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.

Another Bad Service Experience

In Singapore, good service is taken for granted, because we are expected to have good service. Bad service is remembered and condemned. But I think , at the rate our service level is deterioriating, its better to reverse my mentality - take bad service for granted and remember good service. Otherwise, my life will be very miserable because every other day I will be bearing grudges against the lousy service staff.

Or maybe the service level isnt bad, but its just me that service staff have something against, which is why I keep getting crap service.. what is it about the way I ask "Excuse me, can I have this in size _ please ?" that makes them forget I'm a customer and to behave professionally to me?

The civil service is not the only one with poor service, private sector is guilty of it too. This time , the bad service occurred at one of Singapore's oldest and most famous retail store in Orchard road . How many retail stores come to your mind? I can only think of 2 - other than the one I am going to talk about, the other one is Robinsons. I think Robinsons is fine, their service has always been friendly and good.

So anyway, the incident went like this. I was at their shoe department and asking the sales assistant to get shoes in my size. I did so at different intervals, and asking different staff. On my last try (3rd time), i approached a different sales assistant, she took the shoes from me, shouted across to another sales assistant 2metres away standing near the cashier: "Hey XXX, this shoe, size 7!"
Where did she go wrong?

1) A not too happy expression at receiving my request, and no acknowledgment to me at all

2) Shouting to her colleague in a 'commanding' tone. It made me seemed like I asked the wrong person because though she is standing there, the shoes I took is the responsibility of the other girl, hence she 'buay song' to help that girl do her work. (this is my conjecture). This is similar to the concept of restaurants where each waitress is given specific tables to serve, so if the diners not at your serving tables request you to do something because you pass by, you do not serve the diner, but shout across to the specific waitress the request of her diner. Also, is this a kopitiam? Only in coffeeshops do you hear shouting "kopi C, Teh C, Milo Peng!"

3) Even if their duties had been carved out this way (each person in charge of different shoes), even if she din want to help even though she is standing there, or maybe she is the manager (I doubt it, from the attire), she could have walked over and tell the person to get the shoes. If she had been in a hurry (I doubt it too, because she was standing still, not running off when I approached her), she could have acknowledged my request "Please hold on, I get my colleague to serve you"

I wonder if the day will come, where I will a) straightaway tell the sales assistant "Forget it. I dun want this already!" and throw everything down in front of them or b) What's this?!! U call ur manager here, I want to speak to your manager right now!!"

Maybe even such measures will not help because the store's website indicates that they welcome queries on their products and services, but is silent on the 'feedback' part.

Update (Feb 07): Couldnt resist emailing them my 'feedback'.. took them almost 5 days to respond. Still, I am satisfied. This is a model letter for responding to complaining customers.

Dear Ms ____
I refer to your e-mail. I am concerned to learn of the unpleasant experience you had when you were at our store. Please accept my sincere apologies for the inconvenience caused by the poor service of our staff.

I agree with you that the staff should have been more polite towards you. The staff concerned has been counselled and she has been reminded to be more courteous to all our customers. Please be assured that we will be monitoring her performance. I would like to assure you that customer satisfaction is of paramount importance to us at ___ and we will do our utmost to prevent a similar recurrence.

We appreciate the time taken to feedback to us as we believe that it is through feedback from customers that we are able to monitor and further improve our service standards.

We sincerely hope that this incident will not deter you from shopping at ___and we look forward to the pleasure of serving you when you next visit our store.


Just one small complaint: It would have been even better if they had included a voucher for me to shop there and as a gesture of appreciation.

A lesson in Customer Service

Companies usu have 'star' awards to reward and recognise staff who have given good customer service, whether to internal or external customers. I only wish they dare to be radical enough to give 'razzie' award to those who give bad customer service , and that all contributors who name the nominees for razzie award will be anonymous. This would definitely pressure everyone to behave themselves!

Here's some from my company.
(All examples are phone calls)

Me: Hi, may I know who's that on the line?
her: this is LL here.
Me: Hi LL, I misplace my staff card, would like to know..
*interrupted*
her: Staff card is SH, u call SH

nb: LL and SH are sharing the same line
Me: So can I speak to SH then? Is she in?
her: SH only come in in the afternoon, everyday. You call her in the afternoon.
Me: ok thanks bye.

