One week and more in review

Last week was an emotional roller-coaster.

Saturday: Celebrate JC's 21st birthday at Waraku followed by chess party
Sunday: Attend colleague's wedding reception
Monday: Got scolded by grandma for visiting her in hospital
Monday / Tuesday: Attend a close friend's grandma's wake

Ok... Actually much of the emotions subsided after Tuesday and life was more or less back to normal.

Until Sunday.

During tuition.

31st August.

The day before Teachers' Day.

I received a few presents for which I was secretly pleased, more so when Kenny lamented that he did not receive any. Even if they are just high-class trash (so says Mrs. Ang, which is true in a way).



This week was more 'exciting'.

It's not often that the office gets shifted, and now that it's nearer to home, I was really keen to see it. In the end, even though equipment are new and some new facilities and equipment are available, I can't help feeling a little disappointed at the reduced capacity and somewhat unwelcoming feel of the new office. Then again, as Peter says, the rental is expensive, and I guess it makes sense for him to maximise the use of every bit of space available.

Lunch at Long John Silver's was an eye-opener. I really had to open my eyes wide to look out for the seemingly endless ants appearing in their drinks. The counter staff filled and refilled three cups with Sprite, and huge ants appeared every time. The exasperated guy meekly requested for a change to Coke, which I agreed to. Thinking this was a one-off incident, I went back to my seat to join my colleagues. Then Jolene spotted an ant at the bottom of her almost finished cup of Iced Lemon Tea. Examining Alicia's cup of Iced Lemon Tea, we spotted an ant in there too!

Together, we went to the counter, planning to demand an explanation. But being the nice guys we were, we merely told the counter staff to be more careful while the embarrassed guy refilled a cup wif Iced Lemon Tea from the SAME dispenser where the ants came from! Subsequently, we saw him continue to serve customers drinks from that dispenser! Hey dude! Is that how Long John Silver's got it's 'A' grade for hygiene??? I would have written in to NEA if I had photographic proof of their 'hygienic' practises.

More drama followed on Tuesday. On my way to PS for sp, I came across a face-off at the traffic lights outside the MRT station. A white car was stopped beside a white Mercedes cab, and the rear passenger of the car was trading Hokkien vulgarities with the cab driver. Moments later, he got out of the cab and motioned for the cab driver to get out of his cab to 'settle their argument', all the while blasting the cab driver with an endless tirade of crude phrases. Even when the lights turned green, he simply turned around to scold the drivers behind who sounded their horns at him! When they finally drove off, the show did not end. Speeding ahead, the taxi driver swerved momentarily into the path of the other vehicle, causing the other driver to execute an emergency brake, before swerving back out into his original lane! I'm sure that was not the end of the story, but that was all I saw.

Today was pretty anti-climatic by comparison. The most interesting thing that happened was my discovery that the Samsung i780 which I had bought online with my Singtel iTwo Value contract, at what I thought was a very good price of $138 only last Friday, was now available at $48 with the same plan!!

ARGH !!!

The Born Loser?

I received my NTUC Fairprice Plus card today. :-D

Q: What should you do when you receive a new credit/debit card?

a) Polish it
b) Find a good spot in your cabinet to showcase it
c) Keep it in your wallet straight away in case you misplace it
d) Find a quiet corner or better still, hide in your room, then slowly open the package so that no one knows that you got a new card
e) Tell everyone you know that you got a new card. Better yet, get them to sign up if it comes with referral fees or benefits
f) Sign on the back of the card



Being an obedient boy, I immediately got a pen and left my John Hancock on that plastic. But wait, something doesn't seem quite right...

What's wrong? Hmm...

Aha! Something's wrong alright! It turns out that instead of signing on the strip of paper on the card where MOST people sign on, I've made a fool of myself and signed on the magnetic strip instead.

Frantic rubbing ensued as I attempted to remove evidence of my moment of stupidity. All the while, I was slightly worried that my pen may have scratched and damaged the strip.

After my best efforts, I managed to remove 95% of the stain. It was then I had another worry. What if the furious rubbing damaged the strip?

As it should be apparent by now, ignorance is wreaking havoc, causing undue stress. I decided to take my mind off the matter. Hopefully my card is not stillborn.




Haiz... Yet another day of nonsense. :-(

I felt so noob today...

I was such a joke today!

Two weeks back, I made a request for a new DBS iB token as I'd misplaced it. I had to pay $20 for the replacement. This morning, I found it while looking for a pen which I hadn't seen for some time...

