Aristocare founder ‘not very sure’ if he was from GEP

Posted on July 29, 2012 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Private tutor who charges high fees: I was in gifted education programme’ 29 July 2012, article by Jane Ng, Sunday Times

A private tutor charging high fees to help children get into the Gifted Education Programme (GEP) has been warned to stop telling lies about himself. Mr Kelvin Ong Wee Loong, 36, has long claimed that he was admitted into the gifted programme as a child and went on to be a teacher in the programme as well.

Now the Education Ministry has refuted those claims, saying it has checked and found no record that he was ever a pupil or teacher in the programme. Nor is he even a qualified teacher. The ministry has told him to remove the lies from the website of his AristoCare centre, and he has complied.

…This is not the first time that the ministry has taken issue with Mr Ong. In 2010, it was alerted to AristoCare’s website after it advertised the sale of the 2009 GEP Screening and Selection Test papers. The ministry checked and found that those were not the actual papers. It subsequently alerted parents that there was a website giving the impression that it had past GEP papers for sale, but they were not genuine.

It is not known if he will face further action. Asked what he had to say about the ministry’s latest checks, Mr Ong told The Sunday Times it was his mother who had told him that he had been in the gifted programme. ‘I’m not very sure. According to my mum, I was from GEP. When MOE called me, I tried to check but couldn’t because I don’t have records from the past,’ he said.

Now it’s common for tuition agencies to hard-sell when it comes to advertising just like any business, and God knows how many private tutors out there are conning parents into buying their programmes with exaggerated qualifications. In a previous post, I questioned what Kelvin Ong was doing being a ‘GEP trainer’ having supposedly gone through the system, and here he confesses following a background check (rightly so and about time, MOE) that he never really had any teaching experience at all. How flabbergasting. Would you pay for a flight manned by an unlicensed pilot? No? Because entrusting Ong with your kid is the promise of business class without the guarantee of you ever reaching your destination.

Instead of the whiz-kid-turned-GEP mentor persona that he created for himself, what we have here is really a shrewd businessman exploiting the tuition craze, emptying the pockets of gullible, and desperate, parents with a ruse that appears to me as clearly a case of false, manipulative advertising. In other words, a liar and a fraud. If I were a parent who spent my hard earned money on his bogus programmes and didn’t get anything out of it, I’d probably want to recoup my losses by slapping a lawsuit and set this scamming liar’s pants on fire. I might as well have consulted a celebrity crystal ball gazer for GEP exam questions. In 1990, a tuition con artist and jobless woman fleeced customers of more than $10k, landing herself a six-month jail sentence (Tuition-scam woman gets six months jail, 2 June 1990, ST). In 2001, a Today reader was deceived by a tutor with a D7 for English but told to lie by the agency that she had a distinction instead. It remains to be seen if any legal action will be taken further here other than ‘cleaning’ up the website.

But that’s not the end of it. Making false claims isn’t the only charge that we should level at Ong. What’s more criminal in my opinion is a grown 36 year old man bringing his MUMMY into it. Not only is your child in the hands of a serial liar, but 1) Someone with an affliction of selective amnesia, in which case, you shouldn’t trust his ability to even teach ABCs, not to mention Maths Olympiad problems, and 2) Someone who blames his mother for implanting false GEP memories into his brain. For $1K lessons you would expect someone with not just the smarts and experience, but at least some shred of moral fibre, and the decency to leave one’s parents out of a con job of your own making as well.

Nonetheless, this nab is a timely wake up call for parents to be wary and know the difference between tuition ‘agencies’ and ‘centres’. Agencies are profit-driven commercial entities registered with ACRA, while centres are registered as schools by MOE. Don’t be seduced by flashy qualifications, colourful testimonials (which seem to be faked in this case) or regal company names. If their expensive educational methods are like psychic lobotomies turning your kid into a Night of the Living Dead zombie, you have every right to complain to CASE. A little official snooping around may be more useful than trawling social media platforms or checking with friends who have already invested in agencies like AristoSCAM. It’s also possible that your kid may be better off emotionally and psychologically without any tuition at all, and that our education system, together with anxious parents, contribute to a festering nation-wide addiction to tuition serving as a lucrative market for agencies making a quick buck out of a chronic fear of being left behind , like drug dealers selling users adulterated crack. If there’s any ‘help’ to be sought, it’s for parents so blinded by kiasuism and peer pressure that it doesn’t matter how much it costs, even if the agency’s founder looks like the Riddler from a Batman movie.

