21:20 by FoxTwo Relax, this isn't a woman-bashing post. It's a genuine question.
See, recently a newly-acquired female friend started to want to hang out with me during my weekly sojourn to
Initially her SMSes were along the lines of:
Her - "Hey where you at?"
Me - "Boat Quay, pub name is xxxx"
Her - "Who's with you?"
Me - "Uhhhh you don't know them... Dave, Steve, Soon Hock, Angeline"
Her - "Oh, I dunno them".
Me - "That's what I said"
Then she didn't turn up. Understandable.
A few weeks later, she did the same thing again:
Her - "Where r u?"
Me - "Duxton, pub name is yyyyy"
Her - "Who's with you?"
Me - "Same lah. I don't have many drinking kakis ok?"
Her - "Oh, I dunno them"
And she didn't turn up. Again, understandable.
A couple of days ago, she did the same thing again:
Her - "Where are you?"
Me - "Clarke Quay, at zzzzzzz"
Her - "Who's with you?"
My question is, Why is it so important she asks "who's with you?" all the time?! We have no friends in common, none of the names I tell her will be familiar to her. Some other female friends have told me that she just wants to know if the pub is too far or too inconvenient.
Fine.
If the place is too far, or too inconvenient, you can already tell from my first reply - I always reply with location, pub name. You can decide to come or not from that information. "Who's with you?" is an irrelevant question. It has no bearing on your decision to come or not to come.
Anyway, this time I did this:
Me - "You decide to come then I tell u"
Her - "Yah I want to come."
Me - (gives directions, did not mention who was with me)
Her - "ok I see first. if I decide to come then I SMS you again"
What the hell? "I want to come" and "I see first" is a total reversal. Just because I didn't mention names?
No I'm not pissed or disappointed she didn't turn up. I'm more irritated by her constant "Who's with you?" question. I just don't get it - why do women need to know WHO are with me? Is it generally the same for most women, or is she just weird?
Guy friends are so much easier, by the way. The moment I reply with location and name of pub, they'll reply whether they're coming or not. Short, and sweet.
So ladies, enlighten me please. Why the need to know "who's with you?" if we have ZERO friends in common?
Labels: drinking, pubbing, Rant
00:45 by FoxTwo
You Are Doomed To Failure, And Here's Why
Image via WikipediaOne of the more common expressions you hear people say is:"Naw, I'm too old to do that anymore".
... or variants thereof.
You know what? You are never too old. That phrase is used by people who are resistant to change. They are comfortable, they are in their comfort zone. They just don't want to step out and try something new.
For example, for people born in the 40's, during the war, they never knew about computers when they were growing up. Computers in our modern-day incarnations never existed back then. The first time they ever touched a computer would be in their 30's and 40's (late 1970s to early 1980s). They learnt, they coped.
Just because something wasn't experienced in your growing-up years doesn't mean you can never ever do it. I personally never learnt to swim till I was an adult. Even better, I never understood Accounting till I started working, and saw how the numbers moved around inside the computers. It was THEN that I realised how simple Accounting really is. Yet, I flunked that subject in school.
Then there's a variant of the people described above - the defeatists.
"I'm so old, what if I can't do it? What if it fails?"
Dude, you'll never know if you don't try it. So what if it fails? You still learn something - you learnt not to do it that way again. The crap about "if I do something I will do something right, the first time" is just that - crap. If you never tried it you'll never get good at it. It's just a lame excuse to not try something new. They have just defeated themselves without even trying.
That's why there's this other saying - "practice makes perfect". Once you have tried something new and you keep doing it, eventually you're going to get really good at it, since you're conditioning your brain to do this activity constantly, and your brain will store the "pattern" in your memory.
It's sometimes frustrating to talk to people like that. You have an idea, and they shoot you down all the time. "No it won't work". "Nah too troublesome". "You're wasting your time on this". How much negativity can you take?
The ultimate people are those that you present proof, facts and figures, and they still will not trust you. It's like they're telling you "don't confuse me with facts! I know it's been like this for eons and none of your facts and proofs are going to change my beliefs".
Sometimes I think the old saying is true - if you hang around positive people, you'll have a higher chance of succeeding. They won't tell you it can't be done. They can see the potential of your idea or product, and they can see how great it can become if enough work is put into it.
ps - today's entry is not about anybody in particular. Don't speculate. It's just something that has been bugging me for a long time.
