Ruined Gathering

My phone is buzzing with messages now and I always just feel this huge sense of relieve when the messages aren't coming from any of my clients.



It's late now, around 10 pm and I really do not want to be disturbed by any of them right now simply because it is extremely annoying to have to deal with work related problems when every other working adults are about to go to bed or are already in lalaland.



A few days ago, I actually met up with a few of my secondary school friends and while we were discussing about getting desserts from a nearby pastry shop after our dinner, my phone started buzzing with messages from my clients and right when I saw the barrage of images and messages, all that excitement and anticipation I had for the desserts just completely went away, it was so horrible because I was actually really really looking forward to trying the pastries but I just had zero appetite.



My friends bought a hazelnut tart as well as an Ice Cream to share and when they offered it to me, because my mind was so occupied with my clients, I simply found no joy in the food, it was good but my clients were ruining my appetite for food. That being said, the issues that were brought up by my clients were valid and they are partially oversights on my part, so I did deserve the disturbance, but it still sucks.




I was able to drop by my site at Sembawang today to take a look at the progress of the renovation and everything seemed to be going well, lights were being installed and everything seemed to be on track, the installer had no issues, so I decided to make my way straight back to the office after that site visit, seeing how I haven't actually been doing my duty for the past month and I was having this rare moment where I didn't actually have to drop by any other sites, it's probably a good time to start.



So I took a train that was headed for Toa Payoh and mid-journey, Eve decides to reply to a message I had send to the group chat earlier this morning. The reason why I send her that chat was because she didn't respond to the one I had send yesterday. The new text was essentially to reiterate the issues I had yesterday, to get her to actually reply because it was holding up the renovation works, and she finally did try to address the issue at hand. It didn't really make much sense to be honest, so I told her that I didn't understand what she was trying to tell me and thought she was just trying to cook up some bullshit excuse to cover up for the fuck up.


My client was also in the group chat but she was just reading and not responding or asking any questions, which was really irritating because I had told her from the start that if she were to engage her own contractor, I will play no part in coordinating the works of that contractor for her, but look at me now, coordinating the works for her because she managed to find an inept individual and I have to be the one who cleans up the mess.



So I had a bit of back and forth with Eve and I really wanted to just call my client and complaint to her about how unnecessary all this back and forth was and how we could have avoided all this had she just decided to use my contractor, what I said to my client when she first told me she wanted to get her own electrician was this....

"If you are going to be getting your own electrician, I won't coordinate their works for you, you will have to do that yourself, the most I will do is allocate a date for them to drop by and that is it, I will have nothing to do with them,"

... and she understood the terms and got her own electricians, I really wanted to throw this back at her, but I held back and continued my conversation with Eve, the conversation went nowhere and finally Eve just asked me...

"Will you be dropping by the site today? Adam will be there."

... a part of me really didn't want to go because I was already on my way to the office and I am not being paid to coordinate with her, so why the hell am I even having this conversation with Eve, but after remembering the screw up that Adam did, I really had no other choice, so I told her I will meet Adam on site, got off at Toa Payoh, bought a drink, and then hop on to the train and went back the direction I had come from to Choa Chu Kang. It was so stupid.

I reach my site about 40 minutes later and Adam was there, so after settling down, I went straight into the fuck up that happened. He did eventually sort of rectified the issue, but the whole cutting a hole in the wall bit was completely unnecessary, he cut a hold because he wanted to add extra support in the wall for the fixture, I told him that it wasn't really necessary because if my carpenter can mount a huge cabinet on the wall, the small electrical fixture my client wanted to install will definitely be light enough for the wall to support. I decided to stay at the site for a while longer to see what else was going to be done, did some scheduling work with my other contractors on the phone while I was there and then finally left after about an hour.



Adam did manage to damage a portion of on of the carpentry while I was there, so that is another issue I will have to deal with. I told my carpenter about it and the first thing he told me was...

"I will have to charge you for it."

 ... I understand that he has to charge me for it, but lately, my carpenter has also been quite disappointing. In the past, he was very helpful and would do a lot of additional things for me without charging me, but lately, the overall quality of his service has taken a bit of a dip. He is still good, but just not as helpful as he was last time.




Not too long ago, literally about 40 minutes ago, it's 12.30 am now as I am writing this portion of the post, my client send me a message that writes....

