Nights
Was standing at the family living room window looking out into the orange night sky, signalling the coming of rain. The trees are all now swaying with the strong breezes of wind.
And it just started raining. I love the smell of rain.
On nights like this, I will have many reflections about my life..
Ethics & Governance
My first paper starts in 1 ½ hours time and I’m not prepared.
I-a-m-s-o-d-e-a-d..
Daiso
I love going to Daiso. They sell anything. Best is same price for everything. Plus, all the words are in Japanese so that I can pretend I’m in Japan. No money buy air ticket go there is like that one lor! Got to use some imagination.
After dinner with Dar at Plaza Singapura, with nothing to do while waiting for our movie time, we wandered into the Daiso. I always go to the one at IMM and its so much nicer to shop there coz its really way much bigger.
Saw some boxers and I asked Dar if he wanted to get any as its only two bucks for one. He was too embarrassed to go choose so I, with my auntie spirit, not scare pai say one, went to the rack and start taking the nicer design ones to him. He was standing at a far away corner pretending to look at plastic containers lor.
When I was choosing, I realised it came in 2 sizes only – L and LB.
I was confused. I thought S, M, L, XL is the more usual sizing?!?
BUT, me being the smartest auntie of all, after looking at the measurements on the label, managed to decipher the acronym lor:
L = LARGE
LB = LARGE BIRD
I clever not you say?
Bank Housing Loan
I was reading this article call “Is It Time For You To Refinance?” by a Dr Money in The New Paper and feel angry lor. What a stupid advisor. Its obvious he is one of those typical complain customer pattern.
In his article, I quote his exact words ~
As a rule, you are on your own when it comes to refinancing. Don’t expect your bank to notufy you. The reason, I think, is obvious: Banks make more money when they do not teach customers how to save money by paying them less.
PUI!
Please lar, you think we have a lot of staff working in the bank is it? You come and work la. You know how many hundred thousands loan customers we have anot? And he has the cheek to advise people to ask bank to waive the fees involved in doing a repricing. If like that, my already miserable pay will become even more miserable with the loss of such fee income.
We are not a charitable organization ok. People must take care of their own finances what. Just like we need to remember which dates pay what bills etc. Its your own responsibility right not. Does the government have to announce on TV its dinner time so you will take your meal?
If a person can earn so much to buy a new property and need to get a bank loan, they would be smart enough to shop around for the best loan package. As such, they should know about the lock-in period and what to do after a lock-in period. Once it expires, they should enquire with the bank about any other packages they can change to. How can one expect the bank to call and say ‘hello, Mr Tan, would you like to reprice to a lower package?’
Anyways, I think the customer will also get worried and say ‘is there any catch?’
Like sometimes, I’ve such a hard time convincing my customers to move their funds in their savings account to a fixed deposit account which pays them 10 times higher interest. A normal savings account pays 0.3% interest but they can get 3% interest in a three months fixed deposit placement.
They keep thinking I’m trying to sell them something or there’s some catch and hangs up on me. Then those that do put, thought they are doing me a big favour. Please lar, fixed deposit is not investment ok, I don’t get any revenue for it. In fact, the bank earns more when its in the savings account as the interest is so low in there so they pay you lesser. So don’t sound as if I need to feel super grateful to you ok.
Anyways, back to the loan part, so Dr Money, please don’t give such errant advise to the readers that the bank should actively inform customers about the end of their lock-in period. We are not so free. If you think so, then you should come and sit beside me for a day, you will know the hours we put in are crazy.
Plus, the most difficult group of customers in the bank are housing loan customers. They think they very 利害 buy private property so they like to boss us around. But I always wish to tell them ‘hey if you are really so rich, use cash to pay for the whole house la! why need bank loan?’.
Its really those very poor or super duper mega rich customers whom are really the humble and nice customers to serve.
Anorexic
99.99999999% of the people I very long never see and finally see have the same comment – you lost weight! That is not good news to me as I used to weigh only 50kg at 1.70m tall.
I started panicking after the 89th person said that and went to find a weighing machine to weigh myself. I did lost weight but not so much what – 2kg (currently at 48kg)! I mean ok, that’s like way too skinny but its not like I’ve lost 10kg walking around looking like a third world citizen or something.
I eat a lot one lor. I take lots of fast food, junk food and supper. Supper are supposed to be super fattening. But I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Perhaps I was balancing too many things 2 weeks back.
Going to be on leave for the next 3 weeks to study for my exams. Hope I put on some weight to look ‘healthy’.
“Thank you for calling — Priority Banking. This is Linda. I am currently on leave and will be back on 7 May. Please contact my cover, Lisa Yeo at 6512 —- for any service matters. If your request is not time-sensitive, please leave me a message and I will call you when I’m back from my leave. Please do not leave any transactional instructions over the phone as I will not be able to execute them. If you need urgent assistance, please call our — Hotline at 1800 — —-. Thank you.”
Mom’s going away to China, no home-cooked food for the next 10 days..
One-For-One
I did an one-for-one exchange today for my O_o! Now the one I’m holding is O_o number 2.
Palm Treo 680
I’ve finally got a new phone! My darling O-o. That’s my phone name. Haha..
Have been meddling with it since Friday. It’s keeping me real busy with so many functions, softwares, accessories etc to explore.
But O-o crashed on me earlier. 
Bad O-o. Think its due to me on-ing and off-ing and on-ing and off-ing when doing the phonebook entries transfer.
I’ve got 1000 over numbers stored and the SIM card only can save 250 numbers so I got to (1) save from old Nokia phone to SIM (2) SIM to new Palm phone (3) change to Samsung phone to mass delete SIM numbers as Palm I don’t know how to mass delete and Nokia I forgot what’s my security code (4) insert SIM into Nokia again to repeat process.
It’s so so so tedious I tell you. My main problem is I saved loads of my customers name along with IC nos and salutations. But because the SIM card can’t save such a long name, the name got chop into half. Now I got to re-do them when I’m back in office. I’m going crazy lor. There’s like 500 numbers?
Not to mention, I think my office mobile line’s MMS and data calls are not activated or something so I can’t access MMS or internet, so got to use my personal line for it. That changed my plan for using the new phone with office line to new phone with new personal line, Samsung phone with office line and Nokia phone for old personal line (as contract only ends in July).
Sounds confusing right. Haha, I don’t blame you, I had to think through them for a while too. Well, all you need to know is, if I haven’t sms you my new number, please sms me at my old number for it. 
Now I got to carry 3 phones till July. Troublesome lor, I hate carrying 3 phones, so heavy. Sighs. I think if people sees me juggling with them, they will think I’m nuts. I don’t blame them, if I observe someone else like that, I most probably will make the same comment.
O-o comes with a 30-day exchange warranty. I hope if it wants to give up on me, it will do it before times-up. Then I get a brand new set – yay~ But still, choy choy choy!
Oh ya, before I end off the entry, I went to Singtel outlet at Com Centre to buy the phone, think not many people around on Good Friday (in church?) so the service was great. I took quite a long time to choose a nice number from their database. Look for Li-Nah, she has great service!
