I Like It On Facebook Status

You may be wondering what on earth is happening on Facebook with your female friends making sexually suggestive updates like ‘I like it on the floor’ and ‘I like it on the dining room chair’, as featured above. I certainly did and I got curious.
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Dusty Blog

Wow, it’s been like 7.5 months since I made my last blog post. Terrible.

I’m going to ramp things up again so stay tuned :)

What’s been keeping me busy? Well work and life as usual. But I’m looking to buy a Gibson Les Paul Studio now. Sweet looking guitar.

Which one do you reckon I should get? Alpine White or Fire Burst?

Google Geek Night

Hey guys, sorry I haven’t been updating this blog. Been a busy little bee! Thought I’d do a quick update and share with you guys my trip to Google‘s office tonight for an event called ‘Google Geek Night’.

It’s basically a short meeting between Google and their agency partners to give a presentation on the online search demand and insights into user search behaviour, more specifically focused towards online shopping. Oh yeah, after that it’s all about drinks, cannapés and socialising. I was happy that they served Becks beer, one of my favourite beers and didn’t go cheap with local beers.

Each of us also got a Google pack which consists of a Google cap and some Google ‘goo’. Yes, really it’s goo. I’m too lazy to take photos so you’ll just have to use your imagination :)

Above is the First Rate team after a few drinks and posing with our Google pack. Produce placement there, hehe.

We also got a tour around the Google office but unfortunately I wasn’t allowed to take photos. It’s their brand spanking new office located at Pyrmont, just opposite Starcity Casino. As expected, they had pretty cool decorations all around the office and a beautiful view overlooking the harbour.

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Australian Individual Income Tax Brackets & Rates

I got bored so I decided to create a spreadsheet and a graph to calculate the percentage of income tax, how much you earn after tax and the percentage of tax you’re paying against your pre-tax income.

The graph above displays these information with salaries ranging from $10,000 to $300,000. These calculations do not take into account any offsets but are merely simple calculations.

You can see the tax percentage spikes up around the $40,000 – $100,000 bracket and plateau’s a bit after that.

The tax rates for the financial year of 2008/2009 are,

• $0 – $6000 => 0%
• $6001 – $30,000 => 15%
• $30,001 – $80,000 => 30%
• $80,001 – $180,000 => 40%
• $180,001 and over => 45%

You can visit the Australian Tax Office website for more information on income tax rates.

Banking Affairs

Don’t you hate it when you get bank charges due to late credit card payment fees or account fees which you could’ve waived?

Well, I’ve recently signed up for a NAB Gold Banking which has unlimited withdrawals from any ATM around Australia and the world free of charge. The catch is, you either pay $12 monthly bank account fee or deposit $5000 per month to waive that fee.

The problem is, I got charged $12 for December’s fee. I absolutely hated that. Why? Well, I put in my application in late November and was only able to get my bank card almost 6 weeks later. Why on earth would I deposit money during that waiting period if I couldn’t withdraw it out?

Not only that. The biggest downside to NAB banking is that I had to pick up my bank card from a NAB branch since they won’t post it to my house. Apparently I live in a “high theft” zone. You gotta be kidding me. I live in such a quiet and well civilised neighbourhood.

To add to my frustration, they sent my card to the NAB Liverpool branch which is like 30 minutes drive away from my house. Did they even apply logic that they should’ve sent it to my nearest branch? Eventually they did though when I pointed out the flaw in their decision making.

Anyways, after my whining and whinging, I finally managed to get my $12 bank fee waived.

So, here comes another one. I flew to Malaysia on the 2nd of January for my holiday and due to my limited Internet access, I discovered my credit card bill was due and I’m late by like 4 days.

Couple of weeks later, I discovered that I’ve been charged $25 for a late fee. I was quite upset about it and steeled myself to resolve it when I got back to Australia.

So I went to the Commonwealth bank branch in the city during my lunch break and explained to them my situation and asked if, out of good faith, that they could waive my late fee since my history with them over the years have been good as I’ve always paid my bills on time.

Luckily there was this asian bank teller who was helpful enough to pass on my message to the branch manager since she was in a meeting. However, the initial Indian teller I got wasn’t helpful at all and didn’t seem determined to satisfy my resolve.

Anyways, today I got a phone call from the same Asian guy saying that the branch manager has okayed it and that I should be receiving a debit of the late fee to my account within a few days.

Awesome how they value customers like that. Little did they know that if they didn’t debit the fee to me, I would’ve cancelled my card and gone with someone else.