I can’t tell you how important it is to write polite emails. Even when you are filling a ‘Contact Us’ form on a website, e-mail etiquette applies because most probably the administrator is going to receive your information in his mailbox.

What constitutes a good email? What is a no go? Let me just briefly talk it through. I just received a rather “rude” email. It wasn’t entire rude, but the tone wasn’t friendly or polite.

In an email or a contact form, you can always start off by “Dear Sir/Mdm” or a simple “Hi!”. To make it less formal sounding, just use a “Hi” and I’m sure you have started off fine. Please do not launch into the objectives straight away, although it won’t be impolite if you omit the “Hi!”.

Next, the body of the text. Think about what you are saying, and put it in a polite tone. When I contact people from forms, I normally try my best to sound as polite as possible. In the email I got, the person questioned my website policy in NextTutor.

Then you all do this for what? Altruism?

Come on, whats the catch.

Seriously, this is in an “accusatory” tone. He or she could have phrased it differently and making me feel pleasant about answering his or her questions. Directly accusing me of being a “hypocrite” is wrong because I am not. I mean, one shouldn’t directly keep thinking that there are catches when somebody offers a service for free. For me, I would write it this way:

Hi,

I read from your website at NextTutor.com that you are offering the service for free. I was just wondering if there are any reasons behind, like I have to pay some money to unlock special features? I am also curious to know the reasons behind your decision to offer the service for free. I’m curious because most other websites will not do all these for free.

Thank you.

Yours,
XXXXXXX

I think this sounds much better. In fact, if I receive such an email, I would be more than happy to tell him or her why. Of course, no matter what I gave him/her a reply that I hope would be satisfactory and as polite as possible, but I’m sure people will understand when you feel a tinge of irritation when you reply to rude emails.

Well, in fact I’m really doing everything for free. One do not need to pay to use the facilities provided by NextTutor. In fact, there are not many services provided, just a simple database + filter capabilities. There is no hidden charge and I only cover my hosting fees and domain name fees through adsense, which till now, has just been enough to cover the fees.

The reason why NextTutor was started was more of an interest in learning PHP. From young I had an interest in websites, and I guess PHP opened a whole new dimension for me because I can create dynamic sites. Using this technology, everyone’s lives would be easier.

In a way, being cynical and using the word altruism makes me feel like some organ donor.

Seriously, which parent or tuition coordinator will pay me money just to put up an assignment? Tuition assignment forums are also free of charge! In fact, I provide the means for people to see your assignment, but I do not help anyone link tutors and students together. Hence, I guess if I asked for payment, my users will be 0. Simple as that. In this information age, why should we pay money for something we provide? Hence, I’m just using ads to cover my fees.

In the future, perhaps I will go into linking students and tutors, and there will be separate fees for that. No matter what, NextTutor’s database will remain free. If I cannot cover my hosting costs one day, I will close NextTutor down, simple as that.

So please people, write polite emails. It make’s everyone’s day better, especially someone who does not profit by providing a service. I’m sure we don’t go around questioning volunteers who are helping with disaster relief?

“Eh you volunteer for f***? Altruism ah? Confirm got catch one..”

I think running is a great way to start your day. I would know, I just did it today! My Primary School friend called me up and asked if I wanted to go jogging at the Lakeside Park. There’s this new (ok maybe not so new) park at the Lakeside area (Lakeside MRT), part of the ongoing process to link up all the parks in Singapore. Hence there’s running and cycling tracks built there.

So I agreed and I went down. We ran from the start, then into Chinese Garden and ran to Japanese Garden before looping back to Chinese Garden and my friend wanted to climb the 7 Story Pagoda. For a moment I thought he wanted to run up there, and I was bracing myself for it. Then, at the foot of the Pagoda, he said “Yes we made it”. Oh. Haha. Thankfully we didn’t run up because I think that is quite sick and we were quite tired. I am not sure what’s the distance I ran, but I doubt it’s very long. Perhaps we should increase the distance next time.

But I must say it felt good. It’s nice to run with a friend too. We walked out from Chinese Garden, and he bought a drink. I didn’t bring money, so I didn’t get any. But I tell you, it felt simply shiok when I returned home and drank juice. Even juice tastes super shiok. Next time I will bring money and get an isotonic drink to replenish my salts.

The best thing about a run is the shower. A nice long warm shower for me (maybe you would like it cold) really makes me happy.

But I have no idea why, after a run, I would feel disciplined and want to work. For the past few days I have been slacking and not working. My target for launching the second version of NextTutor is tomorrow, but I am afraid I cannot meet the target. But latest would be this week I guess. For now, I have to work!

“How Starbucks Saved My Life” is a real story of Michael Gates Gill written by himself, in short, something like an autobiography in the form of a story. It’s about how Michael has gone from a huge salary in a successful advertising firm to nothing at all. At the same time, he had an affair and got divorced, and his life just seem totally screwed.

He got a way out of the whole mess when an African American came up to him when he was drinking his coffee at Starbucks, and asked him, “Would you like a job?”. Although he is a white man, Michael said “Yes” and an interview took place.

The story is about how he started off from nothing, and then becoming Starbuck’s partners (which is the better name of workers) in one of Starbucks many stores. From being a wonderful cleaner at Starbucks to challenging his fear of the cashier counter, from calling out the drinks in correct order to making the drinks himself, Michael learnt many life lessons and became a happier person, even though he isn’t earning as much compared to when he was at the advertising firm.