The Riddler Unriddled

Postscript: In a follow up Sunday Times article (Not a maths grad either..5 Aug 2012), it was revealed that Ong was never a NUS ‘double Math major’ grad either and was really a Nanyang Poly trained physiotherapist, apparently applying the skill of manipulation to lucrative effect. Turns out that Aristocare is actually a home-run scam where Ong crammed his clients in his BEDROOM. Sleazy! Surely someone would have sounded him out, if they were the least bit concerned of their kids’ safety. As if pushing blame on his own mother wasn’t enough, Ong pointed out that the qualifications in the credits of his assessment book was a printing error. According to the ‘About the Author’ section in the preface of his ‘Know your Maths Methods!’ book, Ong supposedly has a Postgraduate Diploma in EDUCATION as well.  What, no Grandmaster Wizard Professor of Hogwarts? One of his methods is called ‘The Alphabet Method’. It looks like damn ALGEBRA to me.

Meanwhile the Aristocare site is permanently shut down, with the error message ’404 Not Found’, which describes Ong’s degree perfectly.  If there’s a lesson to be learnt from this fiasco, it’s that no matter how desperately kiasu you are, it always pays to do your own homework first before placing your trust in bogus tutors who teach out of their bedrooms. It also means that if your child did in fact score in GEP after hothousing in an unqualified person’s bedroom, it’s likely that he or she could have done it on their own without anyone’s help.

About these ads

Filed under: 1990s, 2012, Advertisements, Justice system/Lawsuits, Kids, Teachers | Tagged: , , , , , | 10 Comments »

Every company should be like Lady Gaga

Posted on July 13, 2011 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Swee Say to firms: Emulate Gaga’, 12 July 2011, article by Gwendolyn Ng, MyPaper.

COMPANIES in the service industry here should emulate Lady Gaga. That was the advice Mr Lim Swee Say, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office, had for business owners and industry representatives at an event marking the fifth anniversary of the national service-excellence movement, Go the Extra Mile for Service (Gems).

Though Mr Lim admitted that he knows next to nothing about the 25-year-old popstar, he is impressed by the emotional attachment she inspires in her “little monsters”, or fans. He said: “Somehow, Lady Gaga is able to engage her fans all over the world, not just with her songs… but also with experiences. Every (company) ought to find a way such that more of you will become like the Lady Gaga of your respective sectors.”

…Mr Lim said: “The gap between the very-good and not-so-good is quite wide… Not because those at the bottom are not good, but rather those at the top are running faster and faster. We hope to help those who are running fast to run even faster. We (also) hope to reach out to the majority.”

This awkward analogy came fresh after the NDP Funpack song fiasco, which our dear Minister here would have taken as an original composition given that he knows ‘next to nothing’ about Lady Gaga, or her ‘Bad Romance’ song for that matter. Perhaps Lim Swee Say should spend more time surfing tabloid news before randomly selecting a music and fashion icon as a business model. You could apply the same analogy to any hip, successful celebrity with adoring fans (Kylie Minogue for example), and it appears that the only reason why Lim Swee Say went Gaga is because her stage name sounds like that of a superhero, in addition to being ridiculously catchy.  Lady Gaga can afford to stir controversy, whether it’s splashing herself with blood, cooping herself in an egg, wearing a dress made of steak or spouting blasphemous slander. Such antics define the product that is her, and suggesting that companies gaga-fy themselves by becoming tacky media whores and aggravating animal rights groups as a means of getting recognised is simplistic at best, a regrettable mistake at worst. If Lim Swee Say’s inspirations were a national dish, it’d probably be a big bowl of  ‘rojak’.

