Friday 23 October 2015

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.

Monday 12 October 2015

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?

Thursday 8 October 2015

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.