I'm not sure if u can detect the lack of customer service here. For me, her tone was 'i dun wish to help' and slightly curt. If I were her, I would have
1) not interrupted the caller, and try to see if I can answer the caller's queries. Since we are all in the same dept, and I am not new to the organisation, I should have at least some basic knowledge even if this is not my scope of work.

2) if I really have no answer to the question, I would have said "I'm sorry, I'm not too sure abt this. The person in charge is ___, but she wont be in until afternoon, can I get her to call you back?

Its whether u want to help or not.. anyway, she's a clerk.. and seems like most of the clerks in my company talk like this... not helpful, and in such brief english that u wonder is it becos they cant speak english properly, so they talk like that?

Here's a good one to illustrate (their mouth got gold, cannot open too long, lest the gold fall out)
Me: Hi, can i speak to XX please?
Clerk: XX not in.
(Cant u say "I'm sorry, XX is not around / on MC / on course / on leave , would you like to leave a message?")
Me: Ok thanks, bye.


Incident no 3:
Me: Hi, may i have the direct line of Mr XX in your dept?
Him: Where are you calling from huh?
Me: I'm calling from HQ
Him: The number is _ _ _ _. How come you call me huh? I'm not tel directory you know.
Me: The staff directory does not list such phone numbers, so I have to call your dept directly to get the number. May I have the number please?
Him: The number again, is
*I interrupted*
Me: No, no, u haven given me the number, u only gave me the first 4 digits. (He pissed me off with the 'again')
Him: If you know the system, all the telephone nos at my dept start with the same 4 digits:
6_ _ _
Me: Ok thank you . Bye

Gosh, this clerk was just plain rude... I went to complain to his manager who was totally understanding 'Yes, that's very unprofessional of him, I will have a word with him'.
Actually on hindsight, I think that dept was very busy that day, they had some ISO audit, so maybe he was involved. But still, there's no excuse for bad customer service.

House Woes

My ROM went smoothly while wedding banquet has been compromised, and there is no pressure to have a banquet. However, my completion appointment for the resale flat that we are buying has been hanging there since Nov 06. The seller had financial difficulties and has been unable to cough up $$ to pay for the conservancy owe to HDB, nor the late penalty charges to us for delay of completion appt. I din mind waiting until the seller can come up with the money, hence the completion appt was fixed a few times, but the seller always couldnt pay and the whole thing just fell through. Worse, recently I discovered that CPF has started to deduct $ from my account for repayment of house loan + housing protection insurance.. huh? I am not even the legal owner yet! Is there no communication between CPF and HDB? Why is it that I do not possess the flat, and the housing loan has not been effected, but we are already paying the loan and insurance? Talk about world class government service and SQA organisations... this is their real standard!

The most sought after junkie

Kate Moss's reputation as a cocaine user is well-known. Yet this has not dented her modelling opportunities. I came across a Sep 06 edition of Her World magazine and was flipping through it. The first few pages are always advertisements for branded luxury goods. Coincidentally, Kate Moss was the 'in' gal for that season. Three big brands used her as their ad model. I am surprised competing brands would use the same model, or are they all different girls who looked alike? Judge for yourself.



Dior



Louis Vuitton



Burberry

The unending polyclinic saga

NHG Polyclinic has screwed up big time as I mentioned in the previous post. Sadly, i used to have a better impression of Singhealth polyclinic until now. Yesterday I receive a letter from Singhealth polyclinic - it was a bill for $8 consultation on my last visit to the Geylang Polyclinic in Nov 06. I was not prescribe any medication then. I knew I had definitely paid because 1) I had an MC on that visit. You must have paid so that your MC will be stamped and considered valid 2) I need the receipt to claim medical reimbursement . Therefore, it was an insult to be billed again. I called the number given in the bill to dispute the billing. The lady on the line had the cheek to ask me if I have the receipt. If I had been a housewife who is unable to claim for medical reimbursement, would I have kept the receipt? Though fortunately I do have the receipt, not everyone would have kept something for so long. By the time they got home, the receipt would have been chucked into the bin. As if to pacify me, the lady gave the lame excuse that there must have been some double entry , hence double billing, and if it's true that I had paid, she would get her supervisor to write off the bill. Hello? Write off? U write off when people default payment. In this case, I did not default payment! Using the word 'write off' is like charity to me, 'oh since u cant pay, we'll write off', or an insult 'oh since u dun wish to pay and we cant do much abt it, we'll write off'. And if I did not keep the receipt? 'Oh since you cant prove, we'll still take your word and write off'.

