My interests over the past few years have changed. I have grown less interested in the gadgets & electronics, and have instead acquired a new passion for looking after clothes and keeping them looking their best.

I do want to get back into blogging once more, but my future posts would be random ramblings of all sorts. I am currently obsessed with keeping my shoes looking their best, and I have some practical tips to share that I believe would be of benefit to some.

As a .Net web developer, I think it’s high time I also post code, tips & links that can help other fellow developers, just as how others have helped me. Sharing is caring.

And finally, while I find I don’t have to acquire the latest and greatest toys, reparing them (like my previous XBox 360 posts), tweaking and giving them new life is still something I do from time to time, so if anything interesting crops up I’ll blog about it.

Let the pollution of the search engine indexes begin!

I use Microsoft Money to keep track of my savings and expenses. Money works great if you live in the US… alot of banks either let you connect to them directly or give you Money friendly file formats to download your transactions.

I have an ANZ credit card, and they have a feature where you can download transactions into Money but it’s not automated. You have to choose your dates, then ANZ will generate the file for you that you can download and open in Money.

But as a result of their changes, when you download transactions, charges appear as payments!

I emailed ANZ to complain.

“Downloading my transactions into Microsoft Money 2006 doesn’t work properly. In the past, I would use the Quicken option and everything would work but now the Charges appear as Credits in the application.”

The Microsoft Money option you have in the web page is an .ofc file which is a very old Money standard and does not work for Money 2005 and above.”

Please let your programmers know and hopefully you can change it cause it’s a feature I use alot.”

This was their reply:

“Thank you for your SecureMail regarding your inability to download transaction history to MS Money.

We wish to inform you that we are aware of this issue and our Internet Banking Technicians are looking into this matter on an urgent basis. However, till this issue is fixed, regrettably, you will not be able to download to MS Money.”

We apologize for the inconvenience caused to you.”

Big help you are ANZ.

Fortunately, I have found a simple solution. Simply download the file in qif (Quicken) format, open it in a text editor (Notepad) and add a negative sign to all purchases. Similarly, remove all negative signs for payments.

So, this:

D05/10/2006
T72.95
PFITNESS FIRST AUST SYDNEY
^

Should be changed to

D05/10/2006
T-72.95
PFITNESS FIRST AUST SYDNEY
^

UPDATE: ANZ appears to have fixed this. Hooray!

We get on well with the guy who makes our coffee, whom we’ve secretly nick named Botak (Baldy). He’s not really bald, but shaves his head with a shaver setting of 2.

Anyway, Sylvia and I buy our coffees at different times of the day, and she always leaves cheeky messages for Botak to pass to me. Today, she instructed Botak not to serve me my regular soy hazelnut latte, but to use skim milk instead.

Botak claimed that since I was counting calories (as part of my workout plan), I should drink skim as it’s lower in calories and fat and higher in protein. I refused to believe it, as I was misled by the soy manufacturers that soy milk is better. Plus, I love the taste of soy coffee (if prepared right by experts such as Botak).

Then I realised that the soy manufacturers were always comparing soy milk to regular milk, not skim milk. The naughty buggers! Botak made me look at the nutritional information of both, and true enough, for the past few years I have been cheating myself of precious protein while taking in unneccessary calories.

I’m switching to low fat milk, while saving soy milk for special occasions.

And when I really want to reward myself, I’ll go full cream.

A Thai man literally burnt his insides out when he consumed too much of the durian fruit. The moral of the story? Alcohol and durian don’t go hand-in-hand.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/31/1085855496294.html

The Asians know what it means when you say certain foods are “heaty” or are “cooling”. I tried to explain the concept to a guai-lo, and had to use certain examples that I feel will be beneficial to all.

Go to McDonalds and buy a large order of french fries and finish it without drinking any water. Does your throat feel swollen and are your lips stinging from the salt on the fries? Do you feel unheathly and greasy? That’s “heaty”!

Head to any Asian supermarket and buy a can of grass jelly drink. Are finishing the can, do you feel cleansed? That’s “cooling”!

