You would think that after my years of working in IT support that these two things would be instinctively done every time. But in the heat of the moment, I’d forget my lessons learnt. So here are the top two things that I can impart to anyone looking to work in this field. Are you ready?

1. When speaking to a customer who may not understand the nuances of modern technology, ask to speak with someone else who is more technical. For example: their internal IT support or the youngest child in the house. You don’t need the additional stress of passing technical info through a non-technical conduit which will surely double the time needed to resolve a problem.

   Be careful with this one though. One time I did this with a female caller and she immediately thought that I was a sexist pig.

2. The placebo effect cannot be underestimated. This week whilst dealing with a difficult customer, I was reminded how effective it is by two of my colleagues. Instead of thinking how a change might not solve the problem at hand, know that a change done by you is better than inaction or suggesting that the customer look into possible problems at their end.

   This is particularly useful when the customer is stubbornly insisting that you do something, anything to fix a problem that cannot be or is difficult to attribute to your company. So even if it’s moving a problematic website from one server to another server that is identical in specs, which you know will change nothing, it will be enough to placate the customer. And they might even sense an improvement when there isn’t one.

   Ultimately all of us customer service types are in it to make the customer happy. So whatever works, right?

But no matter how obsequious we are required to be at our job, remember this: not every customer is right.

alb6450 @ flickr

Bacardi 151 is evil in a bottle. At 75% alcohol or 151-proof it’s highly flammable and is meant to be mixed into strong cocktails. But if you wanna get hammered very quickly at half the price, this is the shot for you. However …

If you like to enjoy your night slowly progressing from sober to buzzed to drunk, this is NOT your drink. If you want to help get the chick sitting on the couch into your bedroom, this is NOT the drink to use. If you want to showoff and think you’re a total badass, this is NOT your drink.

Urban Dictionary: bacardi 151.

Alcohol blackouts are nasty and nothing gets you there faster than a couple of shots of this swill. If you have a high tolerance of alcohol you can still function and appear normal but your brain is not capable of forming memories anymore. This was the crux of the rape case that I was a juror for.

Contrary to popular belief, alcohol does not kill brain cells but it does “interfere with brain receptors that produce steroids, which cause neurons essential to memory and learning to misfire”. And it gets you into dangerous and undesirable situations.

“If you drink enough alcohol, you will do things you won’t even realize you did the next day,” he says. “You will have conversations with people you won’t remember and put yourself in dangerous situations. You will get yourself in trouble, not remember and it may be the police explaining it to you.”

The Body Odd – About last night: Biology of the booze blackout.

Anyway, my point is … stay away from Bacardi 151.

Half a bottle of 151 off in a jug
1 cup of Malibu rum baby thats whassup then you
Fill the rest of the jug with pineapple juice and its crackin
The only defect is waking up like, “What happened?”

I was at the supermarket picking up some Mother when I saw this preposterously named variant of one of its competitors on the market. The full name is: Monster Energy Extra Strength Nitrous Technology Super Dry. I was like lol wtf?!

The gimmick is that besides carbon dioxide, there’s also nitrous oxide used to fizzy up the drink. Otherwise the ingredients are the usual energy drink culprits: caffeine, taurine, guarana and vitamins B1 and B12. Flavour wise it has a generic citrus taste, a bit like Mountain Dew. I don’t know how nitrous oxide is meant to taste like when it’s infused into water, perhaps it doesn’t even have a taste. Due to the nitrous oxide probably taking up the volume that would have been normally carbon dioxide, it is less fizzy than the other energy drinks which meant I could gulp it down faster.

The blurb on the can says the nitrous oxide gives the drink “a unique texture, smooth drinkable flavour and buzz that’s bigger than ever”. It did feel slightly thicker in my mouth than the usual fizzy drinks but I didn’t notice anything new with the flavour. It’s citrusy and that was it. But because I could slam it down faster, I did feel a stronger buzz that lasted for about 2-3 hours.

I would buy it again even though it costs the same as Mother but in a smaller can. And I would also buy it again because I want to encourage energy drink companies to come up with the next crazy idea.

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.
… what if you don’t like lemonade? Or lemon tarts? Or lemon meringue pie?

You play the cards that you are dealt with.
… This dealer sucks. I’m moving to the next table.

There’s plenty of fish in the sea.
… how come I can’t catch any then?

Good things come to those who wait.
… what if you die waiting?