" I will talk to you tomorrow."

...what purpose does that serve? Telling me you will talk to me tomorrow.


It's midnight, I am about to sleep and you drop me a text that has no context whatsoever. Now I am going to be spending the night worrying about what conversation I will have to deal with tomorrow with my client.



If you want to talk to me tomorrow, then talk to me tomorrow, I mean what is the whole point of the text, am I suppose to treat it like a royal decree, that I shall be spoken to tomorrow?

The Chinese Word is 傻逼

I really do not like it when my client decides to engage a third party sub contractor and request for me to coordinate the sub-contractor work for them.

I don't get paid for coordinating with them because I can't do any sort of mark up for the services they offer and I don't know how they work, I don't know if they are efficient or if they actually know what they are doing.

With my own sub contractors, I have worked with almost all of them multiple times and because they have always been relatively efficient, I continue using them, so when I get thrown a random third party sub-contractor that not even my company has vetted through and approved, it is quite worrisome and I always tell my clients that if they want to get a third party sub-contractor in, then they better be ready to deal with the sub-contractors on their own because I want nothing to do with them. 

For one of my current project, my client did just that, she decided to engage her own electrician because she found their prices cheaper, as it always is when they decide to liaise with a contractor directly, so I told her right from the start that if she wanted to engage her own sub-contractor, then she has to deal with them herself, and she was totally fine with it, she was sharing with me about how the electrician she has engaged is very friendly and is very familiar with residential projects, that she didn't need to show up to the site to discuss the electrical works with the electrician because the electrician simply knows what to do.

It's all bullshit.

Ever since the renovation started, I have had to get my client to call up the electrician to rectify so many different issues, issues that shouldn't even be happening in the first place for someone who claims they are very experience with residential projects. To make things a little less complicated, I shall call the electrician Eve and her worker Adam.

Eve is the one that talks to the clients and Adam is the one who does the labour, and when the first issue actually came up, my client couldn't understand what exactly had to be rectified because this is her first time doing renovation works and I also don't expect her to know how to tell the electrician what needed to be done, so she requested to start a group chat with me and the electricians and I proceeded to shared with Eve all the problem areas that needed to be rectified, every time I share a problem with her,  she would go...

"Noted, Adam please take note of all this changes."

... and that would be it. 

But Adam didn't take note of all the changes because every time I go back to the site to inspect, something is always left undone, the wires are not extended, outlet points are not relocated to the requested location and EVERY TIME, when I message my client about it, she will tell me to share the problem in the group chat because she wasn't very sure what I was talking about, so I will just forward the text to the group chat, or sometimes she forwards it herself, but will then ask me to explain in detail to the electrician so they can get a better idea.

This has happened multiple times over the course of the entire renovation and just today, when I went to my site to inspect what the electrician has done, I was bloody shocked.

Just a little background, so on Friday, I decided to drop by the site to take a look at the progress, just for the sake of taking a look at what has happened thus far, I wasn't expecting any contractors to be on site that day because as far as I was aware, Eve had told my client in the group chat the day before that she would only confirm the date for the installation of lights "tomorrow", which is Friday, the day I drop by the site

Confirming the date and actually showing up to install the lights are 2 very different things, Eve didn't confirm the date and Adam was just there on that day I dropped by, it was unexpected but I didn't really care too much because being early is a good thing and I also needed give him some instructions that I felt would be a lot better done if I explained in person.

What I needed for Adam and Eve to do was essentially help me do some screw markings on the wall for a fixture that my client wanted to install, simple as that,  and it was honestly quite infuriating whenever Eve reads the text but never acknowledges it, I told her a total of 3 times and all 3 times, she doesn't acknowledges it, my client had to text me personally to confirm if Eve knew about the fixture marking and every time, my reply would be the same...

"I already wrote in the group chat."

... so up till Friday, I never actually knew if Eve and Adam were going to do the marking for me until I actually spoke to the latter.

My instructions to him were simple, mark out where the screws would be but don't install the fixture on the wall, and I reiterated it multiple times that I only needed him to do the marking, he acknowledges my request and I left the site, thinking he was going to do what I had instructed, I mean it was a really simple request....

"Mark out where the screws will be on the wall."

... I didn't think he could mess this up, so I didn't bother to drop by the site on Saturday as I had to be at another site to deal with another problem, which I will probably blog about in another post soon.

