The Stylistics and SMAP - Can't Give You Anything

wai here it is!

Takuya Kimura - GATSBY Moving Rubber Commercial

if your wondering where's the source for this...

my antisocial tendencies are kicking in again...more and more i feel like i need some ME time..

MEMEMEMMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEM

I'm a very terriorial being...i need my own personal space lol i remember when i was in pri/sec school i used to fight with Teng Soong all the the time cos one his arm would slightly extend over to my table. Its true what they say GEP boys are more immature..

Anyway more and more i feel like i need to recharge and just do some of my own stuff again haven't had the time to do it anymore..have a piling stuff of things i want to do.

just got Avril Lavinge's new album and i'm not ashamed to say Avril your still the best. In spite of all the obscure/indie pop-rock/alt/folksy stuff i listen to...i'll still come back to you, you two-faced skinny bitch.

Recently there's been some uproar in the local anime community because the main distributor of anime in Singapore, ODEX has just sent a settlement letter to an anime fansubber who downloaded one of their copyrighted materials. Now people are complaining well, because they love to complain (not talking about you tk!)

http://www.riuva.com/astuff/letter.pdf - copy of that letter

Now just several points to highlight:

1. Downloading copyrighted material infringes copyright law. And the company who owns the copyright has the right to prosecute. No argument there. Unless you can somehow twist the law. In which case i salute you.

2. In the US theres the mentality that if an anime is licensed for release, distribution of the fansub is halted at least by those who care about the companies who care to spend money to bring the stuff in. Now thats respect. No such mentality here.

3. If your willing to spend money on anime merchandise you should be willing to spend money to buy the medium on which the anime is stored on. Because this directly affects the companies who produce the anime as well.

4. Local fansub watchers know they have been playing a dangerous, illegal game. in the words of TK you gotta know when to fold, before the house crashes on you.

5. ODEX can't and won't bother to persecute you, if your not distributing material for which they have not obtained license for, and which they will not get revenue from. they don't have the incentive to, they don't have the right to, its god damm free speech. So go ahead and choose wisely.

6. http://miyamoto-sensei.com/lolicontrol/2006/12/31/i-talked-to-odex/
According to this the goverment plans to blanket ban all anime downloads. first of all they wouldn't have much incentive to. Second of all they would not be able to (see point 5). The most they can do is publicise via their local mouthpiece the legal persecution. And other speculation is just playing into their hands by driving fear into the minds of fansub downloaders.

So basically the situation has't changed overnight. the stakes just got higher.

The Roundtable Discussion

Yes somewhere amid all that playing and the eating and the chilling out, of all the conversation topics that had to come out, it had to be religion.

I believe that we spoke close to about 3 hours on the damm topic. it began innoncently enough with me expressing my personnal preference to someone close by to be atheistic (?SP). chiefly being that i think a life in heaven playin harpies castrating prostrate in front of GOD is not a life i would want to have. (at this point in time i would like to add that this recreation has been heavily embellished and is chronologically wrong). And that believing in a life after death is simply dimishing the life you have now.

And suddenly i found my views being challenged in the open . Now i hate open confrontation. chiefly because i tend to lose :) But because i was fairly confident of my position well i let it go :)
On my side was the non- christians. On the other side was Daryl - evangelical/charismatic christian. Brian - conservative christian. and Marcus - liberal christian. And because i'm tired and fairly biased (oxymoron? pun?) I'll just briefly sum up their points.

We discussed some fairly heavy topics. Like the evidence for god in the beauty of the world. And the longing inherent in all of us to believe in a god which they said was instilled in us for god to worship him. Which i countered came naturally from us being able to differentiate between whats good for us and whats not bad for us which is in fact a survival mechanism. That same ability to differentiate is what gives us the ability to imagine a perfect life, a perfect world, a perfect being. And this ability is what causes us to form god in our imagination and not the other way around (ie god created this inherent longing in us versus we long for a god, thats why we create god to worship him).

