Thursday 17 March 2016

Rant 1226 / I Am So Bad.

16 Mar 2016

So I ended up on that side of Youtube today. It had an intriguing title and 8 million views to back it up, so how can anyone resist that?



I feel sorry for the girl.

Even before watching the video, I'm fully aware that children make great mouthpieces because their perceived innocence makes anything they say so much more believable.

As for her speech, some things seemed to be omitted to raise the impact of her words. For one, why did their government start to borrow money from private banks? This question can even be broken down into two: why did the government need to borrow money and why from these banks?

I may not be an expert but for all we know, there could be mitigating factors in the answers to these questions that will better explain the situation than simply because banks are evil.

Also, why are they so fixated on how loans are money that didn't exist before their approval? As long as most of you pay your debts, the loan is as good as paid. The risk of you not paying up is covered by the interest rates and whatever the average borrower owns - that's why actuaries exist.

I think it pretty much also covers what I said before - that the economy is founded on confidence, the confidence that it will keep going. I guess in a way it's like a religion because that's saying that the whole system is runs on faith.

As for why houses are so expensive that you need a loan to buy one, it's simple - prices go according to demand. If they are way lower than what people are willing to pay for them, someone will just buy up whatever they are and sell them at the highest prices others are willing to pay. That's just a fact of life in our capitalistic world. Who would miss such a simple opportunity to make some money?

If the price of a home is really too high, it would stay empty for a very long time, but as long as a house sells, it's not too expensive. Maybe it is to you, but not to the rest of the people who want that home. To put in in simpler terms, there are people out there who are perfectly willing to pay a portion of their income for their homes for 30 years of their lives. Different people, different circumstances, different needs, different degrees of urgency.

Oh, and different perception of value.
























18 Mar 2016

I don't want to hug Buddha's legs but it's a terrible habit of mine.
























Aaaaaaand I forgot about my parents for Qingming. Oh no.

Tuesday 15 March 2016

Rant 1225 / Just A Quick Post.

15 Mar 2016

For some reason, Pillars of Eternity got a lot more interesting to me in recent months. It used to be kinda boring when I first received it but my taste seems to have changed since my trip to Europe. No idea why.

Now I'm in the Sun in Shadow (hopefully got that name right) and I've got no time to play it.

Tried using Remotr before realizing it was only for intranet use unless a port is forwarded, and found it hard to play PoE on. It's probably the same with Teamviewer, at this rate.

But I'll try it anyway when I go to Penang this weekend, and maybe try Arcanum too. Finally bought it for real, through GOG.


















Losing weight again. But a lot of it seems to be muscle mass. My stamina is getting worse and my legs ache again in the morning when I first get out of bed. At least I've gone below 96kg now.

Trying to keep my dinner to below 400cal with either half a cup of oats in water with 2tsp of sugar, or a serving of cold soba. Both are possible when there is a good enough mobile game to distract me with to make me eat slower.

Monday 14 March 2016

Rant 1224 / And Let The Sous Vide Begin!

01 Feb 2015

Looking at my mileage balances, a thought keeps running through my head - is it really worth it?

There are a few schools of thought when it comes to mileage and airline loyalty, one of the newer ones being that we should ignore all of them.

It is, in fact, the most cost-efficient to ignore all brand loyalty and sign up for the cheapest flights all the time. The amount of money we can save from that is pretty significant right now, if we compare budget flights with full-service flights. Often, we can save half the money we would have spent on a full-service flight if we book a budget flight with no food and minimal luggage.

So, is it worth it?

I'm currently sticking with CX because of the service. So far, I've been watching it in a few airports and the lowest Marco Polo tier has been grouped with other passengers only in Singapore, while in Hong Kong and Seoul, they are entitled to priority boarding with the Business and First classes.

The issue now is that CX fares are becoming increasingly expensive in comparison to other airlines flying their routes and there rarely is any serious promotions. It is pretty hard for a Green member like myself to find a reason to fly CX other than brand loyalty when airlines like EVA can fly SG-SanFran for about half the price and has a decent reputation. Priority boarding doesn't count for that much relative to that price difference.

