I don’t know about you, but I feel very hurt each time I get treated rudely by service people when I never even provoked them in the first place.

But when the anger dissolves by the end of the day, I start to wonder why they’re like that. The wounded child in me, of course, would like to think that they’ve got a bee up their toot.

But the rational adult in me, who sometimes pops out uninvited, would say, “Maybe it’s not entirely their fault.”

Don’t you hate it when you’re forced to be sensible about things? It kinda throws a blanket over the flames of fury you’ve been nicely stoking all day, dreaming up creative BBQ dishes in which your enemies are the main ingredients.

Here’s a case in point:

There’s this “Seoul Street Food” outlet in Bugis Junction that serves up skewered meats fried in all sorts of interesting batter.

The price tags advertise one stick for $1.60, while two go for $3.

That day, I wanted to buy about four different ones because they all looked so good. I started pointing out my choices to the guy, “One of these and one of these…”

At which point he cut in impatiently, “Cannot miss!”

My mind drew a blank as I blinked at him. “Cannot what?”

“Cannot miss! Cannot miss!!” he cawed at me with a shrill voice and a frown.

“Cannot what?” I repeated stupidly.

He raised his voice. “This one cannot miss!!”

“What do you mean by miss?” I asked helplessly.

He switched to Mandarin. “不可以参！”

That was when I got it. He’d meant to say “cannot mix” but must have been slightly gutturally challenged.

He was basically telling me, in the verbal equivalent of shorthand, that if I wanted the special price of $3 for two sticks, I’d have to get two of the same sticks, instead of one of this and one of that.

I was a bit slow on the uptake because I didn’t even realise that there was a discount for buying two sticks. (I don’t look at the price tags very carefully as a habit.)

“Sure, no problem,” I said.

Then he grumpily walked off to the cashier to ring up the purchase without even asking me if I wanted anything else.

What the hell was eating him?!

I swear I didn’t so much as wrinkle my forehead or speak in an unpleasant tone.

While he was packing my two sticks, I asked if I could have my sauce separately packed because I was going to be bringing the food home.

(The sticks are usually drowned in mayonnaise and chilli sauce, which actually makes it very tasty.)

He said something in a scolding tone which I couldn’t really catch, and then he passed me the packet without any sauce whatsoever.

A freeze-frame moment happened as I gaped at him puzzedly.

“Er… what about the sauce?” I finally asked.

That prompted him to lecture me about the food not tasting good without the sauce as he snatched the packet back and squirted sauce onto my sticks.

Totally incomprehensible.

My conclusion about this guy is that, apart from having a bee permanently stuck up his toot, he may possibly have been driven insane by customers yelling at him for charging them more than they expected.

In order to pre-empt being scolded by unreasonable customers, he goes directly into defence mode and lashes out first before the customer can lash out at him.

And, no, it wasn’t that he was having a bad day or something, because he was happily gossiping and laughing with his colleagues between customers.

I have a similar story about a taxi driver, but I think this entry is already too long and pictureless, which means I’ve probably lost 90% of my readers by this point. Haha.

So, which came first: Unreasonable customers or rude service people?

This story isn’t related to the first one. It’s a separate call from a separate makeover studio and it happened quite a while ago…

Telemarketer (female): Good afternoon, can I speak to Mr ____?

The Goonfather: Yea, wassup?

Telemarketer: Hi Mr ____. I’m calling from Naughty by Nature, a makeover studio. We would like to offer you a free photoshoot.

The Goonfather: Mmmm… Naughty by Nature?

Telemarketer: Yes, we’re a newly opened studio.

The Goonfather: Okay. So, when would you like me to come down?

Telemarketer: How about the day after tomorrow? We have available slots for then.

The Goonfather: What?!? So fast? I need to go gym and do some workout first. My body not ready to be shot.

Telemarketer: Haha…

The Goonfather: So, is it a solo shoot or do I have a partner?

