The sweat and tears put into my graduation gift.
9:36 p.m. x 24.07.10
Today's graduation gift day!
Because my laptop can't burn cds, I had to approach cw for help, which he kindly rendered. So, I drove home this morning to park my car and then take the train to Redhill to meet Sam. I was parking my car and positioning my car to the extreme right (about 2 inches from the right kerb) but I still felt that the space between the car on my left and me was too narrow. Still, since I got the car in, I just left it so. And when I walked by that car, I saw a flyer-sized note on its windscreen.
LOL. I think the previous car that parked on my lot left it there. So, I walked back to check how he parked.
It was quite bad huh? And actually, if you see the photo below, you'll see that there was no need for him to park that far from his left, because the car on his left had left a big space by parking near the left.
Oh... Now that I think of it, I think that car owner would have thought that I was the one who left the note there! He was gone when I collected my car!! I'd better check from dents/scratches in my car tmr.
So, after meeting Sam, we went to cw's place and burnt the cds. Took about 2 hours to burn 3 sets of 2 cds each. Actually we had intended to burn one for each person, but there were too many songs to fit into just 1 disc. So, we used up all 6 discs for just sh, den and ck.
And then we went to Queensway Shopping Center to print the lyric booklet. Experienced a very rude salesgirl who sounded irritated from the first sentence she spoke to me and lasted that way throughout the whole experience. She kept picking on my files, like how they're separately saved, in jpeg formats, which makes it difficult for them to print double sided. She said they need to be in pdf format and asked if I can do it. So, I was like can your computer do that? She said yes. She had the look of sianness, so I said, I don't have a computer so can I use your comp to convert it? And she said yes. But then, I realised that she needed the files to be in one pdf file, which I can't do. So I told her I can't do it, and asked if she could. And the answer was yes. Oh my god. If she could, she should have said so right at the start!!! She was just giving me problems without offering solutions! And then she went through a whole list of crap about how she can do it, but if she does, there might be loss in colour and quality. So basically it meant that she needs them to be in one pdf file to be able to print double sided. But if she convert for me, there might be loss in quality. But I have no choice right? If I don't let her convert, I can't print it. I'll have to go home and convert them myself and go down there again. And she spoke in Chinese, and didn't sound like she was giving me a disclaimer. It sounded more like "wo ke yi bang ni zuo ke shi quality ke neng hui bian di", as if she doesn't want to do it.
After a long heated discussion, which involved me raising my voice, it got solved only to lead to another dispute. Oh, and in between the discussions and the actual printing, she kept speaking to her colleague in some Shanghai/Beijing/whatever province dialect. Which is VERY RUDE to do in front of the customer. How would I know if she's talking bad about us?
Ok, the second major dispute was about how she can't reduce the size of each page into the size required (12 cm x 12 cm). She reduced the size of my image files and test printed a copy. It was bigger than the size I wanted (I think it was 17 cm x 17 cm?), and cannot be inserted into the cd case. So I asked if she can reduce to a smaller size. The files I created on photoshop were 15 cm x 15 cm, so if she could just reduced them a bit more... And she got so defensive, turning the screen towards me and saying that the files were 81.sthsth cm x 81.sthsth cm. I didn't believe it, so I checked. She was right. But hello? Did she have to react so aggressively to such a mistake that doesn't even affect the printing much? Whatever.
And to my question she said cannot. WTF. Cannot. HAHA. Her explanation was that if she did that it's very hard to make a double sided print. Coz she will print 2 pages on on side of the A4, and another 2 pages behind those pages on the other side of the A4. So apparently, if she reduced it further, the 2 pages will be smaller than A4, which makes it difficult to print double sided (I think she meant difficult to position the two sides of the A4 to match). So what? People who print booklets in odd size...they can't do it either?! She had to put the fault on me saying that if I had made the files exactly 12 cm x 12 cm, she could just print them as they are and exactly at that size. And then I was like, nvm, just print 12 cm x 12 cm and I'll cut myself (to make them fit). Ok, it doesn't make sense what I was suggesting, but at that point I was really upset. Somewhere around there she also said that they can do the adjustments for me (as in, make them 12 cm x 12 cm, and then one by one position them to create the double-sided print) but that would cost 60 bucks per hour. I felt like saying, just do it, it's not like I can't afford. I was so pissed off!
