When it rains it pours. When you churn, all annual fees come up at the same time. Here are the latest on the chopping block:
IHG: $49 annual fee provides 1 night at any IHG hotel. That’s a great deal subject to deval. I maximized mine last time at the rainy IC Bora Bora, a great redemption but lousy hotel. Keep
British: It was tough to hit the 20k spend on this one but I made it. Now, there’s nothing to do but book short-haul flights with this stash of Avios. Cancel
Alaska: You already know. Cancel
Amex Platinum: Great card. Already maximized the $200 airline credit and now have the Amex Mercedes so there’s no point in the $450 annual fee. Cancel
It was freshman year of college. I had just sold my Sega DreamCast for $300 to a kid from high school that swore that Sega would prevail in the gaming market. (at least my Blackberry survived this long) I made the trek to K-Mart to camp out for the PS2. When I arrived at midnight there were 5 other people already there. The manager came out to tell us that they may have 6 but probably five units available. I decided to wait it out. At 7AM, the manager confirmed that they did receive 6 units and gave us each a Willy Wonka golden ticket. He told us to come back at 9AM when the store opened. When I returned, the parking lot was jam-packed with people looking to purchase the PS2. Of course, only the few who had braved the night would be going home with a shiny blue box. Eventually I also purchased an Xbox and Nintendo GameCube. By 2003, I graduated from both the University of Michigan and playing video games.
Today, that all changed when I impulsively bought the Xbox One S. Seeing the commercials for FIFA 2017 had me convinced that it was time to be a child again. While Madden has advanced well beyond my capabilities (I dare anyone to challenge me to Super Tecmo Bowl with QB Bills), FIFA remains perfect in its simplicity. To tie this all into travel, I wonder why airlines don’t have an Xbox on board. Imagine flying Etihad Apartments while talking trash to someone back in coach over a friendly futbol match. It certainly beats watching Two Broke Girls or playing Tetris on a plastic remote.
Bring it on fellow pax!
I failed as a blogger in the month of September, only posting 25 times. I’m still trying to figure out how to work, blog, and travel at the same time. This laziness continues today as I am writing this post instead of beginning the Quest Around The Globe Trip Report or resuming the Tahiti Triumph Trip Report.
Here are the top posts for the month of September:
TPOL’s Guide to Maximizing Free Breakfast & Late CheckoutIt should come as no surprise that my ingenious solution to get the best of all worlds is to stay out all hours, come back for a great buffet, and wake up late into the afternoon.
Breaking News: TPOL’s Headed Back Home Months were spent trying to secure a flight flying first on Etihad. Now, the time has finally come to take that flight. It’s bittersweet that I leave Amman, Jordan for Abu Dhabi.
Quest Around The Globe: Too Much Cash, Not Enough PointsThis adventure was very expensive and I didn’t travel very far. I visited 7 countries by flying 25,000 miles. I spent $2,822 for air, hotels, and one train ride while burning 400,000 points. The retail price for this trip is around $28,000 so I can’t complain too much about a 90% discount.
Do you have an external hard drive which is a backup of your external hard drive? Do you have SD cards that you will not format because you are afraid that some photos were not backed up? Do you have an SD card which is now corrupted and you are unsure if those files were uploaded?
If so, then welcome to my hell. A few years ago, I had an iPhone and iPad which synced to iCloud. I got rid of that stupid iPhone and somehow, someway a lot of my photos disappeared. Since then, I have been trying to find a perfect way to make sure that my photos are secure and organized.
Here is what I was doing:
Dropbox sync to my desktop from my smartphones
Create an album on my hard drive
Open Picasa where the photos would be easily accessible and organized
Sync that album with Google Photos
Backup the album to my external hard drive
Then the following happened:
I ran out of hard drive space on my laptop
Picasa stopped loading my albums
Picasa is no longer supported by Google
Dropbox constantly created duplicates of the uploaded photos
I went crazy
Here’s the new strategy:
Autosync photos to Google Photos
Create albums from within Google Photos
Download photos onto my external hard drive
The reason I did not do this before is because Google Photos is not smartly built. Here are my complaints:
If I erase a photo from an album, it doesn’t erase it permanently. Now that photo is floating around somewhere in my photo stream.
