Yesterday was Labor Day here in the Philippines and beyond the usual protests by workers' unions and such, it was a fairly light day for the rest of us. With the sweltering heat, the oppressive humidity and the overly sporadic rain showers at seemingly random parts of the city, the weather has been less than idea. Put the two elements together and you get a rather weird day to take a holiday, but you take what you can get.
I spent most of the day at home alone since Prince had duties at his Makati apartment / boarding house to attend to and Tobie still had work all the way in Paranque. It wasn't too bad - I tried my best to make good use of the time editing photos and videos from past O Bar trips, catching up with my blogging queue for the Geeky Guide and actually getting in some creative writing time, surprisingly enough. I don't necessarily find myself looking for "alone time" as much as I used to, but it doesn't mean I've forgotten how to be productive during such periods. And I capped off the evening with a rather good massage session - something that has been rather long overdue given the work stress of the past month and all the other stuff in-between. I've yet to find an absolutely reliable massage service here in the QC area, but it's not like we have a heck of a lot of time for that anyway. Ah well.
Yesterday we hit O Bar for the last night for their Tuesday operations, at least for now. The lack of demand for Tuesday night drinkings in the Ortigas area has necessitated the bar changing its operations schedule, which seems like such a shame since I feel the demand is out there - they just don't quite know what O Bar has to offer them. Thus I'm dedicating a bit more of my Geeky Guide blogging time to promoting the bar a bit more and helping illustrate what makes O Bar different from your stereotypical gay bar - the kind that people imagine based on what they see in movies and whatever.
Today we hit the grocery since it's the first Wednesday of the month - and that means Shopwise cardholders (like us!) can earn up to 10x points for most purchases, save for common consumables like rice, milk and sugar. There used to be a promo where customers with the reusable eco bags could earn up to 2x points for any purchases that can fit in the bag. Thus we made sure to have 5 bags in stock to rack up more points for all purchases. But starting April they took that promo away, so I've decide to re-map our grocery budget such that we purchase the bulk of our items on First Wednesdays in order to maximize the point-earning potential for items. That translates to getting pretty much 10% off on most of our groceries just by participating in the promo. Today it led to our biggest single grocery bill ever, but we the short term expense today will even out in the long run as the month progresses. Plus I'm still in the process of mapping out our actual monthly consumption for longer-term items like toothpaste, soap and shampoo in order to get a more accurate estimate of what we should purchase every month.
Lastly, the preparations for A.S.A. Travel achieving full-time operations continue on with Prince busy on the phone making new hotel partners and arranging the occasional trip here and there. And me and Tobie working on the back end for support services like developing marketing collateral, building a social media presence for the company.
On the horizon, we're definitely looking at getting an Asus EEE Pad Transformer to help with our presentations to hotels and potential resort partners and other on-the-go activities. It has essentially the same stats of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 but with the bonus of a keyboard dock that provides another 7 hours of battery life, USB ports and other fun essentials. Thus it really switches between being an Android-powered tablet and a handy netbook all at once - which really presents a lot of potential as a business-focused device.
And I'll finally get to tinker with the benefits of the Android OS - something that I've been dying to do for some time now. We're just waiting for my credit card to reach its cycle date before we push through with the purchase, although I have to admit that I'm tempted to just go for it now rather than later. Oh EQ, don't fail me now!
I spent most of the day at home alone since Prince had duties at his Makati apartment / boarding house to attend to and Tobie still had work all the way in Paranque. It wasn't too bad - I tried my best to make good use of the time editing photos and videos from past O Bar trips, catching up with my blogging queue for the Geeky Guide and actually getting in some creative writing time, surprisingly enough. I don't necessarily find myself looking for "alone time" as much as I used to, but it doesn't mean I've forgotten how to be productive during such periods. And I capped off the evening with a rather good massage session - something that has been rather long overdue given the work stress of the past month and all the other stuff in-between. I've yet to find an absolutely reliable massage service here in the QC area, but it's not like we have a heck of a lot of time for that anyway. Ah well.
Yesterday we hit O Bar for the last night for their Tuesday operations, at least for now. The lack of demand for Tuesday night drinkings in the Ortigas area has necessitated the bar changing its operations schedule, which seems like such a shame since I feel the demand is out there - they just don't quite know what O Bar has to offer them. Thus I'm dedicating a bit more of my Geeky Guide blogging time to promoting the bar a bit more and helping illustrate what makes O Bar different from your stereotypical gay bar - the kind that people imagine based on what they see in movies and whatever.
Today we hit the grocery since it's the first Wednesday of the month - and that means Shopwise cardholders (like us!) can earn up to 10x points for most purchases, save for common consumables like rice, milk and sugar. There used to be a promo where customers with the reusable eco bags could earn up to 2x points for any purchases that can fit in the bag. Thus we made sure to have 5 bags in stock to rack up more points for all purchases. But starting April they took that promo away, so I've decide to re-map our grocery budget such that we purchase the bulk of our items on First Wednesdays in order to maximize the point-earning potential for items. That translates to getting pretty much 10% off on most of our groceries just by participating in the promo. Today it led to our biggest single grocery bill ever, but we the short term expense today will even out in the long run as the month progresses. Plus I'm still in the process of mapping out our actual monthly consumption for longer-term items like toothpaste, soap and shampoo in order to get a more accurate estimate of what we should purchase every month.
Lastly, the preparations for A.S.A. Travel achieving full-time operations continue on with Prince busy on the phone making new hotel partners and arranging the occasional trip here and there. And me and Tobie working on the back end for support services like developing marketing collateral, building a social media presence for the company.
On the horizon, we're definitely looking at getting an Asus EEE Pad Transformer to help with our presentations to hotels and potential resort partners and other on-the-go activities. It has essentially the same stats of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 but with the bonus of a keyboard dock that provides another 7 hours of battery life, USB ports and other fun essentials. Thus it really switches between being an Android-powered tablet and a handy netbook all at once - which really presents a lot of potential as a business-focused device.
And I'll finally get to tinker with the benefits of the Android OS - something that I've been dying to do for some time now. We're just waiting for my credit card to reach its cycle date before we push through with the purchase, although I have to admit that I'm tempted to just go for it now rather than later. Oh EQ, don't fail me now!
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