I Won!

OMG, I joined two contests this week. (I'm sucker for contests and I love winning! I've won movie tickets, plane ticket, etc.) The one I just posted, the other one I joined via twitter. I joined this Moleskin Planner Contest.

And lo and behold, I won! It's a kick-ass planner, I already have 3, Belle De Jour, Starbucks and Moleskin. I only need 2, for work and personal use (I still love writing on paper, instead of using gadgets), so I'll give my Starbucks planner to my brother :) I just got my Starbucks planner today, and found out that I won the Moleskin Planner today! Wheee. And the planner that I won is worth Php2,750.00. This is probably the most expensive planner I'll ever have :p (Hmmm I consider the Starbucks planner free even if I spent 2k ish for the coffee)

YugaTech Great Gadget Giveaway

I'm such a sucker for contests and freebies! This is my entry to Yugatech's Great Gadget Giveaway. You can blog or tweet to join. I've done both :) I haven't won anythin in a looong time, so hopefully in this contest, I'll win.

Handling Finances.

Here are some interesting/good read articles that are money related:

6 Simple Steps To $1 Million
10 Simple Steps To Financial Security Before 30
Squeeze A Greenback Out Of Your Latte

I'm actually guilty of some of the things mentioned like spending for gourmet coffee, I used to buy in Starbucks more than twice a week but I had to stick to a budget and promised myself to brew most of the time (which is cheaper even if your beans are from Starbucks), and just get a gourmet coffee fix once a week.

Another thing mentioned in the article is bringing your own food for lunch, which I actually do, from Monday to Thursday, then Friday is the day I treat myself out for a good lunch/an eat out, so I guess that's not bad right? I get to save money, and I've been doing that since I started working so that's for 5 years already.

On the rest of the items/tips mentioned in the articles, I'm still working on it :D I really love good food, and I enjoy eating in restaurants on weekends, well, for this one I really have to set a limit on.

Hopefully, with these little practices, it will eventually contribute to my first million target! :D

Hopefully I'd still get my first million soon :P

Traveling.

The Cebu Pacific's P1.00 promo fare just ended! I'm actually one of those people who usually take advantage of the sale, even before the sale happens, I usually have a specific place to go to, and have planned/organized it already with people who will go with me, so when the sale comes, no more phone calls/sms to each other to decide since the plan and date's been finalized so I can book instantly as soon as I get Cebu Pac's announcement text. (I'm subscribed to their SMS alerts) Tickets for Bangkok and Hong Kong went as low as P1,200.00 (in case I have international readers, that's 24 USD only!) and that's ROUND TRIP tickets with taxes already. So that's damn cheap, the lowest HK fare I've seen was 2 years ago with P2,500, and this year's was like 50% cheaper than 2 years' ago P1.00 fare.

But this year I didn't book any tickets. We're still figuring out our personal finances and still have to recoup our savings. And I think I've reached my quota for 2009-2010 since for this year, I've been to Japan, Malaysia and Cambodia. I had to let this go, and Ian said no surprise bookings, so I have to talk to him first before planning a vacation. So now, my cousins will have to go without me next year to their trip to Bangkok! :D I so wanna go back there for shopping and food. So I'll settle for the next best thing, send money to them and ask them to shop for me :D It will come out way way cheaper than going to Bangkok.

If you want to be updated with Cebu Pac's sale, subscribe to their SMS alerts, email alerts (though this comes late) or follow them on Cebu Pac's Twiiter for real time updates. Some of my friends who subscribed to their alerts get it late, I dunno if I get it really early because I've signed up way way back, they must have a really big database or something that's why it takes a while for other people to get their alerts. Better just follow them on Twitter.

Always remember, traveling doesn't have to be THAT expensive :)

For 2011, still thinking, Ho Chi Mihn, Vietnam or Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia :D I'd surely wait for the 2010 sale for the 2011 travel. Hmmm or Osaka, Japan!

The Truth About Santa.

Got this in my email, interesting :D


After much research, we present the annual aeronautical engineers report on the theory of Santa:

No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer, which only Santa has ever seen. There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish & Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total -378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes that there's at least one good child in each.

Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with. This is due to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits/second. That is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has .001 second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house.

Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles/household, a total trip of 75.5 million miles; not counting stops to do what most of us do at lease once every 31 hours, plus eating etc. So Santa's sleigh must be moving at 650 miles/second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a pokey 27.4 miles/second. A conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles/hour.

