Rant 1223 / It's Alive! It's Alive!

27 Nov 2015

So whatever happened to the shield wall tactic?

This tactic is probably pretty well-known, in which a group of soldiers would have their front rank hold up a large shield so that they form a wall. I thought only the Romans used it but apparently, it was used by the Persians and Greeks too, among others.

Anyway, how did battle tactics become what we have today from there?

Just guns? No, that's too simple.

So I went to read about it on Wikipedia, and this is my summary of a few pages of Wiki articles:

First, people innovated with this tactic. What did they attack enemies with from behind their shields? Swords and polearms. Eventually, they settled on pikes, it seems. Probably because with that polearm, even the guys behind the shield-holders can attack.

On a side note, one major issue with this tactic is that if a shield falls, morale falls rapidly unless the men were well-trained.

Moving on.

From the pike, they slowly realized that heavier pikes are even more awesome. At some point, they decided they could just use both hands to grab the pike instead of holding a shield at all.

That's when the norm went from shield walls to pike squares. Well one can still call the later shield walls a square of pikes with shields on, but pike squares mean just pikes and no shield.

Then guns arrived at the scene. Those early guns were the arquebus and the later musket. At first, they surrounded pike squares with a thin layer of gun-users, but later realized guns were even more awesome than heavy pikes, so they added more and more till the formation was a square of pikes surrounded by a layer of guns plus another square of guns at each corner. That was the tercio.


That was followed by the realization that with the range of guns, you don't need to focus so many guys in one place anymore, so they shrank the formation and split everyone up. With many smaller squares, the troops were more mobile than the gigantic 3000-men tercio formation, and as we have seen time and again in history, speed is a great advantage in battle.

Soon, however, guns got better - the flintlock came about and guns got a lot closer to what we have today; pikes became pointless when reloading and firing got so much easier. You don't need such a great aim anymore when you can fire so much faster than the arquebusiers.

So pikes were out, everyone got a gun, and here we are.































07 Jan 2016

Just watched 15 minutes of The 100, a TV show set in a post-apocalyptic Earth where people have been living on a gigantic space station for a century and they sent 100 "expendable" teens to Earth to check out the environment.

Maybe it's just me, but the fact that half the teens didn't care about reaching the mountain base they were supposed to go irked me to no end because it was supposed to be stocked with 300 years worth of supplies.

These kids were born in a space station and their ancestors were too for at least 4 generations. Logic says 99% of them are lacking in any basic survival training. Yet they don't want to go to the only place they know of with any degree of certainty that can provide food, water and shelter. Even if they can identify plants that grew in their greenhouses in the space station, wild plants can be incredibly different from their cultivated counterparts despite being the same species, with one example being bananas - wild bananas are huge and have seeds.

Even if they can get food, I find it hard to believe they have the skills to build shelters and fires.

...

Turns out they could. Weird.

Shit. My miles are getting spread out. Although the majority is still in CX, it's only 80% of my total excluding the miles I can buy with my credit card points. Moreover, I'm not taking many long haul CX flights this year. In fact, among all my upcoming trips, only one will be on CX and that's to Seoul. The furthest destination will be Toronto and that will be on Eva Air because it's S$500 cheaper, although I can't upgrade to Business which I would do if it was CX. 

After a total of six long haul flights of 9-13 hours in the last 3 months, I've become quite tired of taking them on economy.  However, for the trip to Toronto, I'll have to consider my girlfriend's limited budget so I'll just have to suck it up and do it.  According to Seatguru, Eva has wider Economy seats with better pitch than those of BA, so hopefully it will be nice. Fingers crossed.


















11 Jan 2016

So according to my estimates, I had probably spent about 10k SGD during my trip to Europe last month and earlier this month.

That's slightly lower than my expected budget overall, given the fact that my shorter trip to NZ cost about the same last year.


























15 Jan 2016

So I think the flu that has lasted almost a month so far is no longer a flu. I tried wearing an N95 mask for most of the evening yesterday and my nose stayed clear for most of the night with almost no coughing, runny nose and phlegm. The sore throat seemed to be almost gone too.

Then I slept with the mask off, and everything's back. BUT I'm not sure about this and will try again later when I get home.






























01 Feb 2016


This is the longest post in terms of the amount of real time it spans.

Much has happened. As for the flu mentioned above, it's really my dust mite allergy that got ignited by the flu. The thing about flu is that my sinus gets swollen, allowing mucus to accumulate. Mucus/phlegm is like a piece of tissue paper - you have to keep it moving. If you leave it stuck on some dirt, it just lets bacteria fester since it doesn't have any inherent antiseptic properties.

So when my sinus got inflamed from the flu (yes there was fever on the second night I had it during the trip), it allowed mucus to stay there and hence dust mites or bits of dust mites or dust mite shit got stuck on it too, causing it to stay swollen.

It's still swollen today but it's better now. I just have to keep rinsing with my saline spray, clearing my nose and stay hydrated (to keep the mucus watery and hence easier to blow out).








Much has happened, like I said. The Europe trip was crazy and my Seoul trip just happened to hit the cold wave at its coldest point - Seoul, at -18 degrees Celsius. Bad luck, seriously. Even with my thermal, t-shirt, ski jacket, wool beanie, ski gloves and nylon scarf, it was not enough at all. At most, I could stay warm for a minute or two, then the cold hits me.