The polyclinic also did not provide a convenient way for people to make payment as no self-addressed envelope was provided. Hey u asking me for money, u still expect me to pay for my own envelope and stamp? Or you expect me to take leave / time off to make payment since your clinic does not open at night, there is no way I can make it during the polyclinic opening hours. Dun tell me such non-payment cases are rare, hence there is no need to purposely have a system of self-addressed envelope etc... then if so, why din you bother to check properly the accounts before sending me the bill? If someone had bothered to check, the double entry would have been obvious because of the same date and proximity in timing. Billing people is such a sensitive thing, in this scenario, it is an accusation that the other party have not paid up when one should have done so by the time one leaves the polyclinic.

Update 13 Feb 07: This is exasperating! One month later, the same bill is generated and sent to me! I have already faxed my receipt to them and yet this still happened. Totally unacceptable. I called Singhealth head office "May I have the fax number of your Customer Service Manager?"
The person responded "What isit regarding?" I said "What does your Customer Service Manager handle?" Bo pian, she said "You attention the matter to Corporate Section, officer in charge"... huh? No CSM? Really? Or are you trying to hide something?

Update 22 Feb 07: Having gotten the fax number to the corporate person, I faxed them a letter of complaint:
Please see attached documents. One month ago (9 Jan), I receive an invoice for $8 for consultation charges of my visit to Geylang Polyclinic on 23 Nov 06. I called Geylang Polyclinic to tell them I paid the $8 on the day of the visit. The person-in-charge asked me to fax my receipt to her, which I did so promptly. However, it seems that nothing has been done because I still received the same bill, only this time, the bill indicates that the amount has been outstanding for 61 – 90 days. Why has the issue not been resolved till now? The person-in-charge mentioned it is a duplicate bill, one shouldn’t be repeating mistakes. Please ensure this does not happen again.

Here's the reply letter from them:
Dear Mdm,
I refer to your fax dated ...
Kindly ignore the invoices that were previously sent to you as we have indeed received payment from you.
Sorry for any inconvenience caused and do feel free to contact me at DID.... for any further queries.
Thank You

What's wrong with this response you may say? Well, it doesnt address the core issue! My concern is, STOP SENDING ME THE INVOICES! But here, no mention of "we have rectified our system ....we would make sure such incidence do not happen again "... instead, I am just told to ignore previous invoices. So what now? Wait for more invoices to come in, complain somemore? Or assume that they would not repeat their mistake without any assurance from them?

Presenting yourself

Had the privilege to attend Jill Lowe’s presentation and dressing course at the start of the year. Was surprised to see a petite chinese lady instead of a tall angmoh lady. Jill is a Singaporean Chinese, but becos her surname in dialect is spelt as “Lowe”, it becomes pretty classed - Jill Lowe.

I found her very inspiring and motivating, because she is pretty sincere in imparting her knowledge and genuinely wants us to do better. Some pearls of wisdom from Jill:

- dun carry big handbags. Small bags are more classed.
- hang your handbag on your elbow at a distance from your body. The nearer the bag is to you, the older u become.
- every blusher applied 1cm below the lowest point of the nose, ages you by 5 years
- jeans / denim are for the farmers in the past. The fact that it’s a fashion item now doesn’t increase its ‘class’. So wear it sparingly
- brown eyeshadow is ‘class’, blue eyeshadow is ‘cheap’
-flat hair gives people the impression you are a poor man’s wife.. no wonder the indonesian ibus always have beehive hair.
-dun bend your knees when you are standing. makes you look cheap.

Alot of the things she said, contradicts with what I have been trying to do in my quest to improve my appearance. Eg: I should have short layered hair (the recommended styles were very ‘auntie’). But a lot of people have commented I look nicer with long hair. Some of the recommendations were in conflict with my personal tastes. Eg: I like pink lipsticks. But I am supposed to use orange-brown lipsticks to match my skintone. Yikes, so garish.

So how am I supposed to reconcile these? It’s easy (in theory). Jill is teaching me to dress and present myself such that bosses will look at me and think I am deserving of the promotion or at least think that I am a capable person. Previously I have been learning to doll up to look like a pretty girl so as to attract guys. But now, I want to attract bosses to my capability, not my looks. So, out with the long hair, and the pinks.

Changing of the Guard?

