3 Open your mouth and say "aaaah....."

I haven't been to the dentist in years. That's right, I'd rather go through that toothache than have my teeth checked. It's no wonder I have bad teeth. No sane man will fall for a girl with teeth like mine.

I just have this thing about people sticking things into my mouth. I always feel like throwing up, hence the bad teeth. If I had a dentist friend, I'd feel so much more comfortable but I don't. Sigh.....when will I grow up.

Aching Tooth

Aching tooth that tortures me

Give me peace

I beg you please

Sleepless nights, a restless body

One panadol to soothe my pain

Two if it starts all over again

What can I do, what can I do

I hope it all blows over

Before I fall over ...

0 Many moons later - What Banks consider excellent Customer Service

At the rate I'm going, it's no wonder my blogging "sifu" has abandoned me. It's been ten exciting months and a few mentally disturbing experiences with several banks since my last blog.

I wish I can just sue banks on behalf of the company I work for.

Banks have a habit of demotivating our employees. They'll call them up on the office number to enquire about overdue payments..for everyone else to hear.

I agree that the employees should pay what they owe banks. What I don't agree is banks calling our office and demotivating our employees in the middle of the day and interrupting our business flow.

And we do get calls, very rude calls, demanding to know if our employees already own a credit card during office hours. Do you believe that employers pay employees to sign up for credit cards or loans during office hours? It was the last straw when I got this call from a lady who was shouting over the phone, I immediately demanded to know how they got our number and to speak with their Superior. I told the Customer Service officer straight that we will not hesitate to sue them for calling our number unnecesarily...I know that sounded extreme but they never called again. I don't mind them calling if it's a business proposal to the company and I certainly won't mind if they're polite but being polite is the last thing they know.

Even when I cancelled my credit card in Mar 06 :p I was assured that the card would be terminated within a week. I took leave just to cancel two credit cards. Call me paranoid but I brought a witness..hahaha..because I couldn't trust any banking officer to do a good job when what I'm asking for doesn't benefit the bank. I had asked for a receipt but they assured me smugly that I need not worry. I paid all the outstanding balances.

True enough, they didn't fail to disappoint me. After one month, the card was still activated and lo and behold, the statement contained a balance.Needless to say, I lodge a complaint demanding to know what happened and why there was a delay because I will not visit their bank twice and I asked them if they would pay me ;D because I took leave to ensure they did it right. I gave them specific details about the cancellation.

Guess what they replied? The card has been terminated today. ......Hello? Don't I get an explanation on how it happened and what about the balance that I still had to pay. They do not understand a thing about customer service. After a nasty (ok, not that nasty. I do have a heart) reply from me, ..voila..they finally understood what I wanted . I didn't want to know if my card was terminated today. I'm glad I got that all sorted out but I really wish banks would hire people who can understand what a Customer needs, someone with some sense.

They'll be quick to complain that they get lots of rude Customers but when they get someone polite, do they really bother? Not from my experience.

1 A New Home, A New Beginning

After a year, we're (Daevid and I) still renovating our new home. We moved in last Dec 05, bought the unit in Dec 04. It's sheer bliss having our own place to thrash.

Bright orange and yellow, those are the colours of our apartment because I love cheery colours and typically, I've grown sunflowers in my mini garden which is located at the balcony.

Bathroom wallls are orange too. I've green plants everywhere. I've this vision that my home should be full of live greenery. Perhaps I may even buy a CD that plays nature's sound for a more realistic feel. I, I, I ..Daevid doesn't seem to mind.

We started out by designing the home for a Balinese feel. It obviously didn't fall through because unconciously, we veered into another direction.

The room walls were painted blue and green. We've hanging lights which are crafted from seashells, one in the hall, one in the balcony area and one in the bedroom. We've sea rocks / stones decorating our tiled floors.

What were we doing? .......I've lived by the seaside all my life. We both lived on lovely islands with lots of greenery. Now, we live in the city, in a condo, on a high floor. We may not have realised it initially but we've probably fashioned our home after our childhood. .. "Seaside Tropics" ....that's more of the theme of our design now. Lush tropics....

The reason why I love our new home so much is because we worked on renovating the small parts ourselves. We have fond memories of every item that is placed in our home, every item that we've worked on.

We painted the kitchen cabinets ourselves. All the top cabinet doors are decorated with a white framed picture of a flower which we got for about MYR 9.90 at Jusco.

Then the balcony railing is entwined with rope which we got from Ace Hardware.

The seashell lights....ahh..we got those from Labuan island between MYR 15 to MYR 45. The same item costs between MYR 80 to MYR 160 in Kuala Lumpur.

The stones which we laid on the floor was collected from Port Dickson beach. We spent the afternoon picking up stones under the hot hot HOT sun during the Chinese New Year Holidays. But it was not all hot, we had ice cream to keep us cool.

Our bedroom wall is decorated with 2 towels with beach babe pictures. We got this free from HSBC (Credit card points redemption).

Our best indoor plants are from Ikea. They're so healthy, there's two healthy green worms living in one pot and a fat earthworm in the other. You could say, I'm in good company even when Daevid isn't around.

There are but so many things for us to do together, so many memories to build....I love my new home :)

2 CNY Resolutions

I tried. I really tried. Blogging just comes effortlessly to some people but I could be staring at the screen for donkey hours wondering what's there to talk about.

Maybe I should just convert this to my online diary. Merc and Winn are always trying to encourage me. They must see some potential in me becoming a world class blogger, otherwise, they won't be encouraging me so much. I love them.

So to give them some hope, I've decided to make it my CNY resolution to blog................ more than I did last year ! I did what? 3 or 4? That shouldn't be hard to achieve.

My next resolution would be to diet. Typical, you say? Nay..Doctor's orders. No prawns, no cuttlefish, no egg, no peanuts, no meat except for chicken and fish...fruits and take less salt. Basically a lot of nos to abide by. If I'm able to stick to this diet, I'll survive the year with healthy pride. How will I survive.....sigh..I so love cuttlefish...

If everyone kept achieving their resolutions, they'll run out of resolutions to make and they probably won't need to make any in the first place. I know I'm making excuses to not stick to my resolutions ;) but if you can convince me to follow through, I'll take you out for dinner......we could have cuttlefish :D