QQLand Incorrigble Parking

(Click To Enlarge)

Took this picture off a balcony when I saw how the folks here park their cars. If you click to enlarge, you can see the painted lines, that's how the car were originally supposed to park.

Parking idiots gathering?

Welcome to QQLand. 

- Voxeros

Dumbass Of The Week XIII

It was 24 Mar 2010 when George W. Bush and Bill Clinton went down to Haiti to visit the earthquake victims.

Bush was caught wiping his hand on Clinton's shirt after shaking hands with one of the victims.

Dumbass Move #1 for wiping his hand after shaking hands. Reminds me of how Dr Seet Ai Mee lost her 1991 elections after been spotted to be washing her hands after shaking that of a fishmonger.

Dumbass Move #2 for wiping his hand on Clinton's back in a sneaky fashion.

That's a really low move, even for a Bush.

- Voxeros

My Nuts

Was reviewing new samples when we chance upon this.

I was the only one laughing away as the rest of the folks looked on like I was a lunatic. They obviously did not get the joke

I can see it now when we send the promoter out to the stores.

"Hello Auntie, you want to try My Nuts? My Nuts really nice to eat wor! My Nuts very cheap!! Lai, EAT MA NUTS!!!"

Let's just say that I am going to confine this to the non-English speaking markets. LOL.

- Voxeros

Crisis Of Faith

I plurked that a few weeks ago on the day just before I left Singapore.

I was in Church and possibly my very last church service in a long time to come.

I have been praying for months to find something worthwhile to do in Singapore so that I can remain close to my family and friends. Alas, it has fallen on deaf ears or was there no one at the other end to pick up my prayer call in the first place?

Now don't get me wrong, I love my current job and the opportunity that comes with it. It is like the Two of Spades in the game of Chor Dai Dee where it is the best card and you only play it right at the end. However, the price to pay for that kind of money and power is beyond imagination. A solitary nomadic life. Not many people have the mental appetite for it. 

My crisis of faith arises when my prayers went unanswered and I have had a miserable year prior, working with idiots and morons. I was there to bear witness to see good people suffered injustice while I was helpless to offer any assistance. I was also there to see two-faced conniving witches pretending to be angels while plotting your murder.

Where were You?

I am now in QQLand on my own and I believe I got there on my own. Some may say that this is God's plan to put me in QQLand which is why my prayers to remained in Singapore were denied.

I say bullshit. That's just self-fulfilling prophecy.

So for now, I am taking a break and to get myself some peace of mind. I am done looking for Him. He can come look for me instead, if He exists in the first place.

- Voxeros

1. Nerak left...

Thursday, 25 March 2010 2:42 pm

It's not easy for you to say such as I know you have always been a rather staunch Christian.
If you are still feeling upset, you still have me to talk to! :)

2. JayWalk left...

Thursday, 25 March 2010 4:34 pm :: 

Nerak: I was never a staunch Christian and neither am I a good one. I am just one. I think.

3. darkelfin left...

Thursday, 25 March 2010 7:22 pm

well, u know wat staunch christians will say. this is all god's way of testing you. and you have FAILED!
dun worry, if u are upset, you still have Nerak to talk to. :)

4. barffie left...

Thursday, 25 March 2010 10:09 pm

Don't give up. Faith (on a general term) is there, so people have something to always look towards to, or to fall back on when the going gets tough... I don't think I can do what you did, but I can understand that you just had to. =(

5. JayWalk left...

Thursday, 25 March 2010 10:23 pm :: 

Darkelfin: To those supposedly staunch Christians, I say screw them.

Fail? Fail lor! Seriously, I stopped caring already.

Barffie: Well, in this case, I only had myself to fall back on.

6. Ruok left...

Friday, 26 March 2010 11:19 pm

We almost always want the answers to our prayers to be a positive one. But what if the answer is a "no"? Do you reject it or accept it? I believe He answers prayers; just that His answers are not always "yes". It could be a "no"; it might even be a "not right now". Point is, he does answer them. We just have trouble accepting his answers when it doesn't go according to our plan.

I found this book to be helpful when I had my own crisis of faith. "Reaching for the Invisible God" - Philip Yancey. Hopefully you will find it as useful as I have.

7. Gary left...

Saturday, 27 March 2010 2:19 am

there are certain things in life you cant never say, that is it. I believe even if God had put you there, there is a reason to it. no? God's plan is always the best, but human beings refuse to accept as they think that their plans are the best, but in the end, fall short and deny the glory to God. Perhaps you have some unfinished business..

8. merryfeet left...