Saw this at Somerset on Sunday.. is Singapore having a changing of the guard ceremony like Buckingham Palace? A pretty small scale one though. Only 3 contingents












This is an interesting ad at the busstop outside Plaza Singapura. The product is placed in the aquarium at the busstop. Suppose to guess the name of the fish and sms it to some number to stand to win a prize..
Love the Pucca biscuit. It is much better than Meiji Panda biscuits.

Crap Service and Response!

Whenever I come across extremely bad service, I never fail to complain to the company via their website. Usually I get a satisfactory response. But this sure was one eye opener.
The story (or rather, the complaint) goes:

On 22 Nov I was feeling unwell in the morning, and I left office to see doc at Clementi Polyclinic. It was 1130am by the time I left office, and I took the precaution of checking the website to see what time your polyclinic closes for lunch (stated as 1pm on the website). I reached Clementi Polyclinic at 1215pm only to be told, due to large number of patients, the registration had closed so that doctors can go off for lunch at 1pm sharp and we can only see doctor at 2pm. This is unacceptable! There was no pre-notice abt cut-off for registration time. And who was to know when it would be peak ? It was mid-week, i understand usually its monday that is peak period. The registration staff argued that the website timing is 'operating hour', ok, but there was no information on registration hours. What if some days , there happen to be alot patients in the morning, does that mean the polyclinic will impose a cut-off registration time at 11am? This adhoc cut off time is not fair to patients. I had to take transport to rush to the polyclinic, only to be told that i have to wait til 2pm, and my house is not nearby, so I either loiter around in discomfort or pay more for private GP. Please look into better practice so that patients will not be unfairly inconvenienced!

Here's the ultimate response you can get from a Department in charge of Quality:

Dear Ms XXX,

Thank you for your feedback. We would appreciate if you could provide us with your particulars (Name and NRIC No) for the clinic to look into the matter and reply to you.

Best regards,
YYY
Quality Management Office

Huh? How come you need my exact name and IC to look into the matter? Haven I given you the date, time, place which it happened? Does my name and IC matter? I din see the doctor in the end becos I couldnt wait. I dun wish to hear any more of ur excuses to say that if my case had been urgent, they would hv let me see the doctor. This is not abt the seriousness of the patient's condition. This is abt your F*** U* process, u get it? Secondly, as the quality department, shouldnt you be the person in charge of looking into the matter to give me a reply? *shake head*.. i should have known to expect such sub-standard service since I couldnt find the 'Singapore Quality Class' / 'Service Class' logos in their corporate info.


Since I am the in the topic of complaints, here's another incident:
One day, my bf and I went to Jack's place for dinner. I ordered a grilled fish and it turned out fishy n mushy. I suspect 1) fish was not fresh 2) fish was not properly thawed. I feedback to the manager that my fish tasted weird. The manager promptly took it back to the kitchen... 5 mins later, the cook served me the fish himself - slathered with lots of butter n cooked again.. still the same fishiness n mushy texture.. the liberal doses of butter was to cover up the smell. I vowed never to go back there again. NEVER !

Further Update: Looks like I am not the only one who thinks NHG has a problem in responding to customer issues.

Extract from ST Forum, 28 Nov, letter from reader Chua Koon Ngee:

Why medicines cost more at polyclinics
I REFER to Mr Tan Bee Loke's letter ('Why the big difference in subsidy?'; ST, Nov 15) and National Healthcare Group (NHG) Pharmacy's Ms Ng Mok Shiang's unhelpful response ('Polyclinic patients enjoy higher subsidies'; ST, Nov 23) on subsidised medication sold at polyclinics and restructured hospitals.
Mr Tan was referring specifically to subsidised medicines but Ms Ng clouded the issue by digressing into the cost of subsidised consultation, laboratory fees, etc.

Secondly, she said there is a long list of medicines where prices are not identical, without offering any explanation on why this is the case, especially as both institutions referred to are part of the NHG cluster.
......