Then, while I was in the office in the afternoon, I noticed my socks did not look quite alike. Taking a closer look, I realised one is navy, the other is grey... (Nobody seemed to have noticed it though. Haha!)

I almost made a total fool out of myself with the next incident. Having tried repeatedly to connect to the wireless network without success, I was about to approach the IT personnel, Lai Peng, to help me uncover the problem, when I noticed I had forgotten to turn on my wireless modem...

What a joke!

Thus came a fitting end to the day when I reach home to find that I got a new mail - my new DBS iB token.

Awareness

I can't believe how lazy I've been.

Until I saw the date of my last post. OMG! Has it been THAT long??

Actually, there's a lot that I've wanted to blog about, things like my reservist experience, for instance. Somehow, I've just been VERY lazy. Yet for some unknown reason, at 2am, when I'm feeling very irritated by this uncontrollable itch on my right thigh, I just felt like blogging again.

Weird.

Haha... Let's see how long I can keep this up.

Reservist No. 2

I'm going back for reservist tomorrow! Still pretty unsure of what to expect even though this is my second one in two years. All I know is that I'll be marching.

And marching.






And marching.

That's what happens when your unit is participating in the annual SAF Day. Having participated in it during my NSF days, this is one activity I'm really not looking forward to. I'm just hoping to get more book outs.

Packed my stuff already, but I can't stop stressing over whether I've left out anything...

I'll be back!
(After three weeks...)




Query of the day: Why am I not one of those who do not get called back for reservist?

Bad day...

I had a bad day...

First, I had a big quarrel with a friend over a minor issue. Another arguement that got out of hand. What can I do to avoid all these?? Sigh...

In my frustrations, I somehow managed to lose my wallet. It was not until around 15 minutes later that I discovered the lost. Unsurprisingly, I was not able to retrieve it. Having already booked movie tickets for the evening, I ended up missing one hour of the show while making the police report.

Reaching home, I realised that I had omitted my SAF 11B from the police report of my lost possessions. Which means that I would have to make another trip down to the police station tomorrow...

Reaching home, I somehow managed to get into another quarrel with that same person, which was totally not my fault! Once again, it's another small issue which got out of hand...

Arghh!!! This is so frustrating!!

I hate to quarrel. Especially unnecessary ones. And I hate losing my wallet. Sooooo troublesome... Maybe I'm not fated to own a good wallet. My longest-lasting wallet stayed with me for 5 years and it only costs AUD$3. All those that cost more seem to have a tendency to get lost after less than a year.

Oh man...

What a frustrating day!

comGateway deserves 5 stars for their service . . . not!

Online shopping can be easy, convenient, and cheap.

It can also be very frustrating.

Frustrating when the order takes much longer to arrive than promised. Frustrating when the courier service does not inform you of the time they are delivering such that if there is no one around during delivery, you have to wait longer to get your goods. Frustrating when the company managing your order decides to impose silly charges on your order.

I placed a few orders with the ST701 spree service during the end of April and early May. Sad to say, I've been very disappointed with the service. On one occasion, I had placed orders for three items separately under the same spree box. I did not expect any complications since by virtue of the system, they would know the orders are placed by the same person, and it was the SAME box. Imagine my unpleasant surprise when I received emails for separate charges for the three items! Apparently, as the orders are separate, they were treated as orders by different people and hence, packaged as such. An email to the company in charge, comGateway, confirmed the matter. What a dumb decision! Why would I want to package my orders separately and pay extra charges for that? The company did not email me to check if I would like to have the items packaged separately, and there was also no mention of them providing such 'nice' packaging service on their website. It's the equivalent of a restaurant providing one napkin for each course of a three course meal and charging you for each napkin, without telling you they will do so, and without checking if you would like to have this service.

It did not help that I was already unhappy with the ridiculous amount of time they took to deliver my orders. According to the website, 7 to 11 business days is all they require to deliver your goods. My foot! Out of three sprees I participated in, their fastest delivery took 19 business days. My order under my first spree has not reached my over 25 business days! Although they stated on their website that the delivery time is not guaranteed, I still find it unbelievable that they can be so far off their target. Furthermore, after my email enquiry, I was promised my first order (the one above which is still missing after business days, and according to them, was initially misplaced) would reach by the end of LAST week. Well, I'm still waiting.

I've never had such a memorable shopping experience.