Mrs Ho

Ring, ring....our Spore number phone rang...

Lady on the line asked, “请问何太太在吗？"

Bewildered, I tot to myself, "who is 何太太?"

I paused for split second before realizing she was asking for me....

Girls Gone Wild

Too lazy to re-write my experience at PCB, I decided to copy and paste what I wrote in an email to my EY ex-colleagues:

"Tim and I made a very last min decision to drive 10 and a half hours to Panama City Beach to check out the Spring Break party scene there. We heard so much about girls gone wild so we tot since it would be the last spring break for us and we had frens joining us from Alabama, why not just do it!

We decided to make the trip only at 3 pm on Thurs, started driving at 1130 pm that very night and only reached our hotel by 4pm the next day. We made pit-stops at a Mississippi rest area to sleep for an hour; Mobile, Alabama for breakfast at Waffle House; and also went to the beaches at Pensacola and Destin. (Actually, I slept all the way, waking up only for breakfast and beaches. Yes, Tim drove all the way! A personal record for him. The best piece of luggage i packed was the red couch pillows Wen and Celia gave us. Sleeping in the car was never so comfy!)

We didn't see too many people went wild on Fri night. Dunno is it because it was Good Friday (not very holy to do?). Tim and I even attended mass at a church filled with retirees.

LS and his friends, Nick, Vince, and Zhou, met up with us only on Sat morn. There weren't much action on the beach itself too when we went there on Sat afternoon after our oyster and buffalo wings lunch.

But when we went to the bar/pub/disco that night.... We saw literally what they meant by girls gone wild. Girls and guys dirty dancing with one another... by one another i mean they stand in a row of 4-6 people then the girl rubbed her body against the guy's, then another girl will be standing behind the guy doing her moves, multply that by another set of girls/guys doing the same thing in a row. And boy girl doing that kind of you know what action standing up...and girls letting guys touch their tits and flashing them once in a while. What a sight! I was busy watching "shows" the whole night and taking photos too....

After seeing that. i can't imagine sending my children to the US to study next time, i.e., if i can afford to send them overseas at all......Hmm....now i wonder if NIgel had gone wild while he was here last time? Or did Ch Ch go wild when she was in Aussie for her undergrad then. heheheh....."

Tika Bar at Sandpiper is definitely the place to be seen (or see) during spring break! And the ang mo's dance moves are definitely much easier to learn than our own mambo hand actions cos there is only just one style - touch and be touched.

After chatting with Tif on msn, I decided to add in more juicy details. Here are some "shows" I caught:

- 2 black guys and a white guy did some great break dance moves. the dumb blondes were swooned. another black guy challenged them just like what we see on tv.

- mesmerized by the break dance guys, all the girls wanted to dance with them. while one of the black guys was sorta kneeling down, one blonde put her right hand on his head and danced, pretending to have control of him. guy then stood up, together with his fren, forced the girl to dance in between them. the girl was practically sandwiched between the two guys and was touched ALL over. the scene wasn't pretty. i definitely wouldn't wanna be in her situation. then again, i would never ever be caught in such a situation. Never ever.

- black guy touched white girl's boobs, white girl then touched her own boobs trying to seduce the guy, then a group of black guys came over. white girl just opened up her blouse and flashed her tits at them. After that, the group of people just started dirty dancing. weird but true....

- saw black girl in just a gold bikini top. turned out she wasn't even wearing anything . It was just gold paint. kua kua...

- white girl in tube top dancing with white guy. with their bodies rubbing against each other, the tube top threaten to drop to a dangerous level. she tried to pull it up a few times. then the tube top just dropped below her breasts. i saw everything. she wasn't wearing a bra. too bad, i din think of taking photos then. heh.

- as the night went by, the place got "darker"...the porportion of blacks in the bar increased. the whole night, i was sitting on a high stool by the bar counter watching everything played out. suddenly, i got pushed, everyone stepped back two steps as two gangs of blacks got into a quarrel. people started to leave. i was stuck.only a guy standing in front of me separated me from the brawl. i asked Tim to leave. he just stood there. good thing the security came in time. phew!

- black guy leaned against pillar. black girl in real tiny short shirt stood right in front of him with body bended down, back facing him. They were practically doing it like what they do on discovery channel. Shagadelic!

- one of our frens got drunk. two of them carried him out of the bar. i was walking behind them when we passed the black couple. there was a group of blacks dancing there. one black girl, with the incitement of a black guy, reached for our drunk friend's jeans left pocket. I saw what happened and immediately grabbed her wrist. still, she refused to remove her hand from his pocket. i had to yank it out. we left it as that and left. not wise to kick up a big fuss being a minority in a foreign land. there were probably less than 5 asians in the bar excluding us.

Spring Break!!

We made a last min decision to go to Panama City Beach.........now! Turquoise beach and girls gone wild! Woohoo!!

