Author: Grievous

Is Smith Street Dying?

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Took this photo around 8pm yesterday after dinner at Lan Zhou La Mian (兰州拉面) at Smith Street. I noticed 4 of the stalls were closed, and 3 of them has a sign up showing that the store are open for rental. That simply means the previous stall has closed down.

My colleague and his wife who were with me for dinner, wondered whether Smith Street is dying. After all, we noticed that several of our favorite curry chicken, mutton soup, and western food stalls have all thrown in the tower. In fact, I think one of the 4 stalls in the photo may have been the char kway teow stall which I found quite decent as well.

Above which, 静思書軒 has also closed down some time last year. It is my opinion that the standard of the food – which we used to consider quite good – has dropped. We also cannot help but wonder, whether stores which used to serve good food are moving out because the business was bad, or they are moving out, because the rent has become too much to bear.

Smith Street Stores
Photo Taken with an Olympus C-450Zoom I always carried in my bag

Random Ramblings…

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Citizen A: Wah piang! Today is day 15 since Mas Selamat’s Selamat Hari “YAYA*”… They still haven’t caught him yet! That DPM Wong ar, can’t Sing, can’t guard terrorist, can’t resign is it?!
Citizen B: What is Selamat Hari Yaya*?
Citizen A: The happy day Mas escaped lor. Now he can go and yaya about this day to his buddies in JI and tell them: “You all know why is this my big day or not? Because ‘limp peh*’ escaped, understand?!”


* Yaya – local slang for ‘show off’.
* lim peh – local slang for ‘I, your father’. Pun intended that’s why it’s spelt limp peh in this case.

Commuter A: Wah seh. MRT was fined $400,000. Serves them right for that 7 hours breakdown.
Commuter B: Bah! This gahmen do nothing to improve the situation and earn $400,000 more. This has no benefit to us and impacts SMRT’s bottom line. Gives that bloodsucking SMRT more excuse to raise our fares again. Should have just make SMRT give us free ride for one day. At least we, the real victims, are compensated!
Commuter C: Come on! How many trips you can make in a day? Should simply just ban their CEO and directors from getting a bonus this year. That won’t hurt SMRT’s bottom line at all!. Only then they will wake up their ideas*!


* Wake up their ideas – local slang for ‘buck up’.

Ah Beng: Bro, do you know Singapore has very specialised 4-passenger only bus in the CBD now?
Ah Seng: Is it? Why I didn’t know? Where to find them?
Ah Beng: Aiyoh!! You go to Taxi stand you will see all the special bus queue there. Now taxi cannot suka-suka* drop and pick up passenger anywhere in CBD you know?


* suka-suka – local slang for anyhow.

Handicapped Man: Driver, can drop me at the building in front?
Taxi Driver: Encik! Now Taxi cannot drop people anyhow, anywhere. Taxi stand only lah! Fine $100 plus 3 demerits, ok?
Handicapped Man: Have mercy. It’s raining you don’t expect me to roll my wheelchair back from the taxi stand back here do you? There’s no shelter!
Taxi Driver: Sorry man. Even if you pay my fine also cannot. You tell the kam lan* LTA people who come up with this kam lan rule lor.


* kam lan – local slang for stupid, stupidity or immense idiocy.

Even bad users are better (II)…

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I wouldn’t have made an issue out of just one case had the contractor not been with the company for almost 9 months. Even so, had she performed the other tasks to our satisfaction without some of those tasks ending up with us because it has dragged on for days until my line manager has to reassign it to us, I wouldn’t really give a shit. Simply put, as long as the work is done, there is no reason to complain about the quirks of others!

Here are more examples of her dismal performance.

  1. Opval Installation
    Opval is a program that one of the commodities trader B said he required to do his job. Surprisingly it has never been used in the Singapore office until recently. So after getting the install instructions from our contact J in London, I passed on the task for her to do. It was a relatively easy task, just run setup.exe. Or so I think!

