Beauty and health

Sorry for the lack of blogging as I was away for the whole week for a job. I have been approached by many people and also looked through many sites about the various slimming/dietary tips and how to reduce their weight.

Well, here is a brief advice to everyone.

• Buy a good weighing machine. When measuring your weight, make sure that you have all the other items on your body such as wallets, mobiles and handbags off you as this may affect weight.
• Once you have your weight measured, get your height in metres and divide it with the square of your height to obtain your BMI. For example, if your weight is 60kg and your height is 1.5m , your BMI would be 26.7
  

• While this does not give you a good idea on how much fats there are in the body, it is a good estimate on how healthy you are based on your height. Once you have your BMI, see which zone you fall into and that tells you

Category	BMI range - kg/m2		Mass of a 1.8 metres person with this BMI
Severely underweight	less than 16.5		under 53.5 kilograms
Underweight	from 16.5 to 18.5		from 53.5 and 60 kilograms
Normal	from 18.5 to 25		from 60 and 81 kilograms
Overweight	from 25 to 30		from 81 and 97 kilograms
Obese Class I	more than 30		over 97 kilograms

What apology

Okay, this is an update from my previous post regarding etiqa.. Wonder how they come up with such a name anyway.

Decided to write in a nasty e-mail to them, cced to the boss, complaints department BUT more importantly to Bank Negara (this should get their ass kicking). Within hours, the staff called up, told me the cheque is already ready and ask me to pick it up. Here is how it goes



Staff; Hello, Mr xx. This is calling from ETiQA , Your check for claims is ready.
ME: Ok (Waiting for her to apologize)
Staff: Can you come pick it up from our office
ME : (Upset) No cannot, I am working now. Send it to my home.
Staff: Ok

Hangs up!!!!

What the HELL !!!. I was atcually expecting an explanation on the delay etc and all but no such luck.. Heck. Was pissed off so wrote another e-mail to the boss and she mailed to say sorry.

Attached a letter.









Hmm, looks like a victory for me. But heck, imagine the trouble.

NEXT TIME ADVICE TO EVERYONE

Dont buy ETiQA insurance

What customer service?

Okay, this is just some random ranting of the terrible service from ETIQA insurance pertaining to my claims

Imagine this, you purchased an insurance policy so that you get a peace of mind. Then something untowards happens and you lodge a report to the insurance company for compensations.

It takes them 1 month to reply you and send you a claims form, then another month to process the claims and send back the proof of receipt and another 1 month to get the cheque prepared. Okay, 3 months in total.. NOT TOO BAD right considering its a MAYBANK group of company which is well known for the "excellent" customer services if you count from the bottom.

So here is what happened. I thought finally, got my claims after 3 months, had RM50 deducted from my total claims because of "SERVICE CHARGE ???", what service? but anyway when I saw the cheque guess what, name spelled wrongly, changed my first name, surname and middle name also, SO basically is all wrong except for the figure.

Wrote in to complain about the person and guess what, typical of Maybank, no response yet!! Geezz... if they want to compete worldwide, I guess they should just buck up.

Garbage enzymes ??

This is related to the previous post I wrote.

Okay, made the concoction and see if it would work. From what I read online, it would take me nearly 3 months before the mixture can be used. Just a word of advice to people who would like to make the enzymes

1. Remember to use a airtight container since it can breed mosquitoes. I also added a layer of oil (old used cooking oil) to the top layer to prevent air from entering the container. Caveat is that I would need to stir the mixture every now and then so that there would be enough oxygen for the fermentation process.

2. Remember to clean the container properly first before placing it to a corner since the mixture contains sugar and it attracts ants.. lotsa ants. I made this mistake of not cleaning the container and had hell a lot of problem cleaning it afterwards.

3. Use only vegetables and other fruits , otherwise you would need to bear with the stench.

Recycle your waste as fertilizer

Okay, as the title says, here is a simple and easy way to reuse and recycle your household waste. This can save you some money and also help the environment, so why not ?

Instead of throwing away all your food and household waste, why not take a few minutes and think what you can do with it. I have looked through many websites and in Japan, they even have a machine which actually grinds up the household waste and dry them to be used as fertilizers ... I would think that it would be somewhat like a pickled dehydrated vegetable or meat when it comes out. Ooh well, I don't think we would have the luxury of getting this gadget here so here is a simple and easy way to do it.

1. Add 1 part of brown sugar to 3 parts of organic/household waste into a large container.
2. Add 10 parts of water
3. Leave in a warm place and leave it to be fermented for at least 3 months.
4. Filter the solution after 3 month (just use a piece of cloth) and bury the residues in your garden.
5. Fill up the liquids into small bottles and mix it according to the table below for the specific purpose

Usage	Dilution Ratio
Enzyme for fertilizer	1:100 / 500 / 1000
Enzyme for insecticide	1:1000
Enzyme for pesticide	1:100
For anti odour / air freshener	Dilute 200x
As plant hormones to get more flowers and fruits	Dilute 500x
When the enzyme is diluted with water, it becomes more effective.