Today, I had some free time, so I decided to drop by the place and take a look at the progress, I was quite excited because Adam had assured me that he could complete all the light installation by Thursday and I was just really excited to see how the place would look with all the cove lighting and down lights all fully lit up.

Unfortunately, Adam lied to me because not all the lights were installed when I dropped by just now. The toilets were still not done, the kitchen wasn't done, the service balcony wasn't done, the down-lights in the bedrooms could not be turned on because all the switches were not installed. 

I know Adam has to come by a second time to install the fixture, so I wasn't too bothered by it, then I remembered about the fixture request, so I went to take a look, fully expecting the wall to have some sort of pencil markings on where the screws of the fixture will be or at most have the fixture loosely secured on the wall, but there wasn't any because instead of MARKING the wall like I had instructed, Adam went to CUT a fucking hole in the wall the size of the bloody fixture.

I was so fucking blown away. 

How the FUCK are you going to secure the fixture on the wall, now that you have removed the portion of the wall that the fixture is suppose to be fixed on, like what the actual fuck? I don't fucking get how he can screw up such a simple request.

I have since sent a message to the group chat and both Adam & Eve have yet to reply, they have read the text and so has my client, but no one is responding yet, I'm not sure how they are going to rectify the issue and at this point, I really don't want to care, this is the problem they created, so they will have to settle it themselves, I will have to ask my client to directly check with them tomorrow if they still choose to remain unresponsive, she was the one who decided to engage them so she will have to deal with the consequences of engaging a random electrician.

A kidney isn't enough.

So Apple just released a new batch of iPhones and even though I am not very interested in getting an iPhone in the immediate future, I still had enough interested in the product to sort of keep up with it.



There is the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max and iPhone XR. The first 2 cost about a limb and a half, at a starting price point of $1,649 and $1,799 respectively, while the XR, that is the cheaper variant actually cost $1,299.


Just to put into perspective how ridiculous that price is, the Samsung Note 9, which is Samsung's current Flagship Model, can be purchased right now at a price point of $1,340.

One is a flagship model and the other is a "cheaper" option that is supposedly the "iPhone for everyone", the price difference between the two is only $50



WHAT!?!?!?!



And to put even more perspective just how insane that pricing is, the current phone I got, which is a Huawei Honor flagship model, cost me just $600.

I am hoping the sales of the new iPhone won't do well because this is ridiculous, aside from the fact that the phone now cost as much as a very decent mid range laptop, Apple has also decided that they will no longer include a 3.5mm Headphone Dongle in the box, now consumers will actually have to pay for the dongle separately if they are planning to use their wired earphones and headphones with the new iPhone.



And from the start, ever since Apple introduced the quick charging for their iPhones, they have never included the fast charger in the box, it has always been a separate item and I just find that really iffy, considering how other brands are including the fast charger in the box, I actually came across a comment online defending Apple's decision on that and I just find it really bloody stupid ...

"I am glad Apple did not include the fast charger in the box, wouldn't want my phone to be exploding for charging the battery too quickly."

... so if Apple doesn't include a normal charger, then you should also be grateful because Apple potentially solves an addiction problem? Can't become addicted to the phone if the phone cannot be powered on in the first place right?

When the new iPhone finally becomes available at all Apple Store 

Take The Hint & Go Away

Had to break news to a potential client that I couldn't commit to her project and it was really uncomfortable.

I had to lie about why I couldn't commit to her project because the truth is she is a pain in the ass to deal with and I couldn't say that to her.



She is a very nice and friendly person to talk to and I will admit, we had a good chemistry going into the consultation sessions, she was also very interested to engage me for my services because she felt that we clicked really well as compared to the other Interior Designer she had shortlisted.



But when I found out the type of apartment she was staying in and the location, a part of me started to lose interest in the project. When I first met her and we talked about her requirements, it seemed alright, pretty straightforward and nothing too out of the ordinary, a few simple touch up works here and there, redoing the entire kitchen and bedroom tiles, so I did my best to prepare a quotation for her and send it her way, thinking that if she isn't interested, then I also don't really care because I am not interested in the project, I wasn't against it initially, but I was also not very keen on it.