16:57 by FoxTwo
Death To The Google Sorry Page!
In the early part of the week, I was cut off by Google from accessing 2 of my blogs. I kept getting the damned "Google Sorry Page". At first, like everyone else, we thought it was a temporary problem. Common ways to resolve the "Sorry Page" problem was to use a different browser, clearing cookies, clearing cache, etc. However, it seems that this time Google has it in for us. All these measures did not work. I even made sure to disconnect from Starhub and reconnect with a new IP address. Same thing, no go. Google still showed the "Sorry Page".
Ok before we go further, this is the "Sorry Page" I'm talking about:
Yeah it was driving me nuts since I couldn't access my blog to do maintenance or reply comments. I kept hoping it would be a temporary problem and it would go away. It never did. Even up to today, I still see people twittering about this. A very good example is shown below:
All my blogs were hit except this one. The only difference? This one's self-hosted, ie not stored on Google's free blogspot.com servers.
It was VERY fortunate though, that the 2 blogs that were hit, had already had the default Blogger commenting system replaced with the more powerful Intense Debate and Disqus ones. Thus, I could still reply to their comments via email. In the case of Disqus-powered commenting system, I could even head to the Disqus website and reply to the comments from there if I wanted to.
So I set about converting my blogs from the nifty Layouts format to Blogger Classic templates, so that I can publish them to my own server, away from Google's reach. I succeeded early on in the week with my fitness blog. I was lucky - I found the same exact template which I used, all ready and waiting to be used as a classic template. That one was fast.
However, there wasn't any classic version of my gaming blog template, so I attempted to manually convert the template by hand into a Blogger Classic template. After 3 failed attempts, I gave up. I have no clue why they failed - the CSS was left mostly intact, yet it looked haywire upon previewing. After having wasted 3 days trying to hand-code the XML template into a HTML one, I gave up and thought seriously about finally moving away from Blogger platform. I was deciding between Drupal and Expression Engine but the theme I used was not available on those platforms. Thus my decision was primarily forced by the need to use the same theme, and to get it working FAST. So Wordpress became de facto platform of choice.
Long story short, it was only today that I completed the migration of my gaming blog to Wordpress. I only used Wordpress due to convenience, not because it's a "all powerful" system. The migration had numerous hiccups, and even their much-vaunted import functions FAILED. Utterly. Wordpress forums were no help. Everyone just said "it SHOULD work!". Yeah it should, but it didn't.
Wordpress was, and still is, very finicky with some themes and javascript not playing nice together, so even though you might like a theme, you can't use it because of some javascripts that you're running. Even worse, some themes look fine on one browser but sucky on another. I know Wordpress die hard supporters will not like me saying this but it's true - Wordpress is almost as good (or "bad") as Blogger.com. The only difference is that Wordpress runs on a server out of Google's reach, which solves my current problem.
I do not have a problem with Blogger platform, just Google blocking me from accessing my blogs. I also do not have have a problem with Wordpress as a blogging platform, just the Wordpress fanbois. I can use either, and I am happy to say that I like (or hate) both equally. None is "superior" to the other in my opinion and usage. No wait, I take it back. Blogger has an edge - I can write 3 blogs from one Dashboard even if the blogs are all self-hosted and externally published. With self-hosted Wordpress, 1 blog per installation please, thank you (without using WPMU and having to muck around with Apache settings and such).
So, now that I've finished addressing my more immediate concerns, ie getting the blogs OUT from blogspot.com servers and onto my own, I can slowly concentrate on perhaps, migrating them completely out from Blogger and onto other platforms. Perhaps I will revisit Drupal, or try out Chyrp. One thing's for sure - the CMS system that I pick to migrate THIS blog to, will need to have this theme readily available and useable.
Now, with Intense Debate or Disqus as my choice of a commenting system, I wouldn't even mind trying out other CMS systems and see if they would be a better, or at least, more interesting choice, than Wordpress. After all, ID or Disqus can be used with any sort of web site, even if commenting systems were not originally available on them!
Labels: Google, internet, Rant
09:04 by FoxTwo
Join Facebook, Make Friends! Enemies Thrown In As Bonus!
Why do you join a social network, such as Facebook? Well I could have used other social networks like Friendster, Orkut etc but right now, Facebook's the "in-thing", and almost everyone has an account.
So back to the subject at hand. Why do YOU join a social network? I bet it's more likely peer pressure. "Everyone has joined, I should too!". Although none of your friends actively "pressured" you, the mere act of them sending an invite to you is already "pressuring".
