And February is done. Hope you got your RedBIRD spends in. The end of March marks the one year anniversary for ThePointsOfLife with readership on the incline thanks to joining BoardingArea and thanks to ground breaking content like the International Brew Awards.
My insistence on wearing the SQ garb and milking the celebrity of the greatest pajamas known to man extends beyond the airport. I wear them to the gym, to the bar, and to dining establishments both high-end and low.
This is a special edition of the Travel Guide as it commemorates one the most fantastic travel experiences, Rio de Janeiro Carnival. (Carnaval en PortuguĆŖs)
The International Brew Awards’ first nomination is for Best Go To Brew Abroad.
What’s a ‘go to’ brew? It’s the one that virtually every bar will have regardless of where in the world you are. It doesn’t mean that the beer is your favorite. It just means that in times of emergency you can count on it to be true. It’s comparable to going to McDonald’s or Subway to take a break from local cuisine.
The nominees for Best Go To Brew Abroad are:
1. Corona: You can find your beach anywhere in the world as the pride of Mexico is for sale everywhere. The availability of limes is not as consistent.
2. Heineken: The green bottle that comes from the Netherlands is probably more prevalent than Corona.
In case I forgot that I was in Sweden, Heineken is there to remind me.
3. Carlsberg: The Danish beer continues to pop up in random places.
Carlsberg on the way to Seychelles.
4. Tiger: This beer whose headquarters are in Singapore is literally the Heineken of Asia-Pacific as it is owned by Heineken International.
Tiger in Mongolia.
5. Budweiser: The King of Beers (not the Czech Budweiser, not Bud Light) is sold and consumed throughout the world.
Budweiser in America.
Which is your Go To beer while abroad? Take the poll and wait for the next category of nominations to find out my choice.
Last year I failed the Hyatt Diamond ChallengeĀ but still received suite upgrades for trying. Those suite upgrades were for the duration of my stay. I used two in Buenos Aires for the Park Hyatt Palacio Duhau and the Park Hyatt MendozaĀ and am still waiting to go to the Ararat Park Hyatt Moscow this September.
Last year I re-qualified for platinum status with SPG and somehow scratched and clawed my way to staying 50 nights. As a perk, this year SPG has given me 10 Suite Night Awards, something that I would like to hoard but must use before they expire.
Today I learned that instead of electing for a Suite Night Award, SPG is offering alternatives. What could they be I wondered: discount points on stays, midnight checkout, an invitation to NBA All Star Weekend?
None of the above. Instead, SPG is offering the following prizes for all those tickets schemed playing skee ball:
Four free rides with Uber up to $25 each (My SPG stays are usually abroad where taxis don’t cost $25.)
Gift Gold status to a friend or family member (I’d rather book them a room under my name.)
TSA PreCheck fee waiver (What good does this do when I’m stillĀ randomlyĀ searched?)
$100 Amazon gift card (Compare the price of a suite upgrade even for one night to a $100 gift card and this is not a good deal.)
Donate $100 to UNICEF (Donating to a charity out of your own pocket gets you a tax rebate something that SPG probably doesn’t provide.)
I’m not so whiny to complain about freeĀ but I was hoping that there would at least be something exciting in the list like more tokens for air hockey. Alas, I’ll have to confine myself to the royal suite at the Waldorf Astoria.
Wait, that’s Hilton.
Save your suite night awards for upgrades at the St. Regis Mauritius.
I’m not the biggest fan of baseball. While I do hope the Detroit Tigers can finally win the World Series, I never watch until it is playoff time. Tuning in on TV is too boring and going to a game is too expensive.(reference beer prices.)
If you feel the same way about baseball then you may believe that spring training is also worth skipping. To that point, I must inform you that you are mistaken. Spring training is not to be missed, especially in Scottsdale, Arizona.
The weather is right, the city is alive, and the fans are, for the most part, disinterested in the game. Scottsdale Stadium is home to my adopted team, the San Francisco Giants. It seems like every year or every other year they win the World Series.
During spring training, I’m usually there to evaluate the Giants’ talent and assess their chances of winning again. That’s actually not true. During spring training, I’m usually at the game, on the lawn, meeting up with friends and having a few beers. Take note that they are still overpriced.
Regardless of whether they win or lose, who they are playing, what players are starting, spring training games are loads of fun. Years ago amid the steroid scandal games would be even more entertaining as fans and spectators alike would come out to taunt Barry Bonds.
Tickets are not too difficult to come by especially if you go during the week. If you’re lucky enough to get a bracelet as a guest of the Scottsdale Charros,, head up to the pavilion for all you can drink and eat. If not, then enjoy the sun, and maybe try to enjoy baseball.
How’s the weather where you are?Not a cloud in the sky.Night games are by far the most exciting.Nothing like the Charros Pavilion experience.
Now that the Academy Awards are over, perhaps someone can tell me how Birdman won Best Picture. I still don’t get the ending.
