Conspiracy Theory

24th August 2006, Thursday

Early this Thurday morning I felt a string of events from which some people/organisation are conspiring to ruin the well-being of my lofe...

First of all, my ultimate superior, the American researcher these days BY and I known affectionately as "Hulk Hogan" (don't ask why) has the problem when his own project suddenly became ultra urgent and take precedence of everything else...
And the sad truth would be our French supervisor being professional yet always induce ways to please her superior which I termed as "hugging the testicles (translate that into Teochew or Hokien and it'll make sense)"...
Something like what my old supervisor had been indulging herself in with SeBan's testicles of course...
Suddenly a project which involves that 2 plates I had ruined last week became a high priority and had to be done "asap"...

Today marked the day my supplementary mobile line expired which was holding my porting of old number to my new line back...
After successfully terminating that line, I got the info from Singtel that since I suscribed my line under my lass' name while my old line is under mine, legistratively it couldn't be done which totally incensed me as the lady from the telephone shop should have pointed it out before I decided to take the line under her name...
In the end, ultimately I will have to change the line and annouce to the world of the coming of my new handphone number...bugger....

However the biggest conspiracy theory arose from our friendly bridal shop...

Last evening, we went as scheduled to choose the creme-de-la-creme photos for the wedding album...
With Soon's expertise in capturing life's beautiful moment on his camera, we were in good hands and the results were stunning as the resident sissy-man Keanu who's in charge of the phot album guided us through patiently the stack of photographs from the various shootings in the studio to the 4 locations outside...
It was a difficult task choosing the best out of the lot which almost all looks too delectable to resist... However we knew in the back of our minds that we have like barely more than 24 to choose from, so we just refrained adding on to the growing collection...
Finally it was down to the final 70 and when Keanu started to rumble on about how the choices of album we could choose...

Seriously I would love to unveil that evil genius who came out with the method of burning the photographs into a thick, durable cardboard which we came to know as the "magazine" style...
I am sure eveyone had checked out before when you attended wedding banquets in recent times when the nice collection of wedding photographs which had been digitally enhanced and altered were presented in the form of a nice hard cardboard album...

We had also assumed that that was what been promised in our package except for digital effects which we needed to chip in a bit more to ornament the pictures...but boy were we wrong...
The promised package is a simple screw-on album with minimal enhancement and as Keanu had claimed barely lasting for a decade before the photographs started peeling off from the cardboard...
And there would be no way they could do digital enhancements for this format so we could dream on about doing that "Densha Otoko" montage...

Then came the gist about the pricing of the magazine style which certainly was appealing to any hotheaded newly-weds... Keanu went through the actual cost if we were to calculate by the items to make up of that album which is at absurd pricing (let's say you can tour Europe with luxury with that obscene sum of money)... Then he was "kind" enough to reveal that great deal his studio had conjured which cost like a fraction of that sum but still several folds beyond my original budget...

at this junture I felt we had been well-tricked by the whole get-up...
First the package seemed reasonable with all the gown and photo shooting, then the expert photographer showed his true shutterbug power and came out with those nice photographs...
We were not been well informed of the format of the album thinking we were been promised those nice ones...
During this selection they showed us those beautiful photos which we were in dilemma of which to give up then dropped us the bomb of the actual pricing...

We would have to give up more than half of the selected photos and it was nearing 10pm when we were tired and starving as we had not have our dinner...
In the magazine format, we could choose up to 60 photographs as the 32 pages could hold multiple photos with digital alteration and touch-up...
To make the package even more appealing, Keanu threw in a nice landscape style wedding montage as a replacement of those mundane potrait photograph with some metallic enhancement which he claimed to be the top of the line now...
In the normal package we would not have a digital form of the collection of photographs (i.e. the soft copy) and inclusion would mean more money of course...darn those conniving businessmen!!

We had a long discussion about the final decision we had to make there and then...
To me I felt the album would not justify that amount of money we had to foot as it would be for show for one day and most probably kept in the crypt for ages afterwards.
The landscape picture to be hung on the wall on the other hand sure looks classy and I wouldn't mind spend a bit on that...
Nevertheless I wouldn't budge on my budget and we came into an understanding as she as always has been well-aware of my limitations and eventually we made some adjustment and let the night of endless choosing came to an end..
Money spent eventually and let's hope it is worth..even mildly would be good...

Japanese word of the day:悪戯~i-ta-zu-ra~ (Trick) I wouldn't mind if Nakama Yukie and Abe Hiroshi would come to unravel the trick these people had pulled on us...