We all like friends, definitely. But, did you know you can now use Facebook to find new enemies? Yes you can!
Facebook takes the cake in that it's the first social network thing I know of, where you can make enemies really quick. I'm not kidding.
Previous incarnations of social networking sites, like Friendster, only let you add friends. You can't do much except to send each other private and public messages (Facebook calls the public messages "Wall Messages"). If you uploaded pics of yourself, people can write comments on them. That's basically the extent of the "interaction".
So now Facebook comes along, ups the bar by allowing 3rd party applications. All fine and good. Then people who write "apps" need the apps to be competitive. After all, competition is what keeps nature alive, and ever changing. We compete for food, mates, etc. It's natural. So we have apps that buy and sell friends.
This is the fun part. First, let's set a hypothetical background:
On Facebook, Ah Kow has a friend, Ah Mei. He installed this "Buy Your Friend" app and bought Ah Mei because she is his friend. Ah Mei has another male "friend", Ah Gu. Ah Gu doesn't know Ah Kow, but he knows Ah Mei. So he installs the same app, and buys Ah Mei.
So, this is the part where people get too serious and personal.
Ah Kow is not happy that a stranger buys "his" Ah Mei. So Ah Kow buys Ah Mei back from Ah Gu. Ah Gu, however, is a businessman. He finds that Ah Kow is a good candidate for "quick sales". So he buys Ah Mei again, driving her price up. He knows Ah Kow will buy her back and he'll make more money.
But, Ah Kow is totally pissed off that this weirdo Ah Gu keeps buying "his" Ah Mei. Pissed off, he goes to Ah Gu's wall and writes some threatening notes.
Tada! Ah Gu just got a free enemy from a social networking site!
You just gotta love Facebook... enemies are provided too!
Yes, the story I related is actually happening inside Facebook. This post serves to explain my sudden disappearance from all buy/sell apps, because I no longer wish to be asked to decide whose side I'm going to be on, because EVERYBODY TAKES THESE APPS TOO DAMN SERIOUSLY!
Labels: facebook, internet, Rant
19:44 by FoxTwo
The Aftermath of Mas Selamat's Escape
Simply Jean has posted the official findings from Straits Times regarding the escape of Mas Selamat, 2 months ago. At the time, there were jokes aplenty about the guards at the detention centre not having watched movies, of how prisoners escape from prisons.
Mas Selamat climbed onto the ledge located just below the ventilation window, pushed open the ventilation window and squeezed himself through it
So, one can see that there weren't any grilles at all on the toilet "ventilation window". After reading this part, I truly think they need more movie time :)
Then there's this part:
No one was actively monitoring the two CCTV cameras covering the outer and inner perimeter fences at the rear of the Family Visitation Block.
No one was monitoring?! I'd like that kind of job too.. to be paid to watch the monitors but actually not do the work I'm paid to do.
Why the heck install CCTVs anyway? Besides, nothing was mentioned about improving this part of the flaw. No recommendations to install motion-sensors or vibration sensors on the fences, for example.
In a re-enactment requested by the COI, a GC guard took 49 seconds to climb out of the ventilation window in the urinal cubicle, scale the fence, climb onto the roof of the enclosed staircase and walkway, and jump over the converged perimeter fences.
49 seconds by a combat-fit guard. Mas Selamat, who walks with a limp, probably took 2 minutes, if not more. Whatever the time frame, one thing is clear - the layout of the place sucks. If they had fences, weren't there guards on duty at guard towers? Do they even have guard towers? Perhaps they thought the place was a "Detention Centre" rather than a "prison" thus didn't post guards up at the fences. It goes to show - we view murderers and rapists as more dangerous than terrorists. We lock THOSE up in prisons with guard towers and where guards patrol the fences and the prison grounds.
There's nothing much to say about their "recommendations" except for the last one - to relocate the detention centre to Changi Prison. Should have done that a long time ago. Then, they can retrench some of the guards and tap onto the guards already working at Changi Prison :) Purely in the spirit of outsourcing, of course.
Labels: random, Rant, Singapore
11:30 by FoxTwo
In densely-populated places like Singapore and Hong Kong, we are definitely bound to encounter inconsiderate people. Take a look at stomp.com.sg and you will see what I mean. People putting their bags on the seats in MRT and buses, even my own entry on kids blasting music via speakers on buses etc.
