The latest news in Singapore: a bunch of Starhub Mobile users failed to pay their bills for ninety days, despite reminder letters and reminder SMSes, and so their phone service was turned off today. As a result, Starhub customer service centers were flooded with people trying to pay their bills and complaining that their phones were off and that they were losing clients and terribly inconvenienced as a result. There was footage of hapless Starhub customer service representatives trying to placate aggrieved customers.

Now the news was clearly trying to paint Starhub as the bad guy --- which reiterates that there is no such thing as unbiased news coverage from Mediacorp --- but DUDE. Pay your bills. If you don't pay your bills, technically, the mobile phone service provider can turn off your phone the day after it's due and the payment wasn't received. They gave you NINETY days. Get over yourselves.

Which just goes to prove to you what big fat schmucks some people can be.

I was laughing so hard at the news coverage and then I had to come in here and tell Terz and laugh some more. I mean, when I saw the 'preview' footage, I thought Starhub had screwed up and turned off a bunch of mobile phone services by mistake. But no, it was quite clearly a case of the customer being very, very wrong. The Starhub spokeswoman, when interviewed, said something about reviewing the situation to try to prevent a similar one from recurring. She should've just said, "If they'd paid their bills like they're supposed to, like their service contract requires them to, there wouldn't have been any problems. All our punctually paying customers aren't here complaining, aren't they?"

Maybe me going into Public Affairs next year is not such a good idea.

* * *

Considering that I didn't go to work today, it has been a busy day. Well, a busy afternoon-evening. I was in the mood to try out this recipe for pork chops, so I took the MRT (aka subway) to the grocery store two stops down at Paya Lebar. I had my grocery list on my Palm, but I also wound up browsing the shelves and buying all sorts of other things too, like cheese slices and Campbell's chunky soup. I love grocery shopping and it's even more fun when the store is virtually empty, as it was today.

Eventually, I realized that if I was having this much trouble hauling my shopping basket around the store, I was going to have even more trouble getting the groceries home. So I took out the one bottle of Thai chilli sauce and went to the cashier. I wound up with five plastic bags' worth of stuff. I thought my arms were about to fall off halfway on the walk home from the MRT station --- I have no arm muscles except the minimal needed to keep my arms joined to my body, I swear --- but I made it home okay. I unpacked everything and sat down with my Bundaberg ginger beer and rested for an hour.

(And people ask me why I don't exercise regularly.)

Then I made food. Besides the pork chops, there was corn and garlic bread. X came over for dinner too. Fortunately, everything turned out well. I was afraid it wouldn't 'cause it was a brand-new recipe we'd never tried before, plus I am an ordinarily not a good cook, plus I cut a few corners, plus I got worried at the end 'cause after I'd dished out the pork chops, I was supposed to let what was left of the sauce thicken for another ten minutes over the heat, and even with my rudimentary cooking skills, I knew that ten minutes more in that pan would leave us with no gravy, so I improvised. It all turned out well (I have to say it again because I say it so rarely when I make the meal). Bonus: I got the garlic bread and corn hot and ready in time for the pork chops too, which rarely happens when I make food. Terz liked it. X liked it. X took the recipe home. No one has thrown up yet. Yay me!

Some time over the next few days, I'm trying out a simple recipe for Greek homestyle chicken. Wish me luck.

The cooking (and the eating) completely perked me up, because before I went to the grocery store, I had to do battle with a few recalcitrant cockroaches. *sigh* That always bums me out. I love everything about our apartment except the fact that we cannot get rid of the roaches. They just keep crawling in from drain pipes and under the door and so forth. Bah. Anyone got a foolproof solution? One of my students says it's just part and parcel of HDB living --- even if you keep a clean apartment, there's always the dustbin chute and other little holes in the wall that they come from. Double-bah.

But. I am happy. I cooked successfully! And I got to laugh at silly Starhub Mobile subscribers. And I got to watch The Powerpuff Girls for the third day in a row. And Terz bought Her World (by mistake, because we thought this girl we knew was in it) which came with neato Christmas gift catalogs and such. I usually don't read any lifestyle/women's magazines because their lack of intellect makes me feel sick, but I admit that I indulged in buying Elle last week as a post-examination de-stresser (plus it came with a free tote bag!) and now there is Her World as well (with another free tote bag!) and depending on what time I get up tomorrow, I might stop by Metro on the way to school (not that it is on the way to school) so that I can try to get free Revlon lipstick using a Her World coupon.

It's the holidays. I can be as ditzy as I want to.