iQuest Studios

I have learnt something today.

It’s never about the blunders you make, but how you deal with them.

Making mistakes is part and parcel of being human. But what really makes one stand out from the rest is how he deal with it and make himself seem like a better person. People tend to forget your mistakes as time go by, but how you deal with the mistake will leave a lasting impression of you on other people. Case in point: Steve Jobs during his presentations. The way he deals with mistakes such as the presentation remote not working, trouble with flickr is simply amazing, and the impression that people have of the presentation is not that “oh, they didn’t bother to test out the technical stuff thoroughly.” but rather “Steve Jobs is an excellent speaker that blows my mind away”.

Till next time,
cheers

Tags: lesson

Just today, I went to Coffee Bean to have a sip of coffee and some light tea. Most unfortunately, all the seats were taken up. But what disses me off the most was this group of idiotic office workers, who apparently just finished work and are just sitting around the coffee table chatting, WITHOUT EVEN A SINGLE CUP OF COFFEE ON THEIR TABLE. And then they seem to be blind towards those with coffee and/or cakes trying to look for a seat. In the end I had to share a table with someone else, which was really awkward when her friend came and started chatting. Those assholes should just shove their ass off the seats reserved for patrons of Coffee Bean! I mean, it may be alright to take up the seats when there are other empty seats around, but when all the empty seats are taken up, they should have the consideration to move away. The most retarded thing was that, one of them even went to take 4 cups of plain water and just continued taking up space. I REALLY REALLY HATE THIS KIND OF PEOPLE.

There was another asshole at Coffee Bean, who was bitching about having too much whipped cream on his coffee. Apparently he told the cashier girl to have less whipped cream on his coffee, but the girl forgot to pass the message on. So fine, he got the right to complain about that. But when the Coffee Bean Staff offered to scrape off some of the cream for him, he just bitched really loudly about how the “harm is already done”. I mean, it’s not like the cream will dissolve in the ice blended coffee so quickly, so just let the staff scrape off the cream and there would be no difference. Instead he must insist on faulting the Coffee Bean staff. I feel kind of sorry for the staff. No wonder it’s hard to get good service in Singapore, when there are people out there to pick at and complain about every single mistake you make. PLEASE PEOPLE, THE SERVICE PEOPLE ARE NOT YOUR SLAVES.

Those few assholes just ruined a perfectly enjoyable coffee experience for me.

On a completely different issue, I am now obsessed with wearing blazer with jeans. Overdressing is so fun!

By the way, this song is really catchy - Fack By Eminem.(Explicit Content - Please be advised.)

Till next time,
cheers

P.S I don’t like people quoting what I write on my blog in real life.

Tags: coffee, coffee bean, poor customer, seat hoggers

I went down to the Apple Support Centre today to collect my new battery for my MacBook Pro. I must say I am rather pleased with the job they have done on my laptop. The sunken in Power button was fixed, and the bottom case with some bulging part above the lid button was also fixed. Even my very dirty screen was wiped for me. All this for the excellent price of $0, even though my warranty’s expired, all thanks to the exception code given to me by the very friendly Apple Staff on the support hotline.

But I couldn’t help thinking: what if I don’t have the exception code? Well, from the price list displayed at the Support Centre: it would cost me S$100 just to send the machine in for diagnosis, and extra costs for my replacement parts (the battery costs about S$235, and I am told that to fix my sunken in Power button, it would cost another S$100 to S$200) and of course transportation fees for the parts to come in from the US. So of course the guy recommended me Applecare, which extends the warranty of the product to 3 years from the date of purchase. Of course I politely declined his offer, given that it costs S$629. (Can you believe it, Applecare for the Macbook Pro is more expensive than any other Mac line - even more expensive than Applecare for iMac or the Mac Pro!)

Now, as we all know, Apple has poor quality control, and the problems and defects for it’s various products are numerous, especially issues of swollen batteries and excessive thermal grease. A look at the MacBook Pro’s wiki page on the Apple Defects Site and one could probably guess why lots of people chose to buy Applecare. Is it possible that Apple is so evil so as to deliberately lower their quality control, in hope of increasing sales of their wildly expensive Applecare plan? (The Applecare plan for the Macbook Pro is 20% of the price of the base model). I mean it is possible right? It would seem like a great chance to profit. (I have never seen exactly what’s in the Applecare box, but I can’t believe people actually pay S$600+ for a paper box)

But of course, to quote my friend: “Big brain, evil heart; everything’s possible.”. Seeing that I am such a person too (ok, maybe that was a tad egoistic), can I really fault Apple?

Till next time,
cheers

Tags: Apple, Applecare, defects, evil, macbook pro

Hmm, long time since I have blogged.

Firstly, sorry for not providing any updates to ALS or ICF for so long. So sorry that there has been hardly any progress on any of the 2 scripts in the past erm.. 5 months. And I am sorry to announce that there isn’t any scripts updates. BUT..but I am going to restart work on the scripts from today. Just give me a while to get used to the code and continue from where I left off. I am pretty out of touch with coding.

Secondly, thanks for your continuous support for this blog despite the fact that I post on a very irregular basis. The blog is nearing 35K - that is 35,000 unique visitors, which, I must say is quite an achievement. The number of downloads for all the 3 scripts that I have written totals to about 7000. I shall now resolve to blog more often from now, despite my hectic JC college.

