Comparison of Prepaid Data Packages: Telkomsel simPATI vs Maxis Hotlink

I have recently changed my postpaid Maxis line to prepaid and what a bummer deal I got on the data package for prepaid. Previously while on postpaid, I subscribed to unlimited data package for my iPhone and hence I do not monitor my usage at all. Just before I did the switch, in order to gauge which mobile internet package is the best for me, I monitored and found that on average I was clocking around 50MB worth of data per day.

With 2 weeks to go in the remainder of my stay just before moving, I had to buy a 2-weeks data and for what Maxis is offering on their 2-weeks package, there was a lot of compromise . I had to ration out my usage, only allowing myself 8MB of data per day, and could only check FB once in a day.  In fact, if you look at their 1-week package, the volume quota given was a ridiculous 5MB that I called up Maxis customer service to confirm if that was a typo. I told them as well that their packages sucks and got this response, "Well Ms Chin, our packages are catered more towards phones like the Blackberry that doesn't consume a lot of data" Hullo Maxis, what about iPhone users???  

Fast forward 3 weeks later in Jakarta, as soon as I arrived, Hubs took me to a Telkomsel center in Gandaria City (on my previous visit, I have already bought myself a Telkomsel prepaid sim card) to check out their long-term data packages. And below is their packages. Their 2-week data package cost almost similar to Maxis but you get a decent quota of 300MB. In the end, I signed up for the 30-days package which cost me roughly RM 35 with a quota of 1GB. And so far, services has been pretty good I would say.

First day in the office

And so here I am, finally in Jakarta for a 41 days stint, to be exact.

The gamut of feelings I was experiencing, from apprehension to some mild excitement caught me slightly offguard, to be frank. In all honesty, the ratio of dread to excitement is slightly higher on dread. All my previous stints to Jakarta has been more of excitement. On reflection, I realised that on those trips I still can call myself a visitor, they were short visits, and I always told myself this 'well I can wait to put this plan into place when I'm here for the long haul'.

But this IS the longer stay. Which only means one thing - ACTION. All those plans that I mentally planned out in my head in order to get assimilated into the society like join a yoga class, go visit a church, find some any activities/hobbies to amuse myself and kill time has gotta be executed. And on the home front, it is also SHOW TIME on the housewife-ing skills. So far my marketing (read: food and grocery shopping) trips has been rather haphazard. I end up at the supermarket, walking up and down the food aisle but totally clueless what to buy/cook. Hubs is more organised than me. :(

And therein lies my dread. I sometimes wonder how my mom does it. Simple things like going to the market and instinctively know what to buy. Perhaps that's my inherent problem. Mentally think/plan too much in my head until I don't know where to start. Perhaps I should just go out there, do it and hopefully everything will fall into place. In time we shall know...

The month that was...

What an eventful month it has been. With the condo renovation that we undertook in early September running slightly behind schedule, I had no choice but to fly back to KL in the last week of September to oversee the final bit: moving in of furnitures and getting the condo cleaned up i.e. basically in tip top condition for rent. I have one week to do this, because the following week I was due to check into SDMC for a laparoscopy cystectomy, which means 2 weeks of rest thereafter and no moving of heavy stuffs around, before I finally move to Jakarta.

Post-renovation cleaning is a biatch. Period. I mean seriously, I have never clean this much magnitude of dusts, grimes and stains. And this is after my contractor done one round of cleaning of the renovation dust. Maybe I'm nit-picky but heck I don't want to fly back and clean again prior to tenants moving in. So this is the one-time major clean up. All in all, it took 28 woman-hours over 4 days to finally get the place all spick and span. This is discounting I had Lil' Sis to help me on Saturday, so if it's just one woman effort it would have been 35 hours over 5 days.

To give an idea of how much work involved, on that Saturday before cleaning, Lil' Sis and I drove to Klang for some Kee Hiong BKT action. The last I had this for brunch, I was so full to the extent that the next meal I ate was only spinach soup at dinner. So with our stomach filled with BKT, we started the chores and cleaned and cleaned non-stop except for water breaks until by 6pm, my stomach was growling from hunger. I told Lil' Sis "Let's stop at 7pm, grab a nice shower before we head to Choong Kee in Damansara Jaya for some nice claypot chicken rice and a bowl of steamed soup each." With the game in plan, Lil' Sis called ahead to book in advance and half an hour later, when we reached Choong Kee, we sat down to a well-deserved meal. 

This is the condo balcony before and after using acid wash to scrub off the layer of stains.