Coz I don’t like them make the panda do kungfu.
That’s what my friend said when I told her about Kungfu Panda. Cool.
Aside from that, things had gone fairly okay. Forgive me for the 2-week break. I think its 2 weeks, but doesn’t seem to matter much, when week 10 is the last week before the 5-week Easter holidays begin.
Not much going on as well in the past 2 weeks. Well, the weather seemed to have changed for the better. It’s been very sunny these days, and the sun only leaving us at about 6pm, which is nice, because nobody likes a jog in the dark at 4°C. Walking to Tesco had also been a much more pleasant journey with the light.
Shopping in there though, was not very pleasant, as usual. But things took a turn for the worse last Wednesday. I was in a hurry that particular afternoon, so I only got about half the stuff I wanted to buy initially. Seeing that the queue at the cashier was short (which does not happen very frequently in this corner of the Earth), I made a run for it, only to be stopped by a staff, who asked me to use the self check out machine. Just to let you know, a self checkout machine is a cashier without a cashier in it. You scan the barcodes yourself, pack the stuff yourself, make the payment yourself and get out of there. Unfortunately, I belong to the group of sensible beings who never trust these digital stuffs, because they are bound to fail. Which it did. So did the rest of the staff in the store.
I did tell Ms Bossy that I prefer to queue. She said it would be quicker to use the dumb machine. I said I have all the time in the world to queue. She insists on me using that shitbox. Okay, very well, I’ll give it a try. So I loaded the stuff onto the counter top and started to scan the things. My first packet of instant noodles went well. The second didn’t, and already I was cursing. So I asked for assistance. Then Ms Constipated came to my counter, fiddle with her keys and my noodles, and it scanned. My third one again refused to show up on that piece of donkey machine, and this time Ms Constipated came back, and said “It wouldn’t scan if you put too many things on the counter.” Okay, got it, and it would have been nice if you told me earlier, and got rid of that pissed-off expression of yours. Hence the name. She looked more annoyed than my neighbour’s dog when my slippers went over the fence back at home. I think she probably found this young man a really big dumbo for not knowing how to operate the electronic elephant dump, but then again, Ms Constipated, do you know the difference between the Cournot and Bertrand model, and how is it related Kreps-Scheinkman theory? If not, then what are you fussing about? There’s bound to be something that’s beyond one’s knowledge, and it is unfortunate that today, I am stuck with this piece of junk appliance. Get yourself transferred to the cold storage department if you only want to show off that cold look and don’t intend to help out desperate customers who are forced to face the chicken feed machine in the store, like myself. And in the end, it did take me longer to get out of there compared to just queuing at the cashier. So much for customer service.
This led me to recall if there’s any of these ciplak machines back in Tesco Mutiara Damansara. And if I’m not wrong, there’s NONE. And I came up with a few reasons for these useless scanners to just remain in this part of the world. Firstly, the cashiers in KL would pack up your shoppings into plastic bags for you, so already it’s an advantage, or should I say, more pleasurable to let them do the job while you are busy searching for coins. Then, the queues in Mutiara are almost always 4 trolleys long at most, and there are a handful of express counters that cater for rushing customers. Again, no reason to employ those orangutan machines. But more importantly, and this why I think those plastic machines would be left to rot if installed in Mutiara, is that problems would be solved quicker with cashier around than otherwise. She scans an item, you find it too expensive and don’t want it anymore, she says no, cant do, you look at her with the George Clooney stare, she shouts for some dude who comes running with some keys, beep-boop-beep and back to business. If you, at the self checkout thing, scanned something you didn’t want, and the customer service guy is out for lunch, you might as well drown yourself with Pepsi if you insist on not buying it. And patience, I presume, is never KLite shoppers’ forte.
Ok, enough ranting. Apologies for that if you need some. Lets do some news. Toyota seemed to have disappeared from the automotive radar. This brake (or the lack of it) issue really reduced their public image to a piece of toilet roll, and no amount of bowing seemed to make things better. Really feel sorry for them. BUT, BUT, yo, chaps and chapess at Toyota, more reason for you to launch that FT-86 as soon as possible, cos you can be sure that for those who buy this car, braking is definitely not an issue. They’ll probably be modified and installed with Brembos the size of dinner plates and braided steel brake lines and floor mounted paddles, but, you get my point. It’ll sell.
GM, cheekily, had also had their own set of recalls, probably to check on the brakes too. No, no, just joking. Their recall centers on some faulty power steering. Which, if you give it a good thought, seems much more dangerous than the thing in Toyota. Tell me which is worse: not being able to slow down for a tree, but still able to put it in neutral to regain braking and steer away? OR braking hard, tyres smoking, but not being able to steer away from it? I can’t tell what’s in your head, but seems to me that if you can’t steer, you can’t drive.
Then there’s a new kid in the block of billionaires. A new kid who just moved in and blew the pants off the neighborhood. Haha, no, not really. He seemed more like the quiet kid on the block who keeps running after the ball and one day disappears with it and never returns. Whatever, cheers to Carlos Slim, richest chap in the world, and current world record holder of the most number of Zeros in his bank account and financial portfolio. 9 of them, if you must. He’s worth US$53.5 billion, according to Forbes, and this made me wonder, if he’s on a shopping spree, this is probably what he could afford. He could get about 40,000 Bugatti Veyrons, which is about ten times more than what’s produced. He could build 2 Burj Khalifa side by side with change to spare to build some waterfalls. He could buy every single thing that Lithuania produces in a year by matching their GDP. Or he could buy 53 billion tubes of Polo, and give each person on the planet 7 of them, and keep 10 for himself.
So, I guess that’s all for this post. And nope, I’m not going back to KL for Easters. Will try to update more frequently, now that the holidays are coming. And to end this, here’s a pic that I’d got from EVO.co.uk of the car that might potentially save Toyota from trouble: the FT-86. See ya.
