Shell Citibank Credit Card

Shell Citibank Credit Card - A Cash Draining Card
Fancy getting a credit card that offers 5% rebate on shell petrol and 1.5% rebate on other purchases? If your answer is yes, then you are draining your money away!

The newly launched Shell Citibank credit card is not as good as its sounds - to enjoy the rebate, you must have a carry forward balance. Yes, a carry forward balance that you have to pay Citibank 18% interest per annum. But that's is not all, your so called 'rebate' is based on your current month spending. That means if you have a carry forward of RM10,000 but did not use the card at all for the current month, you get 'zero' rebate.

To be precise, this 'rebate' card is an old card - it has been around for about 2 years. But now taking advantage of the fuel cost concern, Citibank co-branded it with Shell.

This is how the rebate scheme works:-
First, you need to have a carry forward balance. The amount of that carry forward determines the rebate rate (%) that the card holder is getting.

Then based on your current month spend, you will get the rebate (as shown by the rebate table above) - your rebate is not based on your total carry forward balance. Repeat: your rebate is not based on your total carry forward balance, but current month spending.

In short, to get your 'rebate' you must have at least of RM2,000 outstanding balance in you card AND continue use the card. The outstanding balance is the net of previous month balance minus current month payment.

If you do that, every month you will be paying RM30.00, or RM360 a year for the minimum RM2,000 outstanding balance.

Let's do a simple math here:-
If you spend RM500/mth on shell petrol and your classic card has a RM2,000 outstanding balance, at 1.5%, you are getting RM7.50 as 'rebate', while at the same time, paying RM30.00 for the interest. The 'nett' profit for Citibank is RMRM22.50. Your are essentially "over paying" 4 times the price (30/7.5)

To 'break even' (so that your RM30.00 interest payment = rebate value), you need to pump RM2,000 shell petrol a month, or charge RM6,000 a month for non-shell related purchases.

The USD100.00 per barrel of crude oil won't kill you, but the Citi-Shell card will (Source: Smart Consumer Banking).

In my opinion, this rebate will benefit only the big spenders and if you own a petrol guzzling motor vehicle. Otherwise, the rebate doesn't make sense at all compared to the 18% p.a. interest that you are going to pay for the balance carried forward each month.
Tags: Shell, Citibank, Citi-Shell, Credit Card, Smart Consumer Banking

Wanna Go To Beijing Olympics 2008?

WIN 2 TICKETS AND ALL EXPENSES PAID INCLUDING AIR FARE TO THE 2008 OLYMPIC GAMES IN BEIJING , CHINA.

To participate, just view the attached photo, correctly answer the following questions and send your answers to: International Olympic Committee, Lausanne, Switzerland.

1. Which student seems to appear tired / sleepy?

2. Which ones are male twins?

3. Which ones are the female twins?

4. How many women are in the group?

5. Which one is the teacher?

Good Luck!

I guess you are not going either !!!!

Tags: Beijing Olympics 2008, International Olympic Committee, Lausanne, Switzerland, Olympic Games

A Candy Maker

For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son.... - John 3:16

A candy maker in Indiana wanted to make a candy that would be a witness of his faith. He incorporated several symbols for the birth, ministry, and death of Jesus Christ. He began with a stick of pure white, hard candy-white to symbolize the Solid Rock, the foundation of the Church and the firmness of God's promises.

The candy maker made the candy in the form of a "J" to represent the name of Jesus, who came to earth as our Savior. It could also be thought to represent the staff of the Good Shepherd with which He reaches down into the ditches of the world to lift out the fallen lambs who, like all sheep, have gone astray.

Thinking that the candy was somewhat plain, the candy maker stained it with red stripes. He used three small stripes to show the stripes of the scourging Jesus received, and by which we are healed. The large red stripe was for the blood shed by Christ on the cross so that we could have the promise of eternal life.

The candy became known as the candy cane-a decoration seen at Christmas time. But the meaning is still there.

During Christmas, do you reflect on the real meaning of the season? It is one season we can use like no other to bring the focus on Christ. Ask God to give you opportunities to share Christ with someone this Christmas.

TGIF Today God Is First by Os Hillman
Tags: Christmas, Os Hillman, TGIF, Today God Is First, God, Jesus Christ, Candy Cane, Candy Maker

The Right Match

This afternoon was the full dress rehearsal for The Right Match drama.
My co-producer was giving last minute instruction to those in charge of moving the props.
There were some last minute changes on the scenes involved - 14 of them - therefore, we need to explain further.
While my co-producer was explaining at the main hall, I was up at the balcony trying to connect the cables correctly.
My laptop couldn't trigger the LCD projector to work. Panic! Panic! They were about to begin and I couldn't connect properly. Upon checking each cable one by one literally, we found a loose connection with one of the cables. That too was the last cable. How come we didn't start with that cable first?