Most successful companies hardly live on the razor’s edge, being more like safe, steady David Beckhams than offbeat, volatile Lady Gagas. Think Coke, Apple, Pfizer. Do any of these sound the least bit Gaga to you?  Such analogies are redundant and unhelpful, serving only to create the illusion that Lim Swee Say listens to what you listen to on the radio, though it’s likely that he had only heard of the performer via the Funpack song and it’s the only Western female solo artist he can probably name other than Madonna or Dolly Parton. He probably rates Poker Face as his all time favourite song. now. Here’s some possible Gaga-inspired motivational posters to adorn our cubicles, featuring our patron saint of business herself living on the Edge of Glory. Eh Eh Eh There’s Nothing More I Can Say.

SACRIFICE 

TRANSPARENCY

DON'T LET THE BUBBLE BURST

MAKE MEAT OF YOUR RIVALS

EVERY IDEA IS AN EMBRYO

Filed under: 2011, Customer service, Dress sense, Music/music videos, Politicians | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

Your bloody passport

Posted on June 18, 2011 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Why visit a place where we are not welcome?’18 June 2011, ST Forum

(Lawrence Koo): …Last Saturday, I left home at 7am to go to Malaysia for a holiday. I took the Second Link hoping to beat the jam at the Malaysian immigration checkpoint. It was rather smooth clearance at the Tuas side. But to my horror, it took me four hours to clear Malaysian immigration.

Just before I drove off, I said to the immigration officer attending to me that the new system was really bad and impractical. Instead of saying sorry for the inconvenience caused, the officer replied: ‘Then don’t come, lah.’

That was almost unpardonable coming from a government official who is supposed to be tourist-friendly. Who would want to visit a place that is unwelcoming to visitors?

It was reported that visitors from Singapore made about 13 million trips to Malaysia last year, which constituted about 53 per cent of Malaysia’s total tourist arrivals – contributing RM28.4 billion (S$11.6 billion) in receipts. Whose loss is it if Singaporeans stop visiting Malaysia?

The friendliest immigration officers I’ve met in my Asian travels were the Japanese, and the sulkiest sort were the Cambodians at Siem Reap who barely look at your face that you wonder if they’re doing their job or not. I suppose the grouchy attitude is to ward off any unnecessary feedback from the throng of strangers entering your country  everyday. It’s debatable if immigration officers, Malaysian or otherwise, are supposed to be service-friendly and polite all the time; after all they need to be stern when quarantining dubious characters so that they can administer naked squat body checks and such. The nature of their work is strictly business and one shouldn’t get too hard up on this scathing unfriendliness which isn’t entirely representative of Malaysian hospitality. I’m certain the offending officer must have gotten complaints the whole time (probably mostly from Singaporeans) while Mr Koo was stuck in the jam, and it’s not like he could do anything about it. Still, this outburst is tame, and even sort of makes sense, compared to the treatment dealt to Malaysians themselves in the 1970s (See below, Hard words and no chicken, 24 Oct 1970, ST Forum)

Of course, one shouldn’t flame Malaysian authorities and preach about service standards when our own immigration officers aren’t exactly tourism ambassadors themselves (See below, Our unpleasant return to Singapore, 12 Aug 2009, Today).

In terms of derogatory treatment, Malaysia’s notorious naked squat and strip searching is a stroll in the park compared to the POW grade detention practices of the Canadian immigration authorities in the 80′s,   that it actually drove a Singaporean tourist to commit  suicide right in their office (See below, Holiday girl’s nightmare in Canada, 8 November 1985). I myself was subject to an embarrassing ordeal by Canadian officials once after being initially deceived by what appeared to be friendly banter when it was in fact tactical interrogation, and in spite of how welcoming everyone else outside the airport were, it’s still one country I’d swear to avoid as much as possible. So, be respectful in front of an unfriendly officer, but be even more careful when he’s exceptionally friendly.

Filed under: 1970s, 1980s, 2000s, 2011, Changi airport, Customer service, Tourists | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

SIA stewardesses sleeping on plane

Posted on June 15, 2011 by gdy2shoez

From SQ air stewardesses caught napping, 14 June 2011, article in insing.com translated from SM Daily

Some SQ air stewardesses were caught in the act: Taking a nap right next to passengers.

A curious passenger, Mr Tan, took a photo of two stewardesses sleeping on empty seats during a flight from New Zealand. He was flying home from Christchurch, New Zealand via Singapore Airlines when he saw the scene. When he was interviewed by The New Paper, he said he saw some stewardesses sleeping in the last few rows of economy class.

