New Car Problems

The biggest problem I have today is having a car and the trouble is I cannot sell it. Here is my problem:

1 - I bought the car when the price was really high so I took a bank loan to slowly repay the car. Now the price of the car has fallen so much it makes it not worthwhile to keep it. Am currently paying close to $1500 a month just on installments.

2 - Selling the car is not an option as well ... with the outstanding loan and the currently value of my car now even selling the car would not cover my loan ... I would have to top up close to 20K just to sell my car

3 - My car gear box has gone bonkers ... a check with the auto shop tells me that I have to pay close to $12K for a new one and $5k to repair the old one.

Sometimes life throw terrible stuff at you *sigh*

IMF - World Bank

Was doing some work in Orchard Road Singapore about a week ago and came across some bill boards that were showing some interesting pictures ... it suddenly woke me up to what is really happening around the world and made me glad to be in my country - Singapore. Tear rolled down my eyes as I walk down the shopping district.

"Imagine Asia without Provety

What can you buy with one dollar?

300 Millions africans live on one dollar a day"

"Imagine a world without poverty

Have you called home laterly?

In Yemen, 92 out of 1000 people have phones

In Singapore 978 out of 1000 people have mobile phones"

"Imagine a world without poverty

Can you count to 30?

Every 30 seconds an african child dies of Malaria"

"Imagine a world without poverty

How long do you expect to live?

In Zambia life expectancy is only 36 years of age

In Singapore life expectancy is 79 years"

I guess we should really look around us as we live each day and really count our blessings for what we have.

Good Service Bad Service

With the IMF happening soon, Singapore has been emphasizing on good service and just a couple of day ago I saw the difference of service between two establishments.

Bad Service – Café Cartel in Raffles City Singapore.
We had a goodbye dinner for one of our friend who was going back to her country after doing her studies here. We decided on the little chain of Café which was quite well known and establish. Upon entering we were greeted by a nice waitress who help us get a table and still allowed us to have some outside snacks as our entire party wasn’t there yet. Great service – but that was where it stopped! All the way during dinner it was going to down slope all the way. First, we requested for water and as our friends were arriving one at a time … we had to request for a glass for each of them – no initiative on the staff side to bring the water over. We placed our orders and were told about 15 min later that some of the stuff we ordered was not available and we changed them. We waited for quite some time even after repeated request for our drinks to be served first, the drinks never arrived until much later. When the food arrived, the order was wrong and no one even made and attempt to apologies for the mistake. What was worst was that we ordered a seafood platter to be shared by all five of us – the platter arrived without any serving plates or cutleries – were we expected to eat fish and chips with our hands? We requested for some cutleries and were told that they ran out! When we asked for more BBQ sauce, it came half filled and we had to request for more. 2 more plates of BBQ sauce were handled to us and you guessed it … half full as well.

When we decided to leave and ask for the bill, it took forever to process and we ask for some of the food to be put into a bag and some (yes again) BBQ sauce and Black Pepper Sauce and you wouldn’t believe this – they put both into the same container! Taking about bad service.

Good … no Great Service – A small establishment call Lai Lai Family Restaurant at 20A/B Liang Seah Street.
We had dinner there on the very next day after the bad experience at Café Cartel and the service was a world of difference. We were well greeted at the door by a staff that showed us to our seats. We ordered drinks and side dishes and shared the food as we were quite full. The food came and the attendant actually repeated our special request – less sugar in the bubble tea. We were pleasantly surprise. Then the food came and without asking a serving dish was placed in front of us. We could see this being done at all the rest of the tables even when the table beside us was served without a dish … it was quickly brought over when the next dish was served! We saw the next table having some fried egg plant and wanted to try but the normal serving look really huge and two of us cannot finish it. We ask the supervisor if she could specially prepare a smaller plate for us and guess what they did saying that it’s the first time they are doing that … they even charged us half the price for it. The staff were attentive and great! Not to mention the food was fabulous as well.

See Great Service can be found in Singapore as well … what shocked me was it wasn’t a five star restaurant in a hotel just a normal street side eatery – much smaller then an establishment like Café Catel but much Bigger in HEART.
Thanks Lai Lai for that wonderful night.

PS if you wanna go to Lai Lai for a wonderful mean and experience their business hours are 11.30am – 3am (last order 2:30am) daily except Monday when they rest. For Reservation you can call 6837 1556 – This information I stole from a name card I found at the cashier … good service and good food need to be shared.

Gout! Ouch!

Wanted to post earlier but … you guess it I forgot my password and login (age is catching up). Lucky for me first post I am still able to maintain this blog. If not it will start to become another one of the floating dead blog taking space in the internet. Anyway back to today’s blog – Gout.

If you have never experience an attack you wouldn’t understand how much pain your body can give you. Gout has been compared to childbirth and yes … it won in the pain level criteria.

Gout is basically the swelling of a joint – usually the right big toe because of the way the blood flow and gravity etc. The deposit of crystals becomes razor sharp and basically the slightest touch is like have a thousands knifes cut you from the inside.

I just got an attack about 2 days ago – onset of eating some Durians (very nice ones) in Malaysia about a week back. The toe started numbing 3 days ago and I knew it was coming, took lots of water to flush it out but it wasn’t good enough. Yesterday, the toe swelled up and the pain poured in … not too bad as I could still walk and even go to work this morning. Came lunch time and the pain was so bad I could leave to grab lunch and couldn’t wear my shoe as well. I just got back from the doc, (another time if I remember I will write a blog on driving with my left leg) got a big needle stuck into me and about 4 different type of medication. But experience have shown me – the medication just help with the healing which will still take another 3 – 4 day *sigh*