Unhappy Valentines' Day for TosH

Not sure how to structure this post into a coherent piece since soooo many things happened so forgive me if this piece seems a little haphazard.

Let me get the most du lan thing out of the way.

My hard disk crashed.

KAN NI NA BE CHAO JIBYE!!!!!!

My laptop is a fucking IBM!! It is not supposed to crash!! I didn't drop it. I didn't hammer it. I typed "bye bye" on MSN, went to change clothes to go out to watch Man City vs United, took a look at the screen before going out and there were funny lines across the screen. I couldn't get into Windows after rebooting.

And the world starting caving in on me as it dawned upon me that I had lost ALL my precious photos from my Europe and Japan tours, birthday and CNY celebrations, matches etc. Not to mention 6 Gb of music files as well. And when I got to the pub, I discovered BOTH Giggs and Ronaldo were not starting, Fortune and Fletcher started on the wings. It was seriously a case of WTF!!!

Heng got Richard Dunne. What a finish for the second own goal. *applause*. Even Pele would have been proud of that goal. As John remarked when the screen focused on Dunne's face: "What have I DUNNE?"

Eh come on lah, quite funny line right...laugh leh.

And so on to today, a frantic series of phone calls to IBM service centres etc. I reiterate that...

I HATE OUTSOURCING.

I can't even begin to describe my dulan ness whenever I have an urgent problem to settle and when I call, I hear an Indian accent. I have nothing against Indians (stop sniggering behind!) but I am absolutely against Indian accents. You are bloody servicing the UK market, you jolly well speak PROPER English. I mean seriously.. everybody complains about Singlish. But what is so different then about Indian accented English when people also have problems understanding what they are saying? JIbye. So much time was spent on spelling out every alphabet and reconfirming every sentence that the guy said.

And the most jibye thing of all? They have no local knowledge at all. The place where I have to leave my laptop is in bloody Stratford. Far far away in the South China Sea... The address he gave me is DHL Depot, Unit I and J, EAST CROSS CENTRE, Stratford, E15 2HN. No ROAD NAME. How the hell am I going to find a building in the whole of Stratford?!?!?!!?

Me: Do you know how to get there?
Annoying Indian accent: No.

-Silence-

No attempts at all to help find out how to get there. Because he is in INDIA, that's why!! He then suggested that I can post it to the DHL depot and then DHL will bring it to IBM. All very nice, except that I had explained to him a minute ago that I was scared that my laptop would get lost in the post. Why doesn't it register in his head? Because people in India don't fucking know ROYAL MAIL is screwed up!!!!

So people in Singapore, be glad that Singapore is small. Sometimes it is an advantage. When you bring your laptop for servicing, it is at some convenient location and they don't need to send it to ANOTHER town to repair it.

Another thing was that once I send my laptop for repair, all my data would really be goodbye. So I phoned Irving to ask him how much data recovery would cost. And the answer was prohibitive. And then the first sign of St Valentine appeared. Irving asked me to bring my laptop to him so that he can take a look at it. To cut a long story short, he saved my data.

THANK YOU IRVING!!!! LIFE SAVIOUR!!!!

Phew...my photos...my precious. TosH hereby swears to back up not only photos he haven't printed, but also ALL his photos and music when he gets his laptop back. So at least my data is safe now. But still got to make a trip to Stratford, make numerous calls to IBM, (maybe) buy a new hard disk etc. Sigh... I am dying without my laptop :(

And so I went out to look at hard disk drives along Tottenham COurt Road, Sim Lim Square of London. Being Vday, lots of people were holding bouquets along the roads, some big some small, some roses and some were other flowers. I had a glimpse at the price of some bouquets in shops and they were SO expensive!! 25 pounds for a small bouquet of flowers (no roses)!!! Wah kao... I didn't even dare to see the price of the roses.

It does make the $2.50 per stalk that my sister is selling in NUS look so much cheaper. Yupz yupz my sister is ENTREPRENEUR!! Quite impressed by her. I have never had the guts (nor the business ideas) to do a small business on my own. The fear of losing money would always prevent me from being one. So I have developed new found respect for my sister. Hope her business venture went well today.

And this leads me onto the problems of Singapore. One of my friends specially flew over from US to see his girlfriend in London. (You can do so many stunts when you are rich...=( ) And we met up for lunch and had (strictly speaking the 3 of them talked while I listened, trying hard to understand half the time) a discussion about the problems with Singapore. I really do agree with the point that Singapore/Singaporeans are too judgmental. In fact, I am extremely guilty of that. For example, when I saw a guy with a bouquet of flowers wrapped in Sainsburys' (a supermarket like NTUC in Singapore) plastic bag, I automatically conclude that he is a cheapo. (Yes I did see a guy like that, I sincerely hope that he remembers to throw the plastic bag away, if not he is going to learn an unforgettable lesson...) We judge everything based on results and not on effort. We have no room for failures. I love Singapore, but this is one area where if I had one wish for Singapore, I would wish for it to change. Let's all try not to judge people on their occupations, their salaries, their failures and also the language they speak ok?

YES THAT INCLUDES YOU FUCKING JIBYE BOYFRIEND OF MY COUSIN! JUST BECAUSE MY PARENTS DON'T KNOW ENGLISH DOESN'T MEAN YOU CAN TALK BAD ABOUT THEM IN ENGLISH YOU FUCKER!

Just because my parents don't eat eel and doesn't understand English doesn't mean it is ok for you to say to your girlfriend that "Even if we don't tell them its eel they also don't know right". Going by your logic, if we don't tell Muslims and let them eat pork its ok? Go and stick your fucking marketing jibye manager up your arse. 0 PR skills still want to do marketing.

Anyway yeah, quite impressed with the thoughts and ideas of my 3 friends. Though I really feel that some of their ideas are not desirable, like affirmative action (positive discrimination to put it simply) it is not important. What is important is that they retain the enthusiasm and concern they have for the future of Singapore. As long as that continues, then it is all that Singapore can ask for really. Not like me who is contented to remain a heartlander and watch football only. I will fight for Singapore if there is war (though I will be killed almost immediately) but I am absolutely clueless in trying to see where Singapore should be heading in the future.

So I guess I would end this damn long post on this rather I-am-useless note. Just to further this useless mood a little.. I just discovered I am damn fucking suey. The shop along Regent St can just disappear into thin air when I am trying to find it. I walked to Covent Garden to see if there is another branch and couldn't find any. Just now when I looked on the Internet, I discovered that I literally WALKED PAST THE SHOP WITHOUT FINDING IT. wtf man.... When you are suey, you are really suey I tell ya...