GiGa Singapore Ambassador
December 15, 2008
I wrote for GiGa.de as a Ambassador for Singapore back in early 2000. And occasionally did live phone interview with the hosts. How I came about this was, my boyfriend(then) had his webcam turned to his television and this show called, GiGa was showing. I asked him what it was all about. He told me that it’s a variety cum tech show. They also had GiGa Games.
I checked out their website,which is still around,and saw they had this special section looking for people who were living outside Germany to write about the countries they came from. I was pretty excited over it and wrote to them. And as they say, “the rest is history”. I got a part in the “Ambassador section” and wrote religiously about the latest happening in Singapore.
The video that you’re watching is a live phone interview I did with the show. I had a lot of fun being one of the Ambassador on Giga. I kinda miss writing for the show!. Hopefully, they have something new in the future!. Maybe a reunion would be great!.
Vodcast Blopper!
December 14, 2008
As you can tell, I had a hard time trying to get the sentence right! This was recorded in my hotel room in Antwerp, Belgium. I now know how it is like being a Presenter!. So instead of publishing a well done first Vodcast of mine,I decided to put this one as my first Vodcast!.
REWE
November 23, 2008
A couple of days,okay,a week or so back. I went to the mall here in the city to get some Christmas Chocolate Calender for my nieces and nephew back in Singapore. So I went down to the ground floor of the mall where there is a supermarket called REWE to get it.
As I was browsing around and found what I was looking for,decided to purchase and head to the cashier. I was in the line and an old lady was in front of me paying for her groceries. So I waited,the line started to get long due to the fact that ONE-UNO-SATU-EIN-UN(I could go on with international word for ONE) cashier counter is available. What would a cashier that has basic customer service skills do with this situation?. First, she must call in the other cashier to open the other counter or worst case,if there is no other cashier available,she must clear the line as quickly as possible. What did she do?. Talked to her follow colleagues who were heading out for their breaks or where ever it was they were going but from the look of it(carrying their wallets and cellphone)they were out for their breaks.
It was a good 5-6 minutes that she was talking to them and what was the reaction of the rest of the people in the line?. We were mad. What did we do?. Nothing. Why?. It’s just the way it is here. There is YOUR answer dear government of Germany. Are you going to do anything about it?. No. Plain and simple. The typical mindset of,I would say,75% or more Germans here. It could be that the temperature in winter drops to minus 10 or something and I reckon it froze the brain that they have there in their heads. It hurts to read what I have to say but look around and see how well you’re being treated to by the Sales Personnel here. I am not saying that I do not see good customer service here in Germany but Germans can do much better at it. I believe they can. What say you?.
The Good, The Bad And The Ugly- The Evolution
November 11, 2008
On my last bad customer related post, I have you given a rough idea of extremely bad customers that I have encounter which I have put into various categories. I asked this question to myself a lot when I was working in the stores. To why some customers are just plain nasty?
Look, everyone are consumers,including myself. Everyone goes out to shop, be it buying groceries, apparels, equipments-whatever. The bottom line is, everyone shops. But to shop with an attitude is another thing. Do the retail personnel deserves to be treated with no respect by the nasty customers? These people, the retail personnels,are there to help you and not working against you. Yes, I do noticed bad customer services also but I will come to that in the near future. We are there to listen to your needs,wants and requests. What we don’t need from costumers are,disrespecting us as professionals,being rude,having absolutely obnoxious manners and so on.
In the “Perfect World” which is obviously not where we are all in right now, if everyone plays their part in respecting each other and understanding one and other,everyone will be happy. But reality check(for me),it is not as so. Though, I am optimistic that everyone can work on that. I can feel it in every fiber in me.
Move the ego aside,the pride(though i don’t understand why there is a need to,it’s just shopping guys!),the arrogance(you may have all the money in the world but what is more important is the goodness in ones soul-it shines through)and the same goes to Retailers. It takes two to make it happened-never one sided.
With that said, in my coming blog entries, I am going to be very brutal in my observations at the Sales Personnels here in Karlsruhe,Germany where I am living now. I have been here a couple times and seen(still seeing)bad customer services. I want to change that too. Hopefully, the German government will imposed Excellent Customer Service programs to all Retailers. The outcome of this, you will see everyone being less grumpy in the streets of Germany, more tourist will flock to this country,gives the economy a boost and everyone enjoys the pleasant shopping experience. Call me naive but I call myself determine.