Tags: Christmas Drama, Christmas, The Right Match, LCD Projector, Laptop

Third Last Video Shoot?

According to our planning, this should be our third last video shooting. My cinematography guy, Kerk, is getting very tired with all those editings lately. Sleepless nights for him while we were dreaming away and he has to rush it out for the full dress rehearsal on Saturday afternoon.

In this scene, it was supposed to be a flashback, a scenario in black & white with a filmstrip at both sides showing a long time ago situation.

William was trying to invite Esther out for a date but the response was negative each time. We took a few shots with different clothings each time as if he came to her house a number of times throughout the year.

This was done at the main actress house and the video shooting started at 10pm till 12am.
With our creativeness, even darkness cannot stop us. Just use a table lamp as our lighting.....hehe
"He should have faced the other way" said my co-producer, Lud.
After the tough work, we went for mamak at Sri Petaling. At 2am, this was the stuff where 4 of us took into our stomach. Dinner? Supper?









The Right Match will be shown this Sunday. We intend to video shoot even those live stage acting later on and maybe submit this drama for a short drama competition.
Tags: Christmas Drama, Christmas, The Right Match, Video Shoot, Cinematography

Laptop's Harddisk Crashed!

Met a friend yesterday and he said that I must be very busy with the dramas till no time to blog the latest. I told him I was away to Genting on Monday/Tuesday and was in office on Wednesday.

The laptop started the day very slowly till I can't even load my emails. I could see 104 new emails but downloading from the server took ages. Turned it off and concentrated on my work and in between I turned the email on again but it slowed down my other softwares which I was working on.

By 3.45pm, I have completed my assignment and I went to my emails again and since it was slow, I decided to shut down the laptop. It jammed while shutting down and switching the laptop on was the real issue. Can't even read anything. Went straight to the IT Dept which said my harddisk has disappeared. Totally wiped off from the face of the earth! They asked what did I do to my laptop. Can't even detect my harddisk using whatever softwares they have.

The bad news - all my files, datas, 7GB of songs, pictures - ALL GONE! Sat at IT Dept, heartbroken. Sad. Nothing to say.

When I told my boss of the tragedy, he asked how come I didn't do any back-up. I told him my personal external harddisk of 80GB was gone 3 weeks back too, while using it in office. He kept quiet knowing that it was a real tragedy.

All my whatever files that you can think of while working in Sudan, pictures of my travels here and there (overseas and local) for the past 3 years, my Christmas drama scripts, my back-up of 7GB of songs are all gone.

On Thursday, IT Dept called me up to say that since my laptop was a goner they have gotten a new laptop for me. So happened that this new laptop was not allocated to any person yet. This is a surprise to me as an order for an office laptop may take few days as it required a number of approvals.

I got this new Dell Latitude D520 laptop now which is even more powerful than my previous one (a HP Compaq NX5000). A blessing in disguise? When I told my co-director and multimedia guy, they quickly responded by finding the next person with a laptop for our coming dramas.

But when I told them later in the day that I have received a new and more powerful laptop, the multimedia guy said all the while God wanted to provide me with a better laptop. Yeah, I told him BUT 'minus' all the datas in it.

Went for drama practise yesterday night and there was a HP Sales Manager in our midst. When I related the incident to the group, this lady friend said you must buy a HP laptop .......... hehehe. My co-director voiced out loudly saying that "His previous laptop was a HP!". So, I brought out my new Dell laptop and said "Hello, it was because of that incident, they decided to give me a Dell now" ........... she was looking for a hole to bury her face.............hahaha!

I have to start anew with everything, re-setting all the options again and re-collecting everything right from scratch, ensuring the right files are in place. Really time consuming and may not get some particular files that I wanted to keep for reference as well.

But I can tell you devil, nothing's gonna stop me from getting the Christmas dramas running at an even better performance.
Tags: Christmas Drama, Tragedy, HP Compaq NX5000, Dell Latitude D520, Laptop, Harddisk Crashed

Eggs-Traordinaire

I'm sure you have seen people using dominos to create a landscape and then push the first domino to have a nice effect of it dropping onto the next and the next and the next.







But to see a guy using chicken eggs to make it stand is very eggs-traordinaire.















Not only he made the eggs stood but created a nice picture using eggs alone. Dominos can't break.
Tags: Eggs, Chicken Egg, Unique, Creativity, Domino