Archive for July, 2009
the O.S.I.M meme is a new topic posted every Monday here on quaintly.net to kickstart the week with some story-sharing. this is my puny attempt at massaging my brain into action every working/academic week, and also to hear stories from other people that i otherwise would not get the opportunity to. O.S.I.M stands for Oh Shit It’s Monday.
this week’s Monday Meme topic is about service in Malaysia, inspired by the horrible customer experience i received from an Air Asia sales staff at the LCCT airport on saturday prior to my departure to Kuching. i’ve never had problems with Air Asia up till lately (not even a delayed flight actually), so i was a little taken aback when i got attitude from the sales staff. so much for service with a smile. i suppose the nastiness comes with working in such cramped and bustling environments.
but instead of talking about rudeness or inefficiency, which we all know already plagues our country’s service industry, i want to share stories of good and kind service where people went the extra mile for their customers even when they didn’t have to. these stories are rare, but so heart warming when found.
reminding myself to keep it brief, my latest story of good and kind service:
some nights ago, i was waiting for a cab from mid valley to go back home. it usually costs me about RM 12, and definitely no more than RM 14. when my turn in the line came, this Waja (slightly spiffier than the 1.6 though i’m not sure which model it is exactly) pulled up. remembering that wajas charge the same metered rates as the sagas do, i got in, but not before the guard at mid valley assured me that it was the same rates as other cabs.
when i got in the cab, the cabbie began informing me that his cab was a special airport taxi that would go by a special rate, but he couched it in very confusing terms which led me to believe that airport taxis could use two rates — one for trips to and fro the airports, and another for the city. by the time we reached jalan istana, the fare was about RM 25, and usually at this point the fare would only be about RM 5-6. shocked, i asked him how much the entire trip was going to cost me. his answer: between RM 50 to RM 60.
upset but still extremely confused, i told him that i wanted to get out as soon as possible, so he dropped me somewhere in san peng. we covered a short distance between my insistence on getting out and the point at which he dropped me off — miraculously, his meter only jumped about 40 cents in that distance, as opposed to the RM 2 it would have cost before i made it clear i wanted to get out. that pretty much cemented the fact that he was conning me with a rigged meter. really, why was i surprised?
it took me about 30 minutes to get another cab out of san peng. no cabbie wanted to send me back because of the traffic congestion; the ones that conceded asked for an extra charge between RM 10 and 15 -_-
finally, one cabbie agreed to take my trip, albeit reluctantly. he sheepishly asked if i would give him an extra dollar above the meter, which was such a relatively cute request, so i laughed and said sure. during the trip home, i told him what had happened to me and he confirmed once again that the “airport cab” should have charged the usual rates. he told me about the various ways that cabbies can rig their meters, and asserted over and over again that i should start driving so that i don’t have to rely on cabs.
at the end of the trip, the meter was about RM 8. as i turned to get my wallet, the cabbie then told me that i didn’t have to pay him, as long as i promised to take care of myself a little better in the future.
O__O
i insisted on paying him (and the one ringgit he initially requested, and then a tip), but i was very touched by his gesture. with cab rent being as high as it is, and malaysian cab meter rates being so low, RM 8 is a substantial amount of money for a cabbie to give up. i thanked him over and over again — he was a timely reminder for me that not all cabbies are mean and crooked.
as an aside, but still related to the topic, i also think it’s really cool how some salespeople in shopping malls — especially sungei wang — rush off to their faraway stock rooms without complaining whenever a customer wants to try on something. i know it’s part of their job, but it’s such a tedious and tiring process to keep running back and forth each time a size is not right. their speed and readiness always fills me with admiration. such service is a far cry from the blunt “no stock” grunt that we often get from salespeople who just couldnt be bothered.
i’ve got many more good service stories, but i think one (un)brief one will do for today. i’m completely exhausted and i have a feeling i’m about to lose my wifi connection very soon. please do share your tales, if any! :)
on another note, the haze today is positively putrid. when is this going to stop? O.S.I.M!
July 13th, 2009
duuuuuuuuuuuuuuude. there is just not enough time to do the things you want to do in life.
i need to go to bali, like, right now. i want the beach, the sun, some surfing, three good books, camera, my bikinis, ku de ta’s amazing barbeque ribs, decadent cake from wayan cafe, and … coconut-y sunblock.
and fungi.
and sea breeze.
and my ipod.
and me. just me.
okay party time. many fuzzy greetings from Kuching.
everybody say hi to thomas!
