Hello, welcome to sucky service..

Citibank service sucks. Big time. What do I get for being a loyal, on-time, in full payment customer all these years? Crap service. Ask them for help, the auto response is "but this is our bank's policy." duh. Platinum customer so what? Still get sucky service.

Service in Spore just sucks overall. Brilliant example of our lunch at cafe cartel. They gave me the wrong salad and insisted it was the right one until we demanded to see the handwritten order. Lasagne was 45mins late, with a lame excuse the kitchen was busy. One of my colleagues had a broken toothpick in his sandwich which he bit into ....ouch. I showed them (black) face, and showed them good. My black face is legendary and even more poisonously dangerous these days. I'm forever in a black, dangerous mood. Job sucks.

On a side note, saw a tv ad for Gain-IQ milk powder. All these new moms gushing how Gain has made their kids brighter and smarter. I made a comment to Con and suggested maybe we could give Holly some Gain, it might help improve her ditsy bimbotic IQ a notch. He looked at me and said blithely, it wouldn't work, as her brain was too small anyway. Well, it could be worth a try.......

28

No not my age (though I wish). Perhaps it's Bis age in human years (if 1 dog year = 7 human years). Not the amount of money in my bank account (thank god!!!!! though I wouldn't mind a few more zeros added to the back). No, not the number of spartan men with their well built, rippled bodies packed into tiny loincloths. But rather, 28 is the number of cookbooks I have actually accumulated.

28.

28 hardcover cookbooks. Recipe books. Famed, reknowned authors. Most are quite excellent, some are so-so, and there are a few that has been purchased, but recipes never tried. Come to think of it, I haven't invested much time in the kitchen preparing meals, since I started MBA classes. Last I could recall really getting into flow of checking out the recipes, was when I was in between jobs and had a month long break. Pretty cool.

So now there is 28. Probably nearly a thousand recipes, and I've only tried and tested a fraction. Beautiful books, lovingly kept, but underused. Ah but what dilemma - as a yoga practitioner the diet is often plain, simple, organic if possible, and ultimately vegetarian. I don't think Jamie Oliver or Anthony Boudain is going to write a vegetarian cookbook anytime soon. Vegetarian chefs ain't that popular I guess. How many ways can you cook a broccoli?

A friend of mine commented, "since cows are vegetarians, so it would seem if we ate a cow, we could be considered vegetarians too right?". Whoa. Now that's really something to think about. The whole concept of vegetarian re-expolored.

Motivation

Nicole's dog Tiger is pretty smart. Psycho that he may potentially be (pity the poor fella, who had to endure days of Nic's whinings and complaints about work and life), he certainly learned how to roll over and play dead for the first time after Nic brought home some leftover chicken from our Soup restaurant dinner. Freak event perhaps. Last sat we had a BBQ and some leftover sausages which I told her to take home to Tiger. She had complained about him eating up her tv remote control. So I said, use the sausages to train him to change tv channels. Which she did. Within minutes apparently the dog can indeed press buttons on the tv. Now the only thing she said, was to teach him how to change to specific channels she wants to watch. Can imagine,, "tiger, go change to channel 5!". Whoa.

Now imagine my dogs. I bet my bottom dollar Holly has no freaking idea what a tv is, or a remote control (unless it smells like food). Asking her to fetch my remote control.....well, I think I have a better chance of finding a needle in a haystack. If I were to train Bis to fetch the remote, he'll likely give a huge woebegone sigh and just amble off to the nearest doggybed. Slick, on the other hand, could be bribed to fetch the remote control. But knowing him, he'd probably use the $ to outsource the actual job to some other minion in his reporting hierachy (maybe Hootie, Herbie or Mogu) and paying them peanuts (if at all).

Moral of story, when Wen wants her tv channels changed, she's better of using the remote control herself. Safer, quicker, and less frustrating. Then again, since dogs won't be changing channels, they aint' getting any sausages nor samsui chicken neither. Heeheehee.

