Service standards

Previous week. I was waiting for my turn at a popular clinic in the same shopping center (Beauty World Centre) that had 20+ people ahead of me, and thought I could waste some time at McDonald's.

The service was lackluster. The queue growing behind me, and all they had was a one young cashier with a face you'll wish to slap, and a manager who was multitasking so badly and slowly, the cup of coke she had tried to fill with the auto-dispenser overflowed. It was also a delivery point, so there were delivery men hunched over their iphones, seated at the corners.

I walked off, pissed.

I went back to the clinic and waited another hour. The old doctor was worth waiting for. You know how good he is, when there are at least 5 different clinics nearby, but people were flooding his clinic instead. I'm just wondering why his clinic assistants are so under dressed and snappish. Overworked, perhaps.

These damn song lyrics...

I guess it's good to turn to love songs because they are comforting, but, please ah, we live in the real world lah, lyricists.

Here are two examples of song with lyrics I found that were not practical in the real world.

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Sean Paul, in Temperature:

Video Link

Lyrics:"...and gal I got the right tactics to turn you on, and girl I Wanna be the Papa, you can be the Mom, oh oh!"

Dey, brother. Children are heavy responsibilities lah, dey!! There's really nothing wrong with just proposing to have sex when by the end of the day, you just want sex. Don't need to bullshit, just go straight to the point.

You really don't want to be the ass who had to tell the girl that you can't really be the Papa and she had to be the Ma on her own terms, when the day comes when she tells you that Little Sean Paul is on the way.

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Bruno Mars, in Grenade:



Lyric: "I'd catch a grenade for you, throw my head on a blade for you"


Oh Bruno Mars, please don't go and over promise, and later on go and under deliver, can? Any sensible project-lead or boss will advice against that.

Why you go and play your best cards so early early?

If you never made all these promises, the girl may be far more impressed when the day comes and your hand(s) turn into smithereens after catching an incoming explosive device that was headed at her. She'll be thinking "Wah. This guy really love me and protect me, ah!" rather than "That time he already tell the whole world that he'll do this for me mah."

Then this guy also go and promise the following things in the same song:

-I'd jump in front of a train for ya
-Take a bullet straight through my brain

Don't know which insurance company will want to cover for this guy, siah.

You spammers.

To a particular Kevin21 that has been putting spam on my blog comments, I have something to say, and let's put it in the most elegant way possible.

Fornicate off!

And can you find a new job other than posting these links for whatever SEO Company you working for? Write some real content for fornicating sake.

Come to Mama.

Yeah, I just placed an order for one of this. $$$. It'll be my very first Apple Product! Yeah, I'm a little late in the game.

Singapore SIRI!

SIRI, with a Singlish Pack will be such a comforting digital friend to speak to, or argue with :P .

Of course, Mr Brown has already came up with S.I.M.I way before I drew the above.

My terrible relationship with library books

Public libraries. There are so many of them in Singapore.I live near one that's located in the neighborhood shopping mall. It's a place where you can find retired old men flipping through newspapers, students with laptops plugged in, and the occasional person who'll fall asleep in the free air-con.

My trip to libraries are usually unplanned. I may just happen to be helping my mom return the books that she borrowed, or require a free place to hang out at while waiting for the rain to stop. But of course, I do pop by intentionally with the purpose of finding a book I need lah.

Here's the usual scenario whenever I pop by the library.

Firstly, while browsing, something interesting will get my attention.
Soon, I'll get bored of reading in the library. I'll max out my library card, lugging 4 books home, promising myself that I'll finish them when I get home. Plus, I get to pretend to be an intellectual while lugging so many books home.

Reached home. Books will end up on desk.

Books will continue to be abandoned on desk, while I spend most free time I have doing this...


3 weeks will pass.



I have forgotten about the library books. But the friendly library would remind me of them. And then I'll lug the same books back to the library...

Return them at the book drop.





And since I'm at the library already, why not drop in for some browsing?
The cycle repeats.

Are you sure you are Apple (Singapore) ?

No way would Apple allow such hideous colors and fonts to be used with their branding!

Dey, let me drive lah.

My friend Nitya recently obtained her driving license, and has been making full use of it, picking me up from work, and driving me around. It has been enjoyable: being chauffeured around, headbanging together to Prodigy's Firestarter and criticizing Sean Paul's music.

One wouldn't believe that she's on a P Plate, because she's pretty darn good at it (except the parking part..)

I failed my Basic Theory Test twice this year, chickened out on the third attempt, and haven't progressed in the driving world ever since. She'll keep ask me "Oi, so are you planning to continue to learn to drive" and I'll be like "not now, too stressed at work".

I must say, I am envious of her new ability. So one night, after another one of the "Are you going to continue to learn to drive" questions, I said:

Working with what I have

jQuery, HTML5, Ajax, Webfonts, CSS3.....etc. JAYZUS.

There appears to be a million new methods and techniques for us to present web content, but oh god there are just too many things to learn. I don't even know where the heck to start.

