Sunday, January 15, 2012

How positive are you? Here's a test...

About the DBS Bank saga (cont'd)

I had, in an earlier posting, praised DBS Bank's handling of the recent illegal ATM transactions in Malaysia, especially the straight-talking manner in which its CEO, Piyush Gupta, tackled the matter.

But in a Sunday Times story today (15 Jan, "No 'jitter' safeguard at DBS' Bugis St ATMs", page 2), an unidentified DBS spokesman resorted to strange language when explaining why the so-called "jitter" feature had not been activated in the two ATMs that were skimmed by the fraudsters. I found the technical explanation that this feature may not always be that useful in the face of skilled skimmers fair enough, and perhaps experts can weigh in and enlighten laymen like me.

What was below par in the spokeman's choice of words, compared to his/her CEO, was this part: "Jitters are useful, but... they too, can be compromised by current-day skimmers. At the same time, they result in a meaningful increase in customer queue times."

Meaningful?

The only way my being in a queue is meaningful is getting what I want, with little hassle and in good time. What the spokesman seemed to be saying is that having the jitter feature in operation would result in longer queues, as transactions would be slowed.

So, even if you replace "meaningful" with "meaningless", it still does not make sense. I am not nit-picking. Words are a PR person's stock in trade, and that word was a poor choice. I would choose "significant", "unnecessary", or "unhelpful", depending on the intended meaning. [Update: DBS now says that some 700 of its customers had their accounts skimmed and that the total amount fradulently taken was about $1 million.]

------------------------------------------------------

Try this test!

Ok, on a more positive note, how positive are you? From a tip my wife gave me, I came across this article, "What is your positivity ratio?" by someone named Paul. Here's the link:

http://unisonconsulting.com/2011/01/05/whats-your-positivity-ratio/

Essentially, the writer is saying that research has shown that a certain ratio of positive (P) to negative (N) thoughts and emotions is what "humans need to flourish". So, I guess more positive people are presumably more able to deal with what life throws at them, and vice versa. And there's a positivity self-test, to find out your P/N ratio. It's in the article above but I'll put the link here:

http://positivityratio.com/single.php

------------------------------------------------------

So, don't worry, be happy! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=SG&v=d-diB65scQU

No comments:

Post a Comment