They said how about all the evidence thats been accumalated in favor of the bible like noah's ark and evidence of a flood. I said i believe the bible is a historical record but i don't believe which should take it to be a god's word in the same way that we shouldn't expect billy graham's books to be become a holy book in the future. And they replied that Billy Graham didn't proclaim himself to be the son of god. (which in my mind simply means that billy graham has something that jesus doesn't - sanity). About the most absurd idea i believe i heard was that Noah didn't have room on his ark for dinosaurs thats why they went extinct. haha wtf.

At this point in time it was still ok i believe because they were exposuing about God in general and about morality and sinfulness in the world and about christians in general which i didn't really have an opposition to...But at some point in time the non believers hit upon a fallacy in the system. Daryl was explaining that God was the alpha and omega and he already had a written plan for all of us. At the same time he also said that we each had a choice to make be obedient to god or disobedient to him. Which begs the question....if god wrote the story for all of us..we don't have a choice do we? So why test us in the first place if he already knows the outcome. And then they brought up this analogy of a maths teacher who was giving a test to students. And one of them was a student who always failed, never studied and was patently stupid. The teacher still had to give the test else it wouldn't be fair. But there's obviously something wrong with this analogy. the teacher isn't God. she doesn;t know the outcome of the test. God does. So why does he still give us the test?

At which point QH replied:" because GOD is a bitch."

And so for the rest of the night it settled on this one topic and because they couldn't answer it sufficently enough the tide turned. In the end all the answers pointed to "no one knows what god is thinking" and " its all about faith". We demand understanding, accoutability and logic in all we do why should rely on faith on something so important as this? Because we can never prove god exists but to say that he might exist just because we can't prove it is so wrong. But Yaochen brought up a good point that actually we go about out lifes with a certain degree of uncertainty and actually its all about how much unknowns you can live with. For me between a belief founded on logic and known constants and one that is based on so much faith its pretty obvious which i would choose.

In the end brian put it in succintly when he said why care so much about the things that do not affect you in the end. these macro issues can never be resolved but in the end you should only care about the stuff that affects you...

will add more if i do recall but thats about the gist of it.

IT GROWS ON YOU. EMO BOYS.

CS SHOT. DOOM EAT YOUR HEART OUT ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION I"LL ELABORATE MORE LATER THIS SHOT SUMMARIES NEATLY WHAT THE VACATION IS ALL ABOUT.

hehe its been a fun 4 days thanks for all who participated in one way or another. and for those whom i have yet to meet (you know who you are) please carve time from your schedules :) be warned what is to follow will be an extremely girly post.

first of celebrated with my working colleagues on thursday. wanted to treat them to ramen and then board games...but they sprang a surprise on me by hiding money in my bag. sneaky bastards. Too bad i don't have photos of the trip its been some time since i played board games :) and to jingfeng if you do read this you missed the point of the trip it was for you to spend some time with us, not for you to enjoy free ramen or for me to get a present -____-. you lose for not coming ...speaking of which they bought me a very nice springfield long sleeve shirt which i love its so warm and cuddly!

friday it was off to bintan which thankfully i have pictures of :) first of a disclaimer the place is a bloody ripoff. Its probably run by singaporeans to suck singaporean money. Seriously the food there is so freaking ex and there's not much you can do there. We went sun tanning , played a beach volleyball shot a few rounds of pellet guns, did archery and a bit of snorkelling but there wasn't much you could see. Would love to post more pictures but i'll prob just wait till someone puts them up on facebook or friendster and link to it. Which i know they will do cos well..theyre photo whores. Especially marcus.

came back, slept till sunday and then it was off to IT show to grab a printer and hard disk after which i scooted off to dinner with family. again no pictures :( but it was a $158 meal with shark's fins, chili crab and black pepper crab, teochew steamed fish, cereal prawns, a real chinese seafood meal. and then scooted off again to KTV session with my precious bottle of Absolute Kurant. Which right now is sitting prettily (prettily empty) on my desk.

total haul with a bit of creative steering (actually quite obvious steering as my colleagues will attest to :) : one springfield shirt. one fossil watch. one myuk wallet. one hard disk. one goldlion tie. keep them coming.

so point of this story? i wasn't hiding i was celebrating my bday phuckers.

back on saturday night.