Everytime I surf the net, I see something new and exciting, and it always made me think: "Oh how the heck do they do that?"

But there is only so much I know. Sure, I've attempted installing the very popular jQuery lightBox plugin , and tried writing a few lines of jQuery, but because I'm not a big fan of javascript in the first place, it turned out to be quite a pain in the arse.

At work, whenever I'm thrown a new assignment, I'll be far too ambitious with it. I'll be like "OH I WANT TO USE AJAX FOR THIS SO IT CAN AUTO-LOAD ITSELF" while not even knowing how to write AJAX. And then, I'll attempt to read up a little on it, realized it's too hard to learn within a few days, and abandon the project for awhile. When I'm closer to the deadline, I'll be in like "OH MY GOD PANIC MODE" and put together the project with whatever knowledge I have. And still, I end up still not knowing how to write AJAX.

I'm not surrounded by colleagues who are excited about these new technologies, because , good and bad, our work environment just requires the forms and applications we build to work. Never mind if the usability police arrests us. Never mind if the colors used is damn salah . Never mind if the fonts used makes me want to scream. It just needs to work. And so, I don't really learn anything new.

This catching up game is exhausting.

Some of my opinons on writing a story.

A good friend of mine recently got into film school. She sometimes consults me on her writing assignments and vet her scripts, which is a process I enjoy because I hardly do anything creative these days.

She told me to read a short story a few days ago, and I gave her my honest opinion about what I felt about a lot of things about her writings so far.

I've paraphrased some of what I told her. I thought it's good to share. Don't mind me. I'm not the most focus person when I talk. Feel free to disagree with me.

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I don't like you peppering your language with so many cheem words. Okay, maybe that's just me, because I'm very impatient, don't like flowerly language, and I enjoy my airport novels. I took 1-2 minutes trying to understand this short paragraph you wrote... of this guy waking up and just walking to the door. It's a short story. You'll want to establish your characters quickly.

Write about something you know. You're Singaporean,you know. You're not a white guy, so why are you writing about a white guy living and working in London? You've never even been there! Perhaps you're basing his character on the books you've been reading. But have you done your research properly? Why is he on Facebook? Your character's a guy that works as a kitchen staff in a Indian Curry house... what if subscription for the Internet is actually very expensive in London? How could he have afforded that?

Write about something you know. People want to read about Singapore. Life in Singapore. Your life as a Singaporean girl. Even if it's the most mundane part about you taking the MRT or Bus to work. Don't be shy. Your writing always make me feel like you're afraid of expressing yourself. I bet you have some classmates trying too hard to impress as well, but never mind, it's a learning process.

Look at the writers we know. R.K. Narayan gave us a window to life in India. Kevin Smith was writing about his himself working as a convenience store clerk in Clerks. Alfian Sa'at wrote short stories of different people living in HDB in Corridors. Marian Keyes was working in London, that's why she was able to write about London, lah! See, the beatnik guy you like... that guy who wrote Post Office. He also wrote about himself, what!

...Marian Keyes is clinically depressed, and was an alcoholic. But you see that some of her characters are actually her.

When I wrote my script last time, I first started to write about a friend who worked in New York. I haven't even been to New York before! Then my friend Fadhil said that I should just write about something I know, so I scrapped my whole script. That's why my script was about something happening around me.

I don't know what inspired J.K. Rowling to write her Harry Potter series, but perhaps that's because I haven't read any of her works. But I'm sure she herself is somewhere there in her works.

You're not writing an autobiography lah, but if you do you got to do your research well. Look at that lady who wrote Rape of Nanking. She killed herself after awhile because she probably couldn't tahan after relating some other people's tragic stories on their behalf. Quite sad ah, the life of some writers. Her job literally killed her.

Don't be ashamed of who you are. Don't be afraid of revealing yourself in your works. Just. Let. Go.

What's Craig David doing now?

10 to 11 years ago, the radio introduced us to the handsome Craig David, who was 19, oh-so-handsome, and sang about his dating prowess in the song "Seven Days" on him meeting a girl on Monday, taking her for a drink on Tuesday, and managed to make love with her by Wednesday, and on the Thursday and Friday and Saturday...

Nitya and I used to laugh, saying "Wah lao, have sex 4 days in a row. Not tired meh?

Fast forward to 10 years later. We were in her husband's car when "Seven Days" came on the radio. We both wondered what happened to Craig David, as we haven't heard anything new from him these days.

"Maybe he's no longer in the music scene" I said. "Maybe he's stuck in some lousy desk job."

"I know what he's doing!" she said.

And when the chorus came on, we sang:

He went to work on Monday
Then he went to work again on Tuesday
He will still be working on Wednesday
And on the Thursday And Friday And Saturday
And did OT on Sunday



On a separate note, I love the music video. It's following the style of Groundhog Day.

Jaywalker!

Spotted this while playing around with Google Street Maps. Now who is that, jaywalking in Jurong East?