Bargain hunters

On the mrt to work (tryin to concentrate on my endowment management book) my mind strayed, as usual :P

Maybe abit excited abt stopping over in NY after my training in July and thinking of where to stay... suddenly remembered the hotel that bernard and i stayed in Auckland.

In NZ, we stayed at motels throughout becos it's cheaper and provides free parking (not to mention completes the whole road trip experience). Auckland was our last stop before heading home, and as a lovely surprise for me, bernard took advantage of corporate rates and made reservations at a really nice hotel.

Both of us are by nature not very extravagent in our expenditure, and bernard is a bargain hunter with a flair for negotiating (i really love that about him, that street-smartness). So, we couldn't help it...

- First, we asked if there's complimentary parking for hotel guests (No). So, where can we find the cheapest parking? (we eventually parked on the street, it's free at night, and we woke up early to move the car.)
- Then, itchy fingers me was playing around with the hotel safe and locked it before realizing that it's pay-per-use (pretty high-tech tracking system). So we went downstairs to ask them to unlock it n reverse the charges, cos we decided not to use it after all.
- While we were loitering around the lobby, we thought might as well ask (this one abit paiseh), do they provide complimentary bottled water? (No, but you can sit in the lobby where they serve iced water.) *grin* So where is the nearest hypermart? (A couple of kilometers away.) Can we walk there? (Yes)

Laughs~
btw we didn't sit in the lobby n drink free water okie... abit kua zhang!

So we strolled to the hypermart in the cool evening breeze, laughing at ourselves and enjoying each other's company. Really love supermarket shopping overseas. Bought water and groceries and cooked our own dinner (rather, bernard cooked for us) before dressing up and heading off to the Sky Casino. You can see our picture taken in the room in the side panel here.

Long after the trip, we continued to laugh at how we must have looked so cheapskate to the hotel staff!