Simply Suhandy

Monday, August 30, 2010

Wedding Planner Beware: Florist to Avoid

Wedding, is supposed to be the most wonderful event in a person's life (apart from accepting Jesus). For man, our attention to the wedding may not be so particular or detail, for the woman, sometimes they wanted everything to be just right, in terms of colour, style, music and so on.

Me and my wife were honored to help out in one of our friends' wedding. She is my wife's best friend, and my wife is tasked to take care of the decoration and liasing with the florist. The bride-groom engaged a florist, who was approached by another couple having the wedding just one week before theirs.

The name of the Florist is 7colorgift.com, an online shop. The owner has a shop somewhere, but we contacted her through internet. Her name is Liu Qian or Lin Qing or Jessie Liu (you never know which is her real name). Her origin is from China and was graduated from Temasek Poly.

The Negotiation

Weeks before the wedding day, my wife has been communicating with both the bride and the florist about what they wanted to have. In the beginning, my wife took charge to identify what are the things we do not need and negotiated the price to go down by 200SGD. All was still well at this point of time.

The Requirements
Our friend wants to have gold/champagne color as the main theme for the floral decoration. This was communicated to the florist ways in the beginning.

Since this is a Christian wedding, we would like to have the center piece at the altar. This center piece should have a candle holder in the middle to hold the unity candle. And of course, it should be gold/champagne colour (eg. you can have other colours, but what stood out should be gold/champagne colour).

There will be flowers at the pews along the aisle, which should also be gold/yellow/champagne in colour.

There will be proper cover for the seat that the couples will sit on during the ceremony in the worship hall.

There will be another flower piece outside at the reception table, and it should be of the theme colour as well.

The Delivery of the Design
During this stage, there are communications between the bride, the florist and my wife. Pictures were sent and designs were discussed, all are noted by the florist which means that they will comply with our inputs.

The florist came up with a low center piece design for the altar, with a candle holder in the middle. My wife commented that the design is good, but because the altar is quite wide, can you add something to make it look wider? She noted the email, indicating that she is okay.

My wife requested for the florist to come up with the final design the latest one-week before the wedding, so that we can have a final review, and yet the florist only come up with the design on thursday, less than 2 days before the wedding.

D-Day - 1, Friday Night, Day for Decoration

My wife and her decoration team were there at the church to help out with the decoration as requested by the Florist.

They were shocked by what was being delivered:
1. The flowers decoration along the pews are pink and purple in colour
2. The center piece for the reception was pink in its entirety
3. The center piece for the altar was tall and fat and has no room for the unity candle at all, and it is also dominated with pink flowers with just a hint of yellow/gold
4. The seat cover that she provided was Pink

It is like, all the designs that she communicated to my wife, even the last minute design, was not in accordance with what she is doing.

My wife and the decor team commented on the spot, that it is not what they want. The florist's reply was simply "I think this colour is nice, I think this is good"

When being commented that we wanted a gold/champagne colour decoration, she said, we should not expect everything to be gold or champagne colour, and should allow some mixture. Of course we are aware of the flexibility to mix colours, but the main colour should be "gold/champagne", but what she delivered is purely pink/purple/red with just a tiny hint of gold/champagne.

She was totally stubborn to listen to any feedback that the team provided. She was so adamant that she did the right thing. When commented about the pink seat cover, she simply said "I don't have gold colour", and the team has to search for a replacement in the church and found a cream colour cover that is more in accordance to what the bride wants.

The team has to put aside the center-piece for the altar, because it is not according to what the bride wants, and it was plain ugly and not worth the 50 dollars that she paid for. The team improvised using Syphon cake's plastic cover, and punching holes through out, and sticking the plastic flowers all over the plastic cover and it looked even better than the paid center piece.


On the Wedding Day

After hearing my wife's words concerning the thing, I discussed with her, to see whether there is any lapsed on our part. I went through all the email correspondences and it is clear on black and white that we have communicated all that we wanted and the florist has acknowledged. I said I will talk to the florist myself.

After the wedding ceremony, the florist arrived to collect back all the flower pieces. When we are about the finish, we call her aside away from the wedding crowd to convey our feedback and displeasure.

To my amazement, she is a superbly unreasonable person. I asked her, what do you think about the decoration that you put up, which is not in accordance to what we wanted? She said, she thinks all is very good.

Below are the replay of our communication. It will not be correct word by word, but the facts will be correct.

I said, how can you say all is very good when you do not deliver according to what we want, concerning colour, design, theme and so on?

she said, no.. she thinks everything is good.

We: How come the colour is pink and not gold/champagne?

She: you cannot have all gold/champagne, it will be very dull, so I have to mix.

We: you can mix with other colours, but all that we can see now is a Pink-themed wedding and not gold/champagne as we wanted.

