Context here:

I embrace this opportunity of remarking that [Mr. Jaggers] washed his clients off, as if he were a surgeon or a dentist. He had a closet in his room, fitted up for the purpose, which smelt of the scented soap like a perfumer’s shop. It had an usually large jack-towel on a roller inside the door, and he would wash his hands, wipe them and dry them all over this towel, whenever he came in from a police court or dismissed a client from his room. When I and my friends repaired to him at six o’clock the next day, he seemed to have been engaged on a case of a darker complexion than usual, for, we found him with his head butted into this closet, not only washing his hands, but laving his face and gargling his throat. And even when he had done all that, and had gone all round the jack-towel, he took out his penknife and scraped the case out of his nails before he put his coat on.

– Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

Even more information here, in case you didn’t understand the symbolism.

It was such a delightful sight, and I regret not taking a photo of it.

Nevertheless, I give you MAX PERRY instead as an EQUIVALENT substitute:

So it seems that McDonald’s outlets around Singapore have run out of curry sauce.

It is thus timely for me to explore the non-altruistic/capitalistic side of my nature and place on offer two (2) packets of original, authentic McDonald’s curry sauce (as shown in the above picture) which I have in my possession.

Let the bidding wars commence!

My latest article on POSKOD.SG.

Ten Steps to Effective Online Commentary.
A guide to online criticism and debate. (Mostly criticism.)

So, you’ve got an Internet connection, an opinion and some spare time on your hands.

Congratulations! Like everyone else and their blogs, you are now a media hub.

Before you commence e-hurling your iNtellectualism @ the rest of the world, here are ten steps to effective online commentary, the cyber-Singaporean way.

1. Increase your Internet presence.Set up a website on socio-political issues in Singapore and give it a cerebral, subtle and unique moniker, something like Socially Political SG: Thinking About Socially Political in Singapore.What you have to say is, after all, very ‘niche’, and no one thinks about critical issues affecting our nation in as classy or as astute a manner as you do.
2. Read widely.Turn to Google and Wikipedia for all your edificatory needs.Besides being the only scholarly sources that can be found on the face of the earth, they are also the most reliable, according to teenage students who take a great deal of pride in referencing “en.wikipedia.org” and “ehow.com” in their homework submissions.
3. Participate in community discussions on a consistent basis.Trawl other websites and forums every hour and leave comments on other posts, regardless of whether or not your advice is sound and/or logical.Bear in mind that we are a democracy, and democracy, as translated from the Greek, means ‘many people shouting loudly at each other in a self-important fashion’.

   Moreover, your counsel serves to affirm and validate the existence of ‘netizens’.

   Never underestimate the value of this, even if netizens do not seem to mention their appreciation of your beneficence, or worse, if they seem to respond negatively to what you say.

(continued…)

rmb call me. i scare cannot hear alarm thankies

A translation is as follows:

Please remember to give me a call (at the presumably pre-specified time). I’m worried I might not be able to hear the alarm when it goes off. Thank you.

I don’t know who this person is as I don’t have her/his number in my phone book.

Nevertheless, I responded, saying:

Hi, just to let you know that you sent your wake-up call request to the wrong number.

This was uncharacteristically un-snarky of me; I wanted to add:

Just in case this has any bearing on whether or not you get any in the future. Cheers.

However, it did occur to me that the recipient might’ve been an ex-student – in which case, it would’ve been hard to explain my humour if I needed to do so – hence my decision to err on the side of caution.

Then again, it could’ve been Jun Liang – to which, coincidentally, it’s three years to the day!

NOW LOOK AT THE MONSTER YOU HAVE BECOME:

AND ON YOUR WEBSITE:

What is – I don’t even – which hamster told you that customers are desirous of this heinous pigletry???

I don’t want to “call [my] agent or [your] 24-hour hotline” because I don’t need to talk to a human being to do this.

I just want to click a button and give you my money so that you can insure Le Poots and I – that is all.

Like what you see in this picture here, just in case you’ve forgotten what convenience and customer service is all about:

At the same time, it seems my premium has increased to $322.58. Why?

If you think this is an uneducated grouse, don’t worry – I know what the basic principles of insurance entail.

Nevertheless, my question centres on a logical Key Performance Indicator that all efficient insurers should adopt (or should have at least adopted), and that is: insurers must aim to maintain or reduce the year-on-year premiums that a customer has to pay.

But why can’t insurers meet that aim in Singapore?

Is it because of:

• Bad practices and policies with regard to letting drivers and motor workshops inflate claim amounts?
• No one wanting to take the lead by doing the morally correct thing and streamlining/shaking-up the claims process so that us consumers can benefit from ethical decisions?

