So I'll just chat a bit on what's been happening recently.
I've been out of town in KL as usual for the past week. I'm sure regular readers may have noticed, the usual links at the bottom of my post was missing cos it's hard to input links using my phone.
It's Ramadan period, so many of the people in Malaysia are fasting. It gets a bit awkward cos my wife gets off work at 6pm and we start looking for dinner cos she tends to have to go back to hotel to work after dinner. And as we walk around, we see a lot of shops have people waiting to eat but they can't start eating yet. And it would be totally insensitive for us to go in and order and just start eating, so we decided to, either go to a non-halal restaurant, or just buy back to our hotel room to eat.
We bought satay at MYR1 per stick, it's quite amazing, they use chicken breast meat to make their satay and they give around 50% more meat per stick.
I'm going to Paris again later this week, barely 6 months since I last came back from Paris...
My expense this month is going to go through the roof. Cos we bought our tickets quite last minute and it's the June holidays so it's quite pricey. We are extending a couple of days, so we need to cover a bit of our own hotel. Food is also expensive in Paris.
A normal set meal for lunch is EUR15, which is around S$25.
Or I could just eat a sandwich at EUR5 which is around S$8.
I'll probably have to make do with a sandwich on the days I'm alone.
There's a high chance that once we get back from Paris we'll be going Malaysia again.
It was quite ironic, cos my wife planned a short trip for us to Bangkok in July cos she wanted a break, and after we paid for the flight and hotel early this month, within the week she was asked to go Paris.
And I told her... "Eh... we shouldn't have bought the Thailand trip, we are really spending too much time overseas, we need a break."
Cos there's a high chance in June and July we're going to fly for her work again.
We thought that we could catch a break this month and have a short BKK trip for ourselves in July. But now that we aren't getting any break, I hardly want to go to BKK. Oh well, still gotta go, money's been paid.
It's quite a challenge every time I come back from overseas, cos I don't have much food left in the fridge, cos I try to use up my food before I go, then after I come back, I need to quickly find food sources to beef up my food inventory again. Of course the easy way is to use money to buy the food, but that just defeats the purpose. It's like a bad habit. Buying food is the easy way out when I can think of ways to obtain free food. The challenge is that I don't have much time when I just get back from overseas.
For folks who don't understand why I bother to obtain free food, since spending money is easier, why bother right? It's the same idea as... why I bother to maintain my $4 phone plan, or why anyone wants to reduce their electricity bill, or any other ways to save money.
The thing is... "Why bother" can be used on almost anything.
Moving on...
I found 2 coffee machines recently. They were sitting beside my lift lobby asking to be taken.
One is the Dolche Gusto machine where I can put in capsules, I found capsules previously so I can use it for a few days/weeks. Then I'll need to see if I can get/find more capsules. No, I have no intention of buying capsules.
Second coffee machine I found on a different day is those which you put in roasted beans and the machine will grind the beans and drip the coffee... it works, but I don't have beans to put into the machine... So I'll have to find a way to get free beans.
CirclesLife has an interesting phone plan. It's a $0 flexi plan.
Sign up for free and get a SIM card sent to you. I already signed up.
For $0 per month, I will get 1GB of data, 30 minutes of talk time and 10 SMS.
This will add on to my $4 phone plan very well. Cos my data SIM has been reduced to 500MB and this 1GB offered by CirclesLife is totally awesome for me.
Apparently, there's no catch, and it's here to stay. Oh well, why not right...
It works like a pre-paid plan.
So at $0, you can get the 1GB +30mins of talk +10SMS.
Then if you run out, you can buy a short term 1 month plan to top it up.
So for example you can top up +2GB for $12, +1GB for $8, or +30mins for $5.
I think if I wanted to, I could just switch over to this plan and cancel my pre-paid card.
Then I could effectively reduce my phone bill to $0 per month!
I think the 1GB +30mins of talk +10SMS should be enough for my purposes.
But... like what I said above... "Why bother"... see, it's so easy to use this excuse.
I need to tell all my friends about my change in number, and my prepaid plan is already so cheap at $3-$4 per month, and I probably can bring it even lower than $3 at times.
(If I top up my prepaid card online, I can buy $10 which lasts for 4 months, means it's $2.50 per month. IF I don't use up ALL the credits to make calls, I can extend the validity for another 6 months at $2.60, this means that potentially, I can use $10 to buy me phone usage for 10 months, which results in $1 per month at best. It's highly unlikely I'd still have credits to extend the expiry one more time after 10 months.)
BUT, I could potentially reduce all that to $0 per month if I switch 100% to CirclesLife, but here, I use the excuse, "Why bother", I would need to inform all my friends about the changes, and inform the banks about my changes and maybe even have to update my email accounts, cos these days you can use your handphone to recover forgotten email passwords...
So I use the excuse, "Why bother" when I could potentially save $10-$20 per year if I really bothered.
There is a catch though, IF I ever needed up use more talk time on CirclesLife, I MUST pay $5 for 30 minutes and it only lasts til the end of the month.
Anyway... moving on...
DBS Visa Debit card, the "So called" awesome card which USED to give 5% rebate for Paywave transactions without any minimum spend has updated it's Terms & Conditions.
The NEW T&C is unforgiving.
They removed the limit of 3 ATM withdrawals, but now there is a $400 minimum spend. Which is just sad.
I used this as my secondary card if I overuse my UOB One card, but now, this card is rendered pretty useless. Cos it's going to be hard to clock $400 worth of paywave transactions. And to use this card to pay for any other purchase without paywave is pointless.
(The alternative will be to use DBS Live Fresh since that one also has minimum spend anyway.)
To successfully enjoy Cashback on local Visa Contactless Spend transactions, customer
must meet all of the following criteria:
i) Spend a minimum of S$400 Visa spend across any of his/her Qualifying Cards in the
month.
ii) Keep cash withdrawals to S$400 and below across all DBS/POSB Cards, including
qualifying cards, at local DBS/POSB ATMs and branches in the month
https://www.dbs.com.sg/iwov-resources/pdf/cards/promotions/dbs-visa-debit-card-relaunch-tnc.pdf
Whilst I was typing this post, my wife called and said we will be going to Malaysia again tomorrow, and it's supposed to be a public holiday...
Then we'll be back in a couple of days and then flying off to Paris again for her work.
Anyway, that's it for today's post, I'll be talking about the 99 year lease time bomb for HDBs tomorrow or Wed, depending if I have the time tomorrow after the flight and everything...
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