I have been using MacBook Air for quite a while now. It really is a great machine and I find myself using it every day. Most of the things that I have done up to now are only experimental; like I have installed several games and programmes. One thing which annoys me is the fan speed. It can get really noisy when doing extensive tasks especially games. Normal browsing, photos viewing as well as document typing are all fine and the MacBook Air is totally soundless. I had switched on my Samsung NC10 once so far to copy some files and I noticed the difference immediately. However, as I play Grand Theft Auto, the fan could go up to 6000 rpm which was noticeable loud. I searched through forum posts and it seemed to be quite normal for MacBook Air to behave like this. But upon hearing that fan noise, it sounded as if it was going to explode.

On the other hand, I have installed a software called Crossover which allows me to install Windows applications without Windows operating system. So far so good and I managed to test a couple of Windows programs without encountering any problems. I would really love to try the BootCamp Assistant some day which will allow my MacBook Air to run Windows operating system on another partition. But I don’t think I will be switching to Windows operating system on my MacBook Air. I will, however, be waiting for Mac OS X Lion which I am certain that I will buy when it is available.

I received an email from Yahoo a couple of days ago asking me to try out the all new Yahoo! Email. It was also because of that email, I found out that I have been a Yahoo! User since 1998. My first email account was actually with Hotmail where I opened in 1996. However, Yahoo! soon becomes my main email account as the interface is easier to use and faster. Over the years, a lot of functions have been added while the user interface is more or less the same. I have actually tried the new Yahoo! email interface a couple of years ago but it was not very stable at that time.

This time, it is a little bit more stable. It looks a lot like an application on its own. Well, like how you would see in Microsoft Outlook or normal email application. It has also claimed to have improved spam mails control but I see no changes in that part at all. I still get emails like depression rehab treatment centers and some of my regular emails being categorised as spam. It has become a habit for me to check spam mails regularly before deleting them. Somehow, you just couldn’t reduce the amount of spam mails no matter how hard you tried.

Mee and my life have kind of gone back to normal; doing our day to day job, gym and preparing meals. The impression that I had when we came back from Malaysia and entered our rented room was a lot different compared to previous years. It seemed to me that I have used to the living style here. I felt at home. At the same time, things are going to change for sure. My future depends on whether or not my current company’s decision about my contract. There are other options available though but I would love to hear their decision before progressing further. Time flies as usual. Rather than be bothered about something that I cannot control, I should enjoy the time that I have until then.

In the meantime, we started our gym workout classes the week we arrived from Malaysia. The instructor still recognised us. Just a couple of days ago, we attended the body attack class again and it was packed. When finished, we tried to book a place for next week’s class, we were told it was fully booked already. The receptionist looked at the timetable a couple of times as well as using the laser barcode scanner to scan our membership cards but she just couldn’t register a place for us. Members are allowed to book 7 days in advance while it’s 6 days for non-members. The receptionist was puzzled and we were baffled.

Last year, I applied for Lloyds Airmiles Duo credit card to take the advantage of a free 1500 Airmiles Voucher. When I received the voucher, I was excited, so was Mee. Upon checking deeper, it turned out that if I were to use the voucher, I would have to choose a hotel selected by Airmiles. As you may have already guessed, it is always more expensive when booking with their ‘authorised’ hotel. Sometime, things seem to be too good to be true. At that time, it actually cost less if I were to book a flight plus hotel with Expedia.

The voucher has been left untouched, until now. Out of interest, I checked again and this time, the hotel deals seemed to be better considering that I have the intention of doing a weekend trip. Or maybe I had done some wrong calculation the last time I looked at it. Anyway, Mee and I are going to Amsterdam in a couple of weeks’ time through the booking that I have just made with Airmiles. The website was not great as it couldn’t process my payment. I ended up talking to Airmiles support to do my booking but the service that I received through the support was excellent.

Mercure Amsterdam Arthur Frommer is the hotel that I have chosen and is not at the central Amsterdam. In fact, it will take about 10 minutes of tram ride to reach the central which I do not think will be a hassle. Over the many trips that we have been to, hotel choice has become more important to us. Ultimately, convenient location is favoured but if the hotel room is unhygienic and unsafe, it will spoil everything even if it’s only one night; and in this occasion, two nights. Hence, we decided to spend a little bit more to get a better accommodation since we have saved on flight tickets.

Mee and I have just managed to transfer our ISA accounts to Halifax over the weekend. At the moment, I believe that Halifax is offering the highest ISA rate that allows transfers. During the transfer process, I was offered to switch my current account. All I need to do was to give them my HSBC current account details and they will take care the rest, including any direct debit stuffs. In addition, I will get additional 0.2% ISA, £5 cashback every month if I bank in more than £1000 a month and £50 upon successful transfer. Well, I knew all about these incentives but I am still quite reluctant to switch.

HSBC provides very few benefits to its customers. At first, I felt privileged when HSBC offered me a Gold Credit Card. On second thought, it is just a plastic card which I have pay with my own money at the end of every month when I use it. It represents nothing. I would love to have been given something like Halifax does to its customers. By the way, HSBC has one of the lowest ISA rate. The only thing that I like about it is the easiness of the online banking; transferring money and making a payment can be done quite easily and I feel secure too. I have to say that Halifax has made some improvement to its online banking but it is still not on par with HSBC.

HSBC provides better customer service overall. However, I could feel some cockiness attitude when dealing with them. Halifax is friendlier but not so efficient.

I guess I am one of those people who don’t like change. On the other hand, change is good. Seriously, when I thought about change, I would normally take a while to think about it. However, I always believe that I can adapt quite easily. Over the next few days or weeks, I believe that I will be logging into both HSBC and Halifax online accounts to compare them both.

Has anyone heard of Etihad Airways? Whenever Mee and I go back to Malaysia, our families and friends will surely ask which airways we fly. I wonder if it was my pronunciation and it turned out that not many people knew about it and I had pronounced it correctly. If you watch football, take a note at Manchester City’s sponsor.

Before we booked our flight, we were kind of wary about Etihad Airways as we have not heard anything about it really other than the fact that it sponsors Manchester City. Anyway, we made our decisions promptly as it was one of the cheapest options and the flight transfer waiting time was reasonably short. It took 7 hours from London Heathrow to Abu Dhabi and another 7 hours from Abu Dhabi to Kuala Lumpur which was quite a nice break between a long flight. A couple of days after we booked our flight, we browsed the Etihad Airways website and even for economy class, the in-flight entertainment is powered by a 10” touch screen device. The seats looked spacious too.

The day came. We boarded the flight and everything was spot on. The seat arrangement was 2-4-2 and we wished that we knew as it would have been a lot comfortable to have the window seat. Nevertheless, the seat was a bit spacious compared to the Boeing planes we experienced before. The 10” touch screen was impressive. The video quality was great. I used to get very excited about in-flight entertainment but I was disappointed with Malaysia Airlines as well as Singapore Airlines planes because the screen size was small and the picture and sound quality were terrible.

The service was far from great. In fact, the steward and stewardess looked clumsy and not at all friendly. However, I was not picky as long as I got served. The food was normal. Another thing to note was that they were not that punctual. Given the choice again though, I will still choose Etihad Airways.