We: How about the center piece? you sent a design with a place for candle holder. We agree to it, we say that we want to have a wider design, and you acknowledge it. But now it is not at all the same with your design.

She: How can you be so unappreciative. I try to do my best with the budget you gave me, you never even say thankyou. You get what you paid for. If you are willing to pay, I can come up with any design, anything you want also can. (it is amazing that when we talk about the design and colours and theme over the mails, she never mentioned about the budget, and she noted everything)

We: Why are you talking about the budget now? we are beyond that. We are talking about the design that you delivered are not the same as the one you sent through the email.

She: you never mentioned that you MUST put the Candle in the middle of the flower piece. You can always put it behind. You never say cannot

We: How about the cover for the chair? how come you come up with the pink colour cover? we wanted a gold/champagne colour themed wedding right?

She: I don't have a gold colour. You all found a white/cream cover and you are happy with it, so it's okay already. I think pink colour is good. You all do not want it, it is up to you.

We: So, you don't think that you did anything wrong at all?

She: No, I think I have tried my best to work for you with your budget, and you never even say a word of thanks and say that all I did for you is wrong. Many people thanks me, your friends (she refers to the wedding previous week) thanks me, and you can only critize me.

We: you do not deliver according to what we want, how can we thank you? (we suspect some of the design are reused/recycled from last week's wedding, because that wedding's theme is pink/purple)

We: I am telling you, your attitude is very bad. You should not be in this service industry. You do not deliver according to what we want. You do not deliver according to what you promised. And worst, you do not want to listen to our feedback and keep on insisting on what you think is right, what you feel is good, with total disregard to what the bride wants for her wedding. You may give input but you never did so.

She: Mister, if you are not happy with my design, why you never try to call me. I have handphone. I have a shop to attend. I cannot be always replying your email (my wife's email). If you are not happy, you all should tell me, and this morning I can still come here to change before the wedding start. You only send me email.

We: I think the team has tried to feedback to you the situation last night but you refuse to listen and keep on arguing that your choice of colour is good according to what you think. How can you say that we never try to let you know?

We: we do not want to argue about this anymore. We will pay you the balance (You have to SIR), but I am telling you, you have a very bad attitude and because you do not feel sorry and acknowledge your mistake, we will be reporting to the CASE with all the pictures and all the emails about what is happening.

She: Sure, you can go ahead to do so. I have a FB account, you can come in and say anything you want. All the people like my design, I don't understand why you dont like my design and are so ungrateful of my hard work. You only get what you pay for.

We give her the money, walk in to the reception hall, and I totally lost my appetite despite of my hunger earlier on. I have never met such a bad service in Singapore before. It is apparent that she has no case, and she kept on jumping the argument from her opinion, to our budget, and to our methods of communication through email.


The FB Account


Later on, we tried to search for her company or FB account. her company is an 'unknown entity' in google. you cannot find it in the FB also. Finally using her email we managed to find her profile. 47 friends registered under her.

We found her photo album inside, titled :my flower shop. We went in to see the flowers she put there, and guess what are the main colours for the flowers there? pink.

It is apparent, she does not have the budget to buy the colour according to what we want. And yet she dares to accept the order. Worst of all, her attitude about feedback from customer. Refusal to listen to any feedback and countering all that we have to say about her wrongdoings.

and guess what, she posted on her wall, in mandarin, about her short encounter with us. She said, "the wedding today makes me so angry, after all my hardwork, they never appreciate it. A guy I never met before saying that I never deliver anything according to what they want. In fact, they just want to refuse to pay me after using my service. Such a lame excuse."

I am totally amazed by how such person can think of working in this industry if she refuse to listen to feedback.

I will proceed with my formal complain to CASE.

Conclusion:
avoid this florist at all cost. if you have friends who are planning for wedding, and is considering her, direct your friend to this posting for reference.

unless, if you are planning to have pink/red colour theme for the wedding, then you may approach her. FYI, the wedding on the previous Sunday was the wedding of my other friend. Although they requested for pink colour as the theme, the center piece that was given for them was plain ugly. Most of church's ladyfolk can do better.

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Friday, August 27, 2010

The Power of Image and Imagination

Imagination, is a gift from God that we seldom use. Ever since the invention of alphabet, many visual images that human ever know are reduced to letters and words. In reading those words, depending on how developed is a person's right brain, he or she may understand the text differently.

In today's world, many adults are accustomed to the way things are, and refused to imagine the unthinkable, the unconventional things. Those who are willing to venture out of the box, will become the leader of their field. Those who dare not to imagine, they will certainly be mere followers.

Not only does imagination can help a person to be more creative in a career or research as mentioned above, imagination is beneficial to human beings in money other ways.

