Category: Diary

From the story of Living With Cynthia Chapter Mission Impossible comes the next installment as a follow-up to What The PUK?!. One morning, Cynthia had an outbreak of desperation: Do you know how frustrated it is?! And she repeated that three times.

PART ONE – FINDING ERBASOL

I certainly know how frustrated she is. Cynthia has sensitive skin and it is her lifelong mission to find the right set of products for her head, her face, and her body. I am used to taking over products that do not suit her. Like the Dove Firming Body Wash a while back. Do I need firming body wash? Seriously?

Taking over the shampoo or body wash that Cynthia cannot use is one thing. Taking over the cosmetic of hers is another. I cannot see myself applying that S$100+ moisturizer on my face on a daily basis. No way.

Having anticipated what is to come my way, I tried to understand why it is so frustrating for Cynthia to get the right moisturizer. Recently she has switched to Kiehl’s. The sample worked well but prolonged usage showed otherwise. It is frustrating of course because prior to Kiehl’s, she used Erbasol range of product and that worked well for her. Sadly, the beauty center she frequented has closed down. Hence, she has not been able to purchase Erbasol products since then.

Understanding the problem is the first step in solving any problem. That morning as though I saw the bat sign on the evening sky or Lois Lane’s scream at the ears of Superman, I was determined to step up, give it a try, to save another innocent’s life.

Figuratively.

Finding out where to buy the Erbasol product here in Singapore turns out to be quite a difficult task. At least to me. I did an extensive search in the Internet, got a lousy phone number that did not work. I tried eBay and sites alike and could not find that particular product. Really, what do I know about lady’s skin care products?

But I ain’t got to give in. No way. I sent an email to Erbasol headquarter asking for the contact information for the distributor in Singapore. Meanwhile, I was ready to call up each and every beauty center and even Erbasol headquarter in Italy if it is what it takes to find the product.

Gosh, I was determined.

We have a happy ending. The headquarter replied and they gave me an address (no phone number though). The rest is easy. Now … part two of the story.

PART TWO – TIME TRAVEL

The distributor Hairizon is located somewhere at Commonwealth drive. As I got out of the car park, I felt as though I was teleported back in time to Singapore in the 70’s. Slabs of stones underneath where my car rested were coming off. The buildings looked old and I even saw an old “bridge” unlike anything I have seen in Singapore (see picture above). Usually I see this sort of scenery in the neighborhood(s) of the oppositions. But no, I did see the sign of PAP (ruling party of Singapore) here and there.

Took me a while to find block 77 and when I found it, gosh, I looked at the shop and that looked old. Turns out that I was looking at the storeroom. The shop was at another outlet down the road.

I stepped in and this old lady looked at me, asked me in Chinese what I was looking for. We’ve talked on the phone, I replied. In this shop that was full of goods (mainly for hair salons), I saw wigs, different kinds of scissors that barbers use, and different kind of shampoo and gels and all sort of funky brands that I have not seen before. Besides the old lady, there was another middle age man shopping for some hair products for his hair salon.

I told the old lady what I needed (3 different kinds of Erbasol products in total) and she stepped out of her shop, left the office and shop opened, and headed to the store room for what seemed like ages. Meanwhile, this middle age man and I chatted on and on and I got to know the background of the shop, of the shop owners, of the shop owners’ children, and the various equipments that a hair salon uses. Not long afterwards, a middle age lady stepped in looking for a pair of scissors in order to give her son a haircut. She in turn chatted with the middle age man asking if he knew what sort of scissors are value for money.

After eternity, the old lady returned. I did some negotiations, have the GST waived, and the old lady chatted with me for God knows how long. You know, I really respect the patience of the rest of the customers. It is as though waiting is a norm in this small town. It must have taken me more than half an hour to get what I needed.

I felt as though I was in another world. But at least, mission accomplished … once again.

This blog entry is kind of overdue, I know. Quite a few friends of mine asked what is it like to leave the life of a consultant and work in the industry. Instead of spending time to type lots of words, I depict my view in the graphs above.

I guess the graphs exaggerate the situation a bit. Ha ha ha … love to poke fun at my friends who are still in this trade but I am sure they can somewhat relate to what I am trying to say. To those who are new to the consulting business, it is not usual to see a consultant who is expected to deliver a lot more in a much shorter time compares to his counterpart at the client side. After all, that is how consultants create value and charge an obscene amount of fees … of which only a tiny fraction actually goes into their pockets (hence the yellow bar). To be fair, consultants don’t just create value by putting in extra hours that they do, no doubt. Depending on the sophistication of the consulting company, some are able to draw best practices, global talents, and connection with external partners to get the job done with a snap of the fingers. For those who are inspired and have the potential of being one of the bosses who take home bulk of that absence fees, by all means, please do stay and excel and while you are at it, please don’t forget you have dear friends like me who love to be pampered with sumptuous meals and expensive gifts.

