Assorted Ravings of the Slightly-Weird

Pet Peeve # (I've Lost Count)

Net pet peeves to add to the list.

1) Super huge restrooms with really cramped cubicles

Whenever I'm on one of my numerous work trips, I like to change into comfy clothes before boarding my homeward-bound flight. Most of the time I'm already checked out so I normally have to find some place to change. And every single time, whether it be a restroom at a swanky hotel in China/India/US or in some airport, there's never any space in the cubicle. At one 5-star hotel in China, it was so cramped that I had to stand sideways against the wall to close the door because there was just enough room for the door to clear the toilet. It really bugs me, especially in an airport where you'd expect people to have some form of luggage, that they would design restrooms with enough space to fit a car across cubicles but not in the cubicle itself.

2) KS people who push their way through to the front of a crowded elevator

I'm at work, the elevator's crowded and then some idiot decides to push his/her way through to the front. Ok, fine, maybe those few seconds will make a real difference to soneone's life. But what I don't get is when the door opens on the ground floor the same idiot takes his/her own sweet time to get out. Dude, if you were in such a f*cking hurry to get to the front of the elevator, why are you not in a f*cking hurry to get out???

And then after you get out, don't stop right in front of the doors and block everyone else! It's not as if you're slim enough that everyone can make their way past you.

3) Idiots who take ages to get out of the elevator when you're waiting to get in

The elevator at my office building has these weird-ass settings where the door closes pretty fast on you, so you really have to jump in pretty quickly. What really bugs me is when the door opens and there's only one person in the elevator who then takes ages to get out. Why, I don't know. You're on the ground floor already, did you not know that you'd be getting out at the ground floor? Why do you have to wait till the elevator makes its way to the ground floor and the door opens that you begin to gather up all your junk?

Then after she (it's ALWAYS a woman who does this) makes her leisurely way out of the elevator, the people who have been waiting patiently outside get to file their way in and half the time we get our elbows bruised because the door's on the way to closing and it doesn't stop till it hits someone.

Thanks for nothing, dumbass.

Keeping Mum

So, we have this intern working out of our office for the next few weeks and it's been an interesting experience so far. This guy is supposed to be super-intelligent but if this is the case, I don't know it. Cos he keeps so quiet that it's as if he's non-existent. All I hear out of him is some occasional tapping on the keyboards.

But the most annoying thing about him is that he never replies audibly. Instead, all he does is a head roll. (Did I mention he's from India?) If you ask him a yes/no question, you get a head roll. If you tell him something, you get another head roll. As far as I can tell, the head roll for "Yes" is no different from a head roll for "No". It's exasperating. I can't tell if he understands what I'm asking and what his answer is if he does understand.

I'm just glad I'm not his mentor. I'd have throttled him by now, with all the head rolls. Don't get me wrong, this is not a racist thing - it's not the head-rolling that I mind. It's that he doesn't verbally answer. You can roll your head all you want or even flap your hands like a chicken by all means but just answer me at the same time, that's all I'm asking.

In fact, his mentor seems almost about ready to throttle him. And so, we have today's BQOTD, courtesy of a very frustrated analyst:

Frustrated analyst: "Diarrhea up here (pointing to her head), constipation down there (pointing to her mouth)."

Hahaha. For once, I'm glad I'm still a junior analyst. And, I wonder what happens if we ask him an open-ended question... Will his head drop off from all the rolling? Teeheehee.

Idiot Drivers

This is the THIRD time I am bitching about this but...

... IF YOU'RE NOT GOING TO FUCKING TURN LEFT, DON'T FUCKING HOG THE LEFT LANE OF THE FUCKING ROUNDABOUT!

Geez. It's not rocket science, people.

And yes, I know I swear a lot. It's just that some things get me really riled up. Like this morning, when I was driving to work and this fucker on my left just kept hogging the left lane of the roundabout AND exited after me. I was so pissed off, I just had to yell. Which didn't help much since there was no one to hear me.

It's times like these, I wish I had some sort of loudspeaker attachment in my car. That way, I can yell at the idiots on the road and not be ineffectual.

