television

I was chatting with my brother earlier and he was telling me that he was planning to buy an lcd tv to replace the old tv inthe living room. He was getting a good deal for a good brand 32″ lcd tv. When he told me the price it was definitely a bargain. He’s planning to put it downstairs. So they must start to clean out the current mess there so that it will be a place for entertaining again. Now all he needs is a nice tv stand and probably a new comfy sofa too haha!.

building house

I was bloghopping and saw on a friend’s blog that they are in the midst of constructing their dream house. Another blogmate is renovating rooms in their home. With all these fixing they would probably need ball lock pins for positive locking that is fool-proof. I can only wish that in a few years that we will be living in a house of our own and not a rental.

holiday gifts

In the months leading up to the holidays, we would always see on the telly various ads for Christmas hampers and gift baskets that you can pre-order now and pay in monthly installments and have them delivered to your home or as gifts to friends for next year’s Christmas. It was funny one time when E saw the commercial he told me that he wanted to order a basket for Christmas. I had to tell him that those orders will be for next Christmas. haha!

no more playmate

Last month, we heard from our friends the Bs that it was already confirmed by his boss that they will be relocating to Canberra at the start of the year. And good for them that two weeks ago they got approved for the house rental that they applied for. So by early January they will be requiring moving services to get all their things from Sydney to Canberra. No more instant meetups with them anymore and E won’t have his constant playmate S. Good luck in Canberra guys.

packing

I was organizing some of our things last weekend and putting away our winter clothes (yes I know it’s already summer, nice procrastination no?!) when I was reminded that we need to check out luggages one of these days. Though we don’t have any major trips planned but I think it would be better to start looking for one now than wait until there is a need. We may even get a good one on sale. One of the brands that we can probably look at is the zero halliburton, it looks like it can stand the abuse we give luggages.

canberra weekend pt1

A couple weeks ago we drove to Canberra for the weekend at the invitation of the Molinas. They had planned an early Christmas get-together with their friends there and invited us. As we had been wanting to go for a while now, we didn’t pass up on the invite. Before we went to their home we visited the Australian War Memorial. E had a great time looking at the various items on display. After picking up some food, off we went to the Molinas. It was a fun christmas get together, complete with great company, good food, nice gifts and plenty of laughter.

Driving to Canberra	Car seat fun
Happy passenger
Australian War Memorial
requisite peace sign pose
liking the diorama
party at the molinas
putting to use tita carlene’s christmas gift
gift giving
games
kids turn

With all the pics that we’re accumulating, its a good thing we have external hard drives for storage.

merry christmas!!

Credit: 2007 Holiday Card Collection by Shabby Princess.  Photo by Tin.

blog tools

A lot of people that are getting into paid blogging are always looking into ways to increase traffic to their blogs. One of the ways that can help is conversion rate optimization. Conversion rate optimization or CRO is a way for you to convert the traffic that comes into your site to generate income or to be leads for future ones. It can be a good way to start while you wait for your SEO to finally kick in. So for those planning their blogs especially ones where you sell something, this can be something that will help you.

ichi’s xmas gift

I was thinking for the longest time what to get Ichi for Christmas, was initially wanting to purchase a dslr lens for him but those don’t go cheap and even with the discounts it was still way out of my budget. But I was still determined to get him an accessory for his camera. So this is what I got him, it fit my budget (what little it was from my blogging money) – The Puffer, a pop-up flash diffuser. I ordered it online from one of the local distributors here and got it the day before we went to Canberra to visit friends. Just in time to test it out. I had to make him open his present as soon as he got home from work.

Images from Gary Fong.

Oh and this I like haha! Flash diffuser for point and shoot cams. Size 4 for me please!

Image from Gary Fong.

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Speaking of Christmas, I’m sure our families in Manila are busy preparing for Christmas eve dinners and pre-Christmas gatherings with friends. Hopefully they’re still mindful of their diets so that they won’t have to look into fenphedra or the likes to slim down after the holiday season.

banking woes

I recently ordered online for some goodies to be sent to friends in Manila for Christmas.  I didn’t have any problems with placing my orders, both of the shops that I dealt with were really good with their customer service, answering my emails quickly and updating me with the progress if needed. What I was terribly disappointed and frustrated about was that when I transferred the payments online to their bank accounts, I got charged P150 each for the two transactions that I did. This was not the charge imposed by my bank (which charged me P10 each for the online transfer) but a charge by BPI the receiving bank. I don’t mind any additional charge for the transfer if it was only minimal but a P150 for receiving an online transfer? I find it a big amount to charge. Considering that this was a local bank to bank transfer and not an international remittance. I don’t know what the difference is with how the banks in Manila do local bank to bank transfers to how banks in say Singapore and Australia do it. In both Singapore and Australia, where I have experienced doing domestic bank to bank transfer we don’t get charged for both outgoing or incoming transfer. Or in the case of Australia you get charged depending on your account type and only if you exceed the allowed number of electronic transactions. Hay, I really can’t understand it. I think it should be a basic service that should be part of online banking, I would think that it costs less for the bank to have their account holders do their transactions online than have them all go to the branches to do their banking where the bank would have to put more people to man the counters. Oh and when my suppliers asked their bank about the transaction BPI told them that the missing amount were charges made by my bank. They don’t tell their account holders that they charge for the incoming transfer. Grrr! In the end, I had to ask a favor from my brother to go to the bank and deposit the balance when it should have been covered to begin with. Good thing both of the suppliers still went ahead with the deliveries while waiting for me to settle the balance.