Entry 37 - Back From Cebu

I'm back from my 5 day vacation and I must say, it was a very relaxing one.  We had planned an itenerary, but we were only able to follow it on our first day.  Our original plan was to go around Cebu City for our first two days, then go to Mactan Island and Bantayan Island for the rest of the trip.  That was the plan, but what happened was on our first day, we went around Cebu City, got to visit Sto. Nino Church and Magellan's Cross.  We also went to the Crown Regency Hotel, where the Edge Coaster and Skywalk was.  After that day, we suddenly decided we wanted to stay at Shangri-La Mactan resort on Mactan Island.  Initially, we planned on staying for only two nights.  We would stay one night, go to Bohol for one night, then stay another night at Shangri-La Mactan.  But we weren't really into getting to a lot of places, what we really wanted was just to relax and take it easy.  So in the end, we decided to book the rest of our stay on Shangri-La Mactan.  Three days, quite expensive but I feel it was worth it.  The rooms looked great, all the facilities you'd expect was there.  Swimming pools, health clubs, beach, even a Timezone arcade.  Breakfast buffet every morning.  I was always looking forward to the morning where I would be able to eat a hearty breakfast, and lots of fresh fruit too.  We only went out of the resort a couple of times, one to eat dinner at Sutukil (this was very disappointing experience) as well as visit the Lapu-Lapu shrine.  We also ate dinner at Hola Espana, they served great tasting pasta and pizza.  On our last day, we visited a market in Cebu (forgot the name) which sold lots and lots of dried squid and an assortment of dried fishes.  We also didn't enjoy that experience as the taxi ride was really long and the place smelled, the type that sticks to your clothes and hair.  But I guess you really can't have it all, as we were really having a great and relaxing time at the resort, maybe some stress was needed to balance it out.

That Shangri-La Mactan was really a wonderful place to stay at, just a little expensive, but I feel its worth it.  Felt really relaxed and rejuvenated, felt my skin became a little smoother from this vacation.  But now, it's back to reality, maybe I'll add vacations like this as one of my motivations.  Really work hard, be sucessful and earn money that I can use for these kinds of vacations.

Entry 32 - New Laptop

I bought a new laptop yesterday, it's an Asus N43J.  The Asus N43J wasn't actually part of my list of choices.  I already did a lot of research about which laptop I should buy, and Asus N43J wasn't in that list.  I didn't even know that the Asus N43J existed until yesterday.  My original choices were either the Dell XPS 15 or the HP Envy 14. I chose these two models as they had good performance, and they were not noisy and not prone to overheating.  I already tried looking for these models but these two models are not available anywhere here in the Philippines.  I already looked everywhere and gave a lot of time researching as to where I could possibly buy these here in the Philippines but I just couldn't find it.  Because of this, I had to change my plan.  My plan yesterday was to look around at SM Megamall's Cyberzone, check out what laptops were available in the market.  The specs I was looking for is at least an Intel CORE i5 as well as at least an AMD Radeon 5670 or GeForce GT 325m.  As I was looking around, I mostly saw some low end specs, and I only saw a couple of models that was near the specs I wanted.  I went to a couple of stores, looked around, and at one of the stores, I was given an Asus brochiere.  Asus was actually having a new years promo, the brochiere had a couple of models they were selling with some additional freebies.  I saw the Asus N43J, the specs were within what I wanted, but was a little above my price range.  Freebies included a 500GB USB3 external harddrive as well as a Logitech wireless mouse.  I also kinda liked the look of the laptop, aesthetically it looked good.  I was intrigued so I tried reading about this model through the internet, but I couldn't find much information as this was a farely new model.  I wasn't sure if I was going to buy this model, so I still looked around.  I got to this Lenovo store, and saw the Lenovo Y460.  I actually had read a lot about the Lenovo Y460 already, and one thing I didn't like about it was that it heated up more than other laptops.  The specs were within what I wanted, price range was actually nearer to what I was aiming at.  Freebies were also available, including a wireless mouse and two laptop bags (the bags actually looked good).  So now I had two choices, buy the Asus N43J which I didn't know a lot about or buy the Lenovo Y460 which I had read a lot about but had some negatives to it like the heat issue.  Well, it took me a while but I finally decided to go for the Asus N43J.  What made me decide?  One factor was that it was newer than the Lenovo, it had a Blue-Ray drive, and a USB 3.0 port.  The Lenovo didn't have this.  I was thinking, since I was willing to shell-out a somewhat large amount to buy a laptop, why not buy something that was more future proof.  I also thought that I was already overthinking, taking into consideration too much of the research.  I was thinking that I wanted the perfect notebook, considering performance, noise level and heat issues.  I didn't know any of these things about the Asus N43J but I decided to buy it anyway.  I made a risk, and hopefully it pays off, that the laptop I bought would live up to what I want it to be.