The Moley Prophet

The largest fast food chain in town has something up for this lunar new year. And the mole feeling hungry, went to take a bite at the Longevity Meal. Hope its what it sounds like. Mac foods shortens your life is all I heard.

MacDonald's

Date visited: 23 February 2007
Time visited: 3:50pm Approx.
Outlet: IMM
Queue: None
Food ordered: Longevity Meal (Changed soft drink to Milo +20cts)
Price: $6.50

Time for food to arrive: Quick (9.5/10)
It took just about a minute for my food to arrive from the point I order to the point when it's packed and ready. It could have been faster though. The guy who was serving me was rather blur and wasn't helping with the packing while his colleague was doing it.

Food quality: Average (4.5/10)
Rubbish. The burger is called Prosperity Burger. But I guess, you become more of broke then prosperous after you finish the burger. They added too much black pepper that all you taste is… black pepper. You get sick after eating it. The burger was small. Very small. I don't agree with Willy Wonka here that something big will become small on print or tele. Its rather they upsized it on print. The only savior was the fries.

Satiety: (7/10)
I feel full after the meal, though I thought it was because I had some other stuff before.

Value: (6/10)
The freaking burger was so small. The meal costs $6.50 and yet, as compared to a meal at Burger King, its burger is atom size! I just went through the prices of its French Fries today and found out that it has increased from $2.00 to $2.60 (60 freaking cents!) in just 5 years or so. The good thing about Mac is they never giam on the sauces.

Packaging: (8/10)
Packaging was ok ok. Nothing much to say about.

Ambience: (8/10)
Correct set of lights used. Feels comfortable and cozy around

Overall: (7.16/10)
Not bad results overall. I guess they have to improve on their food and also recalculate the pricings. I believe this is far from burgernomics.

Happy New Year to all my friends out there. For this New Year, I have decided to once again make my assignments open source. Please do remember that they are for reference only. You will be able to download them from the links below:

Best Realty (Chapter 3 Exercise 5)
The Fishing Pole (Chapter 3 Exercise 6)

As the New Year approaches this year, our beloved finance ministry gave their cock and bull story budget for the new year. Just after they announced that the salary for ministers are going up, they are taking away more money from the citizens to fit that hole in a country where "democracy" is so called present.

As expected, the GST has increased 40% this year. It wouldn't take too long to increase further. And how did the intelligent government tried to twist their findings and words? They gave out some packages, meant to "offset" the increase. Oh! As if they were such nice people. I heard they were giving out some stuff of monetary value as well. How much was it? $100 bucks if you stay in a private property. What the heck. We pay the most, and yet, get the least benefits out of all these. It doesn't mean people who stay in private property are rich. Most are middle-class. In my opinion, the middle class are always the people who lose out. Take this increase for example. The poor gain from the packages given out. The rich gain from the reduction in corporate tax. The middle class? Gain shit and more work as they have to work harder to pay for the increments.

And yet, they could claim that the packages offset the increase for up to 16 YEARS! What nonsense. Anyone who believes is an idiot. I wonder how they calculate. It is indeed questionable on the statement. Why would they need to increase GST when they could offset it for 16 years? And who will believe that they would not increase GST in another few more years. My mother would dump me on the streets if I were to believe them. Do you?

Today, I went down to NSRCC Toastmasters to do my 7th project, as part of a demo on how projects are to be done. I know I'm not a good speaker, I'm just average, but as DTM John Sih said, practise makes you better. I strongly believe in that.

So I met Dayal and his wife, Florence at Far East, and he sent me down to NSRCC. Just to sidetrack a little, I need to comment on the Nissan Cerfiro. I always disliked the Cefiro and found it crappy compared to the Camry. Didn't know why people like the Cefiro over the previous Camry. The Camry is a great car from the previous to the current model. I was in both before. The engine, compared to that in Nissan cars, were fabulous. May seem a little underpowered, but it was never noisy compared to Nissan's although the Cefiro had a bigger engine. Finishing wise, needless to say. Although the exterior design of the Nissan Murano, was one of my favourites, the interior is totally rubbish. And the Cefiro doesn't get away from the same crappy design. It totally sucks. Old, squarish with finishing like those from IKEA.

Anyway, Dayal picked up Pradeep from Tanah Merah MRT before turning back to NSRCC. We were talking all the way from the moment Pradeep hops in. May be due to my nature, I was never bored by adult's talk. They always have something that interests me.