There’s light at the end of the tunnel.
… it’s an oncoming train.

Every cloud has a silver lining.
… behind every silver lining is a cloud.

Tomorrow is another day.
… thanks but you haven’t helped me at all.

The glass is half full.
… who drank my water?!

Of course, I was not always this pessimistic. But that was a long time ago.

What, me worry?

I Wish Skee lo by oublierleracismeskyblog

I wish I was a little bit taller, I wish I was a baller …

So a couple of weeks ago, I wrote about my mom and her ex-boyfriend. And at the end of that post, I joked about how if she had married him I may be taller than what I am now. That prompted a very earnest and concerned query about my mental well-being, and how I should not feel sad about it, and that I have so many other redeeming qualities. *ahem*

Hahah the concern was misplaced of course. I know I sometimes come across as very cynical here but I’m far from depressed, even when I wish and fantasise about a lot of things that I don’t get. For example, besides being taller I also wished that I was rich and handsome. But hey, 1 out of 3 ain’t too bad right? Hah! And besides, I have this winning (nay, bi-winning. Duh) personality that makes me at least a 6 out of 10. Amirite?

And you know how they say that if you are insecure about your weight, you shouldn’t stand next to thinner people? Just to show you how secure I am with being vertically-challenged, here are some photos of me next to taller people.

Woo, this photo deserves a special mention because I have almost forgotten how awesome that night was. Hint: take a look at the scenery behind us. Heh.

Emily Scott. Dayum.

This pic is here because of Sel.

Lastly, I am 164cm and I once dated a girl who’s 172cm. How did I feel about myself when I was going out with her? AWESOME.

It’s been slightly more than a month since I’ve got my HTC Incredible S and I’m still happy with the decision. Coming from the iPhone 3G, the bigger screen with colours that are more vibrant is an awesome change. And I like the slimmer feel of the HTC even though it’s about the same thickness at the back of the phone due to the bulge of the battery.

Even though it’s not fair to compare the nearly 4-year old iPhone 3G to the Incredible S – it should really be compared against the iPhone 4, I’m quite happy to have a phone that feels snappy again. The web browser which loads the text first and images after makes web pages pop onto screen; the caching also makes going back and forth between pages a very pleasant experience. The Safari browser on the iPhone (any of them) should be more like the one on Android.

Transferring songs onto the phone is one step easier than the iPhone and choosing any song on the phone as a ringtone is also simple – the Incredible S even has a tool to crop the songs into any length that you want. I miss the playlist management via iTunes but I don’t miss anything else about it. And the virtual sound enhancement makes my earphones sounds more expensive than it is.

One difficult thing that I had on the first day was transferring my contacts from the iPhone to the Incredible S but that was more the fault of the iPhone. It took a few attempts for the iPhone to recognise the bluetooth signal from the Incredible S even though the HTC could see the iPhone just fine.

And finally, being able to back up my contacts onto the removable SD card is brilliant.

I love my KFC. I get mildly euphoric from eating it. So when I first read about this being available in America, my first thought was, “WTF, that’s insane” and my second thought was “When are they gonna do it here too?” Heh.

For those of you who don’t know of it, it’s a double-deck burger without the buns – two pieces of whole chicken breast meat would be the buns. And in between are two slices of cheese and bacon. If you order the original recipe chicken, you get BBQ sauce slathered on the cheese and bacon. And if you order the hot and spicy chicken (the Zinger version) you get hot sauce instead.

So how was it? It’s exactly what you’d expect if you bite through two pieces of KFC chicken. The first bite was like a party in my mouth but subsequent bites became a little too much to handle. If this was a normal burger, the sweetened buns would have balanced out well against the saltiness. The bacon and cheese did not add to the flavour at all because the combined taste of the two pieces of KFC chicken was overpowering. The hot sauce did provide an extra kick to it though.

The price was $7.95 for the Double by itself, or $9.95 in a combo with regular fries and drink. I had the combo and I was stuffed after. I think the whole thing sat in my stomach for at least the next 2 hours. I don’t think I will have it again. I had thought that I would like it more than I did, but I’d much prefer having two pieces of chicken meat on the bone, one piece at a time. If I’m gonna have a massive intake of fat, salt and calories, I might as well enjoy it right? Hahah!

p.s. I could have sworn that the girl at the counter smirked when I told her my order. Her expression was like, orly?