The big gym question

I decided I need to do more exercise. Now the big question is, whether I shall stock up the (shared) gym of my condo by sponsoring them a weight machine (there is currently none) or whether I shall get a yearly membership at a public gym.

So far, I have checked out the price for a good weight machine for my condo's gym:

How much a yearly gym membership would cost, is still unknown. The gym I plan to go (Fitness First) publishes no membership prices on the web unfortunately.

What do you think how I should decide? Participate the vote...

Back from Zurich and from Thailand

The last month was not planned like this:
First I had to travel to Zurich for 3 weeks to support my previous migration project for a local bank in Zurich. I stayed in a very small hotel room (11 sqm):

Additionally, the hotel had no gym or other facilities which would be convenient for a 20-days-stay. The laundry was priced with 12 USD for 1 T-shirt! For WIFI on the room they asked for 350 USD. I realised I was back to Zurich again....
But it also had the bright sides of course. Here my last lunch break at work with some office mates:

After those 3 weeks I was lucky enough to spend 1 week of vacation sailing around Phuket with my father, Tess and Jörg. I am going to publish the video clip as soon as I have edited it.

When arriving back at the international airport of Manila, I had no Filipino Pesos with me (as our money got stolen in Phuket). No problem I thought: Just use an ATM at the airport Manila to get some cash. There were 5 ATMs at the airport. But none of them worked for me:
Two of them were offline.
One of them did not accept any international cards (I have no local card yet as the visa application is somewhat slow here).
Two of them were out of cash.
It was not possible to get some cash at the international airport. Can happen...
I had to ask the taxi driver to borrow me some cash so I could at least pay for the tollway fee.

Back to Manila, the biggest change is: Alain (another expat from Switzerland) and his family have arrived! Welcome Alain & family! I am looking forward to have another pal here to talk to and to hang out.
Of course we all had to rush out and celebrate Alain's arrival with a 10 cent soft ice from 7-eleven in the flavor of chocolate and cheese (yes: cheese!):

Today I made walk at 30 degrees air temperature to discover my north neighbourhood. That's where I took this picture:

That was a good way to digest my anger after I got a bill from the Post office to pay the import taxes of USD 90 for a book purchased at Amazon worth only USD 70! I don't know how the Philippines can keep up such a high import taxation... That is really a drawback.