Saturday, 27 March 2010 3:16 am

This little Asok here (not such a blur f* anymore but unfortunately, still blur, and still the lowest lifeform, exp. a/c servicing in an mnc) is commenting because she faced the very same thing you witnessed. Peace, integrity and intelligence cannot co-exist in Singapore is it, must target the Asok to save his own ass. Wtf.

Somehow whenever I feel the need to complain i come to your blog and you are talking about the same thing haha.

 And anyway.. Atheist here. I never knew who I was speaking to when I was encouraged to try prayers for 2 years at the alma-mater. I don't believe. I can't. And I really don't like it when people tell me for all of my problems and happiness, it's God's plans. I go through the shit and found my happiness because I made the decisions that landed me there in the first place, so it could go either way. Of course, there is no right or wrong answer, but I'm not comfortable with the Church's.
I survived alone in a foreign land without friends for a month, can't even speak the language. I know it can't be compared to your long term posting overseas la, but I believe you will be well. Jiayou! Be strong!

9. JayWalk left...

Saturday, 27 March 2010 1:05 pm :: 

ruok & Gary: I am familiar with Yancey's work. The skeptic in me just find that "it's God plan for you" is just too convenient an answer to explain everything.

It is a self-owning exercise where every prophecy ends up being self-fulfilled.

Merryfeet: I know how you feel. You keep dialing the hotline only to be put on hold for hours. You wonder if there is anybody actually on the other side of the line or were you just merely put on machinese to listen to endless loop of muzak?

10. Chocolate gal left...

Saturday, 27 March 2010 1:13 pm

Errr.. i loan you my Guan yin ma, okie? No stress no stress.. Huggiess....

11. JayWalk left...

Saturday, 27 March 2010 1:20 pm :: 

Chocolate Gal: Thanks for the offer but I prefer to walk this path on my own for now.

12. Mistress Grace left...

Saturday, 27 March 2010 9:52 pm

Its your karma, would Karma be a better explanation for things. Jay, faith means having belief in something even if the answer is not yes and having the ability to accept things as they are. As you know, I am not a staunch religious person. But then, if you are christian because you are christian, then you shouldnt be in the faith itself.

13. barffie left...

Sunday, 28 March 2010 1:36 am

Faith, to me... it's something within me. It's not a 'higher being' or a 'force of nature' or something. So I guess, 靠自己還是最實際的。。。

14. JayWalk left...

Sunday, 28 March 2010 9:49 am :: 

Mistress Grace: I do not believe Karma in the religious sense but I do believe what goes around, comes around.

Barffie: Yes, that is perhaps how it can describe me. I am helping myself.

They say put everything into the Hands of the Lord and he shall take care of it. It's like the queue at a gahmen agency. Yes, they will help but God (no pun intended) knows how long before the queue reaches you.

Hence, I just decided to do things on my own. Those folks who still have the so-called faith, I say they can sit there and slowly wait while I get off my ass and start making things happen.

15. Ruok left...

Tuesday, 30 March 2010 5:28 am

The thing is, nobody can truly tell you what God's plans are for you. And if I've caused you to believe so from my comments then I apologise. I was just trying to impress we might not like God's answers to our prayers.

I too am not an advocate of just leaving everything to God and let him take care of it. It's again coming out from the genie complex some Christians are prone to.

 It might not be biblical, but I've always believed God helps those who help themselves. So no, i don't expect you or any Christians to sit on their arse and leave Him to do everything. Why not get a genie lamp instead?

 If you've already read the book I mentioned, you might want to take a look at this other one : "Prayer" with the tagline "Does It Make Any Difference"

16. JayWalk left...

Tuesday, 30 March 2010 7:15 am :: http://jaywalk.blog-city.com

ruok: No need to apologise. I know where you are coming from. I used to tell the same thing to other skeptic.

Here's the thing about God helping those who help themselves. If I am helping myself, I don't need Your help liao loh.

Again, I used to be an advocate of God helping those who help themselves. Now it's kinda coming back to bite me in the ass. Karma's a bitch sometimes.

17. Sophie left...

Tuesday, 30 March 2010 10:37 pm

Its okay to take a break from God, Jay. Faith will find you again.

18. JayWalk left...

Tuesday, 30 March 2010 10:46 pm :: 

Sophie: Well, we'll see how it goes. Not going to think about it anymore. If it happens, it happens. If not, the no biggie either.

Cigarette Biscuits

Was at Carrefour in Bangkok doing market research when I chanced upon this.

Wow. This is definitely great stuff for the kids. I am so buying this for them!

Branding FAIL.

- Voxeros

Towel Elephant

I checked into my hotel at BKK and was immediately greeted by this cute little elephant. Originally I thought it was a soft toy but upon closer look, it is actually and elephant made from folded towels.

