prayed together at a chinese temple.
- We hopped on the CAT buses 3 times.
- A number of toilets in Penang’s shopping malls require a 20 sens entrance fee. Some require 30 sens. The ones are Penang Times Square and Gurney Plaza were free to use.
- We requested for cold milk on our flight.
- The tourism counter at Penang airport had no maps. We only got our Penang travel map at the Komtar information counter.
- We walked through Jalan Rangoon 4 times.
- Traffic lights in Penang give pedestrians exactly 12 seconds to cross the road.
- We ate 16 Tan Boon Biah (half a box) before leaving Penang.
- We went to St George’s Church to take a rest and visit the toilet on 2 occasions. Both times there were events being held there and the participants gave us some curious looks.
- Ordering drinks is almost compulsory at every eating place we visited.
- Old Town White Coffee is the in thing right now, even the taxi driver said so. A glass of Classic White Coffee costs only RM3.80 before taxes.
- It rained twice while we were there.
- There are a lot of one-way roads in Penang which made travelling in taxi very confusing.
- We spent a total of RM157 on taxi.
- Food portions are about 2/3 the size of those in Singapore.
- We make an effort to avoid raw/half-cooked food and ice from roadside stalls to reduce the chances of food poisoning.
- We didn’t have any diarrhea despite eating at lots of roadside stalls.
- We only had 2 pillows so we hugged our spare clothes to sleep.
- When we first caught a glimpse of the Penang Bridge, Dear1 told Dear2 that the Penang bridge was 3km long. Later, Dear2 read in a brochure that Penang bridge is in fact 13.5km. So paiseh…
- There were Halloween celebrations everywhere becos it was Halloween weekend.
- We actually understood Penang Hokkien.
- Piping hot Tan Boon Biah straight from the oven is actually crispy! Yummy!
- We ate a total of 57 plates/bowls/packets of Penang food.
- At the airport, every tourist departing from Penang carried a bag of Tan Boon Biah to bring home.
-Dear1
Misunderstood McDonald Monopoly 9 November, 2009
Posted by dear1dear2 in Dear1, Leisure & Games.add a comment
Our McMonopoly. Everyone else’s probably looks the same.
Sentosa Cove is the currently hottest property in town. Why? Becos you can take home $50000 in cash from the McDonald Monopoly game if you own the Sentosa Cove property sticker.
We’ve eaten about 6 upsized extra value meals (EVM) since the start of this marketing campaign to join in on the latest craze in town. After all, getting a chance to win great prizes while eating $5.50 upsized lunch time discounted McSpicy meal sounds like a good deal!
Sure, the set collecting game does look fun at first, and the chances of winning looks great too. Each upsized meals comes with 8 stickers and we *just* need to collect 2 or 3 of the same colour to win. For many people out there, the hidden assumption is that all property stickers are printed in equal quantities. And right here, we have a big contradiction.
If there is going to be only 1 cash prize of $50k, how can there be 72148 pieces of Sentosa Cove in circulation? If everyone comes to claim the prize, do we split it like Toto? >_>
It didn’t take us many EVMs to confirm this. After collecting 3 Ardmore Parks, 4 Geylands (no misspelling) and 5 Amber Roads, it is quite easy to observe that the prize winning stickers are printed in controlled quantities. In a sense, everyone in Singapore who are playing this game will probably have Newton Road and River Valley, waiting for the prize winning Scotts Road. And so on for the other colours as well.
Or if we look at it another way, referring to the picture of the monopoly map above, there’s only going to be 50+100+20+15+10+15+1+1=212 prize winning stickers (and probably a few more spares in case of unclaimed prizes). Yes, only ONE Sentosa Cove.
And if I’m the organizer, I’ll probably release these prize winning stickers slowly over the course of the game duration (until 31 Dec 2009), starting with the lowest prize in the first few weeks of the campaign to convince the public that prize winning stickers are indeed in circulation. And I’ll release the winning Sentosa Cove sticker (singular, not plural) on the final week to crown the so-called grand winner. After all, who will still want to play the game if the big prize was given away during the first week.