Telemarketer: It is up to you, sir. You could bring a partner if you like.

The Goonfather: But I don’t have a partner. Do you have models to pose with me?

Telemarketer: Er… no.

The Goonfather: Hmmm. It would be nice to have a hot female model to do this shoot with me, so I won’t feel cold alone.

Telemarketer: Er…?

The Goonfather: Is the photographer male or female? Cos I don’t think I am comfortable being naked and doing suggestive poses in front of a male photographer.

Telemarketer: Huh? You don’t have to be naked.

The Goonfather: What? But you said your studio is called Naughty by Nature, right?

Telemarketer: Oh, haha. It’s just a name. We’re not doing that kind of shoot.

The Goonfather: Hmm… then you’re the same as the last 10 studios that called me, which I normally hang up by the second sentence. So, tell me something.

Telemarketer: Huh? Like?

The Goonfather: Anything lah. Maybe about this photoshoot you’re offering.

Telemarketer: Oh, okay. This photoshoot is free of charge.

The Goonfather: Okay. Please leave me a message after the *toot*!

*click*

In case I’m dealing with hardcore gaming addicts who lose track of time and never know the time of day, day of week, etc, I just wanted to inform you gently that today is not Friday.

It is Tuesday.

You still have four days in which to neglect school or work and play games marathonly before your girlfriend yells at you to take her out shopping during the weekend.

(Although I wouldn’t encourage you to do that. Neglect school or work to play games, that is. And you should take your girlfriend out shopping because it’s a nice thing to do.)

Gamer Girl Friday is making a surprise appearance today to announce the surprise appearance of Yoda and Darth Vader in Soul Calibur IV.

Well, okay, it’s not a surprise appearance. Gamers have known and anticipated for ages the arrival of these two Star Wars luminaries in the long-running, totally unrelated, popular fighter series.

Soul Calibur IV launches officially today.

I played the game on both Xbox 360 and PS3 yesterday, so I gotch videos!

==================================================

Yoda pwned by bikini babe

Yoda is exclusive for the Xbox 360 version of SC4.

We connected to Xbox LIVE and found a random online opponent who had created a custom character with a custom costume who annoyingly did the same moves over and over but still thrashed the hell out of us because Yoda forgot how to use the Force.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Darth Vader body slams Darth Vader

Darth Vader is exclusive for the PS3 version of SC4.

I asked the guys playing it to do me a favour, one of them please pick Darth Vader to play so I can get it on tape. Ends up both of them chose Darth Vader.

Funny as hell to see Darth Vader body slamming Darth Vader.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Special! Critical Finish animations

These are really beautiful animations that happen when your character fulfills certain conditions and finishes the opponent off in one strike. Every character has a different animation.

Sorry for dodgy video quality. My camera’s memory card chose yesterday of all days to act up and I had a borrow someone else’s camera, which took low resolution, 10fps videos.

==================================================

More about Soul Caliber IV on Friday! I had a blast playing it yesterday (on both platforms). Definitely worth buying!

Back to my interrupted week-long slumber.

See you on Friday!

Being an actor gives one the license to do all sorts of naughty things.

So, that’s gonna be my line the next time someone asks me (for the umpteenth time) why I decided to become an actress.

Some of the “naughty” things I’ve done in the name of acting:

• Push someone into the Singapore River
• Dance in a graveyard
• Drink on the job
• Do a mock strip tease
• Slap someone
• Kiss under a fountain
• Scare an unsuspecting public with ghostly makeup
• Blow cigarette smoke in someone’s face
• Yell at someone older than me
• Tell a lie in court

I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t want to be an actor.

Of course, then again, one would have to be able to take all the shit as well as the fun.

Example of shit:

Long waiting hours between shots, sleeping in all kinds of weird places because there is nothing else to do.

This isn’t an extreme example of shit but I’m not really going that direction today.

I promised to tell you what this guy was doing to me, some time back.

