Budget terminal

Our first time in this new building, and it feels a little cold and detached, even clinical. Too many jokes about budget or budgeting come to mind. :)

CommunicAsia

Geekland beckoned and i answered the call. The gadgets were cool, the technology was awesome and the people just great. Ok, so there were lotsa eye candy around, i guess sex sells. Great way to spend a weekday anyways. :)

ps. there was one incident which stood out for me, which was a guy 'trading' business cards with one of those models. Rather dubious proposition since it is pretty obvious the poor girl doesn't have a single pocket to store her own cards even if she had one, given the amazing scarcity of cloth in her outfit, so how to trade cards?
pps. how come all these models are all so tall and lanky one? If i want to feel like i'm standing in the middle of a bamboo forest, i would go to one and do so, like House of Flying Daggers.

Wordy posts

By the way, if you're wondering about the recent posts being very wordy, it's because my home internet connection is down, so makes posting and editing a little tricky. Feel free to add some words of your own in the comment section though. =)

Weekend capers

One particular sequence of events stood out over the weekend.

On Sat, we had a great father's day lunch at Central mall (or Soho @ central to others) at this jap pasta place. Yum! Then went to install solar film for the car (to the tune of "but you don't drive in the day!?" from some quarters) which was for safety, fuel economy and 'cos it looks cool (ouch, that pun hurted!).

The guy was pretty good and very meticulous about the job, and affordable too! At about 6 he was done and I went to look for wibblewamble in town. She was looking for teapots for our tea ceremony and had been teapot hunting the whole afternoon. I called her and she said that Robinsons would have the best range so she was heading there now. So I made my way down to town, and fought off some pretty bad traffic (and the odd errant lane switcher, grrrr) and found a nice parking lot at Raffles City even though it was pretty crowded. Had to make my way up the many flights of escalators to end up at the teapot section in Robinsons.

"Where are you?"
"I'm by the teapots"
"So am I!"
"I dun see you"
"Neither do I"
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah, I'm right here!"
"Wait, which Robinsons are you at?"
*zeenie thinking: uh-oh, there is more than one? xiao liao*
"Raffles City"
"I'm at Centrepoint lah!!"
"Crap! I'll see you there in a bit then."

So I got back into the car and fought the by-now heavy traffic in town. Got to Centrepoint car park and thankfully there was only a short queue to enter the car park. Then I found out why. The car park was full but each time a car came out, a car would be allowed to enter, just like any other car park. Also, they had the split level car park thing going where you had a basement car park and a higher floor (in this case 5th onwards) car park. What was different was that instead of putting the exit gantry beside the entrance gantry at the only route in and out of the car park, there were exit gantries places at the exit of the basement car park and the high floor car park. There wasn't any electronic status board to let you know whether to go up or down (there was outside the carparkn which said 'full' for both sections), so if you chose wrongly (like I did, basement parking fanatic), the only way you could go to the other section was to pay to exit the basement and go to the higher floors. There were absolutely no lots in the basement, and there were many cars circling, but no lots. I waited behind another car waiting for a lot for half an hour and then gave up. I paid a dollar to exit the basement and went upstairs, and up, and up, and up, and up until the roof. No lots, just cars circling like buzzards at a desert buffet. Oh wait, I meant singaporeans at a dessert buffet, but same diff. So down I went again, round and round and round and round and round, until the exit gantry. Guess what, it didn't let me through. Had to call the guy on the intercom who said "wait ah, I progamming into system now." Another dollar deducted later, I was free to escape the multi-level gridlock from hell, straight into the orchard road saturday night jam. I turned off at the nearest building two blocks away from Centrepoint and found a car park and walked.

Teapot purchase and a dinner later, we felt well enough to face the world again. I had gathered that ww had a similar experience just that hers was human traffic and she had to contend with a more in-your-face kind of crap. As we were walking out, we noticed that Timberland was still open. They had a nice shirt for me and quite a decent discount going, so I bought that. While waiting to ring up the bill, we chatted with the guy there and he told us about the various discounts, and one of our credit cards had a further discount. I saw a nice gore-tex jacket for ww that was waterproof and windproof, so we got that as well.

When we got outside, we stopped in shock. Not because of the long cab queue, that's always there, but because it was pouring. Absolute cats and dogs stuff.
Transport costs: $30
Shopping: $300
The look on ww's face when she realizing that even though it's pouring, you don't have to get wet because of your recent purchase of a waterproof jacket: Priceless

farting epilogue

There’s a sad epilogue to my tale of woe,

when the source of the gas decided to go.

