A day of cleaning

Last Saturday, Ah Mi and I set out to give our new home a good wash up. We visited Ikea to grab some lunch and some furnishings, a table and a lamp.

After that, we lugged our purchase to our new home, before going to the nearby Sheng Siong to get some cleaning gear and dinner. And by the time we were back with our cleaning gear, it was too late to do any work, so we called it a night.

Next morning, we woke up bright and early in the afternoon, and went over to our apartment to start work. Our plan was to clean up all 3 bed rooms and the common toilet. We figured that we shouldn't be over ambitious as I was still recovering from the aches and pains from my paintball game last Thursday.

In the end, we ended up cleaning the 3 bedrooms, completely cleaned the whole common toilet, scrubbed the kitchen floor and even mopped up the living room. It was tough, but we managed to get it done. :-)

And now, let the aches come...

So this is journalism huh?

Last Friday, I came across this product review in the Today's paper on my newly acquired toy phone, the Samsung Omnia, and I was quite angry at what was published on the paper. To those who are free enough to read, here is the review.

Basically, what it is saying is that, the phone sucks, and cannot be compared to the Apple iPhone. Normally, I'm quite fine with criticism to products, but having used this product for 2 weeks, I can't help but feel injustice done to this phone. Sure it has its flaws, but it's not as bad as the reviewer made it out to be. Moreover, the reviewer had a preference to the iPhone (oh trust me, you can tell if you read the review), and her description of the flaws of the phone was way off. Then it occurred to me that the reviewer had not really tried to explore the phone thoroughly, or she was those people who will simply condemn things that she cannot grasp. Anyway, whichever it is, this is no way to write a review (but please don't ask me to write one) , hence I decided to send an email to this technology editor to see what she have to say about what I feel.

The email I sent is as follows (Warning: long boring text ahead):

Dear Ariel,

Regarding the mentioned article, I would like to point out a couple of things.

Giving a product review is supposed to be unbiased and neutral. From your title as a online and technology editor, I would imagine that you should have knowledge that being a journalist, you should not put your personal likings in the article itself and affect the reader. Readers read reviews to find out how good or bad a product is, and sometimes use it to determine whether or not they should purchase the product. I find your review is totally useless in this aspect.

Right at the start of the article, I already came across the line "This 16GB touchscreen phone is a beauty, but alas, it's still no iPhone", giving me the impression that you might already prefer the iphone over the reviewed product.

Secondly, if you wish to compare products, please do so in a correct manner. Compare a Windows Mobile phone with a Windows Mobile phone, not a phone running Mac OS. Even if you want to compare different OS, how come you are not comparing phones running Symbian or Linux, or even the up and coming Android?

Thirdly, I am suspecting whether you have used the phone long enough to publish a review on it? There are certain pieces of information from the article that seems to suggest that you have not really used the phone for long. Information like the motion sensing accelerometer sensitivity, and the battery life is so inaccurate, that it leads me to believe that either you did not properly try out the phone for a few days to know the functionalities and features, or simply you have no idea how to operate a Windows Mobile based phone.

As you may suspect, I am a current user of the SGH i900 Omnia, but I am definitely not biased towards it. It has its faults and flaws, but I certainly don't think that it is as worthless as you make it out to be. In short, I feel that this article to be extremely biased and should not have been published. I am very disappointed by the level of journalism project by the Today paper, as the article sounds like a well written piece from Apple fanboy bashing up a rival product.

Please review this article again and let me know if I have wrongly interpreted your intentions.

Best regards,
Peter

I spent some time reviewing this email that I wrote, making sure that I sound civil while being able to send my point across, before sending it out. I was quite eager to see if I would get a reply from the editor, and sure enough, I got an automated reply from her that made me go "Huh?! What the.."

Reply:

Hi Peter,

Thanks for your feedback.

Would you like to give a line or two on what most impressed you about the Omnia? We're collating some feedback from users to be potentially published on the paper. Please also state your full name, age and designation.

Thank you.

I was thinking if this an actual response? Did she read my email at all? Was she thinking "Aiyah, another si gi na think he knows something about journalism that I don't know again ah."? In any case, since she wanted a line or two, then I give her a line or two loh.

My response:

Hi Ariel, I feel that Omnia is a device with many well integrated functionalities, with an attractive industrial design. While it is definitely not perfect, it is not as bad as you made it out to be in your review last Friday. In comparison, the iPhone is not without its own flaws too. In summary, I just want to say that if you have spent more time using the phone, you would have found out that it is quite a handy phone to have. There is no single "wow" factor for Omnia, hence I am unable to give you a line or two as to what is it about Omnia that impresses me the most. It is the combination and integration of everything in Omnia, hardware and software, that makes it a good phone. I would rather have a device with well rounded functionalities than a device that is very strong in aspect, but weak in others. That's all I have to say. If you are interested in publishing what I have to say about the phone, I'm a software engineer in my late twenties.

If my reply to her sounded pissed, that might be due to the fact the I AM pissed loh. Anyway, I wrote this expecting her not to publish anything from me, but I was wrong. On the way to work, I got a sms from my colleague that I was on the papers. I was thinking, "Ho ho ho.. What will she be writing about me? Geek Thinks He Knows Journalism? or Ignorant Bum Can Write!"

So I made my way to the office, and grabbed a copy of today's Today (pun intended :P) paper and read the article where I'm supposed to be on. Here is the article.

Anyway, this made me have a clearer understanding on how journalism work. When faced with questions to your article, just ignore the questions posed at you and get the reader who questioned you to "give a line or two to be potentially published on the paper", and get your colleague to publish a new article, totally unrelated to the previous one to try to "rectify" the first article, and Wa La! Problem solved.

