Fitness First: Last thoughts

As I mentioned in this entry, the Fitness First saga, for now, has been concluded. This side quest seems to have been completed successfully with needing just the time period of one month for me to finish the last few details.

Despite saying that, there are still a few things that bug me about the way Fitness First handled my complaints. These relate mainly to the way they communicated with me.

As I mentioned in this post, Fitness First took their own sweet time to contact me. Now, when I spoke to Ms Cook about them, she said that Fitness First did try to contact me, but they kept getting a busy signal.

Which struck me as odd, as my default setting for calls if you can’t get through is for them to go to my voicemail. Also, they had my email address. Would it really have been too hard for them to just email me to say, “Hey, we tried to call your phone but it was engaged, so could you give us a ring back or something?”

Also, NLP training for the win! They were prepared to rebut my points, but completely neglected to realise that I was not complaining about what had been done to my own account, but rather, it was my brother’s account. :3 So once we pointed that out, we more or less settled the issue.

Ah well. No more auto-debit for me. Nor credit cards either. I’m going cash all the way.

Original entry as appearing at Reach Into Your Soul.

[Nano] Do I dazzle you?

This was written on a dare by the Neon. :3 Also I have not forgotten writing meme, but am a bit too lazy + busy to post it.

“Good morning, dear Star. Do I dazzle you?” his smiling face, albeit cleaned of grit and glowing with health this morning, greeted her as she turned over and woke up from her sleep.

Sukina’s mind immediately snapped into defense mode. In a split second, she had taken in her surroundings and the role she was expected to play. The memories of the night before, when he had started the spell and overcame her defenses made her choose a self-defense technique that she hated but one that she thought would be appropriate.

She shrieked and started throwing things at him, beginning first with the pillows that had cradled her head. He laughed and moved away, evading the pillows easily. This was quickly followed by her grabbing things from the bedside table, which were much harder and of a much more dangerous quality, including but not limited to the candle stick, random books, and other paraphernalia. Princess tantrum mode? Very much so.

It was then he spoke, and very quickly too, offering a truce.

“Please! Hear me out, Star! I mean you no harm!” he ducked as a candlestick flew over his head, but as he straightened himself up, a book hit him square across his face, its cover opening to slap him hard. This had the effect of making him lose his balance, and as Anra fell backwards, landing on some pillows and hitting himself (as he fell to the ground holding his face) on the aforesaid candlestick. Only then did Sukina stop.

She remained in bed though, suspicious of him.

Anra took his time to sit up, sensing that the danger, for now, had passed. He opened his eyes to find Sukina staring at him, a jewelled box in her hands this time. That alarmed him, and he removed one hand to entreaty her to stop while the other was pressed to his nose. Sukina watched him as he did so, then noticed that he had blood dripping down.

“Puwhease,” Anra entreated, his words coming out odd as he pinched his nose. “Hweft mi xpain,” he said.

“You’d better,” Sukina got out of the bed and went to him.

As she did, she was aware that she stank badly, but this was forgotten as she knelt before Anra and removed his hand. Her words were not gentle as she cupped the area around his nose and took a deep breath.

“Hold still, this *will* hurt,” she emphasised, before channeling a small amount of energy to heal his nose. She had not broken anything, but there was a vein that she had hurt, which was causing the bleeding. As expected, he yelped.

And yes, Neon, more corniness *will* follow.

Original entry as appearing at Reach Into Your Soul.

DiGi BlackBerry Torch 9800 – Hot New Features

This entry was created for the DiGi Blackberry Torch contest.

Features, features on the wall, how will the BlackBerry Torch 9800 make my life hotter among them all?

Do you really need to ask? Let me count the ways in which the beautiful BlackBerry Torch 9800 will make my life the hottest of them all!

5 mega pixels. I mean the camera, of course. With excellent picture quality (I played with Ezel’s BB Curve and the 2MP camera had my heart. This, though… I might give a soul for). I love how it looks and how sharp the colours turn out. The other key features that would make my life so much easier? The fact that it also has continuous auto-focus and image stabilisation makes this phone sound more and more tempting the more I read about it. In other words, my photos will actually look real instead of just looking like… photos.

There’s also the fact of battery life. Mizuiro has been with me for about 5 years now, and the poor darling is really beginning to show her age. Her battery life which used to be at least 36 hours on standby and 2 hours of talk time is now coming down to a paltry 30 minutes (I’ve hung up on calls where the battery indicator was red and in some cases, she beeped me even though her battery was almost full when I picked up the call). The new BlackBerry Torch?

It’s got a standby time of up to 14 days on a UMTS network which I think would translate to perhaps 2 days of normal usage with me (you’re talking to someone who does Twitter and browse the Internet on her phone) and up to 5.5 hours of talktime. I like this, yes, I like that I can now make calls without worrying too much about the battery running out on me.

And the one thing that makes the phone, the HOTTEST item to make my life the hottest of them all?

Maps.

Never underestimate the power of GPS. With my family deciding to go on random trips and my brother and me driving around the city to locales we’re not familiar with, the fact that the BB Torch comes with a built-in GPS functionality and includes BlackBerry Maps from the word go makes it the item that’ll heat up my life! Plus it means that I don’t have to leave my house extremely early to head to events for fear of getting lost!

So will the BlackBerry Torch 9800 make my life hot?

YOU BET!

Original entry as appearing at Reach Into Your Soul.