Naturally when I'm with my buddies out at the pub drinking, subjects like this comes up. My buddies have some pretty creative ways to handle such people.
MRT
Situation - you're getting off at this station, the one the train is stopping at. Before the doors even open, you see a horde of people outside waiting to rush in without waiting for you to alight first. They are obviously not standing behind the "Y-box" to "queue up".
Solution - whip out your handy dandy cellphone that has a built-in camera. Start taking pictures and make sure flash is on (so the people outside can see the flash). As soon as a couple of flashes go off, see the crowd in front of you part like Moses parting the Red Sea. Everyone's trying to shy away from the camera :)
Solution 2 - If you have an umbrella, those with a long handle type, just stick it out in front of you, and the crowd will part too.
Situation - Train is crowded, and there's a seat beside an auntie (typically it's an auntie that does this), but she puts her bag on the seat and is obviously not about to remove it so someone else can sit down.
Solution - ignore the presence of the bag. Just move to sit down, as if the bag isn't there. The auntie will hastily grab her bag before your butt lands on it.
Situation - train is crowded, almost packed like sardines. One inconsiderate guy is leaning on the grab pole, thus other people cannot hold on to it for support.
Solution - push your hand into his back and grab the pole too. Make sure you fidget alot if he still doesn't move away from the pole. He'll be so uncomfortable at all the squirming and especially when you ram your hand into his back that he'll vacate the pole.
Bus
Situation - kids blasting their ipods/handphones, "sharing their music" with everyone else.
Solution - Here
Situation - bus is almost full, and there's only 1 seat left. The guy at the seat is seated at the outer edge, and is or pretending to be asleep. The seat beside him, the one at the window, is thus empty and unoccupied.
Solution - Wake him up. Whether or not he's truly asleep, he'll have to either move inside or make way for you to go in.
Well, at the very least, this list makes for interesting reading. These methods aren't guaranteed to work, and use them at your own risk/discretion! Why risk? There's no way to tell if the guy you're doing it to won't get violent and bop you on the head *grin*
12:06 by FoxTwo
Loyal Customers Always Get Left In The Dust
I bet it must have happened to you at least once.
You've been a long-time customer of Company X. You've been using their services for 10 years, 15 years etc. In all those years, at best all you've done is redeem some points for some small gifts.
Then, now you see Company X having a nice promotion for new signups. You call Company X up and enquire whether you can take advantage of the new promotion too, since you're not currently bound by any existing contracts. You even indicate you would not mind topping up some amount of cash, since you understand it's to encourage new customers to sign up.
Then Company X flatly tells you NO. No negotiations. No attempts to accommodate you.
Just a simple NO.
Indirectly, they are actually encouraging you to terminate your subscriptions with them.
Seriously.
There'll be people who are miffed that they get the cold shoulder treatment, and terminate all services in a fit of anger, swearing never to use Company X's services again. Then there'll be the other section that terminate and then re-apply again, hence becoming "new signups". Yes, Company X, you're giving yourself MORE WORK for LESS MONEY (promotional prices), having to terminate us, then re-process our applications again. Time and effort that could have been saved. Think about it.
Also, loyal customers like us usually don't get price adjustments to our packages. If you have never bothered to check the promotions, the price of $90 a month you've been paying for the past 10 yrs might only be $39.95 a month now for the same thing, if you were a new signup. Company X probably never even bothered to notify nor offered you a lower monthly subscription price. From a business standpoint, of course it's stupid. Why cut your revenue? But from a customer and rapport-building point of view, it's a disaster waiting to happen. When customers wake up and leave in protest, you have no customers. No customers means no revenue. It's better to have less revenue than no revenue at all
In light of this, doesn't this seem like we customers are encouraged to terminate services as soon as contract ends, and signup again later, so that we can get the price adjustments as well as promotional items/prices?
Yes indeed, all you service providing companies out there! Take heed! That is what you're encouraging loyal customers to do! You're telling us we should terminate as soon as contract ends, since there's NO BENEFITS whatsoever to continue using your services past the stipulated contract time-frame.
Where's the customer-oriented service that the gahmen has been trying to preach?
nb: - this post is not directed at any company or service provider in particular. However, it is inspired by a recent promotional offer by a prominent service provider, and the author was told he could not enjoy the offer, period. No discussions.
