In the past, I used to think that McDonald’s< Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut and the likes were owned by big companies and only big companies. Part of it was because one of my tuition teachers also said that only big companies have franchise opportunities with famous fast food companies. Maybe I misunderstood his meaning but the fact is, anyone can have franchise opportunities as long as the money is available.

I was a part-time worker in one of the franchised Burger King restaurant and I must admit that the owner was very stingy. Every pence counts and the food served was not always fresh. Sometimes when they faced unexpected crowd which left them with limited food for the rest of the week, they would shopped at Asda for cheap buns. That just shows their low quality control of Burger King’s franchise partners. Well, if I had the money to buy a franchise opportunity and Burger King was the only franchise opportunities available, I would rather save up the money.

Gordon Ramsay once quoted in FHM that Burger King’s beef is comparable to those served in high class restaurant. I do not think so.

Life is so full of choices especially in this ever advancing technology world. Do you think that we can live without technology? I cannot, really. Imagine this; our shower is not working and we have to use the upstairs bathroom until ours is fixed. Mee and I obviously are not used to using the upstairs bathroom and we tend to take shower quickly. That leaves us quite an amount of time to spend in the evening. So, what do we do? Browse the internet, playing games, watching drama and log on to social networking sites. Okay, maybe eat and reading newspaper but those activities are not going to use up our hours before sleep. Even if we are going to chat with our friends, we need to use our mobile phones or the internet.

So, what is the fuss? As my contract with my current broadband service provider is coming to an end on December, I thought that I should be browsing around for better deal. Eventually, my current deal is still the best even though I have to pay an extra £1.50 or £5.50 when I renew. For the extra £5.50, I will have broadband and phone line while for the extra £1.50, I will only have broadband.

Other broadband service providers have monthly download limits and the prices are scary. Most of the terms and conditions will be printed at the bottom of the page with a super-small-thin-blurry-font-size so that anyone will completely miss that line. To rephrase again, life is so not full of choices anyway.

Yesterday, Mee and I went to the Sports Centre at Festival Place. They had a promotion price of £1 for using its swimming and health spa each. We had a very relaxing day. The health spa includes spa, sauna and steam. We were given a code to enter the health spa as well as wrist strap to identify us as the £1 user. Obviously, there were a lot of £1 users.

After that, Mee and I were quite tempted to sign up for the membership packages. But before that, I need to do some research on the number of sports centre in Basingstoke. One of the disadvantages of the Sports Centre is the parking. It is situated inside Festival Place shopping centre, so there is no free parking. I sent an email to check on the membership types but got a reply saying that they do not have any weekend membership. On normal rate, the use of health spa is £4.60 and even members need to pay £1 for each use.

Fitness First seems to have the better deal and flexibility. Eventually, I found another sports centre which is much more flexible because they are not so commercialized. It is the Queen’s Mary College’s sports centre. Membership is as low as £13 per month for a weekend pass which the deal which I would prefer to have. I will discuss with Mee later then.