Rant 1115 / Cooking Prawn Heads In Sesame Seed Oil

Best video I've seen in a long while.
























Watched Bernie. A very unique movie based on a true story of a very popular man committing murder in a small American town.

What I learnt from the story was this: If you are popular enough, there is that possibility that you could get away with murder - even if you confess to the police.

The film also felt like an appeal to reduce his charge from first-degree murder (ie premeditated) to second-degree (not premeditated).

Anyways, although the comedy category felt inappropriate for such a recent story (the real Bernie is still alive in jail and looks about 40-50 only), the more appropriate drama genre would mean that it would feel a lot more like a tragedy.

Maybe the director wanted it to appeal to a larger audience because I don't watch drama films a lot.





















Finally made the estate account at DBS after so long. Apparently the bank employees call it an "estate account" while it's technically a crappy current account based on the death certificate number instead of the identity card number.

I say "crappy" because estate accounts do not have the internet banking feature, ie I can't check its balance.

All I get is a chequebook and I checked that this was correct.

As if that's not bad enough, I have to pay $2 maintenance fee on top of the possible $7 or something if I fall below $3000 daily average.

To top that all off, I need to maintain this account for at least 6 months or I'll have to pay a penalty fee of $30.

So I must pay $12 to DBS minimum just to set up an account to settle my late mother's assets. Can't I get a sympathy waiver or something?

And when I want to close the account, I have to go to a DBS branch personally to do it.

I think I can check the balance via phone but I'm not sure because I'm just the "signer" and not the account owner (it's not my death cert number).


Anyways, the lady handling my case in her office was very enthusiastic in telling me how bad her job was. She began by telling me that I was lucky to be there on a weekday because the queue was horrendous on weekends, with one person complaining to her that she had queued for 2 hours.

In comparison, I think I only waited for 20 minutes.

It was funny because there were three rooms in that branch for account opening yet she was the only person using any of the rooms.

Apparently they do get temporary help from other branches but they don't get replaced by permanent staff.

Whatever these bank employees are paid, it's not enough to compensate for the long hours and the strictness of the bank. According to her, one of the temporary staff had to stay till 9.30pm (the branch closes at around 5pm) because there was a FIVE CENT discrepancy in one of her clients' account and she had no idea whose it was.

She had to stay that long to search through all her clients' papers just to see who was missing FIVE CENTS.

I didn't say out loud that it was ridiculous because it might have been rude, but it was true.

I wouldn't give a damn if my staff forgets 50 cents from my office stationery fund that I don't even watch.

Normally, they sometimes had to stay beyond 5. In her many years of working her (she had over a decade's worth of experience there), this is pretty long. Once upon a time, they could leave at 3.

Now, they barely have time for lunch. She herself gets 30 minutes - 5 to walk to the restaurant, 5 to walk back, 20 minutes to order and eat. Toilet breaks only last 15 minutes.

The counter staff are even worse - they almost never have time for toilet breaks and yet I always see a long queue every time I go there. According to her, they drink less water so that they can pee less, and usually, the first thing that comes to their minds when their work is over is the washroom.

Then I asked her if the people above her had better life.

I thought her manager might be able to get off early but she just told me the lunch break starts at 4pm.

Dinner? Work ends at 9pm for the manager.

I just told her straight up that this was one moment I'm glad I didn't get a good job, because I used to want to work in a bank back in uni.

Although I'll probably make less than her manager for many years, I love all the free time I'm getting.






















So I finally got around to picking the lock of a locked drawer in my office. No idea what was inside nor why my mother kept it locked.

After watching some Youtube videos on this topic, I bought two sets of professional lockpicks from DealExtreme and brought one to the office.

But I had simply left it there till a few days ago when I actually used it.

Played another video on lockpicking by HowCast on Youtube to see which pick in the set is used and how.

After about 5 minutes, I finally got it using only two of them. Absolutely no idea why I have about 10 in the set including two of what I assume to be wrenches, one L-shaped and one S-shaped.

The process was surprisingly easy, maybe because it was an old lock. All I needed to do was keep a gentle pressure on the wrench in the correct turning direction while repeatedly scratching the top of the keyhole with the pick to push wherever the real key was supposed to push.

There was nothing important inside, just lots of old chequebooks that don't matter anymore.



As for my other set, it's a smaller one that's packed in a flat case that's poorly disguised as a credit card. Due to the size, the wrench proved ineffective when I tested it with the door locks in my home.






















Finally went to SGX and UOB to settle the estate stuff. UOB was a little complicated because of the mess but I think there shouldn't be any problem once they're done with their checks. I haven't done anything wrong and there's nothing to hide.

SGX was a little inconvenient because it's at Shenton Way. Fortunately, there was a direct bus home so it didn't end too badly.

I had already researched my path for that day starting from my office and expected to visit UOB, CDP and HDB to settle all the estate stuff by 5pm.

First, I took a direct bus to the Bendemeer branch of UOB (for some reason I was supposed to go there specifically just because my mother had set up the account there) at 1pm, but I managed to leave only at 3.30pm.

While waiting there, my bro gave me his girlfriend's IC number so that I could get member's discount at Challenger at Funan because I had previously mentioned that I wanted to get a spare network adapter there this week.

So I looked at the map and found that there was a bus to Funan and a train route from Funan to SGX Centre.

Since it was placed so conveniently in my path, I decided to go there to get the adapter. Moreover, since I was leaving UOB at 3.30pm, I had given up on going to HDB before it closes, so I had more than enough time to shop a little at Funan.

I was right, because I reached SGX at around 4.15pm and got served after 4.30pm. Fortunately it was a simple process of transferring the little bit of shares to me. I could also set up an estate account and then split them between my bro and I equally but I'd have to wait for my bro to set his CDP account and whether I use the estate account to transfer his shares to him or transfer them from my account, I have to pay the same amount of transfer fee of S$10.70 per transfer.

I figured there was the chance that my bro wouldn't give a damn, especially since I had given him the larger share of our inheritance to him, so I decided to transfer the shares to my account. Anyways, I was right that he didn't care whether I gave him his half, so I'm saving the $10.70.

Met two secondary school friends while I was waiting for my turn at SGX. One was an insurance agent with AXA while the other was a trader at PhilipCapital.

As I was quite tired by then, I actually only pretended to look at their namecards and gave a meaningless "Wow, nice," and gave them mine in return only because I think I was supposed to.

The insurance guy then came over to catch up with me even though we barely talked at all back during our school days. The only thing I really could recall about this was that I had a lot of difficulty turning the conversation topics back to himself because he kept trying to probe me and even attempted to try to get me an insurance policy when he found out I had no medical insurance, albeit a very basic one known as "PRUshield".

Honestly, I didn't even realize what he was doing other than make conversation. I just want to practise talking about others during conversations instead of focusing on myself all the time. It was only when I really looked at the namecards at home that I realized what he was trying to do.

The fact that he had asked me if I had any investment-linked products made sense then, mainly because ILPs aren't known to be very good investments among the better-informed investors.

It was good that the queue didn't move too slowly so I didn't chat with him too much, and then I quickly waved them goodbye and left once it was done. The SGX person serving me was really quick even in her speech, most likely because it was almost 5pm.

I'll have to settle the HDB later, then find a Hong Kong lawyer at the end of this year to reseal the Grant of Administration in Hong Kong. I'll also need to settle my IPT which I've already booked for the rest of this month and the next, and I haven't even bought a pair of shoes for the training yet.

This means I have HDB and shoe shopping to settle by Wednesday in time for my first IPT session on Thursday, in addition to my work. Not too much.