Just to announce, I have managed to get on a Chat Box for my blog. Go on, try to spot it! Hehe. This is to satisfy those of you who are not Friendster members but wanna post comments all the same. Have fun, but please do not abuse it!
Some random pictures I took recently while on an outing with the lao po & xiao lao po. Finally the haze is lifting, can go outdoors for a walk liao!
And no, we did not go on an overseas trip…
If that trust is broken too often, it does not matter anymore that in those many cases, a handful can be accounted for by genuinely excusable reasons…
Anyway, something totally unrelated, but I thought would interest some of you. Read the comments in there as well: http://www.womendiary.net/2006/10/22/wee-shu-min-the-slammed-rjc-girl/
Not many comments from me, except that if it was true that her Dad really claimed people were intruding into her privacy by reading her blog, then those people recently convicted under the Sedition Act shouldn’t have been convicted; and also how the heck did she know about what that Derrick guy write without reading his blog and thereby intruding into his privacy?
Yesterday morning, I had a dream. (Yes! You read it right! Morning. Nowadays I only get to go to bed in the morning, and wake up very soon after.) A weird dream. The contents:
I was the CEO of a hotel. A relatively new and small one. So to make a name for my hotel, I decided to offer my ballroom to this mega NGO for their AGM for free. During this event we would try our best to impress them and then we would be famous all over, with many people coming (& paying) to use our ballroom in the future, and possibly even taking up some of our rooms or suites! Never mind that we could be making a loss for this event. Think long-term, I told my mangers. In future after we become famous & reputable we could be making obscene amounts of money!
To prepare, I got the whole hotel repainted. Potted plants were placed everywhere. The staff were constantly reminded to smile. The lifts were upgraded, escalators as well. Plasma screens installed in the ballroom. Even the cutlery etc were brand new. Cleaners and chamber-maids were made to "stand by area", army style, with army standards thrown in for good measure. Perfect! Now that was bound to impress them!
Then about one week before, when it was too late for them to do a ke-belakang pusing, I told them that for the conference only vegetarian food could be served. This was because our chef was against the killing of animals. Well they should have known better when they picked the venue. We can’t have double standards and insist we go vegetarian for staff meals and then for guests we serve them meat, can we? They knew about this even when they were evaluating the venues, even though they somehow had the impression that this clause was negotiable.
Furthermore, some of their members would not be allowed to enter my hotel, because they had criminal records. Too bad, no criminals allowed in my hotel. They could try coming, but entry would be subject to "customer attitude". I could jolly well turn them away if I did not like their faces. What I meant by don’t like their faces would be decided by me, and I did not have to explain the basis of my evaluation to the other members, even when they insisted on knowing.
As such, many of the high-ranking people amongst them started to condemn my hotel, saying we were not being reasonable. They filled up the service evaluation forms etc, but I made sure I vetted through them and showed my staff & shareholders only those stuff written by the swakoos who had never stepped into a 4 Star hotel. Naturally they paid attention only to the nice fixtures that we had put on for the event, and also the efficiency of my staff. Being swakoos (& from poor families), these could be the only things that they could take note of. Who cares about their colleagues who were stopped at the main door? Also, any type of hotel food is a treat for them, never mind it was vegetarian! Showing such comments would definitely show my shareholders and staff that I had handled the event well, and I deserve another pay raise sometime soon. For the more worldly-wise guests whose comments I chose not to show, I just explained away that they just had different standards from us and were being unreasonable. After all, they were at our home ground. Who cares that many of them swore off coming to our hotel ever again?
So during the debrief, I said to everyone that we pulled off the event well. It was a huge success (however I chose to define success, but definitely the definition would be different from what was the original one, in the 1st paragraph)! Never mind that those Western educated guests complained about us. We are Asian, and should not bother about Western-educated people! It was a success, no matter what they said! I also told the company newsletter that I would have to approve everything that they published so that the staff morale & shareholders would be well-managed.
~~~
(If you believe it), that was my dream. No wonder when I woke up and read the newspapers, I had a sense of deja vu reading this article…
Saw something interesting in the TODAY forum (aka "Voices") pages this week. This was an "interesting’ exchange between a person who had written in to feedback + suggest stuff to our Authorities, and then the reply by the Relevant (no pun intended on word "relevant") Authorities. An excerpt:
It is common knowledge that coupon-parking bays are marked out in white lines and season-parking bays in red lines. I received a ticket for parking in a season-parking space near the Tiong Bahru market.
I called the HDB to query this as the bay was demarcated in white. To my surprise, I was told it was a season-parking bay.
I do not understand why the lines cannot be repainted in red to avoid misunderstanding.
They should standardise the designated colours, especially at commonly used car parks.
HDB parking lots are provided primarily to serve HDB residents who are season parking ticket holders.
Car park lots painted with red lines are reserved solely for season-parking ticket-holders for the whole day.
For parking lots with white lines, coupon parking is available during designated hours. The coupon-parking hours are indicated on the signboard at each car park entrance. The hours are generally from 7am to 10.30pm.
Where they have to be adjusted to meet the particular needs of specific car parks, the revised coupon-parking hours are indicated on the entrance signboard.
There will also be additional signboards at strategic locations within the car park to alert motorists.
Came across 2 memorable quotes this week. Just wanna share in this short post.
1) "Marriage is like having your beloved over for an indefinite sleepover." - I don’t remember the exact words but it went something like that. From a columnist in the New Paper, the only local newspapers I read nowadays because it is the least biased towards the ruling party. (Note, least biased, not unbiased)
2) "If you want the rainbow in your life, you have to first put up with the rain." - Ms Nanz Chong, owner of the now defunct 1.99 shop.
Anyway wanna encourage my Muslim friends here. It is bulan Ramadhan (did I spell that correctly), a challenging but fulfilling month for them. Guys, please show some encouragement for your Muslim friends as well k? It is really not easy fasting. Takes a strong character to pull it off. I really respect all of you guys who do it! If it were me I would have died from gastric pains. Hang in there!