It was worse for a friend of mine who wasn't prepared for this sort of cold at all just like me and was suffering from a flu even before flying over. She refused to get out at night and for one of the days, she had to stay in the hotel. Throughout the stay, she was coughing out phlegm that had to visit the bathroom often or leave a huge stack of gross tissue papers next to her.

I feel kinda bad right now.






Soon I'm flying again, this time to visit my aunt in NZ and then explore Sydney for a few days for Chinese New Year. My girlfriend is mad and I don't blame her. When I postponed the flight, I did ask her if those dates were ok, but the both of us are just as absent-minded sometimes, so she said yes without realizing, just like me, that I was returning to Singapore in the evening of Valentine's Day. Yes it's pretty bad and I'll have to make it up to her somehow.















My halfbike has arrived and I still haven't really tried it yet. I did try it a little in my home but there's just insufficient space to get started.

























So I had a thought this morning while coming back from the market. To make your country wealthier, you have to look outward. You cannot target solely your domestic market and expect your country to benefit much from your wealth. It's kinda a zero-sum game when it's all internal. Hence, all the wealthiest countries have had some kind of income from overseas, and it used to be foreign colonies while it is now international corporations.

And this is where patriotism comes in - you have to be willing to do to foreigners what you cannot do to your fellow countrymen.

Rant 1222 / Improving My Swimming Technique

24 Oct 2015

Been doing some research on flights for the April California trip next year, with the route being Singapore-Toronto-San Francisco-Singapore. Checked the prices of 4 combinations:

1) separate bookings of one-way flights for the entire trip
2) separate bookings of one-way flights only on Oneworld airlines for the entire trip
3) a single consolidated booking of flights for the entire trip
4) a single consolidated booking of flights only on Oneworld airlines for the entire trip

A single booking can be vastly different because all the airlines involved must be working together through codeshare or something, so airlines available through separate bookings may not be used in the consolidated bookings.

One early conclusion is that consolidated bookings are always cheaper even if sometimes, you are unable to book the cheapest airline in certain segments.

Also checked these four combinations for trips originating from Seoul, Shanghai, Beijing, Barcelona, Mumbai, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur and Ho Chi Minh, eg Seoul-Toronto-San Fransisco-Seoul, although the results were only recorded for the first three.

The conclusion seems to be that it's the cheapest to book a single booking of flights from any airline from Beijing despite the extra cost for a return trip to Beijing, but the US$250 difference IMO isn't significant enough to beat the second cheapest option of a consolidated booking on Oneworld airlines flying from Singapore.

I'm just slightly biased towards it because of my pleasant experience taking BA between Singapore and London, not to mention the fact that it's simpler without the extra flights to and from Beijing.


















26 Oct 2015

The results found the other day were not very useful.

Yesterday, I decided to take a look at this trip from the opposite perspective - from the end-point ie the actual place she needs to go in California. Turns out that in terms of major airports, there are at least three - San Francisco, Oakland and Sacramento. All are kinda equidistant and all are pretty inconvenient.

The place she's going to is neither served by bus nor train, so her only options are taxis and car rental, and airport limo on the way back. At about an hour's drive out, a taxi ride is going to cost some serious money, but a car rental may not be useful if she ends up staying at that place for weeks.

Regardless, I'm only looking at the flights. Therefore, I'll have to redo the research using those three airports, even though San Francisco may be the most interesting airport among them.

But I'm not looking into them anymore since she can't confirm whether she can go there next year. Prices may change by the time she knows for sure, so there's no point in doing this so soon.

The spreadsheet will be left alone for now.























27 Oct 2015




Still going to buy that Salomon Quest 4D 2 GTX but in Dec in London. Couldn't get it in Vancouver because it was inconveniently located and spending time with my relatives was more important than shopping.

It's still a great hiking boot, according to recent online reviews, so I'm not forgetting about it.






















29 Oct 2015

Went for my first health screening yesterday. Was awkward and very uncomfortable at some parts. The doctors and nurses were very professional but some procedures were just necessary.



















30 Oct 2015

Was telling my girlfriend about the life of my late mother when I realized I had forgotten a lot of the details.

What's going to happen when I have kids someday and I want to tell them about their grandmother?

I'm not sure if I had recorded it in this blog either, so maybe I should try to jog my memory here since it's quiet now.

Disclaimer: This is mainly my mother's account of her life and is only one side of the story.

My mother was born third with two sisters before her. Both her parents expected and wanted a son, so my grandmother wanted to abort her before she was born. However, a fortune teller she approached told her that if she kept her, the next baby would be a boy. That was the only reason my mother was born; in fact, my grandmother didn't even bother to try to come up with a name for her - a nurse in the hospital gave her her name.

My grandmother never loved her. When she was a child, tuberculosis infected her right leg. Though she recovered before she could lose her leg, it had gone all the way through her thigh bone, causing that leg to be permanently weaker than the other. From then on, her mother would call her "crippled girl" even in the presence of family and friends.

That made her resolve to hide that limp, and IMO, any other weaknesses, which she succeeded in doing eventually.

My grandmother never believed in educating her daughters; only the sons needed school. My aunts born before her didn't need to attend school because they were too old by the time they came back to Hong Kong, but due to the laws of Hong Kong back then, she was forced to send my mother to one, and that was after people from the government visited them. Thus, my mother was able to attend primary school... a few years older than the norm.

