thank you x2

I was boarding this MRT train when I saw 3 empty seats in a row. Naturally I went for the one in the middle so that I could have more space. As I settled down in the seat, a man sat down on the empty seat to my right, and his son sat on the man's lap. I don't usually get sympathetic towards kids when it comes to seats on the MRT, but since the seat on my left was still empty, so I shifted my ass so that the father and son could have 2 seats together. I mean, if I was in their situation where a Berlin Wall was dividing 2 seats, I would wish something like that happen too.

The father thanked me. The son also turned to me and said "Thank you".

It's hard to find kids that well-mannered nowadays.

quote of the day

Excuse me lady, please allow a space for people to come out.
-- a staff at the MRT station platform

Loud cheerful voice with a tint of sarcasm and mockery. I'm sure the intent wasn't to shame anyone who stands in the way of alighting passengers, but it was effective. Very. The woman instantly became the focal point of many stares, and her expression was priceless.

Love your ride! :P

post no e-bill

Lately some of the telcos and utilities companies are offering e-bill to customers in a move towards going green and paperless.

My advice is, don't opt in.

I opted in, and realized that after that I will have to pay a fee for every bill I request them to send to my address. Doesn't make sense, you opt in, they don't give you rebate or discount or reward, but if you want them to do something they have been doing all this while, ie sending you the bill in an envelope with their logo, they charge you a fee.

Then they may argue, you are doing this for the environment. So? Does that mean you have to charge the customer for the bill request? If you care so much about the environment, why don't you allocate a portion of your revenues to save the environment? Oh, so you need to answer to your shareholders. Don't you have to answer to your customers?

Compare cust A and cust B. A goes for e-bill while B still sticks to paper bill. Let's say they charge $1 per bill. In 12 month's time B would have gotten $12 of "value-added service". And remember, once you opted out of paper bill, there is no (way of) going back (unless you pay).

If you want to charge for bill request, at least give some rebates for those who go paperless. Tsk tsk, only know how to take, don't know how to give.

singapore internatinoal energy week 2010

The Singapore International Energy Week 2010 starts today! There is a series of events happening till 4 November and I will be attending some of them. Policy makers, business leaders and academics from around the world will come together to discuss the energy landscape. The Prime Minister will also be delivering the Singapore Energy Lecture, so let's see if there's any exciting energy plan coming out.

Some of the events that caught my eyes are Clean Energy Expo Asia, Carbon Forum Asia... I know at least one of my coursemates is involved, so let's see if I bump into him.

Details are at the official website.

the force was with me

We were walking past this roll of gashapon machines when we spotted one selling Star Wars key chains. For the fun of it, we decided to give it a shot. While the girlfriend was inserting the coins and turning the handle, I pointed at the picture and said, "sekali we get Boba".

"Thump"

The capsule came out. We squeezed it open and guess what, Boba Fett.

URGH! I could have pointed at Darth V or Stormtrooper, but Boba?

That's the thing with some business minds. They don't let you choose, and they play around with the ratio. Worse if they put a mystery figure or ask you to collect the whole series, then you may end up inserting coins and getting lots of boba just to find Darth Vader to complete your collection. Luckily I didn't seriously go into Kubricks or Tofu Oyako.

ultimate coverage

Our neighbour Indonesia's 4G (fourth generation) network of hotspots will beat any telco hands down with their excellent cross-border coverage in Singapore and Malaysia. I got full bar reception even inside my office and in underground MRT stations. You don't even need to apply for roaming. You can see it you can smell it, I think you can call it 5G network. They are definitely obsessed with little red dots.

I wonder why T*mas*k Holdings hasn't bought over them.

The workers were thermal-fogging outside my office and I "smoked" my colleague about the haze outside the windows. He jumped up from his seat when he saw the sight.

you again?!

Went to watch the preview of the movie You Again last night. Starring a bunch of actors/actresses whom I don't know, this is one of those movies that you go into the cinema, sit back and relax your brain.

The story talks about this girl Marni who grew up as a "loser" in high school. Just as she becomes successful in her career, she discovers that her elder brother is marrying the big bully back in high school days. Now Marni has to shake off her loser past and strike back, if not for the sake of her elder brother's future.