14:39 by FoxTwo
Foreign Talents And Their Skills
After reading xizor's latest entries, I feel compelled to relate some similar experiences with "fallen talents" myself.
Back in 2006, the company hired a "foreign talent". Let's called him "S". On paper, he looked very qualified, supposedly to have come from impressive backgrounds like having worked in large MNCs like Citibank and such. The list of his skills in the resume were pretty impressive too. He had good testimonials from previous employers too.
However, we noticed that he always, and I mean always, took MC on a Tuesday. Without fail, every single Tuesday he'd call in sick. Even my boss, who is normally very forgiving when it comes to these things, started to take notice. He'd call in sick when he is needed to come back on weekends for planned maintenance. He'd always leave before the official knock off time of 6pm, usually at 5.30pm or 5.15pm. It's like clockwork. Once 5pm comes, he'll disappear, and people just assume he'd be in the washroom.
Once, there was a job to be executed at 5.30pm. He was assigned to execute the job. However, he was nowhere to be found. My boss called "S" on the handphone, and he never picked up. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him trying to leave by the back way. I caught up with him and led him back to the workstations and "gently reminded" him of the pending job he was to execute.
Then he did something nobody expected.
He declared that he has no knowledge of how to execute the job. Then he just shoved the job request form onto me and said "I need to go" and disappeared out the back door. At the time, my boss just happened to step away from his desk for a couple of minutes, so "S" apparently seized the chance and disappeared. When my boss came back and saw me doing "S"'s work, he was livid.
A couple of weeks later, there was a planned maintenance scheduled for Saturday and "S" was assigned to perform this. On Friday night, he "urgently" sent an SMS to my boss saying that he'd hurt his ankle very badly playing football, and he could not even stand up or walk to see a doctor. Hence, he was unable to perform the Saturday maintenance.
On Monday, he turned up at the office. One would have expected him to at least walk with a limp or have his ankle wrapped in bandage.
He had NOTHING. He walked fine.
On Tuesday, like clockwork, he sent an SMS to my boss saying, and I quote, "The doctor advised me to rest for 2 days, so I have 2 days MC. I will be back on Thursday".
Thursday came, and "S" presented 2 separate MCs to my boss. One for Tuesday, one for Wednesday, from 2 different clinics. My boss, having had enough of his nonsense, showed the SMS to "S" and asked:
"So which of these 2 doctors," pointing to the MCs on the table, "advised you to take 2 days MC?"
Needless to say, "S" could not provide an answer.
Friday morning came. "S" came to the office, late as usual. Then, for some strange reason, he requested time off from my boss saying he needed to go home (to Clementi. My office is located far to the east in Changi) to get "some important documents". My boss asked him, if it was work related, we had all the relevant copies of the documents right here in the office. "S" replied that the documents were personal ones, and repeatedly assured my boss he only needed "half an hour" to get home and retrieve his documents and be back in the office.
Everybody knows that you can't even reach Clementi from Changi in 30 mins, let alone get there and back.
Naturally, my boss turned his request down. "S" returned to his desk and made a flurry of phone calls, speaking in his own native language.
So lunch came and went. By 2pm, he still was not present at the office. My boss again tried to reach "S" by handphone, and had no answer. At 2.30pm, my boss decided enough was enough, and made a call to the Head of Security, to inform them to bar entry to "S" into company premises. Then he informed HR to draw up the relevent documentation to terminate "S"'s services with immediate effect.
At 3.45pm, "S" called us ("us" as in the colleagues) and said he was stuck outside at the guardroom and unable to enter due to some unknown reason. We informed our boss that "S" was at the main gate. My boss called up the main gate and instructed the security personnel to escort "S" into the office.
So, "S" came in and was told to clear out his desk. All the relevant paperwork was already done and his services were terminated at 3.55pm, and escorted out by the security personnel right after.
We were joking afterwards that it was "unfortunate" that he had never gone through SAF's training. Otherwise, he would have learnt how to "geng" (malinger) properly and not be caught with such obvious lies.
Labels: Rant
16:19 by FoxTwo
In the continuation of this saga, my login ID is now fixed. However, they still left out a couple of things to grant me access to.
Not relishing another round of "calling the right people", I just went ahead and added the corresponding entries to my ID and just informed them that I did. Waiting for them to get around to adding it for me, as per stipulated procedures, will mean another waiting time of 3 days.