Desktop auto upload: It doesn’t upload by album, it just uploads it to the photo stream. Then I have to go in and create an album.
Create an album by drag and drop: Since my Lenovo is on its last leg, it likes to crash.
Creating albums after a long trip using autosync: When photos were uploaded to the camera upload folder on Dropbox, I would cut and paste the photos until the camera upload folder was empty. That’s how I knew that every photo was accounted for and each photo went into the right album. With the photo stream, I have no idea if I have clicked on every photo nor do I have an easy way of knowing if I put the photo into one album.
Removing duplicates: Somehow there are so many duplicates and I have no clue how to remove them. Google it. Same complaints. No solution.
Security: Is there a cloud back up of my back up? If someone hacks my account, can they erase my life memories? How scary is that?
In my old Sony’s I would create a new folder each time I went to a new location. Then I would simply rename the albums when I copied it to my desktop. From there it would import into Picasa. Life was good.
Now I have this garbage photo stream to deal with. If anyone has a solution for my problem please comment. If you are a MAC user, don’t tell me to switch to a MAC. Unless it’s spectacular, I’m not going to rely on another Cloud app besides Google Photos to deal with this persistent problem.
So now I have to take all of these and put them into the St. Pete album. Oh and if I want to use them in the blog then I have to download the album only to upload them to WordPress. Good grief. Help!
As a nomad, home is wherever I fall asleep. This complicates things in the world of churning as my mail is still sent to mama and papa’s house. (see post: Nomadic Churning: Where Do You Send Your Card?) Whenever a new card arrives, my parents call to lecture me on my lifestyle choices (get married, have babies, you’re getting so old) and to give me the full credit card number. From there, I call the bank and get them to overnight me the card.
This time around, I waited for two days for my Citi Exec to come and it did not. I called Citi and asked them to track my card. Somehow the card was never ordered. To apologize, Citi gave me 5k AA points. It’s remarkable how Citi will offer silly retention offers with absurd spends for AA points but in this case (and without me even asking) Citi credited my account 5k simply because another agent dropped the ball on sending me the card.
Having said that, it’s almost noon where I am and I do not see the FedEx guy!
Maybe there’s a weather delay
Whoa, September is done and I was on the road and could not publish the best posts from August. August was largely a month of complaining, my favorite pastime next to sleeping.
Hyatt Regency O’Hare: The Best Airport HotelI recommended two excellent hotels, the Radisson Blu Aqua, and the Waldorf Astoria Chicago. Now I’m going to tell you where to end your trip. It just so happens that it is at the best airport hotel that I have visited.
Citi Exec Approved: Is It Worth $450?Today I applied for the Citi AA Exec, a card which used to have a 100k sign up bonus. That was during the glory days of the Vanilla Reload.
A reader wrote the following: Eh I don’t really blame you for doing whatever you can to take your hustle to the next level. It’s not like your pho noodle reviews were going to take you anywhere.
I respectfully disagree. The reason I started this blog was to find the best pho in the world! And dag nabbit, I plan on doing that. First, I would like to at least find a decent bowl in New York City. After returning from my Quest Around the Globe, I was in need of pho to recalibrate my senses. Another reader recommended Nha Thrang One which is located on 87 Baxter Street. Famished, I thought I would give it a try.
Nha Trang OneSpring Rolls
Some places call them spring rolls and some call it summer rolls. Be sure to clarify if you want rice paper or fried as spring often refers to the latter. At Nha Trang One, the spring rolls came out instantaneously. Unfortunately, they were a huge disappointment. They were dry from the outside and overstuffed with boredom on the inside.
BadThe Pho
A wise man once said, don’t judge a bowl by its cover; investigate the ingredients individually.
Sprouts in here!Broth
Before I could complain about how bad the spring rolls were, the pho was served. Staying true to protocol, I tried the broth without adding the additional ingredients. It was bland.
Looks goodBeef
The beef was overcooked which is a cardinal sin. When one orders pho tai, one expects it to be slightly raw. The piping hot broth should bring it to its perfect state.
Time to mix the overcooked beefPurple Onions
Why are there purple onions in my pho?