And that, my friends, is journalism! :) Pete out.

Summer's Birthday Party

Today, Pete and I made our way to Earth Cafe, a pet cafe along Upper Thomson Road, for Summer's 1st birthday party.

Our birthday gift to Summer - a bottle of S.E.P (Stop Eating Poop) powder & a new duckie toy

Have not seen Jinglin for quite some time, and it was good to see her again :) We had a nice lunch at the cafe, made nicer with the company of Summer, the birthday girl of course, and 2 other dogs, Ah Bee and Cola. Summer has gotten bigger since the last time we saw her. Some pics to share...

Jinglin & me

Summer, the birthday gal with Pete

With Ah Bee, the possessive cocker spaniel, who barks when his owner gets friendly with Summer :)



With Cola, the gentle border collie



Food prepared for the 3 doggies



Summer's birthday cake - Summer devoured it, Ah Bee was fed piece by piece, Cola licked off the cream like a lady



Summer & us

It was an enjoyable lunch with the dogs :) After lunch, Pete and I went to town and had afternoon tea of Hilton's delicious cheesecake.

Another great weekend...

Shucks, Monday is beckoning again..

Thursday Nite Vivo!

Met up with Cindy over dinner on Thursday night. We tried out this little French place at VivoCity. We ordered a quiche each and shared a tiramisu. Verdict: Quiche was too salty, tiramisu was so-so, although there are reviews about the latter being good.

After dinner, we were about to make our way to the supermarket when we noticed a crowd surrounding the escalators leading to the cinema. Not knowing what was going on, we actually hung around and waited. During the process, we saw a few Mediacorp artistes such as Zoe Tay (and husband), Felicia Chin, Pan Lingling, Qi Yuwu and a few others. We suspected that it was the gala premiere of the new movie, Red Cliff, and thought maybe we should hang around longer just in case the BIG celebrities turn up. And lo and behold, Lin Chiling came walking in first (after some time). But I think I was more excited when John Woo, the director himself turned up. Never expected to see a big-name director in person! Cindy managed to snap a few pictures, but alas, the side profile of John Woo was the best we could get of him.

Not bad for a Thursday night...

Lin Chiling



Tada! The side profile of... John Woo

Finally...Checked

Finally...

Actual Day Wedding Photography - Checked!

Behind the smiles

You know, last time when I read about how people lament about how stressful and difficult it is to plan their wedding, I would always think to myself; With proper planning and management skills, this shouldn't be a problem.

So from the day that I proposed to ah mi, I dedicated myself to plan a wedding that will be stress free, smooth and happy to the participants. I threw in all my project management skills into it, spreadsheets, task lists, target tracking documents were drafted, milestones were planned and scheduled and action items were tasked. In my mind, nothing should go wrong, but even the best laid plans will backfire.

In the past few blogs, we announced many items accomplished, even the mother of all difficulties, the flat, was settled. You guys must be thinking, hey, its really going quite smoothly leh. Well, it's not. We are having lots of problems, and they can be summarized using one word: Parents.

People who have gone through this will know what I am talking about.

We want this, parents say cannot.

We say we don't want to do something, parents also say cannot.

When parents say they want something, we cannot say cannot.

Parents say "Up to you two to plan lah", but it's written on the fine print that you cannot do this that this that, and you have to do this that this that.

In short, this is the gist of what we are facing now. On one hand, I would like to satisfy our parents requirements, but I would also want to have a wedding that we enjoy too. As of now, I cannot really say that I'm enjoying the process of planning the biggest day of our lives. There were a couple of times where I'm really tempted to ask my parents that who is the one getting married, but I chose to swallow it instead. *Explodes* It's really not easy to satisfy others. Sigh..

Hence now, I'm in a silent mode at home, where I choose to keep my trap shut, rather than risking to say anything inappropriate. And since I cannot talk at home, I choose to rant here. Wahahaha.. So to those who already went through this, now I understand. To those who will be going to go through this process in the future, read up and prepare yourself. :P

Pete out.

Welcome!

"Tock tock tock, ding ding ding..." That was the tune being played yesterday as we visited our new home for the first time. The tune was created by knocking screwdrivers against the floor tiles as we checked for hollow tiles and other defects in them. We brought along our very first furniture for our nest (2 Ikea stools) for the job.

Welcome to our home :)

Pete at front door



The 2 pioneers of the living room



The long living room



Living room leading to bedrooms



Kitchen



Kitchen toilet



One of the bedrooms



Our 1st purchases for the nest

Keys to our future

Hello all!

Been really busy for the past few weeks so we did not have time to update the blog. Not that I'm very free now, but I think I should update on the "milestonic" events that happened.

Last Friday, ah mi and I took a day off to go do something very important for our future. We went down to Toa Payoh, signed a bunch of papers and got..... this!

All 30 of them. :) We finally got our house keys! Although our place won't be renovated for another half a year or so (for superstitious and rational reasons), we are still very excited to get the keys. However, we did not go and see our apartment just yet, and will only be going this Sunday morning (now this is due to superstition :P).

So having got the keys, but cannot open the door, what can we do but to go Ikea and fantasize how our place is going to be like next time. We got 2 stools, one pink and the other baby blue, for our home.

Today, we also just got news that the HDB officer in charge of our block approved the deferment of the submission of marriage cert for the flat. Yay! As we are deferring it for 1 year plus, we were not sure if it can be approved or not. So lucky us, ya? ;)

On other news, I decided pamper myself, and got myself a Omnia! It's a really cool toy.. Heee.. Hopefully, I will take more pics with it in the future and post it here. Well, that's all I have to say for now. More pics to come after Sunday.

No worries and cheers, Pete out.