Ikea Coventry sale

Both my wife and I are Ikea fans and we decided to pay the Ikea Coventry store in the city centre a visit yesterday. The Ikea store here celebrates their first birthday and we were expecting some celebrations but were disappointed to find out there weren't any.

I had received a few coupons (for being a loyal Ikea customer) and one of the coupons was for a free copy of their new coffee table book 'UK at Home'. Was quite disappointed when I found out that it was not available in the store and the staff apparently did even know anything about it.

We didn't have anything in mind and had gone there to browse through and grab a bite. However, as it usually happens, we came back with a car boot full of stuff. We didn't buy any furniture but we got some great steals from their bargain corner.

They had cut prices on a number of products. I guess the credit crunch has hit them as well and like other retailers are trying to pull in their customers with bargain offers. The choice of candles was amazing - in various shapes and sizes and with different aromas. My wife grabbed a few. Our house smelt of apples and berries nice last night.

We also grabbed a bite at their restaurant.


Anyway, their winter sale starts tomorrow.

Woolworths' sale now on

Dropped by the Woolworths outlet near our house as I heard that they are having a closing down sale. I heard correctly but I was mistaken about the date. The closure sale starts in all its 815 outlets from Thursday (today). Read the BBR report: 'Woolworths closure sale to start'. Their website has been down for a while now.

There's only one message that says: "Our site is currently undergoing essential maintenance. We apologise for any inconvenience caused. Please check back later."

Anyway, I was able to grab a few bargains. However, was disappointed when I found out that reductions on the movie DVDs and games were only 20%. However the store was packed with customers and a number of the shelves were quite empty. I have never seen so many customers in the Woolworths outlet ever. If business had been that good before, they probably would not have gone under.

Anyway, I will be dropping by the store again and see how much the Nintendo Wii is going for.

Melayu Boleh revisited

One thing about Search Engine Optimisation is that you cannot afford to rest on your laurels. Take my 'Melayu Boleh' project for example - which started out as a competition initiated by Mohd. Suhaimy but later became a personal campaign to dislodge porn blogs from Google search results for the above search terms.

I eventually won the challenge on February 02, 2007. That was a great effort and in fact, the first results page didn't have any links to porn sits for a while.

On January 12, 2007, my post was #4 in Google search results for melayu boleh. It even went up to #2 and I think that was the highest it ever went up to.

It later dropped and I had to work hard to bring it back to #8 position in Google - 18 Aug 2008.

However, I stopped bothering after a while and now my post is nowhere to be found on Google results.

You can Digg it here.

Gift cards for this holiday season

The holiday season is almost upon us and the almost everyone I meet seems to be in a jolly mood. It's also the time of the season to buy gifts. Not really sure how the current recession is going to affect the sales. Most of my friends are looking for bargains online.

One thing that will not change will be the big queues in stores at the returns counter where people go to exchange unwanted gifts. I was wondering whether giving prepaid gift cards would be a better alternative. People could then go and buy things that they really wanted or needed.

According to a study by commissioned by Blackhawk Network, the creator of the Gift Card Mall™, 70% of the respondents felt that gift cards are a useful gift since the recipient can get what he/she wants. Further more, the National Retail Federation’s 2009 NRF holiday survey showed 54.9% of consumers would like to receive a gift card this holiday season.

I guess that's not really surprising. I would prefer to receive a gift card rather than a sweater that did not fit me.

I am sure some of you might be worried that with several retailers in financial trouble or even going under, they might not accept gift card. However, the fact is that most retailers are not going bankrupt and those that were are getting rescued and there is no evidence to show that retailers are not accepting gift cards.

So if you haven't thought about your gifts as yet, you might want to consider giving gift cards.

Experience of buying a phone from the 3 Store Coventry

Ever since we arrived in the UK, I have always used prepaid mobile services or 'pay-as-you-go' as it's known here in the UK. I started with O2 and then moved on to Vodafone, followed by Tesco mobile and finally 3. So far, I have been very happy with the service provided by 3.

