Sakura at Clementi Woods

This is a nice place to dine in. As the venue implies, the restaurant is in the midst of Clementi woods and there’s a nice greenery view in the daytime. But if u come at night, you will probably see more courting couples than greenery at night.








This is a pretty big restaurant with 2 levels, both levels have different types of food. A word of caution – dun go during lunch time. It was extremely packed. We were lucky to be dining at the upper level (only 2 -3 tables filled), while the lower level was filled. Even then, the queue for food, the jostling, going up and down the stairs.. and very long wait for our food from live cooking stations to come, made the dining experience less than pleasant. Since lunch is only from 12 – 230, you have less time to eat and especially so, when half an hour is gone, just waiting for your herbal soup / pan fried meats / satay to arrive. The toilet condition was the equivalent of C- by food hygiene standards too.. and beware of the slippery floor around the stairs.

Food wise, the standard, variety and quality is about the same as those that I have tried in other Sakura outlets. This outlet seems slightly better because there are more live cooking stations, than the ones I have been to (actually only Tampines Safra and Parkway Parade). What is available in the cook-upon-order items:
Dim Sum – few varieties only. not really cook-upon-order, just there is someone manning this station. I tried one item, not bad. But my colleague’s dim sum wasn’t fully cooked.
Grilled station – I saw satay, octopus and pregnant fish. Alas, after the long wait, u get only 2 sticks of satay / octopus / pregnant fish per portion.
Vegetable stir fries – din try. We could pick from green leafy veg, abalone mushroom and even bamboo clam to do the stir fry.
Pasta station – the cooked pasta was very hard.
Pan fry station – beef, lamb, chicken, dory and salmon. Beef and lamb were good. Salmon was too overcooked.
Herbal soup station – choose from herbal live prawns soup or herbal black chicken soup in paper pot.

Sentosa Flowers 2007

This CNY, as usual, I was so bored and had so much free time that I went to squeeze with the thronging crowds at Sentosa. This entry is all about flowers and colours as I specifically looked out for colourful and nice flowers. Unfortunately, it din really meet my expectations, I was hoping to see flowers that are in big and full blooms, eg: tulips and roses. Silly me, these flowers cant grow in our weather or maybe its not their blooming time yet.













Spot the 3 animals in these 2 pics













View from above




Lavendar flowers












Alice in Wonderland characters

My favourite bank screwed up

Not sure what's wrong with me, been finding fault with alot of service staff I come into contact with recently. Of cos, there were also many incidents of good service. For those, I would end up buying more things but I would not remember their good service. Like I mention before, good service is something we expect, and bad service is something we dun forget.

I do most of my banking transactions with OCBC and save most of my money there as well. As we are buying a place, we are also getting a housing loan from OCBC. Because the housing transaction was delayed time and again, we deactivated the loan, only to reinstate it recently in the view that the housing transaction might go through this time. The housing loan officer wanted us to fax over our CPF statements (3 month history). Why so? Our loans have already been approved earlier, now we are just asking it to be reactivated.

Some reason was given, which we accepted. Hubby asked me to do a 'print screen' capture of my CPF statement and email it over to the loan officer. I did so, only to have her reply via email that the bank's email programme doesnt allow her to view the file. (Its only a jpg file). Bo pian, I printed the 'print screen' version of my CPF statement and faxed over. This time, she responded 'Please kindly print out the page using the print icon so that the URL address is reflected at the bottom of the page.' HMMMph.... I login to CPF again, and printed out the CPF statement and faxed it over again.

One week later, H got a call from the loan officer. She wanted us to fax over our 6 months CPF history. WTF! What's their problem? If u think that two of us cannot pay back that meagre housing loan we took , just reject la. Need to make us go thru this trouble?! The loan officer did apologise and gave some crap excuse..

Still, I couldnt resist sending her a barb email :

Xxx, obviously u din get my hint that I hope it would be the last time u bother me with the CPF statement. For goodness sake, why do we have to do such a simple thing 4 times?! Explanations aside, if ur admin is not assured that we can be trusted to repay the housing loan, by all means, please reject us. We would be very happy to bring our business to elsewhere.
NB: I have faxed over the CPF printout from Jun 06 - Feb 07.

She responded :

Hi ________,
I apologize for the inconvenience caused, however due to our standard operating procedures, the correct income documents have to be submitted in order for disbursement of the loan.
Reason for the haste in furnishing the documents is due to the disbursement of loan on the 14th Feb 2007, as no delay is desired, i would want the loan to be disbursed on time.
My credit department is doing their job to ensure that the neccessary documents are in. As a front line staff, it is my job to get the documents from customers. Hope you understand.

Kindly note that the cpf statements which you've faxed over is the "Transaction history", not "Contribution history". I would have to trouble you to fax over the right documents again.
Your loan was signed in August 2006. CPF Contribution history submitted then was up to Jul 2006.

Due to the delay in dusbursement from the purchase of your property, therefore the need in getting the past 6 months income documents.

You're still a valued customer to our bank, your kind understanding is appreciated. I would be glad to pick up the documents from you personally if it is too much of a trouble to fax or email. Let me know the time and place to collect the Jul'06 to Feb'07 Contribution History printouts.
Thank you.

Hmm.. ok, that was a pretty well written letter. But then again, so what if i faxed over transaction history? Transaction history includes all contributions made. Which means, I am giving u more than u ask for, cant u pple be more flexible?!

Response:
Name of employer has to be shown and only the contribution history has records.

Conclusion: Never argue with the experts, u wont win. She's right, the transaction history does not show who made the contribution to my CPF account, so only the contribution history will do. I did not want to bother to argue why she all along did not tell me specifically must be 'contribution history' statement.. sian already.