Pitchblack was a dissapointment the search continues for an alternative venue.

The rest of the week is jam packed with events.

With all the money that is being pumped in...i better feel like i'm 21.

went for a bit of retail therapy picking up food at the singapore food fair and books at the MPH book sale.

Picked up Freaknomics, Sisterhood of Travelling Pants and Michael Moore is a Big Fat Stupid White Man. Would have picked up more if i had more than 1 hour to shop on the LAST DAY. Endless rolls of books all with the words "international bookseller" on them how's a virtual book virgin like me to choose ( i remember how to read its just been a loong time - my excuse). Oh and tk picked up a book which is basically a playlist of the most hippiest music you can find, a book of top 100 shitty jobs and a book of neurological diseases and psychiatric disorders (ain't that right?). I should have known about it earlier *slaps himself*

I'm starting to feel silly and i dunno whether i should laugh or cry this issue is basically a non-starter and i'm throwing a hissy fit. really shows how much i have matured.

I got a hard disk covered.

you nubcakes are gonna have to think of something else :)

give you a hint. rbtskooa

I'm sorry it took so long to get this out. But i couldn't let you read this, not that night as we were still talking.

Before you revisted me i thought i had closed this chapter in my life. but you just had to appear again didn't you. you woke me from my quiet reverie at a time when i was feeling the most emotionally vulnerable and for the first time in months i felt more alive than i had ever been. But these moments, sweet as they are, are evil when they are gone.

And just this once i'm sorry i can't be your best friend/your go to guy. i have to be selfish and think of myself this time because it already hurts so much inside and i can't be the nice guy all the time.

For once you have a real shot at something nice and i can tell you have an attachment for this guy. He may not be like me but he has endeared himself to you in his own ways and i don't want to ruin it. I just wished i could have been a part of your happiness don't blame me for feeling so.

goodbye.

things at work have been very tense lately and it all began with, as such situations always do, with a small petty thing like adolescent love (i'm too old to use that word *cough* *cough*). surprisingly it wasn't mine. but one thing led to another, and now i just wish things would return back to normal.

i'm smiling like an idiot for no damm good reason and sometime this too will pass but for now i realise i'm gonna have to settle for someone who can make me feel that way, no compromises.

Theres some new can drink called "whatever" and "anything" thats in stalls now. supposedly there are 6 different non-carbonated flavours of whatever and 6 different carbonated flavours of anything. Now its a pretty cool concept..except that after trying 2-3 cans of whatever, i have become convinced that all the flavours are variants of green tea. Like wtf? Who can tell the difference? Lame shit.

Today i chu stunt.

There was this few ppl who refused to give me and my colleague a reply about some case for which cx keep calling us up. It was a very simple thing like "have you received the application form?" So i shot an email to them, the team leaders and oic blasting them for not replying. Don't you think its fun to do stuff like that? Dispense with all the pleasantries, the bullshit and just give it straight to them? Works wonders i tell you they replied about the status right away.

Things might change but i've made a decision..never to stoop so low as to do a white collar job ever again. Or at least never to act like a white collar worker. Theres a standard i know that has to be set for any big company where professionalism and protoccol has to be followed, but its precisely that which i hate the most. Or at least there's only so much that i can take.

So far there have been no repercussions but just maybe i might find myself out of a job tmr :)
And actually thats fine with me. In fact the more i stay in this job the more miserable i get. Its not so much the customers fault in that i feel like i'm unable to help customers to the best of my ability. And thats is the fault of UOB. There's so many layers that have to go through just to get a simple thing done that i feel its dragging the productivity.

In fact when i leave i'm going to shoot another email this time to the entire platform. including the head of call centre. The title of the email would be "Parting Shot"and the contents would be as such. Its still a work in progress. Maybe i will leave the minor grievances out so as to make the point across more strongly.

Let me just start off by saying that i appreciate the opportunity extended
by your very honorable organisation to allow me to experience working in the
banking sector. I have a learnt a considerable lot from my short stint and for
the most parts its been quite favourable in my eyes. But sadly this has
been marred quite badly by several factors of which i feel they are easily
remedied but for whatever reason the situation has remained unchanged. Heed this plea to change the working conditions in UOb by simply taking 5 mins to read this email.

