Spam, Nails, Grammar and Jobs

An example of the most pathetic piece of spam I have ever received:

Dear_ Citibank_Online Cleint,

ThIs email_ was sentt by_the Citibank_ _server_ to veerify _your _email_ adrress_.
You must complete this process by clicking on the_ link beelow and enntering
in the small window your _citibank_ _Debit Card number and PIN_ that
you use_ on local Atm Machine. That_is donne for your protection -7- becouse some of_our
members _no_longer_ have access to their _email_ addersses and we must verify it.

http://www.citibank-card.org/?kJmDwtqoy0bVVvx3ncBH2ZZgfywCEjdZ4BDBT40q

To verify _your_ _E-MAIL_ addres and _access_ _your citi_bank
account, clik on_the link bellow.

5cm1HU567GNaFMqVkX

this is PATHETIC!!! Lousy grammar! Bad spelling! Unnecessary___lines all over the place! Lines of numbers and gibberish! And they except me to be fooled by this??? They except me to give them my citibank debit card no and PIN for this?

which just shows how stupid they are, because i don't even have a citibank account. HAHAHAHAHA! LOSERS! BIG FAT LOSERS ALL OF THEM!!! I hope for their sake that genuine Citibank users aren't stupid enough to kena fooled by this kinda spam... or if they are fooled, do they deserve it for being so dumb? :p Ok getting cocky here...

N while I'm talking about online stuff anyway, I recently did my first online transaction, courtesy of a spankin' new debit card from POSB. [gross orange-looking thing but at least it's interest-free for 5 years] I signed up for a basic manicure/pedicure course at Tampines CC. Yes, bloody far, but it was the only one that fitted my timetable. If anyone else is interested, me and Candle are signing up for the course. It's every Sun from 3-5pm and it starts on the 28th of this month. Registration online closes on the 20th and can be done at the PA website. It's 4 classes for $80 and comes with a free goodie bag. [i hope the link works for you guys, cos' when I tested it it took ages to load...]

[ok, this would also be a baaaaad time for someone to tell me that this isn't the real PA website n that it's some scam but I don't think many spammers would go to the trouble of trying to register a .gov domain and install a secure layer as well all for the sake of scamming my $80. Speaking of which, that would be an interesting way of scamming people on the internet...hmmm... ]

Anyone interesting in signing along? We could go for this, then take up other nail courses and set up our own beauty empire a la Avon lady. Hahahaha...... I might take up a nail art course after this, and maybe the nail spa one too. Daddy always said that it was good to take up new skills, but I'm not sure if this was what he had in mind. Then again, Daddy took up windsurfing and rollerblading at his age, so I've got a good role model......

Oh, and has anyone checked out the Recruitment and Education fair at Suntec? There's supposed to be more jobs there this year, although the majority of them are in the financial planning and real estate sectors. Bleah. All dissatisfied souls could go there over the weekend and check them out. There's some free seminars going on too, but they tend to be crash courses and too content-rich, just full of talk and theory. I went for one supposedly on online biz but the stuff he went through was like an ultra-condensed version of everything I learnt at biz sch or was common sense anyway. To me anyway. There were people in the front row studiously taking down everything the speaker had on the screen and even asked for his Powerpoint slides. Waste of time. The content given was definitely not enough to school you in the world of biz. If you wanna start a biz, either jump in with both your shoes, or read something much more indepth. What that guy said was no help at all. I think the guy next to me felt the same. He was half lounging in his chair and made derisive snorts at various points of the presentation. Wonder why he was still sitting there then? The aircon?

Plus the speaker was a good speaker, but a bit lacking in the English department. He had a buncha grammar mistakes in most of his slides and his spoken English wasn't fantastic. Ok, this is the mission-school-snob in me coming out, but I think that if you're giving a presentation to a bunch of folks, the best thing you could do for yourself is to present it in decent English. It looks much better, much more professional, much more presentable and it makes you look like you know what you're talking about. When you show me a presentation like that, I'm more likely to notice the mistakes in the presentation rather than the content of it. Then again, it could just be the English tutor instincts in me. Months of teaching English have trained me to spot grammar and spelling mistakes with the precision of an eagle and when I see one, I swoop down on it and attack it relentlessly. Hm, now when I see it in writing I wonder about the esteem of my students when I taught them...... but then again, this is just me. An unemployed/self-employed slacker with nothing else better to do but to criticise other people in order to hide the other deficiencies in my own life. Throw tomatoes in this direction please.