    Unfortunately, J gave the wrong instructions for the first install so it didn’t install properly. She tried to reinstall it using the new instructions but for some odd reasons it will say its completed without an error but no traces of the program can be found anywhere – and that is for both the remove and repair features as well. And without even attempting to find a solution to this situation, she came straight to my colleague and I and asked us where the registry keys are when we also have no prior experience with Opval.

    I am personally shocked (on top of being annoyed) that she didn’t even consider using the search feature of the registry editor. Simply put, she expects us to do the thinking and give her the instructions when she faces a problem. There was never any attempts of her own.

    We thought we can make some people learn by leaving them to swim or drown. So we told her we have no idea what the keys are in hope she’ll find a solution on her own. In spite of this, she made no further attempt to find the solution other than one email to J. When J didn’t reply – probably as frustrated as we are – she didn’t even bother to continually pester the guy for an update even though she said she’s doing that in an email to my very head of department. While this predicament is no fault of her own (since J’s original instructions were to blame), it is the lack of initiative to seek solutions that really annoys me. In the end, my line manager instructed me to sort this out because the user has written an email pleading for a solution. I must give it to the user for his patience!

    And the solution? It was as we thought: a matter of using the search feature in the registry editor to find entries related to the program and delete them. After those entries were removed, the setup program runs without any glitches.

    Foreign talent? More like fallen talent. And a fallen talent who always remember to clear the call log on her desk phone everyday before she leaves to hide all her private chit chats but would forget all the outstanding tasks the next day she comes to the office!

  2. Secretary C’s feedback
    The secretary was rather upset she was scolded by one of the managers when the contractor failed to turn on the video conference equipment on time and establish the proper connections even after being notified. And the secretary was adamant all her notifications were received because our contractor had accepted all the appointments in Outlook. Of course I didn’t fail to notice that on occasions she actually remembered to go and turn on the equipment, my other colleague had either reminded her or give her specific instructions to do so.

    And this complaint came in on the day after I took urgent leave because I lost my wallet. And right behind it, the secretary told me she had told the contractor to rectify a problem with a Fuji-Xerox color printer. The secretary was upset she has not gotten any updates on the matter until the next day and she was not happy that she needs to collect her printouts from another department’s color printer. She subsequently wrote an email demanding for a status update and only them did the contractor get her ass down to call and check on the vendor. Yet all the while she was at her desk and there were no other outstanding tasks!

    If that’s not a lack of responsibility or failure to take ownership of tasks, I don’t know what to call it.

  3. Citrix Icons
    The company has decided to move some of the services to our office in Europe. My guess is that it is to reduce some of the synchronisation and replication problems which has been plaguing us for a long time. Colleague M from the application support team emailed us – the desktop support team – and asked us to set up the Citrix icons for several users to test the remote access connectivity between the Singapore office and the server in Europe.

    As I had expected, our contractor ignored the email as usual, and I picked it up and find out the necessary settings for this task.

    Having done that, I tested it out myself, and then informed the contractor to carry out the task, with detailed instructions attached. I gave her specific instructions to do it first for one group of users, because their tasks are not time critical. I copied M on the mail and expected the contractor to exercise initiative and work with him to do it for the remaining users.

    To my horror, M came to me 2 days later and said his line manager is pressing him for an update and things are not moving. When I asked the contractor about the status, I was exasperated to discover that user N’s was still outstanding, because ‘N had no time for her to do it’. And it was the day before when N told her that.

    WTF?! I am utterly shocked she didn’t even inform the user that this is just a 5 – 10 minutes tasks at most and it is not even disruptive – i.e. needing a system reboot. Must I even give her specific datelines to complete her tasks? Why can’t she apply the same enthusiasm she had for her private calls to the tasks assigned to her?

  4. Hummingbird Exceed Connection
    User H reported that he couldn’t connect to a server using this client software. Our dear contractor went over, took at look at it, and came back and told me that no program was assigned to deal with the icons (which I already know!).

