Inefficient Day

 I did a site visit to one of my clients new place today and this site visit was meant to be a defect inspection.

The original plan was to meet at 2pm, so I left the house at about 12.30pm because it was located all the way towards the Punggol area, the apartment was located a fair distant away from the nearest LRT and it was just not a convenient location.  

I managed to reach the place at about 1.45pm and my goal then was to head to the apartment, do maybe an hour of defect inspection, and then leave for a late lunch at about 3pm because it was a weekend and I figured 3pm is an odd enough timing for the lunch crowd to dissipate, all I had before that was leftover bag of caramel corn puffs for breakfast and a cup of milk coffee, so I wasn't exactly full.

As I entered the carpark and was heading towards the apartment, my client messages me and tells me he will be there soon, that we can go up together, and he arrives like 5 minutes later at the lift lobby and I notice he wasn't with his wife, so I asked him where she was and if she was going to come later, to which he said she was still stuck at work but will head over soon. My assumption at that point was that she was probably going to be late for maybe 30 minutes, that she was already done with work and was on her way over, that I can still leave at 3pm and actually have my lunch.

So we took the lift together and reach the apartment, my client invites me into the place, he goes and turns on the aircon, ask me if I had anything else for the afternoon, I told him I was free the entire day and we start walking around the entire space to observe the space, as I was busy measuring the areas where the carpentry would be at, he was busy measuring the rooms and then coming over and asking me for advice on how big of a bed he can buy, how much space he has left if he gets this furniture, how much space he needs to leave if he gets that furniture, and we ended up talking for quite a bit, occasional we would actually look for defects here and there but we did eventually spend most of the time just discussing about the space planning for his loose items.

I hadn't realized how much time had passed until I finally looked at my phone and it was already almost 4pm, so I asked him if his wife was coming anytime soon, to which he told me she will be reaching a bit later, at this point I was already feeling a bit hungry and thirsty, so as I was talking to him, I was also packing my bag to sort of give him the hint that I wanted to leave soon, but he didn't really get it and kept pulling me to other areas of the apartment and talked about more space planning stuff, at one point, I started to realize that he didn't really want me to go because he didn't want to wait alone, he wanted someone to accompany him, so I begrudgingly agreed and just entertained him until his wife came.  

The wife came at 5pm. 

I had been talking to the husband for 3 hours before the wife finally came with her parents and THANKFULLY, they brought bottles of water up and a puff pastry for me.

Initially I was a bit hesitant to take the pastry because it didn't look like it was bought for me and they were only offering the food to me to be nice, like how sometimes I offer to help my colleague buy lunch out of courtesy and hope they would say No, but then they say "Oh, I don't mind" and then I just feel burdened with the task. Same with the puff pastry, so when the wife initially offered me one, I told her I was alright even though I was fucking starving.

We did a walkthrough of the space with the wife and her parents, had more discussion about the space planning, their Dad offered his own take on how the space should be planned and I like the Dad, he is super easy going with all the defects that I had spotted earlier and told my clients that those areas they can just leave it because the issues aren't major, if all my clients were as easygoing as the Dad, my job would be so much easier, but anyways the Dad offered his own advice and we ended up removing a few of the carpentry pieces, much to my dismay because that means less profit for me, he offered some valid advice, but there were some that were also a bit iffy that I didn't really want to go against because I didn't want him to think I was disagreeing with everything he was saying, after that was done, both the husband and wife urges me to take one puff pastry, so I finally took the puff pastry and wolfed it down like a starving African child.

At this point, both of them tells me that if I had to go, I could leave because technically my job was already done, but I stayed until I finished my puff pastry and FINALLY left the place at 5.45pm! I spend 3 hours and 45 minutes at the place and only maybe 1.5 hours doing any actual work related stuff, the rest of the time I was pretty much entertaining the husband until the wife arrived. 

I was still feeling peckish after the puff pastry, so I had my dinner after that at the nearby shopping center and thankfully, Mos Burger was relatively empty, so I had my dinner and headed home and by the time I came out from the MRT Station, it was already dark and when I think of how early I had left home today and how late I am reaching home, it just felt like my time was so horribly spend because it's not like I had visited multiple sites today, I only visited one and it took up my entire day, like the level of productivity today just felt like shit.

 Anyways, after I got home, the husband send me a text thanking me for dropping by and apologizing for making me stay so long, which was a nice gesture. I can appreciate a customer who actually respects and feels bad when they know have have taken up too much of my time. 

Good news is I am pretty free tomorrow, so hopefully my day off won't be interrupted by any work related messages from my clients and sub-cons. A short mental break would be nice.

Worst Korean Cold Noodles Ever

After settling some final paperwork for a friend's renovation project, I had to drop by another old project to do a favor for the client.

Right after that, I dropped by West Coast Plaza for my dinner because it was just around the corner, I wasn't very hungry because I had eaten quite a late lunch, but decided since I was already in the shopping mall, might as well have something light and settle my dinner. 

Initially, I didn't really know what I wanted to eat, so I walked around and then came across this Korean Restaurant that was selling affordable Korean food, I had tried their items before when I was working on that old project and everything was just painfully average, it isn't real Korean food so my expectations really weren't that high.

