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1. They are always rude and angry.
2. They don’t listen to your instructions because they think that they know more than you and insists that it’s not their fault.
3. They are not willing to learn. They believe it is their right to ask you to do it for them every single time, because they have already paid for the service.
4. They take advantage of your easy-going nature and ask for extraordinary favours.
5. They confuse the issue and have contacted the wrong people, eg. calling the shop that sold them the computer about a faulty software that they’ve downloaded, and insist that you help them anyway.
6. They lie about the problem causing you to go on wild goose chases that lead nowhere.
7. And then they get impatient when you can’t solve their problem.
8. When you tell them that it may take up to a day, they email you every hour on the hour to see if maybe somehow the Gods have smiled on them, and all kinds of rules and logic do not apply to them, and their issue has been miraculously fixed.
9. They change their mind after the item/order has been delivered. Their complaints always start with, “If I had known it was going to be like this …”
10. And after all of the above, they still complain about the price.

Those who do IT support will recognise the above instantly, though some types are applicable to all kinds of business. Have you guys got similar to share? Or as a customer calling up for support, have you been through your own tech support hell?

Shannon K @ flickr

• Age 18: aimless, knew I wanted to do the sciences in university but didn’t know what to choose. Elected to do Electrical Engineering because my dad was one. Chose to do an additional degree in Commerce because it was only one extra year if I combined it. Bargain!
• Age 18-23: Struggled through the hardcore maths and physics units because I could not visualise the theories. Did ok in the Commerce units because it was more “real world” to me and so I understood it better. Got depressed towards the end because I was an above average student at best and wondered how was I suppose to compete with all the smart people around me.
• Age 23: graduated with double degrees. Immediately took a month off in Europe to not think about finding a job (thanks mom and dad). Landed back into reality and it took me 3 desperate months to land a job.
• Age 23-24: toiled in a monotonous job in an industrial area. Primary task: plugged numbers into formulas that I never understood. When I asked, the Senior Engineer couldn’t be bothered with my questions. And I was made to feel little when technicians who are non-degree holders had to show this university educated person how and why. But they were nice about it, unlike the Senior Engineer who was a prick. Ended up playing around with their computers and network more than what I was paid to do.
• Age 24: Realise that I can be good at this computer thing and I loved it. Uni friend asked if I had wanted a career change – no more electrical engineering, and working in IT. I said yes. Within a month, I was out of the industrial area and working in the city. Hurray for better food and better looking women!
• Age 24-27: working in the city, living it up and coasting on the IT boom. Was paid a hefty bonus for standing by for Y2K – easiest money that I have ever earned because nothing happened! Within those 4 years my salary jumped $40,000 and with some of my stock options I bought a second car. Yeah I know – how decadent. But the good times had to end some time …
• Age 27-28: the big IT crash and the company decided to scale down their Australian operations and the Perth office was closed down. I was made redundant along with 60 other people. Got half a year’s salary as a payout. I kept looking for work while studying for an IT certification. I got the certification but I never got a job. Then one day whilst walking to one of a few interviews that I managed to get, I saw this little eatery but it was closed. Asked my mother if she wanted to move her restaurant there. She said, “Why don’t you do it?”
• Age 28: after almost 10 months moping around feeling sorry for myself, it wasn’t hard to convince me to make yet another career change even if it meant dumping all my savings into it. This time I was going to be a restaurateur.
• Age 28-30: Running a restaurant was incredibly tiring and my emotions followed the business of the day: if it was good, I felt good; if it was shit, I felt like shit. It was a good living but I was never going to get rich from it and my social life was suffering. I did learn many life and people skills. My staff were always a great bunch and the loyal customers kept me upbeat.
• Age 30: same uni friend offered me an IT job at his startup. I didn’t want to abandon my restaurant but my mother and brother offered to take it over. So it was another no-brainer – I took the IT job.
• Age 30-33: felt great to get back into IT though I was very rusty in the beginning. An office job felt so cushy in comparison to the restaurant. Being in a customer service role, the benefits of having been in the hospitality industry cannot be overstated – the experience was tremendously useful.
• Age 33: feeling proud of what I have achieved and have contributed to the company but also feeling that I have reached the glass ceiling at the current job. I’m ready for new challenges and bigger and better things. Have started my job search and am having my first interview tomorrow.

What did you want to be when you were a kid? Did you study what you really wanted to do in university? Ultimately, was university necessary? Have you ever questioned your career path? Has it ever took multiple detours like mine did?

claudecf @ flickrYou know sometimes I wish people don’t tell me the things that they do because it then becomes something that I have to tell someone, and by extension – blog. In the recent past, unless the secret was truly sensitive or horrible, I didn’t think twice about writing it so long as I left the specifics out of it.

