MEL

Hi guys, hehe sorry for that long absence. Hope you people didn’t miss me too much? Had been busy compiling the ppt presentation for my Langkawi trip. Haha get your limited edition copy right now, price to be confirmed… Keke

Anyway here’s some interesting stuff for you guys courtesy of my good friend Tengyuan. Have fun…

http://www.tohzhiqiang.per.sg/downloads/nkfaffairs_pt2_CW.wmv

http://www.tohzhiqiang.per.sg/downloads/nkfaffairs_CW.wmv

Till the next time, see you!   ;)

Sighz, back here in SG again, & 1 of the first tasks that I have to perform once I’m back is to settle my bidding for modules again… Sienz ah. Anyway now that I’m back you guys don’t have to keep missing me liao keke..   :P

Anyway Langkawi was damn fun! Wished I had more time there though… Didn’t get to visit all the places we had intended to. But still it was shiok! Driving around & exploring the island armed with a Proton Waja, a map that looks more like it was made for a cartoon clip rather than for navigation, & my half-past six knowledge of Bahasa Melayu for asking & understanding directions from the locals. There were times we got lost, especially when you are driving around after dark & there are no streetlamps, but still it was fun.

The people at Langkawi are generally very friendly folks too… Most of the locals would smile at us when we drove/walked past etc. I found this to be very interesting because at some other places like Bintan where I went to the last time, the only people who smile at tourists are the hotel staff, taxi drivers & shopkeepers when you step into their shops & make purchases. In other words, only people who have a chance of making money from you will smile at you, & once they figure that you are not buying from them after all, the smiling stops. Worse still, I have heard that in some places like parts of China, they don’t even make an effort to smila at you no matter what the circumstances, as if you owe them something by being there. It is pretty different at Langkawi where the locals seem to be more genuine in trying to make us feel welcome & try to be helpful whenever they can. This is an aspect where I think Singaporeans could learn from them if we do want to boost our tourism industry.

Another observation I had made is that Malaysians in general (might be over-generalised as most of those I have seen so far only could represent maybe about half of the Malaysian states?) from the states i have visited have got a certain bad habit. This habit could have an effect if there ever comes a day that we have to engage them in a war (hope it never comes, I still prefer the notion of Singapore & Malaysia being good neighbours & trading partners). While the Singapore army will be concerned about where to get water & food if we do advance into their territory, the Malaysian side will have a logistical nightmare regarding the procurement of cigarettes to sustain the fighting forces. Almost every Malaysian man I have come across smokes, & it is not social smoking from what I have seen.

Haha enough of my "observations". Please note that it is just something I have gathered only from what I have seen. Does not represent the big picture, & neither is it supposed to be a malicious comment in anyway, so my Malaysian friends, please do not sue me for defamation k? Haha

Well anyway for those of you who somehow do have some intention of visiting Langkawi in the future, the cable car, Mangrove swamp tour (which you have to book from the tour coordinators), & Temurun Air Terjun (for those who know even less Malay words than me, Air Terjun means water fall) are die-die must-see in Langkawi! Miss them & you have missed the best parts of Langkawi.

Hehe OK, back to my bidding liao. May update more on the trip in my next posting, & possibly upload some pictures for the more kaypoh 1s among you. Till then, take care & have a great week   :)

Hey guys, I’m back at it again. Haha one last posting before I leave for Langkawi. Hehe something to keep you from missing me too much during my absence. In the meantime if you really miss me very much, maybe you could just look at the previous postings to entertain yourselves first lor keke.

Anyway it’s been a pretty eventful weekend for me, I must say. As they say, we all never stop learning new things everyday, unless we choose to stop learning- either by giving up or when the ego takes over. However, while some people say they like to learn from their own mistakes, I would say I do prefer to learn from others’ mistakes rather than my own if I could help it, which I probably did over the weekend. Ironically, the lesson I had learnt is that no matter what you are doing, never assume you are so naturally-talented that there is no need for you to learn- or worse still; try to teach more-experienced people how to do things which you are totally new to!

The crux of the matter: took a break from Samsung’s roadshow at IMM (which I did regret a little because the sales were damn good over the weekend) to go for the roadshow at the East side for a company, L, that I had previously worked for. During the previous 2 occasions I had worked for them, I had enjoyed the experience because I had felt that while we were working hard, we were having fun at the same time too because the people I was working with were friendly, fun-loving but at the same time professional when it came to serious work. This was the thing that I had liked about them because the balance between work & play was handled very nicely. The atmosphere was very conducive & morale was also kept high regardless of external influences.

