Debbie’s Neighborhood

Not feeling altogether healthy today, so have been lying a little upon my bed. I have the blinds open and a crow is spending large amounts of time sitting on the lamp post outside my bedroom window and looking in at me. It flies away and then returns to take up its post again. I am not overly superstitious, but I am starting to get a little spooked out by the damn crow. I would indeed like to stone the damn thing.

FD and the crow : not friends at all

Look you saggy bag of black feathers take your business somewhere else! SHOO!

Yesterday Mr FD and I experienced two ends of customer service - the good, the bad and the bad was ugly.

As mentioned in a previous post, Mr FD and I have been in the process of buying a car for the company that Mr FD is currently setting up. He started some two week ago on this process and he told everyone involved that he needed the car to leave on an extended trip last Monday. He just wanted the basic car, happy to choose from the colours on the show floor. Wanted no extras - oh except floor mats which now cost $180AUS for 4 rubber floor mats! Mr FD made call after call, repeating his need and his deadline. No one listened. They all heard what they wanted to hear, and then covered up with excuses of "fax didn't arrive" ,  "missed the deadline and head office won't process until tomorrow" and "they are out of the office and I'll leave theme a message" . Where do you leave the message? On the toilet wall of the business next door?

Anyway, we finally got the call to collect the car. We made an appointment for 2.30pm. When we arrived our saleswoman was nowhere to be seen. She was out on a test drive with another customer, even though we had an appointment and knew Mr FD had to leave that afternoon on an extended trip. A number of salesmen walked by us without even acknowledging that we were human and breathed. Eventually we made enough noise to be noticed and demanded to be served. A very junior member of the team took us through signing the papers and then she found a poor salesman who had a leg in a cast and couldn't make an exit to go through the car with Mr. FD. I made little effort to make small talk with Junior Girl as she kept up this charade of our Saleswoman returning at any moment, weeping over her unintended absence. Oh yeah.

An hour later we are driving out of the show room and Saleswoman appears. She throws herself in fron of our car and reefs open Mr. FD's door and screams "Congratulations " as though we had just given birth and not gone into spasms more of heart breaking debt. Then she plants a big lipsticky kiss on his cheek, something that normally would have his heart go into overdrive. THEN she runs to the otherside of the car and reefs open MY door, and rubs her cheek against mine. I take particular note of her name badge and facial features to add her to my stick list. I had never met this woman before, Mr FD had only ever spoken to her over the phone. Not a word of "sorry" even though "I knew that you were driving an hour to get here, and had an appointment with me, and were short of time". Nope, She had our money and she was onto the next sale. Customer service? I think not. Next company car, and there will be one or two or three, won't be bought from her.

On the other side, earlier that morning, a real estate salesman left his comatose mother to drive over an hour to bring some papers to us for signing as he knew Mr. FD needed to sign them before he left yesterday. [We are renting warehouse space]. While we were signing, the LOVELY [HANDSOME] Salesman received a phone call to inform him that his mother had just woken from the coma. She had been involved in a car accident a day or so previously. So this man spends 3 hours away from his possibly dying mother as he knew how important his role was in the next step of Mr FD's business. [If we had known before the meeting we would have gone to his office]

Wait there is a 3rd tale of service. Mr FD is in the seed business, pasture seed mainly. He had bought some seed and organized for it to be sent to a depot for delivery. Yesterday morning there is a knock at our front door, Mr FD goes outside and there is a delivery truck driver outside. The delivery man says "Got a pallet of seed, here for you, mate." They sent the damn seed to our residential address despite Mr FD making it obvious the residential address was for billing purposes only! The poor delivery driver had in fact alerted his office that they were sending him to a residential address with a pallet of seed, but they wouldn't listen or double check the details, so the poor delivery driver drove across town only to be told that "yes, that is right, this is the wrong address", and to have to drive back across town to the depot.

So not only are they giving bad customer service to their customers but they are giving bad customer service to each other. Your co-workers deserve as much as your customers, if not more.

To me, it is easier to do the right thing, and to do the right thing first time around than to do to the pretence dance. And if MR FD asks you to help him make a deadline - just remember there is a Flamingo Dancer with a stick list standing behind him.

[Stick list : list of names of all the people I am going to hit with a stick one day soon]

Daughter1 just sent me the following quote of the day. Needless to say I agree with it!

'Whatever you give a woman, she will make greater. If you give her sperm, she'll give you a baby. If you give her a house, she'll give you a home. If you give her groceries, she'll give you a meal. If you give her a smile, she'll give you her heart. She multiplies and enlarges what is given to her. So, if you give her any crap, be ready to receive a ton of sh-t.'  

Are you prepared in case of a natural disaster? What do your plan and preparations include?

Not really, but I guess I should start reading this book..

The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead

Max Brooks

.. but then again I have seen a lot of Undead movies.. so I get the gist of what I need to do.. And my many hours of hands on experience of Zombie blasting by playing a lot of "Resident Evil" should also come in handy. Although I should probably pick up a Sword and a few guns. Which shouldn't be to difficult seeing on how I live in Texas.

Look! NumNuts! I mean YumNuts!

For the record, my father's favorite expression while driving when I was a kid: Get the fuck out of the way, NumNuts!

(I love the package design though.)

Just wondering if I am the only person that tends to eat more when they are sick. It's like, I feel bad, so I go around the house eating whatever I can get my hands on hoping that it will be the magical thing that will make me feel better. In the end, I'm still sick and now my pants are tight too. 