Tony Buzan, an expert who wrote many books on how to maximize the brain's power to memorize things, speed reading, mind mapping, explained that if we can combine the functions of both the left brain and right brain together, we can remember up to 10thousand items, if we want to try.

The key to remember or memorize? Imagination. A series of unrelated numbers or a string of illegible characters become so easy to remember, if we want to take another step - to imagine.

David Eckman, a Christian writer who specializes in the psycho-emotional health of a person said that most Christians are not performing well, as they should be, because they may not have a good mental image of the presence of Christ in their life.

In his book, Becoming Who God Intended, David vividly described how, by putting the image of Jesus in certain of our struggles with Sin, by remembering how vividly Jesus was nailed on the cross at the point when we are sinning, by imagining how God was saying to us that Jesus is there to died for this sin, the sin that we are committing at the moment, that we can truly feel and be as a Christian should be.

J.I. Packer in his book Knowing God, says that many do not really understand about the extend of the wrath of God, and therefore they do not feel they need to repent. Perhaps by giving the unbelievers some mental images (like how the Bible described hell), then they will be able to realize the consequences of their unbelief.

If you are still considering sin, and do not understand how detestable is our sin to such a holy being as God, try to imagine this. Imagine a creepy animal that you don't like. Maybe rat, mosquito or cockroach. You may not fear the insect or animal, but you feel disgusted when you see them. Especially if they are in your shirt or pants which you are wearing. Picture this.

Now, think from God's perspective. The sins that we are committing, are to God, as the cokroach is to us. It is that disgusting, and maybe 100 times more. How can God allow us, people who are full of cokroaches, to come near Him who is so perfect, so holy? If you do not want any cokroach in your shirt, do you think God wants you to sin?

May we be able to use our ability to imagine, to help us to become a better man, and a better follower of Christ.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Manila Hostage Situation: Time to Evaluate the Function of Media?

I made a new promise to my wife, to send her off to work even though it may be my off day (meaning I can stay in bed longer). The early morning sun, the green of the trees and the fresh air definitely worth my sacrifice of a few more hours of sleep.

I managed to grab a copy of the free Today too :)

The frontpage news is bout the hostage situation in Manila, in which the HongKong tourists were held by a gunmen, and a family of five lost 3 of its members. It is awfully sad, for a supposedly happy occasion to turn out to be such a tragedy.

and who is the culprit? It could be the gunman, the authority, or even the Media. Why Media? because the Media provided a Live coverage of the entire situation, which the gunman can monitor through a TV in the tourist bus.

In the report, an analyst mentioned that the Live Media coverage was the mistake number 1. Although others may point out that the authority was at fault for slow response or lacking of skills, I tend to agree with the analyst.

Indeed, in the world today, Conventional Media appears to be more of a bad influence rather than good to the society. They seek for higher readership, or viewership, by seeking to provide news that appeal to the audience. As a result, news about crime, scandal, sex, anything that sells became the 'only thing' that matters.

Some information about certain crime are described overly vivid in the coverage, which makes me wonder, is the intention of the reporter/writer/editor to provide more detailed information of a crime, or to inspire others to follow. Cases of rapes, incests and sex scandals are the constant highlights and front page news of certain Chinese News Paper, and one wonders why...

I believe it is irresponsible for Media, particularly in this case the one who provide the live coverage for the incident in Manila that costs 8 lives altogether. But 8 lives is comparatively small, compared to the vast number of public who absorbs whatever the media puts up and indirectly affected by them. Programmes and articles that are "hot" and "sellable" are mostly morally questionable and slowly but surely deteriorates the moral standard of the community.

Perhaps it is high time for the people playing major roles in the media world to stop and think, is money really the only important thing that matters? Is media solely a means to provide for the need to satisfy the insatiable hunger of the populace for more scandal, sex, and crime, or can the media serve as a means to educate the public and promote on what is right, true, good and beauty that are essential for the building up of a healthy society?

All things are permissible, but not all things are beneficial.

ReNew my Interest to blog again

It is difficult to keep a habit, particularly a good one.

The past few months had been rather hectic, but after settling down to a regular job, somehow I just failed to gather enough determination to start writing again.

But again, after some nagging from my wife, I think blogging is perhaps one of the good habit that I should cultivate on. Rather than just blogging without purpose, I pray that I may be able to structure my blog into a kind of daily personal journey and reflection.

For that, I will try to blog something in the morning. It may be a reflection of my morning devotion time, or a response to the newspaper, or something that I encountered on my way to work.

In the evening, I will try to blog something that I have learned recently, maybe lessons from a book, a seminar or workshop, or even tv show. I hope that this blog will continue to be a blessing to me (to keep myself in check) and at the same time to bless others as well.

Life is full of ups and downs, failure and restoration... this blog is a true reflection of my real life, simple life...
 

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