25,000 Aeroplan Miles was the gift and I gladly chose it.

A few weeks ago I received an e-mail saying that once I reach the 150,000 mile threshold I can chose from the following gifts:

However, when I had to make the selection the 25,000 Bonus Aeroplan Miles was the only gift available. I would have not cared much for ’Samba Days Life Culture packs’ for example and I would have still chosen the miles for sure but I wonder what happened and why the selection list was not available. Was it only to tease me to make me more anxious to reach the threshold ? 

Under normal circumstances I would have contacted Customer Service and asked about the discrepancy but I was too tired and I let it go .

Last year this period I was in Sydney, Australia and I took the photos from the Sydney Tower.
It is interesting how the queue looked like. It started compact but then it changed the shape, I suppose because of the heat. The queue was for:

I have been travelling for more than 2 years on business and I have not had the need for an expense app but due to some changes implemented by my company in the way receipts are reimbursed I have decided to download an app for my iPhone.

I looked first into Expensify . The app description said: “Consistently rated as the #1 app for business travelers and road warriors, Expensify does expense reports that don’t suck! (CNN Money http://bit.ly/lEhQEK)”.

This was exactly what I needed , not to mention that it was listed under ‘8 apps to simplify business travel’. However, in order to use the app you do need to add your credit card so that the app connects to your bank to import data. They say it is secure – what else could they say – but this is a No, No for me. Why take the risk when there are other hundreds apps there that don’t require your credit card data ?

So next app was Lemon (yes, I know a funny name) and I was impressed with it. You scan the receipt and you will get the vendor, date and amount. Amazing ! No need to type in anything. However, I did not like it as it uploads your receipts to retrieve the data and it was very, very slow, either my connection  or their server.
Why didn’t they do an offline app ? Perhaps they want to lock-in customers, it is their business model and can’t argue with this.

So my search continued and I looked into other apps. None of them offered subtotals per day per expense type and for me it was important as I have a maximum amount allocation for meals per day, but I also needed to enter the cab receipts so I would have only the total per day. I ‘solved’ this issue by entering only the meals, but I didn’t like it.
However, they all had pie and graph charts that I did not need. I don’t care that meals were 70% and taxis 30% or whatever. I just wanted a simple way to track the business expenses. Also, the apps I looked into were free for the trial period but then you had to purchase it and I didn’t want to pay money for something that could not offer subtotals per expense type per day. This is all I wanted and I would have paid for it.

At some point I was thinking of developing my own ‘SimpleExpense’ app.

However, I finally found an expense app, that is free (no trial period). I was reluctant to download it at the beginning as it did not have any reviews but someone has to do it.
There must be a first operation for every surgeon and if everyone said that wanted to be operated on only by a surgeon with experience (preferably a lot), would-be surgeons would not have a chance to start and get the required experience. 

Also, the e-mail address for support: j6263218230@yahoo.com
It looks like the e-mail of a spammer (I advised him to change it plus I gave him a few suggestions but no answer, after all I am not a paying customer, so I can’t hold it against him). 

In the end I downloaded the app as I trust Apple’s “walled garden” concept.
The app it is free because it is ad based , and so far the ads have not bothered me. Only once did I notice an ad saying that there was a message for me from luiza77 on some site. I don’t know any Luiza, how does she know me ? However, I was not curious so that message is still waiting to be read and I hope Luiza is not upset about this.

Would you recommend other iPhone expense apps ? What expense apps are you using, if any ?

My ideal app would be an offline app that scans the receipt, saves the data and does subtotals per expense type per day and perhaps create a report that can be mailed.

Cave bear skeleton, 'Rock Paper Silver' store in Banff, Alberta, Canada

It is a 9ft high cave bear skeleton, estimated to be between 80,000 – 100,000 years old and the price is around $40,000.

I saw it first time some 3 years ago and this year they still had it. I should have bought it and kept it in the living room, perhaps it would have been a better investment (like art) than the stocks* I still have (‘still’, as some of them went bankrupt, for example Nortel, BearingPoint and I put here only the big names).