But she gets back to me not long after and we had a discussion on the phone, that was when her requirements started to get really really difficult, she was requesting for the kitchen tiles to be done, but to leave the existing cabinets alone, which meant my tiler had to be very careful when they are removing the tiles, to make sure it doesn't damage the existing carpentry, then she requested for the tiles to be polished, and the tiles isn't marble or granite, it is normal homogeneous floor tiles, which is not a surface that is commonly polished and then there are a slew of other really weird requirements  that would cause so much unnecessary labour for my contractors that it just made me lose all interest in her project.




I tried my best to coax her out of all the weird requirements, so as to make my job a lot easier if for some unfortunate reason I actually got myself into the mess of her renovation, but she was adamant about it and kept asking me to check with my contractors about the possibility, I did and most of them were against her requirement, telling me it was impossible or that it was way too much work, and when I relayed that to her, she just told me...

"You help me check if there is any workaround."

... she wasn't demanding about it, in fact, she was super friendly about it, but talking to her is like talking to a kid who wouldn't take no for an answer, so I told her I will check with my contractors again but really didn't, because what is the point.



I have already asked them if it was possible, they said no, it won't make any difference if I ask them a second time, or a third time. That's like me walking into an Ice Cream Parlour and asking for an exotic flavor, like dogshit, and when the server looks at me in horror and tells me they have never created that flavor before and never will, I reply with...

"Help me check if you guys have, please. Maybe check with your central kitchen if they make that flavor"

... No means no, take it or leave it.




It was really really irritating, so I never really bothered to follow up with her after that call but then out of the blue, she suddenly request for me to send a copy of our contract over so she can look through them, I obliged and send her a copy, which is about 7 to 8 pages long.



The thing with contracts is no one really reads them , everyone just sort of glances through them. My clients are all pretty trusting so they will just sign the contract without being too concerned with the little details.



Well, this client isn't like all my other clients, she actually read through the entire contract and send an email back to me, sharing with me typos she found in the contract, asked me how some bond can be exercised if she required and then asked me if things weren't done to her satisfaction during the renovation, can she request for them to be replaced free of charge?




I honestly really really couldn't be fuck with her at this point, so I completely ignored her email and just went on to do my own stuff, she is a nice person but she was already being such a bloody pain to deal with BEFORE the renovation even started, what kind of monster will she become when the renovation starts, I do not want to know.



So everything was quiet for about a month, I thought maybe she has found another Interior Designer at this point because she did share with me that she had a deadline and had to start her renovation soon.


THEN she actually drops me a text one month later and tells me she wants to visit one of my existing projects to take a look at the workmanship.

It's like she doesn't get the hint, so I stupidly obliged to her request and brought her to my site to take a look, ONCE AGAIN, she starts talking about all her redundant requirements and asked me to check with my contractors to find a work around blah blah blah and I was just so desperately trying to tell her that it is pointless, I have asked and they have said it was impossible, so what is the point in me asking again, but she wouldn't fucking take that as an answer and just kept asking me to check again, so I just lied and told her I would, then she thanks me for my time and finally leaves.





I didn't bother to follow up with her after that, she texted me a few times after and I just told her I was in reservist so I couldn't get back to her, I told her I will be stuck in camp for the next 2 weeks so she might have to wait for 2 weeks to get any sort of updates from me, and she actually waited for 2 weeks!




So she dropped me a text yesterday morning asking me if there were any updates, I didn't bother to reply to her message until the evening time and instead of sharing with her the "updates" she has requested, I just told her straight that I was too busy and can't commit to her project, understandably, she was a little shock and she conveyed that through her text message, but instead of accepting my lies and moving on to another designer, she actually told me she could wait for a few weeks if it was necessary, so I had to exaggerate and told her I will be packed for the next 3 months at least, to which she stopped replying and I thought that was it, I am finally rid of her.



There is just something about her project that turns me off completely, so agreeing to run her project would be a real nightmare come true for me, she also had a very tight timeline she had to adhere to and I really do not like dealing with customers who have a tight deadline.




Everything was fine and dandy this morning, I mean I had shit to deal with at site because there is always shit to deal with, but anything that concerned her, I felt really free. So I went by my day dealing with the issues at my other sites and when I was finally done resolving the issues, BAM, she actually drops me a text expressing her disappointment.




To put the text in point form....


