“We’re announcing some great deals at [local electronics store] but this information is embargoed till 11.55am.”

It took a moment to sink in. So… basically what they’re telling me is that they have something to tell me, but they can’t tell me. Plus, it was already after midday so I wasn’t optimistic about ever hearing the news, which was likely to be some crappy deal on something I didn’t need anyway.

Next I’ll be getting ‘embargoed’ Viagra spam in my inbox.

*

The other night was a special occasion and I went out to dinner at a swanky restaurant, which is a bit of a rarity and something I never quite get used to. I mean, it’s nice eating lots of courses of great food and sipping silky wine, but I never lose the feeling that I’m about 12 years old and an impostor in these sorts of establishments.  The feeling is exacerbated when the waiter:

1) Flicks open my serviette and glides it onto my lap. I mean, I don’t have the strongest arms in the world but I probably could’ve managed that myself.
2) Places 20 knives, forks and spoons in front of me. How long am I going to be sitting there?
3) Pours an inch of Cabernet into my glass and waits expectantly for the usual glass swirling/sniffing/palate-rolling behaviour that is meant to ensue.
4) Hands me a menu in Latin. ‘A filet of Beef nestled upon a Symphony of Fluffed agria potatoes placed Strategically alongside a Handsome row of Beans’ etc.
5) Retrieves my coat at the end of the meal and pauses as I grow 10 arms and struggle into it, slightly blearily after too many Cabernets and 21 courses including, and I quote, ‘Variations on a Theme of chocolate’. Mmm.

Not to mention the bill. HOW much?! I’m on toast for the rest of the week.

Five steps to masterful fishing:

1. Purchase fishing rod (unless you’re adept at catching with hands or harpoon, or the power of attraction).
2. Bait the hook with something the fish will like to eat. Pancakes? Must ask them.
3. Cast line out but be careful not to fall in the water.
4. Sit for ages and watch the world go by.
5. Repeat Step 4 until you catch something/fall asleep.

The rod cost $50 (NZ), and it’s quite a good one with a reel and everything. We bought smelly squid as bait – yuck. Perhaps that’s why we didn’t catch anything. Other fishers on the pier had just picked mussels off the rocks, so I’ll try that next time. It was handy watching and learning from the other fishers; some looked like they lived there permanently, all salt-licked and sunbaked with all the time in the world.

All in all, fishing’s a cheap hobby and very relaxing because my dinner isn’t relying on catching food. And it sure beats running round the malls during the New Year Sales, which is what everyone else seems to be doing. Didn’t they get sick of all the Christmas shopping? I do like to shop but I have finally managed to figure out that if you buy something that’s 30% off in the sales you are not saving money if you weren’t planning to buy it in the first place.

Having Beckham in town is quite exciting. Where is he staying? Where is he eating? What is he thinking? There has been much sporting-hero-or-annoying-celebrity debate, but overall football has been the winner on the day.  Posh’s absence was felt, though.

Last night’s game was Beckham’s LA Galaxy team vs Wellington home team the Phoenix, who lost 1-4 (at least we got one goal, though). Loyalties were divided – most of us supported Phoenix, but still cheered whenever Becks had the ball. Poor Becks was suffering from a wee bit of bronchitis and clutched at his chest every now and again, but still played through. What a trooper.

Highlights

• Beckham yelling at the ref over a penalty
• Beckham scoring a goal (no bending, though)
• The female streaker who got tackled at the corner post – although it turned out she was hired as a publicity stunt for a lame ad company
• Beckham taking his shirt off at the end – of course! What tattoos. What abs. Not that I was looking, of course – I’m just reporting on what others were saying in a non-biased manner.

I wonder if it’s irksome for the rest of the Galaxy team that all the chants were about Beckham, all the cheers were for him, plus he got that massive signup fee (a reported US$250m) and most people had paid just to see him. Still, it puts more attention on the game and less on rugby here in NZ which I think is a bloody good thing; last night’s turnout – 30K – set a local record for football.

There won’t likely be a lot of door-ringers because Halloween isn’t such as big deal here in New Zealand, but I buy the candy and then have an excuse to eat it if there’s any left (actually I have already started…).