July 12th, 2009
i lost a lot of weight while i was away at college in the US. you all know what they say about the Freshman 15 -– people usually put on 15 pounds in their first year at college –- but it was more like the Freshman –10 for me. i actually did do the whole late night pizza thing like a normal college kid, plus there’s a diner in the basement of our dorm that sells the yummiest sinful food, but because i often pull long nights in the library, i tend to forget to eat. this can go on for days sometimes, and so i lost a lot of weight over the academic year from my ultra malnourished diet.
but now that i am back in Malaysia, i’ve gained all that weight back. all 10 pounds of it. and then some. MALAYSIAN FOOD IS SO EVILLY GLORIOUS :(((
growing waistline and hips aside, i’ve been enjoying the blissful gluttony of being back home. my first meal when i came back for the summer was my favorite beef noodles! then banana leaf rice at Nirwana for dinner. and of course, bak kut teh the next day, which drove me insane with delight.
this post is actually written in conjunction with the latest contest by Lurve Multigrain Chips called the What’s Your Lurve Affair? contest, where one stands to win a Macbook Pro (don’t fight with me for this pls!!) by blogging about their Lurve Affair with anything at all. The top 3 winners also get to go on the 8TV Quickie show.
to join the contest, you have to blog about your Lurve Affair and creatively integrate the Lurve multigrain snack into the post as well. do email your details to lurveaffair@nuffnang.com as per the microsite, and remember to read and agree to the terms & condition before participating. the contest period is from 23rd June to 12th July 2009.
i DO want that macbook pro, so here’s my Lurve Affair post. books, costumes and flea markets were very strong contenders, but my Lurve Affair is with none other than Malaysian food :)
i have plenty of pictures from my homecoming food spree at my regular haunts, so i thought i’d share some of my absolute favorites:
Hokkien mee! this is without a doubt the one local delectable i’ve missed most, since none of the Malaysian restaurants in New York can even come close to recreating it. i’ve been craving Hokkien mee almost every day since i’ve been home, and have to eat some about twice a week or i get grumpy. Hokkien mee in the photo is from Ahwa in Jalan 222 in Paramount Garden, but that’s not my favorite place. if you can guess my favorite, i will give you one buck. Naeboo cannot play!
Char Siew Pau. this is the normal char siew pau from Chuai Heng, the dim sum place on Jalan Imbi, but the best thing there is their char siew polo pau. that stuff is simply heavenly — juicy, tender meat encased in a soft, slightly crispy bun mmmm.
Prawn mee from Little Penang, KLCC & Mid Valley. no, i don’t care what you say, this is my favorite prawn mee in the world and nothing is going to change that. not even the real penang. yes yes i know about Pulau Tikus but not even that!!!
Banana leaf rice at Nirwana. tambah the crispy bittergourd stuff, of course :) my favorite add-on dish from Nirwana is the ayam kicap, though Timtam is a big fan of the sotong.
Beef noodles at Yang Mooi in Pandan Indah. apologies for the lousy focus of the photo, but i was rushing to attack the noodles! they’re soooo good and so much heartier than the famous place at Tengkat Tong Shin near Changkat BB. trust me.
Cendol straight from the truck, slurped down with a plate of spicy crunchy Indian rojak while sitting by the street. sigh, a Malaysian institution, that. this cendol is from the popular truck in SS15 Subang.
haha i recently announced my love for Domino’s Banana Kaya Dessert on my Twitter and a couple of people expressed disgust. what are you guys talking about!! the banana kaya dessert is AWESOME.
Kaya toast, best paired with soft boiled eggs and a cup of coffee. bliss bliss bliss at 7 in the grumpy morning.
Pisang goreng. My absolute favorite is the one outside the Weng Hing coffeeshop on Jalan Imbi. the one from the little row of stalls in Sea Park is similarly good.
this is something i haven’t had since i came back – bak kwa and pork floss on a lightly buttered toasted bun. what a comforting combination of textures and flavors :) this one is from the long gone New Seaview in Subang SS15. not sure where there any more good bak kwa buns besides Seaview and the stall in Taman Segar -– most people just cant get the bak kwa right.
and finally, the notorious chili pan mee at Kin Kin near Jalan TAR or at Pandan Indah. as with hokkien mee, the week feels incomplete without a hot sweaty lunch of chili pan mee at either branch. when I was still in NY, i used to boil with such jealousy when folks like Yat announced on Plurk that they would be going to Kin Kin for lunch :( well, jealousy no more! chili pan mee, i has it. you know i really like it when i start making stupid lolcats references.
so it’s been a lot of eating for me since i came back. most days i schedule two dinners and two lunches just to squeeze in all the people i have to meet up with, together with all the food i’ve yet to have :P four birds in one stone! but the waistline has been complaining, and so does the scale every time i step on it. like today, i had an artery-clogging bak kut teh lunch with my colleagues… :(
luckily for me, the product of this contest that has to be somehow integrated into your blog post for the ‘What’s Your Lurve Affair?’ contest, is going to help me solve that problem!