It was a free Catholic school run by missionaries, and one of her teachers was a Canadian missionary whose last name was "Hayhoe" who loved bread with mayo. She did quite well, often among the best in class, but my grandmother never cared, believing it was a complete waste of time and that she should be obediently working like her elder sisters.

And work she did, because in Hong Kong, my grandmother brought plastic flowers home to be assembled. Her daughters who were not working full-time were expected to help with carrying the large bags and the assembly of the flowers, so that included my mother.

At the same time, she was put in charge of helping her brothers in their schoolwork, and that normally involved a cane. It didn't work though - all my uncles are doing pretty badly in life, IMHO, except for my second uncle who's passed on last year and hence isn't doing anything in life anymore.

When my mother graduated from primary school with results good enough to attend secondary school, which probably was not that common back then, her mother did not hesitate in pushing her off to a garment factory to work as a seamstress.

But my mother loved studying, and Ms Hayhoe thought she deserved a better education, so when my mother's request to continue her education got rejected, Ms Hayhoe came personally to talk to her. Eventually my mother was allowed to attend night school while working in that sweatshop during the day.

Obviously my grandmother didn't like it, so she rarely left anything for her for dinner. Usually all that was left was plain rice, although to be fair, none of the daughters were treated much better by my grandmother in the first place. The routine for her dinner was to add hot water to the rice before eating. She couldn't afford to buy better food for herself despite her job because my grandmother insisted on keeping about 90% of all her daughters' income. Heck, she could barely afford even a haircut, and I get those for just S$9 these days, so a decent meal was out of the question. The only thing she could afford consistently? The bus rides.

But two years later, my fourth aunt was born. On a side note, the fortune-teller was right - my eldest uncle was born after my mother. Anyway, everyone was busy working then, so my mother had to give up her studies to take care of the baby. That was the end to her formal education, discounting the part-time short courses she took beyond that point.

Speaking of my fourth aunt, she was badly neglected as a newborn while in the hospital. During one visit, they found her putting her own feces into her mouth. That was the state of public healthcare half a century ago in Hong Kong.

After that, my mother was focused on her work. She found that she had some talent in tailoring and was interested in design, so she attended an informal course taught by a design student in Hong Kong who was trying to raise money to study fashion design in France. She paid for it herself using money she had saved up despite the little that she got.

Eventually she was so good with the sewing machine she could make a suit with one hand and her work was often used as samples by her boss to be shown to potential clients.

In her personal life, she had always been attractive. After her eldest sister, she was the next most popular girl in the family. While that sister got married at about twenty, my mother went on to have many boyfriends. It wasn't that she didn't want to settle down but my grandmother had designated her least favourite child to be her caretaker when she gets old.

Plenty of guys wooed my mother and many tried to talk about marriage, with some even talking to her mother, but they were all pursuing the impossible - in the eyes of my grandmother, only money talks, and they were all too damn poor anyway.

Not only was my mother pretty, she was also particularly outgoing, mainly because she hated staying at home. She would often go hiking and mountain climbing with male friends, because girls those days preferred to be soft and weak. She couldn't handled that kind of thing, especially when they were climbing a mountain. Seriously, if you can't even take a small cut, what are you even doing on a mountain?

Moreover, girls overthink things and my mother was a simpler person. Sometimes, other girls would accuse her of trying to get the attention of guys they liked, which she had never bothered to do because her mother would nullify any possible happy endings anyway. Guys go after her because she couldn't stop them (one waited even after my dad passed away while another threw away a lock of her hair after her wedding), but she never tried to go after guys. All of them were told upfront that her mother would never allow them to marry her.



(To be continued)



























09 Nov 2015

Last week, I finally got comfortable enough with the front crawl to do it slowly. There was still some quick movements as I finish breathing in and continue with the next stroke, but I think I'm close to getting it right.

A lot has changed with my front crawl, and the main difference is that my body rotates back and forth on my sides now.

Now I have to improve on my breaststroke which is clearly wrong because it's giving me shoulder pains. This issue is why I did more front crawl in the first place, hence improving it recently.



























Fallout 4 is coming! Pre-ordered it with the season pass last week on GMG with the 20% off, so it was about US$70+ total.

Can't wait! 1 day and 8 hours to go, says Steam.

Rant 1221 / Macarons, Macaroons and Macaroni.

13 Oct 2015


It's true that you have to take advantage of the hotel promos. They are some of the best ways to earn mileage.























So I've been underestimating the amount of mileage that I have saved thus far.

The majority of it are in Asia Miles and my credit card points, and at this moment these two have over 200,000 miles in total.

At 30,000 miles to upgrade a Premium Economy round trip ticket to a Business ticket on a route as long as Hong Kong to Canada, that gives me 7 upgrades at least!

I HAVE ENOUGH MILES TO UPGRADE EVERY TRIP I'LL PROBABLY MAKE NEXT YEAR! AN ENTIRE YEAR ON BUSINESS CLASS!

Holy shit!

Obviously, I'm not going to be that crazy lol. However, I have reached the goal that I had when I started looking into credit cards. Next goal: try First.




























21 Oct 2015

Learnt several new things regarding my family and relatives.

Early in my father's silk-printing career, he used to sell fake watches as a side income. During one of his cold visits to a bag factory, he found the man who became the husband of my eldest aunt on my mother's side. Both of them came from China, with my uncle investing in a speedboat and someone who could handle it with several other people to get out and my father swimming out, hence they clicked and got familiar enough for him to introduce a sister-in-law to my father.