So, after adding in the right access details, I logged in, and came face to face with an empty email account. Nothing is in my inbox. I wonder if anybody had actually sent me anything the past couple of days when my name got listed in the address books again. If they had, I'd really like to see the error message they got, because I have no idea what they screwed up now.
After a little digging around (since I can't do any "work" anyway), I realised why my inbox is empty - the geniuses created a NEW mailfile for me, instead of using the existing one on the server.
Ah well, I'll use the existing mailfile as a "backup" then. The downside to this is, I have re-create all my filtering rules again. I have several people that I automatically blacklist - ie those always send me useless company-wide announcements like "Bowling Night!" or "Departmental Dinner!".
All which are irrelevant because I'm a contract staff - these events do not involve me.
Right now, the only stuff left to do on this whole saga is to reconfigure some network folder permissions and such. Stuff that I can easily do, but am currently not very motivated to do it. I mean, after all, I'm going to end my contract in 2 weeks. I don't foresee a need to access those folders anytime soon.
10:16 by FoxTwo
Previously on FoxTwo's Ramblings,
- My work IDs went missing
- My email ID got activated, but the login one was still disabled
And now, the story continues.....
Today, the login ID is truly missing. Yup, doesn't exist. Again. I called up a friend who is in the Wintel team, and he did a search for me. Yeah he confirmed that it does not exist.
My email ID is, however, alive and kicking. I'm so glad that important mails can get to my inbox now! It'll make the people who anxiously sent me email hoping I can act on it fast, to feel better about finally being able to find me on the address books.
Too bad they have to wait till my login ID gets fixed.
So, here goes another round of calling the "relevant people" again...
13:07 by FoxTwo
The Continuing Saga Of The Missing ID
Since the SLA for ID creation is 5 business days, they had until Monday, 10th March to fix it. On Friday, 7th March, I received notification around 5.30pm that my ID was ready. Yes indeed, they waited till the END of the work-day to tell me my ID was "ready". *clap clap*
So, I tried to login.
And, I laughed my head off.
They enabled it but still listed it as expiring on 29th Feb 2008. So, I still couldn't log in. However, my name is now listed in the address books of the email system, so people can finally send me work-related email.
Except that I can't login to read 'em.
Going by the book, I notified the relevant people again. This time, the head honcho of the Wintel team says he'll personally investigate, and send me an email to inform me when it's resolved.
Send me email... *chuckle*
I had to hold back my sarcasm while reminding him that although my email works, I can't login to read them. That is the problem I was calling him about in the first place.
This reminds me of the time I was fed up with Standard Chartered Bank, and I cut up my credit card and sent it back to them via their Business Reply envelop, to terminate ALL my accounts with them. A month later, Standard Chartered Bank billed me for "membership" for the credit card. I called them up, told 'em I cut up the card and sent it back to them via their own envelop. The lady on the other end said:
"Sorry sir, we didn't receive it. Can you send it again?"
BUAHAHAHAH!
"Sure, give me a new card, I'll cut it up and send it back to you again".
Man, Singapore sure is a funny place to work in.
15:45 by FoxTwo ... I'm sick of hearing about the escaped Limping Terrorist on the different blogs out there. Also, stop with Edison Chen already, ok? Pictures were leaked, people saw, people have already said whatever they want to say.
So, I hereby change the topic to something totally different.
Ok what's the point then? The point is about the way Singaporeans use English. This time, I'm not going to nit-pick on the spoken version. Instead I'm going to ramble about the written variety.
What triggered this off was that I was told to sign a prepared letter for my impending "ROD", ie end of contract and to officially state my intention not to renew the contract.
After reading just past the "Dear Sir/Madam" part, I gawked.
The very next line was "I hereby tender my....."
First of all, I am no royalty. I am not the President, I am not a commander of any large armed force. I am in no position to make any proclamations. Yes dear readers, "HEREBY" is used by people in positions of authority to issue commands or proclamations. I see so many people writing official company letters using all these weird phrases that should not be used.
Like writing a cover letter for a resume. "I hereby enclose my resume for your perusal"? Gawds. If I were the HR Manager, this guy automatically gets disqualified, without needing to read more.
On a related note, another common mistake I see in written communications is the phrase "cope up with", especially when relating to work or stress. You can only "cope with". However, you "catch up with" things or people though. Yeah I know, English is weird.
Then there's another one - "vent out your frustrations". When you vent, you're already letting everything OUT. So you "vent your frustrations", the "out" is already implied. If you want to "vent out", you're redundant :)
Ok back to the prepared letter I was told to sign this morning. Further along the same line as the "hereby" one, it says "... giving one month notice....".
