It’s late at night and I know I shouldn’t stay up too late, but I just wanted to say THANK YOU to those who are here reading this post, those who celebrated with me, and those who thought about me… Feb 22 was my birthday and my lunar birthday felt on Feb 24 this year. During the past two weeks or so, we had the V Day, the Chinese New Year, and Marz’s birthdays (obviously they are as important as other cultural holidays :p). Just like in the previous 20+ years, I’m getting a mixed-fruit cake from my Daddy this year (and I hope I can continue to get the cake from him in the future). The simplist cake with the warmest wishes. None of us are good at expressing our care/feelings towards each other, but I could feel it via the tasty piece of cake. That night, we ordered take-out instead of dining out since it was cold and I was lazy and tired.

Interestingly, this year, we have 4 birthday boy/gals in the office in February. Feb 9, 22, 22, 27. Therefore we took the average and had a celebration on Feb 20. It was a fun day. Without bosses’ presence, we were like kids in kindergarten having a monthly birthday party. I will treasure these moments and keep them with me.

Homemade blueberry cheesecake - by our colleague KL

Look at all the snacks we had! Thx for the pillow… it’s great for napping at desk.

Also had an unexpected early celebration with TW. Thanks for remembering, inviting me to dinner and the gift. Hope your fridge will work well.

Enjoyed a relaxing night with RL. Encountered the first bump on the road. Thanks for everything. I really like the food encyclopedia.

On Saturday, celebrated with friends in a different way. Instead of the usual K and dinner, we went for indoor beach volleyball @ Beach Blast. Although some of us (e.g. me) don’t even know how to play, it was fun (and funny). I’m glad that they enjoyed it. Gotta thank JW for this great idea. It’s definitely one of the most memorable birthday activities that I’ve done - besides one time that I was wasted @ K (-_-|||) It’s all good.

To wrap everything up nicely… we went to the Living the Dream concert held by Across U-Hub. I have to say it was one of the most inspiring events that I’ve been to in the past few years. Originally, I was there just to support my friend, who was the director of the show. But when I walked out of the concert, I felt replenished, and I was refueled to pursue my dreams (or… to dream) again. Another surprise was that singer Emil Chau (周華健) popped in the charity concert to support the youth. It was my first time seeing him in person. Although it was a short appearence, I could feel his passion about music and I respect his view of life. He talked about the reason for his “disappearance”. It was because he encountered his first bottleneck. Instead of forcing himself to keep releasing album, he looked at it in a positive way. He took a break from music and eventually when he felt he could compose again, he went back to it. That’s the way we should treat our lives. I think that’s essentially the same as what EL said, “let the game comes to you”. Life is full of surprises and that’s what make it lively.

Song Demos on the web
Concert Trailer on Youtube

Again, thanks everyone for everything. I’m fortunate to have all of you as my friends and family.

First of all, those who know me should know that I’m not a bad temper person nor can I get angry easily. BUT today, ICICI bank really pushed me to the limit. I have been a customer of this bank since 2005. Originally I opened a Savings account because of their high interest rate. After about a year or so, I got an letter from them saying that there would be two types of savings account HISave account versus premium savings account. The difference would be that the HISave account would be solely online - all transactions have to be conducted via the net. I was fine with that. I thought mine would be the HISave account until one day I checked online agained and actually it was Premium Savings account. The instruction was definitely not clear on the letter that they sent out. That was OK since it might be also because I overlooked something.

Then, one day, I tried to login my account and found that I need the CIF (Customer Identification Number). I wondered what the hell was going on. Usually, we could just login with the client card number. Why would they change that? Did someone hack into their system? I don’t mind logging in with CIF number but the problem is that I have only seen the CIF number on the sheet of paper that they gave to me when I first opened my account. If you have thrown that away, too bad, you would have to call them to get your CIF number. AND on the website they stated that because of this change, you should expect longer than usual wait (not exactly how it was phrased but that’s the meaning).

OK, so I could login. Despite the fact that their UI (user interface) sucks, very NOT user-friendly, as long as I can transfer money, it is still OK.

One day, I decided to move money out of the account. And I saw something like this…

**************

Dear Valued Customer:

We request you to verify the details of your external account registered with ICICI Bank Canada. If you notice a discrepancy in the information such as external account number or currency of the external account, please write to us using the “Communication” option available on the left panel. Please include the following information:

External Bank Name
External Bank transit ID
External Bank account number
Currency of your external account

Please allow us 4 business days to update your account profile with the updated information. We thank you for your cooperation.

**************

I hesitated and thought… should I verify my account even though it looked correct and I had been successfully moving my money before? So, to be on the safe side, I contacted them and verified the bank account info, but I never heard back from them. After about 4 days…Ya, I thought, it’s a bank and they should not let anything happen to this. So, I transferred a small amount. Three days have passed and I still didn’t see my money in my external account. Humm…. I waited til the fifth business day (since that was the max. time it would take to transfer money - as stated on their website), and I called them. They said they would look into that.

After about a week, I was determined to close my accounts with ICICI. So, I gave them a call and told them about my dissatisfaction and frustration and my decision of closing my account. The rep was a bit freaked out and he tried to explain to me that the bank was having a major system change/upgrade and that was why I was experiencing problem. However, he attempt was not a success. I don’t care about all the features that they would be adding to the website interface. The bottom line is that I can see my money and move my money. Agree? Yes. So, now that I’ve transferred my money out of the acocunt - it’s not showing up in the ICICI interface anymore, but I’m not getting the money in my external account. What happened?! What the hell did the money go? So, he passed the phone to his supervisor. They were asking me to give ICICI bank another chance since they are a relatively young bank in Canada. NO excuse! Anyhow, I was finally persuaded not to close the account because the supervisor agreed to take care of the transfer of the remaining balance to my external account. I received that portion in my external account after 3 days.

Today I called again since I’m not seeing the first “small portion of $” that I’ve transferred on Feb 2 (18 days ago!). Guess what that rep said? He told me that the problem has been passed on to the operation team and they are currently looking into it. A lot of other customers are also experiencing the same problem. (OMFG!) I asked when I should be able to see my money in my external account, and he couldn’t answer my question. Finally, after pushing and squeezing him, he gave me an answer - if I still don’t see it in external account after 4 days, give them a call.

It’s been a total waste of my time - each phone call took about at least 20 min. and the problem never got resolved. I’m glad that I didn’t transfer all my money or else I’d be in trouble. Where the hell is my money?! And, what if I need that money right now? How are they gonna be responsible for the costs/loss incurred?

I wonder what/if the bank would react if they see this post? Will they ever improve/change? Will their IT team get frustrated and hack into this blog and wipe everything out? I don’t know. I just wanted to share my experience with you and also vent. argh!