And got several people on my mother's side of the family to buy watches from him.

Then came the man who eventually married the 4th sister of the family. It was also a cold visit, since he sold industrial machines, and my father might have needed those. It worked out, they clicked, my mother saw that he was good with kids during visits, and they introduced my aunt to him.

























23 Oct 2015

Jet lag. It's 5am and I've been up since 2am. So glad I have flexible working hours.



















Read more about Round-The-World (RTW) fares after thinking about her trip to California next year and noticing this while browsing the CX website.

The RTW ticket is interesting because it's so different from the usual concept of the flight ticket.

When we think about air tickets, we think about it being priced in terms of the distance between the places, the popularity of the route, the holiday seasons and the city they're sold in.

In addition to all that, the RTW is also based on a set number of miles. Every route has a specified distance in miles, so every flight taken simply deducts those miles from the ticket which contains a set number of miles in credit.

One pretty cool perk of a RTW ticket is that the Business class version is usually only about twice the price of the Economy class version. However, more research needs to be done check if the Economy version is close to the price of separate tickets in the first place.

Finally, they're very flexible in that they can accommodate lots of date changes for free.








Tried a SG-London-Toronto-Sacramento-SG route, with the London stop included in order to force the trip to cross each ocean only once, which was one of the conditions of the oneworld Explorer.

This got me a price of S$5667.20. Making it Business class got me S$13,742.00.

Starting this and ending at Bangkok got me the same price.

Doing this from Barcelona on Business class got me enough of a price difference that a round trip from SG to Barcelona on Economy would still add up to be slightly lower than the original.




















One thing I've learnt about CX is that they rarely offer awesome deals - 10% off a full mileage accrual fare is probably the best an average person can get from this airline, and S$0.10/mile is probably the lowest one can possible get from a CX flight, generally speaking, although using one of their credit card offers could possibly reduce it to S$0.08-$0.09/mile.

I'm close to giving up on trying to hunt for mileage runs for Asia Miles now.





















I'm not very happy with the fact that I can't upgrade my upcoming London flights to Business class via Asia Miles redemption, but I guess I'll have to suck it up.

Upgrading them to Premium Economy will cost me over S$2k because the flight back alone will cost me S$2k. Probably full.

However, the recent Vancouver trip has taught me a good lesson - BA011's upper deck Economy seats have an extra compartment next to the window seats without sacrificing any space! Nothing in the pouch in front means more leg room! That was awesome!

Plus, when the compartment is closed, the top cover can be used as an additional table or armrest. Best seats in any Economy cabin I've ever tried, seriously!

Too bad I was too sick to really enjoy the flight.

Nevertheless, I'm emailing BA to see if they can help.

Rant 1220 / A Change In Perspective Regarding Airline Mileage.

08 Oct 2015

Booked the two hotels for the European trip in December.

Starts relatively cheap with three nights at H10 Waterloo London via Rocketmiles taking advantage of their Asia Miles promo. This stay will earn me 9000 miles instead of the usual 6000 miles from this site and cost me around S$1056. London hotels are NOT cheap at all.


The tour will end with the final two nights at The Park Tower Knightsbridge London, and in one of their Panoramic Rooms too! This differs from my usual practice of going for the cheapest or second cheapest rooms in every hotel I stay, mainly because the reviews are great about the view from those rooms. This was booked directly through SPG so I'm getting 4pm late check-out in exchange for no major promotion other than the 10% for it being prepaid and cannot be cancelled. This stay costs me 664GBP.

Hope these are worth it.





Will check out the Korean hotels soon. First, the flights though. The HSBC card gives me a small discount on my favourite airline, CX, but the welcome bonus miles just came in so it's time to cancel it. However, I'm also thinking about waiting a little just to see if there will be better promotions in the next few months since the HSBC card offer ends next year.

















Haven't been swimming this week so far and it's already Thursday. Got to do something but I'm already reverted back to my slacker mode. Just can't pull myself off this chair.

Maybe I'll cook. She loved my bacon fried rice the other day when we stayed over at her friend's place while another friend baked a cake using the oven there. I only used the leftover rice from our dinner, the second packet of streaky bacon that he bought, 3 of the 6 yolks they removed from their eggs to make their cake, the last whole egg that was brought over for the cake that wasn't used in the end, and the soy sauce in the fridge.

It's just bacon fried rice with mostly leftover ingredients. I wasn't even sure it was completely edible, and it definitely wasn't hygienic. The yolks had been left in the open for 6 hours and the rice 7 hours. By the time I took the yolks, the raw broken yolk that covered the surface had already hardened into a cheese-like layer.

That was partly why it had to be fried rice, and I cooked it a little more than necessary. The only way I could cleanse this was with high heat. Although I can handle the bacteria, the toxins that are the by-products of the decomposition process was another story altogether. It turned out well though, so it's all good now. I don't think whoever scrubbed the pot was happy though. The oil wasn't hot enough I think, or it was just the problem of not using a non-stick pan.

My main concern after I cooked it, however, was that the rice wasn't dry enough. The fried rice, despite the flavour and aroma, was soggy. Immediately after turning off the heat, I googled for a way to solve that, but there was no solution to saving soggy fried rice after it was fried. I MIGHT have been able to reduce the moisture by heating the rice an hour in the "Keep Warm" mode in the rice cooker, but that was too late.