And then Sam came back (she had went to Macs to buy my mac breakfast for me before it changes to the lunch menu) and I explained to her the problem. We had 2 options. 1) Print the large size and give it as a separate item from the cd. 2) Print the 12 cm x 12 cm single sided and bind them in the style of books. While discussing, this other staff, a very warm, friendly and customer-oriented guy who served us first when we went to the shop came up to us and asked if everything was alright. I could have just pretended and gave a casual 'yeah'. But I was so pissed off because of the limitations of the printing expertise and how the darn girl gave us no solution to all the problems she raised (I mean, ok fine, so you can't do it. But we need to put it inside the case, so any suggestions? Any at all? Why are you not saying anything and expecting us noobs to find one!?) that I gave an expressionless "Everything is not ok." and turned away.
And with that, I just cried a bit. I couldn't stop the tears from overflowing. I hated that because I don't want to be seen as weak by that evil girl!!!
And a while later, we decided to just print the booklet the larger size and give it separately. Before we could convey this to the girl, she came back a while later with the sample booklet in the right size. F. So she could do it? And it was like...only 15 mins before that she told me it cannot be done.
And so we printed that, paid and went to Macs for lunch while waiting for the print. Oh, and she's like out of her mind. She told us, come back after 1 1/2 hour to collect, at about 3.30.
It was about 12.30 when we left.
1 1/2 hour doesn't make it 3.30.
She just contradicted herself in one sentence. And her reason for that duration? It may take long to staple in booklets together. HAHA. So long huh?
Bad experience. Hate that person. Poor attitude. I'm paying you to set everything and print, not to complain about problems with the files I'm providing and how you can't print it the way I want it to be. If all of my files were in perfect condition for the printing, why do I even need you? Customers can then just plug their storage device into a machine, select the type of print they want (without even needing to adjust the size coz the files are in the right size and hence can be printed straight as they are), pay and then print.
Anyway, the back of the cd. If you need everything to be of certain size/format and stuff, please put a big notice at your door or on a website or sth, so that people can prepare that at home and not have to put up with your sucky attitude at the store, or worse, to go home to fix things before returning again.
Seriously, it's bad service. I'd rather pay more elsewhere (and it's not like theirs is very cheap) where I can get better service, or at least someone that can help me solve problems instead of creating them, than to return to that shop.
Anyway, here's the end product. I only have 2 with me.
The result of 4 days of meet ups (3 for recording and 1 for printing/burning) and more than 5 long nights of searching for songs, making graphics, mixing audios and stuff. Mayday, Arashi, Yuzu, w-inds, and many random English artistes are included. The last song is To Be Free with my rewritten lyrics in English. XP
Following that, I met up with Angel and Yen....and got these from Yen! I was soooo surprised when she brought it out! Apparently, she read my vox post (haha surprise surprise) raving about this snack from Japan. <3
After we had tea, we went for dinner! Lol, I had brunch at 1230, tea at 4, dinner at 530. @.@ Teppanyaki! The bean sprouts was delicious.
I tried the beef...and....it was what I've always thought beef to be - tough. Unlike the very tender and juicy one I had in Hokkaido, this one was a bit dry and tough. So I've decided not to eat beef unless I'm in Tokoy. XP
And here's an un-related picture. Remember me ranting about how my gm found Korean accessories to be of poor quality compared to Japanese ones? That is very true. In that picture are things that I broke during my Melbourne trip. The sunglasses was bought in Singapore, and I have no idea about its origin country. But, I fell flat on my face during skiing, and it broke. The hairband was bought in Korea and the heart was initially attached to the band. It broke when I took it off my head, and I've wore it no more than 10 times. The hairpin was also from Korea and initially had the 3 hearts in one line. It broke when I took it off my hair and tried to repin it back. This one I was particularly fond of and wore it many times. All were bought about 7-10 months ago.
And I also have, not shown in this picture, a hairclip bought from a local Korean accessory store. I wore it twice and one of the crystal dropped from it.
So, I'm NEVER going to buy Korean stuff again.
Oh, and my mom's not going for my convo coz we only have 2 tickets and she says to let my gf and gm go. Seriously, I'm very very upset about this. I'm not expressing it though, coz I can't go up to them and say, "I don't want you to go. I want mom to go." But I mean, the only convo ceremony mom will ever be able to go to will be mine. Gf and gm still have Brandon's. And it's not like my convo means very much to them. At least not as much as it is to mom, I think.
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Oh.no