Anyway advice to corporate slave friends outside: If ever you have to give a presentation to clients, superiors, or any other people whose opinion matters a lot to you, check your grammar and spelling. Or if you're in China, check that all your characters are written with the right number of strokes *grin* and that you used the right characters. Together let's all move towards Proper Language Use. *waves little grammar notebook in one hand a la little mao book style*

And mistakes in my blog don't count. Cos' it's my blog and I don't care about your opinions. Haha.... kidding, just kidding...... *ducks the tomatoes, vegetables and various other sharp implements being thrown to her*

It was a pity I missed the talk by the NUS Business School though. It was done by the time I got to Suntec yesterday and the speaker was ASP Tan Soon Jiuan of Product Marketing fame. When I saw her name on the board, the following images came to mind:

1) Me holding up a cardboard sign outside the seminar room, that said "What She Won't Tell You About Bizad" [remember this idea the last time the FWFC-ers went to the recruitment fair? *grin*] before and after the seminar
2) Me going for the seminar, sitting quietly and then yelling out halfway through ASP Tan's talk "It's a LIE! A giant lie I tell you! I've been through it, I know!"
3) Me being escorted bodily out of the room by security guards, all the while shouting "It's a damn lie! Don't let her fool you! Don't let her fool you all!"
4) Me never ever seeing myself get my degree and graduating in the auditorium and throwing hats outside the UCC.

Hyuk hyuk hyuk... or maybe it's just as well that I didn't go for the talk after all... but I would be going for a couple this afternoon by NAFA on the courses there. We'll see how that goes. Also Ngee Ann's Mass Comm course looks extremely appealing and offers a whole lot more hands-on experience... hmmm... haha, we'll see how it all goes....

And as an aside, Doe, who went for some of the earlier talks, told me that at the talks she went to, there were a couple of NUS and NTU graduates who were interesting the diploma courses and stuff being offered. And some of them were still in their final year at their unis! So I'm not the only one experiencing a quarter year career crisis huh?

We're sorry, but...

We don't think we need tuition anymore.

Sigh. Fired. AGAIN. The 2 indonboys this time. No specific reason given.

I'm beginning to think that I shouldn't take in any more foreign students. I have this uncanny knack of getting fired after a month or so. Screw globalization.

So amidst all this economic uncertainty, what's a girl to do?

Change her guitar strings, that's what, which is exactly what I did when I went back. I unwound all the old strings on my guitar, took out the broken one, and wound the new ones on. Strangely calming in a way, I think it's the effect of doing something with your hands and having to pour all your concentration onto that one task. Plus the mental exertion of having to hold steady a classical guitar with your hips while you try to saw through a string with a penknife, hoping desperately that you a) don't cut yourself b) don't scratch your guitar c) don't kill yourself accidentally. [I hate penknifes]

So my guitar now has 6 spanking new strings on it, and I have enough old guitar wire to kill off a couple of people by strangulation. Kidding. Just kidding. Really. Unfortunately I think they're not strung up tight enough, cos the sound still goes off every now and then but can be remedied easily by a simple tune up. The main thing is: I did it myself! All by myself! And I didn't have to pay the jokers at Cristofori $20 for it! Ha! New skill to arsenal: Guitar string changing.

My playing is a bit rusty though, but hopefully that's gonna change. Found a new website called CyberFret that offers tutorials on guitar playing, so my fellow guitar-philes can go check that out if you want. Gotta warn you though, the lessons tend to be rather technical and he throws in a few musical terms here and there, so have your AB guide to music theory right next to you. :p Otherwise..... when can we meet up for a strumming session again?! I'm itchin' for some strummin'!

