25 Random Things

I first heard of this 25 Random Thingys in Google Reader. Knew it was just a matter time before it reached here. I think I prefer to do mine here. I've added too many people in facebook, a lot whom I don't know or can't remember, some whom I don't want to add but can't block.

Anyways,

1. I love dogs. I know almost everybody knows this but doggies must be mentioned here


2. My tongue has a little split in the middle. Maybe that's why I sometimes cannot pronounce words properly


3. I spent the 1st year of my life in Kelantan, then the next 5 years in England. I started my first year of school there.


4. I'm named Mindy because people in England couldn't pronounce my Chinese name so I was given a English name later. My mum was either going to name me Ruby or Mindy. (I'm glad she chose Mindy)


5. I used to be a very talkative kid. My primary school teacher changed my seating in class three times because I talked too much and I ended up sitting in the corner by myself.


6. Later in life I became an introvert. I prefer to keep to myself than to join a large group. I don't care whether that makes me look like I'm stuck up or anti-social. It's just who I am.


7. I can't speak Chinese. Maybe it's because I grew up in England. Maybe it's because my parents converse only in English. But I think it's because I suck big time in any language subjects. Throughout school I only scored A once in BM, during PMR. I rather study anything except BM. I stucked in BM.... and Geography.


8. I love Oprah. And I love Dr. Oz. He's the reason I'm starting to eat vegetables and exercising regularly


9. I would rather spend my money on my home which I spend most of my time then to spend it on a 1 week vacation in another country. Of course if I were rich, I would spend it on both and a lot of other stuff... like an iPhone.
   
10. Because of #9, my passport is absolutely clean. The last time I flew out of Malaysia was when I was 13, still using my mum's passport


11. Since I was 13, I always had long hair (except for once when I cut it shorter and Mun Yi screamed her head off when she saw it). I used to have ugly short hair when I was young because I wasn't allowed to keep long hair. I'm not brave enough to go back to having short hair


12. I don't believe in following traditions just because it's a tradition. I need to understand why I have to do something if I have to do it. If it's illogical, then I won't do it.


13. I can be a stubborn ass when I want to be.


14. I never used to swear, even saying "shit" was too vulgar... until I met Yin How.


15. I'm a little scared of the dark. Yin How likes to switch off the light while I bathe to make me scream.


16. I love The Simpsons.


17. I hate frying fish. I'm terrified of hot oil. I usually wait for Yin How to do it. I'm terrified of fire, I do not dare to light a match or a lighter. I'm scared of bees as well. And also cockroaches.


18. I value old friendships. I would rather have 1 good childhood friend than to have 100 friends I'm not close with


19. I call my sister Lulu Gen and she calls me Lulu Min. We started it after watching Breakfast At Tiffany's.


20. When I'm PMS-ing, I get very emotional. Even an advertisement can make me want to cry.


21. I'm not good in hiding my feelings. If I don't it like, chances are I'll show it


22. I usually only buy shoes from Vincci, Nose or Voir.


23. I sat in a push chair until I was 5. My dad wheeled me in a push chair to kindergarden


24. I love my TV, I love dark chocolate, I love tomyam, I love The Gilmore Girls, I love the color brown, I love Marley and Me.


25. I hate crowds. I won't go out on Valentine's day, or Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve just because everyone is doing it. I rather spend a quiet evening at home with the people I love.

I have to say that writing 25 random things about myself was harder than I thought.

Check out your facts before gossiping

Try to imagine that you are at work one day and your colleague suddenly asks you, "Eh, I heard your wife/girlfriend is pregnant. Is that true?" First of all, you'll probably be shocked where that person heard that news. Then you'll be annoyed why it's anybody's business to know. Then you'll probably be amazed how false rumours can spread like this.

Apparently somebody is telling people I look pregnant and the person he told happened to be my hubby's colleague who asked him whether it's true.

If you want to gossip about something that's a fact, then fine, go ahead if you want. But if you don't know whether it's true, please don't start rumours.

I'm damn annoyed that people expect a woman to get pregnant immediately after she marries. As if it's a woman's sole responsibility to get pregnant. I can understand why the older generation expect that. But coming from people from my generation is just sad.

It's almost like people have nothing better to do than to look for any indication that a newly married woman may be pregnant. And if it's a bit of weight gain, then she just has to pregnant and it's time to gossip. Why? Because she's just got married ma... so must be a baby la.

It's just plain annoying.