I paused.
Hey man, I'm serving out my full contract man. I am not "resigning". You guys should know when my contract ends, don't you? Since you're my employer? What, you don't know? So how come you knew when to renew my contract last year without needing a letter?
Further along, the letter ends with "Yours Sincerely,"
I shook my head.
When you're writing official letters, it's "Yours faithfully," and the 2nd word must be in SMALL letters.
Needless to say, I didn't sign the letter. I threw it back to them and told them I didn't understand what they are trying to make me say (by signing it). I will only sign the next "prepared letter" if they get everything right.
They'd better hire a better secretary soon. Daphne might be a good candidate. Too bad she's already got a job.
Labels: quirks, Rant, Singaporeans
10:13 by FoxTwo
To Facebook Apps Developers....
When you FORCE them to send invites to 5 or 10 or 15 etc friends before you allow the "results" to be shown. Yes, many will spam their friends just to see the "results", but if your app is useless, it only gets spammed ONCE. Then people remove it and block it.
For once, go take a look at successful apps. Apps like Friends For Sale for example. You don't need to tell us to spam invites... we'll invite on our own because, we get $ when we do, and we can't buy people who don't have the apps installed unless they're on our friends list. You BET we'll invite, even without the need to force us to!
Not only that, people will continue to use/play with your apps if it's FUN and ENGAGING. Make 'em fun and the app will become popular. Force us to spam invites, it stays in our profiles only until we find time to remove it. And remove we WILL.
Forcing people to spam invites makes your app a "virus". That's how viruses spread - by forcing themselves onto others. Chances are, you know that if you don't force people to do it, nobody will come back to your app a second time eh? What a low tactic.
Giving incentives to invite people is another thing - more money, more points, whatever. As long as it's our concious decision to say "hey this app is fun, I want to invite my friends to come play it", it's fine.
Labels: facebook, internet, Rant
11:25 by FoxTwo
New Bluetooth Earpiece, And Some Ramblings
For me, I realised that blogging is a way for me to vent. Thus, I probably won't disappear from the blogging scene.
However, I am definitely quitting some stuff. I'm gonna quit drinking. I'm gonna quit smoking... NOT! Well, cut down maybe. I'm gonna lose myself in my workouts and stop thinking about things I am powerless to change.
Anyway, since I so drunkenly misplaced my bluetooth earpiece, I had to go get a new one. I bought the Sony Ericsson HBH-V702 Bluetooth earpiece. No I didn't get this because I have a SE phone. I got this because it's the cheapest 8 hour talktime set I can find on Ebay ($45.00).
The one which I "misplaced" was a Motorola H500. It too had an 8 hour talktime rating, which is perfect since my current phone, the SE K810i is rated for 10 hour talktime. When I went hunting for a replacement earpiece, I had asked a few shops if they had anything that is over 5 hour talk time. A couple of the shops actually told me "Sir, no such thing lah. Where got bluetooth can talk more than 4 hours one?"
I am sad that retail personnel can make such claims. If you don't have what I want, say it. "Sorry sir we do not have anything that is over 5 hour talktime". Don't tell me they don't exist ok? Because I owned one that was 8 hour talktime. What makes you think telling me that "they don't exist" will make me buy the earpiece that you currently have?
So how's the new earpiece, compared to the one I misplaced?
Sigh, I shouldn't have misplaced the old one. I still preferred it over the new one. For one thing, the part where it loops over the ear is entirely rubber. The new one has plastic backing to it, thus making the whole thing "stiffer".
For another, if the phone went out of coverage (ie "no signal"), the old earpiece would beep and let me know. If another Bluetooth device was attempting to connect to my phone, the old earpiece would beep too. The new one is completely silent! In fact I got so worried that I actually placed a call out to 1711 just to check whether it was working.
However, the V702 is much lighter than the old one, and after a while you actually forget you have it worn on your ear.
Ah well, can't complain for a $45.00 earpiece I guess.
Labels: bluetooth, mobile phones, Rant
17:05 by FoxTwo
Sony Ericsson Needs A Slight Revamp
In addition to my recent woes, I have drunkenly misplaced my battery cover of my phone (not to mention my bluetooth earpiece, dammit!). So, I called up the helpdesk, and was advised to visit a service centre to get a new cover.