1. She is surprised at the sudden response.

2. She understands my situation.

3. She calls me out for informing her so late.

4. She has already hinted to the other designer that she was going to pick me so now she feels weird having to go back to the other designer.


... I really have no idea how I should reply, I mean she has the right to vent, but what am I suppose to say to that, I already apologized for telling her too late, I do not want to deal with her project so I am not going to suddenly tell her my schedule has miraculously opened up and I could fit her project in,  to put it very bluntly....

... saying I am not interested in the project would be an understatement because I really really really do not want to touch the project at all, so there is no way in hell I am going to agree to take it just because you don't feel comfortable going back to the other designer.




Aside from this, Sly Fox project has pretty much come to an end, the final meeting went pretty well and he shared with me that he was generally quite happy with the renovation and then exclaim how easy of a client he must have been during the renovation, to which I could only laugh in disagreement. Just a few more minor touch up and I am officially done, that being said, I think there will be another difficult client I will have to deal with very soon, can't really give him a name yet, when shit hits the fan, I'm sure I will have one pop in my head.

End of the Sixth Cycle

My reservist has officially ended and I am now a Singaporean Son who is free from his military duties for the next 1 year.



Whenever my reservist ends, I always feel a little melancholy. It's really weird because even though reservist has been quite a hindrance, a part of me enjoys having that excuse of being in reservist.




When a client messages me and ask me...

"Hey Tim, we are still awaiting your quote. It has been a few weeks already and we haven't heard from you yet." 

...simply telling them I am currently serving my reservist will always be met with a great deal of understanding and compassion.



Or when the company has a compulsory meeting that I do not want to attend, or an event that I do not want to go to, reservist will always be a valid reason for not showing up. I mean it is extremely valid because there were events and company meetings that were going on during my reservist that I simply could not attend because I was stuck in camp doing sentry duty, but that reason is almost met with some sort of universal understanding from everybody.




So for the past 2 weeks, I have been stuck in camp on and off, doing a lot of sentry duty, most of them were alright, some were pretty shit but overall, it could've been a lot worst. Got my hands on 200GB of Mobile Data for my 2 weeks in camp and it was pretty awesome knowing that I could watch as many Youtube videos as I wanted without having to worry about Singtel charging me an exuberant amount of money for exceeding my data.




The shitty thing is because of how low the manpower was, I didn't have a lot of opportunities to actually relax in bunk and stream Youtube videos to watch, everyone was pretty much doing close to the maximum capacity, so after every 6 hour duty ended, I will have 6 hours of rest before having to do another 6 hours of duty, and it just went on and on and on, it was honestly pretty insane and I just feel really bad for the active soldiers for having to endure this because for me, it's only 2 weeks, but for them, it is months and months of barely enough sleep.



Hopefully by the time I get called up again next year, the army would have sorted out their manpower issue because it is really ridiculous how everyone was stretched so thin, I mean even the sergeants had to step in to compensate for the lack of manpower, it was fucking nuts and I actually ended up doing one of my midnight duty with a sergeant whom I was initially a little skeptical of because he actually raised his voice at me once for reasons, but then we ended up having a really good chat about horror happenings in camp for 2 hours during our duty together, and oddly enough, I actually enjoy getting spooked in camp with this horror stories.




He shared with me stories about how a bunch of soldiers had seen a female figure on multiple occasions at this particular area in the camp and I remember having to cycle pass that particular area multiple times before at night to open a gate that was located at the deeper part of the camp. I would always look down whenever I had to cycle through that area at night because of how freaky it was, the route is completely forested and there is literally no natural light streaming in at night, everything is pitch black and all I could see was maybe 2 to 3 meters of road ahead of me that was illuminated by the bicycle lamp. To think that there have been multiple sightings in that area send shivers down my spine because I have cycled through that area multiple times before in the dark, always looking down and keeping my eyes on the ground, because if there is a figure in the forest, ignorance is bliss.




But aside from that horror story sharing session, nothing too memorable happened in camp. I did end up doing duty with one active soldier whom I did duty with last year, was surprised he actually remembered me, I had a good chat with him as well, and it was nice to actually be able to see a familiar face in the pool of active soldiers.




Well, today was the final day and everyone had to report to Punggol SAFRA to Out Pro, we played darts and had a pretty crappy lunch, I played 2 rounds of Mobile Legends with my friends and it was such a waste that we only started playing that game together on the last day because for the last 2 weeks, we have only been playing this game called Brawl Stars and as exciting as it was in the beginning, it got boring really quickly and we didn't play it as much after.





