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 to didn’t allow pregnant women beyond 24 weeks. Dear2 would be 26 weeks by then.
- We initially wanted a 4D3N trip and check with the Krisflyer redemption system. There were seats on a Friday departure and Monday arrival, perfect! We decided to get our leaves approved first before booking. The next day, our leaves were approved and we logged in to Krisflyer again only to discover the Monday flight was fully booked, so we had to settle for Tuesday flight 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). 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
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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
Anime Watching 10 October, 2009
Posted by dear1dear2 in Dear1, Moving Pictures, Nihon no koto, Slice of Life.1 comment so far
All of us grew up watching some form of children program on TV. One genre of programs that captured the imaginations of countless children worldwide is animation, or cartoon in some places.
For us in Singapore, we grew up watching mainly cartoons from America, be it Disney or Marvel. Pardon me for the over generalization but I feel that American cartoons of my era (1980-90s) fall into 2 main categories, Talking Animals or Superheroes.
The only Japanese animation that we had and I could remember was Doraemon. Of course, during that time, I couldn’t tell the difference between American and Japanese animations. To me, they were all cartoons, the only difference being whether they were shown on Channel 5 or Channel 8.
I enjoyed watching cartoons immensely as a child. I remember rushing home from primary school everyday so that I could catch the 6.15pm cartoon on Channel 5. I remember learning how to operate the timer function on the VCR so that I could record cartoons that I knew I was going miss. I remember recording and compiling my own cartoon series so that I could watch them over and over again. I remember The Land Before Time was my all time favourite movie for many years and If We Hold On Together was my all time favourite song.
I remember proudly declaring to my mum that I will never ever grow sick of cartoons and will never stop watching cartoons even when I grow older.
I was that much a fan. And in a way, I did fulfill my declaration. Till this day, I am still very much in love with animation, just that I had shifted from American cartoon to Japanese anime.
I couldn’t really remember when I started the switch. Perhaps it was during the time when SCV started screening up to date anime from Japan. I recall persuading my mum to sign up for SCV just so that I could watch the anime Detective Conan. It was then that I realized animated films can be much more than Talking Animals and Superheroes. It was then that I realized opening and ending songs of anime didn’t need to sound childish. It was then that I realized themes such as crime, guilt and justice can be embodied by an anime.
It was then that I realized anime can be enjoyed by adults too.
It wasn’t until broadband was introduced that the anime became more accessible. Thanks to the hard work of fansub groups, the latest anime from Japan was able to reach out to all corners of the world. I even considered joining a fansub group to make my little contribution to the anime world.
The next big event that contributed to the accessibility of anime was video streaming. Just click Play and moments later the video will begin its run. Now, anime fans around the world could watch their favourite anime even with a basic broadband connection.
I digress.
A few years back, at my peak, I used to watch about 5-10 anime per season. I used to watch an episode or two in the morning while I sipped away at my morning coffee. Those were the days. However, it felt like I was choosing quantity over quality.
Since moving in with Dear2, I’ve learned to reduce my anime intake and focus on quality instead. These days, I watch about 1-2 anime per season. And I would introduce those that I think are really good to Dear2 so that we can watch them together as a couple.
I guess I really will never outgrow anime. And in the future, hopefully Dear2, baby and me can all watch anime together as a family past-time. :D
-Dear1
(p.s. Currently, I’m trying to find a good, calm and tranquil anime that perhaps Dear2 and I can watch together in the delivery room at TMC so as to take her mind off the labour pain. I wonder if they have DVD players there?)
A visit to F1 weekend 2009 6 October, 2009
Posted by dear1dear2 in Dear1, Dear2, Travel & Discovery, Vroom Vroom.1 comment so far
“It’s F1 weekend this weekend!”
-Dear2, 26 Sept 2009
Two Saturday walkabout tickets for Singapore GP 2009, courtesy of Dear1’s mum.
Dear1 and Dear2 got tickets to go on the Sat F1 event, complimentary of Dear1’s mum’s boss who gave the tickets as some form of staff reward. It’s walkabout Zone 4 tickets and that’s what we did on that day – walk about in Zone 4.
Dear1 parked the car at Central (beside Clarke Quay MRT) as we wanted to avoid congested road conditions at the circuit area. Funan might have been a slightly nearer location, but again, the North Bridge Road so near to City Hall MRT which happened to be the most commonly used train station might be jammed with vehicles too. So it was with much surprised that we saw the foot markings directly to the F1 gates, and they starts from the Clarke Quay area. Good job done!
