Category Archives: Rants

Hamsters Are Funny

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Back in middle school, my friend’s hamster gave birth to a litter of hamlets (that’s baby hamsters right?) and my friend gave me a little white one with devlish red eyes. It was a funny little bugger. He would stuff his mouth full of seeds and attempt to escape from the orange bath tub that I kept it in. Early one morning, my grandma woke me up to tell me that the hamster had escaped and was sitting in a bag of peanuts in the kitchen. A couple of weeks later, the hamster escaped again. This time however, he was gone for good. At night, I could hear him chewing on something inside the wall. After a couple of weeks, the chewing stop, presumably because the hamster chewed its way out of my house or it died.

Anyways, that’s my hamster story. And now a video of two hamsters who auditioned for the hamster version of cirque du soleil.

Endings and Beginnings

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Friday was the conclusion of my five year stint @ NG. It was fun while it lasted, but I’m ready to move on to the next chapter of my life.

Thinking about my last day at NG brought back thoughts of leaving my first job out of college. There are specific things that I remember:

  • The company getting me a going away pie.
  • Walking to my car on the way out thinking, “Are they going to miss me? Probably not, things are going to go on.”
  • Walking to my car on the way out thinking,, “Yes, I scored some company coffee mugs! Muah ha ha.”
  • Feeling sad about the present, yet excited about the future.
  • Going to the driving range and feeling disconnected from my then gf.
  • Going home and feeling a bit empty inside.

Endings always make me feel like I’m in a glass cage of emotion. Minus the pie, I feel like Friday was history repeating itself. However, one of the good things about getting older is developing the wisdom to know that although endings can be a pain, endings also signify a new beginning.

So here’s to a new day and a new beginning. May it be as much fun as the previous chapter.

Pardon the Silence

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It’s been a long while since I’ve posted anything of significance because for the past couple of weeks, my brain has been wrapped around the axle about the future of bschool, work, travel, relationship, and residency, not necessarily in that order. On all fronts, there were decisions to be made, some easier than others, some requiring a couple glasses of wine. I thought about writing some of the things down but my brain wasn’t making any sense and I’ve flipped flopped more times than a politician on the campaign trail. When the time is right, which hopefully is soon, I’ll recap what has been going on.

In the mean time, enjoy another senseless video I came across on youtube.

Self Checkout Stands, Beards, and Nose Rings

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I’m a big fan of the self checkout lines at the grocery store because they usually have the shortest line. People who have lots of items in their shopping carts or are afraid of technology seem to stay away from this line. The self checkout counters also seem to be growing in popularity too. Two counters take up the space of one checkout aisle and one cashier can manage four checkout counters. So a win for me on saving time and a double win for the supermarket on adding more checkout counters+ saving on the number of employees.

Unfortunately, the advantages of the self checkout counters were absent when I visited Ikea today. The store only opened the self checkout lines so everyone had to check themselves out. Myself, and several other customers, grumbled about the fact that the line was ten deep when we entered it. Thankfully I chose the line without the mom with two kids but instead chose the line with the Japanese lady who didn’t speak english and grandma and grandpa who couldn’t find the credit card slider thing. This made for a mess and it took a very long and irritating 15 minutes for me to buy clothes hanger.

While standing in line, I had the following thoughts:

  • What kind of numbers did the company that built these self checkout machines pull out of the air to sell all these stores on? Will I learn how to do that in bschool?
  • Are the stores really saving that much money? Will the amount of money lost from people who “forgot” to pay for an item be less than the money they save on not having a cashier?
  • What about the customer experience? Some people, I don’t know who, might like talking to the cashier or bagger.
  • I wanted to pay with cash. I only had dollar bills. And they were crinkled.

My other rant for the day is about Costco. Over the years, I’ve noticed that if a man has a beard, he has to wear the shower cap on his face. This afternoon, I got the urge for a slice of pepperoni pizza this afternoon so I went down to Costco. The cashier was a man and he had a beard, earrings and a nose ring. As expected, the man was wearing a shower cap on his face. He also was wearing tape over his nose ring and he wasn’t wearing his earrings (saw the holes). The guy looked weird, as if he was a leper and was trying to cover it up with all that stuff.

It’s understandable that Costco wants us to enjoy hairless pizza and they don’t want to offend people who find nose rings offensive, but the cashier was just wacky looking. If the cashier is going to look that way, Costco might as well let the guy wear a ninja mask. He might still look wacky, but at least the mask will soak up his sweat instead of having the sweat fall on my pizza.

I wish some chinese restaurants would be half as sanitary as Costco’s food court. I’ll never be able to get the image of the chef @ Supreme Dragon smoking a cig and scratching his head while he cooked. Extra salt and pepper anyone? Yum!

Uncle Phil!

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In case you’re interested, my two minute research of Kaplan University, which is part of the same group that brings you Kaplan Test Prep, reveals that KU is a higher education institution similar to the University of Phoenix.