As a kid I would occasionally go trick or treating (only once did someone say ‘trick’ – I was flummoxed because I hadn’t prepared) and it was mostly lame because people wouldn’t have candy at the ready, so instead they would hand out fruit. Fruit!

Costumes varied. One year I was a ‘ghost’ (pillowcase with eye-holes cut out) and another I was a Smurf (white hat and blue face paint and blue turtleneck).

Which goes to show either a) you don’t need a lot of money to have fun – it’s about creativity or
b) you do need money and this illustrates why precisely – otherwise you end up begging in a pillowcase for strangers to give you food.

Advantages of grocery shopping online:

• Time saved. No driving, parking, venturing into the crowded supermarket, wrestling with the broken trolley, loading your car with bags, returning home only to repeat the next week
• Saving your shopping list in the system so it is ready for next time, like magic
• Searching for items using a search box, instead of idly wheeling a trolley down numerous aisles looking for the turmeric
• Low delivery fees. Usually just $10-$15 depending on where you live
• Easy access to the list of Specials and bypassing the usual tempting tricks of chocolate bars and trashy magazines at the checkout
• Can order in advance and choose date and time of delivery

Disadvantages of grocery shopping online

• Brand recognition issues. You know you like the cookies in the purple sparkly packaging, but what are they called?
• Size issues. It’s hard to tell from the thumbnail image how big the bag of flour is and you struggle with measurements, metric or otherwise
• Not eco-friendly. You can’t use reusable shopping bags – what would Al Gore say?
• Lack of control. You don’t get to manually pick your own fruit/veges etc although they usually do a good job of that, I find
• Not interacting with people. I’ve read that supermarkets can be a great place to potentially meet the love of your life if you’re single. Although there is the delivery man… and perhaps you just don’t like people or are agoraphobic, in which case this would be in the ‘pro’ list for you

Have you/would you shop at a virtual supermarket?

In those fun if un-nutritional days, we had little money but would still manage to splurge on at least one CD a week, plus a few bottles of something for the weekend, and we’d go to the movies and shop for clothes. The magic of student loans, overdrafts and the ‘worry about it later’ mentality.

These days we are the same but different. She’s a home-owner and very eco-conscious. I spend on travel and save when I’m home, and this year I’ve become generally more finance-conscious. So neither of us was particularly keen to spend money on the stuff we used to buy, but we came to an impasse: it was a rainy winter’s day and we could not think of something free to do.

In the end, we went window-shopping and out to lunch. It was fun, but I was annoyed with myself; could I not create my own entertainment? I thought back to what I’d do when I was a kid having friends over for slumber parties:

• Cooked. We would always bake something from a kids’ cookbook. Something five-star, like pancakes.
• Written/painted. We’d write plays, or just get out the crayons and make a mess.
• Make up games. We used to record pretend radio shows, before video blogging was even a twinkle in my eye.
• Dress up. It was the ’80s – there was always something stupid to wear.
• Play games. Twister, Operation, Monopoly… hours of hilarity and sulking when my Boot landed on someone’s Park Lane hotel.

See, I typed that out in no time at all. Does the fact that I can’t entertain myself for free anymore relate to having grown up, or is it just that we’re more of a consumer culture now? Or both?

Remind me to never do so again, because I’d forgotten how tortuous such sessions are.

First came The Assessment from Fabian/Marc-Pierre. My previous home-dye jobs were inspected with much shaking of the head. “We’ll have to strip that out,” they said. My hair was washed, some strands were snipped, the “dye strip” was added. It smelt like turpentine. Time dragged. I flipped through lame magazines. Muzak played in the background.

The strip was washed out, but it hadn’t worked. “Looks like we’ll have to move to Level 2,” said the hair dude, without a hint of a smile. Luckily the situation wasn’t as bad as he thought after a blow-dry. “You’re hair’s darker when it’s wet!” he commented in surprise. Fancy that! But I couldn’t reply as the blow-dryer was roaring in my ear and I looked like Cousin It in a cape, with hair flying all over the place.

