//beconfused

Ronald McDonald wants you to know that, “The coffee bean is technically not a bean but a cherry.”

(The coffee bean is technically not a bean but a cherry.)

Okay, that’s something that I didn’t know about. But I guess it doesn’t really matter too right?

Well, it’s just something random I spotted at King Albert Park’s McDonalds’. Wikipedia coffee bean article has more details. A coffee bean is the seed of the coffee plant (the pit inside the red or purple fruit). The fruits, coffee cherries or coffee berries, most commonly contain two stones with their flat sides together. The name derives from the Arabic language (قهوة qahwa – “coffee” and bunn – “berry”). The name bean is not botanically accurate. Coffee is the seed of a fruit not a vegetable.

Now you know your caffeine.

Saw this at Daryl’s blog, a really old McDonalds advertisement. I hate clowns.

Freaky McDonalds’ Advertisement

View the advertisement here!

An advertisement every Tuesday

Larry Bird challenges Michael Jordan to a shooting contest for his Big Mac. McDonald’s actually has got pretty good commercials most of the time.

Larry Bird vs. Michael Jordan McDonalds commercial

I don’t really like the Big Mac though and this commercial didn’t make me feel like having one. Cool though.

Oh screw Ronald McDonalds. This is the female version, she looks much nicer. Japan has all the good stuff, even their Ronald McDonalds look nicer. Or perhaps, they may be Rebecca McDonalds or something. Possibly the sexiest McDonalds advertisement.

McDonalds McGrand Tomato

[Direct link]

Oh by the way, the burger looks really nice. And guess what? We don’t have it in Singapore too. I really need to start packing my luggage. Hmmmp…

An advertisement every Tuesday

I am just sitting in front of my desk comfortably. Doing nothing. Just lazing around waiting to get out of my seat to meet Pecilius and Shawn for lunch. We’re going to eat at Burger King.

Anyway, I just thought I blog something.

I like fast-food restaurants. I know they aren’t healthy but I can’t help it. The food comes fast and you settle your meal fast too. And what’s more, I tend to eat my dinner as I walk back home and I can never eat with a plate this way. So fast-food works for me.

Plus I like the taste. I like Burger King’s Mushroom Swiss Double and their Turkey Bacon. For McDonald’s, I like their double cheese burgers and their fillet-o-fish burger. As for KFC, I prefer to look for some other fast food restaurant.

What happened to KFC? The food is okay. I am not a fan of chicken anymore. In Singapore, we don’t really rear chickens but everywhere you go, people are selling you chicken – chicken chop, chicken cutlet, chicken pie, mayonaise chicken sandwich, chicken rice, chicken noodle, chicken drumstick, chicken porridge, McChicken burgers, chicken nuggets, chicken soup and like a hundred other dishes.

If Singapore is going to have a national animal, let it be chicken. We all are eating chicken all the time.

So back to KFC – Kentuky Fried Chicken. Everything they sell revolves around chicken and when they sell anything else, it just doesn’t taste right. Hence my conclusion – they can only sell chicken.

Everyone in Singapore knows McDonald’s and KFC. The war here is endless. If there is a KFC, there should be a McDonald’s not too far from it. It’s all about business. In Clementi, they have like 3 McDonald’s there trying to kill the business of 1 KFC.

So KFC isn’t making a lot of money. They post little profits each time. So what do they do? They cut down on services. They cut down on food quality. They cut down on my burger’s size.

The KFC at Bukit Batok’s HDB estate can’t even wrap my burger properly. The queue is long and only one counter is open. They have trainee workers there and all they did was to stand in front of the drinks machine to fill up Pepsi for their colleagues who are serving at the cash register. Then when they fill up your Pepsi, they don’t even want to give you the cover for the cup if you aren’t taking your food away!

Okay, so forget the poor service. The bloody burger is small. You look at picture. The chicken piece looks big and juicy in the picture. KFC has showcased how images can be deceiving and has, in my opinion, set a new standard in playing tricks with the customer’s eyes.

They must have stuffed all the vegetables and the meat at the part of the burger that is facing the camera! Their burgers looks big, their chicken looks big.

Last time KFC had this offer that has a bucket of chicken and marsh potato and salad and drinks and it costs around 20 Singapore dollars. This is how they display the advertisement:

# Take images of the drinks and place them in the background.
# Now it’s the marsh potato, make them look at big as possible because ’small’, ‘medium’ and ‘large’ marsh potato can always have a chance to look like ‘large’ size with the help of Photoshop.
# Take pictures of the chicken, all 8 of them and put them on a plate nicely. Must stack it in such a way that no chicken is left behind the camera. The chicken pieces must be large, but there is no need for getting bigger ones for the photo shoot – there is something called Photoshop.
# Add in all the decorations and the rest of the items available in the menu. Align and resize all items impropotionally in Photoshop to mislead others.
# Oh! What about the bucket. Hey, there is the bucket! Who cares if the bucket doesn’t contain a single piece of chicken, put the empty chicken bucket in the picture too. That way, the total number of items will look more.

