An ego pampering moment whilst I reflect on the year.  Please bear with me.

The Good

• Winning an award for my pendant.
• The work experience at Charles Green.
• Getting to go to Germany for Inhorgenta with my friend and getting one final chance to go to our favourite takeaway in Passing – the food is so good¹.
• Completing the final year of university and having a degree.  I felt that I wasn’t going to achieve a good final mark but I’m extremely happy that all the hard work and travelling expenses paid off.
• Getting a few chances to work on commissions, which I love.  Nothing brings a bigger smile to my face than turning a collation of thoughts and ideas, of the ideal jewellery piece, into an adornment they can actually wear, or give to their loved ones.
• Completing my website/shop².  Thanks to my host’s help I finally have an EPOS to actually sell my jewellery.  Now, all I need to jewellery to sell…
• Getting to go back to Hong Kong and staying for more than two weeks.

The Bad

• Nothing worth mentioning here.

The Forgettable

• Tonsillitis.  In particular getting is so close to my trip for Germany, where is was too cold.
• It was also kind of the reason I missed the awards ceremony.  Not good at all.
• My final exhibition.  My pieces weren’t bad, they just weren’t finished trying to get them perfect was not going to happen.  However, it tough me one valuable lesson: to keep the precesses less and simple!
• Eh…some of the football results…

Oh how rude of me… Happy New Year everyone!  If I drank I’d virtually clink glasses with you but since I don’t I’ll give two very Asian “victory” signs.

1. That is good pronounced with elongated o’s. [↩]
2. Designed and imperfectly coded by me. [↩]

I’m having a bit of a situation.

Warning: this post is quite long-winded, heh.

It’s happened earlier than I never anticipated - 6 months into an upgraded 18 month contract.  My signal was good (much better upstairs though) but it would get tempermental; just one bar of signal.  This wasn’t such a big issue as I’m not constantly on my mobile and only use it at uni. or in my bedroom(s).

However, for the last two months my signal has been limiting or none existent: a text would take an age to send after numerous “unable to send text” messages; wouldn’t be able to call; calls constantly disconnecting, which becomes quite a big issue when you’re ordering by phone.  Note, this is at the old house where I currently stay, the signal in the new house is fine.

My only problem was getting better signal.  Numerous online searching came to nothing but a booster¹ so I called Three to try and resolve the issue, and as I guess they mentioned the possibility of the phone (my HTC) being the issue, to which I replied with Exhibit A: tested sim card on a Blackberry but to no avail.   After a couple of calls back and forth on their end, an engineer looked into it and as promised I received calls back.  In conclusion the signal at the old house was no going to improve…well, it would be but not until the near future.  I was then given a couple of options:

1. Continue with the then-current contract but at a discount – to be fair the deal was great but it would have been pointless if I wasn’t able to use my mobile.
2. Pass on the contract to a friend or relative – who doesn’t own a mobile these days?
3. Go with a reduced deal (less minutes, texts…) – again, would have rendered my phone useless so that wasn’t an option.

I didn’t think there was going to be a chance for me to even consider cancelling the contract, after all I was barely 6 months into it but I decided to enquire about it anyway.  Luckily, they agreed and the cancellation fee wouldn’t cost me a fortune – this includes a very generous discount.   I’ve been reading about people who have receive bad signal but their network providers wouldn’t let them out of the contract – I count myself lucky there.

Now, with my PAC code I have to find a new network and mobile – I would’ve kept the HTC but I have to return it.   Decisions, decisions…

1. I didn’t want to fork money on something, which only had a slim possibilty or solving the problem. [↩]

Oops, appear to be slacking on the blogging-front.

I hope everyone had a good Christmas.  I got a book of sheet music for Boys Over Flowers, Filofax, the new Professor Layton game, a graphics tablet and clothing.  Lovely.

Now I’m going to save up money for a battery, which will last longer than 3 hours, for my laptop.

Just in case I start slacking again have a prosperous New Year.

Annie’s here!  I’m joking, of course.  I couldn’t do what they do, it requires actually talking to people, face-to-face.  I’m too introverted for that.

Although, yesterday I did something, which I never thought I had it in myself to do.  I called my mobile network company, originally to cancel my contract, and ended up negotiating.  Yes people, I negotiated.  I think I’m turning a new leaf…no, I’ll probably bail out next time. XD  I got myself a really, really good deal¹, which includes an exceptionally good mobile.  I also like that the post and packaging is free as well, hehe.

This might seem insignificant but I’m shocked and proud of myself.

1. Not to mention at a good I’m-a-student-therefore-I’m-broke price. [↩]