Orinity

I was looking through my picture collection when I came across this advertisement that is just too humorous not to share. I first saw this bus-stop shelter ad a year ago, and it has since been one of my favourite advertisements of all time.

*For overseas readers who are not sure what the heck is Mahjong, read HERE.

My extended family celebrated my grandmother’s birthday over the weekend on Saturday night. On such occasions, my extended family will usually eat out. This time round, we had our dinner at No Signboard Seafood Restaurant. While not being a seafood lover like several of my cousins, I find that the dishes are quite to my liking with the exception of prawns and crabs. (I am allergic to prawns and crabs, so are several of my cousins.) The crab serving is exceptionally huge compared to other restaurants that we tried in the past. The term for a ‘small’ crab is very misleading as a crab needs to be at least 2.8kg before it can be considered as a ‘large’ crab. Ridiculous, huh?

Here’s my sister eating a gigantic pincer.

The food we ordered tasted good with big servings but do expect the bill to burn a big hole in your pockets unless you have extra cash to spend. We ordered 8-9 dishes and with a table of 10, so we pretty much cleared away most of the food except for the crabs.

My cousins doing their best to finish up the crabs!

Hop over to PrettyDolls now! They are opening these two sprees that you must not miss buying from!

E.L.F stands for Eyes.Lips.Face, in case you are not aware. As their name goes, they specialises in beauty products. I don’t really like to spree cosmetic items, but I had made an exception, because everything is going for US$1 each, which is:

US$1 * 1.60 exchange rate by Prettydoll + $1.50 handling fee by Prettydoll = S$3.10 for each item.

The first time PrettyDolls opened this spree, I placed an order for 5 items on the 6th of September although the spree only closes towards the end of the month. I still remember myself thinking, “Even if the shipping is a whopping S$4 per item, it is still cheap!” On the 9th of November, I got an email from PrettyDolls saying that my items has arrived, one of which is out of stock. And so, the shipping fee is only S$7.98 for 4 items, which is about S$2 for each item. Where can you get cosmetics at S$5.10 each? This spree will close on the 19th of December, which is on a Wednesday.

As for Threadless, I haven’t spree from this site yet. But I do know that the tees are going for really low prices. $16 for an US brand top, exclusive of shipping fees. However, you have got to hurry as the Threadless spree will close on the 12th of December (Wednesday) so as to reduce the possibility of your items going out of stock (OOS) during this festive season.

For many online shoppers, especially those based locally in Singapore, it just can’t be helped that most of the online stores do not ship internationally. It just bring back the memories of making the decision to purchase something online, going through the registration process and only to realize during checking out that the online store does not ship beyond North America. I think that is the main reason why US goods are so in demand. It is due to the simple fact that the products cannot be found in the region unless you are flying there personally.

While it is frustrating, there’s a solution actually. It comes in the form of SingPost’s vPostUSA service. In simple terms, the service provide an US address for you to ship your purchases to and shipped it back to your local address. It will take a bit longer since there’s an extra trip involved. I personally do not use vPostUSA as I am utterly turned off by their shipping rates. Although it will end up to be somewhat cheaper but if I use vPostUSA, my items will be subjected to the 7% Goods & Service Tax (GST). I will not have such an worry if the web store ships internationally. The items purchased are almost always shipped as gifts, thus, avoiding the extra 7% GST. Another alternative will be accessUSA package forwarding service. I did an estimated calculation for both service using 0.5kg as the example. Here are the results:

vPostUSA: S$17 .82 onwards for Victoria Secrets, S$22.40 for Amazon onwards
accessUSA: S$10.0 per month for membership, S$11.52 for commercial invoice

Looking at the results, I am not sure which is a better option but my gut feeling is that accessUSA is a better choice when yo are buying on a regular basis. Not to forget that there is a US$20 membership setup fee for accessUSA as a one-time payment. I feel that we consumers will be spoiled for choices once there are more such services to challenge vPostUSA and accessUSA.

Fossil Watches will be having its Private Sales at Suntec City Convention Centre on the 8th of December (Saturday) from 12 noon to 8pm. Do drop by Meeting Rooms 208 and 209 for this event.

Click HERE for the invite!