However, of late I have discovered that I have been reloading quite often and was shocked to discover that we sometimes spent more than £30 a month. This is despite the fact that most of my calls are to my wife who was also on 3 pay-as-you-go service. My wife went ahead and bought a Sony Ericsson K660i from the 3 site. The phone was delivered within a few days and she also received a voucher worth £20 to buy accessories from their website.

I too decided to get a phone for myself and I was still undecided on the phone. One of my friends told me that the stores had some greats refurbished phone which I might be able to get at a discount. So on Monday, I drove over to Coventry city centre and went to the 3 Store there. Unfortunately, according to the salesgirl, they didn't have any refurbished phones. So I went around and had a look at the various phone they had on display. I really want the Nokia N96 but it was way beyond my budget (cheapest deal was £30 per month). I finally went for the Sony Ericsson W595 for a 18 month contract for £17 per month. 3 has this promotion going on where existing members could recommend a friend (or family and both would receive a £30 credit. However, I discovered that I couldn't put my wife as a recommender because she had been with 3 for less than a month. Plus I didn't receive any vouchers.

I was really angry when later on back home, I discovered that I couldn't use Skype with the phone even though it was advertised as Skype compatible. Anyway, I went back to the store next day and the sales people were surprised as well, when they learnt that the phone was not Skype compatible. They were not very happy when I told them that I wanted to change the phone.

I was shocked to learn that unlike buying phones from their website, you were not allowed to return phones bought from their actual stores. However, in my case they were willing to make an exception as they realised that it was their mistake. The main reason I bought the phone was because it was Skype compatible (or so they said).

Gags (the guy who served me) was quite friendly but he seemed to be poorly trained. He told me that I could choose another phone but I won't be able to reduce the amount that I paid per month. The only phone there for £17 per month was the Sony Ericsson K700i. I should have taken only a couple of minutes to complete the whole process but the managers was busy or something. There was no way I was going to come back again and decided to wait until I got mad, raised my voice a bit and told them that I wanted out. The sales guy told me I couldn't and this went on for a while until their manager finally came out.

I finally got the new phone but was dissatisfied with the whole process. It took almost an hour for me to get the phone changed and that shouldn't happen. I am still loyal to 3 but my advice for anybody who want to sign up with 3 - buy it from the online 3 Store.

1. It's fast
2. You can return the phone if you don't like it
3. You get some nice surprises - like a £20 voucher.

Critical thinking

Recently someone asked me my opinion about "critical thinking" as part of their research. More precisely, what is critical thinking according to me.

The first think that came to my mind was "Thinking outside the box!" However, when I was asked to elaborate what I meant by that, I suddenly realised that I couldn't explain.

What do we mean when we say, "thinking outside the box" and what box are we referring to?

Anyway, to me, critical thinking refers to opening up our minds to several possible solutions to a problem and reflecting during the whole process. It also means avoiding all possible bias that may cloud the thought process. It's really hard to put aside all the bias that we may have inside our heads and this in turn makes it hard for us to think objectively.

For example, in an election, can we vote for someone - totally ignoring the skin colour, religion, race, etc. and only looking at their track record and all available information on the candidates.

Made me think that if we place ourselves in that situation would we be able to think objectively and justly as well.

So what do you understand by critical thinking?

High achiever wife

Last night I bundled up the kids and picked up my wife from Pool Meadow bus station in Coventry City Centre. She was coming back from a conference in London. This was her first ever since she started her PhD two years ago and I was delighted when I learnt that she received a "Promising paper" award at the conference. It's such a big deal because some of the top marketing gurus from all around the World were at the conference as well.

I am really happy for her and am wondering whether I can achieve something like that in the near future as well. Unlike me, my wife is a perfectionist. She refused to go to a conference until she was sure it was near perfect and she's still not happy with it. I am more of a relaxed last minute person and during my first year, presented my half baked paper at a doctoral conference. We are like Yin and Yang. However, I think we both need to come to a balance - with myself taking it more seriously and she - relaxing a bit.

Do any of you have a high achieving partner?