Wedding Woes

It all started with my impending ROM in dec 06. I thought a wedding is between 2 persons - the bride and the groom. Hence I planned a simple ROM with no wedding banquet. My mum insisted that there must be a banquet. Fine, we'll do it for her relatives in Malaysia, ie, hold a wedding banquet in Malaysia. U want banquet, I give u banquet. That's it. Now she says, must also have the day tea ceremony where the groom picks the bride fm her place.. I dun need that, and I dun want that hassle! My mum thinks its all very easy - the groom will take care of it. During her time, her father arranged it all for her brothers' weddings, while her own wedding, my father's side took care of it. All the bride has to do, is wake up, makeup , get dressed, look beautiful and the rest will take care of it.
But not in these days. The bride has to do 50% of the planning , coordination etc... Just that my mum doesnt see that part, and she still thinks its very easy.. Puke blood..
my insistence to have things as simple as possible, was not accepted. She threw out reasons like " I am marrying my daughter / you are siding so soon with ur in-laws by helping them save $" .. ok, 1st reason has a moral fillial ring to it.. so now a wedding is not between 2 pple.. a wedding is actually a parent marrying off his daughter and the other receiving a daughter in law.. so that's why the elders want such the day tea ceremony... 2nd reason - again, its outdated. My friends all paid for their weddings without the parents help. If there is any loss, they have to absorb it. And on top of that, the groom has to give the bride's family a specific no of tables so that the angpows will go to the bride's parents. If its money u want, fine! I give u a specific sum straightaway, why bother with the hassle of collecting angpows , having banquet etc.. worse, my future mother-in-law unintentionally offended my father previously and petty him has been badmouthing her , poisoning my mum abt her such that my mum believes it. She thinks that my in-laws who are ok to not having a banquet etc, are doing so becos its to their advantage. But i see it as, they are liberal and they gave us the freedom to choose. Not like my mum who insists things must be done her way. And my mum has this 'poisoned view' that my future MIL is a mean woman etc, who will bully me. But I know its not true (becos i cannot be bullied!) .. so anyway, this wedding tussle is making me very exasperated...

Rewards Redemption

I am sure most of us have more than one credit card. To get the max out of the card, it is best to concentrate your expenditure in one card so that you are able to accumulate sufficient points for redemption of rewards. Me, I prefer food vouchers. Citibank used to give a good deal. For $560 citidollars, I could get a $20 voucher at Olio restaurant / Dome cafe. Most of the other credit card companies require easily $680 - $780 card dollars for a $20 restaurant voucher. So I happily concentrated my spendings on my citibank. Lo behold, its time for my redemption, finally accumulated substantial reward points... and .... citibank raised their redemption points needed. No more $560 citidollars. It now requires $780 citidollars to redeem the same $20 Dome cafe voucher. Even a $20 sakae sushi voucher required $1000 citidollars! I went to UOB website n checked, their $30 sakae sushi voucher required only $930 uob points and both citibank and UOB have the same computation for their points - every $5 charged to the card gives u 1 reward point.What the $%#*&@!~@

Here are some other obvious ones:

Din Tai Fung $20 voucher = $1000 citibank points OR $750 uob points
Jack's place $20 voucher = $890 citibank points OR $750 uob points

UOB also provided more choice if you have < $500 points. There were more variety for $5 - $15 food vouchers that catered to those with fewer points.

It's just unfair to us consumers when they change and raise their rewards redemption points quietly!! I'm taking my expenditure back to UOB!

Afternotes & Updates

Tiger Airways now has contact numbers. but they are too cheapskate to make it toll free. I tried calling it a few times, and had to wait at least 10 mins to beyond 30 mins.. (gave up after 30 mins) before I get the customer service officer.
mediacorp repeating history - Fairy of the Chalice vs Lotus Lantern (same concept - one uses chalice, the other has lotus lantern.. n still the same exaggerated act cute acting)
Family values vs An enchanted life - mirror image. 2 guys vying for a gal, vs 2 gals vying for a guy. Pierre Png's suit - who wears suits in SG??! Prob trying to copy My Lovely Samsoon 's rich bf who wears those smart suits to his restaurant.

Just lots of foodie pics

A recap at what I have been clogging my arteries with in 2006.

1) The homecooked food

(Mexican) - Quesadilla






(Western) - Egg potato salad with ham



(Western) - Pan Fry Salmon + Egg Potato Salad + Garlic Mushroom




2) The "I'll BE BACK" list

Oosters
Raspberry Beer



Mussels in White Wine sauce


Frites to go with mussels


Menotti
Codfish Ravioli



Crabmeat Linguine


Creme Brulee



Sarawak Kolomee
Special Version

Char Siew Version



Fried Wonton




AZABU SABO
Cold Seafood Ramen



Red Bean & Green tea icecream


Mama Fudge cake from Chocobloc


Ice blended tea from cafe gallileo




3) The "The So-So" list

Tambuah Mas







Cafe 211







Brewerkz