September 28, 2007

I’m getting paid to write about this site but I don’t care, this is the best thing since sliced bread!

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Every time you sign up to a website it will generate disposable email addresses for you to insert into the registration form.

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It’s completely free and like I said, the best thing since sliced bread! Go sign up today.

Mutianyu is one of the several restored sections of the Great Wall of China open to tourists. It’s about 1km long, and featured a ski-lift to get up to the wall. (Super cool.) You can turn left or right once up there. Left looked easier so we took the natural option, heading right. It was in the midst of some beautiful, rugged scenery, the Beijing haze only marring our experience slightly. I sent out a heap of “look at me I’m on the Wall” smses and every second reply made reference to the ad - quite funny.

The Wall is incredibly steep at points. It’s also quite tiring to walk along, with few tourists making it along to the end of the restored section because of the effort required. Where the unrestored section starts is a sign warning people not to proceed further… which to any tourist is an invitation. We headed past. There were two choices - follow the wall or turn onto a section poking out, away from the wall. We took the latter, following a well worn dirt path through the overgrown shrubs covering the crumbling edifice.

What an incredible view awaited us. The track (pic below) opens as the section ends with a derelict battlement. Standing on this afforded a sight of the mountains ahead of us and the Wall stretching out to either side. It was the highlight of our visit and on the way back I enthusiastically encouraged all those puffing upwards to keep going.

To get down there were two choices - take the cable car again (boo-ring!) or the toboggan. The toboggan is a metal track which you can brake or accelerate down at will. (I took the second option.) Having prior experience at these, we daudled as much as possible at the top so the Sunday drivers wouldn’t get in our way. Eventually we could wait no more : glistening metal track beckoned. On the way down there’s employees waiting around most corners yelling through megaphones at you should you be doing something wrong. The soothing sounds of “BRAKE! BRAKE! BRAAAAAAKE!” fading into the distance as I ripped the corners is one of my favourite memories of this trip!

Mortgages have been in the news quite a bit for the past few years. The interest rate in Australia, which is already one of the higher rates in the developed world (atlhough Iceland is hitting their residents up for ~10%!), is going up .. and up.

Maybe we need a massive debt crisis like in the US - they dropped their rate by a whopping .5% in order to stimulate the market and also help people pay their homes a little more easily.

The trend in Australia is towards secured loans. They’re more affordable than other loans (as they are lower risk for the bank) and also good for people with bad or non-existent credit ratings. The problem is for many people without assets, the loans are secured by buying insurance. This adds more deadweight expenses to buying a house. (Could buying a house currently be the worst possible investment you can make right now?)

Personal
loans are good to replace credit cards. They’re the best way to start getting out of debt because you can’t get your personal loan card out to pay for a new pair of shoes. Also, their interest rate is normally lower, although places like Virgin have changed the field dramatically.