Category: reviews

  • The iiNet Mobile Broadband Order Experience (2014)

    Alternative post title: The Power of Social Media. TL;DR summary of events at the bottom of the entry. This post is tagged #firstworldproblems like the other one for obvious reasons. 31 August 2014 (Sunday) It is not possible to get a phone line at my current place and there’s no NBN access yet (boo), so…

  • Coffee: Campos Panama Ironman Geisha

    Back before Richard introduced me to better coffee, I’d just been an instant person. To me, there were only a couple of requirements for coffee in the morning: The coffee must be caffeinated. The coffee must be black. I suppose for the large part that hasn’t changed. Some thought I would be really picky about…

  • The oo.com.au Order Experience (2014)

    I needed a laptop for my upcoming overseas trip at the end of this month but my funds were very tight, so I was thrilled when I saw the huge list of manufacturer refurbished laptops on sale at oo.com.au at the end of the financial year. After a lot of research, I found the laptop…

  • Garden Villa Ishiuchi, Niigata, Japan

    For my second ski trip, we went to Ishiuchi Maruyama and stayed at Garden Villa Ishiuchi (ガーデンヴィラ石打). The lodge was only a 10-minute taxi trip from Echigoyuzawa Station (越後湯沢駅) and was located very close to the ski fields (5 minutes of walking?), so we never wasted any time travelling to and from the place. We…

  • Hotel Princess Garden, Shinagawa, Tokyo, Japan

    Hotel Princess Garden (ホテル プリンセスガーデン) was a comfortable five-minute walk from Meguro Station (目黒駅), so even though we were tired from a whole three days of skiing and a long bus trip back, we weren’t complaining. We didn’t check in until after 10 pm so the stay at the hotel was brief. Our room was…

  • Yamasanso, Nozawa, Nagano, Japan

    Yamasanso (山三荘) in Nozawa Onsen (野沢温泉), Nagano Prefecture (長野県) is really a ryokan than a hotel, but you get the gist. We originally wanted to stay at another cheaper ski resort nearby that everyone else was at (Resort Inn Chitose), but they were fully booked out, so Yamasanso it was! We got there too early…

  • Hotel Villa Fontaine Ueno, Tokyo, Japan

    We stayed at Hotel Villa Fontaine – Ueno (ホテルヴィラフォンテーヌ上野) for two nights (our first two nights of the trip) as part of a custom package deal from Cathay Holidays that also came with return flight tickets from Hong Kong to Japan. Well, it was actually only the hotel for me, because I bought my single…