Road signs to the gates can be seen from miles away.
From Central to Riverwalk to Asian Civilization Museum, there were plenty of people, events and stalls along the way. As first time goers, it was a pleasant walk to our destination, the Gate 5 as the excitement was already quite strong by the time we reached the Gate.
Asian Civilization Museum & Gate 5.
We entered the area at about 6.30, and it was people here people there, and many of them carrying huge cameras ready to capture the action. It’s just amazing to see that there are so many F1 fans around. At 7pm, the first and only practice round of the day started and it was the first time that Dear2 found ear plugs to be really effective. Even if you din bring any, think it’s still worth to buy the $2 survival kit which consists of the earplugs and poncho even though it was obviously going to be a sunny evening.
Photographers eager to catch some action at the practice session before the sun sets.
We walked in the direction of Esplanade and towards Marina Square for dinner.
As we walked about our designated zone, we noticed a number of food stalls selling delightful local food. A plate of chicken rice was selling for $8. A Curry’O from Old Chang Kee was selling for $2. A plastic cup of beer cost $10. The list went on. Visitors were only allowed to bring in 1 bottle of plain water for consumption, so there was no choice but to patronize these blood-sucking food stalls. Wrong!
There was a choice. Visitors were entitled to unlimited entries and exits from the F1 area. So, we made our way to Marina Square thru Gate 7 and had our dinner at MOF and KFC. (Side note: Food at MOF sucks. This was already our second visit, so we’re not giving it a third chance.) Food at MOF was so bad that we had to compensate for the bad taste with some snacks at KFC. Over at KFC, they ran out of large whipped potato and so the cashier substituted our large whipped potato with 4 small ones since a large whipped potato contains 4 scoops of potato.
Curious onlookers surrounded the F1 car exhibit at Marina Square foyer.
After dinner, we visited the F1 exhibition area at the main foyer at Marina Square. It was fun taking photos of the (mock?) F1 car on display and walking through the many F1 related merchandizes on sale there. Soon, it was time for the qualifying rounds and we re-entered the F1 area from Marina Square.
We decided that traffic will be congested as everyone try to leave for home after the qualifying. Hence, we decided that we will only stay for 2 rounds of qualifying to avoid the crowd while we make our way back towards Gate 5.
Along the way, there were many standing platforms where walkabout visitors like us can watch the race from. Most of these platforms were fully occupied with onlookers and photographers. However, most of these platforms were situated along straight roads and the F1 cars simply zoomed by with noise. There plainly wasn’t much to see. In addition, there were no TV screens nearby so we had no idea what was going on, who was leading or had there been any incidents/crashes. There was some seated galleries with those large TV screens but our lowly walkabout ticket wasn’t allowed to enter those areas (despite them being almost empty!).
Standing platforms along the Esplanade bridge for walkabout visitors like us.
The sound of revving engine and screeching tyres was louder than before with all the cars racing for the best lap times. We could sometimes feel the reverberation on our skins as the cars sped past. We had ear plugs but baby dun have. No worries, baby was well protected from the noisy environment under Dear2’s clothes and skin and muscles and tummy fat (gee…) and amniotic fluid. Sayang sayang.
At F4.9, 1/50, Iso400, the shutter speed was just too slow to get a clear shot of the F1 cars.
We did manage to find a few good spots around the corners where the F1 cars slowed down enough for us to catch a glimpse of their cars, sponsor logos and drivers. Corners really were the best places to watch a race. And these hot spots were usually bursting with photographers and their mono-pods.
Somehow, we found the F1 crowd on this Sat night rather restless. Nobody had any idea of what’s going on and it felt like a session of neck-turning exercises, turning from left to right with every zooming car. However, everyone still had a gleam in their eyes, an excitement, an eagerness, as if waiting for something to happen. That must be it! Everyone was waiting for an accident to happen. After all, losing control of a spinning car and crashing into the side walls had to be the highlight of any race. Suddenly, race watching seemed so sadistic.
Luckily, we did not have to squeeze with the crowd on public transport.
We exited from Gate 5 shortly before the start of the 3rd round and retraced our steps back towards Central. Clarke Quay did look different from day to night. The restaurants were filled with patrons. The flea market had made way for an outdoor cafe. A large projector screen was set up next to the Statue of Raffles for the live telecast of the F1 qualifiers. Race queen inspired waitresses busied themselves with drinks and credit cards.
