Mini calamities

Alrighty then...

One of my favourite Japanese TV programme seems to have ended its successful 9 year run.
It is the Dotch Cooking Show, and it really is a pity as I had just discovered their website recently.

As I was about to make a post about this, I found out that I have been subjected to a censorware.
That's right. I have fallen under the yoke of a corporate web filtering service that has managed to eliminate over 60% of my daily content, including all the free web-mails, and messenger systems (although I don't use this one a lot).

I really, really do not like this kind of artificial restrictions. Especially when it is implemented in the name of "security". For one, we are all now under the mercy of the company that provides the filter. If they decided to classify Wikipedia under "Miscellaneous" (which is one of the filters), *poof* there goes one of my sources of data. As it is, I am already unable to access some of my translation and writing resources as they have been classified under "Internet Communications", which is also filtered.

Gah... going to work has just lost some of its lustre.

Fallen empires...

It seems that quite a few people got really upset with the way the US Government has been acting. Having been living in a single party majority "democracy" most of my life, I really can't relate on how these liberal and conservative things work. All I know is that it does not bode well for some of my investments, and might even affect the health of the company I am working for (US dollars revenue).

Anyway, I have finally confirmed that the westerner run western stall at the cafeteria has turned into a ghost town. It was not that surprising though, as the quality of their fare has been decreasing steadily.

First, the westerner dissapeared and got replaced by an easterner. This replacement was at least quite jolly, and seems to be keeping up the standard of the food. Then came the senior citizen helper, and the foreign talent assistant. As time goes by, the jolly easterner stopped coming to the stall, and the two underlings were left to run the stall by themselves.

The vegetables became undercooked. The variety of condiments got slashed. The extra salad bowl went into the limbo. My favorite chicken thigh dish gets the mary chia treatment, and the potato wedges had to do the extra duty of wedging the now wobbly stall. On top of all of these, somehow they decided that raising the price is a good idea. (Hey, we're selling less now, so let's up the price to retain the same level of profit!)

It reminded me of the story that Ms. E told me about how the standard of Bread Talk in Singapore has dropped, and that the ones in Indonesia is even worse. It seems that a lot of us are not as conscientious in keeping up the standards as compared to let say, the Japanese. I am aware that it is not an easy thing to do, keeping up standards, and often it is a thankless endeavour as people tend to take things for granted after a while. It is just sad to see that guality often had to give way to greed.

I wish they had retained the noodle stall...