And who knows in a dream I would have been told to go to a certain First Nation band and tell them about the cave bear I have. In exchange for it they would let a certain company I indicate explore on their land. I would buy shares in that company, huge deposits of rare earths would be found and everyone would make lots of money.  I would write a successful book ‘The Cave Bear and the Dream’ and then I would be accused of inside trading, because I knew the shares would go up hundredfold; after all I saw everything in the dream. Hmm, that could be the basis for a script movie.

*Last time I sold one of these companies the message on the screen before submitting the order was: “The commission on this order will be greater than the trade value” !!!

I suffer from Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder (OCD), only self-diagnosed for the time being. Take the following as evidence.

I bought the sanitizer because I don’t always trust that everything in a hotel room has been cleaned thoroughly: door knobs and handles, light switches, the remote control, taps and I’m sure a number of other things I haven’t even thought of yet.

So I would check into a room and diligently start cleaning. The problem is that usually I arrive late, so I am not in much a cleaning mood. Also, the next day I would realize I had not cleaned this or that and have to take the sanitizer out and wipe things down again. I’ve stopped doing this (too complicated and time consuming), but I still do the following:

I put the TV remote control in one of the zip-lock bags I’ve picked from the airport. However, I shouldn’t bother with the remote at all; I’m trying to watch less TV. For one week, I didn’t even turn on the TV once. I just wanted to see whether I could do it and it felt really good, so quiet and peaceful no noise whatsoever. I enjoy sitcoms but they are still noise. Now as I am writing this I realize I should really stop switching on the TV (not even for 5 min. to see what’s on!).
In my delusional world my future hotel(s) will not have any TV (only in the lounge) and perhaps not even Internet (the same, only in the lounge, but this might be too harsh).

I also have my own hangers (colour-coded: blue for coats, white for shirts, for the pants I use the hotels’ hangers) – yes, I know, it is pathetic – but do they ever clean the hangers? I very much doubt it. I don’t carry them with me as I leave them in a bag at the hotel where I check-in on a weekly basis.  However I would, if I could find some light, fold-able ones. I am sure someone must manufacture them by now.

So what does the title of the post have to do with all this? It refers to a short story by Ray Bradbury.

From Wikipedia:
Mr. Acton begins the story standing over the body of Mr. Huxley, whom he has just killed. While attempting to cover up his tracks, he has flashbacks of his encounters with Mr. Huxley, with whom he is having an altercation over a woman. These flashbacks reveal to the murderer that there are more and more of his fingerprints all over the man’s house, because he thought that he had touched so many different objects. His frenzy to remove all of the evidence distracts him from his actual objective, to get away with the crime, and he is eventually caught after polishing the entire house.

So there is some connection between the abovementioned story and the post. I don’t think I’m quite this bad, yet.

Can’t help it, from the sitcom ‘King of Queens’, the episode ‘Lost Vegas’:

Doug:   So, uh, is the tv in the other room, or does it pop out of something? 
Hotel Employee: There’s no tv. 
Hotel Employee: We believe that tv is the gateway to negative thoughts and sadness. 
Doug: Not if you have the football package. 
Carrie: Honey, you’re gonna love the bathroom. 
Carrie: They have a tub you can land a plane in. 
Doug: Ah. that sounds like a lot of fun. 
Doug: So is the, uh, tv in the bar? 
Hotel Employee: We don’t have a bar. 
Doug: I need to speak to your supervisor.

Coat of Arms of North Korea

I read the very interesting post North Korea trip (part 1): go or no go? – Rapid Travel Chai and this reminded me of one of my hundreds of ideas: a travel agency that organizes trips to North Korea. They would have a lot of business, many people would want to go visit the last communist country, a country that defies rationality and where (almost) everyone is brainwashed. This is a country outside of this world, and hopefully communism will fall peacefully there and very soon.

I have never been to North Korea but I have been to Cuba, closely related to a certain degree. I could not tell whether in the below picture the boy’s face was defaced with a moustache or this was the original so that the following message was conveyed: ‘Every boy is a man when it comes to defending the fatherland’.

Willows Beach, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

I came across this contest after I logged on to Facebook and liked Marriott (yes, I know I am guilty, but the allure of 1,000,000 reward points was too much to resist to). And somewhere on the Marriott page it was a link to the contest.