Staying Green is easy, so I may just do that; a return trip annually on CX is not a problem.

What I'm more concerned about is where I should focus on accumulating mileage. My current theory is to forget the airlines and just think about the points in my credit card. This way, I can be very flexible in where I get my Business class flights.





















05 Feb 2016

So I have taken a look again at the new CX Marco Polo that will begin soon and compared it with the old, and two changes were clear:

First, members who did not get the 100 club points needed to stay Green (the lowest tier) will have to renew their annual membership by paying the US$100 fee. That's twice as high as the original US$50 that I paid a few years back.

Second, the 100 club points are much harder to earn than the 4 club sectors that we currently need to stay Green. For example, a short flight between Singapore and Hong Kong nets me 1 sector, so two return trips on economy will get me there easily. In comparison, a similar flight will only get me 10 points in the new MPC, so a return trip of this distance is only worth 20 points, ie I will need to make FIVE trips to get it. However, a lower tier Business class flight between the two airports will get me 25 points each way, earning me 50 points in a return trip, ie it only takes two such trips to stay Green.

A return trip from SIN to HKG on Economy Core (subclass M) in late Oct and early Nov costs about S$700, or just below S$600 on Economy Special (subclass L). Both M and L gets me 10 club points per flight, except L cannot be upgraded with miles. On Business Save (subclass I), it costs about $2100.

A return trip from SIN to SFO on Economy Special (V) on those dates cost just over S$1900 and earns me 35+10 points each way. Suddenly, it's clear - the new system encourages long-haul flights! This trip costs less than thrice the price of the short trip but earns me 4.5 times the number of points!

Similarly, a return trip from SIN to YYZ (Toronto) on the same dates costs less than S$2300 but earns 100 points for the entire trip. This trip costs over thrice the price of the SIN-HKG trip but gets me FIVE TIMES the points!

You know what this means? Screw the short flights on CX! I'll go to Hong Kong on budget flights and do only the long ones on CX!

But upon checking the price of a return trip from HKG to YYZ on the same dates, I discover that there is no Economy Special; the lowest being Economy Core, raising the price to just over S$2700. Apparently, flying from Singapore is cheaper than flying from Hong Kong, even though flying from Singapore requires a transfer in Hong Kong.

Absence of logic from my angle aside, this means I'm going to have to suck it up and fly CX from SG. It's cheaper and more convenient, it seems.

























24 Feb 2016

So I've decided to take upon a task that may be one of the greatest in my life.

For Van's grad trip in August 2017, I shall organize a train trip from Singapore to London.

So far, two others have expressed interest in it, one a well-heeled traveler and the other the opposite. It's only been two days since everyone agreed on this so everything is still vague and fluid. However, there's already a conflict on this trip - the route. Van likes the cold and wants us to stay North in Europe while someone wants to go South like the Italian Riviera since it will be summer.

IMHO, all countries make sense in that part of the world so my compromise is to go to both in a Z-shape route.

One path is to go from St Petersburg to Finland to Sweden to Norway to Denmark to Germany to Luxembourg and back to Germany then to Austria to Italy to France and finally to London. This is my first draft route and the plan is to come up with a few more before letting them choose.

























14 Mar 2016

So it's been over two months since my last post. Here's a little something: I have a sous vide machine, the bags and the bag sealer now!

Tried it with eggs to make the shoyu eggs from ramen shops that have solid whites and thick gooey yolks. Internet recipe from Serious Eats didn't work, so I'm going to have to  do my own experiment and make my own chart of time vs how cooked each egg is.















Upcoming train ride to Penang will be crazy on the 18th. 8.40am JB Sentral to 9.45pm Butterworth, plus a short one at 8am Woodlands CIQ to 8.05 JB Sentral!

Not sure what I'm going to do during the ride.