Over at Central, things were much quieter as the night crowd changed from race fans to love birds. It was interesting to see the different side of Boat Quay on a weekend midnight. We went to the car park to collect our car, smiling happily that we didn’t have to squeeze on the MRT. Owning a car really did improve our lives. The car park fee was about $5.80, pretty decent for about 8 hours of stay.
There was no congestion that night. Maybe we had parked a little too far away from the F1 gates. We exited thru CTE and arrived home about 25 minutes later. The next day, we watched the F1 race at the comfort of our home, just like we did 1 week after our wedding 1 year ago. It was a fun experience to visit the F1 Singapore GP. Will we PAY to go again next year? Probably not.
-Dear1 & Dear2
Saving our $1 coins 30 September, 2009
Posted by dear1dear2 in Dear1, Dollars & Cents, Slice of Life.2 comments
Since so long ago that I can’t even remember, I started a habit of saving my coins in those coin-saver piggy banks. Of course, mine is not a shape of a pig, rather it is a traditional red mailbox. Now, how did this habit start?
It was around the time when I got my first wallet. As many of us know, if there are coins in the wallet, it makes the entire wallet big and bulky, not to mention heavy too. So what I did was, at the end of each day, I would empty my wallet of coins and just left them lying on my study table. Before long, my study table was overwhelmed by coins. That was when I decided to bring out one of my unused piggy banks and started depositing all these coins into it.
Some time down the road, I found it quite satisfying to hear ‘clinggg’ of new coins falling upon the old ones already in the piggy mailbox. However, I also began to thirst for more! I wanted to grow my piggy mailbox quicker so that I can open it up and start counting my coins like Scourge Mcduck. So I made a new personal policy, that all coins will not be spent but will be deposited once it entered my wallet. This really made a lot of difference as my piggy mailbox grew by leaps and bounds. But my spending power took a big hit. Imagine, I paid for a $0.30 packet of titbits using a $2 note and received $1.70 worth of coins in return. Following my strict policy, I had to save all the $1.70 worth of coins, meaning I had very much less pocket money to spend. :(
Soon, my piggy mailbox was full and it was time to count the fruits of my labour. I remember sorting out the coins by type first, the 1c, 5c, 10c, 20c, 50c and 100c (aka $1 gold coin). I vaguely recall that the 10c and 20c were the greatest in numbers but they were worth very little in total value. Instead, the $1 coins contributed to the majority of the value of my first full piggy mailbox despite it being the least in numbers. (Okok, the 5c coins were the *least* in numbers, the $1 coins were 2nd last. :P)
From there on, I made a change in policy. Only $1 coins will not be spent and must be deposited; all other coins can be spent. This is because $1 coins are the highest valued coins in Singapore and hence a pure $1 saving piggy mailbox will yield the highest value per volume.
That was years ago. I’ve since emptied my piggy mailbox of my pure $1 savings several times and easily recovered around $500 each time. It really makes me feel like Scourge Mcduck counting my stacks and stacks of gold coins (Singapore $1 coins are indeed gold in colour).
Some time along the way, I managed to influence Dear2 into subscribing to my $1 coin policy, and she did. But Dear2 plays cheat sometimes as she would occasionally throw in some 50c coins in order to make her piggy UFO grow faster so that she can empty it earlier. And because Dear2’s piggy UFO is transparent, I can often spot the odd silver colour 50c coins within and ‘punish’ Dear2 for violating the rules. Gee… Under my close supervision, Dear2 has turned over a new leaf and plays by the rules now. Gee…
Since moving in together, we have joined our efforts in saving $1 coins into my piggy mailbox. With our combined contribution, the piggy mailbox is growing faster than ever. It is really music to our ears to hear the silence of the falling coin getting shorter and shorter. It means that our coin-level is getting higher and higher. :D
Besides counting coins and satisfying our coin-music ego, the $1 coins came in useful for one other occasion, our wedding. We selected the brightest and shiniest of our gold coins and packed them into a hefty $88 Gold Angbao for our wedding. So auspicious, $88 (fa-fa), gold colour, bright and shiny. Yeah…
We’re not young children anymore, so you may ask, why are we still putting money to a piggy bank? Well, it’s a matter of discipline and character. Saving these coins is not about its monetary value. It is about cultivating a discipline lifestyle, teaching us perseverance and training ourselves to be responsible adults. The small gesture of our daily coin drop may well be a building block for us to face larger problems in life.
