eh just came back from medical checkup..not surprising i'm shorter and lighter than i thought i was. oh well. and the doctor gave me a lecture on smoking, but otherwise left me to my own devices. no dick examination, no blood test, no ekg. which was a tad dissapointing. oh and i got some msn from some dude after completing his survey. would still rather take a free gift.

had some fun with my sisters inhaling helium from a balloon i brought back from zouk's 16th anniversary. "lonely i'm so lonely i need somebody to call my ownnnnn......." Did i mention it was a riot? free food and drinks till 11, they gave away a car and for the first time in a long while..there were actual queues out there

there's this girl at work who does crazy shit which never fails to amaze ppl (in a bad way) and almost got fired for doing sth wrong recently. And for some reason i can't seem to stop making fun of her actions however she makes me feel bad by saying i'm nice to her...and in a way i'm putting her down to "bring myself up". she just doesn't see it that way. so i resolve to stop being a bully. you heard it here first.

http://www.pulitzer.org/year/2007/feature-photography/works/byer01_jpg.html

reminding us that sometimes...we really do live in a fish tank.

i have refrained from whining about work here..because if i do there won't be an end. and its not like you all can understand anyway.

but there was this one case here today. on which i feel i must share. i got berated for 1 hour, had to promise a callback tmr to get berated again...because this customer had an oustanding amount of 4.96 on her card when she went to cancel it. she claimed she never received her card. never used it. had to trace the amount to last year. and when i went thru all the trouble to retrieve the statements... i found out that she had actually paid for her card membership fee for this card which she did not get. thing is she paid less...4.96.

spend an hour arguing that by paying that amount she acknowledge she did receive this card. and that was over a year ago. why did she not cancel the bloody card then! i mean this amount was quite big..140+. yet they happily paid this amount and now they want to argue over the bloody $4.96. i can understand principle...but going by that i can also refuse to raise for her a waiver simply because its been a year and by actually paying she acknowledged this card's existence.

did i mention how stupid i think line of credits ah? who came up with the brilliant idea to extend non-existent cash to idiots??!??! never heard of saving for it? few people use it like its meant to be used...you accumulate your bills, pay it off at the end of the month start the next month anew. yet so many accounts i look at..people are just getting by on minimum payments. perhaps they think when they die this amount will just dissappear. which is true..but by then they would have paid off many times the original amount.

oh and never ever sign up for a uob credit card. they have the largest installed base..but they spend all that money on promotions. and roadshows. and less on where it matters most....the backend processing. they have a team of 10 people analysing the 1000 cards they receive per day. their customer service is housed in 2 floors. you can wait up to a month for your card to be issued. I have worked in 2 departments and it has all been the same...overworked staff. not that i'm overworked. but i have heard plenty of horror stories from customers...

i realise a large part of both my jobs requires me to interact with people when my preference lies in the exact opposite. i also understand that i was well aware of that fact and that somehow i managed to trap myself in this situation to hopefully rewire my brain somewat. it has succeeded to a certain extent but not a day goes by where i wonder what i have gotten myself into...

Looks like its up to me to provide my own entertainment :)

I present to you kate walsh. A singer in the vein of cheer chan and penny dai (i'm at a loss to find english singers that sing like her...post m2m marit larsen?) her album is only availiable on itunes and myspace but shes quickly gathering a strong following :) Listening to her conjures up images of sitting in a bus staring out of the window on a rainy day, lying in the middle of grass patch as the wind gently caresses the surrounding hills, so on and so forth..

kate walsh - firew...

i need new songs. recommendations?

preferences are folksy pop. acoustic blues or alternative.

a small sample of what i'm digging now.

The Sounds - Rock ...

and in case your wondering why i'm posting so much...well this is the thing that relaxes me. this week i'm working wed thur friday sat zouk and wed thur sat day job. as soon as i look at the schedule all i can say is ..whoa.

i think i like my new job.

why? cos it feels like a game to me. more specifically an rpg.

every call i get, can be classified into two categories...sidequests and story objectives.

now sidequests are your simple run of the mill collect 200 pass go/collect this/kill that kinda thing...they form the bread and butter of your job right. they are the ones that quite literally put the money in that brand new set of jeans you bought. simple things like "how many points do i have" or "can you help me check my credit balance" or " i want to cancel my card". They form the bulk of calls that come in and usually they are quite simple and easy to accomplish. (unless they require humongous followup - in which case they get upgraded to sidequest - insane difficulty. like defeating ultima weapon in ff7.)

