Well guys, if you ever wanted to check if a book is available in the library, you can use their catalogue. Yes, this is the one that’s in all the library computers.

I had a really fun time hunting down books today in the Jurong Regional Library (at the Jurong East MRT Station). The reason is because the codes are all confusing.

1. R is for reference, whether they write it or not.
When you search for books, sometimes they will put the words REFERENCE on the screen so you know. However, sometimes they only put the letter R under the location. R means reference by the way. The most stupid thing is, they did not put any explanation on what the location codes mean at most of the level 2 search terminals. I went to the level 3 terminals to look at the codes.

2. Y is for young adult
Where will it be? I thought it would be at the fiction section or near it. However its not. Its at level 4 where its called Vergingallteens. I do not know why they like to stick the words together because at first glance I thought its vergingal teens. What is vergingal I do not know.

Its getting difficult to search for books there. I guess I have to memorize all the location codes..Haha..

However, the library is still a good place to be in because I saved plenty of money lending books instead of buying them.

Many books that you buy tell you that Amazon is the worlds number 1 online bookstore, and that it is able to give you substantial savings as compared to your local bookstore? But is that true? I will now take the journey to calculate the costs for all readers:

The costs are based on two different books. The first one is “Smart Start-Ups: How to make a fortune from starting online communities” by David Silver. The second book is “Multiple Streams of Internet Income” by Robert G. Allen.

Now the cost of the 1st book in Amazon.com is US$16.47.You save about 34% buying from Amazon.com.

The cost of the 2nd book in Amazon.com is US$16.47. You also save 34% buying from Amazon.com.

The total cost of these 2 books is: US$32.94

International Shipping Charges (>source):
1 shipment: US$6.99
2 books: US$9.98

The total cost of getting these 2 books is: US$49.91
In Singapore dollars (using current exchange rate of US$1 = S$1.51411): S$75.57

Now I will be checking the price from Kinokuniya Book Web:

1st book (Kinokuniya offers paper back whist Amazon’s is hard cover):S$33.44

2nd book: S$45.94

Total cost buying from Kinokuniya: S$79.38
You save: S$3.81

Is that substantial? I doubt it. It takes about 4 weeks for Amazon to ship that item to you, of which I believe we would rather buy from Kinokuniya then wait.

However, Singapore has its own VPost USA service where you make Amazon ship to the VPost outlet in the US, and then VPOST will ship your items back for you. Here is the shipping charges for VPost.

The 2 books are eligible for Free Supersaver shipping in the United States. (They fulfill the minimum order of US$25 for the supersaver shipping). Thus lets assume that shipping costs are zero. (I think it should be zero since its called free) Then the cost of shipping the 2 books to the location in the US (inclusive of book cost) is US$32.94 = S$49.87

Using the shipping rates at mentioned in the VPost link:
1 shipping : S$12.22
2 books: $8.14 (If you use their shipping calculator it will be twice as much, but I believe its a mistake because the website states clearly that calculation is $8.14 * round up of (number of books divided by 2)

The total cost for everything is now S$70.23. However, GST charges apply.

Total cost of product:S$49.87 = A
Total shipping charges: S$20.36 = B
Cost, Insurance and Freight: A + (A+B)* 0.02 = S$51.27
Since the total CIF is not above 400 dollars, we need not pay GST.

Thus the total cost is still S$70.23. You save S$9.15.

Is that huge savings? Well you get the book about a week later, so I guess 10 dollars savings is very important. However Amazon.com doesn’t seem to be very clear if there is going to be tax on the shipping within US. I doubt so actually.

The conclusion is: You can get a bit of savings here and there and the more you buy, the more you will save. However, do take note that there is free supersaver shipping that is why there is no charges on shipment within US. Perhaps if you buy the books from other merchants in Amazon that sells used and new books, you can get a much cheaper price.

Well the other day I went to Suntec City (at City Hall) for dinner and I went to try out the food at the Food Republic food court. Food republic is a “higher class” themed food court. The food court at Suntec City has an old western design theme.

I went to try the Fried Hokkien Mee stall, which promises fresh prawns. Most food court stalls that sell hokkien mee has lousy prawns that seem to turn to powder everytime we bite into it. This means that the prawns are unfresh and probably a few days old. Fresh prawns have this crunchy bite into it. Smaller prawns have lesser bite feel I think. Fresh prawns also have the ‘fresh’ taste which unfresh prawns do not have.

