I Want This Right Too!

My tech who is now doing her pharmacist pre-registration training in Canada called me a couple of days back. It was really good to hear from her considering she was not replying to my email and the last time it happened it was because she was hospitalised.

She was scolded by a patient earlier in the day. What happened was the patient had completely filled med A from his prescription and came back to ask for another refill. Naturally my tech explained that he could not get the refill. He then started scolding my tech and shouting at her. Lucky for my tech, her store's in-charge came out and scolded the patient. According to my tech, her in-charge said, "How dare you be so rude to my pharmacist. You are not welcomed in this pharmacy. Get out!"

I think all the pharmacists practising in direct patient care here in Singapore want to be able to tell our patients this too. So what if you are a patient, it does not give you the right to shout at the frontline staff nor to throw your prescriptions at them. We are humans too!

And people in the management, learn from the store in-charge. You need to protect your staff. Without your staff do you think the stupid hospital can continue to function?! Contrary to the old adage of "nobody is indispensable", professional healthcare workers are unfortunately not dispensable. A doctor no matter how brilliant is not a pharmacist simply because he/she does not have the qualification to apply for the license. Likewise a nurse's job cannot be replaced by a doctor or pharmacist because they are not qualified to apply for the license to practise. Wake up from your dreamland and see the truth.

SBS Buses

Ever noticed that some seats in SBS buses are not near any bus-bells? This is unlike TIBS buses which has 2 strips, one running along each side of the bus such that all the passengers can press to signal the bus driver that one is going to alight at the next bus-stop.

Anywayz, it was unfortunate for me to sit at the seat with no easy access to the bus-bell today. So when nobody pressed the bell even though the bus was nearing the stop I wanted to alight, I tapped this guy in front of me and politely asked him to help me press the bell. He turned around and gave me a disgusted look as if I just asked him for $100.

I had to repeat myself 2 more times before he actually pressed the bell for me. By then the bus was already within 2m from the bus-stop. Had the bus driver not been travelling slowly, I would have missed my stop. What a dumb ass...

Credit Cards

Shopping for a credit card is tiring business. After eliminating the black/ platiunum/ titanium or whatever-funny-metal cards, the average salaried worker like me is still spoiled for choice.

Maybe I take this too seriously. Knowing the annual fees and card perks is not good enough for me. I still need to know if the card has got a grace period to pay up the credit before the interest starts rolling, then there are the annual percentage rates to consider etc. It's information overload.

Then there's UOB's One Card which not only has a smart chip, but has a RFID chip as well. For a moment I was tempted to get the card until I recalled an article I read many months back regarding the weakness of such cards.

RFID chips are the thing you find in your EZ-link cards, and this advancement in technology allows for the so-called contactless payment. In EZ-link cards things are simpler as not much personal information are actually stored on the card. However when put into a credit card, it stores the credit card information as well as personal information of the user. Card security and consumer privacy becomes a much debated issue. Although major credit card companies have taken measures to secure the card information such that criminals working with credit card scam syndicates will have a hard time getting card information when positioning their card readers near cards with the RFID chip, until it has proven to be 90+% secured I think I will still stick to magnetic strips and smart chips.

As for privacy, RFID chips allows the card holder to be tracked. In fact AMEX was considering placing "consumer trackers" in some shopping malls to keep track of AMEX Blue Card holders' activities in the mall. In case you are clueless, AMEX blue card has got a RFID chip. Talk about big brother or Minority Report complex.

Anyways, think I will shelf my plans to get a credit card for the time being. Maybe 1 or 2 months later I will miraculously find a card that suits my needs without too many boggling information like points or miles system.

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Related sites to this post:

1. Choosing a Credit Card


2. Another Choosing a Credit Card Site


3. Contactless Credit Card Consumer Report 2006


4. A Somewhat Anti-RFID Chip Site

Waiting Time

The measurement of efficiency in service sectors. Bosses always hound on us when we have a poor waiting time in the pharmacy. They want us to form task groups to analyse and improve the waiting time. Little do they know that the real cause is because they had hired incompetent staff to begin with. Anyway, this is a story for another time.

A dad wrote into the Straits Times forum to "complain" about the poor waiting time at Immigrations and Checkpoints Authority (ICA). Apparently he waited more than 3 hours to get his daughter's passport. Well, I would be pissed off if I have to wait 3 hours just to get my passport so I am not blaming him for commenting on the poor waiting time.

He gave some suggestions on how to improve the waiting time. However, these are only good on paper. Having been in the service line for 3 yrs I know the limitations of what you can tweak to improve the waiting time, so I am going to dissect what Mr Goh had suggested.

1. Open more counters during peak hours to handle the crowd.
   
   
   • Possible solution, if there is sufficient manpower to start with. If ICA only has sufficient staff to comfortably manage at off-peak hours then opening more counters would not help. Empty counters will not give out passports.
   
   
   • If such is the case then this solution can only be pulled off if ICA hires more counter staff. Ouch! That is going to hurt the bottomline.


2. Roping in staff working at other counters to help issue passport. Mr Goh noted that other counters not issuing passports closed around 5PM.
   