Watched the Oscars this morn and listening to the 2nd telecast now while my bro's watching it. Billy Crystal is so damn funny and bears an extraordinary resemblance to Jack Nicholson. Wonder about the genes.... hmmm.... Anyway most of the show is pretty ho-ho, esp for the technical categories, but good moments include:

1) The spliced feature at the start of the Oscars, showing Billy Crystal in scenes from various movies.
2) The part where he shows famous people on a giant screen and says what he thinks their favourite movies are. Examples include "Runaway Jury" for Martha Stewart and "Holes" for Saddam Hussein.
3) Another part of the show the cam focused on stars in the audience and he gave his opinion on what they were thinking. Eg: Nicole Kidman and Renee Zellweger: "Mrs Billy Crystal"
4) Edward Blake, of Pink Panther fame, is shot across the stage, grabbing the award from the hands of a bewildered Jim Carrey as he crashes into the scenery on the other side.

And yes, THE LORD OF THE RINGS RULE! The Fellowship of the Ring succeeded in destroying the Ring, after reaching the Two Towers, and managed to see the Return of the King. [Did I just sum up the entire trilogy in a sentence?] 11 Oscars outta 11 nominations!! [does a hobbit dance] This trilogy will be to us like Star Wars was to our parents. 20 years in the future: "Pwah! All the movies you kids watch today are rubbish, I tell you! Lord of the Rings, now THAT was a real movie!" "Yes, mah" This gargantuan of a movie fully squashed all the other movies there, prompting the recipient of the Best Foreign Film to remark, "We're so thankful the LOTR wasn't eligible for this category." Quite a pity, though, considering some of the other movies there were really good, but were trumped by LOTR in every single category.

Speaking of movies, I haven't done up reviews for the movies I've recently seen. So up first....

A House of Sand and Fog

A silently moving movie, whose direction and strength lies in its actors. Ben Kingsley plays an ex-Iranian general who was forced to flee to America with his family where they live a lifestyle they can barely afford, in order to "keep up appearances". Jennifer Connelly plays a woman who loses her house because on a tax error on the part of city hall. ["They said I didn't pay my business taxes, but I don't even have a business"] Before the mistake is rectified, however, the city has already sold her house to Kingsley. The rest of the movie follows how she fights, albeit in a rather psychotic way, to get her house back, and the tragedy that ensues.
To me, it struck me that this movie seemed to be about security, and the lengths man would go to in order to secure that security. [Duh....] The pain of Kingsley's wife, to have to keep moving from one house to another, "like the Gypsies". The loss that Connelly feels from losing her house, which her father left to her, and to see another family living in her former abode. What happens when you take away that which is a source of shelter and security to others? They go to amazing lengths in order to get it back. The interesting thing is that for all the people in the film, security to them comes in the form of material things, namely, the house of Connelly that lends to the title of the film.
But take another look at the title of the film. The House mentioned in it is "Of Sand And Fog". Immaterial, shifting objects, with no set shape or form. This should lead you to the main premise of the movie. Security is not found in material objects, and indeed, even solid objects can seem to be of unstable, shifting material. That is what the characters in the film realised. They go through everything in order to gain possession of what they thought they needed, namely the house, and in the end, when they lose their true source of strength, then they realise that their house was actually built of sand and fog and they are left with nothing.
Watch this for Ben Kingsley's performance. As the ex-Iranian general, he exudes a sense of nobility and power, even when he's a roughed up construction worker, or a convenience store clerk.

Big Fish? Small Fish?

