August 20, 2010
Received a letter through our letter box today about a Summer Deal offer from BT. Thought it’s really cheap, £15.99 a month for BT Total Broadband, plus unlimited UK landline calls. And it’s free for the first three months of service. But it is only after looking at the small prints more carefully, and repeatedly, when I realise that this £15.99 actually does not bloody include the line rental, which is currently about £10 a month! How is it such an exciting deal I wonder, almost in disbelief that they actually have the guts to send out such weak marketing offers.
You see, I’m currently paying only £7.50 for my broadband with O2, as I’m also their mobile phone customer. Yes, I’m only getting up to 8Mbps, as opposed to up to 20Mbps. But I don’t have a usage cap of 10GBytes per month! For these I’ll have to shell out almost twice what I’m currently paying to go with BT. How silly does that sound? And what I don’t like about BT is it seems that they deliberately try to make their offers sound better than they actually are. Wasted my time having to look into the small prints to get a full view of what the offer actually meant. So not impressed with these marketing people, and BT!
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June 29, 2010
What’s with me and tyre punctures I wonder. Bought a car only three weeks ago, went on long distance to Cornwall for a holiday, then one of my front tyres went flat on the second day! Similar things happened to me after I bought my bicycle. Three or four punctures within the first month or two. Very unlucky. This time it was costly as well, as the object that pierced through the tyre was too close to the side wall to mend, which means the whole tyre needed replacing. Ouch!
Looking on the positives, we have car breakdown cover so we didn’t have to even change the car tyre ourselves. And we have a full size tyre that comes with the car so we didn’t need to go looking for a local tyre shop to deal with the punctured tyre immediately. Thus we were able to carry on where we left off for the rest of the day. Lastly I think we saved almost 30 quid on our Michelin tyre thanks to the advice of one of the mechanics at Kwik-fit, a tyre shop. Actually his advice, which was to send my punctured tyre to another nearby tyre shop to get it mended, did not work because that tyre shop does not mend punctures that are close to the sidewall as well. The mechanic personally thought the puncture was not that close to the sidewall and could be mended, but he is restricted by company’s policy, hence the suggestion. Anyway we wanted to keep all four of our tyres to be of the same make, but the second tyre shop did not have one in stock. So we got a quote and called Kwik-fit to see if they have one around. Had it not been this initial quote, Kwik-fit was planning to charge me 30 quid more for the same tyre! My friend was surprised as well as he thought Kwik-fit is normally fairly competitive. Looks like these shops will rip you off if you have not done a bit of homework beforehand! Well at least not all is bad. And we had excellent weather throughout our holiday as well 
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June 9, 2010
Today my colleague was looking for information on how to take off the cassette from his rear bicycle wheel. Then I remember that I have written something on here about the differences between cassette and freewheel. What a great idea keeping a diary like this! I can easily retrieve the information too, probably quicker than using Internet search engine.
Sometimes it’s not about me writing something more useful than what already have been written elsewhere. It’s just that some times it is quite nice reading what I’ve written some time ago as well. Does remind me of what I’ve been up to at that moment in time. And interestingly I was somewhat amazed after reading my post again, as I could not remember most of what I had written, and that was only 2 years ago! Think I will make a conscious effort to keep blogging here, despite spending more and more time on Facebook lately. Shame on me (I know!).
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May 29, 2010
We finally got our allotment after what must have been a 2 years queue. This is how the allotment area looks like (not how our plot of land looks like though 
at least not yet). We would certainly like our plot to look somewhat like that, but it will almost certainly requre a lot of work. Now that the little one is coming out quite soon, I really wonder if we can keep the land at a respectable state!
Anyway I went to a stable where my colleague keeps his pony and horse to collect some horse manure as fertiliser for our allotment yesterday. Apparently the horse manure is cleared out together with the horse bedding everyday. My colleague is currently changing the bedding twice everyday! Because his horse has strained one of her muscles or tendons. Really high maintenance to keep a horse is it not? Which in a way makes me a little more committed to do well on the allotment. As surely I can afford to spare some time for the allotment as well?
Fortunately the bedding my colleague use for his animals is made up of straws and hays. Because if sawdust or wood shavings are used instead, the manure and bedding mixture is not going to be suitable for use as fertiliser directly. Whilst the horse manure is good to use as fertiliser, the sawdust or wood shavings are not crop friendly. Apparently when wood breaks down in the soil a nitrogen deficiency occurs, which stunts the growth of crops. There are ways to combat this, like adding nitrogen fertiliser. But we obviously are not interested in such extra activities
Bags of “black gold” that look almost like soil were dug from the bottom of the manure and hay “mountain” yesterday. Very satisfied. Will work on the allotment in anger from next week once we get our car this coming Tuesday!
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May 18, 2010
Found this on RPK’s website and couldn’t help but to share it here as I find it quite hilarious. But I guess you’ll have to be a Malaysian to appreciate the joke
I was stuck in a traffic jam on the PLUS Highway last week. Nothing moved for half an hour when suddenly a man knocked on my window. So I rolled down my window and asked, “What’s going on?”
”Terrorists down the road have kidnapped a few UMNO politicians. They’re asking for a ransom or they’re going to douse them with petrol and set them on fire. We are going from car to car, taking up a collection.”
I then asked, “How much is everyone giving on average?”
“Most people are giving about a gallon.”
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