An Astro Girl Moment

Eric Banana was having coffee with the lady of his future castle at the ToastBox outlet in Plaza Singapore this afternoon when he experienced what he has termed as an "Astro Girl moment". Apparently, while placing her orders, Astro Girl also purchased some ToastBox vouchers. Now, Eric Banana has seen Starbucks vouchers, or rather, gift certificates but he has never seen ToastBox vouchers... so naturally he was puzzled.

The impossibly thrifty Astro Girl explained: One cup of coffee or tea at ToastBox costs S$1.50. ToastBox sells 10 vouchers (each valid for one cup of coffee or tea) for S$12.90 and gives two vouchers free. This effectively adds up to 12 cups for S$12.90 or S$1.075 per cup. At normal pricing, 12 cups would have cost S$18. This translates into an effective savings of S$5.10 for 12 cups or S$0.425 per cup (28.3% in percentage terms).

... and that was an Astro Girl moment!

The only catch? Eric Banana noted that the vouchers expire three months from the date of purchase.

To that, Astro Girl dismissed Eric Banana's concerns nonchalantly. Her line of logic was that they go to ToastBox almost every weekend, which means, they can finish using the vouchers within six weeks. And this excludes their weekday visits :P

Nano-Chromatic!

Eric Banana was having dinner at Modesto's in Vivocity with some of his closest pals this evening when he got a surprise that came in a 7-Eleven plastic bag...

... a blue-colour fourth-generation iPod Nano 16GB!!

It was exactly what he has wanted to get, and it came three days before he got to buying it himself. Apparently, some of his friends have done some discreet homework to find out what he wants.

Eric Banana is very touched by his friends' generous gesture and would like to thank them here (in no particular order): Thanks Vincent, Wilson, Yihui, Chee Wee, April, Annie, Yingwen, Dion, Wee Suan and Maggie! 

AstroBanana Trilogy Part I: First Impressions

As people always say, first impressions count. 

While he was fully aware of this, Eric Banana still made a conscious decision to go for the movie date as... himself. He had just taken on a new look at that time - sporting a moustache with a goatee. Wearing a black t-shirt with grey 3/4 pants and sandals and carrying his Columbia tote bag, he was less than impressive. And he knew it. Well, at least he wasn't pretending to be someone else.

Astro Girl's choice of outfit that evening was a blue sleeveless top with jeans. Eric Banana thought she looked rather pretty, especially with that short hairstyle.

"Where did this guy come from?! He looks like an absolute ah beng!" Astro Girl thought to herself. She wondered what she had done wrong in her past life to deserve this. She probably forgot to account for her past, past life. She spied the conspicuous silver rings on Eric Banana's fingers and did a quick count - three on the left hand, two on the right hand, mostly with some kind of dragon design.

"Oh, she is kind of cute. Kind of quiet too. Must be the guai guai type." Eric Banana was kind of thinking all over the place as he struggled to find topics to talk about during their coffee session.

"Why does he keep blabbering non-stop? He makes me feel like an idiot." Astro Girl tried to keep smiling throughout.

"I better try to keep talking or she may find me boring and decide to go home." Eric Banana was probably one of the world's worst conversationalists and he would rather not talk about it.

"He looks like the type who likes bubbly girls, which means he won't ask me out again. Good." Astro Girl heaved a sigh of relief in the middle of nowhere.

"Oh, I have to ask her out again. Now, how do I go about asking for her number? Darn!" Eric Banana was virtually googling his mental bag of tricks.

So, as it turned out, Astro Girl had a less-than-favourable first impression of Eric Banana. The latter was fully aware that nobody ever has a favourable first impression of him anyway so he was trying to work on leaving better subsequent impressions...

Let's Rock

Despite Astro Girl's predisposition towards iPods (she thinks they are *really* just expensive iDoorStoppers), Eric Banana continues to keep tabs on the iPod product line, especially since he is looking for a high-capacity iPod to store all his songs. 

Apple held a special event - "Let's Rock" - on 9 Sep 2009 (U.S. time), which introduced a product refresh for some iPod models and a new version of iTunes.

iPod Classic:

Eric Banana was hoping for a refreshed iPod Classic line with storage space in excess of 160 GB. Well, the 160 GB model has been discontinued while the existing 80 GB model has been bumped up to 120 GB at the same price point (US$249). Argh!! What a bleah! Oh well, at least now he can get 40 GB more capacity for the same amount of money. Barely any consolation.

iPod Nano:

Eric Banana has heard rumours about the iPod Nano returning to its tall form-factor way before the event. Which is a good idea, since the third-generation iPod Nano looked like the bastardised child between the second-generation iPod Nano and a Creative Zen V player. Presenting the new fourth-generation iPod Nano:

• Curved all aluminum and glass design that is thinner
• Accelerometer allowing landscape video and cover flow
• Music shuffling by shaking the iPod Nano
• Available in 8GB (US$149) and 16GB (US$199) in nine stunning colours

iPod Touch:

With the iPhone 3G priced so attractively in the last round, there is no way the iPod Touch will stay unchanged:

• Sleek new design a.k.a. thinner
• Built-in speaker and volume control buttons
• Longer battery life
• Available in 8GB (US$229), 16 GB (US$299) and 32 GB (US$399)

iPod Shuffle:

No product refresh except for new colours.

iTunes 8:

Version 8 of iTunes has been released with a Genius function, which has the ability to find songs in an user's music library that go great along with a song he or she likes and create a Genius Playlist. Erm, what a genius?

iPhone 2.1 Software:

A bug fix with some performance enhancements. It is a free update to iPhone and iPod Touch users with the 2.0 software. iPod Touch users with 1.x software have to pay US$9.95 to upgrade. Eric Banana is glad that for once, he doesn't have to fork out a single cent to upgrade his software. As it is, he has been penalised enough for being an early adopter.

Eric Banana now wonders if he should get the 120 GB iPod Classic. Those new iPod Nanos do look tempting...

AstroortsA

In order to allow registered users (a.k.a. Eric Banana and Astro Girl) to use their xxx@uptoyoulor.com email addresses, Eric Banana worked on customising the personalised start page for uptoyoulor.com yesterday. Somehow he struggled to come up with a nice title for it. As the start page is powered by Google, he wanted to have the title in Google font:

"AstroBanana" did not seem right:

Eric Banana decided that the "-anana" was killing the text and balance aesthetics so he toyed with the idea of "AstroB" instead:

"AstroB" was actually not bad an idea. Apparently, the word "Astro" sounds and looks nicer. Still not satisfied, Eric Banana decided to combine the word "Astro" and its reversed version "orstA":

And yup, "AstroortsA" did the trick ;-)

Blog Of The Day

Yay! The AstroBanana Chronicles has won a Super Saturday Blog of the Day Award (BOTDA):

http://blogofthedayawards.blogspot.com/2008/09/astrobanana-chronicles.html

What is a Super Saturday Blog of the Day Award?

From the BOTDA site: "Super Saturday is an occasional event held from time to time (on a Saturday) when there is a large backlog of worthy Weblogs that ought to have received a Blog of the Day Award but have not. A large collection of randomly selected nominee weblogs will be granted Blog of the Day Awards on Super Saturday. We believe that by participating in Super Saturday, you will discover many Super Special Blogs that should be Famous Blogs but have not yet reached that status."

Eric Banana and Astro Girl would like to thank Danon for his nomination. They will endeavour to make The AstroBanana Chronicles as interesting as possible, and hope readers will continue to support their blog by posting more comments.

And Then... Apocalypto