now story objectives are where things get interesting. sometimes a customer will call in and ask where is the card he was promised 2 weeks ago when he sent in the application form. and then you search the system and nothing is there. so you go "oh holy fucktard" and you shit your pants. and then you go fight that humongous monster that is part corporate redtape and part human error that results in this app not showing the system. sometimes there's a quest timer involved during which if you don't kill the monster by today you have to fight all the trash mobs because they have respawned again. hopefully when you defeat the monster he drops some sweet loot which will make the customer happy. or at least some crappy gear to give back to the questgiver. and whatever you give back to the customer...sometimes he gets angry and tag teams with the monster in which case it levels up and becomes this huge freaking dragon with an aoe fire breath that can summon whelplings. in which case you press the button and escalate to your manager - the lvl 60 dude decked with purples and hope for the best.

i get immense satisfaction from looking at my quest log at the end of the day and seeing how many objectives i have met and that alone makes it much better than my prev job because each quest completed means you gain experience and money. and hopefully at the end of the day you manage to level up. of course in a few months time i might hit the level cap and everything will just seem like a grind fest to me...even the gigantic boss monsters might be on farm status. and then it'll become a case of been there and done that. and then i'll quit the game and say thats that.

but for now i'm just enjoying this game that i bought :)

http://www.paulgoldinresearch.com/cg/index.htm
- personal grouse...the colors look ugly.

Is it that you are working - or even playing - too hard? Because it would seem that you are experiencing a great deal of pent-up emotion at this time which could possibly take effect and lead to irrational behaviour. ( i thrive and feast on irrational behaviour)

You are a very warm and emotional individual but unfortunately in the past too many people have taken advantage of this sensitive trait. You need aesthetic surroundings, or an equally sensitive and understanding partner with whom to share a warm understanding. (warm, hot, sweaty and sticky understanding yea....)

All the problems that you have been experiencing of late seem to have become a part of your life and there is little that can be done to change the situation. Your emotions run high - but even though you feel as if at times you are about to burst this situation will pass. Try to release your pent-up emotions by participating in some extra physical activities like running, swimming, whatever. There must be some favourite pastime, not necessarily strenuous, that can help you to relax. (you don't wanna know what it is...)

Stresses resulting from a recent disappointment have led to considerable trepidation. It would seem that there seems to be so much left undone. Everything surrounds you with that air of uncertainty. You badly need to feel a sense of security and whatever it takes to protect you against further disappointment. At this particular time you doubt that things could be any better in the future but you are sticking to your guns and refusing to take advice from any source. (this i don't get. i don't feel particularly dissapointed.)

At this time you don't particularly like yourself. Everything that you have tried to do seems to have gone wrong. This makes you feel that there is no point in trying to start again. Apart from being stressed and tense, you are angry with yourself and have unadmitted self-contempt. Your refusal to admit that you and you alone is the basic cause of your problems leads to you adopting a headstrong and defiant attitude. If you take stock of yourself, smile a little and let go, everything will turn out OK. Have you not heard of the cliche 'smile and the world smiles with you - cry and you cry alone!'? ( this part makes me want to buy a gun and shoot myself...if it were true)

this may have been a tad more accurate...if i didn't randomly pick colors after choosing the black blue and red..
hmm so its better than your avg horoscope. fun? yea.

On an unrelated note...i have discovered my fondness/propensity to spend money.

you people are so lucky.

I should be studying.

Instead i'm surfing the web strengthening my belief in my new religion - THE INVISIBLE PINK UNICORN.

For more reading on the parody religions Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Invinsible Pink Unicorn go here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster and here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Pink_Unicorn. Both of them illustrate the point that it is simply ridiculous for the onus to be on the sceptic to prove that God doesn't exist...because both these parody religions have an equal claim to legitimacy as any religion which calls you to believe in a god which cannot be seen. this of course reverses my earlier view that because i cannot prove that god doesn't exist, i won't question other's people's belief.

I used to have a certain admiration for the ignorant faithful because i could never be so steadfast in my beliefs (which i believe is somewhat linked to my very diminished sense of self-esteem which was inherited itself from a very dysfunctional childhood). But now i realise how absurd they all sound. And i realise its akin to admiring the boy who lives in his mother's basement(ok i know we don't have basements). They walk the line their parents inculcated in them never veering from the path that was set out for them and ultimately living a boring and closeted existence.

I believe i can be as morally upright as them without having to live in fear/dependence of a god whose moral system dictates their own. I believe that only through then can i really know what it is to be kind and how to appreciate kindness. I believe that i don't need to live my life through a third party.

And in that way i'm stronger than them.