I looked at the menu and was contemplating getting either my default Korean food order, which is Kimchi Soup or maybe Ramen, but then my ulcer didn't really think it was a good idea so I ordered their Cold Noodles.

I had this store's Cold Noodles once and from my memory, it wasn't good, but I thought it must have been at least edible, I also ordered a coke and then started sipping on that as I waited for my food to come.

It arrives and then I remembered how bad it was.

Korean Cold Noodles usually looks like this....

I love Korean Cold Noodles, the broth is lightly coloured and flavorful, it is usually served with some iced broth to keep the dish cold for longer, there are cucumber and pear slices thrown in for freshness and an egg and the noodles are nice and chewy.

I wasn't expecting that for this Korean restaurant though, I knew it wasn't good, but when I was presented with the dish, it was even worst than I had imagined it would be.

For starters, the dish itself is not super cold, it is the type of cold you would get when you leave your cold can of coke on the kitchen counter for maybe 10 minutes on a very hot day, the bowl itself was not cold as well because the broth wasn't cold.

The broth colour is completely off, I have no idea why it is so dark but it is and it is actually tasteless until it is swallowed, and you then get this vinegar sourness as an aftertaste, it would be like drinking a can of Vinegar flavored LaCroix that is not cold enough, not carbonated.

The beef is extremely stringy and tough I was worried that it would actually get stuck between my teeth, so I didn't eat too much of it.

The noodles were chewy and tough but they looked like they were cooked for too long and expanded way too much.

The egg, cucumber and carrot slices are probably the most edible part of the dish, and they are the garnish.

To date, this is probably the most disappointing dish I have eaten, my expectations were already low but boy did this dish grab a shovel and dig even lower, the noodles were tasteless, the soup is tasteless, the beef is tough and stringy, like how the fuck did the cooks in the kitchen even think this was up to standard to actually serve to paying customers, it blows my mind how little effort was put into preparing this dish, and they charge $5.50 for this garbage. 

There is absolutely no flavor other than the vinegary aftertaste. It is so bad, the picture above is how much was left of the dish when I decided I could no longer eat it anymore, I remember looking at the table across of me of this lady eating a plate of kimchi fried rice and just feeling jealous that she was at least served something edible. 

Damn Tooth Again!

I had to pay a visit to the dentist a few days back because the fillings for my molar dropped off while I was enjoying a box of Pocky the night before.

This is the same tooth that gave me a lot of discomfort about a year back during my company trip that cost me about $400 to "repair", well, the repair didn't last very long. Back then, the dentist told me the damage to the molar was pretty severe and that I may require a root canal during to how deep the decay has gone, thankfully we didn't need to resort to a root canal then and the dentist simply drilled the decay out and then patched it back up with composite filling.

I have since learn that composite filling does not last long and I should have gone for an amalgam filling instead, especially for my molars because I use that to chew food, so composite being non-metal like amalgam, it started to wear off pretty fast, which eventually led to the filling falling off.

When I actually visited the dentist a few days back, I had to go to a different one and this dentist essentially told me that my molar was very close to cracking because of how much damage it has been through and how little tooth I actually have left, according to him, about 70% of my tooth is just filling, so if I actually needed a root canal and did said root canal, there is a very high chance the tooth might just break and I might end up needing to extract it, and then doing an implant.

That means I will potentially be needing 2 fucking implants! One for my front tooth and one for the molar, total damage to have those 2 implants is $8000! Fuck My Life!

But then during the visit, the dentist recommended for me to crown the tooth first to hopefully delay the extraction as long as possible, according to my research, it could potentially delay the ordeal by a decade, so that should be enough to save for the implant because I am currently already stressing out about the fact that I might potentially have to do the implant for my front tooth next year when it eventually breaks.

So much fucking money because I did not brush my teeth when I was young, my laziness really knows no bound, and when I think about how my insurance agent had essentially made me sign a new savings plan late last year, I just want to pull my fucking hair out because that would be another $3000 taken out from my savings account, granted I will eventually get them back so I should just see it as me investing in my molar implant 10 years down the road. 

Anyway, the crowning will be done in about 2 weeks time, that shit is gonna cost me $850, for someone who is not really earning much every month, I am not a huge fan of spending such a large amount so suddenly.

If these isn't a sign that I need a job with a stable income, then I don't know what is. I can either find a new job with a stable income or I can try to make this current one work, but with my personality, I honestly find trying to make this current one work to be a little bit difficult because that would mean not being picky with the customers I choose to work with anymore.

I just cannot not be picky, it is extremely difficult, the signs that a difficult customer shows during the first meeting is sometimes very hard to ignore

If a potential customer is a piece of shit before they officially engage me for my services, chances are they will evolve into the personification of a full blown explosive diarrhea once the renovation actually starts.

If I see a piece of shit, I want to avoid the piece of shit, I do not want to step on the piece of shit, and then proceed to smear what I had stepped on all over my body, I do not believe in the concept of...

"Sign the contract first, deal with the problem later" 

... the logic is so stupid and it was what was practiced by a few of my colleagues in the past, the problem ended becoming a 2 to 4 months long constant headache.