Bob-a-job-alog-a-roonie

I've always been entertained by the idea that I could be a descendant of the court jester who gave us the word tomfoolery. Tom Skelton was known as Tom Fool in 16th century northern England.

Labels: tom skelton, tomfoolery

Each of us were accosted on the street to enter a free prize draw. Reality is that everyone wins a free lunch at a fancy resort. And it's true, we were picked up in a bus and delivered to a nice resort near Kuta. Although not far, it was your typical chaotic ride and took 45 mins each way. The resort and beach were beautiful, although none of the guests seemed particularly cheerful. Maybe they were using their timeshare deal!

Lunch was crap. The restaurant seemed to have nice meals, but our meals came from a special menu that they produced for the freebie crowd. Sandwiches and fries and soft drinks... Then a tour of the place, and then we get sat down in an office and given the hard sell. The sales pitch took more than 30 minutes. But you had to sit it out, because they gave you lunch, and they are in charge of your ride home.

After the pitch, the sales lady called over her manager who basically expected us to sign up for their bargain timeshare deal. I shared my thoughts on the deal, and the fat wanker didn't even respond! He just stood up and walked off, knowing he couldn't convert me. Here's the gist of what I said:

The $4000 they want me to invest will earn me $200/year in interest (and I still keep my money!). The $200 they want in annual fees + that $200 equals $400. With $400 I can find all sorts of 1 week accommodations around the world - and I still keep my $4000!

That's the way to look at it. Same with holiday homes. What is the up front cost. What is the ongoing cost. What if I put that money in the bank and received interest. How much could I achieve from the interest + ongoings?

Example: holiday home that costs $200K. Your mortgage / loss of earnings from interest is going to be at least $10K per year. How much holiday can you get for $1OK?? $10K could almost be a month in a 5 star hotel... Plus you have complete freedom to stay wherever you want.

Do the math!

Note: I do accept that having a holiday home means you get to stay at the same place every year, and become a "local". And a timeshare is essentially prepaid, so it forces you to take a vacation when otherwise you may have decided you couldn't afford it.

Labels: Bali, timeshare

My immediate family all live in the zone that is between Auckland airport and Hamilton. I don't really like staying in downtown Auckland, nor does Hamilton interest me.

For a nice, real Kiwi break, I stay in Pokeno. There's nothing there except for farms, a shop to buy basic groceries, and two shops that both sell exactly the same things - fast food and ice-cream that comes in dozens of flavours and is dirt cheap. Good for one day of budget non-dieting.

Anywhere in South Auckland / North Waikato is close. We choose to stay at the Pokeno Motel. It is new, clean, and they do food and beer. The staff are relaxed as (I say "see you next year", she says "yeah, if we're still open"). Stay there and chill out.

Labels: motel, south auckland, waikato

I can't help but think, just as the rush to make reality shows a few years ago now seems a little foolish, Channel Nine in Australia is going to fail spectacularly next year, based on the new local shows they have planned:

Hey Hey it's Saturday - watch ratings slowly dwindle as we recall why it stopped running years ago

Between The Lines "sports-based and feature audience participation". Nope. Might be great for the audience, but folk at home don't like watching audiences.

Top Gear - never took off, channel change won't help

Underbelly 3 - scraping the barrel with a story already told several times previously

Another Gordon Ramsay show - haven't they heard we are all over him?

"Australian Families of Crime, hidden camera show You're Nicked and the police dog show Send In the Dogs round out the true crime component." - No comment necessary.

I think their Go! channel might get higher ratings, a prediction you heard here first, and nowhere else.

Labels: channel nine

We know several UK people who have just decided enough is enough, and they are shifting to the greener pastures of Australia. And they aren't the only ones.

The number of people leaving Britain has soared to a record high, with Australia the top country of choice to set up home, new statistics show.

Official figures released on Thursday reveal 427,000 people emigrated from the UK in 2008, the highest number ever recorded and up 25 per cent on the previous year.

The rise was largely driven by a 50 per cent leap in the departure of non-British citizens for foreign shores, including 20,000 Australians who bid farewell to the UK.

While the number of emigrants bound for Australia dipped to 56,000 in 2008 from 59,000 a year earlier, Australia remained the clear destination of choice ahead of Poland, Germany, Spain and France.

Of those who moved Down Under, 63 per cent were British citizens and 32 per cent were Australians returning home.
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1140586/Brits-heading-to-Australia-at-new-high

The Poles have been in the UK for quite some time, because they could earn so much more there. For them to be heading home is really saying something. To me, the combination of GFC, immigration, and general British despair means that they are in a downward spiral, and witnessing friends and relatives escaping will make it harder for those that remain.

Unless the London Olympics restore some national pride and prove a huge boost to the economy (hopefully terrorists stay away), about all I can imagine could help Britain is a war. A real war.

The headline from The Scientist magazine is startling - Prostate cancer is increasingly looking like an infectious disease, a new study shows, and may be sexually transmitted.

This means that the trend is towards all cancers being infectious diseases, but not everyone with the disease gets cancer - ie there are other aspects involved, like lifestyle, health and genetics.

I find it interesting, the possibility that most men with prostate cancer caught it from being promiscuous or unfaithful. It certainly makes prevention much, much easier.

Labels: Prostate Cancer

It's a good idea, you pay CentMail 1 cent (you buy in bulk ahead of time), and you get to send an email, with the charity that the cent is going to proudly displayed. The penny goes to charity, and people receiving your email know that it isn't spam, because spammers would never spend a penny on an email.

Unfortunately it will never take off, because to do so, it will need more people onboard than what are willing to pay for email, today. In the long-term it could gain traction as people's attitudes change, but by then it might be forgotten about. It might also have a chance if all email providers join in, but I doubt Hotmail and Gmail will adopt a Yahoo initiative.

It also fails to recognise that quasi-spam, emails from businesses and services that you have used in the past, that kept sending you crap, won't mind paying 1c.

What would work is my old idea - pay 5c to send email, but get a credit each time you receive one. Most people email back and forth to their friends, and the model works out very well for everyone. Read more about my solution to end spam.

Labels: spam solution

Sounds wrong, doesn't it? Lettuces are supposed to be grown in fields. Irrigated. Fed with fertilisers. Sprayed with herbicides and pesticides. Harvested and washed, but at the supermarket it still might have some dirt or bugs in it.

Not in Japan. They grow lettuce in sterile factories. Hydroponic and sealed off from the real world. I'm not sure if I should be freaked or amazed.

Some factories are vast - and can produce three million vegetables a year.

More at the Daily Mail.

Labels: japan, lettuce

Just came across this art form - concrete sculptures made to look like fossils of our era, as if they would be found in the future. Modern Fossils. The one I like best is the cassette:


(Hint to wife... b'day present!)

The rest don't look realistic enough for my taste.

Labels: fossil

Just watched The Chaos Theory and it reminded me of when I read The Dice Man and the interesting adventures that followed due to the roll of a die, something I'd like to partake in again one day, albeit more sensibly.

It was also interesting seeing Stuart Townsend, who is one of those "almost became a star" people. There's nothing wrong with his charisma, acting, choice of roles, or celebrity (his partner is Charlize Theron).