On the bright side, at least the eggs were all spread out. From what I recall, chunks of eggs in a fried rice is not a good thing because a good fried rice needs the egg to be spread evenly over every grain of rice.

However, that could be the effect of the pot not being hot enough. It's kinda hard to heat a pot as quickly as a wok due to the thick bottom. Once the bottom gets cooled down by the ingredients I pour in, it takes a while to get the temperature back up again.

Yes, I actually would prefer to cook that fried rice in a wok or, at the very least, a pan. Those reheat much faster than a pot but weren't available.






















Going to get my steel quarter-heel replaced. That thing is too noisy and keeps me worried about scratching someone's floor.

And it's no use in slippery floors.






























10 Oct 2015

Fixed my Broughton boots by bringing the pair to the Mr Fix at ION. However, he discovered that the steel quarter-heel was actually a much larger piece embedded into the bottom layer of the heel, so the whole bottom layer was replaced by Vibram rubber.

Oh well.


















Think I'm losing weight. Been steady at 95kg these few days now. 95-96kg. Progress! More Subway subs and swimming!























My bro's gone with his wife to the US since before dawn yesterday. His last message was at 3am asking me to bring something he had left behind on his desk.



House is emptier now, but it's awesome when you can walk around naked.

Apparently the most efficient use of my mileage is to buy a Business class ticket and upgrade to First using my miles because the rate is almost twice of the Premium Economy to Business upgrade Well, fuck. I'm never going to buy a Business class ticket with cash.




























12 Oct 2015

So, last night after dinner (been eating relatively more over the weekend) and the weighing scale said I was only 95.5kg.

This is awesome!

It means that in the short term, no matter how much I eat over a few days, I won't exceed 96kg!

Which means I really got to swim while in Canada. Must keep my momentum up!























Recently discovered the use of Vaseline as a lip balm. Feels the same as any other lip balm but I can control more easily the amount applied, I feel. Any excess can be spread over my hands like a lotion.

Pretty cool.


























Booked my Korea trip last night for next year. Got to work! Used the HSBC Visa Infinite for a CX economy ticket with the card promo and it turned out to be slightly better than I thought.

For almost S$890, I got what I think is an Economy Flex ticket or something, V class. Basically it's changeable with no additional fee but at a promo price of 90% of the lowest undiscounted Economy price. If I had booked the lowest Economy ticket normally, they would charge a fee for any date changes, so this deal is awesome.

Only catch is that it's not upgradeable with miles, but that's ok - I have no intention to upgrade a flight of that length.

As for the hotel, I thought the Rocket Miles would be good since they give miles when I book a stay through them, but after some calculations, earning 3.5k Asia Miles for a 6 night stay at Skypark Myeongdong III at $110 a night excluding taxes is still not as good as getting 10% rebate via Shopback when booking the same hotel for 6 nights at $99 a night excluding taxes on Expedia.

I'm taking one mile at S$0.05 here though because I misremembered the value. According to my analysis above, it should have been S$0.1377 per mile at the PE-B upgrade rate, taking 1SGD = 6HKD.

If I use the correct mile value, then 3k miles would have been S$482, ie Rocket Miles was giving a $482 rebate.

Rocket Miles:
$808.62 - $482 = $326.67

Expedia via Shopback:
$653.88 * 90/100 = $588.492

Shit, I just spent an extra $261.82 for nothing.

You know what's worse? I just looked at the Expedia promotion for my credit card and it's giving 15 Citi Dollars for every S$1 spent there through the Citi promo page on Expedia.

Fuck.  At 2.5 Citi Dollars per mile, that's 6 miles per dollar, or S$0.8262 rebate per dollar, or 82.62% rebate!

Fuck!

At this rate, the hotel would have effectively cost me only

$653.88 * 0.1738 = S$113.64 net

No it's not refundable. Seriously, I need a few days to consider every hotel booking I make because I keep forgetting stuff. Must never book on the same day again!




Funny thing is, if I use the B-F upgrade rate, CX would have been effectively paying me to stay in that hotel.

HK$1.50459 = S$0.25765
6 miles per dollar spent = $1.50459 per dollar spent, ie if I use my miles solely on upgrades from Business to First, CX pays me an extra 50.459% of every dollar I spend on Expedia via the Citibank promo link.

I'm not even kidding.

More specifically,

50.459% * $653 = S$329.50 assuming Citi only considers whole dollars and ignores the cents.

Basically, staying at the hotel in itself would have partially funded my First class ticket. Hilarious!



Oh...


Say, all I do is spend my time in hotels booked via Expedia, just to make enough miles to upgrade a Business ticket to a First.

What does it take to upgrade?

85,000 miles.

How much money do I need to spend on that hotel to make 85,000 miles?

S$14,167.

How much did that Business ticket cost?

HK$47,660 = S$7,943.33

Total cost of getting First class ticket by upgrading a Business seat bought with cash:

S$(7,943.33 + 14,167) = S$22,110.33

Undiscounted price of that First class seat:

HK$175,550 = S$29,258.33

Total discount: S$7148 = 24.431%


Basically there is no way I can get that seat for free because the miles and cash are not interchangeable but even a 20% discount is huge. Regardless of how much CX is paying me back in mileage value, it's still in miles that cannot be converted into cash. All it does is reduce the amount of money I have to spend to earn the same amount of miles.