I told you so...

I bought more than 20 Coach bags on Sunday. Based on past experience, I expected that I would have to spend AT LEAST 2 hours in the shop just to get all my purchases right.

Surprisingly, I was out in less than 30 mins!

A really efficient manager served me. Instead of trying to see if there were some of the designs available in store, she streamlined the process by suggesting to ship all the bags directly to my apartment. That way, we didn’t have to figure out from the long list which bags would be shipped (in case there was no stock in the store) and which would be hand-carried.

I had been served by one of the store managers before but the previous ones just didn’t match up. I was impressed and told Tim about it. He suggested to write a commendation letter to Coach. I agreed but decided to wait until all my bags arrive without any hiccups before doing it.

She told me the bags would be shipped in 2-5 working days. Today is the fourth day. So far only about 9 items have been shipped and apparently three of the items were not even on the list of bags I purchased!

I know it is not her fault. It’s the delivery people who screwed up. Somehow, I already knew such a thing would happen. I had received a pair of shoes instead of a hobo bag before. What’s new, right?

But for the trouble I have to go through to exchange the bags, I probably wouldn’t be writing that commendation letter anytime soon.

One tight slap

He was four, I was sixteen.
I brought him to Orchard Road.
We, together with my best friend, had a great time shopping.
When it was time to leave, he refused to go.
We stood outside the portugese egg tart store inside Wisma Atria. Or was it the cinnamon roll shop?
Darn, it was so long ago.
I am getting old...

I tried draggin him along.
He refused to move.
I got pissed and started scolding him.
Still he refused to budge.

What did I do?
*Piak* I hit him on his baby smooth face.
Tears dropped.
I felt bad.
What had I done?

But he was stubborn.
Even when hit, he wouldn't move
All I wanted was him to go home.

Fed up, I left without him.
She then tried pacifying him.
But he was not one to trifle with.
Somehow, she still managed to persuade him to go.

Wow, that was more than 10 years ago.
I wonder if he remembers this episode of his life.

Coached out

Coach sale ended today. Cost of damage: US$1998 - not on my pockets though. Din buy any for myself. Only helped frenz to get. They call me the Coach Ambassador; I call myself the Coach Promoter.

O$P$

How the hell did I end up owing Tim so much money?!! US$3,000 to be exact. It is not as if I owed him money over a long period of time and simply refused to pay up. Everything just accumulated within a short span of 2 weeks. Let see what I owe him for:

- Car maintenance and repair: US$700
Labor is so darn expensive here. A change of just one tiny light bulb for the brake light cost a hefty 70 bucks. And then my car had been making this rattling sound for over a year. Turned out that the catalytic converter had already disintegrated. So changed it for around US$500. Had to change the coolant palange too cos it was leaking. Set me back by another 100-200 bucks.

- Car insurance - US$350
We have to renew our car insurance every half a year and each time it will set me back by a few hundred dollars. "Heart pain"

- March and April rental - US$900; and March utilities and telephone bills - US$60
Hmm....shouldn't the man be taking care of the household bills? Not only does he not give me " 家用", I still have to pay for my own share. WTH!

- Cruise - US$900
Yeah! Yeah! We are going for a Carribean cruise with Carnival Conquest in June! That will be right after our trip to Yellowstone!

- Tickets - US$110
Houston Rockets is on a winning streak. It's now at the top of the table for the Western Conference. We bought tix to the Celtic game for this coming Tuesday about one and half weeks ago for US$60 each. The tix face value is only US$40 $15 (checked with Neo and found out the face value is only worth 15 bucks.). Maybe I should consider selling the tix cos it is worth at least 80 bucks US$100 (Rockets just won a game against LA Lakers. 22 straight wins! The cost of tix is probably sky-rocketing! pun intended) now.

We caught the Houston Ballet - Cinderella today at the Wortham Center. It is a Cinderella story with a twist. Cinderella did not fall in love with the prince but got involved with the prince's secretary instead. The dance was captivating. It was the first time we watched ballet in Houston and the second time we were at Wortham Center. The first time was 2 years ago when we were there to watch Riverdance.


Hmm....never have I imagined that i will owe someone so much money before! *Gulp*

Engagement Encounter

I was going through my office emails when I saw my response to Peiwen's query - "eh share with us what u learnt from the 2 day thingy leh... thinmonkey says its super worth it... but really.. i dont trust what he says lah.."

Tot it will be nice to document it in my blog and then read it again few years from now. So here goes:

"Well, i think it is good chance for couples to think through what marriage really means as we have to answer a list of questions indvidually after each presentation by the experienced couples. After answering the questions individually, each couple will then get together to discuss their answers.

