quaint melody

I have a thing about hotels. A good hotel that is. When I am traveling, a good accommodation is essential. It is that key factor that makes or breaks a trip for me. I love staying in a good hotel that delivers everything I need for a comfortable stay. What makes a good hotel? Well, there are 5 essential factors, cleanliness, good services, good facilities, safety and location. I have stayed in my share of hotels over the years. while not all of them are ‘hotel of the year’ material, most of them have met my standard. Though it can be quite painful and troublesome to look for a hotel at the last minute before a trip, which always happens in my case.

This is where hotelshop comes in handy. They are the professionals who help you book hotel in the UK at the last minute. From 2 to 5 stars hotels, anything you might ask for. Looking for that Perfect Budget Hotels in the UK or the perfect luxury getaway heaven? You got it all here. They are truly the solution for your last minute hotel booking.

*Kindly sponsored by Hotelshop UK*

I have over hundred of blogs on my RSS feed reader list. I used to read through these blogs almost daily, but I’ve been so busy lately that there is not much chance to blog-hop and leave a comment or two as often as I’d like. I love reading through the blogs for interesting articles and get a peek of what other people has been up to. It is my relaxing moment of the day, reading through, leaving comments and checking for any replies for my comments. I really hope to get back to the regular blog hopping routine soon. So, if you have not been seeing my name on your comment list, wait for me ya, that doesn’t mean I’ve gone MIA, I am just late.

blog-hop

Gadget lovers, here’s something you’ve been waiting for. Digital photo frame! I have always wondered whether there is a way to view my massive collection of digital photos on a photo frame, without printing them out individually. Imagine my delight when I came upon digital frames on DigitalFramez. They offer digital photo frame in various styles and sizes. The photo frames comes with memory cards (9″ and10″), all you need to do is to upload your photos to the memory cards and you’re done! You can literally flick through hundreds of your images using the remote control! Simply switch the memory card to the digital picture frame when you would like a change of things, it easy as 123. You can even set the period of time for your pictures to display and how you would like the transition between pictures to be like. How’s that for viewing photos in the 21st century!

Trying to find ways to get paid for blogging? Here’s another company that pay you to write for their advertisers, Smorty. Smorty is a blog advertising network that provide advertisers opportunities to advertise on blogs. They pay bloggers to write opinion posts that include links to link back to their advertisers. Bloggers can get paid from $6 to $100, depending on pagerank and their unique Smorty smart score system.

The process is simple, upon approval of your blog, you choose an opportunity to write. Bloggers are given up to 72 hours to complete the task and summit the post link, wait for advertiser’s approval of the post and you’re done! You can choose to write any number of opportunities as you like! The best thing about their program is, they pay on weekly basis, via paypal. No more waiting around for 30 days for payment! Easy-peasy! So, what are you waiting for? Register today and start to get paid to blog!

This post is inspired by my fellow blogger friend Firehorse, who is a great blogger who writes posts that are fantastically funny. I read this post of hers and it reminded me of something I wanted to write about but has since forgotten and thrown to the back burner.

During my trip back home (Malaysia), I encountered a lot of things good and bad, but there’s this one thing that annoyed me the most. You know those people who went overseas and came back with a weird/fake accent? Well, I am not one of them. Mr K did have one old uni mate who is lidat. He was in the same class with Mr K and went to the same uni for the final year. For your information this guy is Chinese Malaysian with Chinese educational background, so his English was like mine back then, half half only. Have you met those people who tried so hard to speak the slang of certain country but end up sounding very weird? Well, he is that sort. He would go around talking to gui lou (Caucasian) and trying to use all the ‘big words’. Frankly, he sounded like a fool. I mean it is not that I am against learning to fit in and adapt to the environment, but that is a limit before one start to sound weird and make an embarrassment of himself/herself. It is natural that we as Malaysians would have an ascent of our own, that is nothing to be ashamed of. Why have to go and hide that fact?

The joke is, a year after graduation, Mr K met this guy in a conference and introduced him to his boss (a kiwi), who was there with him. After the guy left, his boss asked him, ‘why do you guys sound so different? He sounded really weird!’ Heh. Again, I want to emphasis that I am all for fitting in the local culture and we inevitably will have to do some changes in order to adapt, but that’s a way to do that and not loose your self identity and culture, right?!

OK, I totally digressed. As I mentioned above, the thing that annoyed me a lot was that a lot of people asked me whether I can still speak Chinese/dialect, and also asked whether I am still used to the weather or not. WTH?! I only lived in NZ for 7 years, it’s not like I totally lost touch with my friends and relatives, and transformed into a gui po or something. We are talking about the country I was born in and lived for 20 years! That was 20 long years where I breathed and lived the culture and people. How could I totally ditch that and come back a foreigner? The thought of it really baffles me. To me, no matter how long I’ve been away or how much adapting I have done in order to fit in, Malaysia will always remains home in my heart. So, that’s it, once and for all.

p/s: Something came onto me when I wrote this post yesterday, sounded so angry one hor. I am not an angry person ok. ;P

annoying thoughts

Mr K is always looking for opportunities to expand our company and masterseek is the perfect site to market one’s business. It is a new search engine that provides easy access to company profiles, contact details and service and product descriptions from more than 45 million companies across 75 countries. You can find business partners and ways to grow your business either locally or worldwide. Now, that is maximum exposure for a business!

