just moved into a nice and cosy loft apartment in Bangkok, Thailand. My cats are going to love this place! on Vincent's Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn and Facebook.
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Sunday, 4th January 2009
I found an apartment in Bangkok on craigslist.org. I learnt this tip from the 4-Hour Workweek book. I avoided property agents and contacted ads post by apartment owners. Before searching on craigslist.org, I spent a lot of time contacting property agents and browsing Thai property sites that listed apartments at ridiculously high rates.
Amazingly, I am paying about the same amount of rent I am paying back home in Singapore but it is much better here. I’ve got loads of cable TV channels, free internet, cheap utilities, more space and I am allowed to keep my 4 cats here. I think I got a really good deal here and I am really happy with my apartment. I also followed Tim’s advice on living in hostels for a while before moving into an apartment.
Living in hostels in not for everyone. The shared dorms can get rather smelly once they are full. I spent 8 nights at a hostel before moving to a hotel. The benefits of hostels is …
Thursday, 1st January 2009
I bumped into an Indian astrologer/fortune teller/holy man/yogi/director today. That’s a lot of slashes but that was what I was told from this guy.
I was minding my own business at the hotel lobby this morning when 2 Indian men came and sat at the table next to mine. One of them was a Sikh Indian and the other guy looked pretty young. The young guy introduced himself as Rajah or something, at least that was what I heard. We started with a bit of small talk about where I was from and we talked a bit about our countries and occupations.
Rajah said he was in Singapore some time ago to make a movie. I asked him if he was a movie star but he said he was a movie director instead. He said his Sikh friend helps him out.
The next part gets really interesting…
He started talking about my forehead and he made a good comment about it. He said I would receive good luck this month. He said I think too much lately, which was spot on because I have been thinking a lot during my Bangkok holiday.
I asked Rajah if he was a fortune teller and he said he …
Monday, 29th December 2008
I have updated my WordPress to the 2.7. I just installed the NextGen gallery to display my pictures. Check out all of the pictures I have taken so far!
Here are more of my observations of Thais and their culture.
…
Monday, 22nd December 2008
I’ve been around Bangkok for a week now and I’m slowly getting used to all the new sights, smells and sounds of this wild city. I actually thought of moving to Bangkok last year but I procrastinated and shelved the plan. That plan was revived after I read the 4-Hour Workweek.
Moving out of home, let alone my country is not something that is common in a Chinese family. Almost all my family members disagree with my decision. It is a Chinese tradition to live in your parents’ home to “take care” of them. However, I see a lot of Chinese parents taking care of their adult kids instead of them taking care of their parents. Either way, as long as you live with your parents, you’re generally seen as a good filial kid. To leave your parents and move out is seen as being selfish and unfilial.
It was not an easy decision for me but I believe I have to do it for my own good. I cannot please them by making myself unhappy any longer and I am sure they would understand my reasons for leaving. Furthermore, my family is very dysfunctional and I have been longing to …
Tagged As: Asia, australia, Bangkok, forex, migration, moving, piptronic, pipzu, Singapore, Singapore dollar, Thailand
Wednesday, 17th December 2008
Image via Wikipedia
I am putting the knowledge I learnt from the 4-Hour Workweek into practice. I have decided to check out Bangkok, Thailand as my next location to live. My plan to migrate to Australia is still on but it will be delayed due to the global economic crisis that has badly affected Australia’s economy.
Now the Aussie dollar is worth almost as much as the Singapore dollar! Furthermore, Australia has decided to decrease the amount of foreigners entering their country so I think that might delay my permanent residence application. My application was received by the Australian authorities on 31 April 2008 and it should take 1 year from that date to complete.
I will definitely move to Australia in the future but I am not sure if I would make it my permanent home. That would depend on how things work out in Thailand.
I have been in Bangkok, Thailand for 3 days now. I arrived on 15 December 2008 from Singapore. I plan to check the city out and as many locations as possible to get …
Tagged As: 4-hour work week, Bangkok, Singapore, Thailand, Thaksin Shinawatra
Wednesday, 10th December 2008
Quick Twollow.com Demo from jon on Vimeo.
Twollow is a really cool tool to look for people who tweet about the things that you want to target. I thought it does not work but recently I have been getting more followers out of nowhere. I am not totally sure if the new followers came from Twollow or some of the Facebook group “Twitter… You follow me… I follow you“.
If followers is what you want, then join these sites:
Combine Twollow with Tweetlater and you’ve got yourself a really cool automated follower adding machine.
Tagged As: Facebook, Social Networking, Twitter
Friday, 28th November 2008
If you have not downloaded John’s free call on how he replaced himself in his business, please visit ReplaceMyself.com to get it. I recently tried his 2 week trial and here’s my review of the Replace Myself membership site.
Tagged As: Filipinos, john jonas, Outsourcing, philippines, replace myself
Thursday, 27th November 2008
The 4-Hour Workweek might be one of the most important books you will read if you’re concerned about working less and enjoying life in your own terms.
I have completed my full review of the 4-Hour Workweek. Most of the information is good but I pointed out some of the bad points of the book, which I feel were not accurately portrayed by the author.
I have been implementing some of the tips in the book and I shall see how much of a difference it will make in my business and lifestyle. I have also been selling off, giving away and throwing away lots of junk at home to make it easy for me to move out of Singapore when the time comes to start my “mini-retirements” overseas.
Furthermore, I am in the hiring process of getting a full-time employee from the Philippines to help me out with my business. I just can’t grow at a quicker pace if I have to do all that time consuming SEO work.
Tagged As: 4-Hour Workweek, freelancers, Outsourcing, tim ferris
Wednesday, 26th November 2008
I just started using TweetLater and I think it is a wonderful tool to automate the following of your new Twitter followers, sending of welcome messages to your new Twitter followers and schedule future Twitter posts.
Integrating Your Twitter Account with TweetLater
After you create a TweetLater account, add your Twitter account to TweetLater. You will see the following form below.
I checked on the “Auto Welcome” and “Auto Follow” fields. I think it would be better to send my new Twitter followers a private message with my welcome message. Therefore I selected “Send private direct message” for the “Message Sending Method” and entered a short welcome message into the “Send This Message” field.
Click on the “Save” button to save your Twitter account information and make sure you see your Twitter account listed like the screen shot above. During my first attempt at adding my Twitter account, I somehow did not get to the screen above so my Twitter automation services did not work.
Forward Twitter Follower Emails to TweetLater…
Tagged As: Social Networking, TweetLater, Twitter
Friday, 21st November 2008
Yesterday, Sitepoint gave away a free CSS eBook with a very smart combination of Twitter, Digg and their newsletter. It is such a wonderful way to get a lot of followers on Twitter, lots of Diggs on Diggs and a lot of free traffic to their web site.
Here’s how Sitepoint did it…
Step 1: Newsletter
I received a free copy of their Photoshop Anthology eBook some time ago, therefore they sent me this email because I was on their list.
Step 2: Promotion Page
They bought a domain called Twitaway.com to redirect visitors to a particular page on their web site that promotes this free CSS eBook giveaway. They have a nice countdown timer, a Digg vote button, newsletter subscription box and a link to their Twitter profile on this page. You may either follow them on Twitter or subscribe to their newsletter to get the free CSS eBook. I chose to follow them on Twitter because I am already on their list.
Step 3: Digg
Sitepoint submitted a Digg submission to Digg in the Programming …
Tagged As: Digg, E-book, newsletter, sitepoint, Social network, Social Networking, Twitter
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