At Orchard Ion:

A security guard held the lift door for Naomi, myself and Kai in pram while we were 10m away from the lifts. She then asked which floor we were going so she could make sure the lift was going in the right direction, then she wished us a good evening.

The waiter at TWG Tea Company offered to push Kai’s pram so we wouldn’t have to negotiate the aisles ourselves, then offered to give Kai some macaroons which we had to decline because Kai’s too young to have macaroons. (But we weren’t, so dammit, shoulda said yes), then gave Kai a couple of slices of brioche for him to munch on. And for a change, the waiters knew their menu well and could describe their offerings more than reading out what was in the menu.

The staff at Prologue – an upmarket branch of popular bookstore Popular Bookstore were excellent – they found what we wanted in a snap, gave Kai a kiddy book to fiddle with while we browsed (and when Kai didn’t want to let go of the book and we had to buy it, managed to peel the barcode off it and scan it), and were generally very polite and helpful.

At Goodwood Park Hotel:

The doormen rushed to Naomi’s door and helped her out while she carried Kai, then later while I had to recharge my cashcard, asked if she would like to wait in the shade because it was a hot day out.

OK now, the rest of Singapore, follow suit please.

I wasn’t going to blog about this, but I saw Tuesday’s ST headline about bad service and realised that bad service was a national epidemic, and therefore had to be talked about, the same way we talked about SARS, and swine flu. Because talking about it spreads awareness, and when you’re aware, you’re less likely to suffer from it. Or something.

Last Saturday, because we had Kai in pram and we were stuck somewhere near Forum Galleria (as you would when you have a child in pram), and because we were hungry and didn’t want to eat at California Pizza Kitchen again, we decided to chance our arm at Stuart Anderson’s Black Angus Steakhouse at Orchard Parade Hotel.

There, we were treated to the most bewildering display of the opposite extremes of service attitudes.

When we stepped onto the premises, we saw that staff members were dressed in different uniforms reflecting their vocations – much like how the sarong kebaya on SQ girls have different colours (my brother once said the green one was for the staff sergeant stewardess) – and there were these two men dressed in dark coloured shirts, carrying and talking to each other on their walkie-talkies, I swear, within sight and earshot of each other.

Like little boys play acting at emergency services, they continued their radio jargon-filled requests for chairs and tables while we waited to be seated. One of these fellows then asked if we wanted a table outside or inside, “but inside no more table already”. Naomi very kindly asked him why he would ask if we wanted a table inside if there were none inside already. He simply smiled wryly and then spoke into his walkie-talkie. His colleague, standing three metres behind him, responded with something equally unintelligible.

After we had been seated, Naomi’s mum then asked for another chair so that she could put our giant diaper bag and her handbag on it, and one of the dark shirts told her brusquely, “ok ma’am, give me a minute”. Naomi’s mum didn’t hear him clearly, and thought he hadn’t understood her request and so repeated it, to which he repeated “ma’am, give me a minute!”, but with raised voice and an expression which said “I just said I’ll get it for you, didn’t you hear me?”

Maybe it was the heat, maybe we had a long day, but we were seething by then. Waiters came and went, fulfilling our little requests – such as having one cutlery setting for every person seated at our table – they were harried because it was after all, a Saturday evening, and the restaurant was full of tourists and their companions from across the road at Orchard Towers.

We ordered our food and the real show started when Naomi’s mum’s rib-eye steak arrived, and to her dismay because she was famished, it was too tough for her to cut with her steak knives, and we asked for it to be sent back. The really nice waiter who attended to us listened to our complaint and told us he’d take it back and tell the chef and manager.

We thought all was settled, and that in a few minutes (how long does it take to make a rib-eye medium rare?) Mum would have her steak and all would be good in the world.

But no. The same Walkie Talkie Dark Shirted Guy (whom we asked for a chair), Assistant Manager Mr Peter Ang came and asked Mum, “What’s the problem Ma’am?”

“The rib-eye is too tough!” we cried.

“The cut has too many tendons, maybe?” we added, helpfully.

“We couldn’t even cut it without spraining our wrists”, I exaggerated, demonstrating on a slice Mum had cut out for me, as she always does out of habit.

“The rib-eye is a cut that has a lot of fat, so that is why it is tough”, explained Mr Ang The Assistant Manager.

“We’re not talking about fat. You can cut through fat, you can’t cut through tendon and vein”, we countered.

I’m slightly embarrassed to say that I lost it at that point, and became so incensed at the fella’s attitude that I felt the only way to counter an asshole was to be an asshole as well. I shouted at him, “Hallo, what’s your name?”

Walkie Talkie boy looked unperturbed and came back with a business card with his name and walked away while I was still talking to him. It was too noisy for anyone else to notice that I was shouting “You walk away when I’m talking to you? Hah?”

Except of course my family, and a smiling waiter who waited for me to finish my tirade, then said, “I’m so sorry about that. Maybe he’s under a lot of pressure from the manager also. But I am sorry this is a bad experience. Is there anything I can do for you to make it better?”