Illustrations.
September 6, 2008
I was looking around for some Illustration applications where I can download onto my Mac and put up my artworks here on my blog and I found this really cool site where you can sketch online. I know,this is nothing of what I usually write about but it is an exception.
The site,to me has this dreamy, 1800 era, French-sipping-cappuccino-at-the-cafe,kinda feel to it. I love it. It´s call -odopod. You can head down to the site and check it out. Draw a sketch or two!.
The Good, The Bad And The Ugly – Con´t.
August 28, 2008
In my previous blog entry, I have given you a front seat to my line of work and the different types of customers I have accounted. Here are more categories I have come up with.
- The Using Your Feet Instead of Your Hands Syndrome.
- What´s My Size?
- Spread The Clothes On The Floor.
The Good, The Bad And The Ugly – The Beginning.
August 26, 2008
It has been a while since I had this idea to have illustrations,which I will try to have to done soon,on different types of customers which you can see where you fall into. And if you are honest with yourself – you put yourself in the right category. Here are some of the categories I have.
- The Overly Nice Customer.
- The Arrogant Customer.
- The Pointing With Your Feet Syndrome.

Using the thumb to point.
As shown in the picture above. There was a mother and daughter incident where, the daughter was sitting with her mother,looking at some shoes. She saw a nice pair to be purchase for her dad I reckon. Then points to the shoes with her feet for the mother to see which she is referring to. Doing that to your own mother? That is plain out disgusting manners to me. Do you fall under this category? I really hope not. The lesser of you in this category,the better the world to live in without these sort of bad habits existing.
These are some of the category I have come up with. In my next blog, I will feature even more. If you have seen absurd manners being projected at Sales Personnel, do email me. I really would like to hear someone else experience.
Dignity.
August 24, 2008
From what I have noticed and experience myself after a failed attempted to resolve a problem or a request by a customer,is that customers would usually not want to understand our side(the company´s policy). Customers need to accept and bear in mind that once they step into any store, they are in “our territory”.
A customer must not have the mindset that they know every single operational system in the store they go into. In another word, “have it your way” attitude. I have come up with a couple of category to cater to different types of customer which I will go into that in my next blog entry.
The best time to witness the worst attitude of customers is the Christmas period. I bet when you read this, inside of you know you´re one of them. But I do understand nobody likes to shop in the most busiest time of the year. The lines at the cashier is extremely long, hick ups with the cash register, the line at the fitting room is long too and so on. The atmosphere is no longer “Tis the season to be jolly”.
Everything plays a huge part in the destruction of communication between customers and Sales personnel. Now, I give a real true example of phycological effect but on both sides.
Picture this; a surf shop, one week before Christmas, it was a weekend, we were making five digit total each night and it was super packed. And I mean extremely packed you have to squeeze your way through. the store isn´t that big. The lines for the fitting room was long and customers were already getting irritated at each other and so were we at them.
There was this particular family, they were using one of the fitting room for so long because each customer are allow to bring in three pieces of clothing to try on. But this family were getting clothes in and out of the fitting room and taking so much time. Thus, the rest of the customers whom were waiting in line were getting agitated. And so were the Sales personnels which included my Manager.
He did like what any Manager would do, to tell the customer who was “hogging” the fitting room. Now, what happened was. The father who´s child is “hogging” the fitting room was extremely rude and yelled at my Manager. Is is fair to you? Pain out, no! So, my Manager told him the reason why he has told him to hurry up because simply the line is getting longer and rest of the customers had been waiting. The customer yelled this,”Customers are always right!”. This is,to me, extreme display of stupidity. Look, there is a line between “Customers are always right” and Idiocy.
If everyone, goes around having this mentality. I figure, no one is going to have a pleasant shopping experience. It is not hard at all to give the Sales Personnel the same pleasant experience you are getting from them?. Unless, your country do not practice standard Customer Service like for example Germany. Sometime back i watched a romantic movie called, “Maid Of Mahattan” and something caught my attention more than the love story that was going on. It was a quote that I will remember always and with that I end it with the quote that I can relate so much “To serve people it takes dignity and intelligences but remember there are only people with money nor though we serve them, we are not their servants”.