I paid 5 dollars for the prawn mee and it is the cheapest available already. (See what I mean by high class food court?) The serving is big and the plate is about 30cm in diameter? Its served with 4 prawns and a small bowl of prawn soup.

Now the prawn soup is a bit diluted. You can’t really taste much prawns in it, but it has those herbs like the gou ju zi, which is supposed to be good for the eyes. The 4 prawns (which other food court gives 4 prawns? They normally give 2 and they are stale) are fresh and crunchy. The fresh taste is not as strong as those prawns from hotel restaurants but I’m not complaining. Most of the shell is peeled off, making it easy for you to peel off the remaining shells. You know its fresh when the shells peel off easily and the prawns are still in their nice shape. Stale prawns normally break easily and don’t taste solid.

Thus I recommend people out there to try this Hokkien Mee when you can. It may not be the best hokkien mee in singapore, but it is good enough for me in an airconditioned food court in City Hall.

Look here first

From the last blog entry I wrote about stomp, there have been new updates that are totally lame and I would say, totally irresponsible.

“My girlfriend and I saw that and we were disgusted by their behaviour. We thought it was so gross and shameless, as they are already so old.”

I didn’t know we have such an apparent age-biasness in Singapore today? What has education done to you? Why do you point your fingers at other people when you yourself will probably smooch a little outside with your girlfriend? For goodness sake, that guy’s 22 years old and still acts like this.

If you are doing the same thing as what you are accusing other people to do, then you have no right to feel any disgust for them, whether they are old or not. Our generation now is more open-minded and we have PDA (public displays of affection) everywhere we go. When we grow older we will still be as open-minded. Tell me, in 40 years time when the culture has changed, should you be disgusted at yourself when you are 62 years old kissing your wife and telling her you love her?

Bloody bullshit.

This book is titled “Delivering Knock your socks off service” by the Performance Research Associates. This book talks about how to improve your customer service as a whole, and go on to deeper examples to show what you can do to improve your customer service.

There are plenty of things in this book. They tell you what to do when you are face to face wit the customer, or when you receive a call from a customer. They also even talk about email etiquette. It is a must read if you are in the customer service sector, especially if you receive phone inquiries all the time.

If you are a manager, you can read this book to find a way to improve your team’s customer service. If you are a customer service representative, you can read this to make yourself stand out from the rest of the representatives. Or, if you have your own business, revolutionize the customer experience so that they will come back again and again and even spread the word about your good service.

Thus if you are working in a customer service related sector, this book is a must read. It is interesting and writes in a light hearted way that makes it easy to understand and digest. It is unlike those boring business books where you fall asleep by page 3. Read this and make yourself or your business stand out!

Well, stomp has been around for quite a long period of time already. Sometimes I go down to stomp for a great laugh. Why? Because sometimes this citizen journalism thing is being abused. Any kind of things can be posted. Sometimes even stupid things that has no big deal to post about.

3 in 1 strawberry

Now posts of this sort are still ok. They are interesting and lets us see new stuff. Things like this however, makes me wonder what stomp is all about.

Have we degraded to the point where all we do is to pick on people’s dressing? If you were to look closely, that dressing in there is quite all right isn’t it? She did not dress in those old home clothes where there is a Pikachu in the front, so what’s wrong with it? Are we simply too bored that anything we can photograph with our camera phones will be sent to stomp? What will happen to us now?

What if we decided to rub our noses in public? Someones takes the picture and says its disgusting. What if we decide to scratch our back and we thought no one is looking? Then we discover our picture’s been stomped.

I’m not against citizen journalism, but I feel that having citizen journalism just for the feel of it is plain stupid. Citizen journalism with a certain standard will benefit the community. However our version of citizen journalism results in us taking photos of people to shame them. Why have we become like this?

Citizen journalism should be exercised with greater responsibility. If not, all we are creating is a bunch of jokes archive.

Before I begin, lets point our attention to this article (note: the article has been taken down) I have written. I also need to say that that article represents my feelings and thoughts and it must not be taken absolutely to be true. Blogs are a place to type in your frustrations isn’t it? Therefore, I know my readers have the sense to realize that the article represents my one-sided point of view.