Real pho does not have purple onionsConclusion
I don’t have to write the conclusion. Readers of The Pho Of Life know what an unfinished bowl means.
Finished business
The Quest Around the Globe was far from free. Compared to my $77,000 Trip Heard Round the World and my Tahiti Triumph Trip Report, this adventure was very expensive and I didn’t travel very far. I visited 7 countries by flying 25,000 miles. I spent $2,822 for air, hotels, and one train ride while burning 400,000 points. The retail price for this trip is around $28,000 so I can’t complain too much about a 90% discount. Indeed, the numbers would look a lot better if I included the points savings of my companion.
In terms of hotel redemptions, there’s nothing that impressive. Many of the reservations were cash + points which added up quickly. For other reservations, it didn’t make sense to use points so I just used cash. That didn’t help the bottom line either.
If I was analyzing this as a points nerd, I would say that this is not my best work. Since my objective is traveling not hoarding, I can confidently say that I am satisfied with how I pieced this trip together. I do have a few takeaways:
Club Carlson: I won’t cancel my Club Carlson cards. They came in handy across the globe even if the redemptions were not the greatest of all time.
First vs Business: Without question, it was worth spending a few thousand more points to fly SQ first instead of business. Two words: Grand Cuvee. Same goes for Etihad Business versus First. One word: Apartment.
Status: I requalified for Platinum with SPG and am getting closer to requalifiying for Hyatt Diamond. It was exhausting jumping around so much but I think it was worth it. (see Switching Hotels for Status: How Much Is Too Much?)
Local Hotels: In Cyprus there weren’t any points options available. The first two nights I stayed at the #4 hotel recommended by TripAdvisor. It was $146/night. That’s not terrible but without the comforts of 4PM checkout and the excellent service of the brand hotels, I don’t think it’s was worth it. The third night I stayed at a basic hotel for $49 and was perfectly satisfied. Going forward I’m either Chungking Mansions hostel or brand loyalist.
Here’s the nerdy Excel spreadsheet which details my calculations. I’ve already started on my New Year’s spreadsheet which will be much more impressive than this trip, at least on paper.
Stop posting in forums and start flying!
From China to Costa Rica, positive messages have been pouring in from friends around the world who saw my CNN Business Traveller Interview. Hate rhetoric has also reared its ugly head as chronic MSers think TPOL is a snitch thanks to diagram that I didn’t create. I tried to explain my side but alas it’s pointless. The angry Internet mob cannot be pacified.
Today, I find myself slightly peeved because the article that supplements the interview contains a glaring inaccuracy. It reads as follows: “But as those minimum spends are far higher than the average person’s daily expenses, Bachuwa racks in the points through ‘manufactured spending.'”
I never said anything even close to this. I only commented on how MS is a frowned upon practice and how banks specifically use terms that outlaw this behavior. (see my guest post on Frequent Miler: Thou Shalt Not Manufacture Spend) Indeed, I have written articles on how I quit MS including End of MS Means Get Your Life Together and another that is a bit more explicit, I’m Done with Manufactured Spending which I wrote last November.
The takeaway from the interview that I wanted was for viewers to know that points make it possible and that Living Doesn’t Have to Suck. If they want to learn about MS then they should look elsewhere as I, like Carlito Brigante, am out of that game.
Ah well, I still loved the experience. Next stop AC 360.
You wouldn’t think that such an eclectic group has anything in common. You would be wrong. Mitt Romney, Richard Quest, Kim Kardashian, and I are all in mourning today as it was announced that Blackberry will no longer be making phones of any kind. As devout Blackberry users, I speak for all of us when I say that we are crushed.
Recently, we learned that Blackberry won’t be making phones with keyboards which was devastating. Now, they are completely exiting the game. This will make AT&T very happy as they will try to kick me off of my unlimited international 4G data plan. Of course, I won’t go down without a fight and will consider filing an arbitration claim should they choose to be unfair to this loyal consumer.
In my infinite wisdom, I saw this coming seven years ago and even wrote a letter to Blackberry advising them to change their strategy. They didn’t listen. Now they are toast. What a tragedy.
End of the Road for Us Blackberry Users