We swapped Mum’s order for another, more expensive cut of steak that was not likely to be as tough, so that she wouldn’t go hungry. But by then I was too angry to eat anything. Naomi of course, soothed my jangled nerves by asking me, “so, what are you gonna do about it now that you have his name card? Send him flowers?”

We got a free scoop of ice-cream later – probably the only thing the nice smiling waiter, an Indonesian named Yanwar, could do within his power.

The bill came, and as we expected, nothing had been taken off it. We sullenly settled it before giving Yanwar a big fat tip in person – because we found out that the tip jar is never distributed to the waiters.

As we left, two dark shirted staff members were still talking to each other into their walkie talkies, saying something like, “uhh…. table twenty two only got four chair, why only four chair, can put five chair there, over? yah, roger that, over” ]]> http://miyagi.sg/2010/03/remove-the-g-from-stuart-andersons-black-angus-steakhouse/feed/ 5 http://miyagi.sg/2010/02/quick-someone-give-them-a-bone/ http://miyagi.sg/2010/02/quick-someone-give-them-a-bone/#comments Sat, 27 Feb 2010 05:36:42 +0000 Mr Miyagi http://miyagi.sg/?p=2605

Because lately the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been sounding a like it needs a pat on the head and assurance that all is well:

SINGAPORE: Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) has said it is puzzled by comments made to the media by the former Romanian Chargé d’Affaires linked to a hit-and-run case here…

… SINGAPORE: Singapore’s Foreign Ministry has expressed disappointment that Myanmar’s Supreme Court had rejected an appeal by Aung San Suu Kyi against her extended house arrest.

That’s the name of the Facebook group dedicated to documenting all the ugly things happening at RWS.

It’s kinda new, so maybe you might want to join and contribute.

It was some time in the 90s, when I came back to Singapore for uni holidays and my friends told me there was an act I had to catch at this place in Bugis.

It was rude, raunchy and it was like nothing I’d ever seen before. I loved it, and watched that act several times before the holidays were over.

Almost 15 years later, it’s still as easy to be enthralled by Kumar’s performances, but this time the magic’s even better because I get to see him interpret and transform what I’ve put down on paper onto the stage. It really is a privilege being the writer for the show, and I am really glad some people (and the press) enjoyed watching it last year.

The only problem was that there were only 4 shows last year, and tickets were sold out even before the show opened. So the producers have decided to run it again (4-7 March 2010) for the benefit of Kumar’s fans who weren’t able to watch last March.

As I write, tickets are again selling very fast, and if you don’t get yours fast, you may not get them at all. Except perhaps if you leave a comment here saying why you think you should win a pair of Cat 1 ($78) tickets to Kumar: Stripped Bare & Standing Up. I’ll get Kumar to pick the best answer.

If this is true, Student 1 should be tried for sedition.

So Resorts World Sentosa opened its many doors to 75,000 people over the CNY holidays, and judging from the things I’ve heard, it hasn’t been pretty.

They’ve been charging Singaporeans and PRs $100 a day to get in, so that they’ll only get the right kind of people at the 500 tables.

And I heard from a friend whose house we visited this afternoon, that these right kinds of people have been lying, sleeping on the cheap ugly tiles on the floor outside the gambling halls, waiting to be let in.

Oh well. At least the air-conditioning works.

It’s been as busy as we’ve expected this Chinese New Year, and with Kai nursing a new cold (how many do babies get in their first year?), we were expecting even less sleep than usual, and we were right.

That’s not to say we haven’t been enjoying time with our families and relatives jetting in from all parts of Asia.

Our sister-in-law from Shanghai tells us that the only thing about coming to Singapore for the CNY holidays is that when you want to do a spot of shopping on the first or second day of CNY, you’re probably going to be limited to Mustafa’s or a few other smallish shops.

I said that was because Singapore is becoming more like China, as more and more companies seem to be observing more “Chinese traditions” as a result of employing more (Mainland) Chinese workers.

But I’ve now been told that by our good sister-in-law that that’s bunk, and that in Shanghai, most of the shops are open throughout the New Year.

I imagined a joke about someone telling another person that he works at the WTO, and the other person asks, “Wow, how long have you been in Geneva?”, and the first person asks back, “What do you mean, Geneva? I work in Toa Payoh.”

People laugh at our obsession with toilets – and how as a nation, we made all our public toilets flush themselves because we couldn’t be trusted to flush them, and now we don’t have to flush them so often because water is scarce, and how we actually have a national contest to see who has the cleanest toilets.

Having cogitated on this for a bit (on the toilet no less), I have realised that it really is no laughing matter. Good sanitation means less disease, and we should be spreading the word about efficient waste management.

Lack of public action and education has led to people defacating on street corners in Dhaka because of a lack of public toilets. And you really should teach some people that not everything can be flushed.

So, don’t laugh, and be proud of the fact that Singapore hosts the World Toilet Summit (whose logo looks suspiciously like Standard Chartered’s), which was held last December. And the next time someone says s/he works at the WTO, ask him/her how things are in Toa Payoh.

Kai, Naomi and me wish everyone a New Year of peace, joy and happiness. To help yourself along the way, don’t drink and drive, don’t overeat, and don’t gamble away your Ang Pows at the 500 tables open tomorrow at the RWS casino.