Just the other day, we overheard a few aunties in our neighbourhood discussing about how they *only* short of Orchard Road. And if auntie A have *extra* Orchard Road, must give it to auntie B ok. Erm… There’s only 1 Orchard Road in Singapore (pun intended). Everyone else in Singapore is also *only* short of Orchard Road. I wonder if these aunties realized that they’re falling into the marketing trap by eating EVM every day.
For us, we just eat our EVMs whenever we have cravings for french fries, and at the same time try our luck at the game. Our best hope are the instant win prizes. So far, we’ve won $3 Esso discount, a milk shake and a snack wrap. Slurps!
-Dear1
Counting 130 cars in queue 25 October, 2009
Posted by dear1dear2 in Dear1, Vroom Vroom.add a comment
Yesterday (25 Oct 2009), Shell organised this promotion to launch/introduce their new line of petrol called FuelSave. The promotion is a 1 day only event, from 10am to 6pm at almost all Shell stations around Singapore (only some of those industrial area ones were left out). FuelSave 95 or 98 sold at $1 per litre. For comparisons, current petrol price was $1.767 and $1.90 for RON 95 and 98 respectively.
For us, we’re normally supporters of Caltex due to our OCBC Titanium card which gives us 12% off at Caltex. And I tend to think Caltex petrol with techron technology gives our car engine a ’smoother’ feeling. But $1 per litre was just too good to ignore. And since our tank sits at around 40% full, we stand to make some good savings with this promo. Furthermore, I’ve never pumped anything other than RON92 before, so I thot it was a good chance to try out higher grade petrol for a change.
Oh, but we had a small constrain. Our OPC car can only leave the house at 3pm. Ok, so let’s hope that they still have petrol left in their station tanks by late afternoon. We’ll set off at around 3pm, wait in queue (there was no doubt that there will be a queue) for about 30 minutes, then set off to our destination for shopping and to attend a wedding event at night. Or so that’s what we thought.
We woke up at 3pm from our afternoon nap. :P We washed up and got ready to leave the house. We set off at 4pm and drove to our nearby Shell station at Bt Batok Road. Oh, there’s already a queue. That’s expected, no worries. We also saw numerous station helpers to direct traffic and organise the car queue. Nice.
We drove along Bt Batok Road to find the end of the queue. Hmm… no end in sight! We passed the first U-turn point and the queue didn’t end. Somewhere further down the road, we spotted the last car in line and so we made a U-turn at the next traffic junction. Wow! The queue was longer than expected, we probably needed to wait for 45 minutes to 1 hour.
We took up our position and inched forward. 15 minutes into our wait and Dear2 counted that we’ve moved about 10 car lengths. Why is it so slow? When is it going to be our turn? We might be trapped in this queue for longer than we expected. Is it even worth the wait? How much can we save from this? We still want to go shopping before the dinner event u know… Many questions raced across our minds.
We give up!
Turn on the right signal, change lane, get out of the queue, and we decided to do more meaningful things with our Saturday afternoon than to waste our time waiting. As we drove past down the line, Dear2 began counting the number of cars in the queue. I slowed down to a comfortable speed so that Dear2 can keep up with the counting. 2, 4, 6, 8, 10… 64, 66, 68… 98, 100, 102… 126, 128, 130! O_O
There was about 130 cars in queue, and about 10-14 cars within the station itself. OMG. If we had only moved 5 car lengths in 15 minutes, we would still be queuing when the sky turns dark. And taking into account that the promotion only lasted up 6pm, we were most likely going to miss the cutoff timing for the $1 per litre promotion anyway. Can you imagine waiting for 2 hours or more only to discover that promotion is over and having to pay normal price?!
Maybe this marketing event can be improved a bit. First, the long queues caused traffic jams, especially in the city areas. Second, turnover time is still quite long. Maybe they can try a redemption coupon kind of thing? Go to any Shell station, get a coupon, redeem anytime within the next 2 days. Sure, the current promotion stirred up quite a big hoohaa (and traffic jams), and they’re getting all the (bad?) attention/publicity. The redemption scheme probably won’t have the same impact.
We were glad that we decided to abandon this useless waste of weekend time. What can one do in a car for 2 hours anyway? And think about the petrol wasted while waiting in line.