All fine and dandy.
So, I went to one, walked up to the cashier and asked about purchasing a cover. I mean, there's nothing wrong with my phone, except that I lost the battery cover. Simple and quick, I thought. They give me a new cover, I pay them, and walk out. This transaction should be done and completed in less than 5 mins.
But no, I was to take a queue ticket. Ok fine I got one. There were 10 people ahead of me in the queue, and each of them, I'm sure, had a more serious and pressing problem with their phones than just a missing cover.
45 mins later, it was finally my turn. I went up to the service personnel and he went through the full routine - checking IC, keying in data and all that. Once that is done, I needed to sign the "complaint form". He said, the form was needed so that I could get my battery cover.
So again I had to wait. The technicians inside had to "process" my "complaint" and will release a new cover to me presently. About 5 mins later, I was finally brought to the cashier counter. However, I still couldn't get my cover, because ahead of me were 2 other people checking their repaired phones before paying. One guy was swapping SIM cards between his repaired phone and his current phone. The other customer, a girl, was scrolling through the menus and checking whatever. Only after a few more excruciating minutes passed before the guy finally got his SIM cards swapped and agree to pay for the repairs, and the girl decided that HER phone is good to go too.
The cashier even so kindly wanted to staple my new cover (which came in a plastic bag) to the "repair form" for me to sign.
Gah!
What should have taken 5 mins stretched almost to an hour.
Sony Ericsson should really start thinking about making stuff like battery covers available as "accessories" to be bought off the shelves in retail stores! I mean, there might be someone out there that might want a differently-coloured battery cover for their phone too, you know? Kinda like Nokia owners with their garish "housings"....
Labels: Rant
14:19 by FoxTwo Ok so I'm gonna get a little picky today.
Sometimes, it just irks me so much that Singaporeans, majority of which are "educated" with English as the first language, can still write and speak so differently.
A long time ago, I wrote this. In a sense, this post is like a "followup" of that entry.
So what has this got to do with the post title?
Well, it's how many Singaporeans pronounce "owe". Yeah I know it's weird, there's no N in the word "owe" yet many people say "own" instead of "owe". Saying "own" to an American is actually to tell him you beat him hands-down at something. This phrase "You got owned!" is very familiar in gaming circles. As a side-note, the phrase recently changed to "You got pwned!", thanks to a popular spelling mistake by Blizzard in the game Warcraft circa 1998 or so.
I had a discussion about this with a friend some time back about Singaporeans and the pronunciation of words. She said, a large portion of the human race is mostly visual, hence they see a word and memorise its pronunciation, instead of using phonetics on the words. It's fine to mispronounce "Lavender" as "lah-ven-der" instead of "laven-der", but saying "own" instead of "owe" is almost hilarious.
This is especially so for Chinese, since the native language is pictorial in nature. People see a Chinese word, and memorise it. Hence, they apply the same principles to the English language. Hence, words like "spanner" is still being pronounced as "spunnah".
Very few people I know pronounce words phonetically. For people like me, I normally don't stumble when I come across a long word which I've not seen before. I just break it down into its phonetic components and pronounce it. Of course, the English language has its own quirks too, like "sabre" is pronounced "say-ber" but "genre" is pronounced "jon-rer". I will always remember and laugh at an incident my drinking buddy told me that happened to him in secondary school.
He said, once he was asked to read a passage by the teacher. Like me, he's a phonetic speller and reader. He came across the word "quay" and pronounced it "kway". When the teacher corrected him, he argued that if it's supposed to be pronounced as "key" then they should have spelt it K-E-Y. LOL! At least the Americans got it right - they called the place "Florida KEYS" and not "Florida QUAYS", in my opinion anyway.
If you've always struggled with the English language, and one of your weaker points is spelling words, I've just given you a clue to help you - learn phonetics. When I was a schoolkid, I prided myself in knowing how to spell words that I've never even seen before, by just listening to how it's pronounced.
That is also my Archille's Heel in the Chinese language too - you cannot apply phonetics to Chinese. For example, nobody could explain to me why "mouth" (口 pronounced as "kou") and "ten" (十 pronounced as "shi") becomes a "field" (田 pronounced as "tian"). Why can't the pronounciation be something like a combination of "kou" and "shi" and end up with something like "kosh"? Yup, you guessed it, I suck at Chinese.
And please, it's "oh" and not "own", ok?
Labels: quirks,