Thirdly, the weather was pretty bad for the past week, (which was actually my school holiday) and I did not have the chance to train much at all. In fact, as I am typing this, it is raining outside AGAIN. Then, the bad weather made me catch a flu, and I even got a fever. HOWEVER, I got an aero helmet. I got it from another triathlete for S$200, which is quite cheap (relative to original price of an aero helmet). But actually coming to think of it, it may not be exactly that worth it. After all, I don’t think I will wear it often during cycling training, maybe except when I am training in aero position. But never mind, I shall not regret my purchase.

But today, I shall not be blogging about my training, which sadly has been the main focus of the past x number of posts. I know you guys are bored of reading my duathlon training progress reports.

No, today, I shall be commenting on how authoritative our school can get. Apparently, they are now monitoring our Internet activities as well. A few weeks back, my friend told me that our school’s Discipline Master paid a visit to their class blog, and found pictures of “flagpoling” - which is basically the act of ramming a guy with his legs spread open into a flagpole. Apparently he forced them to take down the pictures, and had a chat with the class representative (which is that friend). I was quite shocked when I heard about it, but I can understand the school’s actions - after all, such pictures may affect our school reputation.

But it doesn’t stop there. Just a few days ago, another friend told me that his blog is under surveillance by the school. Reason? A few sharp (and not exactly stinging - but that’s my opinion) remarks about another blogger from our school. Well, apparently the other guy can’t stand a little online flaming, and ran complaining to a teacher. And BLAM, now the school is reading every word that my friend wrote on his blog. Oh, and my friend had to make a public apology. Ouch. What happened to freedom of speech.

Seriously, to tell the truth, knowing that school is waiting to jump on a single word on your blog out of line with the school policy SUCKS BIG TIME. I am going to ensure that the school never finds my blog. Haha, kinda hard when I listed my blog URL on the school portal. But it’s time to take that down.

Anyway, I realised that I got lots of commitment this year. Hope that I can manage. Time to sign off =)

Till next time,
cheers

Tags: aero helmet, authoritarian, School

Well, firstly, I am sorry for not posting in 6 days. (ok, I am not really that sorry, but..) Life’s being a pain for me in the past few days. Firstly, I am a little sick. I am not exactly sure what kind of sickness, but it seems to be a mix of cold, headaches, sore eyes, muscle aches and stomachaches. And I am sure it is not a fever. (though the muscle aches are probably caused by cycling).

Then, there was this thing about the Outstanding Student Award Namelist. Apparently, despite my appeal and all, I am unable to recieve the award. That affected me deeply. For the past year, I have worked so hard, getting a high distinction in project work, ensuring I have got enough community service hours, making sure that my conduct grade is nothing less than excellent, spending extra effort to bring my LEAPS grade up, only to miss the award at the last final moment. Everything was in place, except my Mean Subject Grade, where I missed the requirement by just 1 grade. And that was also because my english and chinese results was 2/3 points below the requirement. Yeah, lots of people didn’t get the award as well, but I have worked so god damn hard throughout the year only to miss the award by two or three miserable marks in my exms. Moreover, if not for the fact that my form teacher is now in Beijing, I am sure that I can get him to appeal for me, which I am sure would yield results. So really, it had a very negative impact on me.

Next was a meeting with my friend (ok, maybe “friend” isn’t exactly an accurate description now). You see, we had a little falling out a few months back and that little incident somehow evolved into a huge misunderstanding. (I am certain it is a misunderstanding, since I happened to have heard his point of view from another friend, and somehow it was a largely distorted truth. (in fact, I doubt it can be considered as the truth anymore) I thought pretty much it was time to make up, since he was one of my best friend (if not the very best) before the little incident. OK, it’s true, maybe I am partly at fault due to my huge ego and stuff, but I am sure he is not entirely free of the responsibility either. After all, it takes 2 hands to clap. But anyway, I arranged to meet up with him, to understand his view, and to apologise (and of course to seek an apology from him as well). We agreed to meet at 1600, at a shopping centre near his place. However, by 1630, there was no sign of him, no SMS, no calls explaining why he is late by half an hour even though we chose to meet at a location near his house. Finally, at 1645, I recieved a SMS from another friend to tell me that he is just leaving his place, with no explaination whatever. I was like “WTF..” but decided that since I initiated the meet up, might as well get through with it. So, I went in to have a coffee. However, another 45 minutes passed without any sign of him, and he ignored all my calls. Finally, I had enough, and I decided to leave, after one and half hours of waiting. Just as I was about to leave, he told me that he’s still waiting for someone else to come and meet me together. So I got really pissed off and I just decided to forget the meeting.

Don’t be mistaken, I am not against the idea of having another person to witness any discussion, argument or apology we have to make. It’s just that he simply can’t be bothered to even keep me updated, until maybe the very last second, when you are really going to lose it. Then when I told him I had enough (sprinkled with one or two vulgarities - I couldn’t help it), he told me that he has been waiting for 3 whole months for this meet up and I can’t even wait 1.5 hours. I don’t want to say this, but the truth is that the 3 months of waiting has been much more painful for me than him. And there was a very good reason for me to wait until 3 months later: we have gotten too close, so close that we have begun to see very clearly each other’s flaws and dislike each other. That’s why a tiny incident broke off our long standing friendship. 3 months of pain and regret, of wanting of patch up, and he can’t even be bothered to arrive on time for the meeting or explain why he’s late. That’s why right now I have very conflicting thoughts, part of me wants to attempt to make up again, another part of me doubt that we would ever be able to resume our normal friendship. So I am really confused right now.

Indeed life’s a pain, I don’t see the point of all hype about prolonging life beyond a hundred years.

Till next time,

cheers