My ex-boss just spoke to my friend, asking my friend to ask me out and have a nice chat over this entire saga. Sad to say, he has been viewing my blog and took offense to the article above. All I want to say now is that I am extremely sick and tired of this issue and I do not want to pursue it further. Thus I hereby apologize to my ex-boss:

I am sorry that my blog post has upset you. I do hope that you do realize that the blog post represents my feelings, and though it may seem wrong to you, it seems very true to me. It may just be a misunderstanding and a deep one at that. Since we have never clarified the issue, there exists a chance that I will not understand you isn’t it?

However, I do not want to pursue this issue anymore. I feel that it is perhaps a bit pointless to have legal representation over a blog post that not many people read. Yes I do agree that my article was based on many assumptions. However, if we were to go deeper into it, you may find that I am not wrong to have those assumptions. The reason why I have so much assumptions is because I always get short emails that don’t seem to explain anything. It is reasonable, of course, to suggest that a passage written in a summarized manner would not be clear to all parties. It is therefore natural to have certain assumptions.

My point that I want to say in the article mentioned above is that I felt that I had been lied to. If I were given false impressions, is it my fault that I felt this way? If someone leads me to have this false impression, is it then his fault or mine? I do not know. I just felt that it was misleading. Is it not? Lets not point fingers at each other anymore.

I admit that I am wrong in putting up details of the classified ad that I saw, and I have deleted parts of it so that it is not too obvious anymore. My point in putting up the classified ad is that I am trying to show that it can be misleading and it is misleading. No matter how you justify it, it is misleading. Perhaps there isn’t anything wrong to my ex-boss, but I felt it was misleading. This is my sole feelings. I am not saying that my ex-boss is wrong, but I felt that it was misleading. People around me feel that way too. Is it wrong to feel that way?

Boss, the reason why I do not want to come out to talk is because I thought that there would be no point. I have no doubt that this is probably a huge misunderstanding because of a lack of communication. I have no doubt that I will emerge confused and persuaded at the end of the discussion just to return home feeling otherwise. I also feel that this matter is over and there is nothing worth to discuss anymore. Lets just not point fingers at anyone. I may not be wrong, and you may not be wrong too.

I am sorry for causing you undue stress and worry. I have to say though, that I feel my blog post has been taken out of context. However if you wish it, you may tell me which parts you feel are wrong and I will edit it personally and give you another full apology on my blog. I hope this matter has been satisfactory resolved.

Thank you very much and have a nice day.

Thought I will share this with all of you since I drive (I got this from an email):

LTA has contracted six traffic wardens from a private company at $34,000 a
year to take down the licence platenumber, make and colour of vehicles that
intrude into bus lanes at peak hours.
(They are incognito with camera in hands……so don’t expect to see a TP,
etc)

Note you can get fined $130 for dropping someone off at or near the bus
stop.

LTA has intensified their operations at the following areas:
1) Eunos Link
2) Hougang Ave 3
3) Jurong Town Hall Rd
4) Lorong Chuan
5) Orchard Rd
6) Upper Serangoon Rd
7) Upper Thomson Rd Yishun Ave 2

Additional spots where speed traps were seen,
1) PIE towards airport near Toa Payoh exit, tripod mounted speed camera at
the pedestrain overhead bridge. 90km/h
2) PIE towards jurong near adam road exit, tripod mounted speed camera over
at Adam Road flyover. 90km/h
3) Braddell Road after Bishan Junction towards CTE, tripod mounted speed
camera at the pedestrain overhead bridge. 60/kmh
4) Queensway towards Bukit Merah, tripod mounted speed camera under tree
before Ridout McDonalds. 60km/h
5) Spot along Upper Bukit Timah Rd towards Woodlands Rd, tripod mounted
speed camera under tree after a curve turn – 60km/h.

Fine imposed is $170 and 8 demerit points.

With the internet so prevalent in our society today, almost everyone has an internet identity along with their actual identities in real life. The guy in school who’s always bullied may be “Superman2007″ in his online identity. The strong bully may be “Powerpuffboys” in his online identity. It is so easy to create an online identity that some basic things that we hold dearly in our lives are thrown to the wind in the online arena.

When we hide behind our online identities, we become more daring and outspoken. The shy guy in school doesn’t exist online. Since there is no fast way to check who you truly are in real life, online netizens have no fear of backlash. Unless of course, you publicly declare who you are and create something controversial.

People online are different from when they are offline. Basic courtesy seems to have disappeared. Take for forums, for example, people have started to flame each other, calling each other names like slut or whore (I think my blog will be rated R21 now). You risk being criticized when someone posts a photo of you online. Bimbo, bitchy, you name it, you’ve got it.