Three hours passed. It was getting dark, and I was hungry. But the end was in sight. After some new color, a few hair-flips, enough spray to cause a chemical imbalance and some vigorous brushing and sculpting, I was presented with the mirror. And it really didn’t look much different from three hours earlier. “Looks great!” I commented, a false note in my voice. His eyebrows narrowed. “Yes, great demarkation,” he said.

It cost $280. $280! That’s a lifetime of AdSense earnings. Next time I’m shaving it all off. ProBlogger and Shoemoney have little hair, so clearly the less hair you have, the better blogger you are.

So how to save on haircuts?

Update: I thought that, instead of just complaining, I should look at ways to avoid this in future. And found this great piece on how to save on haircuts.

• If coloring at home, use a gentle shade and a trusted brand
• If you splurge on color, get a cheaper cut and vice versa
• Get cheap cuts in-between, if you prefer the salon
• If you’re brave, you could try a home cut
• Think about getting a simpler cut that doesn’t require as much maintenance

Okay, I don’t, but I was reading the ever-inspiring Pick the Brain this morning which has a list of classic Ben Frank wealth-building tips. It’s a thorough and interesting list and a couple of things struck me:

• All those years, my parents were quoting Mr Franklin.
• Mr Franklin was a very clever (if slightly preachy) man. He is long dead and yet he lives on through his inventions, kite-flying and memorable adages.
• There is a lot of nature imagery in his words. “Little strokes fell great oaks”, etc. And clearly he wants us to be frugal, disciplined and patient. And to get up early. Ha!
• But some of them are a bit heavy handed, in my opinion.”Be ashamed to catch yourself idle”? Geez, what a whip-cracker.

Still, in the vain (in both senses of the word) hope of immortalizing myself, I thought I’d take a stab at some adages of my own.

Rich Minx once said….

• A subscriber in the RSS feed is worth two of the Stumbles.
• He that lives upon hope of AdSense will die fasting.
• Rather go to bed postless than rise with a bad post in your mouth.

There. It’s only three but that should be enough to ensure my words live on. Come on, don’t die old and wrinkly at 100, write your own!

I knew I shouldn’t click on the article, simply because I eat out a lot (especially now, while I’m on the road) and I was expecting the worst. I was right, it was grim. “A lot of poor, transient people work in restaurants… They’re not giving up the $100 they’d make in a shift because they’re sick.”

On the bright side, it must be strengthening my antibodies. And I learned a couple of handy tips.

1. Be wary of ‘specials’ – they might be old leftovers buried under gravy or sauce.
2. Eating out on a Monday? It may be the quieter option, but it’s also leftover night.
3. Dinner at a casual restaurant may be a more fatty experience than buying a burger, because butter is often used liberally in dishes.

Bottom line: Can’t wait to get home, have a kitchen, visit the supermarket, and cook my own nice stuff again without having to worry about snot in my soup. Just a few more weeks…

The only one I buy religiously is Empire UK because I’m a film fanatic. It’s pretty commercial but they have the odd insightful article and I enjoy their writing style and witty captions. Awesome website, too.

Empire costs $6 in the UK, $9 in the US and (gulp) $18 in New Zealand. I know, insane. There is an Australian edition but the quality is much lower. I’d rather pay more for the better read.

Other choices include Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, Economist, Wired, Business 2.0… and the odd gossip rag. It adds up, and so many magazines are pumped out so often that there’s always something to buy.

I know there are ways to save: subscribe and get a discount (if only I’d stay in one place long enough), swap them with friends (if only I had some), get free ones if you work in media, but let’s face it, most people go out and buy one from the local store when they feel like it.

Sometimes I feel like a trashy read but then I get magazine remorse. Like when I read Marie Claire yesterday (which is far from the worst, but it happens to be on my desk, sorry MC). I learned:

• What British women are up to in the bedroom (summary: yawn)
• Getting that healthy summer glow (summary: fake tan, airbrushing)
• Courtney Cox interview (summary: leave Jennifer alone!)
• Interview with former Hollywood Supermadam (summary: went to prison)
• Fashion Trends (summary: everything I own is inadequate)

300 pages, 200 of it ads. Result: Unsatisfied (rather like British women).