The venue used to host the meeting had a nice view, although it was kind of old. And I agree with Dayal, it just needs some renovation before it would become a great place. After we viewed the venue, we went for tea. Gosh, the cafe was totally crappy. Ever seen Kopi-O and Teh Tarik served in a bloody big glass with no handles? I wonder what kind of members they serve.

The meeting ran pretty fine except for the delay and the lack of enthusiasm from the members, which is normal for a new club, especially one with young members. However, Dayal's enthusiasm always encourages others. People like him is what we need in an organization like this. People like Kyle and Gary as well. Although Gary may seem over enthusiastic at times, but he always tries to help. Its not like Patricia and Chuan Aik, who doesn't do much, although she does try to get stuff done at district level. However, she just does too much talking. Chartering a club is not so simple. Look at what Dayal does, he's the area governor, has 5 clubs under his belt, does his sponsor work properly, and even becomes the new club's VPE - the one which does the most work. And unlike what happened at SIM, the club was chartered pretty quickly.

Of course, he had the support of friends and fellow toastmasters from SRC. And why does he have this much support? Cos he doesn't nag and do nothing to help. To me, there are just acquaintances. There are only friends. Friends who are loyal, they deserve you to be there for them. Unloyal? They are not friends, not acquaintances, but just an empty shell.

Tonight's the night! Chartering of SIM Students Toastmasters. Spent a whole day preparing for the event. Woke up at 7+ in the morning to prepare. Wasn't able to sleep properly the whole night. Took about 45 minutes to put on my contact lenses with the help of my sis. Got my shirt pressed, tie up, jacket in the sleeves and set off. It was kind of weird without glasses on after spending years with it. First problem with the lenses came when I had to look at the computer screen. Everything was blurred as there wasn't glare protection or whatever is that called with my Dailies. Damn. My eyes still kind of hurts now.

Reached school and met Ryan at the bus stop who can't stand me wearing contact lens. Haha! We went through a whole session of boring lectures by Okullo and went for lunch after that.

When we came back from lunch ZZ and I went to get the posters from SCS before going off to put the room in order. The posters were … ZZ requested the posters printed on A3. And yes they did print it on A3 paper, but in A4 size. Heck. So, I skipped COM 217 lecture and went to clear up the room with ZZ. Thanks Anita for collecting the assignment for me. ZZ and I overhauled the room by clearing out the tables and arranging the chairs in position, the table cloths in place, name tags in their holder laptop ready, lecturn in place, sound check done. And the people could tell us they do not have enough man power. All it takes was 2 people.

When the ushers came, we sent them on pasting the signs, and with a walkie talkie on hand, they left the place. I was quite amazed how well my Motorola works. I thought the label just gave a crap distance. It could actually go from the RM5.27 (at one end of the school, right inside the room) to the gate at Ngee Ann (at the other end of the school, down 2.5 levels).

When everything was done, ZZ, Fawwaz and I just stayed in the room talking and practise speaking. Then, they commented about my tie, saying that Mochino (the brand of the tie) was an ah beng brand along with Dolce & Gabana and some others I could not remember. I supposed Montagut was one of those brands as well. Freak.

We waited and waited until the night came. Everything went on well and pretty smoothly and being the TME, it was my style to disturb the speakers and guests. Ryan, as usual, made a marvelous speech. Louis with his entertaining personality, came up with this theory, with added humor. I heard Bernard walking up to him to tell him its possible (opposite of what Louis said) to shed 20KGs off himself. Who the heck he thinks he is telling the past ODAC President and a member of SIM Soccer team that? How do you shed 20KG of muscles? Dear Bernie, Louis does not have the same body fat percentage as you. Nevertheless, the night with the food went on great. Thanks everyone. Any photos you want could be found at http://picasaweb.google.com/alvandg/Toastmaster
http://www.flickr.com/photos/47284858@N00/sets/

Then it was the time for me to take out my contact lenses. How difficult could it be? I spent about 5-10 minutes in the toilet trying to take it out, but it would not work. Then, I engaged the help of Ben Chen, who fooled everyone thinking he had perfect eyesight with his contact lens. One came off after much struggling. Ryan came to help too, giving support. Hahaha. And Louis together with Fawwaz came later. Louis tried to help me open my eyes and let me pull the lenses out. It wouldn't work. So I opened them and let him pull the lenses out. Still wouldn't work. I was left half blind to get home. Hahaha. In the end, it took me just about 5 minutes to get the lenses out at home. Damn. I think that was the worst case of a contact lens user. And I have 100 over pieces of lens left….