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.