What do you gain by making your own garbage enzymes?? Well, depends on what you think. During the process, the enzyme produces ozone or O3 + NO3 + CO3 are generated and these could help purify and whiten the clouds in the sky. Those clouds that trap lots of heavy metals appear dark. Those dark clouds cause more heat to be trapped on earth due to the greenhouse effect. O3 (ozone) from the garbage enzymes could reduce the heavy metals in the clouds and this would reduce global warming. More NO3 (nitrite) in the air is useful as nutrients for the plants and soil. So why wait.. try it now!!!

Heard of Sony VAIO Hunt??

Heard of this game called Sony VAIO Hunt? Well click http://l.innity-asia.com/widget/view/4159/swf/http%253A%252F%252F202.150.221.50%252Fsites%252Fvaiohunt%252Fmicrosite%252Fblog_map to register yourself and have a fun time winning Vaio's, PSPs and many more prizes,.

Its pretty simple. Just register yourself and get a pass to the game, then invite more friends toj join in. For each friend who has been reffered and registered under you get an extra passport.

So why not register now?

Home loan - which are the best

Okay, so recall from my previous post to ask all of you to keep the leaflets and what not from the bank sales people. Well, here is the reason why

Every single housing developer has their end financiers and also preferred bankers. What this basically means is that they will give the buyers (like you and me) a better rate. In return, they get more sales and loans (more money for them)

Of course, you can also opt for your own bank which you like (if you are working in a bank or insurance company, you'd get a better rate) but that for a small minority. The reason why I said to keep it was because I found that even within the same bank, they can quote you different rates depending on who the mortgage / loan officer is. I had one from bank XXX (shall not name it just in case I get into a lawsuit) which had quoted me BLR-1.8 and another which had quoted me BLR-2.1 on the same project, same amount and same repayment period !!!

So its wise to keep them, get a few of them to quote you and then decide. NEVER NEVER let the loan officer pressure you into signing the offer letter. If you had signed it, don't fret because you still have a 1 week cooling period... what this basically means is that you can still cancel the deal if you don't like it within a week with no penalty charges. They usually don't tell you this but you can do it . Trust me!

Talking about loans, you will need to decide on what are your requirements. Here is a summary of what I had considered

• Loan amount (after I withdraw from EPF, timed deposits etc)
• Loan period
• Bank offered rates
• Availability of branches and services
• Type of loan:-- term, flexi or conventional
• Fixed rate or variable

The last 2 are actually the biggest concern for most new homebuyers since they cannot decide on what they should do. I weighed the pros and cons of each before deciding and it took me nearly 2 weeks to do so. Heck, this is like my biggest investment so far so I need to think it over wisely.

Usually, banks only allow you to use up to one-third of your nett pay for repayment of loans (includes credit card, cars, hire-purchases etc). So if you are really strapped for cash and the type who needs to know a fixed amount to pay a month then the answer is clearly take a term loan with a fixed rated. You will only then have to pay X amount a month for the next Y amount of months / years before the loan is finally settled.

Next comes the conventional or flexi question. Usually, most people nowadays take flexi and yours truly as well. Flexi loans is like a hybrid between a personal and overdraft. So when you need money, just withdraw and pay more when you feel flushed. What the difference you may ask? Some that I can think of

• Interest from flexi loans are slightly higher but if you put in more money into the linked savings account this reduces your principal hence less interest paid
• Interest is calculated daily and charged to account monthly like credit cards but with flexi loans you have the option to withdraw cash anytime
  

On that note, there are many banks (most if not all) provide some forms of flexi loan or semi-flexi loans. They work on the same principals as others but differences are usually on the repayment terms or withdrawl term etc. Mostly are minor but can be a problem if you are the type who need to withdraw money often. Some banks stipulate a minimum repayment of 2-3 months loan repayment and some banks have no such condition. Some will stipulate a minimum withdrawl of only 5,000 and some do not. There is no quick answer to these so best if you look and apply as many banks as possible before deciding on which bank loan to take.

Here is a picture of a simulated savings which you can get from my banker (supposedly to save RM180,000 compared to conventional loan. This in theory works but reality is I would leave it to you to decide.

Also a word of warning is that bank loan officers usually show you this projected savings etc if you take their loan compared to other banks and make it look so nice and rosy. Never take their word !!! Usually they never compare apples to apples... but apples to oranges , durian etc. Look carefully at their projection and see what I mean. Also, if you are buying a new house like me, these projections are atcually crap since they do not reflect what are the interest you are going to pay.

My personal tips are as follow

• Double check with some of the online calculators to see what are the interest you are going to pay
• Get a loan that gives you the lowest interest during the first 5 years (thats when your interest are highest). Its useless to have the interest reduced after 10 years etc since you would easily have paid 20% of your total loan amount in interest during that same period
• If your house is under construction, get one that gives you lower interest during years 3-7 and not 0% during years 1. You don't save any money doing so.
  

Having said all that, the easiest and simplest method would be to look for a 3rd party loan/mortgage consultant, pay him/her like 150-200 and let them do the rest of searching for loans etc. They will come back to you with what they think is the best and you decide.