If every one of the 91.8 million homes with good children were to put out a single chocolate chip cookie and an 8 ounce glass of 2% milk, the total calories (needless to say other vitamins and minerals) would be approximately 225 calories (100 for the cookie, give or take, and 125 for the milk, give or take). Multiplying the number of calories per house by the number of homes (225 x 91.8 x 1000000), we get the total number of calories Santa consumes that night, which is 20,655,000,000 calories. To break it down further, 1 pound is equal to 3500 calories. Dividing our total number of calories by the number of calories in a pound (20655000000 / 3500) and we get the number of pounds Santa gains, 5901428.6, which is 2950.7 tons.

The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized Lego set (2 lb.), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300lb. Even granting that "flying reindeer" (see #1) can pull 10 TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with 8, or even 9, reindeer. We need 214,200. This increases the payload - not counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons. This is four times the weight of the ocean-liner Queen Elizabeth.

353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles/second creates enormous air resistance. This will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as a spacecraft reentering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within .00426 of a second. Meanwhile, Santa, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250 lb. Santa, being very conservative in terms of guessing Santa's weight, would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 lb. of force. If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead now.

Saving the environment and then some.

I haven't written anything in a while, and I actually miss typing long sentences, more than 140 characters, although I noticed and other people noticed that I've been using twitter but mainly tweeting about food :D

Anyway, a lot happened for the past few weeks with Ondoy, Pepeng and now there's another storm coming. I just have some few thoughts, outside what's been being regularly said. Well for one, about using eco bags when doing groceries.

I'm a big fan of cute, nice, big, eco bags! But recently I haven't been using them but I have a perfectly good explanation. I told my mom before that I'll get her eco bags but she said if she starts using eco bags, what will be used for the trash in the house, which now since I've moved out, I now get what she means. If I start using eco bags when doing groceries, we would still end up buying trash bags. So it's really more of 'recycling' which we have to do also, not just promote eco bags.

And when buying small things like let's say a pen in the local bookstore, don't ask them to wrap it for you anymore, just ask for the receipt, put it in your bag, do the same thing when you buy vitamins or meds in the drugstore, oh and this one's a good tip, don't use straws anymore whenever you dine in fast food joints or restaurants.

I think in a trip to Hong Kong I saw that Mcdonald's have a "No Straw Day" campaign, where they don't give out straws for the drinks, just a little step to save the environment. We should also be doing the same thing in Manila :)

Let's basically minimize our trash, and I'm sure we'll benefit helluva a lot from it.

Suppliers.

I'm compiling all the supplier list for the cheaper prices of goods, from Facebook, Twitter, etc. If you know more please comment on this entry. So we can buy more goods for cheaper price to help more people affected by Ondoy. Thanks!

-Donations On Wheels nos : 09189791229 09177974098 09326991794. They're helping with logistics for delivering relief goods.
-In case you want to donate matches: safety Matches (Commando - water resistant, Rizal, Bueno, Jar) (1 box containing 1,200 matchboxes), please contact Bernice Bernardino at 5323084
-Pan de Manila has dropped their prices to help out! Big Pandesal at PhP4, Small Pandesal at PhP2, Tasty Loaf at PhP40!
-If you need to buy mineral water in bulk for relief goods, please contact Bau Bautista from SMC. You can get it at Php232 per case of 24 bottles. His number is 0922-8497001.
-For sardines: you can order from MEGA sardines, pls contact Jean Tiu 09177161005. They can deliver in bulk and can offer it at lower prices versus supermarkets/groceries
-Joey Pantangco, can get mineral water for donations at dealers price per: box. 230 per box. One box is 230 pesos and contains 48 pieces of 350 ml mineral water. Comes out to 4.8 pesos per piece. Joey Pantangco 09178428812.
-Toothbrushes for only P5 APIECE, Minimum orders: 500 pcs. SMS ABI at 09178898178

Random thoughts.

Time does fly fast. I haven't written anything in a while, and I have all these random thoughts in my head right now. The weather's depressing, there's flood everywhere, I'm just glad I'm safely home, glued to the bed.

Some random stuff, excuse me for non cohesive thoughts :D

1. Glee and Spring Awakening. I'm currently watching Glee, well few minutes left in the 3rd episode when I decided to blog instead, it's a musical tv series. A new flavor to the pile-loads of series I'm watching that's why I don't have time to blog or read other blogs anymore. A lot tv shows have returned already. Oh and the Spring Awakening play that we were supposed to watch today got cancelled. Since we leave near RCBC, we got there early, only to find out the play was canceled. Well if we came from the south, we probably would have called the organizers or assumed that it would be canceled because of floods and traffic. I was looking forward to the play, the music's done by Duncan Sheik! :) Spring Awakening Manila started yesterday, September 25 to October 18, 2009 at Carlos P. Romulo Auditorium, RCBC Building. I'm actually happy that I can drag Ian into watching plays, well musical plays even.

