plaxoed!

Normally I don’t like to rant too much… (oh wait, I do). Anyways, we had just finished dinner at Korea Tofu House and we decided to get a little bit of desert. So we walked around Cupertino Village and decided to hit up Q-Cup. If you just clicked through to the yelp link, you’ll notice that it got 1 out of 5 stars, and this review isn’t going to help them out any either…

We head inside and I order a pineapple bubble milk tea (yeah, I know it already sounds kind of nasty, but I like pineapple so I wasn’t thinking about that too much). When the order comes out, I taste it and it’s pretty bad. Rose has some and she doesn’t like it either. I tried some more and then I barfed a little bit in my mouth (just kidding). Long and short of it is, it’s the worst bubble tea we’ve ever had - maybe the worst bubble tea in the world says Rose.

No big deal we think, we’ll just ask for a replacement regular bubble milk tea. I walk up to the counter and politely ask if I can exchange the bubble tea for another flavor. The girl at the counter seems puzzled and asks some old guy about it and he says no. This was pretty puzzling since 1. the bubble tea costs them almost nothing and 2. customer satisfaction is usually pretty important to a business like this when there’s a perfectly good alternative just around the corner.

I ask again nicely, but no dice. When I tell Rose what happened, she gets pretty mad and proceeds to ask again for me. This time, the old guy runs to the back and mixes a little sample of the same flavor for her to taste to see if it’s still bad. Of course, it tastes exactly the same (we suspect it was the artificial pineapple flavor).

Then, he gives her a bunch of junk about how the bubble tea cup and plastic seal costs a lot of money so they’d be taking a huge financial hit if they gave us a replacement bubble tea. That’s completely ridiculous! Then he offers this case study:

“If you go to any restaurant, order some food, pay for it, and then tell them you don’t like the food, will they give you a refund or make you another dish? No! They’ll lose money! That’s how business works!”

Umm… yeah. That’s for the business tips, where’d you get your MBA again? He forgot the part where customers don’t come back and he doesn’t make money period.

The worst part is, eventually they actually gave us a replacement milk tea (they forgot the bubbles) and it tasted horrible too. Moral of the story: don’t go to Q-Cup.

Epilogue: we came home after this whole ordeal and looked online. According to wikipedia, Q-Cup is an illegal franchise?

Well, I didn’t get to finish blogging about Singapore last night, so on to Day 2 in Singapore!

We woke up and went to Chinatown to walk around and pick up some food. We followed another great walking tour and saw a ton of sights including a street market, a temple, a mosque, and of course, a food court!

If you’re ever in Singapore Chinatown, I definitely recommend you check out the Maxwell food centre, and in particular, try the $2 Laksa and $4 sliced fish bee hoon (a fish noodle soup).

After filling up our stomaches, we went to Bugis street, which is another large shopping area. There’s a nice air conditioned mall called Bugis junction and there’s also a flea market style area with lots of little shops and a ton of local flair.

Also in the Bugis area is the Singapore National Library, which as it turns out is much cooler than it sounds. It’s got some pretty cool architecture, great views from the top floors, and even an outdoor courtyard area for people taking a study break.

After the library, we headed to Esplanade, a crazy double durian shaped structure that houses Singapore’s concert hall and theatre.

Inside Esplanade they’ve got some art pieces on display, a few restaurants, and a rooftop deck! If you’re in the area in the afternoon, the Japanese restaurant has a great happy hour deal (a bowl of udon noodles, a hand roll, and tea for $5 SGD… very tasty ).

Lastly, we saw the Merlion on the waterfront downtown… which is where I had my accident. But once again, it’s getting late so I’ll save that story for tomorrow

Just unloaded my camera too

This past Tuesday (the ominous 6/6/06 ), Bubba, Rikk, Joseph and I went to Xanh for dinner to catch up. On the way to the restaurant, Joseph and Rikk saw these toilets and we couldn’t resist heading back after dinner to take a few funny photos. Here they are:

Oh yeah, the food at Xanh was great too

Whew, I realized today that I haven’t blogged in almost a month. So much to say!

Don’t worry, I’m still alive and kickin’; I’ve just been suffering from Mena’s Syndrome, being too busy to blog. Here’s what’s been on my mind lately:

• Got a new pair of headphones - Shure E4cs. Awesome; I’ll post up a review sometime soon.
• MacBook Pro was getting so hot, it was slowing down (and I suspect heat was causing some of the crashes); so I got a LapCool and it’s been much cooler and faster.
• Hosted some guys from the Michigan Men’s Glee Club when they were here in San Francisco. It was great to catch up with some of the other clubbers in the area at the concert too
• Lots of stuff happening at church. I’ve been helping out with graphics, production team on Sundays, and various other things for a long time and now I’m helping lead a small group too.
• Had a good time at zvents when they hosted Lunch 2.0 a few weeks ago (I’ve got a flickr photo set up). Thanks for hosting us Ethan!

yum!

Ah there’s so much more that I’m probably forgetting; but hopefully I’ll be able to post a little more often over the next few weeks.

If you’re an avid Lunch 2.0 fan you already know this, but for all those who should be avid Lunch 2.0 fans: we’re having a party here at Plaxo tomorrow night to welcome the HipCal team to Silicon Valley.

RSVP at the Lunch 2.0 blog or on the zvents page. We’ve got free pizza and beer, so come on out for a fun Web 2.0 mixer

Rose came up to visit this past weekend and her friends Bonnie and Mike came up from Texas and LA too. On Saturday, we went around downtown San Francisco and on Sunday, we went to Napa. The weather was a bit touchy - it was a bit cold on Saturday and it kept raining and then getting really nice on Sunday - but we had a great time anyways!

To start things off, Rose and I went to Left Bank on Santana Row for dinner on Friday. I had escargot for the first time; it didn’t taste like much to me, but it looked interesting. I ordered a smoked rabbit risotto that was umm… interesting and Rose got a veal dish that was amazing.

Then on Saturday we started things off at the Ferry Building where the farmer’s market was in full swing:

Next it was off to Coit Tower and then Twin Peaks for some nice views:

And finally, we finished off the day with a yummy dinner in Japantown and a nice evening of Jazz at Yoshi’s in Oakland:

On Sunday, we headed off to Napa. We only had time to stop in at Opus One and Sullivan, but it was still a fun time. Check out some of the rainbows we saw On the way back, we stopped at the Golden Gate National Reserve just north of the Golden Gate Bridge and took a few quick pictures before the sun set.

All in all, a fun picture filled weekend! I think I used up 25% of my monthly Flickr allotment in one day uploading all these photos

Rose made me a Valentine’s Day package that was quite yummy: cookies, brownies, and a nice card

She told me later that the cookies were actually healthy! No fat and she only used half the amount of sugar the recipie called for. Amazing!

Meanwhile, I sent Rose some e-cards, flowers, a book, and some headphones - how un-creative *sigh*

A few days ago some Plaxo people were over at the AOL/Netscape offices in Mountain View and ran into Justin, the author of Tales of a Running Man. I’ve been a subscriber of his blog for a while and since he was in town, I invited him to breakfast this morning at Hobee’s in Cupertino. The food was good as usual and so was the company.

Justin and Greg are both pretty senior guys on the AIM team and their depth of knowledge on the industry in general made for really great conversation. I assume we’ll probably be running into each other more often in the coming months