10 years kind of seems like a long time. And I wanted some new perspective in my working life. So I have decided to join the industry that I spent most time with in the past. A decision well advised by some old friends of mine long time ago (an equal number of friends if not more advised me against it). At a first glance, working in the industry may seems a bit slow and relax compares to the consulting lifestyle. That is true to a certain extend. What it means is that you can just do what you are expected of and have time to take care of other priorities of your life. Or you now have the space to do a lot more and hopefully be recognized.

I am still new to the job. Who knows what comes next. We shall see.

Size is relative, I know. But in my eyes, mine is a big one, a huge one. And I am happy with what I have got … until I had lunch with RC today and learned that his beats mine by 2 inches! Arrgghh! As I dug deeper, I also learned that mine has a much better response time than his. Now, take that! Ha ha ha … I know … men, the competitive type.

KF the muscleman (not to confuse with KF the consultant) is someone you should avoid when you want to buy something. Because he will certainly tempt you to buy that something and a lot more. However, KF is also that someone you should see when you want to buy that something. Because he does know everything under the sun. And so I did seek for his opinions. I have been toying with the idea of buying a new color display unit for my computer (a.k.a. LCD monitor), for years. It has become the mother of all delayed gratification (I will tell you what is the “grandmother” in a bit).

Three years ago, I spent S$1,000 for a Samsung 17″ LCD monitor with a response time of 8ms. Since then technology has advanced in three different dimensions. The response time has lowered, the monitor size has grown bigger, and some take onto the form of a wide-screen format. Price, on the other hand, has come down progressively. I visited COMEX (very nice IT show this year in terms of space and babes) and came back with a Samsung 22″ wide-screen glossy LCD monitor (2ms response time) at a price of S$550. That is like half the price of my old monitor. The analogy is … today you spend S$50,000 to buy a Honda Jazz and three years later, a brand new Honda Accord equivalent that did not exist today would only cost you S$25,000. Madness right? That is technology for you.

I love my brand new Samsung so much that I am going to give it a name … Alice it is then. She is beautiful, expensively beautiful … and is larger than my 12 years old 21″ TV. Now, that is the grandmother of all delayed gratification. Plasma or LCD TV? KF the muscleman will tell you how frustrated he is with my indecisiveness. Move on with technology, he often says to me.

On a similar yet different topic, tell me, since when we are what we study? Not trying to console myself but look around you. A literature degree graduate doesn’t write books for a living. A mathematician doesn’t solve the mathematical puzzles of the century after he steps out of the university. A sociologist ends up doing anything but working in the field of the development of society and social behavior. And a computer engineer and scientist like me … not necessarily that technology savvy like many of you may expect of me.

Sick of having to share 4 network cables with more than 4 people in the meeting room day after day (yes, short of office space), I asked for a budget to acquire a network hub. One that is capable to support our ever expanding team size. Ask and you shall receive. Ask and you will be “arrowed” to do it. Duh! And so I made a trip to an IT mall. I marched into one of my favorite stores and had a brief conversation with this less-than-helpful shop assistance.

He: What are you looking for?
Me: I want to buy a wired router for my office (knowing that wireless router will probably breach the security code of the organisation I work for).
He: We don’t carry wired router anymore.
Me: You don’t?!
He: We don’t. That was long time ago.
Me: (facing turning red) … so what do you suggest?
He: You may want to get a switch.
Me: A switch?
He: (leading me to a sea of switches) … yes, a switch.
Me: What is a switch?
He: (looked at me and lost in words) … a switch is an intelligent hub …
Me: An intelligent hub?! (what is a dumb hub then?!) I just need a … a … a thing (hands waving in the air) so that all of us can connect to the network!

Gasp! What does a man have to do in order to get his hub?!

Anyway, I asked the people around me and everyone has his own definition on what a router and a switch is. Not to bore you all with details. After some serious investigation, I bought a switch that fortunately works for our situation. Phew … like my friend GS often said: learn something new everyday!

New visitors of my site must have thought that I am quite a party animal – Attica, The Arena, and now Le Baroque. In fact, the Le Baroque visit was totally impromptu. My guitarist Jason has been talking about this new colleague of his for a long time (till now becomes ex-colleague) but I have yet had the chance to meet this “potential drummer” of ours. Being impatience that my band progresses much slower than I wish to be (quality of masculinity!), I took the initiative and asked Jason to introduce me to CW over email. Come to think of it, I don’t normally meet strangers without a course. But before I get into that, I have to share a phone conversation I had just an hour or two ago.

I woke up this morning felt like having a home delivered McDonald’s breakfast. So I called the hot-line. After waiting on the line for quite a bit …

Her: Good morning! This is Mc Delivery. Can I have your contact number please?
Me: (In my low and masculine voice coupled with the just-woke-up husky texture) Morning. My number is 6XXX-XXXX.