“My flight lasted about nine hours, and I was surprised to see flight stewardesses taking a nap right next to passengers.”

He said that the stewardesses were obviously asleep and yet some passengers kept pestering them for drinks.

Mr Tan wondered why the stewardesses were so tired, and whether the company had given them enough time to rest.

I guess refreshments won't be served anytime soon

Somewhere in that article must be an invisible complaint about how bad this is for the Singapore Girl’s reputation, but instead the person who took this picture was wondering why passengers were trying to wake them up for drinks and questioning staff welfare. It would be the saddest irony that this shot, originally intended to suggest that the Singapore Girl is ‘overworked’, will no doubt be interpreted by everyone else as the exact opposite. Just see how cosy they are. I’m jealous that they look more cosy than me when I’m flying long haul. If this is SIA’s idea of power napping, then God help us all in a real emergency when every second counts.

Fine, we don’t want to know goes on among Singapore Girls behind the lavatories on long haul flights. Maybe they do shift napping on their cabin stations, kill time freshening up the toilets (or themselves), gossip about difficult passengers, whatever to stave off the sheer boredom without the luxury of a passenger entertainment system or an internet connection – I don’t want to know. What attendants do after landing, whether it’s smoking outside terminals or kiao-kar-ing away, is none of my business. But the least our girls could do, tens of thousands of feet up in the air, is to give plane insomniacs like myself the assurance that we’re not the only ones wide awake when all other passengers are blissfully asleep, and that someone on the plane is always ready to jump to my rescue and wrap an oxygen mask around my face if I suffer a panic attack, or collect my airbag after I’ve vomited into it. In fact, this image, assuming that it’s not some staged viral prank (as much as I’d hope it to be), is taking  ‘kiao-kar-ing’ to the next, and in fact highest achievable, level. If Singapore Girls can snuggle up on unoccupied seats, it’s only fair that passengers can do the same. In fact, it is imperative that passengers take up whatever empty seat that is available, just to prevent our stewardesses from using them. Alas, that’s often not the case, even if you’re suffering from severe air sickness. Of course, stewardesses aren’t the only uniformed people caught sleeping ‘on the job’, it happens to our NSmen too.

Filed under: 2011, Customer service, Singapore Airlines | Tagged: , , , , | 1 Comment »

Airsick SIA passenger not allowed change of seat

Posted on June 14, 2011 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Passenger disagrees with airline’, 14 June 2011, ST Forum online

(Law Cher Khiam): I REFER to Singapore Airlines’ reply (“Why passenger was not allowed to change seat”; May 31) to my letter (“Service goes out the window amid SIA balancing act”; May 27).

It was a 6am flight, and there must have been about 30 empty seats from economy class row 30 to 54 on that flight (54D was the seat given to me).

I checked with my aviation and pilot friends and contrary to SIA’s reply, I am told that I could have easily been given one of these seats up front (to alleviate my severe air sickness) without compromising the safety of the flight. I didn’t specify any seat and any attempt to move me forward – even if it was a row or two – would have been appreciated.

No attempt was made to help me despite my plea.

The arrogant manner in which I was brushed off at the airport by two of the senior staff there hurt as much SIA’s reply. This is definitely not the sort of service one would expect from the world’s most awarded airline.

The initial complaint was about SIA’s refusal to allow Mr Law to change seats citing ‘plane balance’ and safety as a reason. No information on how far exactly the complainant would want to be moved from his position at the time, but would moving ‘a row or two’, as he now claims, make any difference for ‘SEVERE’ air sickness? In his first letter ‘Service goes out the window..’ (May 27), he in fact states:

…She refused to give me a seat further up front even though I explained to her that I experience giddy spells sitting behind (for example, when the plane hits turbulence).

I then sought the help of the supervisor, but was told the same reason: They couldn’t give me a seat further up front because they needed to “balance the plane”.