Besides the loads of funny-until-you-tear moments, what I like about this movie is that it is quite easy to relate to our own experience. I guess high school (aka secondary school) days leave more marks (if not scars) on us than many other stages of our lives. There is always this past of us that we want to shake off and put behind, and there always seems to be a loser in the class... while it was quite mild in my school when I was still a student, I did see it in my classes when I was teaching. There are also some messages to bring home in the movie, and I shan't reveal too much. I guess one weakness I find is that they didn't really leverage on how Marni is a successful PR person now and develop it further from there. Maybe it is an irony that PR person also has enemies.

The movie opens 21 October.

customer is king (of destruction)

We were walking past this furniture store at Liang Court when we spotted this unique coffee table. We couldn't tell if it was glass or acrylic, so we went to feel it with our fingers. Glass. Just then, a staff walked out from inside the store and started babbling.

"... you cannot touch the glass..."
"... it will crack..."
"... the table is 2000 over dollars..."
"... if you scratch the glass then customer will not buy..."
"... we have cameras all around so we can catch and make you pay...."

Hello, I know your store is going the atas direction, but what are you taking us for? I don't look like I do, but I own a few pieces of iF design award winning and Red Dot award winning stuffs, not to mention some designed by Philippe Starck. And one of us is a new home-owner, so you have basically killed potential sales. Expert sales killer.

And by the way, you have just self-pwned. If a few fingers touching the glass will crack it, then what makes you (or customers) think that the table will not crack under the sheer weight of teapot and cups and magazines and newspaper and remote control?

Next time when you are in the area, do check out this trendy coffee table and the equally amusing staff.

Do people in the retail sector always classify certain people according to their appearance and assume that they walk into their store only to mess around or to enjoy the aircon, and not to buy and spend? Do customers need to show LV bags or Rolex watch or Ferrari car key?

stand a chance, sit no chance

What do you think is the priority of the public transport system?
a) to move most number of people from point A to point B
b) to move people from point A to point B comfortably
c) a bit of a) and b)
d) moola, duh.

Now, from the point of view of a passenger, what is of importance to you?
a) get a seat and reach your destination
b) reach your destination asap
c) get a seat (ie, the train can stay stationary all it wants)

The reason I am asking this, is because I get amused whenever I take a MRT ride from my station. You see, in the morning I board at the very first station of the line, and when the train arrives, many passengers from the next stations have already boarded and taken the seats. Ie, they do a loop-back. That means to say, they rather have a longer ride seated, than to stand throughout the journey. To people like me who board from the first station, it does feel a bit like play cheat, but hey it's a battlefield. It is not impossible that I have to stand from end-to-end.

So how do you decide whether to loop-back or go straight ahead? Let's say you are at Woodlands and you want to get to Raffles Place. Do you loop back to Jurong East and take all the way back to Raffles Place via Woodlands?

cover the spill

Today at work I went to the pantry to get a drink. I accidentally spilled some milk onto the floor. The sequence of events that followed is really beyond my explanation.

I carried my drinks back to my desk, then I returned to the pantry. I saw a lady there and I asked her where could I get a mop cos there was a spill. She asked if I spilled it. I did the cowardice and lied... (you know, it was like a hit-and-run!) She said the one who spilled it was irresponsible and should leave it for him to clean up. I said, it was right in the middle of the walkway, so chances were people would step onto it and dirty the whole place, so I cleaned the mess up with some serviette.

I got a scolding indirectly, but also saved myself from possible curses behind the back.

mini mori many pioneers

Headed down to Peek! last weekend to take a look at the Mini Mori Photo Trees exhibition. And guess what we saw?


=_=" Ok at least I saw the green exit sign.