    Even while she has no experience with Exceed, to assign a program to deal with a file type is a simple Windows function. The easiest way to find out what program to open it would be to check another user’s system, and how to do it could be found by searching Google for the solution!

    Sadly, I had to tell her that and she was back in a jiffy about another problem which prevents her from doing so. Frankly, this would have been the same result had I gave the user the same instructions over the phone! I was wondering why we paid her to relay messages! Let me go check if there’s a Cisco tag somewhere… maybe she’s a router!

    While in the real problem was with the installation, I have never ceased to wonder just how in the world she managed to convince someone she’s right for this job!!

Anyway, I thank God that both my direct line manager and my Head of Department sees eye to eye with me on this matter and agreed that a replacement would be the best course of action. I also came to find out that quite a while ago another user, P, had already feedback to them and even to our regional head in Tokyo (!!!) about her.

Hopefully, by the end of April – and hopefully even earlier – I would see the last of her and my agony will end. Of course, with the arrival of a new contractor, I wish that will be the end all those incessant private chit chats and also the need to babysit a big baby!

Either way, since she liked phone calls so much, she should seek alternate employment… maybe as some boss’ secretary, or a receptionist or… with Comfort Delgro.

Even bad users are better…

3 comments

This is extracted from an SMS exchange this morning between me and the contractor on the team:

(0800 hrs) Contractor: “User R cannot launch Currenex. Gives Java error. Spoke to [Currenex] Helpdesk. Required version is 1.5. Version he has is 1.0. Error is unable to download jar file.”

(0812 hrs) My reply: “All version of Java on our systems are 1.5. No way they are 1.0. You are also IT. Do not expect me to think of all the solutions for you.”

(0820hrs) Contractor: “I have no idea about the java problem nor the appl. I am looking for solutions. Probably you can help him if I don’t find any. Thanks.”

I didn’t bother to reply further as I scream silently in frustration within myself on the office-bound MRT train. What good is she at all when she didn’t even ascertain the version of Java installed? When after more than half a year in our company, she still does not know the system environment, it makes one wonder just where the heck she’s been to all these while.

Furthermore, what solution is there to look when it is so obvious? The most basic thing to do when a Java Webstart application fail is to delete away all the cached components and download them all over again. And that information the Currenex Helpdesk would be happy to provide!

If she would put even a fraction of the time she spent on her own private phone calls [in her own native language] – allegedly important as it deals with her permanent residency in Singapore – all of these problems will be solved in 30 minutes or so. And damn this is not the first time an easy task like that she doesn’t seem enthusiastic enough to solve!

And finally, it was fixed after 2pm when the user handed over his exposure and risks to the European side. This is his feedback before he called it a day:

16:10 User R it’s all fine now mate, thanks alot

16:10 User R why can the girl not sort these things out? whenever i ask her to help me, she doesnt seem to know what i am talking about.. and u fix it in five minutes

 * sigh * I don’t know to cry or laugh looking at my user’s comment.

It’s not because anyone of us is that good or superb. It’s simply we are more willing and we showed more enthusiasm in hunting for the solution and not expect it to come from a fairy god-mother or to fall from the sky like the proverbial goo lan [aka Cow’s Penis] the Hokkiens talked about.

I must really say, even a bad user is better than help that is no help at all.

2210hrs on a Sunday…

7 comments

At Outram MRT transferring from the NE-Line after dinner at Vivo City and the west bound trains were packed as hell. Some people couldn’t even get onto the train and they have to wait for the next one.

The next train came at 2217hrs – 7 full minutes later. This is how packed it is in this train, even at the second cabin – the blue colored section – from the front. And this is already near one end of the station for goodness sake!! Frankly, I don’t mind even when it come at 11 mins, but the minimum requirement would be that the train can be boarded!

And this isn’t even peak hours!! It’s late evening on a Sunday. Really ‘Worse Class’ transport! Come on, Raymond Lemon Lim, come use this for one year, 2 times a day, 365 days a year and then come back and tell me how world class it is. (Photos taken with Blackberry 8100 Pearl.)
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