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Saturday, Feb 12, 2011 - 18:59 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

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Comprains

I figured the poor rants tag could use an airing, and I had a few saved up anyway, so here goes.


Giftless

Included in the gym package was a (non-transferable) gift certificate for a free face treatment (supposedly worth over S$300), and mini speakers to boot. Well, who could pass that up? Called to make an appointment, only to be informed that there were no slots remaining for January. Erm, the gift certificate expires end-January, I said. No problemo, just book a session for February, they said. Fair enough.

February came, I went down with my cousin to their outlet in the city area, and we were promptly informed, after the preliminaries, that our gift certificates were expired, and that they had no record of any staff making the assurance over the phone. Oh, and they had long since run out of the speakers.

But, they quickly said, they could do the S$98 treatment at half-price for both of us, out of goodwill (eh wait, I thought it was worth over S$300? Incidentally, I came across a book selling at S$26 at Times later, which had been distributed gratis at SAFRA, which goes to show that price is often simply what one makes of it).

[N.B. Oh, and local bookstores could do well to put their inventory online (like this), since I presume they have it all computerised anyway. They could have wrested some of my (and others', no doubt) business away from Amazon.com]

Slightly fed up, but of course the terms and conditions are subject to change at any time, though that doesn't mean I've got to be happy at it.


Talk Talk

Received an unsolicited call from a student at (unintelligible) university recently, about some survey or other. Fair enough, we've got to help each other out, eh?

This however got old real quickly, as the survey turned out to be question after question to be answered on a scale from one to seven, with a mix of positive and negative phrasings, which just made the whole thing even more confusing, without even considering that they were read out in a heavy accent.

Under the impression that it was a short survey, it dragged on, and I decided to ask how many questions remained. A few? Alright. A lot followed. Realising that we might have had a definitional breakdown on what "few" means, I requested a specific number, and got "five or six".

When New Question Seven rolled along, I decided that the shame was on me, and hung up without regret. Seriously, if there are fifty questions to go, just say so! In fact, be upfront about the length from the beginning, and if one is worried that potential survey takers will be discouraged, it might just be a hint that the entire thing is too bloody long.


Walkers

This is an old pet peeve, concerning an annoying class of pedestrians. Now, there's nothing wrong about walking in the middle of the path, especially when there's space. Unfortunately, Singapore being what it is, pavements are often narrow, and often - just about - allow two people to pass each other, shoulder to shoulder.

It all usually works out, and I try to facilitate this by keeping early to one side or the other, assuming that there's nobody setting a precedent in front. If the incoming pedestrian is already on one side, I'm more than happy to hug the other edge of the road.

Of course, this simply doesn't work when the f**ker insists on hogging the middle. What do such people expect others to do? Get off the pavement? It's almost as if they get their kicks forcing people to twist around them. This doesn't happen too often, but still pops up with depressing regularity.

What really takes the cake is the middle-of-the-roader stepping in to my occupied side (which I can remember happening twice or thrice up till now). Hello, what more could I have done? Your grandfather's road ah? So far, the bertstare's worked wonders in such situations.


Sign To Come

Wasted about ten minutes in a queue at the bank, before I got to a small sign that informed me that passbook renewals could be done at the (empty) last counter. Wouldn't it have made more sense to post such notices at the beginning of the queue?

This week: P$100 on Arsenal (-1.5) vs. Wolvehampton Wanderers (at 1.67)



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