Like so: "You, the donkey in the silver BMW. Get off the fucking road already!"

And in other news: TREMORS! I was at Market Street having tea with my mom when we felt it. At first we thought we were imagining things but then 5 minutes later throngs of people started streaming onto the roads as buildings got evacuated. For the next 20 minutes it was all everyone could talk about, and all the mobile networks were jammed up.

As for me, I just grabbed the chance to have an early (read: long) lunch. :D

Peeves and Quotes

To the uncle at the 2nd floor coffee shop in the northeast corner of Lucky Plaza: if I say I don't want chilli OR green chilli, it means I don't want any sort of chilli in my noodles. It's not a free license to dump both red chilli paste and cut green chilli all over the bottom of my noodles so that I don't get to see it until I walk all the way back to my office and open up the container to eat my lunch.

GRRRR. I hate it when this happens. Morons.

Turning to funnier things, this QOTD came from hanging out w/ some friends at Que Pasa on Friday night.

Me: Oh you should come stay with me, my parents are away.
Girl #1: Oh cool. Sounds like fun.
Boy #1: Can I stay with you? I'm harmless anyway, I have a low sperm count.

Black & White

People, people, people.

Do you guys not take a look at yourselves before you leave the house? Do you not realise that black underwear shows up under almost every light-coloured piece of clothing, and do you not realise how unsightly it is to be walking down Orchard Road (or anywhere in public for that matter) with your black underwear on show for all to see? You might as well not be wearing the layer above it.

If you're going to show off your underwear, at least wear a lacy La Perla number that screams "You can see but you can't touch". Not black granny underpants, which are probably fraying at the edges, that just say "I haven't done laundry in 3 weeks and this is the only thing left".

Tsk tsk.

Of Peeves and BQOTDs

It should be illegal for construction to go on on a Saturday morning. From 1000 till 1230 when I reluctantly dragged myself out of bed, my bed kept shaking every 15 minutes as some idiot decided to raze his house down to its foundations and rebuild it. Grrr. Not much fun when I only got to bed around 4am.

In other more light-hearted news, this BQOTD was contributed by one of the hangout buddies (HOBs):

Him: So, she said to me, "Oh I don't have your number." And I said, "No, you don't."
*extended silence*

Ouch. I feel for her.

Get A Room, Damnit!

Occasionally, I get reminded of the fact that we're just one step up from apes and monkeys on the evolutionary ladder.

Case in point: today, on the train back to the office, I noticed a woman squeezing her boyfriend's pimple. Not content with grossing us all out with that, she proceeded to show him what she'd extracted. And then she wiped it off on him.

Not unlike apes and monkeys picking bugs off each other. But it's just nasty! Some things should just be done in the privacy of your own home. Oh and FYI, if you're digging your nose in your car, do you honestly think the world can't see you?

Nasty nasty nasty.

Odoriferous Feet

People with stinky feet + an enclosed space = 3 and a half hours of hell.

On the flight to HK the person sitting behind me had the smelliest feet ever. (Yes, even smellier than my sister's!) And since she took off her shoes right after takeoff, I had the pleasure of smelling her feet for the next 3.5 hours. Plus, our flight was rerouted slightly so the flight time was extended. It was like a wave of stink that crept up on you unawares, so that if you turned your head slightly you would get a whole breathful of odor.

Even now I'm still gasping for fresh air...

Escalator Hogs

Walking around Orchard Road as much as I do means that encounters with the Escalator Hog are quite common. If you're wondering what I mean by an escalator hog, he's the person who stands right at the foot or at the top of the escalator and doesn't move out of the way.

Most of the time the Escalator Hogs work in groups. They'll stand at the foot of the escalator and debate over whether to ascend or not. "Eh, why don't we go to Kino on the 3rd floor? No, I want to go to Zara first..." and blah blah blah. Meanwhile, behind them a line of exasperated people has formed, with people like me squeezing past them with a muttered expletive that's just loud enough to hear but not enough for them to make out what I've just said. You'll often see the group hogs at the top of the escalator as well, causing a pileup of people behind them who are trying to get off.