I have no ready answers.

But if anything, ladies and gentlemen, this is yet another reason why we need honest and customer-oriented people in charge of the organisations and institutions in our country.

I was on the subway on Friday when I saw the advertisement displayed above.

For readers without image support, the tagline is as follows:

Today’s engineers are solving tomorrow’s problems. Are you ready to be one of them?

I took a picture of it and uploaded it to Facebook and Twitpic with the caption “Bet all you B.Eng grads feel pretty proud of yourselves now, huh”, for I thought such a gloriously humorous error had to be shared with everyone.

Unfortunately, some people didn’t get it. What’s worse, some of the people who didn’t get it immediately thought I was mocking engineers.

Let’s look at the tagline of the ad once more:

Today’s engineers are solving tomorrow’s problems. Are you ready to be one of them?

Explanation:

• We know the ad producer’s intention was to ask “Are you ready to be one of [the engineers]?”.
• However, “problems” in the first sentence is also a plural noun.
• Because the word “them” could also refer to “problems”, it’s possible for the second sentence to be read as “Are you ready to be one of [the problems]?”.

In that case, the ad becomes somewhat humorous: is this educational institute actually recruiting people to train them to become problems for engineers to solve?

So I’d rate the copywriting as having failed on this count. However, in terms of advertising, there’s no discernible loss.

Based on the comments I received, only one person made it clear that he understood what I was referring to.

However, the ad isn’t targeting people like us i.e. arts/humanities graduates with little inclination toward an education or a career in engineering or the sciences.

The rest of the comments came from people who majored in engineering, math or science subjects and are also working in related industries.

Their concerns were either to joke about how engineers are in fact ‘fighting fires’ instead of preventing them, or to be defensive about the perceived slight.

Nevertheless, since they didn’t spot the error (or perhaps the error is only a concern to people who are interested in linguistics), I guess the ad will still manage to reach out to its target audience.

Post-script: On hindsight, actually, the biggest failure in terms of communication and humour are actually mine alone.

Sigh. In the future, I shall just stick at doing what I do best i.e. re-tweeting what people are saying about The Weight of Silk on Skin.

Post-post-script: I misread a comment!

A math graduate/teacher just texted me to clarify this interpretation he provided:

This is an ad for BSs and BSc, not BEng. The alternate reading [that B.Ss. and B.Sc. graduates are/will be the bane of engineers] actually makes more sense in light of that fact.

Because ’tis the season. Plus I’ve been receiving gifts again.

If – for whatever insane reason possesses you – you’d like to give me a gift, can I please request you follow this guide?

Thanks!

Colleagues,

The projectors in these rooms are not working well:

…

We have raised the matter to [redacted] to help us resolve the problem as the vendor is not co-operating with us.

I felt like clicking on ‘Reply to All’ and sending this image to everyone:

Unfortunately, I was worried my point would’ve been lost. So I did this instead:

In other news, I’m thinking of setting up a Tumblr called “Things I Wish I Could Say In Public But Can’t Because Of The Need to Be Socially Appropriate”.

For obvious reasons, I can’t provide you with a sampling of the fare that can be on offer. However, if this Tumblr is indeed created, it definitely wasn’t me.

In other, other news: WAR PIGS! (Or their contemporaries, FIRE PIGS!)

My latest article on POSKOD.SG, the latest big thing to hit our shores.

Ten Steps to Communicating Effectively.
A guide to winning over friends and contacts in Singapore. (Mostly contacts.)

Besides playing good football and making babies, there is nothing else that we on the Little Red Dot are better at than communicating effectively.

And for good reason too: what in the world could be more Merlion-esque than saying something that one means?

In any case, here are ten steps to effective communication, the Singaporean way.

1. When conversing, the first thing you want to do is to include people in the conversation. Hence, name-drop or insert as many obscure allusions as you can into your speech:
   
   “Yes, Delia said the same thing about the Blue Paper. In fact, she said it was similar to the Green Grass Policy implemented back in ’08.”
2. If people don’t get it, show amusement. The is best displayed through subtle upward spasms of the muscles between the upper lip and the cheek:
   
   “You… don’t know Delia?” *twitch* “Oh, right – you weren’t on the Remaking WLB committee with us.”
3. Use acronyms. They are the PIE to life in the fast lane during AM rush-hour traffic, just before SUVs go past the ERP gantry:
   
   “WLB, WLB! What part of WLB do you not understand?”

(continued…)