I want to complain!

There’s this stationery shop at Bugis Junction called A “N” BC where I spent $122 last month.

They let me apply for a membership card because my purchase exceeded $100. They said they’d mail me the card in 2 to 3 months’ time.

Today, I needed to buy stuff there again. I thought they would let me use my previous receipt as proof of membership to give me the member’s discount. So I spent about 30 minutes shopping, grabbing a bunch of stuff to buy.

At the counter, I enquired about the membership discount. And you know what the girl said??!!

“Sorry you cannot have discount if you don’t have the card.”

I kept explaining that I should technically be a member already; I just haven’t received my card. I mean, usually stores give you a temp card or allow you to use your receipt, right?

Well, this store doesn’t work that way at all!

I asked, “So are you saying your shop is discouraging me from buying stuff here for 3 months while I wait for my card?”

I certainly wasn’t going to buy without a discount because I was gonna spend another $100+ today.

Then the girl started repeating herself no matter what I said. “Maybe you want to get the member card first then you can get a discount.”

*strangle*

Her English is not very good, you see. It was a bit hard communicating with her. She seems like a foreigner.

The long and short of it is that she insisted I couldn’t use my receipt and I had to wait 3 months to enjoy membership privileges.

What a lousy freaking policy can???

So angry cos I really need one particular item (an A3 size hard portfolio case) NOW.

Dumb dumb dumb!

Lucky I already bought most of what I need at Kinokuniya already. I love the Ngee Ann City outlet. I can spend hours in there!

Okay, I feel better after complaining public, thank you.

Am right now queueing at Nando’s. The queue is ridiculous today but I have to wait for the Goonfather to finish work and manoeuvre his way through the traffic jam anyway!

How come Singaporeans are so patient about queues but then they must rush through everything else?

Anyway, Second manga class tomorrow! Whee! =D

I’ve always resented the inventions that supposedly make women “prettier”. How much pain, time and money have they cost women throughout the ages?

I’ve always wished people could be happy to leave well enough alone, and that makeup, cosmetic surgery and beauty treatments never existed. I resent having to put in so much effort to look good.

And yet, because all these inventions and implements are in place and have become the norm, I must conform to standards or be overlooked.

To give you a visual image of what I mean, let’s talk about bound feet in ancient China. It was considered beautiful for women to have ridiculously small feet. Females had to endure the pain of having their feet broken and mangled through their lives.

Imagine yourself living in that era. As a girl, you would want to have tiny, mangled feet so you can look as “beautiful” as other girls, to be an object of envy and admiration rather than to be discriminated against or overlooked.

But wouldn’t you wish that the practice never existed in the first place so your feet can grow normally without you feeling the pressure to conform?

But, the way it was, you could have happy feet and be ugly or tortured feet and be admired. Either way, it sucks.

Unfortunately, we still have what I consider barbaric practices today to mould people into societal standards of beauty. Plastic surgery, tattooing, waxing. They are all barbaric because they cause pain.

Sure, everyone has a choice whether to do it or not. But when everyone is doing it and you don’t, you lose out. You’ll find it harder to get jobs and find partners or just fit in. Your self-esteem will plunge and life will be more miserable.

And when your naked photos accidentally get leaked a la Cecilia Cheung, you get criticised by the whole world for not having put yourself under the torture of waxing your privates.

There are all these people who self-righteously claim that inner beauty triumphs over everything and that painful beauty procedures are dumb. I’m sure even they cringed at those photos.

These people go around criticising celebrities who go for plastic surgery and yet expect women to magically have hairless privates and flawless physical beauty.

There’s no such thing as natural beauty.

Cosmetic surgery existed long before anaesthesia was invented. (I suppose we can count ourselves lucky that those days are past.)

Besides the ancient Chinese binding their feet, the Maori carved up their faces with sharpened bones and applied dye on the wounds to create elaborate patterns. Burmese tribal women collapsed their collar bones to create long necks.

I think the long neck thing is still happening today. The tattooing too, with less painful methods.

In the past, painful beauty practices reflected the status of those who were able to do them. Being able to mutilate yourself was an enviable luxury. It’s still the same way today, seeing as how plastic surgery costs the skies.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE WORLD? Who the devil invented these practices in the first place? I wish people would just leave things alone and stop coming up with bizarre ideas for making humans look “better”.

Aren’t we good enough as we are?

Unfortunately, we all have to conform to all these crazy standards in order to ease into society better.

Everyone conforms to some standard or other to varying degrees. Some are easier to follow (like makeup and hair cuts) while others are tougher (like big boobs).

But everyone must conform to at least something, which is the whole problem. It’s not easy being the person who gets stared at and pointed at just because you refuse to get a Brazillian wax.

You must suffer, either now or later.

I will state for the record that I opt for beauty. I just wish the option didn’t exist. That’s all.

Who was the one who came up with the stupid PR phrase: “Can I trouble you to [insert request]?”

I know it’s supposed to be a tactful, polite way of asking for something, but what is wrong with “please”??