2. The Best Frozen Yogurt. Okay, so far I've tried Lulubelle (Powerplant), White Hat, Fro-Yo (in Hobbes stores), and Red Mango. Before I used to say that all these frozen yogurts taste the same, but the verdict: RED MANGO for the quality of yogurt, the price, and the 'cafe' feel to the shop. After eating yogurts on consecutive days/weeks, I was finally able to compare. To think Red Mango's a franchise from US or Korea (I dunno where we got it but both countries have it), the price is actually reasonable compared to the others. Next would be Fro-Yo :) Red Mango is for the health buffs since they mostly have fruits as their toppings, I usually get blueberries with crushed graham for the 'cheesecake' feel. But if I want cheesecake as the actual topping, Fro-Yo in Hobbes!

3. Cooking. Before I got married, I don't really cook, I bake, but cooking? I leave it to my mom and my chef brother :) But now since I have to cook, I'm actually pretty good at it :D Yeah but I still occasionally call the house to confirm with the recipes. I even hoarded some spices from the house. Who has bottles and bottles of McCormick spices at home? I was amazed at what I found in our cabinet, we have Tumeric, Rosemary, Oregano, Cayenne, etc. I swear we have more than 20 bottles of different spices. I hoarded the doubles then brought it to our place. What the hell is Tumeric for right? My brother said it's the yellow for Java Rice or don't quote me on this, I think for Arroz Caldo :)

4. Chocolate Fix. I'm currently raving, oh well thriving on the sugar high from the following:
M&M's Straweberried Peanut Butter

Flipz Pretzels. I love Royce's potato chips covered with chocolate but it's really expensive (We have Royce here and it's P540 a box!), I like salty and sweet. So when I tried these pretzels with peanut butter and chocolate = SUPER YUM. Obviously, I love peanut butter :)

Super thanks to Noelle for bringing me these! :D I once tried to imitate Royce's chocolate covered potato chips by using Oishi potato chips and melting Hershey's, it's actually good :) I will attempt to copy this one also. But for my 'healthier sugar fix', I'm happy with my Yogurt!

5. Settling down. After getting married, a lot of people were asking me how it feels like, or how is it like, and even if I try to avoid blogging about personal stuff since it's OUT there and Google-able, I will rave about it :) It's actually nice, comforting, interesting, and fun. Hmm, for people in relationships, hmmm it's like living with your boyfriend, that's basically it, only you get to be with your boyfriend for the rest of your life :)

Itouch Upgrade.

After 2 years of having my Ipod Touch, I finally had an upgrade! Woohoo. For those not familiar anymore with the old Itouch, the first gen didn't have speakers or the applications that the Iphone and the Itouch now have. When some got their Itouch 2 years ago, they had it "Jailbroken" slash used "Jailbreak". Since I was concerned with the warranty and stuff, I didn't bother so I never had those apps that my friends were using and playing. I was pretty satisfied from listening to the music and watching my dose of TV series and movies in my Ipod. I even got the TV connector so I can watch the movies and TV series in the telly since my DVD player was already broken.

Fast forward to the present, since I don't 'travel' to work anymore, no more idle moments stuck in the SLEX traffic, I don't get to use my Ipod that often. I find it very useful only during travels like using it on the plane, or using it to connect to wifi to check mail, facebook and for YM :D Anyway, so just this week, I finally had a software upgrade (Thanks to Weak!).

There are sooooo many applications and games in Itunes available for download. Apple has this very good idea that to be able to log-in to Itunes and download the free apps, you'd have to register and input your credit card details. I am so tempted to buy those $0.99 applications! Since the free ones are just 'trials' and some games only reach certain levels since the free ones are just 'previews' of what you can really play when you purchase, I am left wanting for more :D


Oh and I love the fact that you can update your apps via WiFi or download new games, since we have WiFi in our condo, I just can easily go online and do it :)

Before I used to access Facebook via the Safari browser, now that there's an app for it, it's so much easier and more user-friendly. I just hope that next time I can access Farmville via Itouch :))

Back in college, I had this phase, I used to download ALL sorts of fonts online. I'd do it ALL the time and discover cute and different fonts, now I think I'm in the apps for my Itouch phase :D I haven't even played all of the applications I downloaded :p

Earning Through Blogging Part 2.