-Dear1
Driving out, Driving around 23 September, 2009
Posted by dear1dear2 in Dear1, Travel & Discovery, Vroom Vroom.1 comment so far
Life really did change quite a bit since we bought our car. For one, we’re now more outgoing on weekends. Particularly on weekends becos our car is an Off Peak Car. Life on weekdays are still pretty much the same as we wake up at the same time every morning to catch the morning train to work. Evenings are more varied as I sometimes leave office on the dot of 6pm to fetch the car from home before picking up Dear2 to go out for a different dinner (it does get quite boring eating from the same hawker stall day after day).
Several things come in handy for us now. First, the public transport guide, available for $6 from Popular bookshop, now serves as a road guide more than a bus guide for us. We use it to plan our routes around and also to find our way home when we got lost. But one bad thing about the public transport guide is its lack of proper road direction markings, especially the one-way roads in the CBD area. Maybe the markings are there but if I can’t readily find the markings as a reader, then it is probably poorly labeled.
The next useful device is our handphones. Both our handphones come with GPS so we can use this feature to search for recommended routes by the navigation software. However, I very much wish that carpark rates can be incorporated into the maps so that we know where is cheapest to park when we reach our destination.
The National Parks Board website has also became our good friend as we try to search out and visit the many green parks and beaches of Singapore. Surprisingly, there are really quite a lot of parks in Singapore that we didn’t know of. Or that we knew of but was too inconvenient to visit.
In addition to parks, good food has also became our destinations. We used to brush off those foodie shows on TV becos its just not worth the effort taking bus, then train, then bus again to reach a particular hawker centre to try a “best” noodles in Singapore. Now, we begin to watch more of these shows, such as Buzzing Cashier and Driving Miss Foodie, and will jot down their addresses to visit them in the future. Another great source of information is the many many food review websites and blogs about Singapore food. Yum yum.
So far, we’ve visited a few hard to reach places that we normally wouldn’t have visited if not for our car. Let me just list down a few in our ever expanding list.
- Henderson Wave at Telok Blangah Park
- Home-cooked picnic at Labrador Park
- Dabao beehoon picnic at Jurong Hill
- Dabao bread from Yishun central then picnic at Sembawang Park
- Attend a wedding dinner at Changi Airport
- Impromptu dinner at Ikea Alexandra
- Passion Run at East Coast Park
- Happily going home for weekend family dinners at Jurong
- Late night ice milo at West Coast Park
- Flea Market at China Square
- Sunday breakfast at Toa Payoh, Bedok
- Visiting an acquaintance at Pasir Ris
- Hanging out at IMM
- Durian at Highland Centre, Serangoon
- Crab beehoon at Ang Mo Kio
- Exhibitions at Expo
- Grocery shopping at Vivo City
- F1 Singapore GP at Marina Bay Street Circuit
- A walk at Bishan Park
- Baby discount stores at Kaki Bukit
Not a fan of the bus-train-bus combination, our lifestyle was really getting a bit stale. I’m glad that we’ve decided to invest in a car to improve the quality and inject some variety into our lives. Now that Dear2 is pregnant, I don’t think we’re able to go on any overseas trips until our baby is born. Despite what books say about mums-to-be (MTBs) being energetic in the second trimester, MTBs still tired easily and are unable to walk long distances. So, even if we go on a 8 day Taiwan trip, Dear2 may not be able to fully enjoy the vacation. Instead, why not stay in Singapore and be domestic tourists to discover the many interesting aspects of our island. Kranji War Memorial, Sungei Buloh, Bollywood veggies, Changi Village, etc, here we come!
-Dear1
Singtel BreadTalk 10cent promo 17 September, 2009
Posted by dear1dear2 in Dear1, Food & Beverages, Shop till you drop.add a comment
SingTel Mo4U has been sending quite a lot of advertorial sms to us ever since we signed up our mobile plan with SingTel. The problem is, it is very very annoying to keep receiving unsolicited sms from SingTel all the time. It is very frequent, much more frequent than that from M1 previously. Of course, there’s an option to unsubscribe from the advertorial service, but the opportunity cost is that we may miss out on good promos if we do that. So, we didn’t unsubscribe. Little did we know that it would pay off so soon.
