Here I am, eating Ferrero Rocher in the middle of the night. I am quite tired actually but there’s another part of me that’s wide awake. I am hungry at the moment and chocolate is what’s surrounding me. Anyway, I just finished booking 80% of flights and hotels in relation to Mee and my Australia and New Zealand trip. I have to say that it’s quite a tedious job compared to our previous trips. Multiple destinations booking worked when I booked our Macau, Hong Kong and Taiwan trip but not this time. Therefore, I have to book multiple one way flight instead. Luckily, they work out to be not very expensive but it’s just the effort in checking each flights and making sure the time matches.

Here are some of the facts that I found out while searching for flights and hotels in Australia. Apparently, there is $15 surcharge when booking flights and 1.5% charge when booking hotels. Most of the hotels don’t offer breakfast included package and when we found one, the breakfast consists of cereal and toast. There’s a charge for extra towels to go to the beach. If you want to check in early, you will have to pay a fee. If you want to check out late, you will have to pay a fee. Best part of all, there is not a single hotel that I can find which includes free wireless internet access. Now I wonder if it will be the same like Amsterdam where you have to pay to use the toilet even at McDonald.

Time flies … I always like to use those two words. In fact, I almost forgot about this blog. I only thought about it when I was taking shower last night. I feel bad. Anyway, I didn’t update this blog that frequently because a lot of things happened and I am very busy with my work. The shocking news, though not really shocking, is that my manager has since resigned. He will leave the company early March and no one knows what will happen then. A lot of staffs have been put at the ‘at risk’ category. I am still fine because we are actually short staffed. No one can actually do my work at the moment, hence, I am still safe. That goes the same with my other colleagues in my department. Well, we are in the same department but the works that we do are totally different.

I have changed my daily habit quite a bit minus the late sleeping part. I am still trying to coach myself to sleep early but it’s always until midnight where I start to get all energetic. I have started to take shower before having dinner. The vacuuming routine has changed from Sunday to Monday instead. Mee and I have started attending gym classes during weekend; Body Balance on Saturday and Zumba on Sunday. Well, Zumba is only for Mee as I am not interested. I will just be in the gym area doing free weights stuff. We used to also go to the gym on Tuesday as Mee attended aqua fit class. However, the pool has closed since before Christmas and will only be opened next week. Hence, we have been staying at home all this while on every Tuesday.

Right now, Mee and I can’t wait until our booked holiday period. The last time we went abroad was almost four months ago and it seems like forever. This time, we are quite ambitious as we will be going to Australia and possibly New Zealand. Mee has a couple of friends living in Australia and we could save quite a bit in the accommodation side of things. In addition, my uncle and his family lives in New Zealand, hence, we will most probably be going there and stay at his house for a few days while sight seeing.

Buying things online can be quite comfortable but sometimes, it can be a headache too. I normally only buy hardware stuffs and try to avoid clothing as I never know whether or not the size would be suitable. Regrettably, I bought a Nike sports jacket about a week ago. The price was too good to turn down. There I was, chose a size and click purchase. Item didn’t arrive promptly but I didn’t mine as I was updated every now and then regarding the status of my item. Tomorrow, I have to send it back to zavvi.com as the size, though M, is still too big for me. It states there 178cm which is totally different from my other M-size Nike shirts. Well, it’s also a relief as it is not an expensive jacket. Imagine if I bought a RayBan sunglasses online and had to return it in the end. That would be disappointment plus more headache because I would have been eagerly waiting to wear it and the price would have been higher than a jacket.

I had spent the past weekend doing nothing at all; except playing Fifa 2012 on my iPad and watching TV. As usual for Mee, she cooked and watched her own online TV programs. I just felt weak and my head seemed to be a few kilograms heavier. Anyway, I feel much better now having rested so much.

Playing Fifa 2012 can be quite challenging at times. And frustrating too. When it’s too easy, we wish that it could be harder. But when it’s too hard, we curse the computer (AI). Most of the times, the AI is just ridiculous and it’s better off playing against top teams than playing against teams at the bottom of the table. On some games, the AI goalkeeper is ridiculously good that it could block any shoot from any angle. On the other hand, your goalkeeper can be just rubbish. I have come to the fact that I just play it through no matter how ridiculously good the AI. I will have my revenge the next match. I can’t win all the matches anyway and that’s the same with real life football.

The settings still need some tweaking but I suppose Fifa13 will be very entertaining. Fifa11 is absolutely rubbish. It’s the same like Fifa for PC. It just gets better each year and I still don’t understand why people are complaining. Fifa just works for me.

By the way, I tested playing Fifa12 using iPhone as controller. It worked pretty good but the space is somehow limited. I kept going out of range and a mini-Fling gamepad will be ideal. However, my Fling has broken twice now and I don’t think I will invest in another one until a better one is available in the market.

Guess what? I received an email from thehut.com yesterday. It said;

We are really sorry but due to a high demand we have unfortunately sold out and are unable to fulfil your order.

It’s really frustrating and that was the second time that I tried to buy something from the site. I have bought things online so many times and most reputable sites are very good at stock checking especially electronic sites. In addition, it offers PayPal payment but the payment never went through. It kept saying that the payment cannot be processed. It’s a rubbish site and I believe that buying from them requires patience, time and most importantly luck! I would rather look elsewhere even if they cost a little bit more.

I probably said this quite a lot of time now but not recently. I used to be Point of Sales support or technician. It ranged from the small cash registers that print out just numbers to restaurant POS where it linked several PC-based cash registers. At one point, I thought that was my career path as I loved it so much. Well, being able to travel around and meeting new and different people from all walks of life. I did have some tough days though when customers were not pleased or didn’t have the money to pay after I fixed their problems. I have to say that I didn’t really did a good job every time. Sometimes, I was just trying to get by as I would like to quickly move to my next destination. Even the next job after that involved POS system too. However, I got to work some programming language which expanded my knowledge. My, IT is huge and I am glad that I love it even until now.

POS still plays a part in me. Every now and then, I still feel very close to it whenever I see an advertisement about receipt printers like the new Epson TM-T88V or even when I go to restaurants or having a dinner, I like to look at their cash registers. Most cash registers, be it the normal ones with dozen of buttons or the PC-based front end, they are all linked to a PC-based back end. As you may have already known, a PC can basically do anything but it still depends on the front end equipment to have the ability to perform the tasks required. Like for example, when I was still working as the POS support, most receipt printers were so basic that they couldn’t print out the company logo and the printing sound was unbearable at times. There were receipt printers that do fancy stuffs but they were just too expensive for some customers.

I do believe that now would be a different story. Hmm…. that was a job that I started out about 8 years ago! And I am not sure if I like to think what if I were still with that job now!