So, if you’re on the verge of puking your lungs out, what does one intend exactly by ‘further up front’? Moving ‘a row or two’? I don’t think so.Would flight attendants even suggest that he move one row up at the risk of sounding silly and getting scolded for it? Naturally, in that situation, one would assume a fair distance away from Mr Law’s seat, and you can imagine the affected staff reading this and going ‘Aiyah..NOW then you tell me..’. This is like saying ‘Oh I would have appreciated if NTUC exchanged my maggot ridden apple with something slightly rotten’. It’s common behavior of complainants to adjust their expectations in hindsight to make them appear less unreasonable as they very well could be in the beginning. I could scream at a cyclist for ramming into me for being ‘a bloody blind  bastard’ in the heat of the moment, but later downplay the situation politely i.e inaccurately in a complaint letter with a euphemistic ‘I told him sternly to watch where he’s going’.

But back to SIA’s ‘arrogant response’ by Divisional Vice President Xavier Lim(May 31, ST Forum):

…Mr Law’s flight was nose-heavy. To ensure safe operations, we had to ensure that some passengers were seated towards the rear to achieve the correct balance for take-off. After take-off, passengers would be able to change to the forward seats if they are available.

Mr Law expressed his unhappiness to our staff over his seat arrangement. We are sorry that we could not accede to his request but cannot, under any circumstances, compromise the safety of our flight operations and that of other passengers.

Aeronautic physics aside, did either the complainant or the attendants think of asking someone in front to exchange seats?A little basic human beneficiary could have saved all the embarrassment really. Still, if Mr Law was well aware of his condition, why weren’t precautions taken? If he runs the risk of overflowing his airbag, how about bringing along some motion sickness tablets which you can buy off a pharmacy, or from a doctor for more potent ones? Motion sickness is mostly preventable, and by means other than bossing flight attendants around. It’s unlike peanut allergy sufferers having to risk anaphylactic shock with peanut dust floating around the plane.  Still, this is a masterful ‘I’ve got the Last Word’ letter, with a cunning post-hoc  ‘I’m really not asking for much’ disclaimer and a shaming whopper of a finish that would leave any organisation speechless.  Please save as a template if you are ever find yourself inconvenienced by SIA, be it lack of legspace, crappy food or failure to understand what stewardesses are saying. You may even get a free business class upgrade if you’re lucky.

Filed under: 2011, Customer service, Singapore Airlines | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Joanne Peh’s Nando’s ovation

Posted on June 2, 2011 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Ovation-goodbye for Joanne Peh’, 1 June 2011, article in insing.com translated from LHWB

Joanne Peh posted on Twitter her “experience” two days ago at a restaurant in Tanglin Mall. Peh had gone to the restaurant “Nando’s” with her Caucasian boyfriend Bobby Tonelli after filming a programme, “Ladies Nite” nearby.

However, before the couple could enjoy alone time with a quiet evening repast, they encountered poor service from the restaurant. Peh had asked for a glass of hot water from a waiter, but was told that the restaurant does not serve hot water.

Accordingly to Peh, the manager of the restaurant informed her that a glass of hot water costs $3.90. This is despite a bottle of mineral water costing only $1.80 on the menu. In comparison, a cup of tea is $3.90 on the menu.

Angered by this, the couple decided not to dine at the restaurant and stood to leave. What happened next was completely unexpected.

All the staff members of the restaurant began clapping to the couple’s departure! The furious Peh immediately tweeted about the incident and even specified the name of the manager on duty as “Shah”.

As ridiculous as $3.90 sounds for hot water (was it heated up over a charcoal grill?), compared to 50 cents for the same beverage at Ya Kun, what I don’t get is how someone is willing to forsake a perfectly good chicken meal just because Nando’s charges expensive hot water on the side, which you can jolly well refuse to order and get on with dinner, the main attraction of Nando’s by the way, not their hot water. Unless of course, you have a baby on tow, or having hot water is an obsessive compulsive trait of paranoid celebrities who fear that anything less than tongue-scalding comes direct from the tap and is an attempt by crazy stalker fans behind the kitchen to poison them.