On 7 Sept, we received a mms saying that BreadTalk is having a promotion whereby we can buy a maximum of 2 buns per transaction at 10cents each when we flash our mms at the cashier. Wow, 10cents per bun from BreadTalk! This must be the best promotion yet. And it is valid until 20 Sept. So on that very first day, we decided to visit BreadTalk. We haven’t been to BreadTalk for a very long while (more than 1 year) becos we felt their bun was too tough, too hard, and overpriced. This promo brought us (unsatisfied customers) back to give BreadTalk buns a second chance. Kudos to the BreadTalk marketing team. Buy buy buy!
Purchasing the buns at the promo price was quite straightforward, just show the mms to the cashier. In addition, the cashier will request that we show them the sender of the mms to verify that we are indeed SingTel customers and we received the mms from the main server, as opposed to receiving this mms forwarded by our friends. Ok, this slowed down the paying process a little bit but it’s a just a small delay. That’s it, we left the shop and head for home. Hmm… This meant that we can reuse the mms over and over again to clean the entire BreadTalk of buns for 10cents each. All we need to do is to queue up again. Hehe…
Ok, let’s talk about the bread. We bought 2 of their signature buns, the normal floss bun and the spicy floss bun, since we haven’t had BreadTalk for such a long time. Hmm… Not bad, they have improved. The buns tasted quite decent, the dough isn’t that tough anymore and are probably worth eating again. Maybe the cost of the bun played a small role in altering our taste buds but we still thought the taste had definitely improved since we last tried it.
So for the next few days, we would always drop by BreadTalk on our way home to pick up 2 buns for 20cents since its just next to the MRT station. No, we didn’t abuse the system by queueing up over and over again. We wanted to… but were a bit paiseh. :P We ended trying a variety of buns from BreadTalk and we realized the choice of buns had changed since a year ago. There were some new buns to choose from and some of the digusting flavours (i.e. vege bun) were gone. :D And I found my new favourite, the Chocolate Croissant. We try our best to sample the expensive buns so as to make full use of the promo. Dear2 liked the most expensive of the lot, the usual price $1.60 Raisin Bun.
A few days later, the cashier started a new system. Everyone who uses the SingTel promo must write down their names, IC number and contact number on a sheet of paper. Are they starting to track their customers so that the person cannot reuse the promo mms? But it’ll be difficult to enforce since they didn’t request the writer to produce his/her IC, and difficult to cross check if there are repeat customers. Furthermore, it slowed down the payment process.
On 11 Sept, we received an sms telling us that the BreadTalk promo will end earlier on 11 Sept instead of the original 20 Sept due to overwhelming response. Yucks. How can they stop a promotion early due to good response? That’s so un-magnanimous. But the sms also mentioned that the promo will be available again from 14-18 Sept as an act of appreciation. Hmm… Let’s strip away all the sweet talk and focus on the facts. Original promo is, say 7-20 Sept. New promo is 7-11 Sept plus 14-18 Sept. In effect, they remove the promotion for the 2 weekends of 12-13 Sept and 19-20 Sept. Perhaps they have foreseen some problems during the first few days of implementation and decided that they do not wish to deal with such problems on weekends when sale volumes tend to be higher than on weekdays.
Since the BreadTalk management had some time to rethink their implementation procedures over the weekend, we expected some improvements at the cashier when the promo resumes on 14 Sept. Nope. Nothing has changed. We were still requested to write our names and contact numbers on blank sheets of paper upon payment and hence causing a jam at the cashier. And we’ve written numerous times on the sheet of paper that makes us wonder what use they actually have for the compiled list of names. First, the accuracy of the list is questionable as we were not asked to produce our IC for verification. Second, if they want to create a mailing list of customers, there is no need for us to repeat writing our names everyday.
The promotion is great and effective from the marketing perspective. We are happy to patronize BreadTalk and to hand a 20cents coin to the cashier everyday for the past 2 weeks. However, the implementation and execution of the promotion is far from perfect as discussed above. Hopefully, the planners can think through the process carefully before rolling out their next promotion. And perhaps also conduct some internal trial and staff training before the actual event.
2 more days to the end of the promotion. We’ll continue sampling new buns varieties from BreadTalk.
-Dear1
P.S. The original mms referred to SingTel Mo4U website for further details, but the website has never been online, not even once.