Lurve is a multigrain snack that’s both yummy and healthy, which means Lurve should probably be replacing my super unhealthy diet for a while. it’s healthy because it has no artificial colouring, no added preservatives and is trans fat-free. i’ve got about 6 packs of Lurve sitting in my house from an overzealous run to the nearest 7-11. starting tomorrow i’m going to take one pack each day to the office for lunch in a bid to get back my pre-summer figure :(
so, had a Lurve Affair lately? :)
(also, do feel free to tell me if you think there are better places to eat any of the local food i mentioned above. i’m always game for jaunts to new places, and more so now because i’m in the midst of compiling a Best of Malaysian Food list. well, Klang Valley really, but you know what i mean. i dont believe that anyone goes to the place i go to for hokkien mee…!)
July 9th, 2009
to celebrate my recent acquisition of stable internet access at The Workplace, and also the departure of BossBird from the office, i have decided to put this god-given boss-free internet-powered five minutes of free time to good use. so i am coming up with something cool for my blog, which hopefully will be continuous for all eternity and will not be abandoned anytime soon.
I present to you the MONDAY MEME!
to kickstart the working week and to get rid of post weekend doldrums (for myself, but hopefully for you too), i’m going to write briefly about a topic every Monday. any topic. the keyword is BRIEF, just to remind myself not to get too caught up in verbiage as i tend to do. and if you guys have any stories or thoughts of your own to share about this topic, please do share! i would love to read what you have to say, and compare stories, and see whose stories kick more butt. :)
the objectives of the Monday Meme are:
1. to rid self — and hopefully you too — of OSIM* blues
2. to massage my brain into action at the start of the week by doing a little writing
3. to facilitate an exchange of interesting stories between myself and my readers, and a subsequent forum
4. to generate some reading material for the rest of the work week
5. okay cant really think of another objective, but i want a fifth one because all sets of objectives always end at five. will be back for this!!
this week’s Monday Meme: is about How You Met Your Boyfriend/Girlfriend. cos i am currently undergoing a dearth of joy, and i think that hearing sweet, romantic or funny stories will make me feel a lot better. especially if they are sweet, romantic, funny stories of how the biggest things can spring forth from the smallest of incidents.
so my story is not about a current boyfriend (not that i have one), but an ex boyfriend. he first sent me an email saying he came across my blog, and because we had similar interests, he offered his help with something. a friend of his had shown him my blog a whole year earlier, but he refused to email me back then for some very snobby reasons (i basically didnt apply to his university and he thought my choices of colleges were not atas enough). he also thought my blog was the most moronic and atrociously pink thing he had ever seen, but emailed me anyway out of courtesy, because he’s very courteous and benevolent like that. very coincidentally, some months later we happened to meet each other at a big lunch outing. he couldn’t stand how i was “wearing pink” (i actually was NOT; i was wearing white) and how i was so obnoxiously cheerful and smiley. he went home from lunch thinking, “oh my god i cannot stand this girl. why is she so pink and so happy?”
one month later he emails me to ask me out for dinner. why? i dont know and i shall never know. but i said yes, and that was the night his life was changed because he was henceforth incredibly smitten by me. why? apparently because i quoted some random author and it happened to be his favorite book or something. also because he had to admit that he was just no match for my cute charms. he then proceeded to pester me for another week to go out with him for drinks, dinner, movies, clubbing, anything; but i turned him down every single time because our ‘date’ ended with him thrusting twenty bucks into my hand hastily and saying “i’m sure i’ll see you at some point” before he slammed the cab door shut and trundled quickly away into the night. eventually we got together because i thought his persistence and general cannot-make-itness were very cute. plus he was quite good at math and offered to help me do my calculus homework if i would go out with him (yes, this is how they get the girls these days). now he is madly in love with me, and i think i may be madly in love with him too, but i broke up with him for a great sin he committed, which i will probably write about in the next Monday Meme, which will likely be titled, “Stupid Things Your Ex Boyfriend Has Done To You That Warrant a Break Up or Month-long Silent Treatment”.