   
   • Er... fair enough. However, it was probably time for the staff to go home. Asking them to stay back to help out with issuing passports, well, as they say 有钱能使鬼推磨. But there are also instances whereby the extra money is not worth sacrificing the time for rest and time to spend with the family.
   
   
   • Then again we are not working in ICA, perhaps there are fixed procedures to follow when issuing passports. It may be more than just matching the customer's ID with the passport. Given the severity of the matter should a wrong/faulty passport be issued to a customer, staff not familiar with the procedures may not be able to help out with issuing passports.

Whatever is the case, we should be a little more sympathetic towards staff providing us services. Staff can get demoralised too when they have tried their best, but never seem to meet the target waiting time. Worse if the customers are overly demanding during peak hours.

Some People Are Just Born Stupid

If anything happens, I can only say those people are just getting what they deserve. The Malaysian government issued a tsunami warning a couple of days back, but some people still choose to gather at the Penang coasts to see if the tsunami warning will come true. How duh can a person get really eludes me.

If a tsunami really occurred on that fateful day, those idiots would have been fish food, but do they care? Not. Maybe those people has got suicidal tendencies and probably felt disappointed when the tsunami did not manifest after all.

Anime Download - Partie Trois

Wanted to post this for some time, but as I posted earlier I was distracted by online detective games.

Anyways, there has been no updates about the Odex saga. The last I read Odex was given a deadline to submit the necessary evidences for the appeal; evidences submitted to request for a court order to get the names of pacnet subscribers were ruled to be insufficient and nonsubstantial. The deadline should have passed by now, so I guess Odex would have been deemed to lose the appeal? I'm a pharmacist not a lawyer so somebody please correct me if I am wrong about this.

Whatever is the case, here is a link to Odex's newly revamped website.

I did a quick tour of the website and to be frank I am kind of put off by it. The visual layout is appealing, but when you go down to the contents, they really do need plenty of improvement. Somehow Odex cannot seem to get competent staff. A few years back they got translators who plagiarize the works of other fansubbers. Now they get staff who does not know what it takes to make a good business website.

A good business/ commercial website needs to provide the consumers sufficient information about their products/ services. Take for example the DVD for Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle Vol 2. It was simply stated on the website that the DVD cost 20 credit points with no reward points. Does not tell me how many episodes I will be paying for, or which episodes of Tsubasa are covered under Vol 2. Thought maybe Odex made a mistake only for that DVD, but when I randomly clicked on another DVD, it is still the same. No mention of the number of episodes in that other DVD as well.

And what are reward points? I know if I purchase video-on-demand (VOD), for each episode I pay 2 credit points and get 1 reward point. So what am I to do with the reward points? Can I assume they can be used in the same manner as the credit points? Or are there restricted use of these reward points? This was not mentioned in the website nor under the "How to Get Started" link.

In addition, VOD is costly. Assuming reward points can be used as per credit points, then it costs $1 to download one episode of the anime which you do not get to keep for good. Think Mission Impossible. The VOD episodes are programmed to "self destruct" after 7 days. Okay... I am exaggerating. The episodes will not "self destruct" but they do expire 7 days from the date of purchase. Just consider this, you are paying approximately half the price for VCD, but you do not get to keep the anime for good. Some would argue that one can re-watch the episodes countless times during these 7 days, how many people in the right mind would re-watch the same episode 20-30 times in the span of a week unless you're telling me they are writing an in depth synopsis together with an analysis of the episode from characters development to the graphics to the OST.

Odex will have a hard time getting out of this mess and getting people to accept its products. I do not think offering VOD is going to help decrease illegal downloading. Do not forget, a significant percentage of the illegal downloaders are students. If the VOD is not going to be affordable at their level, then they will go back to illegal materials eventually.

Age Must Be Catching Up

Been forgetting little things here and there like where I placed my EZ-link card and mobile phone. My mathematical skills aren't as sharp as they use to be, been relying too much on my calculator at work... but never fear, I can still mentally split the dinner bill when going out with friends. And I can still do quick estimated currency conversions. Also realise I have a harder time focusing on reading nonfiction; worse if I am required to assimilate the information for application at a later date.

真是岁月不饶人。

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This is just an update... Had dinner with Tytianne just now and she looked quite amused when I stupidly asked her if I forgotten to eat my last meatball. Talk about dead brain cells. I had saved one meatball to the very end so I can slowly savour it, but forgot all about it until it turned quite cold...

做人要有自知自明。嗓子不好就不要在大庭广众高歌。丢了自己的脸到是小事一桩，苦坏了我们这些普罗大众那就不好。想练歌可在家中练，不要在巴士上练！

Distracted...

Found some really interesting websites, and have been engaged in online detective games for the past couple of weeks. BBC has got some really good flash games. Unfortunately, they are dispersed throughout the whole BBC website with no proper classification for easy location.

Go try them yourselves and see if you have what it takes to be part of the gumshoe community.

http://playsleuth.com/
http://www.mysterygamecentral.com/games/onlinegames.html