This means I have been looking at this from the wrong perspective that all these ads have given me.

Instead of looking at how much value I get back from spending each dollar, I should be looking at how these promos reduce the amount I have to spend to earn the amount of mileage I want.

It has never been a rebate since whatever value I get in return cannot be converted into cash - all these are are discounts for the upgrades. Instead of seeing it as a 50% rebate, I should regard it as 33% less cash I have to spend to get the same amount of miles.

At the First class upgrade rate, it's just a 33% discount, even if I ignore the Business class fare which makes up 27% of the First class fare.

27% of the ticket is paid at 100%, and the other 73% of the ticket is paid at 67%, hence the effective payment amount is around 76% of the original price.

Although the 27% is an unchangeable amount, can the 73% be paid at an even lower rate?

Rant 1219 / The Storm Before The Calm

29 Sept 2015

Will I... spend 341GBP a night for a Panorama room at the Park Tower Knightsbridge in London? I could also get a room with a less awesome view for 287GBP there.

So I have these 5 nights that I'll be staying in London on my own, 7-10 Dec and then 3-5 Jan.

Did some research and found that among that available London hotels in the SPG programme, the above hotel is the best in terms of location while Sheraton Skyline Hotel London Heathrow and the Aloft London Excel are the best in terms of price. From what I can tell after reading the reviews, the Aloft London Excel is mainly a no-frills business hotel that's pretty new and has minimal amenities in a rather inconvenient location for exploring the city. In contrast, the Sheraton Skyline Hotel London Heathrow is a convention hotel that has pretty cool amenities but is also ageing. Moreover, the Skyline Hotel isn't actually very close to the Heathrow Airport despite its name. As for its Club lounge, it's apparently getting old and can be quite crowded at times, the latter making it noisy and limiting the choices of food and beverages, hence potentially turning it into a redundant feature. After all, lounges are supposed to be quiet! On the other hand, I'll be there only on weekdays so it could be better than that.

Both are equally inconvenient due to their locations, with Aloft being served by the Jubilee line and Skyline served by... various public buses and the Hoppa bus.

One option is to stay in one of the two cheaper ones on the 7th till the 10th of December 2015, than stay at the Park Tower Knightsbridge in January, mainly because all their rates are lower in the later month.

However, another option is to stay at Le Meridien Picadilly in December. It's got the same age problem as Skyline but it's got a far better location at the city centre. The issue is that it's only slightly cheaper than Park Tower Knightsbridge.

The Park Lane Hotel London is out of the question because I expect to waste a day suffering from jetlag in the hotel. It's under renovation so it's going to be impossible to chill in during the day.

Or I could try the Great Northern Hotel. Everything about it seems pretty cool and it's slightly more expensive than the Park Tower Knightsbridge. Unlikely.

















As for the ski trip to Japan, I'm thinking about sucking it up and just stay in a place where I have to mix around with others.

























02 Oct 2015

For the ski trip, I'm cancelling it. No time.























Ordered a kickboard to learn a new swimming technique. This doesn't seem to be widely taught here in Singapore as I had trouble finding any coach or school offering a course on the underwater dolphin kick.

After a lot of reading and watching videos, I came across this website teaching this technique and one of the videos showed that the board is useful in practising the kick.

I've already done the exercises on the wall and the plan is to try it out with the board soon. This technique is awesome!
















03 Oct 2015

























How do people see soy milk as a vegan replacement for cows' milk?

Soy milk tastes and smells nothing like milk! The only resemblance is the colour, that's all.

But if you see it as a different thing, then yes it makes sense. I'd describe soy milk as having a different aroma - if you add it to coffee, it gives a very slight difference in taste.

Then again, I could try with almond milk and tell you the same thing. Could be awesome too, almond mocha.

































4th Oct 2015

What a dilemma. She wants to sleep over at my place every night (no sex, we're too tired from our schedules, mainly hers of course) but her dad might explode if he finds out. As I recall, she told me a long time ago, back when we first started dating I think, that he would chase her exes out of their home at 12am. Clearly, he is a conservative/protective father regardless of his opinions in the upbringing of a child. Moreover, he's already scolded the both of us once, literally shouted at us, for being late.

If he finds out that she's sleeping over, regardless of whether it's anything more than that, it's obvious that his voice is going to be the least of my concern.

It was a decision between my heart and my mind: she wanted to spend more time with me and vice versa so that's one of the few ways we can do that due to her long classes; but this was going to hurt everyone if her parents ever find out.

In the end, despite her extreme response to my suggestion that she stayed home, she eventually decided to agree because she felt I had already decided on it. I'm not even kidding - she ran home crying once I raised that up. It was only due to her poor stamina, the slightly longer route she took and my sustainable brisk walking speed that I could reach her lift lobby about 2-3 minutes before her.

You know what the worst thing is? For such decisions, you will never know for sure whether it was the right one. Only when things go well long enough that I will know it was probably one of the many right decisions that we made that made the relationship work.





















Drank a whole bottle of Carlos Rossi sparkling white wine last night because I no longer need such a thing and I felt like drinking alcohol to see if there's any improvement in my alcohol capacity.

First of all, it sucks. Then again, it's ok for its price. Seriously, I'm never going to touch this brand ever again. I'll just drink less but better wines.

Second, it was gassy so it took a while to finish, and by the last mouthful I was quite ready to puke. But I did not. Phew.