By right it is supposed to feature videos taken with the Digital Harinezumi cameras, but, oh well... But anyway Peek! is an awesome new player in the local toy camera scene. Their shop is more like a museum than a shop with all the vintage Polaroid cameras and popular plastics from Superheadz, and I am not complaining. I am definitely going back to get some 35mm goodies for my camera.

shoot the puppy

I was walking through the rows of shelves at the library when I saw this title: Shoot the Puppy: A survival guide to the curious jargon of modern life by Tony Thorne. I don't usually read language books, but curiosity and the slightly-sadistic title got the better of me.

The book is organized in a dictionary/glossary style with the terms arranged in alphabetical order, starting with al desko (yes, not alfresco). The author tries to explain the origin and the usage of some unusual words that we encounter, be it in our daily conversations, magazines or at work. Some words have transformed from noun to verb, from non-english to english, from non-existent to being everywhere. Some of these words we have more or less incorporated into our life, such as diff in what's the diff, while others seem to have different meaning geographically. We seldom see BOGOF (buy one get one free), do we?

Maybe after reading this book, you can use some of the terms in your work email to make it sound chim. Just what on earth does synergizing mean?

10/10/10

Today is 10/10/10, on which day many people around the world are throwing the Global Work Party. Not to be confused with Worker's Party, this day is for celebrating solutions to climate problems. For example, in Maldives they are going to install solar panels on the President's office. You can see other ideas at www.350.org/workparty-ideas

There are Work Parties happening in Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, but I don't see any in Singapore. Well, while we may not be keen on organizing such activities, I guess we should at least know what is going on around us. And if we can't do things collectively, maybe we can start individually. Don't you think the weather is getting hotter these days?

2nd roll of film

I've finished posting photos from my first roll of film at my photoblog, so now I am moving on to posting those from my second roll.

It was a little disappointing, cos only 26 photos were developed compared to 35 from the 1st roll. I didn't employ a systematic way of experimenting, since not only were the films different, the lens setting was different, the developing labs were different, and the scenes were different too. But I highly suspect it was the film. I don't really like the effects but there are some slightly decent ones.

That's the thing about taking photos with film. You won't know the outcome until you have it developed, and the delete button really leads to the bin.

quote of the day

tower crane operator ah?
-- a Bangladeshi asked me

-_-" which part of me has the crane operator look?

running after train : life's a sport

On one hand we have public education videos and posters telling people not to board the train when the doors are closing, on the other hand they have this kind of advertisement on the platform screen door.

Ah, they didn't say no running on station platform, so you can have your 4x100 relay for all you want. On a side note, once I was watching a Taiwanese movie and in it, the police officer actually scolds commuters for running on the subway platform.

Really, what are we trying to promote in the advertisement?

quote of the day

china-man go anywhere also can bloody work,
but they come (insert company name) one week only they zao.
You know something is not right.

-- a coursemate on his previous workplace

robotic ice cream auntie

Saw this video clip of a robot selling ice cream in Japan. At first I thought it would be a cold metallic vending machine but no, it looks more like the auntie at McD's dessert kiosk! The robot actually picks up the cone, squeezes the ice cream from the machine, and adds the toppings.

Cute Japanese version of Carmen as background music :P

our world that builds the bricks

As a kid I grew up playing Lego bricks. Whenever I went to the department store the first section I visited would be the toy section, and the first shelves I rushed to would be the Lego shelves. The number that caught my eyes wouldn't be the price tag, but the 4-digit serial number that comes with every Lego set. It wasn't so much about buying, but more of realizing what possible things one can build with the basic building blocks.

I diligently collect the Lego catalogues even up to now, and it dawned on me that the design of Lego sets follows closely with how our world has evolved. 2 decades ago racing cars sets were quite popular. Then slowly they came up with container ships, space shuttle, airport. Now what do we have, crawler cranes and fire engine with inflatable boat, which follows quite accurately with the development of fire-fighting equipment of modern days. They even have a box set for wind turbine!

It puzzled me for quite a while that why Lego doesn't roll out any set with buses. Oh boy, they did in 2009 with the 7641, they did it again in August 2010 with the 8404, comprising of a city tram and a tour coach. They have released 2 catalogues in 2010 alone, yet the 8404 isn't captured inside nor their website, that's how new it is.

Their catalogue is like a little modern history book, and I can't wait for the next one to come out.