Not meant to be

The universe has its laws. And some things are just not meant to be. School assignment is due tomorrow, and I was planning on scrambling for it this weekend. Had lunch with Viv, Nic and gang at Imperial treasures (really very good dimsum) after which they tried to convince me to go to Viv's place to complete the afternoon with a round of dvd watching marathons. Nic even offered to write up my strategy assignment in order to convince me to hang out with them. Apparently she is some kinda strategy studies expert; she also claims she can write an assignment in about an hour. 2500 words apparently is a walk in the park.

Of course, in about 2hrs, all she did write up for me was 539 fairly good words. Apparently the remaining 2000 words should be "all gas" as the whole point was just to embelish the BS that goes on in assignments. I saved the file, sent a copy to myself via email, and borrowed Viv's thumbdrive to save an external copy. But the universe has it's ways - apparently there is some software incompatibility, or the file was corrupted. Neither the emailed nor thumbdrived version allowed me to retrievve the doc. I had to sms Viv to email me another copy, and as a precaution also had her send a 2nd email with the contents of the doc pasted in the body of the email text. Smart thing to do, I thought.

Of course the Universe has its ways. I came home from yoga all ready to write my assignment. Lo and behold I realised very quickly I had not brought my laptop secureID home. DUH. No security tag = no way to retrieve emails. I could of course text Viv again to email another time to my hotmail address, but that's not the point. The Universe has just made it glaringly clear to me that I'm not one of those people who could get away with foisting my assignments off to others. Everything comes full circle. Now I'm back here again writing my assignment from scratch. Sigh. So how come some people get lucky and some don't? DRATS.

Lost Again

It's GSS. Though the offerings this year aren't anything to shout about, and despite my determination to only spend moolahs at the upcoming Tod's sale, somehow I always get sidetracked. The number of receipts in my fast bulgeoning wallet is growing at an alarming rate. Tiffany here, Spa there, dining everywhere. Not to mention the coming Tod's sale. Even thinking seriously about installing an aircon system in the house. Have a sinking feeling that this month's expenses will be way over a month's salary. Aieeee.

Think this year is bad karma with Tiffany. Got myself another bauble from Tiff's again. Thank god the salesgirl convinced me to put it on before I left the store, cuz the empty box and bag went missing shortly after, thanks to my ailing failing memory of leaving it somewhere behind and not realising it till hours later. Mental note to self - all new Tiff stuff from now, I'm gonna wear it when I leave the store. Will be damn super effing pissed had my new Tiff been in the box when I lost it today. Super effing damn. Of course, the lucky person who picked up the box would have been sorely disappointed nothing was inside. Bad for them, good for me.

Weakness

Weakness for all things Tiffany. Tiffany beckons whenever she wants. And yes she beckoned me. Just after yoga I spied the store empty, and she seemed to smile and beckon me to enter. Once in the store, all resistance is lost. It's like a kid in a candy store. Of course, I exited the store with couple sums poorer in my bank account, but a blue paper bag and ribboned box in hand. Come to think of it, prices at Tiffany's are fast matching prices at Baccarat. Now, I just need to find more storage boxes for my growing collection.

Weakeness for bathroom and kitchen accessories. A date with C led us to foray into a nice bathroom accessories place at Balestier. All is lost from there as my eyes focused unblinkingly at those ohsobeautiful porcelain bowls and shower gadgets. Actually I've always wanted to go to the HansGrohe boutique but whenever we get there, it's closed. Drats. Actually all I wanted is maybe to change the shower system. But once in store I could see myself fast making adjustments to the plan. Change in showers means wash basin should be changed to complement the shower. Oh might as well change the WC anyway. Ooooh, that means have to change the tiles and redo the whole bathroom to match the new accessories look. YougetwhatImean. I can see my original $300 budget fast adding another zero to the back. Eeouww.

Weather is damn hot these days. Maybe need to give serious thought to installing AC in the house.

Sweating Moo.