I walked into the toilet to do the deed,

in an absolute rush and nothing to read.

I took the only stall of two that was free,

with some unknown guy next door to me.

It started off good, no signs of the gas,

and then the familiar sound came out of my @$$

“Ye gods” the stranger muttered and prepared to exit

The smell was pretty bad, even I had to admit

I hope he was done ‘cos he left in a hurry

One thing’s for sure, I won’t be eating anymore curry!

Word! Bwahahahahaha

cable tv

Starhub increases cable television subscriptions.

I don’t know about you, but I’m cancelling my subscription. I’ve had it with the numerous repeat telecasts, lousy advertisement timing and drab content. This price increase is the last straw. As much as I like the discovery channel, national geographic, and travel & living, I will not condone a course of action which will led to this price adjustment. I will provide them an option when I cancel though: a) calm and soothing voice talking about the unjustness of it all or b) lotsa yelling and pointed words towards some poor feller who is paid to answer the phones. Funny thing is, chances are that option b gets the result. We are not used to the voice of reason, only words of action (especially of the vulgar kind).

True stories on the MRT

What's worse than getting a seat and finding the person on your right falling asleep and leaning on you? It's when the person on your left starts falling asleep as well!

Then there is what I like to call the "hot seat bonus", where you manage to get a seat, but when your bum touches the surface of the seat,...... yikes! It's hot! Wth?!? And you try to recall if the human torch had been sitting there. So you sit on the very edge, utilizing butt muscles you never realised you had in order to maintain stability. Two or three stops later, you inch your way backwards and bliss, the seat is cool again. Joy.
Then a pregnant lady boards the train and you automatically offer up your precious cool seat (like a good boy scout). Drat!

Farting

Short of sitting on the throne, I find that there are simply no situations where I can do so with ease of mind and lack of embaressment. 
Example 1: my roommate steps out for a moment, and seizing the chance, I let go a ripper. However due to poor air circulation, my roomy returns and wrinkles a nose while I try not to blush.
Example 2: at the urinals, I couldn't help but release an invisible zephyr, and whadayouknow, another guy walks into the toilet and straight in the urinal area and waiting cloud of gas. Mutters something, does an about turn and makes a quick escape. All this while I am unable to leave the scene of the crime due to a constant stream that is flowing. Wonderful.
Example 3: I'm in the lift and I am the only one to get on at the ground floor. The (now-familiar) feeling of gas building up grows and it is a stinker! Unfortunately someone gets on at the second floor and woah, he holds his nose while I try to look nonchalant and avoid the feeling of burying my head in the ground.
Sigh

talk about taking them to the cleaners!

Saw this article while reading the news today and the frivolity of it just stuns me, and coming from a judge as well! He really should know better.

On a personal note, what do you do when a local laundromat screws up your laundry and leaves an orange stain on the sleeve of a white Italian shirt? I sent it back of course, and now they have gotten back to me and sent me my shirt yesterday…… with the orange stain still there. I called again to complain and they explained that the stain is very stubborn and they gave me two choices:

a) wear the shirt first and send it to them for laundering, and then repeat, the stain *should* slowly be lifted off

b) send the shirt back to him for some intensive stain removal, which may or may not do the trick and he cannot guarantee that my shirt will come out ok.

THIS IS MADNESS!! My shirt was perfectly alright, spotless and stainless when I sent it in! Why in the blue blazes should I suffer because of their incompetence?!? Argh!

In other news, cable TV charges have gone up! WTH?!? Everything also go up! It’s a monopoly and we have no choice! I really pity those people who signed up just before the price increase, because they cannot opt out without incurring penalty charges. Next time, I’m going to run a taxi service, where the rates per km creep up slowly, “because my rates have stayed constant for the past 12 kilometers already you know!”, and the commuter has no choice ‘cos already boarded the cab. Muhahahahahahaha

everything also increase

Aside from the upcoming GST hike, the recent NETs furore threatens to increase prices for consumers even more. That’s what happens in a monopoly situation. It makes me so pissed off I would cut up my NETs card if not for the fact that it is also my ATM card. Bleah.

What do you do...

when your clients respond to your letter and multiple reminders listing out options (a), (b) or (c) with "thank you for your letter, we have decided to select options 2 and 3."

As jeanie would say, Grrrrrr!!