Only one person got it right. Mince Pye said, “Sound technician installing your wireless mic?”

Yes.

The wireless mic usually goes under the clothes, around the chest area. But, for some reason, my wardrobe during that shoot kept causing a lot of sound disturbance, so this one time, the sound guy decided to hide the mic behind my ear, where it could be covered by my hair.

He went a bit overboard with the tape.

The mic was held in place by surgical tapes because the sound man’s gaffer tape had mysteriously disappeared (again, he claimed).

On the first day of the shoot, the mic was placed inside my hat, just above my forehead where my hairline is.

It wasn’t done nicely the first time and the gaffer tape stuck to my hair and refused to come off. I had to pull off quite many strands of hair in the process.

Ouch.

Well, I generally have no problems with losing hair, but it’s painful when done forcefully.

My co-actors didn’t have any mic woes like I did. Their clothes didn’t mess up the sound, so they had their mics in the regular spot.

I had my long smoking scene that day.

(No smoking photos because, like I said before, I don’t want to glamourise smoking.)

The smoking scene was done in a big, beautiful house.

Smoking in style.

Me taking a photo of myself on the screen:

There was a scene in which I had to enter the house with two bottles of beer. We did many takes of that, so I had to spend many long minutes waiting outside the door.

There was nothing to do but camwhore. I set my camera on timer and did a self-photoshoot.

After years of experience waiting on the set, I’ve developed several effective ways to entertain myself, besides sleeping.

The smoking scene didn’t happen till late at night.

It was a very long scene. A five-minute scene done in one shot. That means there had to be many takes to get it perfect, because if there was even one small mistake anywhere in the five minutes, we had to do it all over.

I was literally chain smoking that night as we did take after take.

By my fifth cigarette (although I didn’t have to smoke each stick all the way), I started feeling high.

It was a nice sensation, actually, my first time experiencing it. Thoughts running through my head:

“No wonder people get addicted to smoking.”

“Oh, no, am I going to be addicted, especially since I hang out with smokers?”

“Hahahahahahaa!”

That last one was me feeling happy and giggly from the smokes.

I lost count of the number of times we redid the scene. By my 10th or so cigarette, I started getting seriously giddy, like I had drunk too much alcohol, which actually kinda helped because I was supposed to be partially drunk in that scene.

But after way too many cigarettes, I started feeling not very good. My hands turned cold and I felt like I might break out into cold sweat any moment.

By about 1:30 am or so, we finally wrapped. I grabbed a cab and felt sick all the way home.

When I got home, I complained to the Goonfather, “I’m going to die.”

He informed me that I was suffering from nicotine overdose and asked me to drink a lot of water to dilute the nicotine.

I was nauseous and giddy and just generally horrible. So I cooked a packet of instant tom yam beehoon because I always feel better after eating something sour when I have a hangover.

After the tom yam, the nausea got a teensy bit better, but I still largely felt like shooting myself out of misery.

The next day, when I finally felt normal again, I decided that the sickness was a blessing in disguise. It had totally turned me off smoking. The ordeal I had gone through had given me a huge distaste for smoking.

But still I love being an actress and doing things I otherwise wouldn’t get to do under normal circumstances.

I think it’s an interesting way to live, anyway.

Sundays are good days to watch online videos. You’re at home and you don’t have to worry about bosses lurking behind you, voyeuring your screen.

Here’s one for fans of The Dark Knight.

It’s freakishly hilarious. Make sure you’re in a safe place to laugh out loud. I salute the guys who made this video. Wish I could think of stuff like that. There’s some really excellent acting in there, too.

Sundays are also good days to engage in voting activities.

It only takes 20 seconds to type in your e-mail and password and click on my picture!

Vote for a chance to win exotic travel packages, how about that?

Vote for the Sometimes Damsel in Distress!

Thank you for your vote!

Sheylara woke up feeling a bit jaundiced.