In the end, I didn't fall like the last time, fortunately, but I did fall asleep very quickly once I went to bed. No breakfast was necessary this morning. Just felt so full.

Conclusion is that my capacity has not improvement significantly and I still can honestly say that I don't get hangovers. Lucky me.

My sister-in-law's friends brought a bottle of Pio Cesare Moscato d'Asti (unknown vintage) last night too, but I never found out how much that guy paid for it at 1855. Upon checking my receipt from Grand Vin, the local distributor, it had cost me S$38 per bottle of the same wine (2012 vintage) and shipping was just my bus fare from Jurong East to Buona Vista. Probably a dollar.

I'll have to enquire at the nearest 1855 shop about the price when I remember to. Just curious about whether I had actually saved anything. The decision to buy from the supplier came solely from the assumption that suppliers always offer lower prices than their clients.
























07 Oct 2015

Bought a tiny 50ml bottle of Vaseline after reading that I could dab a bit of it using a cotton bud and apply it on my sinuses to deal with the nosebleeds I get in colder climates.

Last night I tried using it as a moisturizer on my fingers and it was literally just a touch of it on every fingertips, and it worked pretty well. Now I wonder why people buy other moisturizers.

...


Ok just checked it out and learnt that frequent inhalation of fats will lead to lipid pneumonia. That sounds like it means ANY oil and petroleum-based products, since as I recall, oils and fats are supposed to be digested in our bodies into lipids and other stuff.

One solution is something from Burt's Bees, but I think I'll just get a nasal moisturizer from a hospital and also the saline spray that I've been using to rinse my sinuses.

But I'll continue to keep this bottle of Vaseline for my hands.

Rant 1218 / Of Cards And Health

22 Sept 2015

Frankly I'm tempted to stay with HSBC Visa Infinite. Wait... Let me check on the expiry of points.

Ok so the points last 3 years, expiring at the commencement of the 4th year.

The reasons I'm tempted is because firstly, it only costs me S$30,000 in deposit to enjoy most of the benefits, plus $5k spend per quarter for the airport limo, in contrast to $200k for Citigold plus S$3k spend per quarter in foreign currencies. Secondly, it's unlimited one-way airport transfers, meaning it's available for abuse. $5k spend in three months really isn't hard when I can shop for both her and myself and sometimes my brother. Thirdly, it's got better offers at Cathay Pacific. Fourth, it's got complimentary Meet and Greet, luggage clearance and expedited immigration service at selected airports with that minimum spend. Fifth, the Priority Pass that came with it expires in 4 years instead of one year that Citibank gives me.

However, after reading part of the Terms and Conditions while checking the point expiry just now, I'm totally turned off.

First, the limo can only take two guests and myself. Second, there's a small surcharge if I need it between 12am-6am. Well, sometimes I do come back or go off during that period.

Other than these reasons found in the T&C, there is the fact that the points expire in three years. That's a major turn-off since the unending validity of the points with the Prestige card was what drew me to it. Another reason is that the complimentary Meet and Greet and stuff are off little use to me even if it's available at all airports.

As of this moment, I believe I shall stick to the original plan to cancel the HSBC Visa Infinite once the miles are received.





























I have been tempted. This is undeniable. Google results tell me this is normal. But I will stick with her. Despite all her flaws, she has a combination of good points that I love that I don't believe I will find in the same configuration in anyone else.

One thing I've figured out is that a relationship is as permanent as the two make it - a possible breakup is only a breakup if neither wants to patch up.



























24 Sept 2015

So I was sold.

I went to Spa Rael and I was sold. The therapist there was just better than the one at SkinLab.

This was just a free facial courtesy of Citigold as one of my birthday perks, but it showed me what it can be like, and how bad some of the therapists were at SkinLab.

I'm not saying SkinLab is bad, because there has been one so far who gave me a similar massage for the whatever ampoule they were using; what I am saying is that they provide an inconsistent level of service that can be as bad as... no massage - one simply covered my face with it and left it at that.

Since the place was my first, I thought that was normal. Clearly, I was wrong.

Fortunately, I can request specific therapists so it's not a major issue, but I'm going to move to Spa Rael once my package at SkinLab is finished.

The level of service was one reason, and the other reason was that they gave me more perks - the final package included one extra facial session and four sessions of ANYTHING in the catalogue. I was curious about whether the packages were fixed, so I gambled a little and asked for an extra session (I was actually thinking about asking for a few extra sessions but somehow what came out of my mouth was different). The result was that she said that the manager was in that day so she went out to consult him/her, before returning to tell me she could add an extra facial session (I was thinking about the session of ANYTHING though).

But hey, it's a new lesson for me. Actually, two lessons so far. First, the packages are negotiable. Second, saying that you already have a package at another place gives you additional negotiating power.

So I wonder. I wonder if I should finish my package at SkinLab first, or alternate between them, or go for Spa Rael first.

Probably alternate between them.



























25 Sept 2015

Another reason I like Spa Rael that I've only just recalled is that the therapist cleared my nose pimple without me feeling anything other than a slight vibration as if she poked it lightly. At SkinLab, the last time I went with a pimple I was told it had to "mature" before she can do anything about it.





















So the gears have arrived in the country making the Halfbike II that I backed earlier on at Kickstarter. The delivery schedule is coming soon! Can't wait!



















The haze is improving. It was so bad yesterday my sinus felt sore and I had to wear the N95 all day except in the hospital where I trust the air is filtered since the windows are closed.