She paused, presumably looking at her screen …

Her: Is that … Ms Wong on the line …
Me: (Do I sound like a Ms Wong?!) Erm …
Her: (Giggle)
Me: (Speechless)

After that shocking survey I took, that was not funny.

Her: (Giggle) Can I take your order please? (Giggle)
Me: Sure … “Ms” Wong who is still sleeping wants a Egg McMuffin meal and …
Her: (Giggle)
Me: Mr Wong wants to have a Big Breakfast meal please. Thank you.
Her: (Giggle) Would you like … (giggle) … an apple pie for one dollar? (Giggle)

Not funny, so not funny. Stupid customer relationship system. Cynthia must be the one who placed the first order and from then on, my home number is now tagged to her.

Now, back to Le Baroque, all I know about CW from Jason is that he is an American, musically talented, and is now stationed in Singapore. And he plays drum! Okay, I have been hunting for a drummer for ages short of camping outside studios and nab any good drummers coming out the door. Perhaps that is what I should do. Cold calls, cold meetings, whatever it takes to make some progress. Ya baby. Do it like a man! Oh wait, I am a man.

I wanted to check out some places with good music. Jason recommend Le Baroque at Chijmes over the phone. So CW and I headed over to Chijmes. The thing is, it is actually fun to meet new friends. When we arrived at Le Baroque at 7.30pm, one of the waitress told us that the band would not start playing till 10.30pm. I thought we would have missed the band performance. I mean, how long would a meal and a few glasses of beer take between two strangers? Surprisingly, we left the bar just before midnight. The band was actually quite good though the music played was like back in the 70s or 80s. They have 1-for-1 beer selling at S$12 each (so S$6 for one) before 10pm.

CW is going to join us for a jamming session and this coming Tuesday, instead of jamming at my humble home studio, we are going to visit a real one with a real drum-set. I am so excited because it is my first. Stay tuned!

This must be one of the silliest blogs I have penned, I know. But I am so excited by this new toy I bought weeks ago. As in why it was in a box for weeks … oh well, since when we buy things that we really need and instead, we buy things that we spontaneously want? The irony is, it is not at all a spontaneous affair. I have been toying with the idea of having a printer of my own for years if not a decade. So what held me back?

To cut a long story not so long, there were many questions in my head. Like, why do I need a printer for? Where am I going to put my printer (space constraint in my humble apartment)? And can I afford one (I always have this impression that it is really expensive to own a printer together with the running cost)?

I know why I need a printer. Mainly to print out the music scores of the songs I have written. It is not a lot really (about 10 to 20 songs a year) and I usually have the revisions handwritten onto the piece of score printout itself. Now that my band is getting more serious in working towards performing live, my band mates need the songs to be properly transcribed in large font formats (like this). And because the fonts are so big, each song is fitted into two pages. Since song revision is an ongoing process, all of a sudden, I have a strong case to need a printer. Besides, it is always nice to re-print my own song scores in a fresh piece of paper together with the recent revisions. As I have imagined, once I have a printer, there would be a whole lot of stuffs that are nice to be printed. Like my work-in-progress novel and some of the random materials from the Internet like maps.

Once I have established the case, it was time for some research on pricing. Between an ink-jet and a laser printer, it was a no-brainer for me. Having the need to constantly print something over the 6 months duration in order to keep the head of the ink-jet printer moist and the need to change the ink cartridge every 100 pages or 6 months whichever is sooner? By the time I print a stack of my songs for my guitarist and another stack for my bassist, my ink cartridge would have been half gone. And I love the outcome of a laser printer. The only problem with laser printers is size. So, a color laser printer is out and so are those that come with a scanner. Give and take I guess.

Initially I was fixated on getting an entry level of HP laser black and white printer that is sold for S$250 with a complimentary S$50 cashcard. I always thought that printers are astronomically expensive but S$200 is kind of attractive.

After a rather long chat at PK Computer, a computer shop at Funan …

Me: … I don’t know if I shall buy it here. If I go up to Challenger, there is a S$20 discount for members (Okay, I lied … I am not a member).
Sales assistance: How about I suggest another model that is more value for money?
Me: (Showing interesting) … Hmmm … what do you have for me?
He: You may want to consider this Canon printer … (and then all the sales pitch).

Turned out that a Canon printer with a slightly better stats cost only S$229 before a cash rebate of S$70 directly from Canon. Now, that is what I call … not bad! A laser printer from a reputed brand for S$159.

Still, I was not satisfied.