And burgers. They have this chicken burger that costs about 2 bucks. It’s affordable and the picture makes it look pretty good. I went into KFC and get that burger. Chicken Fillet Burger – Quantity Reduced Edition. I just don’t learn, do I? I got myself a burger so small that I felt sad. It’s better as a stress ball, you know, the thing that you squeeze with you hand when you feel stressful.

Enough grumbling, I’ll just go to McDonald’s and get my double cheese burger which also costs 2 bucks. It tastes better, it is bigger and it certainly is aligned properly.

Early at 8, I reached school. I walked to school with Ben, James, Shawn and Yong Liang. [Just to digress: I have this thing with sorting things alphabetically, lol.]

I walk to school from the train station, it’s a short distance. It used to be quite boring, but my wonderful polytechnic has done some landscaping to it. Now there’s waters running down beautifully like a waterfall. I suspect the reason they construct it is to show it off to our dear so-call elected president. You see, he won because there are no candidates…

As we were walking towards the lecture theatre, I saw Pei Shan and her boyfriend leaving the school.

[drum rolls] Drum rolls not for Pei Shan but for the fact that the lesson is cancelled and the fact that we are going to be idle till 1 in the afternoon. That’s 5 hours of break.

So we merrily talked in the food court. I was munching my Sausage McMuffin with Egg while talking and laughing. Then I ate the harsh brown. McDonald’s made good breakfast. That’s the only thing I like – breakfast. I tried the KFC one and I start to I’m-Lovin’-It McDonald’s more.

We proceeded to the library and booked a discussion room. Well, it’s a discussion room. We were discussing anything that is not related to school. Ben, Shawn and Zhi Yuan were discussing about Pokémon. Right, Mewtwo is better than Mew. Okay, got that noted down.

Yong Liang let me listened to the new Speed CD. [Speed is a much loved Japanese girl group; they recently released that come-back album - Bridge.] I didn’t quite enjoy the songs. I am going into more unique sounding songs nowadays.

It was the last hour that we remember why we booked this discussion room for. We have a test later. And we haven’t study finish.

Thanks to all who enjoyed the new layout. Your comments have been generous.

Years ago, KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) is the King For Chicken. People go there for chicken. After all, that’s what the “C” stand for. One day, the people of McDonald’s decide they have enough of this crap from KFC. They thought, “We got to do something to sabotage KFC’s businesses, they’re always opening outlets opposite us to affect our feng shui. ”

What better to sabotage than to attack right at the heart of KFC’s business – chicken wings, thighs and drumsticks. So McCrispy is born.

I remember that advertising campaign of McDonald’s introduce 2 heroes named Fast Fry and Steam Marinate. Two unlikely heroes save the world by freeing people from KFC’s clutches.

KFC, however, was absent the entire time. They did not retaliate. They just sit there thinking, “We do chicken better. “

McDonald’s is probably thinking, “We do branding better. “

Indeed McDonald’s do branding much better. When ordering nuggets in my secondary school, my friends say to the lady, “Aunty, 1 McNugget.” It’s a pity, the lady didn’t shoot back asking my friends for their sauce preferences. [Aunty, I want barbeque sauce!] Another of my friend visited KFC requesting for a “Fillet Burger”. [KFC is called it "Fish Burger".]

After, say, 4 years? Both have a decent share of the chicken market in Singapore. But KFC is obviously at the losing end. KFC reports annual sales very much lower than McDonald’s. I can’t quote the figures, but it’s negligible for a company with so many outlets.

Small is beauty. This phrase is always in my mind for both handheld device and well.. women. But this phrase never comes even close to my mind when it comes to food. Apparently, KFC thinks otherwise.

In order to cut costs, KFC has invented a “minimizer” to minimize all their food to smaller portions and yet commanding similar charges.

KFC has this burger called “Zinger Burger”. It’s never zing anyway, why did they call it “Zinger”.. It consists of a piece of juicy crispy chicken thigh sandwiched between 2 round halves of bun with sesame seeds on the top. There’s some vegetables and mayonnaise too I think.

Let’s rephrase.. It consists of a elongated piece of chicken thigh chunked in between the top and bottom halves of the buns that clearly reflect serious alignment problems. Mayonnaise is dumped on the center of the top bun and left not spread. One important reason to note for the not spreading of the mayonnaise is they didn’t put enough mayonnaise to allow a beautiful spread. I have nothing to comment on the vegetables.

From the side view, one can spot the buns aligned with a 15 degree error. In the Singapore Mint, any alignment error more than 3 degrees goes to the rejection department.

KFC’s advertisement campaigns are cleverly produced. Burgers are filmed with more fillings, chickens are large. Drumsticks really looks like drumsticks instead of mere nuggets.

Facts are distorted. They should be warn everyone that the images are not to scale. Such deceiving posters are plasters all around Singapore, even on the train’s exteriors.

What’s the use of “Finger Lickin’ Good” food when it’s of such minute content. I suspect tag line is suggesting to you that, “If you still ain’t full, eat your finger”.