The UnSub

We made an advanced reservation for their Courtyard Suite months ahead of our wedding as a short week-end getaway. In the end, it was a huge disappointment.

It was so bad that we’d to cancel and left the resort after one hour of waiting at a temporary “normal” room. Why?

Cleanliness Issues

Stained sofa was at their “normal” room where we waited indefinitely for our suite…  I didn’t bother to take the photo of the hand towel…

Broken rooms

We stayed one night at Orchard Parade Hotel Singapore (4-star) after our wedding lunch. Her service exceeded our expection.How about A.S.S?

It was bad A.S.S. While waiting at the “temp” room, we noticed one light was broken, the toilet flush was broken. Looking out the window, I saw a broken roof top. We waited and waited… Half-an hour later, we called the reception. We were told that there was technical problems.. Hmmm…

Clueless Staff

After the first call, we realized the staff have no idea when the suite is ready. Another 15mins went by, I was quite pissed, my wife made the 2nd call and the forgetful staff made a “oops.. I forgot remark” over the phone.

That was the last straw. We talked to the manager who was equally unprofessional and wasn’t around as we waited yet again at the reception area for the last time.

What’s the point of reservation?

Jocelyn was pretty upset but may stay if the manager were able to talk her way out of it. Me? I have no intention to spend my money at A.S.S.. After seeing the manager in person, we realized the whole shop was run by unprofessional n00bs. The manager asked if we wanted to downgrade to the “premium” room similar to that “normal” room. No thanks… I’m better off in my own bedroom.

If there were any technical fault, just call in advance to inform us, don’t give me reasons to your failure to deliver, I am not interested to know. I seriously do not want to pay for such crappy facility. Don’t even talk about the service.

Friends, you have been warned, your money can be better spent elsewhere…

I am quite irritated by the fact that people ask some silly rhetorical questions and making pointless comments. Eg. “Why should they (re)invent terms like ‘Domain Name Service’ that is not clear?”

My response to this specific silly question is: Don’t blame others for your own ignorance. RTFM. Without the domain name service, the internet would not be what it is today and you would be remembering a bunch of numbers instead of names.

Second: it is pointless to ask too many “why” questions without enlarging your HOW-TO department in your brain. The underlying motivation behind such questions is usually to complain and not driven by a “how-to-make-it-better” attitude. The next time you have the urge to disguise your complains with “Why” questions. Maybe ask yourself, “Why am I asking this why question?”.

I am not sure about overseas Mcdonalds but I sure find the Singapore outlets stupid. They started using this 2-queue system early this year with one queue meant for ordering and adjoining queue to collect. The inefficiency and ineffectiveness can only be measured by the number of people holding their cash or wallet in the wrong queue.

The next silly change is to have their chilli, servettes and what not dispensers placed at another corner. A consumer has to jostle with another crowd hording the dispensers that are either emptied or messed up. This is not fun especially when you are carrying a loaded tray of food. It is also a good time to consider birth control because kids are usually found playing at the wrong places!

My dream McDonald outlet would be one that has a queue with touch screen system to order my food and it dispenses after tapping my cashcard. Then again, that’s just a vision of an extremist consumer who doesn’t give a damn about fast-food personal service. It is a good thing since the present reality would keep me away from junk food.

Ok… I know I sound very cranky but this is a rant post!

Do you receive bills or statements from banks? Ever wonder why they need to print credit card/account numbers all over the pages?

I still haven’t figure out why. It’s good that I do not have many card bills or statements to go through, but I can’t imagine how others deal with them especially for different cards statements from different banks.

There was once I almost threw away pieces of statements that weren’t conveying any important figures, but yet had my card number printed amongst the horde of information on it! Isn’t a bill number sufficient for the bank to process our payment?

After that incident, I bought a manual cross-cut shredder that is more secure than a straight cut one (no we are not talking about hair-style) since it is easier to re-construct a shredded document from a straight-cut machine.

It is better to be safe than sorry. I noticed many overseas online-stores are more secure from the way they handle your sensitive information. At least the bills, statements or invoices that they sent via courier or wire do not print the entire credit card number string but a partial one or even omitting it altogether (”payment via credit card” is sufficient since I am the one paying).

So why can’t DBS do that? I am not sure. Perhaps it is costly for them to adjust their IT system. And since we can’t change the way a bank works, we better change the way we handle our bills and statements.

There are other techniques to destroy sensitive printed material, I personally tried incineration and water soaking, but the novelty of such techniques wears out over time especially if it has to be done periodically.

If you have lots of printed material to deal with, I would suggest an electric cross-cut shredder or bring to an office that has one!

I need one…
Was doing some housekeeping on my disk and found some photos.
I like this particular one… Clouds just happened to be there, although I’d really much wish the kid in yellow vest weren’t there!
Really miss running around in a shutterbug mood and spending tourist dollars.