Petals Around the Rose

Received the links in my email a century back. Just thought that it's a perfect rainy day to clear them.

For those who simply love a puzzle, try solving this one. Petals Around the Rose. According to this article, the smarter you are, the longer you take. Right. That makes me not that smart after all. Hmm... *ponder* Then again, as Pig fondly puts it, high IQ doesn't mean a successful life ahead. In fact, most of the down and out people are those with high IQs, as they wallow and dwell in their past glories.

So, if you can't solve the puzzle or think you have a high IQ, don't hurry to the wall to bash your brains out. I will give you a treat when I make it big with my high EQ and low IQ. Muahahhahahaha.....

Screwed the Glasses!

Ah Hah! Caught your attention, didn't I?!

Can you imagine screwing 2 tiny brackets onto your nose (Ouch! I was shuddering as I was reading this article. Can't imagine piercing any part of my body, except my ears!) and hanging a pair of spectacles on the bridge of your nose? Well, I can't. All I can think of is, what if some bloody idiot decided to tear them off your nose!!!!

Check it out, if you dare.....

*Proud contributor of the Link - Who else... Duma!!

New Year's Eve

So here I am, on a New Year's Eve morning, in the office, typing a boring blog with a dead boring title. *Yawn* My boss postponed the 10am interview to 11am. Argh! I knew it! Should have slept longer AND it's a grand rainy day too!!! *Triple Argh!*

What a Way to Spend Christmas Eve - Malarky!

After the frustrating experience of bashing my way through crowds at *Orchard Road on a Tuesday night, just 4 days before Christmas, I wasn't that keen to repeat that ordeal again last night. Besides, I figured that yesterday would be even more chaotic than ever, it being Christmas Eve and all! So, we decided to chill out at Changi Village with 100 other cats. (Well, I didn't really count, but in the dark, the number of strays there did seem like 100 to me.)

Christmas Eve at Changi Village was not as chilly as I initially expected. Cars Cars Cars! Darn! The carpark was full! Argh! Couldn't even find a decent lot. So Ah Long decided to park the car illegally along the double-yellow lines and guess what! He actually bothered to peel a parking coupon and display it at the dashboard! DUH! I mean, if I were the carpark attendant, I would have given him a ticket for parking illegally, with or without carpark coupon! His theory was - he could give the excuse that there wasn't any lots available so the fault didn't lie with us?! Never could understand the Geminis!

Dinner was great, value for money, with fun company. But it wasn't spectacular enough to warrant more than 3 lines in blog. Hah!

Now for the more interesting part. We adjourned to Vic's house for a game of Malarky. We ended up watching bits and pieces of "Band of Brothers". We wanted to begin the game at Christmas sharp. Nah! We were just intrigued by the gory scenes. Shrug. Probably would borrow the dvds from him to finish the whole mini series.

Anyway, yes, here comes Malarky. (Review over here.) Basically, it's a game in which great storytellers would thrive in (have no doubt, this is one of my favourite games!). It's something like trivia pursuit, yet instead of asking the others to guess the answer, you give them the answer and let them guess if it's true of false. Therefore, you need to possess a certain level of imagination (Me me!) and a straight face. To earn points, you need to either weave believable tales, or tell the truth with a shifty look. Not only that, you need to have a hound's nose to sniff out a lie. Hey! You are talking to a master over here! 30 points ahead of no.2, with the rest differing from one another by few mere points.

One example here.
What's the difference between skimmed and non fat milk?
My totally logical answer told with a straight face : Well, the difference is, for skimmed milk, the fat is removed by scrapping away the milk curds at the top, while, for non fat milk, the fat has been clinically removed from the beginning.

Totally plausible answer, right?! (ok ok, some of you giving me skeptical looks..... I had full marks for this ok!!!! Do you know how hard it is to convince EVERYBODY in the game? You wouldn't understand my skill unless you have played the game for yourselves. *fold arms*)

Anyway, the real answer is - No difference.

Haha! Fooled you! Didn't I?

*Orchard Road - Being a miniscular country, people tend to flock to Orchard Road, our main shopping strip, when they can't think of anywhere better to go.

Xcute mi! Cn U rid dis?

Goodness Gracious! Guess what I've stumbled upon while I was blog surfing?! Try reading this! I'm not sure if this is a generation gap or what. I simply can't understand the "English" of the Generation Y/Z/whathaveyous(I've checked the mirror, I'm really not THAT old!!), or if it's a new language altogether!!

bad dae!!!! =/
another dae of feelin low ah =/ . haish* duno y also . hmmm 2dae work is lyk i was so quiet than other dae. no much voice heard frm mi today. everione was shocked lyk tt. come console mi . thnk pals, i ok =)*

then ck they all come find mi n jashua nor, sho gd sia they all, 1st time x=. then we go to suntec coz ck wana haf lunch. all see him eeat onli x= . den aft tt, we went to arcade. joey n bernard wanna play initial D . see them play i feel like playin also. then i gt play, how i wish i can realli go 4 the spin ~

Actually, I still can't decipher some of the words. Thinking of taking up a course in cryptography or something.... This is simply amazing. This is either "realli bad eng" or a very complicated piece of code.

