This is terrible. Now that I know I made a profit last year, I'm beginning to notice more things that I want to spend money on.
Bad bad bad.
For one, I want to get a bicycle. Not sure if I really ride it much but I just got this strong feeling that I would, the same gut feeling I had when I bought my current pair of suede shoes. Except a typical decent bike would cost me at least S$600-800. Bad.
Another is a trip to Canada. This is even worse but it's something I have been thinking about for a long time; it's just that now I feel the temptation more strongly. A week-long trip there would cost S$2.3k minimum, according to Expedia. That's really painful for a trip that's less practical than one to Seoul. I mean, sure, Toronto's got some good shopping areas and it's cold, but Canadian fashion isn't exactly famous here nor does Singapore fashion follow it to any significant degree.
My 4D3N trip to Seoul in 2012 only cost me a thousand bucks.
Another reason for choosing that place is because I wanted to thank my aunt and her husband personally for coming over to my mother's funeral. I don't speak to any relatives but I feel that I shouldn't completely ignore all of them. I'm planning to fly to New Zealand too for the same reason but that will come later. New Zealand has far less to do with my work than Canada.
But an extra $2.3k expenditure is still painful for my income level.
The thing is that even if I save on the hotel fees by staying with them, I still won't be saving much. $1.9k of that $2.3k is for the air ticket with taxes and etc, while the cheapest hotel cost S$67/night. Saving $400+ isn't much relative to the overall cost.
Sure, I can put it under my business expenses since it's true that all my overseas trips always have to do with my work, but it's still going to cut into my net profit while the income tax exempted for that $2.3k will only be 2% of that, ie $46. Meh.
Anyway, while checking the prices to Toronto, I thought of checking the Korea prices.
Fuck! $1k for 7D5N in December!
Fucking booked!
Best of all, I managed to get one of the last three Business Single rooms left at Skypark Myeongdong 1.
Woot!
According to Expedia, this includes a total discount of over S$900. I have no idea how this is possible but it can't be such a huge difference compared to last year.
There are a few catches though.
First, it's a business single, meaning not only is it a tiny room, I'm not sleeping on a double bed anymore.
Second, the flight is going to be on Vietnam Airlines.
Third, I won't be getting a full meal on half the flights.
Fourth, and probably the worst of all, I'm going to arrive at Incheon at 6am while the check-in time is 2pm.
Still, I'm basically getting two nights free compared to last year's trip so it should help me endure these issues.
I just hope the smaller bed isn't also shorter.
I also checked the members' rate for this hotel but as before, the prices are ridiculous. No business single and 110k wons per night Sunday to Friday, ie S$121/night. I have no idea why anyone would book directly with a hotel when I have yet to find an instance where the hotel offers a lower rate than travel agents.
Yea I know there's that tension over in the Korean peninsula but I don't think it will go beyond tough talk, now that the DPRK has set pre-talk conditions, regardless of how ridiculous they are. Jong Un doesn't want to fight; I think he's just testing the waters.
Also checked China. This time, I'm not going to Shanghai anymore. Twice bitten, so no way I'm returning. Moreover, one of the shops told me they got their stuff from elsewhere. If the Shanghainese themselves don't get their goods locally, why should I?
Too bad Chinese hotels aren't all very eager to offer their rooms too early, so I'm going to have to wait a bit to try again.
As for Hong Kong, I have a reason for going there but I think I'll lump it together with my China trip.
Then if I take into consideration that I've just spent roughly S$800 on the 3D printer, the 3D printing pen and the plastic spools, and S$60+ on Bioshock Infinite, I don't think I should spend anymore for as long as I can. It's too early to be spending that much; I still have another 8 months of 2013 to go.
And my bro and I are beginning to switch on the air-conditioners at night. Well, my bro does it almost every night when she's around so it's probably her request. Can't blame her; she comes from a wealthier background and it's a small thing to ask for. I do it too only when it's above 30 degrees Celsius at night and they have switched theirs on. Moreover, I always set it to 25 degrees with max fan speed for the 3-5 hours before I sleep and 25 degrees with lowest fan speed when I go to bed, and the timer set to switch off at 5am and my fan to turn on from 5.30am onwards.
Yet regardless of what I do, my last utility bill told me that my home's electrical usage exceeded the national average slightly after all these months of staying below the line. $170+ in total for power, water and gas for March-April, an increase of $30 from the previous month, and I had only been using the air-conditioner 6-7 times up till the date the meter was read. Probably $5-10 of that $30 was mine.
Then there's the internet. I paid over $200 in penalty charge for the pre-mature contract termination, and about $100-$150 for all the little fees between Starfug and M1, the latter for administration charges for changing mobile plans during the recontract, the new mobile data contract and the SIM cards.