We had a great time afterwards, window shopping and meeting up with old friends. And we’re going back to Caltex for our no-frills, zero waiting time, 12% discount.
-Dear1
New Milestones Sidebar 23 October, 2009
Posted by dear1dear2 in Dear1, For Him For Her, Internet & Blog.add a comment
Oh, we’ve added a new item to our sidebar – Our Milestones! It is located just below the Category Cloud. Our Milestones is a chronological representation of Dear1 and Dear2. It lists some of the more significant events in our courtship, such as our first date, our first travelling experience, the proposal, our wedding, etc.
We got this inspiration from visiting other peoples’ blogs where they placed links to special events in their sidebar too. But being the systematic engineers that we are, we decided to start right from the beginning and clearly label the months and years. Haha.
This chronology of Dear1 and Dear2 serves 2 purposes. First, remembering blog as a history log, it allows us to look back in time and appreciate the many wonderful times we spent together. It allows us to take in major events of our lives in a single glance. And perhaps, it can also act as a time ruler with which we measure how long has it been since our last holiday. Hehe… :P
Second, it allows for our readers (yes, u!) to find out more about us and our past, and possibly use our timeline as a sort of guideline for planning your major events as well. Of course, our way of doing things aren’t perfect, but it’s a good starting point for those who are starting from scratch.
Very soon, hopefully over this weekend, I will start putting up links within Our Milestones that will point to specific posts where we’ve talked about the particular event. With that, searching for specific events will become much more efficient than using the search bar or the archives links.
We hope to add more and more events in the future as we continue to write the days of our lives. At the same time, we’ll also be nostalgic and continue to add significant past events when we recall them. These short titles will also serve as reminders that we can write an old story about to fill in the memories of our past.
Take a minute to read Our Milestones. :)
-Dear1
JLPT3, here I come 15 October, 2009
Posted by dear1dear2 in Dear1, Nihon no koto.add a comment
I’ve always been interested in Japanese language and culture (but less the history). So, when the opportunity presented itself to me some 3 years ago, I took up a structured Japanese language courses at my school.
In all, I took 4 modules in Japanese language over a span of 2 years. It was 7 hours of lessons per week for 13 weeks per semester over 4 semesters. So that meant I’ve had 364 hours of formal training in Japanese. The textbook that we covered in class was the Minna no Nihongo series 1-1, 1-2, 2-1 and 2-2.
It was also a great opportunity in the sense that I didn’t have to include the results of these Japanese modules towards my modular credits at school. Essentially, they were considered extra-curricular modules. And that was great because I really dun foresee myself scoring A’s in a language module. And I was right, I scored mostly B’s.
I decided that I should sit for the JLPT exams to get myself accredited. I also decided that I should skip the JLPT4 exams as it was just going to be a waste of money. Level 3 will supercede level 4 anyway. And the exams are held once a year so it made sense to skip a level and save 1 year.
However, the date of the JLPT exams did pose a problem. JLPT is traditional held on the first Sunday of every December in Singapore. Unfortunately, StanChart Marathon is also always held on the first Sunday of every December. It will clash every single year.
I did contemplate about taking JLPT as early as in 2007 (after 1 yr of formal lessons), but I finally decided to attempt the full marathon with Dear2 instead. In 2008 (after 2 yr of formal lessons), I again thought about taking JLPT, but still decided to stick with our half marathon. This year however, Dear2 is expecting our first child so all our running plans are cancelled for the rest of the year, and so I decided that I will go ahead and sit for my JLPT3. :D
Now comes the tough part, I have not been studying Japanese for the past 14 months. The only chance I have to practice was during our Japan honeymoon, regularly watching anime and interpreting the product descriptions at Daiso.
There is roughly about 7 weeks to the exams and I have not started revising yet. I need to study all 4 Minna no Nihongo books to prepare for this exam. In effect, I need to revise everything I had learnt over my 2 years of study. And I haven’t started yet… oh no…
My goal is to attain JLPT2. Anything above that would be a bonus to me and would only be attempted if I have the time (and motivation). But first, I need to get past the hurdle of JLPT3 this year. Time to pull up my socks!
-Dear1