He learnt to overcome his fear of counting money and went from 5 dollars loss at the end of the day to a few cents of loss. He learnt some customer relations, that you never deny anyone the toilet, whether he or she is a Starbucks customer or not, or chase anyone away during closing time. Through his chats with customers when he is at the cashier counter, he made many new friends and enjoyed the daily chats as he sees them everyday and knows what coffee they want, decaf or not.

It’s a story of how he picked his life up together, and even managed to get his children to forgive him and come to see him at the store. Eventually he became a Coffee Master and he gets to brew coffee once every week and give free samples of brewed coffee to anyone walking by any Starbucks store. Coffee Masters have to be trained and they have to be able to be really good with the different versions of coffee, the taste, their histories, etc.

In short, this books tell us how Starbucks key principles and treatment to partners and customers alike are lessons we should all learn in life. I guess that is the reason why there are so many Starbucks books written about its management and policies.

This is a great book to read. Trust me.

More Links:
CBS News
Buy From Amazon

How long will you wait for your ad earnings cheque to arrive? 1 week? 1 month? 2 months? Well, to me, the best would be to get the cheque within 1 month. After all, we have to give a little time for the staff to do the processing. But two months?

I understand that it seems to be the norm for most people who are cashing out their ad earnings, but it is pretty frustrating to know that they are grossly inefficient in their job. I’ve been talking about Nuffnang and how they don’t seem to listen or respond quickly to customer satisfaction. But now the problem is Advertlets take their own bloody sweet time to pay me my ad earnings.

That’s not the main problem though. I just wish that I can at least know when my cheque will arrive. Making me wait this long (since 4th of May), and the whole status is listed as ‘Unpaid’ doesn’t make my life easier. Sometimes you want to get a little money to spend, or satisfy a particular craving, but at this rate my craving will probably end before the money arrives. In Advertlets, there is supposedly different statuses like processing, and according to their website, processing takes 1 - 2 months, to determine click fraud and stuff. But my status is still at ‘Unpaid’. It’s not even processing! Should I be waiting for another 2 months? That’s totally inefficient! I really hope there’s a good explanation for all these, after all, i’m not the first person to think the duration is too long.

Many people have complained, and I guess when you see that your customer is not satisfied, you should do something to check. There is not much checking needed for me for click fraud. Hell, most of my earnings are through visits and not clicks anyway.

So what if their company is from Malaysia? I think it’s time for them to decide if Singapore bloggers are worth the trouble. If Singapore bloggers are worth the trouble, set up a Singapore office to process the cheques faster. Hell we can even go down and collect the cheque and save on postage fees.

Seriously, I think the only credible ad agency amongst the 3 is Blog2U. So far I have not received any ads through their auto-accept system, but I’ve seen people having ads run. However, I have gotten reviews chances from them, and their representative Shirley is really nice and polite. The best thing is that they process the money quick and by bank transfer. The money is fast, the service is good, I think the other two companies should learn from them. Perhaps they do not have such a big customer base or publisher base, but I will choose them over the other two anytime because what matters to me is myself. I guess as long as a company demonstrates that I am important to them, I will stick to their company. It makes perfect sense right?

So Advertlets, how long do you want me to wait before my status even proceeds to ‘processing’? Are they trying to wait till the exchange rates change? It makes no sense.

Nodame Cantabile is a romantic comedy and I really recommend people to watch it. For starters, this is one of the rare times in which I remember the lead character’s names. In certain cases like Galileo, I seem to not be able to recall the character’s names.

There are two leading characters, the first being Nodame, which is short for her real name, Noda Megumi. (See I remember even the full name). Nodame’s ambition is to be a kindergarten teacher and she is in the piano division in the music academy. She composed a “fart song” for her future students. Who the hell wants their kids to learn a fart song, I don’t really know.

The second is Chiaki-senpai, where senpai just means senior. Nodame is Chiaki’s junior, so she calls him Chiaki-senpai. Chiaki’s dream is to go to Europe to be a professional conductor. However when he returned from Vienna when he was young, there had been an emergency landing and he has an aeroplane phobia since then. Hence he is unable to fulfil his dreams because he can only stay in Japan.

The whole drama is a manga adaptation, so be prepared for manga style things happening like Nodame getting whacked and flying a huge distance before hitting a big rock.

The whole drama is about Nodame’s love for Chiaki and how he eventually “accepted” her love for him. It shows how Nodame helped Chiaki overcome his fear of planes, and eventually Chiaki is able to fly to Paris to further his studies as a conductor. It also shows how strong Nodame’s love for Chiaki is, because Nodame decided to immerse herself in music more and even attended competitions for him, something she said she will never do. In a way, she is giving up on her kindergarten teacher dream by working hard. (She has natural talent at piano also).

There is this character called Stresseman (Hope I spelled it correctly), who’s got to be one horny ah pek. But he is actually the Maestro, one of the superb conductors around the world. He’s super lame because he keeps going to parties and immense himself in the company of female escorts. He also likes reading Japan’s Magazines, the kind where skimpy clothing rule.

There are two episodes of SP to be watched after you complete the 11 episode drama. But that’s for another post. I give this drama 8.5/10. I enjoyed laughing at it. Seriously.