Me: Erm … you know, this brand is new to me and I haven’t done any price research yet …
He: Sir, this price is already very good! We even absorb the 2% increase in GST. This promotion only last till National Day!
Me: I know … hmmm … I like doing business with you. What’s your name?
He: XYZ (I seriously cannot remember his name right now) … (and he continued to do his sales pitch).
Me: Okay, XYZ. My legs are tired and I really don’t feel like walking around no more. Give me a good price and I will grab one.
He: (Not moving the price on the ground that it was a promotion item)
Me: (Not taking out my wallet on the ground that I must get a discount)

In the end, he gave me a S$4 discount, which is not bad. It did cover the car parking fee and more.

I chose a Canon because its toner is 10% cheaper than the ones from HP. At home, I did a calculation. Each toner cartridge cost S$95 (before I bargain it down of course) that can print 2,000 to 3,000 pages. Say I am sensible in what I print and taking the mid point as an estimate … cost per page for toner alone is 3.8 cents.

As for the paper, there are two types – the 70 grams and 80 grams. The 70 grams type cost 10% cheaper than the 80 grams type. However, I love the feel of the 80 grams type. I choose Double A brand almost without a thought – the power of advertisement eh?

To buy a stack of Double A paper (500 pieces) in Raffle Place is S$5. And you would have thought that since Raffle Place has so many people, so many shops to compete against each other, the price must be the lowest eh? Funan actually sells the same stack of paper at S$4.65. That is a 7% difference – enough to cover GST. So, one day during lunch, I walked from Raffle Place to Funan to buy a stack of Double A only to find that I was stuck in that area because of the rain. Oh well, I have to pay for a train trip to return to office area. The moral of the story? Go figure out … ha ha ha.

Okay … back to the running cost … so far we have:

Cost per page = 3.8 cents (tonner) + 0.93 cents (80 grams paper) = 4.73 cents

Since the printer comes with a toner cartridge (half) and if I am going to keep it for 5 years, the yearly cost of the printer is roughly S$20. Judging at my usage, I reckon the cost is in the region of 5 cents per page.

I know it is silly. But it is always good to know.

I spent the first half of my career life working in an International environment and then switched to a workplace whereby local Singaporeans seldom talk about sex. Now that I am back in an International environment and check this out – on day 5, I was squeezed into a small meeting room full of guys as my new workspace (my first month at work will be another story) and was surprised at what sort of topics these guys talk about.

Before getting into the juicy bits, here is some background in what I mean by “International”. Our project team comprises of an Indian freshly from India, an Indian freshly from Middle East, an Indian who studied and worked in US, a few local Singaporeans, a Korean who is now studying in US, a couple more from the West, and me who is born in Hong Kong and have studied in UK. I must have gotten “domesticated” by the local environment (which is not a bad thing really) when most locals at their 30’s talk about babies and 20’s talk about … movies, food, and shopping. Now, in this meeting room, behind closed door, with audience age group ranges from early 20’s to late 20’s to … ahem … mid 30’s to late 50’s, there is one topic in common.

Sex.

One day, some of us started to comment on how to improve our shitty environment with so many of us squeezed into a small meeting room working environment, I suggested that we need a Plasma TV. Somehow that conversation has gone from CNN to videos to … porn – totally beyond the control of the relatively rather innocent me. Then out of the blue, one guy started talking about ways to download porn and before I could recovered from a dropping jaw, the topic turned into various fetishes found in porn videos – in graphical details.

Not that I have anything against what’s inside porn. Just that talking freely about it with an audience of such a wide age group and cultural diversity sort of makes me gasp. But that is not the most shocking of all …

It is the sex life revelation from one of the young Singaporean that intrigues me the most. (Strangely, the subject of our interest has gone to the same school as one of the sons of my colleague in the same room and this subject of mine know his son … now, that is awkward.) I am so inspired to write a book on “Sex Life of the Singaporean Teenagers” following one of the books with the same topic written in Australia.

I am not sure how much of this is new information to you but it is certainly quite an eye-opener to me. The key “learning points” for me from a single subject are (imagine if I conduct a survey in a much wider audience like the one done in Australia):

1. Some Singaporean girls are not shy about initiating sex and they start young … very young
2. Some youngsters treats sex as experimental and lustfully recreational while my ideal of “deepening the passion and love between couples” seems too … old school
3. Some youngsters tend to change their partners frequently within short time frame
4. Sex education in Singapore may have taught the youngsters well in terms of birth control (girls actually take pills in advance to plan for sexual encounters!) but probably fails in teaching them that unprotected sex is the main reason how people contract HIV

When that young colleague of mine finished the story and left the room, I was too tongue-tied to say …

“Next time, please consider to wear a condom.”

Very soon, the topic returned to paid sex in Singapore and expanded to paid sex in various parts of the world … how the in-thing in India for men to throw money notes to the (clothed) erotic dancers and more.

My oh mine … this gives forth a new definition to OJT – “On the Job Training”.