Why use five words instead of one?

“Can I trouble you to” sounds condescending to me. It’s the same as saying, “I’m going to give you a nasty task but I don’t want you to hate me for it so I shall pretend that I’m asking you a favour so you’ll feel awesome instead,” but in fewer words.

Someone came up with this phrase and everyone thought it was a great idea and started using it. I don’t doubt it works on most people but I see it for what it is!!!

Can I trouble you to comment?

Telemarketers are getting more and more annoying! Not only do they invade your personal domains (your phone), they try to sell you stuff you don’t want.

On top of that, nowadays, they read make-nice sentences off convoluted scripts before even telling you what they’re trying to sell you.

You know how some pay-per-minute calls go on and on in their introduction menus, saying tons of redundant things, making you pay for precious minutes for nothing?

It’s like that.

Telermarketers now take two hundreds years to get to the point where they actually tell you what they’re selling, when you can safely say, “Oh that’s what you’re selling? I’m not interested.”

Seriously.

I don’t want to know your name.

I don’t want you to ask if it’s a good time to talk.

I don’t want you to tell me I’m one of the specially selected elite few to be receiving your call.

I don’t want you using formal, polite sentences as if you were reading a business letter to the Queen of England, adding a zillion redundant words to make yourself sound more polite but prolonging my misery!

“Good morning, m’am. Thank you, m’am, for your kind patience in hearing what I have to offer to you. I am quite certain that you will benefit much from our brand new service, which I will be most delighted to share with you in a moment. And, now, m’am, this exciting offer which I have right here, which I would like to share with you is…”

What is that?! Nobody talks like that in real life. Just get to the point already.

I don’t care if you have to do this job to survive. This is a terrible, evil job, next to flyer distribution, and you should rather starve than accept the job.

GO DO SOMETHING ELSE FOR THE SAKE OF HUMANITY!

I watched Avatar in 3D with my friends at Lido last night. We each received good quality 3D specs at the door.

There were repeated reminders outside the cinema, as well as on the cinema screen, as well as audio messages, for us to return the specs in good condition at the end of the movie, failing which we would have to pay $10.

All good there.

We watched the movie and immensely enjoyed three hours of a gripping story set in a fantastic, vibrant world.

And then the movie ended and the credits started.

Accompanying the initial credit roll were awesome 3D footages of the world of Navi accompanied by awe-inspiring music.

Unfortunately, we never got to enjoy it. Two seconds after the credits rolled, lights flooded the cinema, the music was muted and a recorded announcement came on, reminding us to return the 3D specs, failing which we would have to pay $10, blah blah.

I was annoyed.

The movie had ended too soon and I craved more of it. I was sad at having to say goodbye to the world of Navi and I wanted to enjoy the ending music and footages to continue the illusion of still being immersed in the world.

The recorded announcement and muting of the music shocked us out of our immersion like icy cold water to the face.

We endured the announcement for about 20 seconds, waiting for the music to come back. The screen was still showing footages of 3D scenery but it was hard to watch since the lights were all on.

Then the announcement ended but the music didn’t come back.

Three seconds later, the announcement started again. The same damned announcement all over again.

I was very, very annoyed. By muting the music, turning on the lights, and playing the stupid announcement, Lido had robbed us of our final few minutes of enjoyment of the movie, an experience which would have given us the closure we needed to wrap up our otherwise impeccable experience of the movie.

It’s like sex without a proper climax.

Did they really need to remind us to return the specs over and over again? After all, there were two guys collecting the specs outside a very narrow exit doorway.

No one could possibly escape.

We left the hall and the Goonfather demanded to see the manager.

We were shocked at what the night manager had to say.

He said we weren’t the first people to complain. Unfortunately, he can’t do anything about it because he is only following orders.

The management of Shaw Theatres had ordered the recorded announcement to be played before the movie officially ended. And even with repeated complaints and suggestions to play the announcment later, the management refused to budge.

The answer was, “Don’t care them lah.”

The manager also said that, by right, it wouldn’t hurt to allow patrons to take the specs home. After all, we paid extra for them. The tickets cost $14 each.

But Shaw wants to make more money, so the specs are collected back and recycled.

The manager also told us that care is taken to wash the specs thoroughly before they are reused, but he was probably lying. When we collected our specs, they were all greasy and covered with fingerprints on the lenses.

In the end, there was nothing we could do. Nothing he could do. He told us to complain directly to the Shaw Theatres management and, maybe, if more people complained to them, they would take notice.

This is very disappointing. Not only did they rob movie goers of the last few crucial minutes of enjoyment, the management of Shaw Theatres also showed great disrespect to filmmaker James Cameron.

To truncate his movie like that!

How grave is the insult for a pioneer of Singapore’s movie industry (Shaw made movies in the early 1900s) to disrespect a film like that, and all for the fear of losing a few plastic spectacles?

I am deeply disappointed.

Be warned. If you’re going to watch Avatar in 3D (and I absolutely recommend that you do), don’t watch it at Shaw Theatres.