To these people I say:

The concept of an escalator may be too deep for you to grasp. It's a moving walkway which transports people a couple of feet but the critical point is that people have to be able to get on or off the escalator. This facilitates the flow of traffic and enables the escalator to fulfil its true purpose.
So if you're too stupid/dumb/self-absorbed or not civic-minded enough to know how to use an escalator, USE THE STAIRS.

Other times, you'll see a family of Escalator Hogs. Daddy Hog goes first and just as he gets to the escalator he turns around and realises his hog family isn't behind him. He then proceeds to stand right at the escalator while waiting for his family to catch up, and in doing so, he blocks the entrance. (For some reason, I've observed that these tend to be tourists from a certain country...)

The worst are the indecisive hogs. They'll put one foot on the escalator, realise that 'hey, wait a minute... do I really want to go upstairs? Maybe I want to stay on this level' and then they'll oscillate on the spot a bit before deciding whether to put the other foot on, or take it off and push past the people behind them. To them I say:

PLEASE. It's an escalator.
It just takes you up or down to the next level.
Getting on the wrong escalator is not a life-changing decision.
It won't decide if you can get the killer job, or if you can achieve the 5Cs by age 25. At most it'll delay you by 30 seconds.
Thirty FREAKING seconds.

So just get onto the FREAKING escalator already.

Use The Pavement, Dumbass!

All things exist for a reason. So, you know that grey strip of concrete beside the road that's about half a foot higher than a road?

That's called a PAVEMENT.

It exists for the sole purpose of pedestrians walking on it, so that they don't wander onto the roads and interrupt the actual road users (that's us people in the cars and on the bikes). Pedestrians, that's you people walking BY the road, should use the pavement since that's the reason why the pavement is there in the first place. If pedestrians were meant to walk all over the road, then we should just remove the pavement and widen the roads by a good 5 feet on either side.

And please, people, be smart. If you're going to insist on walking on the road and not on the lovely pavement that was so thoughtfully provided for you (out of my tax dollars I might add) then stop listening to your walkman/discman while you walk.

Else, don't blame me if I toot my horn and you still get run over because
a) you're not walking on your part of the road i.e. the pavement, and
b) the loud music blaring in your ears prevents you from hearing the sound of imminent pain.

Two Idiots and Bad Karma

Buenos dias amigos! Feliz viernes!

But not to the two idiots who sat in B9-10, Cinema 7, Orchard Cineleisure on Wednesday 14 July 2004 at 2145h watching "Japanese Story". You know who you are.

Quick word on the movie: Touching in some parts, funny in others. Left the cinema in a contemplative mood. For more, visit the official site - RHS, under "Now Screening".

The two dumbasses persisted in talking through the entire movie despite my frequent glances. Plus the girl had a really squeaky voice. Man, if you're going to talk throughout the entire freaking movie, SIT IN THE FRONT. Where no one can hear your stupid comments. It pissed me off so much that as I got up from my seat, I had to turn around and give them the whole eye-glaring, head-shaking, eye-rolling, exasperated-sighing routine.

Dumbasses. People who talk in cinemas during a movie are now one of my pet peeves.

Anyhow, I'm now thoroughly convinced that someone up there didn't want me to bitch about the two talking idiots. First, the site went down and only came back online sometime in between 1am and 10am today. And then, as I was typing this entry somehow my coffee spilt on me and I had to run out to the restroom to perform emergency surgery on my WHITE shirt. Now my shirt is damp and I'll probably catch a cold from wearing a damp shirt in the coldest place in Singapore.

Damnit! I'm sneezing already!

"The" vs "De"

I have got a new pet peeve.

I just hate it when people say "de" instead of "the". It just pisses me off and everytime I hear people saying "de" I find myself gritting my teeth to prevent me from grabbing their collar, shaking them until their teeth rattle and shouting in their faces:

"T-H-E, not D-E! Dumbass!"