It's not just about the dust particles but also the gases produced by the Indonesian fires. Normally, when trees burn, we only consider the smoke and dust, but the fact is that there are a number of gases produced in small quantities that are practically negligible if we're talking about just a small area getting burnt.

However, with the huge swathes of land on fire in Indonesia, and with the winds blowing everything in our direction, those gases are no longer in safe quantities for the weakest of the population.




















Was checking out my subscriptions on Youtube when I noticed TokyoGastronomy again. It has been a while since their last video so I thought I'd just look around to see if there's any discussion going on there.

No comment at all, but in the process I looked through their old videos again and found one that was on strawberries.



Since my gf is studying culinary management and loves desserts, I thought it would be of interest to her.

It was like an undergrad looking at post-doctorate work. All the stuff in class she's been telling me about, they were nothing compared to that single strawberry that took over half the day to make.

Dat strawberry. Seriously.
























So the health screening clinic at NUH is considered a private clinic, so any referrals to a specialist will get no subsidy. The only way to get that is to go bring their referral letter to a polyclinic and get another referral from the polyclinic.

Unfortunately, polyclinics don't provide comprehensive health screenings so if this is the same with all public hospitals, I'll just suck it up and go to NUH.

That is, unless Raffles provides a roughly similar deal in terms of price vs number of tests. I'll have to do a excel sheet later.

Rant 1217 / More Posts Likely Due To More Alone Time In These Few Months.

20 Sept 2015

Back from Penang yesterday.

It was quite enlightening, this trip. What my uncle there told me was a more realistic version of what my mother told me about my father.

For one, he tried to swim over to Hong Kong twice and the first time he was stopped by the PLA coast guards. Some of his friends were shot dead on the spot while others were injured. Everyone who was alive, including my father, was arrested and sent to jail.

After he was released, he tried again, this time successfully reaching Hong Kong where he was taken in temporarily by a fisherman before finding a job in a textile factory. The part after his arrival was told by my mother so let's take it with a pinch of salt.


The other inaccuracy was that my great-great-aunt who went to Penang went there because she had a son by a Singaporean man who refused to marry her. Because that was in my grandparents' era, she had to leave the country to escape the shame and humiliation. My great-great-grandmother, aka her mother, left China with her and they eventually settled down in Penang. Being well-educated, she became a teacher of English and tailoring (instead of a midwife like my mother told me). Her son was the uncle I have here in Singapore whom I had lost contact with and whose ex-wife attended my mother's funeral.

I wonder if he ever found his father.

During her time in Penang, she got a godfather whose son was the relative I had contacted and visited in Penang during this trip. In addition, her godfather, being the 7th child in the family with 10 other siblings, had a 6th brother who had five children during his lifetime. Unable to feed all of them, he gave a daughter to my great-great-aunt to adopt, and she was the nice one who took care of her during her final days and then settled all the matters involving her passing, even though she had at least one business to run in the US.

Her son didn't do anything.

One issue that cropped up in Penang was about the name of my grandfather. On the tablet of my great-great-grandmother were the names of her children and grandchildren. My great-great-aunt was not in the tablet for some reason, shame being my guess. Anyway there were two names under the "grandsons" and I would like to know which is my grandfather. For this, this uncle in Penang suggested that I find out the contact of my great-uncle, ie my grandfather's brother, whom I recall visiting many times in Hong Kong when I was small. His door had this board placed vertically, probably to prevent minor floods, and everyone always had to remind me to avoid tripping since I was less than five years old back then.

Back to the point, surely there must be a number that my mother had noted down somewhere in her notebooks. So I searched just now, and the name of one of his daughters was there in a notebook along with a few numbers.

On Monday, I'll contact her.

Maybe eventually I could contact the relatives I also have in Medan. Maybe she would know. I recall my father's Indonesian cousin visiting us several times, including once when I learnt that while in Singapore, we call tea with sugar and milk "teh" and tea with sugar "teh-o", in Indonesia "teh" refers to tea with sugar and "teh susu" is tea with milk and sugar.

No I don't have their numbers nor names.



















Quarrelled again because I forgot to download a TV show for her mum last night and earlier this morning until she reminded me. It's not like it's urgent anyway and I forget everything, not just her things. If I have to set reminders for everything, life is going to be a pain. So she says I'm the wrong guy for her because I keep forgetting and don't want to set reminders for midnight. Fine, if dating her means becoming so rigid, then staying myself alone is better.




















21 Sept 2015

Yes, I'm a slacker. If I don't slack, I become a very unpleasant person.
























Did almost nothing today. Fitness seems to be up actually but forgot to train my arms. Too lazy now since it's 11pm. Will swim tomorrow. Have to train my arms because she wants me to try rock-climbing. Also because I'm travelling a lot more. Having decent arm strength is useful when you're not in your comfort zone.





















Wonder how much Burberry trench coats cost in the UK. Want to get one but it's S$2.6k here in the duty-free shop at the airport. Friends told me it's cheaper in the UK, plus tourists probably get no tax.

Anyway, I'm not 100% sure but it seems that shorter coats can be paired with casual clothings like t-shirts and jeans while long ones are formal, as seen in The Firm starring Tom Cruise which I'd just finished watching earlier today.

I'm definitely getting a short one to wear when visiting places where waterproof jackets are needed but a thick jacket would look out of place.