Eating excessive “heaty” or “cooling” food is not good for you. Both have detrimental effects. You must learn to balance the amount of “heaty” and “cooling” food.

Does that mean you should always have grass jelly drink with your fries? Absolutely not! It means you should stay away from both, and drink plain water instead!

These guys are in their late 20s to early 30s, have jobs, no financial commitments, and two thirds of them still live with their parents. They tend to spend all their money on designer clothes, alcohol, gadgets and other toys. They don’t save, don’t invest and seek instant gratification. They indulge in themselves.

They watch less TV, and prefer surfing the net instead. When they do watch TV, they watch shows such as Big Brother and Australian Idol, where they think it’s easy to become famous.

Initially, after a brief self-reflection, I thought I was part of this group. But then I realised I’m actually an Asian version of the “Me” generation.

I don’t spend alot of my money on food and booze. I mostly eat at home before going out. I think Giodarno is designer enough, and don’t buy real designer clothes. I do buy gadgets and toys, but settle for the cheaper Taiwanese or Korean alternatives.

And finally, although I do watch the occasional Australian Idol, I’m too cheap to vote.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/24/1085389339741.html

Quote: “Researchers are finding players can make sharper soldiers, drivers and surgeons. Their reaction time is better, their peripheral vision more acute. They are taking risks, finding themselves at ease in a demanding environment that requires paying attention on several levels at once.”

I grew up playing all sorts of games. And in a quest to complete some of them, I enabled cheats or hacked my saved games. Now I cheat and hack my way through in life, accomplishing my goals in record time.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/06/1083635268977.html

Now they are turning the sex industry upside down by introducing pay-for-self-service sex. I mean, there are many sex movie places already that lets you do all that (I heard from friends of course), but this takes it up to a whole new level.

Basically, you pay for a girl to join you and as she exposes herself, you play with yourself. It’s the safest of sex. And since there’s no physical contact, you pay less and the girl earns less.

http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/waiwai/0404/0417relief.html

I was quickly given a link to a self-confessed super action hero called Steven Lim, who claims he is the most handsome man in Singapore.

His web page is hosted on a free Yahoo! GeoCities account, and because of the enormous amount of traffic he generates, it’s often unavailable. I suggest you try hitting the site at different times of the day. http://sg.geocities.com/sghunk1976/SgHunkWeb.html

Steven also calls himself the Street Eyebrow Plucker. He wrote a book on the art of plucking eyebrows, but for SGD$10 he will personally pluck yours himself. His eye brow plucking web page can be found at: http://sg.geocities.com/eyebrowser1976/Eyebrowser.html

Quote: “I am handsome, I am gorgeous, I am fearless, I am me. I am Steven Lim.”

More happening than me lah.

In a recent survey by FHM magazine, they found that not only did Singaporean men had very little sex per week, they also had the second smallest ding-a-lings.

Ages ago, fearing that the population will rise too fast and overload Singapore’s limited space, the government encouraged its citizens to have 2 children only. Recently, they held a campaign to encourage more baby production!

Pity the Singaporean men! Not only do they not get alot of action, now everyone in the world knows as the government has confirmed. It won’t be long before the Singapore government also encourage penis enlargement operations too.

To top it all off, oral sex is also banned in Singapore. You can read more about it…

• No oral sex please, this is clean-living Singapore
• Teen claims she performed oral sex on 3 men
• CJ halves oral-sex sentence

Be careful when you’re in Singapore. If a girl performs oral sex on you, she may be able to blackmail you by threatening to report you to the police. In other words, if you’re a visitor to Singapore, keep your wandering hands off women and enjoy the good food Singapore offers instead.

The law is also unjust, in that it seems to convict men who receive oral sex, and not the women who administer it. It also doesn’t seem illegal if men perform the same on women.

I predict many Singaporeans are protesting privately by having oral sex at home. Maybe the government plans to continue banning oral sex and encourage normal sex to increase baby production?