Vintage Bin: December 2008


Vintage Bin

That's me =) --->

Consumerism

Wednesday, December 24, 2008


my R-date. urgh. But tonight I saved a lot of money by dining at home. A steamboat gathering on Christmas Eve. How nice.

All I need for Christmas is u. Every Christmas. Every New Year (Deepavali, Hari Raya, Vesak Day,etc). :D

Interesting restaurant.

Tuesday, December 09, 2008


The owner of the restaurant must have taken macroeconomics module in his uni days. :D

12 Days of Christmas for 2008 inflated by 8.1%.

Monday, December 08, 2008
On the Twelfth Day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
Twelve drummers drumming,
Eleven pipers piping,
Ten lords a-leaping,
Nine ladies dancing,
Eight maids a-milking,
Seven swans a-swimming,
Six geese a-laying,
Five golden rings,
Four calling birds,
Three French hens,
Two turtle-doves,
And a partridge in a pear tree!

Lol. There exits this interesting Christmas Price Index (created by PNC Wealth Management) which is like the Consumer Price Index. It can be viewed here. 2008 12 days of Christmas has supposedly inflated by 8.1% as compared to last year's!

Interesting faq :
"Which year could the “True Love” afford to be a scrooge?

The cheapest cost of Christmas in dollars occurred in 1995, when the true cost of Christmas was only $51,000."


It looks like my true love (and yours too) will need to spend more money this year to bring me this basket of goods (hint: nine ladies dancing will do, I don't need that partridge, geese and whatsoever. :D).

Jack of All Trades or Master of One?

Tuesday, December 02, 2008
I always find it interesting to read about how human analyse their own thinking process. And today, I came across such an article by a Northwestern doctoral student.

I find this paragraph particularly enlightening:

"Heuristics are simple mental rules that people use to make decisions, form judgments, and solve problems. According to the zero-sum heuristic, individuals believe that the alternatives in a given choice set are balanced in their overall performance. Hence, consumers draw compensatory inferences and conclude that for each option, advantages in one attribute must be compensated for by disadvantages in another attribute. Therefore, when evaluating choice sets comprising both specialized and all-in-one options, consumers tend to consider the overall performance of the alternatives to be equivalent. This leads them to draw two types of compensatory inferences: compensatory devaluation, which lowers the perceived performance of the all-in-one option, and compensatory polarization, which enhances the perceived performance of the specialized options on their differentiating attributes. "

However, after having experienced the demise of my 2 years old all-in-one printer , I'm slanted towards the 'masters of one' instead of the 'jacks of all trades'. Can you imagine when your all-in-one becomes a all-except-print printer (a printer that doesn't print?!?!)?

On the hand, I have received feedback from friends about their pleasant experiences with all-in-one printers. Well, sometimes it boils down to luck (and yes, brand). Futhermore, nowadays home printers are usually all-in-one.

Oh and I forgot to mention, the novelty of a post-ORD lifestyle is slowly dying off but nevertheless, it's still great! LG.