As my readership increases, so does the potential of offending someone because they know someone who knows someone who knows me. Now, it’s not just the stories of friends and family that I sometimes self-censor on, but I am also wary of writing about things that happened to friends of friends, people separated by two or three degrees of separations even. Oh, the things that I could write about if I didn’t give a shit about still having friends who’d willingly talk to me without worrying about me spilling their deepest and darkest secrets.

Being known for blogging is a double-edged sword. I want to be read because I like talking to an audience instead of an empty room. But that also means that I can’t write as freely as I could as before when only a small circle of family and friends knew the existence of this.

It’s frustrating at times when I know it makes for a good story, especially when I’m stuck for material. So it’s with a heavy heart to say that although I’ve been told and have overheard some fairly interesting things lately I can’t tell you any of them. So you’ll just have to make do with this: my mother made me a chicken-mayo sandwich for lunch today, using leftover Nando bits. It was very nice. Spank you very much.

Recently I met a woman whom I had a good first impression of. Mind you, the first impression was purely physical. She gave me no choice by what she wore. Nice face, nice skin and very nice cleavage. Then over the next few encounters that I had with her, I liked her less and less.

She is the kind of person who likes to tell you her opinion on everything that you are talking about, even when we didn’t ask for it, and even when the topic was personal between the other person and me. She butts in when we didn’t include her in the conversation. She’s the type who if she had walked into the room and heard laughter, thinks that you are laughing at her. Or if the joke was not about her, she’d ask you to repeat it so that she can join in.

Yeah I know. Fucking annoying right?!

But she was a friend of a friend so I didn’t say anything. Although I did look away and grit my teeth a few times, that was the extent of it. I was quietly saying to myself, “Surely I can’t be the only person who thinks this?” Then a mutual friend came over to me and said,

“Gees, she sure talks a lot of shit.”

Hahah! I was so relieved in finding a kindred spirit that I hugged the guy and said, “I know right?!”

Shame really. She was pretty until she opened her mouth.

My brother is a man of big contrasts. He watches and reads movies, novels and magazines which are cerebral and thought-provoking. Yet in his every day life, he lives it the simplest way he can. He has simple needs – his job, his cigarettes, his beer, his food and his like-minded friends. He doesn’t splurge on material things, but unless he’s planning for a holiday or a major purchase, he doesn’t save much either because he doesn’t believe in rainy days. Although he does live within his means and he has no debt.

Our Cantonese maid in Malaysia used to say this about him, roughly translated:

If the sky ever falls on him, he’d just treat it as a blanket.

He doesn’t plan much for the future. This of course, causes a great deal of consternation for my parents. Because to not have a plan for one’s life and to have a just-enough mentality about money is very much not the Chinese way. We’d prefer stability over uncertainty while he lives it one day at a time.

In a way, his easy-going approach towards life may be enviable. Because while we fret and worry about things that may never happen, he’s cruising along enjoying the simplest pleasures that life has to offer. Like I’ve always said though, ultimately our lives are about the journey rather than the artificial milestones and timetable. There isn’t a “correct” way to living, and we are all entitled to seek happiness in our own ways.

So happy 29th birthday Marvin! Maybe you should be the one lecturing us about our lives rather than the other way around.

The English comedian Eddie Izzard once did a skit imagining Darth Vader visiting the canteen on the Death Star. Then a guy nicknamed “Thorn2200″ dubbed it onto a stop-motion animation that uses Lego figures. This is the result below.

Check out the other Lego clips on Thorn2200’s Youtube page – he’s talented, and is only 15!

(via IZ Reloaded)

Just before I left for my holiday to Singapore in December, I had to move everything out of my room so that the new flooring can be put in, and the walls be painted. Whilst moving all my stuff out to the living room, I manage to clear out a lot of junk and things that I had perhaps held on to for a little bit too long.

I was merciless, and I was proud of it. Everything that no longer mattered went into the recycling bin or became garbage. After I got back from my holiday and started moving things back into the room again, I threw out some more stuff – things that did not pass the second time of filtering.

Then today, I got a new laptop for work. All spanking new and pristined, ready to be deflowered. As how it was when I moved stuff around in and out of my room, I deleted lots of files and programs as I transferred my data across to the new machine.

Both of the above felt good and almost soul cleansing. It got me thinking: do I want to move myself out of my comfort zone in Perth to do a real soul cleansing? Or at the very least do I want a change in my work environment? Being comfortable has been good the past few years but lately I’m beginning to feel cramped in. I like my life now but at the same time I feel restless, like I should be doing something more or different.

I haven’t quite figure out the direction that I want to head in yet. I think my family is ready and ok with me mixing things up a little but the question is, am I? One thing’s for sure though: it is really hard to leave home, even if I’m beginning to want to wander.