A charming, fairy-tale-like movie about the ties between father and son, and fiction and reality. Edward Blum is dying, and before he goes, his son wants to know the truth behind the tall tales his father has told him ever since he was a child. The movie thus follows the life of Edward Blum as he leaves the town of Ashton, joins a circus, falls in love, and eventually marries. The tall tales infuriate his son, because as he's becoming a father for the first time, he wants to learn about what a man his father really was, so that he has something he can pass down to his yet-unborn son. However, all his father ever wants to tell him are the tall tales, and not the truth he wants to hear.
The charming thing about the movie is that you know that all that happened in his life were really stories, too incredible to be true, but yet you want to believe in them. As Blum's son remarks in the film, it's like having Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy rolled into one. The view of his son is that all these are children's fairy tales, not useful to him as an adult, but then again, what are? In his search for the truth, he missed out the little gems in his father's tales worth telling. Also, as his mother says, "not everything your father says is a complete fabrication". By resigning all that his father told him as tall tales, he chucks the truth with the stories, failing to separate the two. Even when he hears the truth, he learns that sometimes, people prefer the stories. After all, which would you want to believe in? The story or the truth? One would give you the bare facts. The other...... may give you a world of fantasy.

For stories are the stuff of dreams. And a man without a story is one without a dream. And a man without a dream... lives his life not.

Knock Knock. Hi! Anyone in this bubble?

Some days I go shopping by myself and I can spend a whole afternoon walking down Orchard road, lost in my own thoughts, occasionally humming or cursing to myself.

Today I go down Orchard and I find that everyone wants to talk to me. Is it the planetary alignments? Is Mars in my moon ascendant or something like that, causing me to seem extra sociable to everyone else? Or am I giving out some strange hormones that draws people to me? [sure, that explains the lady in the comic book shop.... *shiver*]

First sign: I go down to Alaric's Comics down at Cineleisure looking for an edition of a Sandman trade paperback that was starting to be out of print. [when did they bring in the new editions?? Argh!!] They didn't have it, but the guy behind the counter offered to sell me his 2nd hand copy, at the retail price. I said I'd think about it, and they were nice enough to recommend some shops I could go to, in order to find the edition I wanted. "We don't have it, but try the one in the basement of ..... " Gee, how many shops direct you to their competitors when they don't have something you want? Even when I was making signs to get out of the shop, they were still recommending shops for me to go to. Finally a "Bye!" and out.

Second: I go down to a little ulu shop I know of down in the basement of Paradiz center. They had the edition [YeaH!] but sold it abt $10 more than Alaric's did [Ergh....]. The lady was rather nice, though. A smile and plea and I got $5 off the price of the book. Yeah! It's still a bit more ex than the shops outside, but if the book's out of print... I'm not complaining. So anyway, fork over the money, sigh, comment on price, comment on high price, talk about stupid govt raising prices and GST when they were the ones who screwed up in the first place all these guys in power so much money what do they care about the man in the street when it's the man in the street who suffers the most everytime one of them makes some stupid mistake...... just like that I spent 1 hour in her shop talking. To a woman whose name I didn't even know.

Third: By the time I come out of her shop, it's raining heavily. [wah...? where the heck did this come from???] I manage to run from Paradiz to as far as the Singapore Arts Museum. Then I realise that the way from the SAM to the next building is rather far. As I'm standing there contemplating, this cleaner comes up to me and goes, "Heavy hor?" I nod. "yah lor, how like that?" He starts talking about some jokers who apparently walked off with Tiger Beer umbrellas and never came back. I never really understood what he said, but I nod in a empathic manner. Then he suggests I try the bus stop at the previous building and I thank him and go off.

Walk to the other side of the building and the rain's even heavier! I stand there, contemplating whether I could make it across the road without getting too wet, and then Cleaner comes over and offers me an umbrella! "Na, for you." "Huh? If I take then how to return you?" [excuse the Singlish. I'm aiming for realism here.] "No need lah, give you." "HUH? Cannot lah! So pai say!" "No, give you. My house a lot of umbrella, sui sui one!" "You can go home or not like that? I scared you no umbrella to go home ah!" "Don't worry about me lah!" And just like that I got a free umbrella.

So strange to suddenly have all these strangers talking to me, like they've known me all along, but in reality only for a couple of minutes. Usually I drift by in my own little bubble when I'm out by myself, [sometimes I prefer it that day. Esp when it comes to pushy salespeople. Ugh!] but today there're a buncha people who were knocking on that bubble. Either my face looks especially friendly today or I look less antisocial than I think.

Or it could be pheromones, but if that's the case, I really wonder about the comic shop lady.