Alas, all good things come to an end. Out of nowhere, a certain person whose background could not be established by those of us not from the "management level" appeared, & things subsequently turned out to be a BRUIS-ing experience; pun not intended. Firstly, it was very obvious he had totally zero experience in sales. That was acceptable. Everyone has a first time, but the problems started when he started to want to stamp his authority (wherever it came from, it was not obvious, but there was speculation he was probably the boss’ godson or something, though it could not be established, not even anywhere near established as we were totally not informed). He made sure in everything he said (his pre-talks & briefings & de-briefs to a group of 6 EXPERIENCED SALESMEN, which were entertaining, hinging on being hilarious sometimes), he made a clear distinction between personnel from the management level & basically anyone/everyone else. To his credit, however, he had learnt from the British colonialists by employing the strategy of Divide-&-Rule: trying to create tension between the Full-timers & Part-timers by holding separate briefings etc with regards to remuneration, sales targets etc. However he had failed to realise that the rapport between us had already been established long before his arrival & it only made us even more united, although the full-timers were more professional than us in a way as they took things better in their stride & did not voice their displeasure, although we could feel the tension even though it was not articulated explicitly. They just quietly went about doing their work. Now I do know if I do set up my own company, where I can get worthy partners or key position holders.

As if it was not enough, he decided to set ground rules for us. Too many crazy/unworkable/unsuitable/lousy rules that simply were contradictory against each other or were things that any self-respecting supervisors in the sales line would not even think of. To sum it up in 1 word, they were AMATEURISH- but he still had that arrogant & I-know-it-all air around him all the time. It was obvious he had thought that he was simply talented, & that we were all just pieces of shit. I’m not sure how to read it, but at the end of the event he asked me if I was from Poly. Anyone wanna help me?

That all said, I must stress that the I still like the rest of the company because the rest of the guys are really a great gang of people. It was just the appearance of 1 person that spoilt the whole show. Now we all know that all you have to do is put a clown in the management position & you have a circus even though the rest of the team is great. What he did & said almost all contradicted what I had been taught at all other sales teams by other supervisors/team members (all with years of experience under their belts) at other companies & events- but he still had the cheek to behave like he was the best & simply knew everything & whatever we were or knew were rubbish. Sighz, it does pain me to know that a company I had grown to like over the past few months is going to be ruined at his hands because it does seem that he is here to stay, & that is the reason I have decided not to go back there as I cannot stand working under such people anymore. Samsung is still more suitable & conducive for learning for me right now.

Alright enough of that. Hehe I’m going to set foot in Langkawi in about 19 hours. Please don’t miss me too much, & also remember try not to get me on my mobile til late on Sunday night k? Keke have a great week people!   ;)

Hehe just to show that I’m keeping myself well-informed about current affairs- I shall talk about current affairs again- about something that has hit a raw nerve. The recent NKF debacle is probably something that has kept many of us Singaporeans on the edge of our seats watching with anxiety, excitement & whatever not you have the events that have been unfolding. & with each development the anger & disappointment heightens. I could empathise with all that. Those are also the same feelings that I have been experiencing.

Anyway I believe the outrage came not so much from the facts as they were revealed, but more about how we all had been fooled all along. The trust we had placed, the support we had given, the silent prayers & wishes we had offered when we had reached the limits of the contribution we could offer- all betrayed by a despicable group of people who are lacking in integrity, & maybe even a conscience. Tell me if this doesn’t suck.

For one, though I also can’t justify why the CEO of a CHARITABLE ORGANISATION should be drawing remuneration that probably exceeds even that of the President of the Republic of Singapore, I believe I would not feel so pissed if they did not attempt to cover it all up. The issue here is more of transparency & accountability more than anything else. If your efforts can justify it, I wouldn’t begrudge it so much that you are drawing a high salary, but please be honest about it instead of lying about it! Furthermore this could just be the tip of the iceberg. If the CEO is drawing $600k per annum (which someone has said is peanuts for someone in his position), I wonder how many "peanuts" the combined allowance of the management board could buy. & we have left out the remuneration of the rest of the staff so far too. How many employees does NKF have? Perhaps it’s also a mystery just like how many patients they have right now. How many calls do we have to make for the charity shows in order to account for the payroll of the organisation? Just for the record, I once read an employee management book saying if we are paying peanuts, be prepared to get monkeys. The monkeys have run wild & are in danger of getting shot now.