My morning addition

The beverage making machine is not working. SOB! For a while I panic a little. How was I supposed to function in the morning without my cup of Milo? Then I thought, silly girl, there are other beverage making machines in the building. I needed my cup of Milo and I needed it bad. If I were hungry enough, I would even walk to the 3rd building to get my Milo.

Took my cup to the second floor to get my Milo. Felt strange though, as if I was stealing Milo from another department. I found myself hurrying away with my “stolen” Milo back to the first floor. I got my cup of Milo, I’m happy.

Hopefully they’ll fix the machine soon. Or not I’ll be going up to the 2nd floor every morning “stealing” Milo. 0.o

He calls himself the Legend

As requested, Yin How's interview, the one where he made me read again and again :P


By APJ Corporate Communications

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みなさんからのコメントをお待ちしています。

Yin How Tan has been working with Dell’s customer care for 4 years and 8 months and has recently moved into a new role of standardizing processes for the region. He joined Dell as a call center agent working with ANZ customers before gradually getting involved in coaching agents on customer care as well as training new hirers with the right skills before they go on board. He has been leading the team supporting both ANZ pre- and post- calls and was the escalation contact point for the team in instances where customers want to speak to someone higher up within the Care organization.

An expert in all things to do with ensuring the customers get their orders on time, he was awarded the Customer Experience (CE) Legend award for December 2008. Here, he shares his thoughts on CE and why drives him on a daily basis.

What is the most challenging aspect of your job? What keeps you going?

The most challenging aspect of my job would be dealing with demanding customers, as well as making sure I keep all my customers happy at all times. I have come to realize continuous passion and patience are keys to delivering good CE. Receiving recognition from both internal and external customers fuels my passion and keeps me going.

What are some of the things you do to ensure your customers have a positive customer experience?

Walk the talk, and focus on building a long-term relationship instead of short term one with your customers. Remember to go the extra mile as this is very important in the service industry to cultivate the trust and confidence of our customers. Customers should be able to believe Dell is providing the best quality services and products to them, all the time, every time.

Can you share with us how the recent BPI projects you worked on help to improve CE?

In call centre environment, the most critical part would be ensuring the speed of the resolution while delivering an awesome customer experience. All my projects are based on improving these two areas.

As a start, teams must be aligned and processes, standardized, especially in terms of skills and knowledge among the care specialists. This is why I came up with a new hire training manual as part of my yellow belt project 4 years ago. Another project consolidated 10 manual excel reports onto a single automated tool to help care specialists improve their call handling time. It also strengthened backend support to the frontline, reducing the frontline’s workload and time spent on case follow ups. As a result, more time could be spent understanding and helping customers resolve issues swiftly.

Why is CE more important now when the economic climate is challenging?

I must agree that this year’s economic recession is one of the worst that I have come across in a long time but we should view it as an opportunity for Dell to grow even stronger. People are now thinking twice before spending money. If Dell continues delivering the best CE especially during this period, I am very confident that customers will appreciate this and become loyal customers for years to come. Build a stronger relationship with the customer during this period and it will pay back in a matter of time.

What advice do you have for colleagues on the topic of CE?

Continue delivering good CE and position Dell and ourselves as #1 in the PC market. Most importantly, whatever you do, it must come with passion from your heart.

The CE Legend

Yin How recently won the CE Legend award at Dell, an award to recognize the top performers across Dell worldwide who give the best customer experience.

Don’t know why he submitted that photo of himself. I think he was overexcited about getting interviewed so he rushed to take a photo for it.

For some reason, I feel he looks like a teddy bear. I’m going to call him teddy bear from now on. I’m so proud of my teddy bear. Go teddy, go teddy!~~

The Brangelina movies

I’m not a fan of Brangelina. But it just so happen that both are in really good movies this year.

The first is Changeling where Angelina Jolie portrays Christine Collins, a mother whose son went missing. The LA police during those times had a corrupted image, so to improve their image they found a boy who matched the description of the missing boy and returned him to Christine. Christine found that the boy was not her son and the story goes on to how she fought to find her real son.

Usually I don’t like movies that have bad corrupted police and the storyline didn’t seem very interesting. And I was wondering, how they could find a boy who is not her son and insist that he is? But as I watched on, I found that it was a compelling movie that it had a twist to the story. And Angelina’s acting is absolutely superb giving a powerful portrayal of a mother’s anguish. Also, this movie is based on true events giving the story more credit.

All in all, a good watch. And it’s a sad true story, which unfortunately does not have a happy ending.

