Saturday, January 31, 2009

Richard, Richard..

Alright, I admit. It's going to be a lazy post, but this is something I read off the net today.

Enjoy!
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The Best Complaint Letter Ever?


This is a letter recently received by the Virgin Atlantic customer complaints team and is currently being hailed on news blogs, such as this one on The Telegraph as possibly the funniest customer complaint letter ever.

We called the Virgin Atlantic press office and they confirmed they received the letter and that Richard Branson himself called the author to thank him for the feedback.

Here's the letter.

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Dear Mr Branson

REF: Mumbai to Heathrow 7th December 2008

I love the Virgin brand, I really do which is why I continue to use it despite a series of unfortunate incidents over the last few years. This latest incident takes the biscuit.

Ironically, by the end of the flight I would have gladly paid over a thousand rupees for a single biscuit following the culinary journey of hell I was subjected to at the hands of your corporation.

Look at this Richard. Just look at it:

I imagine the same questions are racing through your brilliant mind as were racing through mine on that fateful day. What is this? Why have I been given it? What have I done to deserve this? And, which one is the starter, which one is the desert?

You don't get to a position like yours Richard with anything less than a generous sprinkling of observational power so I KNOW you will have spotted the tomato next to the two yellow shafts of sponge on the left. Yes, it's next to the sponge shaft without the green paste. That's got to be the clue hasn't it. No sane person would serve a desert with a tomato would they. Well answer me this Richard, what sort of animal would serve a desert with peas in:

I know it looks like a baaji but it's in custard Richard, custard. It must be the pudding. Well you'll be fascinated to hear that it wasn't custard. It was a sour gel with a clear oil on top. It's only redeeming feature was that it managed to be so alien to my palette that it took away the taste of the curry emanating from our miscellaneous central cuboid of beige matter. Perhaps the meal on the left might be the desert after all.

Anyway, this is all irrelevant at the moment. I was raised strictly but neatly by my parents and if they knew I had started desert before the main course, a sponge shaft would be the least of my worries. So lets peel back the tin-foil on the main dish and see what's on offer.

I'll try and explain how this felt. Imagine being a twelve year old boy Richard. Now imagine it's Christmas morning and you're sat their with your final present to open. It's a big one, and you know what it is. It's that Goodmans stereo you picked out the catalogue and wrote to Santa about.

Only you open the present and it's not in there. It's your hamster Richard. It's your hamster in the box and it's not breathing. That's how I felt when I peeled back the foil and saw this:

Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking it's more of that Baaji custard. I admit I thought the same too, but no. It's mustard Richard. MUSTARD. More mustard than any man could consume in a month. On the left we have a piece of broccoli and some peppers in a brown glue-like oil and on the right the chef had prepared some mashed potato. The potato masher had obviously broken and so it was decided the next best thing would be to pass the potatoes through the digestive tract of a bird.

Once it was regurgitated it was clearly then blended and mixed with a bit of mustard. Everybody likes a bit of mustard Richard.

By now I was actually starting to feel a little hypoglycaemic. I needed a sugar hit. Luckily there was a small cookie provided. It had caught my eye earlier due to it's baffling presentation:

It appears to be in an evidence bag from the scene of a crime. A CRIME AGAINST BLOODY COOKING. Either that or some sort of back-street underground cookie, purchased off a gun-toting maniac high on his own supply of yeast. You certainly wouldn't want to be caught carrying one of these through customs. Imagine biting into a piece of brass Richard. That would be softer on the teeth than the specimen above.

I was exhausted. All I wanted to do was relax but obviously I had to sit with that mess in front of me for half an hour. I swear the sponge shafts moved at one point.

Once cleared, I decided to relax with a bit of your world-famous onboard entertainment. I switched it on:

I apologise for the quality of the photo, it's just it was incredibly hard to capture Boris Johnson's face through the flickering white lines running up and down the screen. Perhaps it would be better on another channel:

Is that Ray Liotta? A question I found myself asking over and over again throughout the gruelling half-hour I attempted to watch the film like this. After that I switched off. I'd had enough. I was the hungriest I'd been in my adult life and I had a splitting headache from squinting at a crackling screen.

My only option was to simply stare at the seat in front and wait for either food, or sleep. Neither came for an incredibly long time. But when it did it surpassed my wildest expectations:

Yes! It's another crime-scene cookie. Only this time you dunk it in the white stuff.

Richard.... What is that white stuff? It looked like it was going to be yoghurt. It finally dawned on me what it was after staring at it. It was a mixture between the Baaji custard and the Mustard sauce. It reminded me of my first week at university. I had overheard that you could make a drink by mixing vodka and refreshers. I lied to my new friends and told them I'd done it loads of times. When I attempted to make the drink in a big bowl it formed a cheese Richard, a cheese. That cheese looked a lot like your baaji-mustard.

So that was that Richard. I didn't eat a bloody thing. My only question is: How can you live like this? I can't imagine what dinner round your house is like, it must be like something out of a nature documentary.

As I said at the start I love your brand, I really do. It's just a shame such a simple thing could bring it crashing to it's knees and begging for sustenance.

Yours Sincererly...

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I sincerely love this guy. He has brought much joy and entertainment to the complaints department of Virgin group, relief to the unsatiated passangers of Virgin airlines and of course to mua, le much amused reader.

Goodstuff!

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Have you ever?

Earlier, I was driving back from my aunt's place. It was dark, and suddenly I felt a distraction..
*eeeett*
I ignored it.

*flash of movement*

Me: *stares at the road ahead*.. going at 90 km/h

*Nggeeee..*

*BAM*

I caught a mosquito today - with my bare hands, in the dark, while i was driving and staring at a road ahead. It felt pretty damned good, not in a sadistic way, but knowing that sometimes you still got it.

Back to less serious matters, my Chinese new year has been great so far, traditionally with much family fervour. I reckon my family has gotten more accustomed to city CNY celebrations instead of back in Rasa (my hometown), which still stands as a favorite choice. It's dissapointing to think that it's merely another house to rent currently, in place of what once was the breeding and living grounds of the Wong clan.

I miss that house for so many reasons. Firstly, it was a single storey bungalow with almost an acre of land all around. It was a simple layout comprising of the house, the shed where the bulk of gardening and heavy rusted equipment was stored, the mini barn (yes, an actual chicken barn) where we used to have a self-sustaining egg source, and the not-so empty land where animals usually roamed around the many fruit trees available. (which proved to be a source of much excitement when fruit seasons arrive!)

Ahh, I can't help but feel the nostalgia of myself as a Justin junior, running around with nothing but his round face, stumpy clothes and a fat smile across his face. Sheer bliss knowing that all there was to do when I was back in Rasa was to collect my MOOlah (haha, couldn't help it), eat and be merry. That was it, that was the job, and I sure did it well.

Yet, being so young, it was easy to take for granted the fact that the people around you were what made that atmosphere possible.

I think I'm in the right direction when I put my family first most of the time and I'll do my best to keep it that way. After all, when all else fails, you will always have your bloodline to depend on, trust me, I've pulled that card more than once.


GONG XI FA CAI to all my loved ones, sincerely wishing you abundance of health, wealth and happiness throughout this year! =)

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