Ingenious!

- Voxeros

Thai Red Army March

It's great to be a Road Warrior again. Perhaps this is my calling after all. Cursed to never be able to settle in any single location for long.

Destined to be a nomad, perhaps?

So anyway, I am writing this in Bangkok and smack in the middle of the Thai Red Army March in protest against the incumbent government.

Quite a bit of drama as litres of human blood with spilled and splashed to curse the present government, grenades tossed and cache of weapons discovered and confiscated.

In all, it was a peaceful event and I am glad that both sides exercised great restrain to erupt this event into one of violence.

The folks were pleasantly friendly then when we got caught in the jam of the Red March, one of the Red supporters actually politely asked us to turn our car around as they apologise that we wouldn't be able to get onto the street that we want as the procession will take quite a bit of time.

Tourist were all over the streets whipping out their camera, mobile phones and snapping away in total safety. The Red folks even waved back at us when we took their pictures.

Gotta love them Thai folks. Such sincere graciousness and friendliness that we should take a leaf and learn from them.

It's great to be a Road Warrior again.

- Voxeros

The Asoks - A Brief Introduction

I am starting to settle down at the company. It's good to catch up with the folks back here after so long. Everything is rather familiar except several new faces here and there.

Among the news faces, we have a few green horns who came over from across the Straits. These are really noobs who are fresh out of school with no real working experience.
 
I call them the Asoks. Named after Dilbert's little Indian intern. There are not really interns but given that they are all blur fucks and possibly the lowest life form in the corporate ladder (for now), Asok seems to be a pretty apt name for them.

Asok #1

Leader of the pack. 9 months into the job already when I arrived. So relative to the rest of the new arrivals (same time as I), he is not so blur fuck. He handles more responsibilities and also overall "welfare officer" of the Asok Brigade.

He does come up to me for advice from time to time and is a very smart chap judging from the fact that he gets the point where I only need to say once. This one has great potential in time to come. I have high aspiration for him. Possibly the fastest climber among the lot and it will be a big gap between the rest of the Asoks and himself considering he has the advantage of a 9-month head start.

Asok #2

Asok #2  left us yesterday. Technically, he went AWOL and as such is a career-ending move. He reminds me of The Apprentice where folks comes from all walks of life to climb the ladder. This one dropped out when the going gets too tough. Age-wise, he is the oldest. The opportunity here was perhaps his second chance in life after having screwed up most part of his earlier life. I heard he was a cab driver prior to coming over.

So the story was that he has this girlfriend who is still in school back home. Their relationship was highly suspect when he broke down and cried at the dinner table (not to mention got himself pissed drunk) when he couldn't reach her via phone, msn, skype or whatever in the last few days. He was freaking out thinking that he has been dumped.

Well, so much for trust and foundation.

As it turned out, the girlfriend got into a traffic accident where she fell off her scooter and possibly sandpapered herself all over the tarmac. Normally that would be compassionate ground for immediate approval of leave for him to return. I am guessing that this girl was someone that many of them know back home (perhaps she was an intern in the Ta1wan office) and their relationship was frown upon from the start by everyone since everybody felt she is still too young and should focus on her school. Everyone was even more unimpressed where there was an earlier episode that she wanted to quit school and take up a clerical job here somewhere.

The drama continues to unfold as Alpha Male rejected the leave application. Well, not for immediate departure anyway. Perhaps Alpha Male's intention was to arrange for him to return home over the weekend so as to allow him more days back home while at the same time test Asok #2 mental toughness under such unfavourable environment.

Asok #2 failed there. When Alpha Male was ready to talk and arrange travel plans for him the next day, Asok #2 was already on the ferry sailing out to the Hong Kong airport.

Asok #2 burnt his bridge that morning.

Asok #3

This my personal Asok. As I am heading the International Marketing division as well as IT department, Asok #3 was assigned to me on account of the fact that he graduated with a Computer Science degree and had spent 7 months in Brisbane.

So Alpha Male's assumption is that he is 1) savvy in computers and 2) powderful in English.
Sadly that wasn't the case.

I spent the last few days teaching him some of the intermediate functions of wait for it...... Excel and Powerpoint. So I thought perhaps it is not fair to assume everyone is familiar with Microsoft Office and I thought perhaps his area of expertise is in programming. Sadly that wasn't the case either. So the rest of the time, I was grilling him trying to find out what he knows that I can make use of immediately.

Let's just say that all I managed to dig up was a very keen learning attitude and unfortunately that's about it.

Fortunately, that's something that I can work with.

So the conclusion is that I probably can't use him in IT and groom him to be CIO one day but perhaps International Marketing would be a better place for him to start climbing.

