After last night’s Let’s Talk iPhone event, I’m open to trying out new mobile phones again! Ever since I got my 3GS, I’ve been rather stubborn that no other phone can replace the iPhone, but having used iPhone for two years now, I’m beginning to get bored of it. Not that I’ll not consider buying the 4GS, just that I think I should give other brands a chance.

My lifestyle for the next one year, in wait for iPhone 5, I’ll need the following features in my phone:

• great camera (8mp and above) to capture shots of kids in action with good lens, light sensitivity and macro shots
• email access
• good UI for access to Facebook, twitter, instagram, flickr, wordpress, google apps, dropbox and whatsapp
• good photo editing apps equivalent to camera+, photoshake and pictureshow on iOS
• at least 16GB storage
• good speakers

Anyone has got a better alternative than the iPhone 4S for my needs? If not I’ll have to join the queue on 28 Oct! -_-”

I’ve been a customer with Standard Chartered Bank for 2 years now, and there hasn’t been much complaints from my end. But our recent encounter with the bank hasn’t been a satisfactory one. Its either a lack of service standard by the staff (a Relationship Manager, Preferred Banking) who served us at Marine Parade branch that day or a lack of support at the backend of the bank. After 3 weeks, we have yet received what we were supposed to 7 working days from the opening of account.

Here’s our experience; anyone else shared the same experience before? Hope not.

It was on Sunday, 14 August 2011, when we visited the Marine Parade Central Standard Chartered Bank. Our intention was to open an account for savings with cheque book service and look at potential investment opportunities. After approximately 15 minutes of waiting, staff returned from their break and we were served by this young lady. After explaining our needs, she recommended us to take up a long term endowment plan (with Prudential) where we were eligible for a special short-term Time Deposits promotion where we get high interests return for a 3-month period. After calculating and discussions, we took up her proposal and signed up for the endowment plan, started two Time Deposits accounts and started an XtraSaver account.

As it was a Sunday, the bank were not able to deposit the cheque and all transactions had to wait till the next working day, which was the NEXT day. We asked when the ATM/Debit card, cheque book, Internet banking details and other documents will reach us, we were told the ATM/Debit card will be sent to us the NEXT working day and the rest of the documents and stuff will come in 7 working days. After all is signed and done, we left.

The first thing that arrived in our mailbox was the cheque book, followed by the bank transaction slip for our cheque deposit. A week passed and that were all we received. Then another week passed, still nothing was sent. We called the Relationship Manager who served us (whom also upgraded us to Preferred Banking status on 14 August 2011), she said she will check and the other documents should be on the way. After couple of days, still nothing received from Standard Chartered Bank. So I tweeted @stanchartbreeze hoping someone can help look into the matter. Private messages were exchanged and a phone call was made to clarify the situation. We were told they will send out the outstanding items the next working day, which was the day after Hari Raya. So by now, we should have received our ATM/Debit card, Pin for the card, Internet Banking information and documents for our endowment plan right? Sadly, only the card was received and it arrived on Friday! Without the pin number, the card is technically useless, except for purchasing it as a debit card; not what we needed.

From a verbal assurance that the card will reach us the NEXT working day, to a delay of more than 14 working days! This is NOT the kind of service standard we’re expecting from a bank, and for a preferred banking customer some more! Throughout this period of time, the only way we can access the money was to go to the branch and do our withdrawal over the counter. Much time would have been saved if the necessary stuff came in time, as mentioned by the Relationship Manager.

Several times we wanted to go straight to the branch to request for a card and the IB token, but was afraid the bank had already mailed out to us. So we waited. When we called the bank and when they called us after the tweet, neither of them suggested for us to have our problems solved at the branch. Wait was what we did.

If we had opened the account on a weekday, would all this have happened? If not, then is it a failure on the bank’s side to have weekend banking hours yet not able to deliver the standard that should have had for weekday banking? Is this considered a weekend banking fail?

We were looking forward to using the other banking services and products by Standard Chartered Bank before this happened, now we are seriously considering otherwise. If such simple transactional standards cannot be met, how can we trust that a long term property loan or even a CDA with Standard Chartered Bank is what we should take up? Hope something can be done about the bank’s service standard and SOPs. No point having a good range of products/services, great internet/mobile banking tools and nice website, but service standard isn’t satisfactory.

Let’s see how long more we’ve got to wait for the card pin, IB details and other documents pending to reach us. Haiz…

I am sooooo pissed!!! Cleared up the photos in my hdd to make space for more photos so I removed all albums from iPhoto. Not knowing that the flickr albums when deleted from iPhoto also means deleting from flickr, I removed it. And now I have NO way to get it back!

I’ve got too many of these showing on my blog now!! THIS IS DEPRESSING!!!

I do have all the original photos still in my backups but the pain is not the uploading part! Imagine going through all my blog posts to embed all the photos again!! I won’t even know which photos were used lah! This is the GREATEST FAIL in my digital life! I HATE YOU iPHOTO!!!!

I’m never going to sync iPhoto to flickr ever again! No matter how great your integration is going to be.

After a year of being a lazy organiser (of my photos), I used iPhoto to organise all of my photos. And today, when I’m about to clear up some space from my MBP, I got reminded of why I used to hate using iPhoto!

Caught these today and it really is upsetting. Is this commonly spotted at the Esplanade underpass? I know there will usually be group of people hanging around.

I don’t recall seeing any dustbin around, not sure why. If there were bins around, I wonder if this will still happen.

Yap, because health is like shit too, that’s why the color is like that. Healthy shit not this color one! While drawing this piece of shit, the 4 ply tissue in my nose were soaked! Ya, that’s how sick I am now!

Don’t know how I am going to survive the next 3 days with the gigantic list of work pending, blog posts pending and I need to get my suitcase packed for the trip to BKK on Friday! And no I don’t want to fly to BKK and end up sleeping in the hotel because of the weak body I’m living in right now.

Don’t care how urgent work is already! I need to take care of myself! It’s 9pm now. Shower, eat medicine and sleep!

Superman please save me!

I spent an hour trying to get our tickets booked online for GV Tampines but the server is overloaded and they didn’t take any effort to upgrade it I guess. So we tried Eng Wah and were so happy we managed to get our tickets for X-men Origins booked.

Both of us were looking forward to the movie and hope to enjoy a good show. But when we saw the seats in Eng Wah Suntec Cinema 2, I almost puked. Throughout the show, I was paying more attention on whether any part of my arms, neck or uncovered skin was touching the seats or not. I laid tissue on the seats and arm rest but still my mind couldn’t help but picture those dirty cushions touching me!

I didn’t get to enjoy my movie. Pictures tell a thousand words, here’s how clean my seats were!