looking for holiday options, I love the Maldives and been repeatedly. what I love is the peace and quiet, no fight for space (seen Spain deckchair wars in the press recently!), an actual lack of things to do so there’s no stress/FOMO, nice weather of course, decent food and great natural scenery. beach would be great but not essential.

i just want to be able to switch off, relax and just chill 😎

now if I could get all the above without the long flight (followed by sea plane) from London it would be brilliant.

any ideas are welcome

looks like Cochlear, Envoy and Med-El are trialling TICIs. Anyone on here a trial participant and what have your experiences been like?

have quite a specific use case where Live Listen on the iphone is being used to stream sounds direct to hearing aids.

thinking that using a dedicated mic like that in one of the Jabra Speak2 devices (or other similar conference mics) could do the trick by attaching the mic to the iPhone using usb-C. only question is whether the Jabra’s speakers will emit any sound and create an echo in the room?

looking for a large room mic that can connect to an iPhone in same way lav mics do.

reason for this is I am a hearing aid user and the aids generally only pick up sound around 1 metre away.

if I can do a lav mic type input into the iPhone I can use the live listen function to stream direct to my hearing aid the sound the mic picks up. I can do this already with a lav mic but this of course involves giving a mic to one speaking person and is impractical in a meeting room of 10-20 people hence need a powerful enough mic.

sorry if this is the wrong forum for this but even if someone can tell me the technical name for a mic that works on such a scenario i can try to find something suitable by searching on the internet/Amazon that is compatible with an iPhone.

thanks in advance

has anyone taken advantage of the patient support they offer such as introducing you to an implant recipient, etc.

what services were you offered, what did you actually receive and was it worth the time?

looks like most surgeons now treat this as a day case and you are sent home the same evening.

is there any benefit of staying overnight as an inpatient and worth pushing for?

I’m interested in the Hue options, but would like to see the products on display so I can make an informed opinion on what to buy rather than rely on website images.

i cant find any retailers near me with these on display, some have them in stock but not on display.

any ideas where i could potentially see most of the range? I’m in greater London and happy to travel a bit.

for clarity it’s not the light bulbs im interested in, it’s the slightly bigger items such as the Datura

the only other option is to order everything and compare at home but thats a lot of hassle

I’m interested in the Hue options, but would like to see the products on display so I can make an informed opinion on what to buy rather than rely on website images.

i cant find any retailers near me with these on display, some have them in stock but not on display.

any ideas where i could potentially see most of the range? I’m in greater London and happy to travel a bit.

for clarity it’s not the light bulbs im interested in, it’s the slightly bigger items such as the Datura

the only other option is to order everything and compare at home but thats a lot of hassle

a few years ago on mortgage renewal I managed to get an additional amount on my mortgage of £125k to do some home improvements and loft conversion. in the end I did not go through with any of the projects as they would only break even (at best) on the increase in house value vs investment - ie the house value would only go up by the amount of investment in the best case scenario.

so i decided against doing anything and planned to buy another house in a few years’ time instead and the money has just sat in a savings account.

so now the fixed rate is coming to an end and the interest rate is going from 2% to around 4%.

do I give up the additional mortgage funds and return it to the bank and end up with a smaller mortgage? or do I continue investing the cash, after tax I’m not making enough return to offset the 4% expected mortgage cost.

IFA is keen for me to make pension contributions with the £125k and I see the tax rationale behind it, but i feel it’s a risky move as well as the fact the cash is tied up for another 25 years.

full disclosure, house is worth about £700k (maybe £650k in current softer market) and mortgage in total is about £250k. It will be c£125k mortgage if I pay back the £125k additional funds that I borrowed.

thoughts welcome, maybe there’s things I’m not considering here? I’m not happy with the IFA eyeing up the funds and basically trying to pressurise me into transferring the funds to him and not actually offering advice nor options.

ETA I’m already putting £20k pa in an ISA and also putting quite a bit in the pension each year already. so both those avenues are closed unless I really want to put a lot more into the pension (I don’t).

hi all, someone I met at a networking event to introduce me to a travel agent business “you can do on your spare time, minimal effort, etc, etc”. I won’t name the actual company (beings with i). you also get 80% off holidays you take yourself.

to me it’s clear this is a MLM scheme. Why else would someone who claims to be a travel agent on the side of her HENRY day job want me to become a competitor rather than sell me a package holiday?!

there’s clearly more money in signing me up than actually selling me travel!

just wanted to see if anyone else has actually signed up and become a travel agent via such a scheme.