What was your favorite class in high school? (And no, lunch doesn't count.) 

It was my English class. I rarely skipped that class. LOL and I had a chance to write alot...and I enjoyed it.

Love:

That I made a Swwet Potato custard last night.

Vegas! THURSDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My coworker showed me how to put on eye shadow.

This outfit that I got to wear in Vegas AND it was on sale! And because it was on sale, its 50 times cuter to me...

Sleep.

Spam fried rice.

Loathe:

My skin is all out of whack.

I can't afford anything at the Nordstrom sale.

That I could use a haircut.

Art Brut - Alcoholics Unanimous Art Brut Tour Dates 11/11/09 Oberlin College IL 11/12/09 North Star Bar Phila, PA 11/13/09 Brooklyn Bowl Brooklyn, NY 11/14/09 Ottobar Baltimore, MD 11/15/09 Bowery Ballroom NY 12/08/09 Mono Pescara 12/09/09 Circolo degli Artisti Rome 12/10/09 Live Forum Milan 12/11/09 Spazio 211 Turin 12/12/09 Bronson Ravenna Read More Art Brut http://weheartmus... It was quite a few years ago I first heard Art Brut. I do believe I was not overly impressed with...

I arrived late to the Triple Rock, in Minneapolis, so I had already missed some of Surfer Blood (myspace / twitter). However, I did get the gist of the band, who seems like they are going to be a hot new buzz band - like Vampire Weekend. Highlight of their set was the last song, in which the guitarist brought the solo drum into the audience as everyone on stage went monkeys. (Sort of feels orchestrated to me, like they didn't really put much effort in trashing their equipments). The audience seem to welcome Blood Surfer, so it's all good.

Art Brut

Loads of Art Brut fans were in the audience that night. You can tell by all the t-shirt and their eagerness of being in front and center. When the band came on, doing "Formed a Band", which singer Eddie Argos turns to the audience and said, "you ought to try it, it's brilliant!"

Eddie looks like a guy that doesn't take himself too seriously. He seems to like to drink a lot and talk a lot (but with his thick British accent, it's not like we could understand half what was said). He seems to swagger on stage a lot, often using his left arm to illustrate the songs.

There wasn't enough room on stage for Argos to do his infamous microphone skip, but he did manage to sing half of "DC Comics" by the bar section. Speaking of which, I think it's cool that Argos is a huge DC fan - since UK comics are usually, you know, 2000 AD/Judge Dredd sort. During the song, Argos spouted out what I hear as "Christian Bale", "Booster Gold" (if I can remember, I think he was basically a janitor from the future with future tech and a Legionaires flight ring), and something about "Metropolis".

Setlist

As you can see from the setlist, they did a mix of new and old songs. The setlist also doesn't reflect what was played, for instance, I know "The Passenger" was played well after "DC Comics". I suppose the setlist was more of a rough guideline than actual instructions.... which actually fits the way Art Brut operate.

The thing about "The Passenger", from their latest album Art Brut vs Satan, is that it got this great introduction. Eddie explained how he thought the Iggy Pop song was about taking the subway, "Iggy doesn't seem to me to be the driving sort." It wasn't until later did he discovered that Iggy's song was about taking heroin in back of a limo with David Bowie. Too funny.

Oh the other thing, the way Eddie sings, if you can call it singing, is quite interesting. It's more like rambling, it definitely feels at time like The Fall - only with a lot heavier backing band.

The band left and came back with three encores. I thought I heard Eddie saying "we don't normally do this", which may have been said in an ironic kind of way. I really couldn't tell, all I know is that the encores were met by the fans' demands.

Art Brut's funk sole brother

PS, They only had T-Shirts and CDs for sale at the merch table. I was hoping to see some of their awesome shoes. It's £20 online, which is about $40 USD, but totally worth it if you are a massive Art Brut fan. Get those shoes, and also their latest album, Art Brut vs Satan, at the usual online stores.

 11/11/2009 00:00:22 ♥ vu () ♥ artbrut.org.uk ♥ myspace.com/artbrut 

After looking through old photos of myself and my sibs when we were kids, I have come to the conclusion that we must have worn the most ridiculous, daggy swimmers you could ever hope (not) to see.

Now I myself only saw my mother sew once, when she sewed my bridesmaid doll a dress and cape. But these definitely have a home sewn look to them. And we seemed to wear them for years.

Take me here for instance. Determined to get to the beach. And nothin', not even those baggy daggy swimmers is going to stop me. I mean mother, you could've taken in the legs a little. I bet if I keep looking I'll see one of my sisters wearing these before I got them. Probably both of them.

1

And one of my favourite photos. Emjay, the oldest, with our brother and sister. Sporting a very unfashionable blue suit with a matching home done fringe trim.

2

And here she is again, what maybe a couple of years later, still wearing it.

3

Move forward another couple of years and my other sister is now wearing it and Emjay has a much nicer, yet still loose fitting pair of swimmers on. As you can see I'm still wearing the same pair I had on in the beginning. Because I had penty of room to grow into.

4

OMFG. And I was right. Even though I was only half joking. Here is Min, wearing my baggy pink swimmers. I wonder if I ever owned a new pair.

5

I have this vision of my mother, searching through her wardrobe every year the day before we went on our summer holidays, pulling out a bag full of atrocious old faded swimmers and handing us each a pair. Mind you it wouldn't have been a very full bag. We seemed to last through our childhoods with three of four pairs between us.