We went to hell last weekend. Yes we did, for a whole 15 minutes, for pizza that is! Heh.

Hell’s Pizza is a very successful pizza franchise in New Zealand. Started as a small pizza shop next to Victoria University in Wellington, they quickly gained attention via clever advertising campaigns. With a catchy name like ‘Hell’, it’s no wonder they created buzz around town successfully. They now have 63 stores spread around the country. I remembered when the new stores started popping up around town, their unique devilish deco certainly caught my attention. There were even hearses parked in front of the shops! They certainly took the nation by storm.

Of course, however strong the campaign is, the pizza chain wouldn’t have survived without the most important ingredient, good pizzas. They offer various gourmet pizzas, pastas and sides. The unique part is, the names of all dishes are hellish as well. You get names like Lust, Greed, Envy, Sloth etc on the menu. That certainly makes ordering fun!

Hell only offers pickup or delivery services, no dine-in. You can phone in or place an order from their website. We normally order online and collect the food from the shop near us. Their website is very cool and animated, with little devils running around. Have a looky here.

cute devilish merchandises.

They are running a series of advertisements that depict the current political events. This one is about the newly passed anti-smacking law. Heh.

cute ducklings.

We ordered snack size Touble pizza with camembert, bacon, onion, chicken, pineapple and salami.

Yummylicious spirit pasta, my favourite!

Last but not least, garlic bread. (again, modeled by Mr K’s hand. Ha.)

Next time if you visit New Zealand, don’t forget to go to Hell!

hell’s pizza food New Zealand

I’m sure many of you must have heard of the great news from PayPerPost What? No? Ok, PayPerPost has just announced that they have received US$7 million dollars in funding. The blogger outreach campaign has certainly come to an all time high point. To celebrate this, the good folks over at PayPerPost has launched a 7 days promotion called Lucky 7’s. Everyone can get a piece of the cake now, as long as you are a registered postie for them. The promotion is running between now and next Tuesday, 19 June 2007 ppp time. They are releasing $7 K in ppp opportunities. That means, during the 7 days period, there would be Oops of $10.77, $70 or $700 up for grabs. Each postie is eligible for one each. The best thing about this is, it is totally segmented, so everybody has a chance!

I was really excited when I read about this great news on PayPerPost blog. Isn’t that a really generous thing to do, to spread the joy with us posties?! I really hope with the grand amount of new funding, there would be more varieties of opportunities for us. This could really turn into a win-win situation. I will certainly be looking forward to more great things from PayPerPost. For now, just hurry up and go grab your share of the blogger outreach campaign! Let’s hope I’ll be lucky enough to get the $700 opportunity!

Press Release:
The PayPerPost Revolution Accelerates, Sponsored
Blogging Marketplace Secures $7 Million Series B

Draper Fisher Jurvetson leads round and joins Board of Directors

ORLANDO, FL – (June 12, 2007) – PayPerPost, the leading marketplace for advertisers to reach bloggers and other consumer content creators, today announced it has completed a $7 million second round investment led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, an investor in the company’s Series A and one of the world’s leading high-technology venture capital firms. The financing brings the total amount of capital raised by PayPerPost to over $10 million, giving the company considerable resources for further development as the industry’s leading Consumer Generated Advertising marketplace. Additional participants in the round include existing investors Inflexion Partners and Village Ventures as well as new investor DFJ Gotham. With this investment, DFJ Managing Director Josh Stein also joins PayPerPost’s Board of Directors.

“PayPerPost created this exciting new advertising space and has established itself as the industry leader,” said Ted Murphy, chief executive officer of PayPerPost. “Although we’ve only used a portion of our first round capital, this added support from investors unlocks significant growth potential. Our content creator and advertiser ROI metrics clearly demonstrate the upside for PayPerPost’s model. We intend to use this capital to build the infrastructure, visibility and professional expertise necessary to reach and retain a greater network of advertisers and content creators than ever before.”

Since its founding in June of 2006, PayPerPost has signed more than 6,500 advertisers to its groundbreaking service, which has enabled Consumer Content Creators to be compensated for their efforts discussing specific companies, products or services via blogs, videos or other media. The content creators are required to disclose relationships with advertisers on their blog, providing transparency for the end reader. Over 125,000 Internet postings, most in the form of blogs, have already earned money for their creators through PayPerPost’s innovative marketplace. PayPerPost recently released PayPerPost Direct, a disruptive new service that allows advertisers to contract and negotiate directly with individual bloggers they identify through a safe, managed system.

“PayPerPost has laid a strong foundation for the future,” noted Tim Draper, founder and managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. “It continues to attract a critical mass of participants from both the advertising and blogging communities. Analogous to Overture’s sponsored search model, we believe PayPerPost’s business model holds disruptive potential and will enable the company to thrive in the evolving paid-content arena.”

To mark the $7 million dollar funding, PayPerPost has launched a new website detailing the company’s service offering at http://www.payperpost.com. Bloggers and advertisers can easily sign up at the site and begin leveraging the self service marketplace.