After the award presentation in which I did not manage to get awarded for anything, we were allowed to leave and the very first thing I did after was visit my job sites.





All my clients will be dropping by their respective sites tomorrow to check up on progress and also do some shit they as homeowners have to do, so I had to drop by today to make sure everything is in proper order for their arrival, like making sure there aren't any cigarettes butts lying in the house, and most importantly, that the contractor did come down to actually do the things I told them to do, because the less issues I have to deal with tomorrow, the better. Will be meeting up with 2 groups tomorrow and sly fox is one of them.






His place is pretty much done, it has been thoroughly cleaned, all the rubbish has been cleared, I am really really hoping that everything goes well tomorrow and I can finally hand the project over to him officially and be rid of it forever, he also wants the project to be done because I had originally estimated the entire renovation to be completed in mid August and it's already 3 weeks past that. The place looks really clean when I popped by just now, the floors are no longer covered in a layer of dust and I can finally step into the house without my shoes on.





After this week, I will officially have to go back to work again, which means reporting back to the office for my showroom duty. Honestly do not have the mood to do my duty anymore, not because I am losing interest in the job, I mean that is partly reason why, but also because I was recently transferred to another group, so now, I am actually doing my showroom duty with a bunch of guys I don't talk to, who also don't talk to me, it feels pointless to even show up anymore because back then, even if I am not serving any potential walk in customers, at least I still had a bunch of colleagues I could talk to, my reason for showing up was to talk to my colleagues, but now, I am showing up to work just for the sake of showing up, I don't want to serve any walk in customers, so I end up just sitting at the back and watching Youtube videos until the office closes.




I'm trying really hard to look for a new job right now, but I can't seem to find any suitable ones, so that is a little troubling for me. That being said, I am quite interested to try and receive one more customer, a simple one, maybe a BTO, and actually try preparing a design proposal based on how an Interior Designer would, so far, all my design proposals are very uninspiring, just Sketch Up drawings with zero creativity, I want to try coming up with a mood board and go all the way and see how that works out, be a designer and not a contractor.

Have been getting really inspired by this Interior Designer lately.

No offence to my colleagues at work, but none of them are Interior Designers, and that includes myself, I don't see myself as a designer, I see myself more as an interior contractors. The work we have been churning out have been really boring and I really don't get inspired when I see their final results, sometimes I even question a customer's taste when they tell me...

"Yeah, we saw your company's portfolio online and we really like the designs."

... we do have some decent designs, but they are really nothing amazing, and majority of our normal works are very cookie cutter and boring, so when a customer tells me they like our designs, I just automatically assume they have very bland taste.



I mean just the way the Youtuber does her presentation, I can hear the passion she has for the craft, she isn't doing it just for the money, she actually loves Interior Design, and sadly, the same can't be said for a lot of my colleagues because ultimately, we are Sales Designer, keyword being "Sales", everything is about the money. No doubt all of us have an interest in Interior Design, but it is definitely not in the same magnitude as the Youtuber, which I just find very infectious.

Produce 48 Rigged

A week of reservist has gone by and it has been a really busy one.


Due to a severe lack of manpower at the base, reservist personnel are given almost the maximum amount of duty time possible, so the sleep I got while I was in base was pretty sporadic. I don't think I actually had any proper sleep there, none of the "7 hours of uninterrupted rest" , they were more like short 3 hour power naps, sometimes even lesser than that before I had to get up and prepare for my next duty.



I was mentally exhausted from the irregular sleeping schedule, and when I actually got to book out, I had to deal with work. My first free day was spend meeting clients and dropping by multiple sites to check up on the renovation progress, which pretty much ate up my entire day, and then I had to book in again the following evening and repeat with the almost maximum work load.



Right now, I have a potential client who really wants to sign a contract with me, but I am really not interested to run her project because it is just way too unnecessarily complicated and also because I am planning to leave the career soon.



Off to a very random topic that no one probably cares about.

Lately, I have been following this Korean program called Produce 48, the final episode aired last night and I am not happy with the results.




So in this program, there are 96 contestants who are taking part and vying to debut as a temporary girl group that will be promoting for the next 2 years, and the member of the girl group will be decided solely on the votes made by the Korean viewers because fuck international fans right?