They make u think through things that prob you know but never really discuss with your partner before. Like what if the two of you are of different faith, how are you gonna bring up your children, how are you gonna manage your finance (the experienced couple agreed that the wife should take care of the bills, but then she ended up struggling with it), how are you gonna distribute your household chores (the husband mentioned that his mum is a super good cook so he expected his wife to whip up very good cajun food but then the wife is not a good cook at all. In order to satisfy him, she ended up struggling with the cooking), how are u gonna spend xmas (in our case CNY) after you are married, discuss what are your own priorities and how they match up with those of your fiance (what if one wants children, the other wants to focus on career), etc....

We have more than 10 lists of questions to go through and each list contains at least 6-9 questions. Actually, it is more like a discussion to ensure that the couple are on the same page on things that may seem trivial but may blow out of proportion if not discussed in advance.

It also discussed about what marriage really meant (i.e. not just about living together but about unity). In a way, it prepares you for marriage... Make you focus on marriage rather than the wedding day which people tend to focus more on."

Shopping

A new outlet mall is opening in Houston. Just 40 mins drive away from our home. I am excited!! Even Tim is! No more 3 hours drive to San Marcos. Hooray!

Slim Tim

On Wed night, Tim was looking at some photos when he turned around and said, "Look at this photo, your arms were so slim then."

On Thurs morning, I told my ex-colleagues in Singapore that even Tim thinks I am fat.

Today during lunch, I told Tim that I told my ex-colleagues about what he said. He then tried to defend himself by saying that when he said that, he didn't mean that my arms are not slim now but probably just not as slim as before.

I argued that anyone who heard that comment would probably think that he thinks that the arms are not slim anymore.

He continued to defend his statement but failed to convince me.

Then out of the blue he said, "I think PW should look at the old photos too. She used to be half her size."

I think he is so dead.

Why am I not surprised?

This post was written on Thursday, February 28, 2008 while I was in the office, right after I put down the call with the third CSO.

I applied for a credit card at the start of this year. On Jan 15, I received a letter to call the Fraud Ops department to verify my details. After talking to them, I was told I would receive a letter from the bank to let me know if my application was approved.

In early Feb, I began wondering why I hadn’t received a reply. Even if the application was not approved, I should have already received a letter. Receiving a rejection letter was extremely important especially since I was about to move in a couple of weeks’ time then. I didn’t want my letter to go missing.

After I moved, I called the bank to inform them about the change in address for my other credit card and also to check on the status of my new card application.

The customer service officer (“CSO”) told me that she could not find any records of the application in her system. She said the only application she saw was the one dated January 2007 (A year ago!) I told her that’s the wrong one she was looking at. She looked again and then finally found out that a letter had already been sent to request for me to verify my address. That was on Feb 10.

Today, I called the bank to check again since I did not receive the said letter. Another CSO I spoke to said the application is still pending and she was unable to give me any information on why it was still so. She told me that an application typically takes 30 days to process. But if there is any other issue, it may take slightly longer. She was, however, not sure how much longer it will take. She suggested for me to call back in a week’s time to check again. Well aware that even if I were to call back in a week’s time, I would still get the same answer, I asked if there was any way she could help me escalate the matter to someone who would be able to tell me why the application was still pending. She said even if I were to speak to other representatives, they would still give me the same answer. There was no other way to go about doing it, just call back in a week’s time to check.

I then requested her to transfer me to the Fraud Ops since the department was the one which told me I should receive a reply from the bank. I talked to the CSO at Fraud Ops. After a few minutes of checking through her system, she told me that a letter was actually sent out on Jan 24th informing that my application was rejected.

So my questions are:

If the letter was sent out on Jan 24th, way before I moved out of the old apartment, why didn’t I receive the letter?

Is it the post office’s fault again? How long does it take for the post office to deliver a piece of letter?

Why did the first CSO tell me that a letter was sent to me to verify my address when I called her on Feb 10 if a rejection letter had already been sent out on Jan 24th?

Why didn’t I receive that verification letter the first CSO was talking about unless of course if it is the rejection letter I should be expecting?

I understand that the CSOs may not be privy to all customers’ information. But couldn’t the 2nd CSO have done more to help instead of keep telling me to call back? There must be a reason why the application was still pending after more than 30 days. If the first CSO was right, doesn’t that mean that she should be able to see in her system that the application was still pending because of the need to verify my address?

Why is it that the 3rd CSO was able to see in her system that the application had already been rejected but the 2nd CSO’s system showed it as pending? I understand that sometimes in a big organization, the right hand may not talk to the left and it takes time for information to travel from one end to another. But in this case, I was only checking the status of a credit card application. I'm sure the bank would have a centralized database for such information, so why is it that the three CSOs gave me contradicting information?

I was feeling a little pissed after I got off the phone with the last CSO and so complained to Tim. Tim then asked, “Are you surprised by all these?” I paused for a second and actually smiled to myself, “Seriously, no.” Why am I not surprised? This is just another typical day in the US.