In other news, Ferrero and Henman are out. Sob. My money is on Federer to win. That man is playing some good tennis and it's almost impossible to beat him. He's barely broken a sweat in the 5 games he's played so far.

And in baseball (all you non-baseball fans can skip this paragraph), Barry Bonds just hit another home run - thanks to the technological wonder that is MLBTV I can watch MLB on broadband. That makes it 678 for the Giants left fielder, but I doubt he'll be able to pass the Babe (714) though, much less Hammerin' Hank (755).

Hm. I wonder just how many people have read the last paragraph...

Anyhow, I'm off to Bali tomorrow! Colleagues getting married left right and center so most of the Asian team will be in attendance. It should be fun to catch up with my colleagues again, especially when it's outside of work.

Take A Cough Drop, Damnit!

Man, I HATE it when people have a tickle in their throats and just keep going "Er hmmm..... Er er er hmmmm.... hmmmmm".

It is supremely irritating to have to hear this throat clearing thing going on every 15 seconds or so. For the love of all things good, go get a drink of water, or suck a cough drop or something; just please STOP with the incessant er-hmmm-ings. It really gets on my nerves and makes me want to start strangling stuff...

Ugly People

Such is the state of my (very boring) life that I haven't had an entry in more than a week. Apart from the Mauritius trip, there wasn't much to talk about. More on the Mauritius trip later but first, some stuff to rant about.

One of the perks of my job is that occasionally I get free tickets for concerts, performances and/or movie screenings. Over the weekend, I was lucky enough to get some tickets for a screening of the latest Harry Potter film, and the organisers also threw in lunch and arcade games for free prior to the screening. (In my defence, it has been over two years since I last accepted any free stuff. Oh and btw, the new HP film is great!!)

Anyhow the word "free" seems to bring out the worst in people. At lunch, the guests were ordering tons of food simply because it was free. Worse still, some guests even ordered food to go. Come on! Just 'cos it's free doesn't mean that you should take the chance to stock up on next week's entire dinner menu! Grr...

My already-slightly-sour mood was not improved at the video arcade, where over-protective parents and snotty kids were the order of the day. First, my sister and I were queueing up for one of the find-5-differences-in-a-photo machines. There were 4 machines and every single machine was being hogged. The people playing simply kept putting in more tokens, even though we had been waiting for quite a while. And the worst case was this one mother, who was playing with her (6 year old?) daughter - the kid would bang on the touch-screen whenever she couldn't spot any differences and, as a result, kept dying rapidly. Instead of teaching her daughter how to play, the mother looked at us and said "Oh it will be a VERY long wait, this is the only game she likes to play" and went off to get more (free) tokens. Man, if you're going to play the damn game, at least teach your kid how to play.

Then, there was another mom, who was playing a memory game with her son, probably about 7 years old. And with every game, instead of letting him play, she would grab his hand and direct him to the right cards. If that's the case you might as well play yourself right? How that kid is ever going to learn anything, I do not know.

Other examples:
1) The GROWN man who hogged another machine and refused to let anyone else play.
2) The 3 snotty kids who hogged 2 machines even though there was a queue behind them.

What is with these kids and their horrible parents?!!? Don't they know it's basic, common courtesy to let other people have a turn? So as a result, these kids will grow up into brats who don't understand how to share and will go on to teach their own kids the same thing. These people should be sterilised.

Dumbasses.

Anyway, we were allowed to keep our tokens, so I will go back another day. When there aren't any snotty kids/kiasu Singaporeans/people who hog machines and keep playing because it's free.

One last thing: incredibly, there are still people around who don't know how to use an escalator. Here's a tip - when you're on an escalator, and there are people behind you, MOVE AWAY from the escalator once you get off instead of standing there talking. If you refuse to move, don't glare at me for stepping on your shoe. You should be glad the whole line of people didn't fall on you instead. Dumbass.

Hell Is...

... wanting desperately to pee but having to stay on a conference call. This has happened a number of times already. Either I forget to pee before my calls start or during the calls I get the urge to go, and once they start they just go on and on and on while my urge to pee keeps building and building and building.