But anyways, what makes this Season of Produce different from the last 2 seasons is the inclusion of Japanese contestants, or more specifically, active Japanese Idols from AKB48, HKT48 etc who have joined the show in hopes to be part of what the show has referred to as a "Global Girl Group", which is complete bullshit, but I will get into that later, as compared to the past when the group would consist of full Korean lineup.



When I first started watching the show, I found myself drawn to certain individuals on the show, the rest of the contestants just didn't really leave too much of an impression and I thought that it may be due the dull personalities of the contestants that gave the producers nothing to air, but then I came across this introduction video of one of the Japanese Contestant on the show's official Youtube page and I thought she was hilarious. She had great variety skills and if that was the case, then the show should have enough content on her to actually air on the show, but oddly enough, there wasn't a lot when the episodes actually aired.





As I continued watching the show week after week, netizens started to point out that there was something going on with the show because certain contestants were getting an unfair amount of screen time compared to others, and that was when I realized that the Japanese contestant that I really liked was barely getting any screen time, and the contestants that I found myself being drawn to early on, they were always highly ranked during the elimination episodes.




Something fishy was definitely going on and that was when viewers realized that the show makers were purposely pushing for certain individuals by giving them an obscene amount of screen time compared to the other contestants and they were trying to manipulate viewers into voting for the girls that the show makers wanted into the final group.




The realization just made me completely dislike all the girls who were being pushed by the show makers because that was extremely unfair to the other contestants and I found myself showing great disdain towards them, and so did a bunch of netizens because towards the end of the show, during the final few rounds of elimination, all the girls who were being blatantly pushed by the show makers saw their ranks slowly dropping and eventually one of them actually got eliminated. People were getting sick of those girls and they started voting for the underdogs instead and it was honestly so satisfying seeing the ranks change so drastically and have the show actually not go according to how the show makers intended for it to go.




So as the popular girls ranking started to drop, more talented individuals actually started to fill up the top spots and for a while, international fans who couldn't vote were really pleased with the results, I knew I was because the girls who were in the top positions actually deserves their place, they did not get in because the show makers manipulated the audience to vote for them.



Then the final episode aired last night and this is the final line up.

Just to do a small breakdown....


Rank 1, Rank 4, Rank 5

They were given an obscene amount of screen time as compared to the other contestants throughout the entire season, and when viewers realized what was happening, they stopped voting for them and these girls had their ranks drop pretty significantly after, so how the fuck did they end up in the final line up ?


Rank 2.

Miyawaki Sakura, she is extremely popular in Japan and was actually predicted to get first place, I was hoping for her to get first place as well, but then she got usurped by the Rank 1 and a lot of people are extremely unhappy about the it, as evident from the like to dislike ration on the announcement video on Youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiGyH0liNNQ

The winners from the first season were there to witness the atrocity and I also decided to contribute to the video by giving it a thumbs down.


The problem with the Rank 1 is she didn't have any stand out moments in the show, aside from being extremely young and making older guys like myself feel like a pervert for even thinking that she is really pretty. She isn't horrible but she isn't amazing at what she does, she doesn't have the stage presence Sakura has and I am honestly baffled. In the previous 2 seasons, when the rank 1 were announced, the general reaction was...

"Saw that coming, he/she deserves that spot."

... it is like asking people to take a poll about their favorite Ice Cream Flavor and expecting Vanilla or Chocolate to come out top, but then get presented with Rambutan.  Rambutan is great, but why the fuck would it be on top? Where the fuck did Strawberry go? Or Cookies & Cream, how the hell did Rambutan beat Chocolate Mint?



I don't really have much to say about the other winners, the final line up is pretty bad, this was supposed to be a Global Girl Group, but there are only 3 Japanese Members against 9 Korean Members.


I think something really fishy is going on because all the girls the show makers were pushing for actually got in, even though their ranks were falling in the earlier episodes because of the controversy, why would their ranks suddenly spike up when people were clearly no longer actively voting as much any longer.



Not really sure how the group will fare, I was happy when the Rank 12 got in, but then now I feel kinda bad for her because this group is now facing quite a bit of backlash because the final lineup isn't what a lot of people were expecting, which is ironic because the members in the final group are supposed to be determined by the viewers themselves.