Such a sarcastic, synchronised reaction from the staff could only be triggered by a staff member with a personal vendetta against Joanne and her date, or Miss Peh was making an impetuous request worthy of humiliation. An explanation by Nando’s is in order perhaps, though any patron unaware of the ruckus over hot water would take the applause as just a playful announcement of Joanne and her beau’s presence and departure. Maybe they were experimenting with a new way of saying ‘Thank you, come again’, or it was special guest ‘Joanne has left the building’ treatment that Nando’s provides all their celebrity customers, since applause is to an actor’s ears like a mother’s voice to a helpless child . At least they didn’t taunt her with lines like  ‘Your character should have died in Little Nyonya!’ or ‘SPG!’.

Still, such fury over Nando’s price of hot water and attitude before being served anything comes across as a little petty even by Joanne’s standards. It’s not like someone vomited in her Peri Peri sauce, nor did Nando’s intend to deceive her by withholding the price of hot water and subsequent refills till she receives the bill. Perhaps if she had remained calm and sated her hunger without the trivial accompaniment of hot water,  this unnecessary fracas could have been avoided altogether.  Someone could have just offered a free coleslaw (maybe mashed potato since coleslaw is, well, cold) just to appease her, instead of orchestrating the bizarre gesture of mock applause behind the scenes.  Just remember to ask dear Bobby to bring a thermos along next time, then. Meanwhile, will an economist please stand up and clarify once and for all, how much should a cup of hot water cost, if not free of charge?

Postscript: Turns out that the Nandos’ staff were really taunting Joanne, and have duly ap0logised by sending  free bottles of Peri Peri sauce. Surprised that no free water was given with it, though. Nando’s were reluctant to explain why they clapped though. Anybody asked to define sarcasm or irony would be at a loss for words too.

Filed under: 2011, Customer service, Local actors, Local food | Tagged: , , , | 4 Comments »

M1 rejects husband who forgot wife’s D.O.B

Posted on March 12, 2011 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Can’t recall wife’s birthday, so no help from telco’, 11 March 2011, Voices, Today

(Jimmy Ng Kim Kok): Two days ago, I received a frantic call from my wife who is on holiday overseas, saying that her handbag containing her mobile phone had been stolen.

Immediately, I called M1 to ask for her phone line to be suspended. I was asked to provide my wife’s name, phone number, address, postal code, IC number – to all of which I gave the correct reply. Then, I was asked her date of birth. When I said I could not really remember, I was told my desperate request could not be acceded to. Weren’t the correct replies I gave earlier sufficient for them to act?

As the last straw, I was told to call my wife to ask for her birth date. How could I, when her phone had been stolen!

I hung up the phone and am now waiting for the phone bill to come.

Strange cliffhanger at the end, with the complainant resigning to being charged an extravagant phone bill from the culprit rather than finding means of retrieving such information without crawling in shame to his wife’s friends or worse, his in laws for help.  Which is why everyone should have a Facebook account, in case people forget their significant others’ birthdays, full name or their favorite colour, so that they can obtain such details discreetly without making a fool of themselves. It’s really not that uncommon for husbands to forget birthdays in brief moments of panic, especially when you have a spouse who expects you to recall multiple anniversaries, all her dental appointments and even your pets’ birthdays. But it takes some astonishing nerve to broadcast your failings for the whole world to see, which includes not just his wife, but his children, his wife’s friends, and the in laws as well. You could almost hear the collective awkward whispers of ‘Oops’ from everyone in the country and beyond reading this incriminating complaint.

To top it all off,  he then proceds to divert the blame from himself to the telco for abiding by protocol, when the sensible thing to do here would be to find out which hotel his wife was staying in (where she would most likely be after losing her hangbag, not shopping) and just call her directly, if she weren’t calling from someone else’s mobile phone already.  Which was what the staff at M1 probably meant anyway, before Jimmy hung up the phone and started sulking instead of doing something with a little more common sense than telling everyone you can’t remember your wife’s date of birth. Top pick for the  ‘Unintentional self-shaming’ award.

Filed under: 2011, Corporations, Customer service | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

Female cleaners in male toilets

Posted on February 3, 2011 by gdy2shoez

From ‘ Mind the gender in toilet cleaning’, 3 Feb 2011, ST Forum online

(Seow Joo Heng): OFTEN, we see female cleaners being employed to clean all toilets, including men’s toilets; and male inspectors inspecting all, including women’s toilets.