Today was a classic example. I was supposed to have a call at 1530, and at 1445 my boss called up to chat. For 45 minutes! Then she hung up because we were supposed to do this conference call, but by that time I already wanted to pee. I couldn't go though, because the call was supposed to start at 1530. And then, the company management came LATE, and the call only started at 1545. And I still couldn't have gone, because I had to wait around for the call to start.

Throughout the whole call I could only think of how badly I wanted to pee, and I kept standing up and sitting down in an effort to take my mind off things. The damn call ended LATE, and by the time I rushed to the toilet it was 1700.

Wanting to pee while on a never-ending conference call is definitely one of my pet peeves.

Stupid Questions...

really irritate the hell out of me. Especially when I get a message from someone I haven't heard from in a while, and the first thing I read is a question like "Do you know of any cheap deals to (insert any random place here)?"

How the hell do I know?! As if I am a travel agent! Or as if I am so free as to keep checking the classifieds/internet for travel deals! Geez. These kind of things - you can check the papers yourself right?! Why ask me???

And I hate it when people message me to ask me to do things for them. I just hate feeling obliged to do stuff, or feeling bad to have to refuse to do it. Recently, I got a message asking me to buy some items for a friend from a place that is a good 20 minute walk from my office, so by the time I get there, get the stuff and go back my whole lunch hour is wasted. It's neither near enough to walk to, nor far away enough for people to stop asking me to go there. I mean, if it's just downstairs or opposite my office I'd gladly do it, but if it's far enough for me to not bother going there to buy my own stuff, there's a snowball's chance in hell that I would go there to buy other people's stuff (unless that other person is my mom, and then that's a different story).

I just wish people would consider carefully first before making requests of other people. It just makes me feel like a bitch to have to say "No, sorry..." and think of some excuse.

Other cases of irritating questions:
1) When I tell someone about some article in the paper, and he/she asks (several times) for the exact location of that article. So I have to say "Life, Page 3, 17 rows from the top" ISSIT!?
2) Asking me to ask other people for information, when he/she already knows the other person. That's just a plain old waste of time, and costs me money to boot. I have to receive a msg from Person A, msg Person B to get an answer and then reply to Person A's msg (repeat process ad nauseum). That's two messages per iteration that I have to send, when it could have been zero messages. Just go ask yourself LAH.

I'd give more examples but I've already pissed off several people, assuming they read the blog and recognise themselves. To them I say, look, it's not that I'm not your friend or anything like that, but please understand that 3/4 of the time, these kind of questions/errands can be answered/done by yourself. Asking me is a waste of my time, and just gets me riled up - enough that I have to blog it out and risk hurting people's feelings.

Speak Good English? Ha!

In the lift today, this is what I heard.

Some random person: "... at least in Hong Kong I am able to know Cantonese."

Argh. We obviously aren't doing a good job of teaching English in our schools. It's shameful!

BQOTD

Ok it's been a while since I put up any BQOTD. Where are all the bitchy comments, people?!
Anyway this one was from last Friday night at a mahjong session:

Him: You know, breast reductions are getting more popular in Singapore.
Her (not me): Breast reductions? Must be for Singaporean men...

Speaking of which, man-boobs are one of my pet peeves. Ewww...

Smell! Smell Bad...

So, some aircon service guy is here in the office for some maintenance work, and man, he is STINKY. I think this has to go down as a pet peeve...
stinky maintenance guys who don't even know they're stinky. Ok ok I know it's tough work which is why they're stinky but still!!! If you have to hold your breath when you walk past someone that ain't good.

Plus, now the office has a residual smell.
Eww. Gross.

Heh, a friend in ICQ just said that I should complain about the lousy service level. I imagine the conversation would go something like this:

Me: Hello, I'm just calling to tell you that your aircon maintenance men are very smelly.
Them: mumble mumble
Me: Can you please get them to shower before they come to my office because they leave a residual smell? Or could you make deodorant standard issue from now on?

P.S.: If you can name the movie quoted in the title, and the character that said it, you get extra brownie points. I dunno what you'd use them for, but hey a prize is a prize...