The past few months have been quite frustrating to me as i struggled to settle
into the job as a temp. First of all the training period which was given to
me was quite short and inadequate considering the skill set of the calls i was
assigned to. From the get go we were thrown into the boiling pot and the first
week was quite horrendous in that i gave cx wrong information quite frequently
and unnecessarily made simple queries very trying and difficult for the
customer. As weeks went by we slowly got more familiar with the information and
the tools availiable to us but still it felt as though we were strictly
restricted in what we were able to do. I have several suggestions to make and i
feel that it would be helpful if you would consider my suggestions on the basis
of their merit and not the source from which them came from.

1. If your going to hire temps for a short basis and give them a reduced
training schedule and not allow them access to CRM, restrict the skill sets of the calls they can take. On job training might work fine but its hardly suitable for a position on which the banks highly esteemed platinum customers rely on for their point of contact. For example if we were just restricted to waivers and application status, and allow other CSRS to transfer their calls to our line, it would be so much better
because as job specialists we would free up highly skilled resources to handle
highly sensitive issues like disputes.

2. Am i the only one who feels that a call queue of more than 5 mins is ridiculous for customers? I mean surely we can spare some resources to serve the millions of credit card users in singapore? We are the single most biggest credit card entity in singapore and yet our call centre occupies 2 floors. This chronic understaff problem and overall reliance on temp staff seems to be epidemic in UOB. Before working in the call centre i worked as temp staff in UOB Business Internet Banking where i entered data for BIB so i know what i'm talking about. The budget for temps that year was 40,000. Just so that they did not overshoot that budget me and my colleagues(perm staff and temp) worked overtime almost EVERYDAY. And yet the backlog was neverending, which was the reason why i quit my temp position there. Obviously in the call centre we do not have such a backlog simple because its based on callvolume pertime. However we have all surely taken note of the amount of abandoned calls and callbacks that have to be done. Spend more money staffing your processing centres and less money on promotions! I believe i speak for the customer when i say that having my call answered on time, having my card delivered faster beats the cheap digital radio clock ($22.50) i'll get for signing up. Protect the UOB brand don't let it get cheapened. Where the hell is our Service Pledge!

3. This is a minor grievance but please provide our CSRS with better tools to manage calls. An excel spreadsheet that likes to eat the last digit of your credit card number and a stupid workaround hardly cuts it. Get with the program! Its damm easy to commision a software company to create a program that can automatically record the time of call, have a preset list of actions to assign to each call (like waiver of membership fees), preset reminders and flag cases that have yet to be followed up. CRM is only one part of the call centre package.

4. KMS - its unwieldy. Information is decentralised and there are a LOT of outdated documents. A major cleanup and overhaul is necessary. I would recommend a wiki solution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki with limited editing access. Again get with the program.

5. Other call centres practice a casual dress code. Why can't we?

6. Singapore has 4 official languages. Why is there only 1 language other than english.

Ta da!

Granted they let me have my diginity by not making it like some of the shamings you see on the web. And i thaank them for that. this was taken after a teq pop, teq neat, bourbon coke and like 2 beers. yes i'm that weak.


edit: now with more pictures

In-drive entertainment, catered meals a massage chair with plenty of leg room - thats da shitz right there.

Me and ma homeboy before the show.

And as for the main event itself...sorry no pictures. i left early due to said physical impairment that prevented me from dancing. oh wells.

i'm back and alive in one piece hurrah!

And yes i did get drunk. And yes i puked my stomach out. And yes i took pictures (or rather someone took them for me)

But for now a political quiz. http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz.html - because there's more than just left or right.

my score - liberatarian.

i leave for kl.

i hope i don't die in a freak bus accident. if i do please bury my dvd collection with me (find me a burial plot i don't care) . My last words will be..." you gotta be f**king kidding me." Oh and you know i love you guys. (just make sure it gets done kay.)

this blog should be renamed morbid disharmony.