Not only that, why does the CEO of a charitable organisation need to travel first class? I’m only hazarding a guess here, but I do believe that when the Mahatma Ghandhi travelled to London to meet the Queen, he probably did not even take the business class although he would have had the unconditional support of the entire subcontinent even if he had asked for a private jet. Why also do they have to lie about the amount of funds they have & also the number of patients they have? What else have they lied to the public about? If they are supposed to have so much reserves, what have they done with it? Please don’t tell me now that it’s all in a savings account with DBS earning 1% interest per annum!

Somehow this whole episode reminds me about an incident that I had witnessed a few years back. I was at the temple with my mum, & there was this man sitting on a mat outside the temple begging for money. He had a pair of crutches beside him & told passers-by that he could not work as his legs were crippled. Some aunties took pity on him & stopped to hand him some money. However after coming out of the temple & having our lunch at the nearby hawker centre, I saw him again while waiting for the bus at the bus stop. He was cycling past with his crutches slung behind his back! There was also another time I saw this man get off a taxi & proceeded to sell tissue paper at Newton hawker centre, asking people to take pity on a "poor man" & buy tissue paper from him. I have never bought tissue paper from such people ever again since then.

Or how about those stories we hear of people deliberately crippling little children & then making them beg for money in some foreign countries? Does it sound familiar when people are coerced into telling their sad stories on national TV (I might be wrong again, but I am not convinced that people will willingly go on TV to wash their dirty linen in public & cry for the whole nation to see in an effort to solicit funds which do not even go to themselves anyway) so that the other people hiding behind this facade can selfishly benefit from the sympathy funds that flow in after all that? To me both are comparable, the only difference is that the former is a rumour that has never been verified but the latter- no comments…

Yawn… Very tired… Think I have been drifting in & out of consciousness while venting my outrage here. It is really summed up in one word- betrayal. Shall not continue anymore for now because I do feel I have been getting somehow incoherent (quite fitting with the topic anyway, but whatever) due to my fatigue resulting from having worked long hours & still not getting even anywhere near an annual income of $60k, not to mention $600k. A parting shot- my Secondary school Lit teacher would have said her favourite line: these people deserve to be carefully shot & carelessly buried! But of course we only mean it figuratively; a morale wrong should not be resolved by another morale wrong as we will only be stooping to the same level as the perpetrators in the first place. After they are shot, they deserve a decent burial even though they are going to hell anyway…   :P

Hehe hi people! Keke to those of you who were wondering… Esp Ryu who asked in my blog where Shan Ding is (for those of you not in the loop, kindly refer to my previous entry), it is Boon Lay actually. Fits the description? Haha

Hehe had a tiring day today… Played ping pong with my buddies Simeon aka Peter aka Khew aka Junhao & Tengyuan. Then after that Tengyuan & I went to the gym & we left the place gasping for breath & almost needing an ambulance. Been a great while since I last exercised, mainly because I had been sick the whole of last week & the most strenous thing I had attempted was probably to push myself off the bed. So today, my fitness, or rather the lack of it, showed when at the gym. The only consolation was that my army buddy who had been through thick & thin with me in that green piece of shit did not fare much better, & we both duly embarassed ourselves in front of the 2 other girls who happened to be in in the gym at the same time.

O ya, anyway to do justice to the title of this posting, just to let you guys know that I will be out of town from the 19th-24th of July, so please do not panic if I’m contactable. Also please refrain from trying to contact me unless necessary because roaming charges not cheap lah hehe. Please also note that requests for presents or "tumpang-ing" of stuff to buy etc will not be entertained unless I am made an offer I can’t resist. Therefore do not harbour any thoughts of getting gifts or souvenirs or the like unless you are volunteering to send my laopo & I to the airport or picking us up after the trip. Hehe…

Well anyway have a great week ahead. Please try not to miss me too much when I’m away. If you really do, you could post a comment in my blog, send me an email, snail mail, fan mail, junk mail, chain mail, blackmail etc, but do not SMS or call me! Keke. Byebye   ;)

Sighz, been sick since Friday. Think been working too much recently & hadn’t much time left for exercise, or even to do my own stuff to be precise. Furthermore, working at Shan Ding (mountain top, for those who don’t understand Chinese) is sure to make anyone go crazy, vomit blood & fall sick. Prolonged exposure could even lead to death, trust me.