okay.
what’s your story? :D
*OSIM = Oh Shit It’s Monday
July 6th, 2009
so i’m just wrapping up the first week of my internship, which explains the long silence around here. the plan for summer had always been to have no plan, to simply spend a glorious three months doing absolutely anything, or nothing; but i hit some kind of panic mode last month when i realized that i no longer want to major in political science & economics. so against better judgment, i decided at the last minute to do an internship over the summer, so that i could dip my toes in a new industry and see if it’s something i would consider working towards. i have no regrets, but sometimes i still think wistfully about the things i wanted to do this summer in pure leisure — traveling, reading, playing piano and learning a programming language and how to drive.
the internship has been an interesting experience so far, though i’ve been asked not to blog about what we do. pace has been slow for the first week, but with a reasonable learning curve. the team is great: smart, funny and chill. subject matter is highly engaging as well. i’m kind of treading in two different industries — one of which i am completely unfamiliar with, and possess only a smattering of industry knowledge about the other — but i’m loving the two sets of jargon, scope and novelty :) i’m still curious about many things.
my only occupational agitation arises from the fact that our work gets quite nomadic, so sometimes we have to work in places where there’s no internet. that really frustrates me because i can’t google anything, especially all these new things that i dont know anything about!!!! at least i have mobile 3G to keep me sane — i think i’m going to start bringing my mobile phone charger to work so that i can tether the 3G connection. then occasionally i hear this high pitch sound that no one else seems to hear, and that drives me crazy too, but i’ve battled the problem by bringing earphones to work. /smug though that births a new problem, because then i start listening to all my sappy music and become very emotional. le sigh. cant win them all.
but the chairs are awesome! the seat back is made out of a soft mesh so it’s cooling and allows circulation, the reclining is smooth but not heartbeat-skipping, and the armrests can be adjusted by a wide range! love it. i wanna bring one home. a picture:
oh and that is Eng Han!
when i was being interviewed for the job, i found out at the end of it that Eng Han had also interviewed with the firm and was starting on an internship along with me. it’s nice to have a friend here! some more he’s quite entertaining — he always brings his hand sanitizer along when he goes to lunch, and occasionally he brings his whole pantry with him to work. the other day, he came in with this funky gourdlike Argentine teacup with a metal straw, and started brewing his own herbal tea with a hot water thermos and loose leaves -_-
picture of aforementioned teacup:
my immediate boss is pretty cool. he was very unsmiling at first, so i felt very awkward because i’m always so smiley, and thus willed myself to stop smiling while talking to him. hahaha. but it’s not so bad now. he’s a great teacher and explains things very economically. but he reminds me a lot of Martian. they’ve got the same vibe and even the same hongkong look. sometimes i feel like asking him if he’s a martian :)
on my first day, Boss (must come up with a codename for him) explained to me the three most important filters of any task on the job:
Filter 1 – the client is always right
Filter 2 – the boss is always right
Filter 3 – if uncertain, refer to Filter 1 & 2
-_-
on another but slightly related note, working in such a structured environment has made me realize that although i’m getting older and traversing into more adult worlds, i’m very much still holding on stubbornly to my 16 — or 19 — year old self. i suppose it’s fine if i had an inner child that surfaced every now and then, but it seems likely that i’m never going to grow up. i’m still impetuous, commitment phobic, indecisive and rely way too much on intuition. and apparently i smile too much.
the problem is that i like the way i am. i like that i’m a kid and that i always make a mess when i eat, that my pinkpau email address isn’t appropriate for a CV, and that i use a cookie mirror for my compact. decorum is so boring and stressful; and this whole growing up business is making me feel a lot more inertia than i would like. forget this nonsense, you know? i want to fall in love. go treasure hunting. bake a cake. tell a really stupid joke. and giggle like a hyena as i read lamebook.com.
sigh, adulthood. why?
oh, and here’s a picture of one of the leather bags i bought from singapore during the great singapore sale! sorry i forgot to attach it in the previous post; i dont have the other pictures anymore :( will take some when i remember to. this is the bag i use for my laptop:
SGD 25 from Far East Plaza
i am exhausted. cant wait to catch up on sleep. daytrip to melaka tomorrow! :)
by the way, i thought it would be noteworthy to mention that i’ve been early every single day of work. and by early, i mean an entire half hour early. adulthood is changing me.
P/S: please do the poll on my sidebar! i kinda need some direction in life. i hate all of you who already selected the last option >:(
July 3rd, 2009
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