Everyone Loves a Fast Food Joint!

One more blog today! This is a BONUS addition. You read one entry and you get one more free!! This is worth US$25!! Doesn't that look familiar? That's what all the internet marketing websites do to promote their products. Right, I'm deviating......

Right. Fast Food Joint. Everyone simply loves a joint. You get air conditioning. You don't get threatening glares at your back or people hovering over you, in fact, almost falling over you as you take a last sip of your bak kut teh soup. You don't get waiters or waitresses asking you for your orders, politely hinting,"hey! Get your ass off the seat! You are holding up our other customers!"

Where I work, there are tonnes of fast food joints. (My personal favourite is the Macs at Boat Quay, discounting its north pole-like air con system.) Burger King, Mos Burger, Macs, Subway, Yoshinoya... you name it, you get it. Too bad there isn't a KFC. Hey! KFC! Are you reading this! Open a joint at Shenton! Burger King at OUB Centre is another one that I frequent. Big, spacious....Full of insurance agents and MLM people.

Yeah, that's right. According to Ah Wei's statistics, (hah! You must be wondering how many times I frequent a joint in one day. THat's besides the point!), only 2 out of 10 parties do not belong to this group of people. Every time I sit down at a table in BK, the person on my left, would be explaining some policy and sliming the rest of the insurance companies/agents. On my right, the person would be pointing excitedly at a file, about how fast you can get rich on an MLM fastrack career and that Robert Kiyosaki has endorsed it, before proceeding to urge the prospect to read Robert Kiyosaki's book - Business School (something like that).

Well, I don't have anything against insurance agents or MLM sales agents. Hell! One of my good friends is from the insurance industry and my very own brother is a financial planner! Some of my friends are from MLMs.

There's a joke going around, that if you pick up a rock and throw it at a crowd of people, chances are, you will hit an insurance agent or an MLM agent. I didn't start this joke, so don't spam my email.

Anyway, as I was saying (I have this fond habit of wandering off-topic), BK... Right, our favourite guessing game in BK, would be :
1. Which insurance/MLM company is he from? The right answer gets a stick of french fries.
2. The common mistakes of a salesperson.
3. Will he close the deal?

One day, Laval decided that he's sick of the game and of hearing the same old scripts again and again. You can't help but hear them, when they are sitting around you!! So he suggested that we go to Yoshinoya and he thought it was a brilliant idea, because it's a rather small place, so according to probability calculations, we should have a smaller chance of meeting them.

So we uprooted ourselves and trudged to Yoshi. Hey! Great! No agents there at all. We were going to dig into our beef bowls, when, an insurance agent (I think he's from GE), came in with his client. At this point of time, Laval went mad, stood up and started screaming, "why are they everywhere?!"

Ok ok, so he didn't do that in public! I would have dug a hole with my chopsticks and hide in it if he did. But I'm sure that's what he was thinking as he rolled his eyes.

Personally, I as just wondering, how effective is it, to do a review with a client at a fast food joint? I had the unenviable experience of doing a presentation to a client in Macs. That's a once-in-a-lifetime experience, because, I will never do that again! Hah! I had to scream at my client at the top of my lungs, to combat the noise level raised by the pesky kids and chattering people. At the end of the day, I was not sure if he even heard a word. As expected, the deal wasn't closed. Ineffective, ineffective. Besides, every one in the joint would have known how much you are insured for, etc.

My boss would scream at us, "I spent a 6-figure sum to rent this swanky office and 1 million dollars on renovation, just for you to do your presentation at MACS!?"

For me, I usually request that my clients meet me at my office. One of my friends commented,"Eh.. Miss, do you think you are still a purchaser? So Dao (hoity-toity in Hokkien)! Make the clients come to your office?! How to do sales like this?!"

"My office is nice mah! You can see boats cruising by and you even get free kopi (coffee)!! Cheaper than going to fast food joints!"

Hmm... Come to think of it. Maybe I shouldn't put up this article at all. If all the insurance agents and MLM salespeople boycott my blog, then no one will ever read it again?! Heck lar! *Bo Chap! Not as if I'm enjoying 10000 hits a day anyway!

*Bo Chap = I can't care less! (Local dialect)

Iridology

According to the dictionary,

I-ri-do-lo-gy
Study of the iris, especially as associated with disease.

I had the privilege to meet an Iridologist (Oh wowee!) on Sat at the Malay Heritage Centre (Don't ask me what I was doing there on a fine Sat morning/afternoon, when I could have been doing something better! Grrr...!! That's another story altogether!). Someone was giving away flyers about iridology (I'm 100% certain that it's been plagarised from some iridology website). So, to kill my boredom, I abandoned my colleague at my stall (one of the stalls at the Vanity and Wellness Fair, supposedly targetted at professional women. Guess their idea of professional women and mine are on the extreme ends of the scale... )and sneaked off to walk around the rest of the stalls and exhibits.