Obviously, this arrangement causes inconvenience and embarrassment to both users and cleaners.

Let us give some respect to all, especially the female cleaners, with just a bit of common sense: all cleaning processes involving men’s toilets can be handled by men, and women’s toilets by women.

A counter argument that this will then increase manpower costs should not hold water.

Perhaps instead on complaining about getting caught shaking off the last drops of pee at the urinal by female cleaners  one should consider that these workers are picking up our shit after us and it’s unreasonable to expect that, in this line of work with a possibly askew gender distribution, males can only clean male toilets and vice versa for female cleaners. What if there were only one cleaner on shift that day because her male colleague fell sick from clearing up someone’s liquid poo-margeddon the previous night? Would you rather the toilet be left in a state of  after-party faecal desecration, shit splattered and compacted that you would need tongs to fish out formidably rock-hard stools or unflushable condoms, swirling with noxious fart vapour so repellent and persistent your 15 minute lunch will taste exactly like the undigested discards of all toilet users combined? You spend no more than 5 minutes doing your business, these folks make sure you don’t slip on urine for more than 8 toxic hours a day. Show some understanding for god’s sake.

It’s a dirty, hazardous job really, and it’s understandable if toilet cleaners are an angry, disgruntled bunch who, being exposed to all manners of excrement, spit and pubic hairs in the course of a day, wouldn’t care less about your modesty even if you’re so well endowed that you have to stand an arm’s length away from the urinal just to relieve yourself. Best pee with caution, you know, adopting the usual stance of head and hands down, not hands behind your head whistling and cooing with pleasure. After all, it’s not just female cleaners one has to watch out for barging into our toilets, it’s also fathers who bring in their girls as well, as seen in this letter ‘Modesty issues at the urinals’, 26 June 2007, Today.

 

 

 

Filed under: 2000s, 2011, Cleaners, Customer service, Kids, Toilets | Tagged: , , , , | 1 Comment »

SIA does not have a nut-free environment

Posted on February 1, 2011 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Airline should take peanut allergy seriously’, 1 Feb 2011, ST Forum online

(Ai-Leng Hong): ON A Singapore Airlines (SIA) flight from Auckland to Singapore on Dec 13, my seven-year-old son experienced an anaphylactic reaction by inhaling peanut dust released when peanut snack packs were opened during the flight.

Despite earlier requests to not serve peanuts on board, SIA would not accommodate our request as it had stopped its “nut-free environment on board” policy.

Fortunately, my son did not die from that anaphylactic reaction as we had an adrenalin injection pen which we administered to him.

Following advice given by a senior crew member, we lodged another request to SIA to not serve peanut snacks on our scheduled return trip on Jan 11. Unfortunately, the airline refused to not serve peanuts on board.

…The commercial imperative is clear: Serve peanuts and neglect the duty of care that the airline has to provide a safe environment for all its passengers – including those suffering from allergies.

It would take a philosopher to distill the moral ambiguity in this situation, whether it is ethical for airlines to deprive hundreds of passengers of peanuts in order to prevent one child of unnecessary suffering or even death.  This peanut problem is confounded by locality and circumstance, namely passengers bounded by a common recycled breathing space, with barely elbow room between each other and complicit in the knowledge that slightest disturbance could affect every single person on board. Now, hypothetically, if I had a rare disease, not unlike the prevalence of anaphylactic peanut allergy, which  predisposes me to shock and epileptic fits whenever I smell life jackets,  wouldn’t it then be utterly unreasonable of me to request the airlines to remove all life jackets on board? All kinds of fatal hazards may occur on a plane which may not necessarily involve peanut allergens. Stagnant legspace may have a blood clot shuttling to my lungs while watching inflight Lord of the Rings trilogy. I may choke on a fish bone, or a baby could get smothered purple by a pillow while sleeping, does that give people the right to demand for wider aisles, ban all food with bones, or pillows?