I will be starting him at the ground with the order data entry girls today and then next week, I will station him in the warehouse for the entire week come Monday and let the warehouse manager take over while I fly to Bangkok. I hopes he like sleeping on bunk beds in the warehouse.

Asok #4

The only girl among the bunch and a brave one if I may add. It's really a rough place here and a "man's world" if you get my drift. I admire her courage to go against convention and step out of her comfort zone. So far, I see her working doubly harder than the rest of the Asoks which I am duly impressed. She is one of the 3 Asoks stationed at the retail outlets for this week (we may extend it to a month) as a front-line staff.

She got the luck of the draw to be stationed near where we stay and as such, she gets to come home every night albeit around 11pm. The other two were assigned further out of town and had to make do with $20 a night hotels.
Still, I see her in the apartment after work to discuss her daily report to Asok #1 whom she reports to, though she is not required to. This girl has quite a bit of drive to excel. I think she will go far as well.

Only problem is that being the typical Ta!wanese girl, she is damn bladdy teh.... that one, I ish cannot take it.

Asok #5 & #6

Not much contact with them as they are stationed out of town but from what I have heard, the one who used to be a Starbucks barista kena food poisoning liao.

Welcome to QQLand, guys. Welcome.

Image Credits: http://bp0.blogger.com/

- Voxeros

1. Hamie left...

Thursday, 11 March 2010 11:32 am

may i guess tat you enjoy the time most with #4. hehehehe......

2. JF left...

Thursday, 11 March 2010 12:08 pm

i wanna book Asok No4

3. JayWalk left...

Thursday, 11 March 2010 1:41 pm :: 

Hamie: Word of the wise: Never eat and shit in the same place.

JF: Go away! Shoo! Shoo!

4. Ruok left...

Friday, 12 March 2010 12:50 am

I can't stand the tehness too.

5. JayWalk left...

Friday, 12 March 2010 8:58 am :: 

ruok: Apparently they are all like that. I think there is something in their water. Haha.

$1. How About It?

• The Temasek Review (03 Mar 2010) - Dr Chee Soon Juan Challenges Lee Kuan Yew To Write Off His Debts

This has been going on for many years already. Dr Chee was sued by the Lees and was awarded a shitload of damages against him. As a result, Dr Chee had to declare bankruptcy, which effectively disqualify him from standing for future elections until he is discharge.

Some may say that this is the ruling party' tactic to prevent Dr Chee from running against them but I was thinking that surely the court would not have ruled in favour of the Lees had the allegations of defamation been disproved?

The court's decision to award damages of such magnitude may raise an eyebrow or two but the bottomline is that Dr Chee made some remarks that were found to be untrue and hence taken to task for it. No?

So here's what I think. How about a merely token gesture of $1 and all legal fees?

That way, the Lees will get what they wanted and that is the various allegations made by Dr Chee were untrue while on the flip side, Dr Chee will not be forced into bankruptcy and subsequently able to stand for election to challenge the polls fair and square.

It is not as if Dr Chee is a sure winner just because he stands for election. I mean if the ruling party thinks that they have done well and have the hearts of the people, what are they afraid of? I do not believe a mere Dr Chee can inflict so much fear into the ruling party. Quite unthinkable. Really.

I say do everything above board and challenge Dr Chee man to man. That way, when the ruling party wins, they would have won it fair and square and nobody can say otherwise.

So how about it? $1 and we close the case. Given that the ministers are soooooooo highly paid, I am sure they don't want the money and especially money under such circumstances.

- Voxeros

Jelly Lost At 7-11

Awww.... did someone lose a Jelly? We found one at 7-11.

Image Credit: TehC

- Voxeros

QQLand Revisited

For those wondering where I have disappeared to, I headed back to QQLand.

After a good couple of months of rest, it was decided that I should head back there where my skill sets and experience are actually worth some decent moolah. It great to be back to a place where people appreciates what I have to contribute.

Gone are the days of working for idiot boss and moron colleagues (sans a few good ones).
Welcome to the major league.

I did try to find something back in Singapore in order to stay close to family and friends but alas doors weren't open or the offer just doesn't make cents at all. Worst is the asshole company that didn't even have the balls to tell me no. Cowards.

So anyway, I have been here a few days already. Accommodation is settled.

Had to arm twist the folks there into getting me a QQLand mobile sim card as well as wireless network on a borrowed laptop.

I am working from a coffee table seated on a sofa.

I don't have an office yet as I am slated to be based in another city which will happen sometime later half of this year. I guess my table and chair will show up when we move office in 2 weeks' time.

I need a neck massage from all that awkward sitting posture.

I am happy albeit missing everybody back home.

- Voxeros