Even in responsible adults, the common courtesy vanishes. I’m out of luck recently, to have met with this really irritating man. He started a thread looking for business partners on a traffic business. I did not post any reply and I read the replies other people have given him. Some have questioned his beliefs. He says that traffic, no matter if they are targeted or not, makes no difference in sales.

It is something new to me. I had always believed that targeted traffic is better. After all, you want to attract people who wants to buy your product isn’t it? Thus I started a conversation with him querying his believes and hoping that he will explain more to me. However his replies are short and simple. I don’t really learn much, thus I asked him more questions, gave him more examples and challenged him to explain to me. By challenge I do not mean publicly challenge.

He gave me some more replies, which I was happy to receive, because I felt I could understand his words and gain a deeper insight. However he suddenly replied:

“Good try but you are not going to get anywhere.
You are not the kind of person I am looking for anyway. Why you bother I also don’t know.”

All I did was giving him an example and asking him whether that was what he meant. After all, sometimes things may appear very clear to us,  because we are the experts. However, it may mislead others so other people may seek a clarification. When I received this reply I was frankly a little angry. This reply is definitely rude.

I mean, if you do not want to indulge me in a little healthy discussion, then you should have said so isn’t it? He told me that its rude not to reply to people’s posts. However, does it mean that its not rude to interrupt a healthy conversation just like that?

His reply to me again was:

“Read the title…

I am looking for partners to work with..I am not into discussing how I do my business or to train you to do my business.

I answer your posts only because it would be rude not to !! ”

Well, yes I know the title and I know he was asking for business partners, but he could discuss this issue with others but he could not discuss it with me? Besides, through our conversation I have never asked how he is doing his business nor am I asking him to train me in his business. It a sheer assumption on his part.

I typed a long retort and posted it. 5 minutes later I felt that this will go nowhere. What is the point? Thus I edited it and told him I was sorry to have wasted his time. If I had published my retort, tomorrow I would be getting another rude shock from him. Its not worth it isn’t it?

My point to all netizens is, if you do not want to discuss things with people, you can tell them. You can say this: “Hi, I am only looking for business partners. Unfortunately I am a little busy and I don’t think I can discuss this issue with you. I’m sorry.” This is more polite isn’t it? If you do this, the person will respect you and tell you that it is ok and he doesn’t mind.

Do NOT, I repeat, NOT, have a discussion halfway and then use a rude post to ask the guy to stop. It does not help.

Let us make the internet a healthy place to live in huh. =)

If you have seen the ad’s section on the right sidebar, you will discover that there are 3 advertisements! One is from Nuffnang (which I have gotten for very long), the other’s from google (which I have placed for very long) and the latest is from Advertlets.com! They are currently having this wonderful promotion for bloggers in Singapore right now! You can do a review of Advertlets on your own blog and get at least SGD$25.00! What a wonderful amount of money.

Well the reason why I joined advertlets is not all because of the SGD25, though that did tempt me a little. The actual reason is because I need to fund my domain name and space on my own and I am a poor student. Therefore I need ads to generate some bit of revenue to sustain my online presence. Nuffnang hasn’t been doing its job well enough. It has been logging my traffic data for weeks and my average daily unique visits is at 26. Its 6 more than the minimum required for Nuffnang, yet they have not started to place ads on my site. Without campaigns, all I am doing is basically providing free advertising to Nuffnang! The site doesn’t tell me when I would get my first campaign too. I’m a little lost with regards to Nuffnang.

As for google adsense, I have put up adsense for months and all I have is US$9.00. I need another US$91 before I can get a cheque of US$100 from them. It has been a long wait and I definitely need some money to finance my hosting! Ad sense doesn’t seem to be doing a good job in offering targeted ads that corresponds to my postings.

In fact, the best thing about advertlets is that, you do not have a minimum number of visitors required per day! As compared to Nuffnang’s 20 per day. In fact, you can learn more about why Advertlets is good!

Advertlets also allows target advertising just like Nuffnang! I have a better feeling about Advertlets than Nuffnang though. Advertlet’s website looks more professional than Nuffnangs!

Well my main aim is to earn some cash to help pay for my web host, so lets hope that I will have good news to share with everyone soon about cashing out from Advertlets! I believe that will be the best motivation for everyone else to join huh?