I’m currently in Melbourne for work and this Ajisen Ramen outlet is in the little Chinatown behind my hotel in Glen Waverley. I went there on the recommendation of my colleague Hong. The place was quite busy and people continually streamed in and out of the place so waiting for a table wasn’t that bad. Though it’s easiest if you were alone like me or in pairs.
Service was quick and efficient. Bonus marks for the pretty waitresses.
I had the Ajisen Ramen ($9). This photo doesn’t do the ramen justice. The pork-bone soup is full-bodied and lingers in the mouth even after you’ve swallowed it, and the noodle is just nice – chewy but not too chewy. It could have done with more than just two slices of thick pork and half of a hard-boiled egg but that’s just me being greedy.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.”
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?”
So it turns out that the fix that I did where I stopped the ads from being displayed on my more dodgy posts was not enough. The code must not be visible in the HTML source either. My fault for not reading the relevant Google Adsense policy section carefully.
So the ads got stopped completely. I’ve now removed the code from my template and the ads will only be selectively added to my more popular posts. It’s too much effort to find out which posts to exclude; it’s much easier to add it on posts that I know do not violate the adult content rule. And I’m using a WordPress plugin called “Who Sees Ads” for that purpose and it’s great.
Anyways, I appealed the suspension of ad service and I prevailed.
Also, I’m trying hard to get inspired to blog more again. It’s not that I don’t have any stories to tell either. It’s just that they are either a bit too career-limiting or friendship-destroying. It’s hard to be discreet and non-descriptive when I have so many friends on Facebook. As if. Hahah!
Ok I guess what I am saying is that having one of the monetary incentives to keep blogging reinstated won’t hurt.
I got an email from Google Adsense today saying that I’m displaying ads against content that they frown upon. Their words:
AdSense publishers are not permitted to place Google ads on pages with adult or mature content. This includes any content that is sexual in intent or may not be considered family-safe, such as sexual aids, devices and fetishes.
And the single example that they listed (which they stressed is an example only and that the same violations may exist on other pages of this website) is this one:
Heheh I guess that one is pretty obvious. Then I panicked a little and thought of the times that I have talked about sex and porn on this blog. Oh fuck. And also the times that I’ve used the word “fuck”. Hahah!
Although Google Adsense earns me the least on this blog, it’s still $10-$15 per month which equates to 2 or 3 video games from eBay over a year. It’s good chump change. So I went through all those posts and manually added a flag that will disable the ads on a per-post basis using a tip that I found here. Thanks Internet friend!
Mind you I haven’t talked much about sex these days. Because why? You all know why. Tumbleweeds are tumbling through my groin. If it was an action movie, it’d be the shittiest action movie ever because there’s no action. If it was a porno, it’d consist only of scenes that you normally fast-forward through. Ok I think you get the picture.
