Early Christmas present

Last Wednesday, just before the Deepavalli break, an email was sent by HR department to all employees who joined the company before April 1, 2004. That was the time the company implemented the change of incorporating the one month contractual bonus into the monthly base salary. That means the one month bonus was spread to be paid over a period of 12 months beginning April. In view of that, there is a 0.25 month (3/12) of outstanding contractual bonus which the company still has in leau to us. In the current practice, this outstanding amount is only paid to employees when they leave the organization.

For reasons of proper book keeping and administrative procedures, the management decided to pay this in leau amount to us in this month's payroll. The best thing is, this one-time payoff will be calculated using our current base salary. Whoa! That's a substantial difference of three years' worth of salary increment.

With this extra $$$, I can start thinking of shopping for Christmas presents for hubby and Yiu Yiu. Hubby has wanted to buy a pair of Timberland shoes but they are just so expensive in Malaysia. I tried looking for him in the many factory outlet stores when I was in USA early this year but couldn't find a suitable pair. With this extra cash in my pocket, I can buy him this pair of nice shoes and get 30% discount using Timberland coupons available from Coupon Chief, a one stop online resource for deals, discounts and promo codes.

For Yiu Yiu, I wanted to get her some books as there are some great BooksOnline deals. Unfortunately, these are meant for members only and to be a member, one must reside in the USA. Guess I'll have to look around for more books deals.