I wish I can also earn a lot by blogging! This is my second post about it already, (first here). I thought about it, I mentioned before in my blog that I wanted to be a food blogger, but I'm usually lost for words when eating really good food, so I can't do that. I don't have other passions in life, hmm baking could be counted but it's not like I bake every week or every single day so how am I supposed to put entries on that, right? I usually just blog on random things :)) And I had a stand before that I will try to minimize entries on my personal life since this blog is Google-able, I don't want people that I really don't know know a lot about my life :) Just snippets of stories but I don't think I'm ever pouring my whole story in my blog. Well I'm no celebrity so my life isn't really that much interesting, the usual interesting blog posts I have are about travels (well these are the ones that I like), but then again I'm not really no Richierich to be able to travel all the time :D

And so far, since placing the Google Ads, I've never earned a single dollar at all :( Oh well, I guess my blog will never be money making thing. I have to come up with something else so I can earn my first million!

Credit Card Freebies.

I love getting freebies and discounts :) I usually have cards like the Bench Card (for Fix/First Aid/PCX/Bench/Aldo/Fox purchases) which I've already earned/collected P200.00 from, A-Card which have a lot of cool freebies in resto's and discounts, SM Advantage which I've already earned P900.00 (credited to the card and can be used to purchase in SM) from the purchases, Tony Roma's card, etc.

Oh and now there's the battle for the best Credit Card freebies! I used to love BPI's free food, I have the BPI card which just my mom's extension way way back, which I would use whenever she asks me to buy anything for her for groceries and errands. My mom would hoard all of these free goodies depending on what freebies are for the month, like there was a time Tokyo Tokyo was the partner, we'd have endless meals from Tokyo Tokyo, then there was Goldilocks, and Chowking. So Ian and I both decided to get this card as our 'joint' card when we got hitched.


From August 1 to September 30, P1,000, P2,000, P3,000 purchases will get you free food in Jollibee! :) But to clarify that, P10,000 charged slip doesn't mean you can claim 10 P1,000 freebies. It's per charged slip, so a P10,000 slip would just give you the P3,000 food freebie.

For a minimum single transaction of P1,000 Jolly Hotdog Classic/Jolly Hotdog Chili Cheese or Ice Craze.

For a minimum single transaction of P2,000 Yum with Sundae (Rocky Road, Black Forest or Chocolate) or Yum with Regular Jolly Crispy Fries .

For a minimum single transaction of P3,000 Cheesy Bacon Mushroom with Large Jolly Crispy Fries or Double Yum with TLC with Large Jolly Crispy Fries.

Not bad right? And then Citibank came up with it's own freebie for the credit card!

Ian and I have been both using Citibank cards as our 'personal' credit card even before we got married, so we just retained it. And the BPI credit card we actually got kind of sucked because of it's low credit limit, they didn't even match our existing credit limit, so we both decided to keep it as well. We love our Citibank Credit Card because we got the Mercury Drug card, it has rebates in Mercury Drug (who doesn't buy medicine in Mercury?) plus that's how we got a low monthly fee in Fitness First because of their tie-up. We don't really check on the interest rates, etc. on choosing the credit cards since we pay on time, but really more for the freebies what we can get from the bank. I'm not a supporter/believer of the 'points' system in credit cards because I used to have an Equitable card (now BDO) and what I got for using it for x years was a measly P500.00 GC. The points conversion are so low. Instant gratification is way better for consumers, imagine the P500.00 GC that I got before can be easily matched in a matter of months from the food freebies one can get from BPI, I mean one can instantly accumulate receipts and get P500.00 worth of food from Jollibee. (Our BPI card's the one with the points system, I just have to consider this as the 'plus' because the main goal was to claim the free food! :p)

Anyway, as for Citibank's freebie, which I absolutely love, it's free movie passes! (Add to that the 5% rebate on all purchases you make using the card until August 31, 2009)

For a minimum single transaction of P1,500 you get 1 Free Movie Pass worth P130.
For a minimum single transaction of P3,500 you get 2 Free Movie Passes worth P260
Plus Popcorn & Softdrinks for 2.
For a minimum single transaction of P20,000 you get 3 Free Movie Passes worth P390
Plus Popcorn & Softdrinks for 3.

Ayala Malls are included! :) You still have to shell out for this though, since movies in Greenbelt 3 are priced at P180 and P200, upon claiming the free movie passes, you'd have to add money. I think the promo's really nice! The free popcorn in Greenbelt 3 is from Chimara (the one cooked in olive oil!).

What we do now if our purchase reaches P1,000, we use the BPI card, if it's P1,500, the Citibank card :D So we can avail of freebies! So if you're reading this, and you've been using HSBC (which only give freebies upon signing like the free Mango watch for instance), or any other card, it's probably the best time to switch! The promos are open to ANY Citibank/BPI credit cards. So if you like the earn-points-system-thing for gadgets/appliances or the one for miles, both banks have that and would still qualify you to grab the freebies I mentioned.