The latest was the purchase of pants, shorts and boxers from Jshoppers. That order cost me a total of almost S$150, despite the recent weakening of the yen. At least they were all shipped for free.
So yea, 4 months into 2013 and I've already splurged about $1400 on things that are not strictly necessary, and this is excluding the weekly food deliveries of $50 a week.
With 15 weeks passed, this should come up to $750 so far, so the total would be S$2150.
At this rate of $537.50/month, I'll be spending $6450 by the end of this year.
Assuming I make roughly S$20k this year, I'll only have like $7000 to spend on food, transport, utilities and etc. That's bad. I've got to at least leave some buffer for things like a new PC or whatever furniture.
So definitely no bike and probably no Canada.
As for food, I'm really cutting down recently due to some kind of stomach issue. Frequent diarrhoea. Could be stomach flu, could be infection, but whatever it is, it's mild.
Made some extra-salty steamed meat cake using the last 800g of frozen minced pork and 60% of a jar of mei cai (pickled mustard but preserved in oil instead of dry as described in the Wiki article). Salty enough that I only need two tablespoons of it to down a whole bowl of porridge. It's even saltier than any salty preserved vegetables.
I only worry about my fibre intake now, so I guess I need to go down and buy some fruits soon.
The 5 hours transit time at Hanoi will mean I'll have like 3 hours to look around. I wonder what it's like at Noi Bai International Airport.
Will probably mean that I will also need to change some Vietnamese Dongs to get dinner, then treat the inflight dinner after that as supper. Which would be right because the flight begins at midnight.
I think for the first day in Korea I'll just get a lot of food at the airport then stay in the hotel room for the entire day since I don't think I'll be able to sleep much during the 6-hour flight.
Looks like an entry level bike will cost me only $500, less if there is a sale. Still tempted to try the clearance sale at Ubi but again, it's too early 2013.
I think I'll wait a couple more months. Maybe during the GSS or Christmas.
Monk in Neverwinter Nights is alright, I guess. I've only reached the graveyard beyond the Beggar's Nest, still looking for the source of the zombies. Fortunately for me, Charisma isn't that big a deal in this game because I'm only limited to one companion, aka "henchman" in this game.
With the Persuade skill maxed out, I'm only having speech issues in a few instances.
For the henchman, I decided on the thief, Tomi Undergallows, because I'm greedy and I'm never happy to find doors and containers I can't open. Tomi's great because he can open any lock and disarm any trap that isn't scripted to be unpickable, and he's doing more damage than me so far.
If the monk class in NWN is similar to the one in NWN2, then I've got to be patient about the combat. IIRC the monk only shines at higher levels, so right now the only fun thing about him is that my high Wisdom is getting me a lot of Insights during conversations with NPCs.
So I just saw my terrapin eat its own egg just now.
Eating its own eggs is fine, it's the egg-laying part I'm a little worried about. The only positive thing is that it's been so many years and it's still alive, so it should be able to handle this.
The trouble that I'm talking about is that I do not have a place for it to lay eggs in and clearly, it's got some eggs inside waiting to come out. According to some stuff I've read online, egg retention might cause health issues and even death. Without the proper environment for egg-laying, it tries to hold on to the eggs for as long as it can, and this might lead to all sorts of issues.
But like I said, it's probably been doing this for many years, so it should be fine.
Maybe I'll find something later this year, after I'm done printing walls to create an enclosure for both terrapins.
In the meantime, it's going to have give up and lay eggs into the water. These eggs will never hatch so there's no problem with her eating them.
I didn't actually recognize the egg since I've never seen it before. It was a white oval shell containing a semi-solid yellow goo. I had always thought that eggs should have whites and yolks but that egg clearly was a whole yolk in a shell. That's what I saw from the half that the terrapin was eating; it was like a white coating on the yellow stuff. No space for the invisible egg white as far as I could tell.
I was thinking that it was some trash a neighbour upstairs threw out of the window and somehow managed to hit a window pane at the right angle to drop into the tank, maybe cheese (looked really like cheese with the white part being the mould), and it was only after picking out some of the yellow stuff that fell out of the egg and smelling it that I found that it smelled like yolk. Yet it still didn't make sense because it was solid enough for my fingers to grip and pull out of the water. Unless it was boiled?
It took another minute for me to finally conclude that it couldn't have been anything but an egg despite the lack of white.
There's no way an egg can fall into the tank with half the shell still visibly whole and sticking out of its mouth, so it must have been its own egg.
Slightly disturbing but apparently quite normal.
It ate the entire egg, including the shell; I found no trace of it when I returned later except the water was slightly cloudy. No wonder I've never seen it before.
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