The question then, is how preventable we deem peanut allergy to be such that appropriate precautions can be taken without inconveniencing others, and if it happens that someone on board is hypersensitive short of putting him in an aseptic bubble, I’m sure some understanding and sacrifice on the part of passengers, out of a simple concern for a fellow traveller, to open their peanut packs carefully in vacuum sealed bags or just keep them for later, would probably make the flight pleasant and hazard free for everyone without calling for a total nutty ban altogether. Still, it’s probably unfair of the complainant to blame SIA for not fostering a safe environment just because they expose passengers to peanuts, when they are so many other safety checks in place to ensure the damn plane doesn’t go up in flames and kill everyone, not just allergy sufferers. So, in the grand scheme of things, for hiring competent pilots, for having a decent ventilation system, for making sure the wings don’t fall apart, I would say that SIA is already taking good care of the majority of passengers, in terms of preventing what kills MOST people, whether or not they ban peanuts on board. They may have to do something about serving business class hysteria-causing drunken chicken though.

Postcript: In a SIA response on 3 Feb 2011, ST Forum online ‘SIA does offer nut-free meals’ (The first day of Chinese New Year mind you), Senior Vice President of Products and Services Tan Pee Teck stated that ‘…from 2002 to mid-2009, we offered to remove nuts and meals containing nuts and nut-derivatives from the class of travel the requesting passenger was on. However, we received numerous feedback from customers questioning this policy.’ i.e we tried to but got complaints by passengers who insist on peanuts. You just can’t please everyone really, and all this fuss over some nuts on a plane.

 

Filed under: 2011, Customer service, Local food, Singapore Airlines | Tagged: , , , , | 2 Comments »

Appetiser for destruction

Posted on January 12, 2011 by gdy2shoez

From ‘ 新航提供‘醉鸡’ 乘客担心坠机’, 12 Dec 2010, article in omy.sg (LHWB)

一名新加坡航空公司乘客申诉，在从新加坡飞往上海的班机，所提供的开胃菜“醉鸡”与“坠机”谐音，让他一路大感不吉利，足足5小时起鸡皮疙瘩、忐忑不安，直到飞机安然降陆才放心！

卓佳强是在本月3日搭乘SQ836到上海。他在投给《联合早报》的函件中，叙述这段经历。他说，飞机起飞后，他翻阅菜单的中餐部分，惊见“醉鸡”是开胃菜，“吓了一跳”。根据他的说法，“醉鸡”与“坠机”谐音，一般上华人为朋友饯行时，都避开这道江南小菜“醉鸡”。

卓佳强指出，这个航班服务的主要是中国旅客，用如此“不吉利”的菜肴为开胃菜很不恰当。

They served this on 9/11

Translation: A business class passenger with SIA got the shock of his life upon being served a drunken chicken appetiser on board, which in Chinese is the phonetic equivalent of ‘dropping out of an airplane’. The very inauspiciousness of the dish turned the writer into a nervous wreck for the remaining 5 hours of the flight, suggesting that, with a clientele of mostly Chinese passengers, SIA should take this har-winger of ultimate disaster off the menu.

And all this while I thought SIA’s business class caters to intelligent men of exquisite taste and discerning pleasures, not country bumpkin soothsayers who subscribe to pagan superstitions, numerology and the belief that a poorly named poultry dish will wrench the stars out of their alignment and lay an infernal curse on the engines of an airplane. Imagine the sheer pants-wetting anxiety of such complainants whenever they encounter something on a menu that foreshadows imminent death wherever they go, be it a Swensen’s ‘Earthquake’ ice cream on the top floor of a shopping mall or ‘Shark’s Fin’ on a sailboat. Even if you serve them rice and soggy cabbage instead to ward off any evil lurking in those inflight food trolleys, such people will see patterns emerging from the remnants of their meal that resemble nothing less than skull and crossbones, or a apocalyptic picture of biblical devastation, hellish fire, brimstone and all. We already have passengers complaining that inflight food is too boring, yet when you style it up a bit and give it fancy gourmet names, they blame you for portending doom for all on board. Superstitious passengers should just spend the entirety of their flight time with their eye-masks on, headsets tuned to the spa channel and starve themselves, preferably to death before suffering a far worse fate of a crash orchestrated by an evil drunken chicken. Top contender of the Most Kiasi complaint award.

Filed under: 2011, Customer service, Local food, Singapore Airlines, Superstitions | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Next Page »
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 170 other followers