The real award show begins today with the unveiling of categories in the International Guide to Local Brew. You may recall that it was featured during a split second commercial in the Super Bowl.
Beside the top prize that goes for Best Brew, there are many categories worth previewing including:
Best Brew for the ‘Fancy Beer Drinkers’
Best Banquet Brew
Best Hangover Brew
Best Party Brew
El Mejor Cerveza Mexicana
Best SouthEast Asian Brew
Worst I Think I’m Cool Because I’m Drinking This Overpriced Export Brew
And many, many more. Over the coming weeks, depending on the hangover, I’ll post the nominees, open it up for voting, then display the winner followed by the next category.
Crack open a can, sit back and relax because the International Guide to Local Brew is underway.
Rewind back to grade school when the teacher would inform the class, “If you use the pronoun ‘I’ or ‘you’ in your paper, the result is an automatic failure.” Why? Because a paper written with these personal pronouns weakens the message of the writer.
Today, I assert that smileys should be banned in all forms of communication. It is a sheepish way to make a point. Writers, bloggers, texters, and tweeters use these pubescent emojis because:
They are trying to soften the blow of their passive aggressive insult directed at someone: “Don’t take it so personally buddy, I wasn’t really criticizing you “
Smiley lets a writer say something unpopular/controversial without sounding arrogant and smug: “I can’t say I agree that Emirates has the best hard product compared to Singapore. “
Smileys mean the writer is not confident in what he or she is writing: “I don’t know if I should’ve asked for another amenities kit but I did anyway š “
Overall, smileys demonstrate that a writer lacks conviction in what he or she is saying. Instead, smiley writers pander to the public by trying to use these Super VGA graphic to sound cuddly and folksy.
Because this is an op-ed column, the prohibition of the pronoun ‘I’ is not applicable. With that I would like to make a promise, at the risk of offending emoji lovers worldwide, that I will never succumb to the new norm of tagging every comment with a smiley. Like hashtags, smileys are another unfortunate negative externality from the casual world of social media expression.
I ask others to also respect the art of writing and take the pledge to do the same regardless of the medium for communication. If blogging is regarded as the lowest form of journalism then smileys are the lowest form of expression.
A couple of days ago I called Citibank to cancel one of my AA Executive cards since the annual fee was about to come due. As a reminder, last year Citi offered a whopping 100,000 AA miles plus $250 statement credit as a signup bonus for the $450 per year AA Executive card, so many of us now have several of these cards.
Before cancelling the card altogether, I asked about retention offers and was transferred to a retention specialist.
The retention specialist found only one useful retention offer for this card: For 16 statement cycles, I would earn 1000 bonus miles every statement cycle in which I spend $1,000 or more. In other words, if I kept the card for one more year, I could get 12,000 bonus miles. If I kept it more than a year, I could max out the offer at 16,000 bonus miles. An extra 1000 miles a month for $450 per year? No thank you.
The next part of the call was where things got interesting…
I had recently read Travel with Grant’s experience in asking about retention offers on all of his Citi cards in a single phone call (found here). I thought that was a great idea so I asked the specialist if she’d mind going through all of my Citi cards to see if there were any worthwhile retention offers.
Citi AA Mastercard: 1000 bonus points per $1000 spent through November (apparently I had already been offered this last July and didn’t capitalize on it).
Citi Executive: Same offer of 1000 bonus points which I will use through April when that annual fee comes due.
Citi Hilton Reserve: This is the best one. 5000 HHonor points for 2k spend in 3 months.
Personally, I hate retention offers that take my mind off of my points strategy but it’s these little promotions that keep accounts topped up and bridge the gap between an extra night, an extra flight etc.
Now to call Chase about my Southwest Business card and copycat Grant…
Say what you want about the value of Hilton points but this retention offer makes a stay at this 3 Bedroom @ the Hilton Colombo possible.
Some trips are for partying, some are for luxury, and some are for nostalgia. This trip in January of 2010 with my parents was for one thing: food. Food is an important part of our Arabic culture so it goes without saying that we didn’t spend much time doing anything else. From Shanghai to Singapore, Langkawi to Peking, all we did was eat eat eat.
*I had to conquer the world of kimchi and bulgogi on my own.
Here’s what we ate:
Shanghai: Sheng jian bao. Unfortunately most of these street places have been demolished.Beijing: You guessed it, 北京烤鸭Singapore: Satay and TigerLangkawi: Arabic and Indian and everything in between.In Korea eating with friends.
Maybe you’ve noticed that over the last two days I’ve traveled the world faster than the old Headline News slogan, “Around the world in 30 minutes”…this is ThePointsOfLife.
While certain killjoys (see this post) will speculate as to my motives for over-posting, it was done for good reason. Behold the Country Count List now has links to every country I have visited (apart from those I went to as a mere tyke.)
Each country will eventually have a full complement of the following per city where applicable:
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