It is free to submit an idea, but (there is always a ‘but’) an idea has to have at least one attachment (a media file) so the contest is geared more towards the graphical creative people so to speak. Everyone can submit text ideas so maybe this is the reason I have not seen this contest mentioned anywhere else. I suppose Marriott didn’t see the need to advertise it too much as anyway people in the business would learn about it one way or the other.
As I do not have any graphical skills I will upload the photo of a Japanese toilet, perhaps Marriott will have it in 2022 and my idea will be about the bathroom of the hotel room of the future.

One of the interview questions at Microsoft is: ‘How would you design Bill Gates’ bathroom ?’ Even if I was never called for an interview I prepared the answer. So I will tweak what I have and submit the idea.

The submission deadline is 21-Dec-2011, 16:59 UTC+0000 (copy/paste from the site, I knew about GMT but not anything about UTC, after a quick reading on Wikipedia it seems they are the same) and more details about the contest are here.

Other contest, again about hotels, but this time with the deadline 23-Jan-2012: Develop exciting ideas to connect guests visiting the new “me and all hotels”

And a suggestion for Marriott: Organize a contest “Room 2013” only for the Platinum Elite members as they spend most nights in a Marriott hotel so they would best know how the room should be like.

I stayed at a Radisson hotel sometime toward the end of November and I received 50,000 Gold Points. The fine print somewhere said it would take 6-8 weeks to receive them after a stay and I was already stressed (yes, I know, I am hopeless) that I’d have to follow-up with them because, for some reason, I would not have received the points. I mean a few times bitten, a hundred times shy (related story: I had increased my dental plan, I had confirmation from my company’s benefits department that starting on a certain date I would be enrolled in the respective plan, so I went to my dentist and of course I had to pay out of my own pocket as the insurance company declined the payment. I inquired afterwards and, as it turns out, the interface or whatever between my company and the insurance company didn’t work that week!?! All these IT systems, I work in IT and every so often I get a taste of my own medicine. In the end, I was reimbursed, but it took a few calls and e-mails not to mention the stress and the precious time I would have used differently).

I kept the e-mail from Radisson (the one with “Thank you for participating in the Radisson Big Night Giveaway. This is to confirm you were one of the first 50,000 registrants and are now eligible to earn 50,000 Gold Points®.”) in Inbox to remind me to follow-up in case I don’t receive the points. And in the Yahoo inbox I keep only what it is still to be looked at/dealt with/reply to, etc., not more than 1 page. The e-mail was a nagging reminder so every time I looked at my Inbox I feel a few neurons were destroyed which could have been used towards more important processing tasks. I should have set-up a reminder in Outlook, Gmail, and iPhone and be done with it. “Reminder and forget about it.” (as in fire-and-forget) should be the way to handle these ‘not so important / no control of them yet’ to-do tasks.

So I stayed at a Radisson only for 1 night and I did not have to pay either (i.e. from my own pocket) as it was a business trip. It cost some $10 more than the approved hotel but I took the risk figuring out no-one will complain. Then, for the remainder of the week, I stayed in the approved hotel.

Sorry Radisson !

I would have not written part 2 (part 1 is here) but related things have happened :

It was a survey for an insurance company I collect Aeroplan miles so I had to click on ‘No, thanks’

 Also, this is an e-mail I received after I stayed at a Radisson hotel:

Dear ….
We want to know how you feel about your recent stay at the …… where you checked out on …….  What you liked.  What you didn’t.  And how we could have made your stay even more satisfying.  So please take a moment to share your thoughts with us at the link below:
……..
It will only take a few minutes. Your input will help us improve. 
Thank you in advance for participating.  And if you’ve already filled out the survey, we thank you for sharing your thoughts.
Look forward to welcoming you back.

Best Regards,
Thorsten Kirschke
Chief Operating Officer, Carlson Hotels & President, Carlson Hotels, Americas
701 Carlson Parkway,
Minnetonka, MN 55305, U.S.A.

As I did not have Thorsten’s email I sent the link to  Don’t survey me without something in exchange!  to someone else from the management (found his e-mail address on the company’s website) and the answer was: “I have passed this along to the appropriate person. Thank you for your feedback. Enjoy your weekend.”

Let’s see what will happen !