Prior to this experience, I had never known that there is indeed a corner in Singapore which is almost on a mountain, & where its inhabitants are happily going about their own lives in this little corner of theirs, oblivious to the developments in the world at large, outside that little bubble of theirs. FOund out about this only when I was sent by Samsung there to try to sell products to these SWAKOOS! Almost vomitted blood & went crazy. Wonder why it’s situated so far away from the IMH.

First sign that things were not exactly right with that place: During the first day, the top brands like Samsung, Sharp, Panasonic, Sony etc registered zero sales. But certain items were greatly reduced in stock only after the first day of the roadshow- the cheapo made-in-China brands of CRT TVs & VCRs! After that it was no surprise that I only managed to sell 2 DVD Players throughout the whole week while the VCRs were selling like hotcakes. Don’t ask me who buys VCRs at this time & age, but it really happened throughout the whole day! Who needs the national heritage board & museum etc? Just go to Shan Ding & you can get a slice of the Stone Age! Perhaps the people there are still using charcoal for cooking too as the auntie trying to sell the microwave oven had very depressing sales figure too. She did not have to be very good at Maths to do her sums at the end of everyday- we all know many different ways of denoting zero, aka nil, aka nothing etc…

One would have thought that there was no way of stopping the "invasion" of MP3 Players into our society nowadays, but whoever thought so should try selling it to the swakoos at Shan Ding! One "interesting" conversation which could only be matched by those I had with people who have never seen/heard of Plasma TVs in their entire lives:

Swakoo: What are those things? They are so small.

Me: It’s for listening to music. Want to give it a try?

Swakoo: Listening to music? Music from where?

Me: You could record your own music & play whatever you want using it.

Swakoo: Really? But it’s so small, where do you insert the TAPE?

Me: There’s no need for any tapes. The songs are stored inside the player. You could just store them inside & you can also replace the unwanted sogs later on with new ones.

Swakoo: Really? I thought they were used for listening to the radio…

Me: You can also use it to listen to the radio if you want. There’s a built-in radio receiver.

Swakoo: How can it be? You are making it sound too good to be true. How could such a thing exist? Such a small thing can hold 120 songs & play the radio? Don’t try to trick me into buying. I don’t even see an antenna, how can I listen to the radio using it?

Me: Welcome to the future, Mr Man-from-the-Stone-Age. By the way, where did you park your donkey? Did you remember to paste the parking coupon on its eyes? Otherwise you could be fined by the URA. I’m sure you’ve never heard of cashcard parking too?

Of course I didn’t say the last bit, but that was not an exception, mind you. We all met a few of such people everyday! There was also this guy who was trying to act smart & ask me some "very technical stuff: about a CRT TV he was considering buying:

Swakoo: Can I ask you some technical stuff about that set over there?

Me: Sure! I don’t get many people asking me technical stuff here at Shan Ding. The usual questions from other customers are: How much discount can you give? Any free gifts? Are you sure no free gifts or discounts? Don’t you think it’s expensive? Are there any other colours for the TV frames like pink (I’m not exaggerating, there are people who asked!)? & e most technical question that I get: How many inches is the screen? So I’m more than happy to discuss technical details with any customer who can understand. Go ahead & ask me!

Swakoo: What is the resolution for that CRT TV over there, & what is it’s contrast ratio?

Me: *trying hard not to laugh* Sir, it is a Cathode RAY Tube TV, there are no pixels, so there is no resolution or contrast ratio. Those apply only to Projection, LCD & Plasma TVs.

Swakoo: Nonsense! No such thing! Must be you have very weak product knowledge & are trying to bluff me! Just admit it if you don’t know, but don’t try to lie to me!

& he promptly walked off… Allowing me some relief from trying too hard to control my laughter.

Whatever it is, it was truly an eye-opening & interesting experience being a salesman at shan Ding. The only drawback was there seemed to be an endless supply of irritating PRCs, especially the one who said I was trying to rip customers off by selling my 42-inch Plasma TV at $4999. He had never even heard of such a thing as a Plasma TV & by the looks of it, seems to be a gimmick. Even if I sold it at $499 he would have to give it some thought before buying. All those he said in a menacing way, as if I had offended him. The problem was, he started screaming all those things at me when he was walking past & took a glance at the Price Tag. I did not even say anything to him as he did not seem like he had the purchasing power in the first place! But anyway I did reply him after that. I said I could sell it to him at $499 if he so wished. I then proceeded to ask when he wanted it as I needed time to get it ready to burn it as an offering to him.

Aiyah feeling tired again liao. Think I took too much medication. Byebye. Til the next time   :P