I met Thye San, wandering around out of boredom as well, at the Iridology stall. Ahh.. This looked like something that's more intriguing than the rest. The people behind the stall were all self-professed iridology. Apparently, they would check your iris for illnesses and then recommend a supplement from their stash of MLM products to improve on the condition.

Ok, fine. After a few encouraging words and nudges from me, Thye San asked if the "iridologist" could try giving him a diagnosis. The Malay man, in his 50s, took off his spectacles and peered into Thye San's eyes, or irises, to be specific, and nodded knowingly every few seconds. Then he took off his spectacles and took a deep breath...... (Me too, I was eager to hear some earth shaking diagnosis here, wowee, a reeaaaal iridologist.)

With a sagacious air, he drawled,"You frequently get headaches...." (wowee! what a revelation!!!)
TS : Yes! You are right! I often get headaches!
SOM (Sagacious old man) : Right, you always think very hard. (rewarded by me rolling my eyes and TS nodding enthusiastically)
TS : Right, sometimes I get headaches after long hours of work.

So the SOM went on to introduce some supplements which would cure this ailment. There was a horde of Malay aunties standing beside the SOM, pushing products towards TS.

A younger Malay man (in his 30s, I think) came up and stared into my eyes. I got such a shock that my eyes went glassy. (Don't be surprised, he could even give me a diagnosis even after my eyes glazed over.) I think he has a lot to learn from the SOM, beginning with iriodolgy 101, how not to alarm your customers. Anyway, he too, gave me the exact same knowing look (ah, must have learnt that in iriodolgy beginner's course) and said,"You have a problem with skin allergy."

"What What!?" I sputtered. "No I don't."
"Yes you do." (Now who the heck is he to tell me that I have skin allergy when I don't!)
"Now look here. I have only had rashes twice on my arms TWICE in my whole life!"
"THere you see! Like what I said, you have skin allergy." (DUH!)
Refusing to argue with a moron, I decided to agree with him. "Hey! You are right! I DO have skin allergy."
With my ardent agreement, he smiled at me and recommended supplements to combat that. (Why me?!)

Moral of the Story : If you do want to pretend to be a iridologist, at least get to know the top 10 problems which most Singaporeans have. If I were to do it, my diagnosis would probably be :

Stress (Most Singaporeans are stressed up over one thing or other anyway. High Hit Rate.)
Lack of Sleep
Difficulty in Sleeping
Headache
Myopia (Now that's easy! I will probably peer into my customer's eyes, spot the contact lenses and cheerfully tell him that he has myopia. Duh!)

See! I will definitely make a great Iridologist! At least a better one than those 2!

Blabber

Before I forget (remember? All my history exams? There! I see you nodding your head.), I need to tell you about the blabber tag at the end of each post. It's really a comment form, but apparently, all the comments sort of disappeared when the layout has been changed. So now you see the egghead beside it, which means that nobody is writing any comment.

Therefore, you are highly encouraged to blab and of course, that will influence the egghead to transform itself to a pert little number (1,2,3,4,5,6....). Ok??

That's 2 entries for today. I'm chalking up buffer for myself. *grin*

Keeping Up with My New Resolution....

Opps! I have recently made a new resolution (that's right, just after I have revamped the look of the blog), that I would write a blog a day. Sigh! I can only blame it on my hideous lack of discipline and failing memory (why do you think I failed most of my History exams/tests/whathaveyous??).

However, I must redeem myself, however slightly, for this (hehe, more excuses). Why?! Because.... the stupid IT support (yeah! Excuse module 101, always find someone else to blame) for my company is changing the server, erm.. modifying something here and there (he gave me a 10 mins torrent of uncomprehensible IT jargon, I gathered that he's changing SOMETHING) and it caused my laptop to be unconnectable to the internet! See!! Look at the frustrations that I'm going through?

So poor me has to get up at 7am in the morning, so that I can get to the office by 9am (don't ask me what i did between 7-9am, some time has to be attributed to travelling etc) and lay stake on one of the few common computers (see the look of triumph on my face?!) and BLOG! NOW, do you see the commitment level there?! I could have slept til 9am!! My next appointment in the morning is at 10am.....

Right, so now that I've established this routine and with an iron will, I will endeavour to delight you with more bitching.

A Whole New Look!

As you might have noticed, my blog has taken on a whole new look!! Thanks to Duma for that! I gave up editing it halfway and figured that it's only going to take him 10 mins while it's going to take me 10 hours to redo it... So, being one of the nicest person (here comes the flattery bit) in the whole wide world, he singlehandedly edited it.

So here I am, back in action, to increase my viewership! Stay tuned!