In The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Brad Pitt plays Benjamin who is a person born as an old man who grows younger. Huh? Kind of silly when you think about it. But I have to say that make up and video editing really can do wonders. Using make up to make someone look older is not unusual. But to make a man in his 40s look like a teenager?

The movie moved a little too slow for me. Or maybe it was because I found myself impatiently waiting for Brad Pitt to grow younger. Brad Pitt as an old shriveled man looked terrible though I had to admire how well the makeup was done. Throughout the first half the movie I could feel myself silently screaming, “When he going get YOUNGER!!??”.

And when he finally became younger, damn…. he looked good. And when you think they can’t make him look any younger, the last few scenes showed him looking like a teenager. How the heck did they do that? I was amazed… and drooling at the same time.

This is a movie which reminds us that we will all grow older one day and we will all end up in the same place. So live life to the fullest. And if you think that growing younger is better, you’d be wrong.

Yin How fell asleep during the movie and woke up towards the end when Brad Pitt was young. Maybe you can do it if the movie bores you. Overall, I thought the movie was good. Or maybe it because I was just satisfied after the long wait to see Brad Pitt young and handsome at the end. :P

Ta-da

Brocolli with oyster sauce, fried egg, tom yam flavoured steam fish, and "old cucumber" soup.

Not bad... not bad at all... considering I came home from work and cooked it alone while waiting for the hubby to come home.

The whole fish cost me RM20, soooo sakit hati buying it.

The 8 levels of persecution

The only good thing about a Chinese 8 course reunion dinner is that you can count the dishes to know when its gonna end. And when the last dish comes it feels like the best dish ever. At the 6th dish now. 2 more to go. I can do it... I can do... :)

Twittering blogger

There was once I was crazy over an online game called Maple Story and managed to get a few people around me to join the addiction. After that addiction died down, for a while later I was crazy over Facebook and pestered everybody around me to join Facebook. After I got bored with Facebook, I became fascinated with the wonderful world of Google, especially with Gmail and Google Reader. Then I became crazy over blogging, trying to convince others to start their own blog.

My latest fascination is Twitter. Twitter is the latest craze on the web, though it's not that popular here in Malaysia yet. Twitter is fun because you get to update it wherever you are using your handphone or the web. And it can send updates to your handphone whenever someone posts an update. It's almost like chatting with others, just not in real time. Micro-blogging is cool!~~

Also crazy over Firefox lately. It's so much better than Internet Explorer, especially when I access sites on the intranet at work. It's much more faster. And it has a lot of cool add-ons.

If you have Twitter and Firefox, you should download the add-on, TwitterBar on your Firefox. It allows you to enter your status updates in the address bar of any open browser which then directly updates your twitter. Or you can get TwitterFox which will display status updates of everybody at the corner of your browser.

Using Twitter, you get to jott down what you are currently doing or any random thought you have at that moment. A day usually flies pass by, and memories of that day are just lost. So sometimes it's nice just to capture a thought when it happens so that you can read about it days later. Though when I read back what I wrote, I realize that I'm constantly complaining that I'm hungry... hmmm...

Yesterday I was suddenly determined to find a way to send updates to my blog and twitter using my handphone. As you know, my handphone is old with no features to connect to the internet. But I was convinced that there had to be a way to do it through text messaging.

Finally found that I could do it by sending a MMS to my blog email which will publish the post to my blog immediately. Helps me feel more connected during those times when I'm out there feeling so stuck and disconnected.

It's gonna be a matter of time before my craze for blogging and twitter dies down and I'll move on to my next craze. But until then, go and start blogging and start twittering ya... I'll pester you the next time I see you.

PS - my dream job would definitely be working in a web-base company. Oh how I wish....

More bad news

Damn hungry right now. Drinking water to reduce the hunger pangs (something that Ian taught me to do now that he is in cost cutting mode hehehe).

Received bad news today. No salary increment for this year.

SOB!~~~~~~

Oh well, kinda expected it since all MNCs are not doing well. 2009 looks grim. Bad news everywhere. I'm just grateful I still have a job without any pay cut yet. And I'm grateful that I still get a free cup of Milo every morning. I think I'd be more upset if they decide to take away the beverage making machine. I'll cry. I need my daily cup of milo to function.

Baby making plans (if any) have been postponed until further notice. A baby is just to darn expensive. Initially was planning to have our honeymoon this year but scrapped that idea as well. Don't want to spend unnecessary.

Oh and apparently the world may be ending in year 2012. It's another one of those end of world predictions. Heard it on the radio this morning. Google December 21 2012 if you're curious. :P