Saturday, November 14, 2009

How Lucky Are You ?

Couldn't help but notice the small but noticeable changes in the lifestyle of people from this generation and previous generation.


Food...
Past
: Every year Muslims around the world will fast during the month of Ramadhan. But it doesn't really apply to younger kids. So technically they still have to eat. Moms (or dads) would be living their lives like normal; cooking all their usual meals, including lunch for the kids. Tough work but hey their kids gotta eat.

Parents used to scare their kids of the dangers of fast food and candy and junk food. It's just plain normal to hear parents go "If you eat that candy your teeth is gonna rot bla bla bla.." or "Do you know what kinda preservatives are in those food?" and kids would actually listen and eat home-cooked meals (I guess not all cases).


Present : Nowadays people rather go out and save the hours of their time sweating in the kitchen preparing food and goes to the first fast food restaurant they see and shove their kids with all kinds of crap. I literally see like probably 80% - 90% of the Muslim families going into a fast food restaurant and buying porridge (you know which fast food is this I think) for their little kids. Fries, soft drinks, etc. at such a young age... that just can't be good for health.


Invasion of strollers
Past : As far as I recall when I was young, I've never seen a stroller in my house. Not even one. I guess most parents during those days prefer to be somewhat closer to their kids by carrying their kids. I am just throwing that out but seriously, there was less strollers around shopping complexes last time.

Present : If you don't see strollers around, it's not a shopping complex. Period. Nowadays I just have to avoid them. Babies crying their lungs out and parents and chatting away without noticing them. Kids crying for attention, calling to their parents only to be address by a "Yes dear ?" but none of the eye contact or any further action until probably the kid did something really bad to catch their attention.

It burns...
Past
: I am not too sure about this but I've rarely seen people running to take cover from the sun that much last time. I mean sure, there is the hot afternoon sun that you might technically want to avoid, but some people might just ignore that. Like me ? I remember playing in the sun a lot. Pretty dark (even though my ex-schoolmate claimed I was fair) to even see clearly the ring of fair skin on my left wrist where I wore my watch. And I didn't carry no water bottle around!

Present : Probably a new trend of some sort. I notice that even guys run for every little shade (tree, leaf, branch, corridor, you name it) their can find when they walk around. And sometimes it's just the nice warm morning sun! Come on, it can't be that bad. I think we were made to be more durable than this. I doubt we can get skin cancer or something that easily. And what is with this new trend of carrying water bottle around ? Nowadays I see lots of people carrying a small bottle of water around and in some serious cases, those huge 1.5 litre bottles or those 8-glass-of-water bottles. Might be wrong again but maybe this came from the Western world? Never seen people done this in the past except in TV once in a while.


The need to be clean...
Past
: I remember when I was a kid I used to play around with dirt a lot. There was nothing wrong with catching worms from the freshly dug up dirt, touching toads, touching fish, digging up a freaking large hole on the ground that my mom would start scolding me. And except for the occasional yearly flu or fever or cold I rarely was sick. Weird ain't it?

Present : Parents get so upset and panic when their kid even touches dirt or some bugs. I mean come on, its fine as long as you wash their hands afterward and the thing they touch is not poisonous or something. Yet I think I notice more kids are getting sick these days compared to the past. Could be a weird but I think they are starting to lack exposure to small but frequent germs and bacterias that gives them the immunity that they need to not get sick so often.

Or maybe it could just be the media that is freaking everyone out. I remember that we used to have meals where if there is 5 people at the table there would just be 5 sets of fork and spoons. Nowadays my dad is so hyped out about the health issue thing like don't share fork and spoon or bodily fluid thing, our table would be full of spoons ... for the people at the table and EACH dishes. A little annoying but I can live with it. I remember going out to eat with a bunch of colleagues where we would be calling dishes and what not and this particular guy would go through the ritual of cleaning everything with hot water, and when the dishes arrive he would place a spoon and a chopstick for each of the dishes. ANNOYED level MAX!

I guess that is enough ramblings for the day. Caffeine level running low just in time for my sleep.

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Freaky Night or Freaky Me ?

Note to self; do not consume Redbull like ever! Seriously it's really making go really crazy at the moment. Seriously screw drugs, a can of this is enough to stimulate my mind like crazy. It feels like thoughts are going through my mind like 100 miles an hour or something.


Started off the night feeling really active and started telling childhood stories to someone like for hours literally. After that, when it was time for bed, it started to get really windy. It felt familiar enough and I was smart enough to get up and close the windows tight. Sadly to say it's really building up and it started to rain really heavy. The wind really isn't helping; it's literally blowing rain into my room and my window is not shutting properly.


And I thought it would be a great idea to tape some of the part that is leaking in strong wind. Bad idea; water started flowing in. Well it's not that bad. I mean I did manage to seal it pretty tight. I guess the small is just overflow or something.


Then the whole taping the window incident reminded me of some thriller show. Can't really recall the name of the show. The one where it started of with people to kill themselves. And it turned out like this "ghost" came from the net or something. And in the story people usually get freaked out and it turns out that the only way to "prevent" the ghost from coming in is by sealing the doors and windows with red tapes.


Shuckz now I need to stay awake long enough to see to it that my room and PC don't get soaked. I guess in the end it's a good thing that I drank the Redbull then. Ugh...

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Rant...

It's been a while since I've wrote anything here. Mainly because I am pretty much swarmed by work and also I am pretty much emotionally stable for the past couple of months that it feels like there is just nothing much to rant about.


Of course there are days such as tonight where there are just a million things in my mind that just needs to blurted out. Even though there are minor things of the past, somehow they remained lingering in my mind hoping that one day I would be emotionally unstable again and start pouring them out again.


I think I've talked about this before but then again due to some recent (quite long ago actually) encounter with it I guess it doesn't hurt to use it again to get things started here. There is just something wrong when people somehow shows dislike of something that you do or decide to do. I mean what does it have to do with them in the first place ? It does not even effect them in the first place. If it was a bad choice I doubt I would go complaining to them or anything. Seriously most of the stuff that they show dislike of is quite petty. Why I don't have a car still ? Why am I still at ? The list goes on.


Secondly, it's my choice, something that I've given lots of thought into and I think it is a decision that I am comfortable making and I am pretty sure made me happy. I am not really sure why but somehow some people thinks that the things that they have decided in their lives are correct and anything that is against that is wrong. I mean seriously? If your choices or decisions are correct what makes mine wrong ?


Another thing that has been bothering me is the elevator. The past couple of weeks, on and off, one of the elevator was stuck on the top floor and just don't want to come down. As usual when there is just one elevator, it's pretty darn slow when I need to get back down to the ground floor which is still fine somehow. I mean what you gonna do right? Then comes the culprits who makes it even worse. Those that I have doubts on whether they are just plain stupid or ignorant. It's just those people that when you are going up, there is just one dude from one of the floor that press up but wants to go down. I mean seriously? ( I should stop saying that) The up button means you want to go up and the down button means you want to go down. I mean what is so hard about that? Is pressing both the up and down button making the elevator go any faster? Is it faster being in the elevator going the opposite direction before going the direction they want ? Sheesh...

Thursday, March 19, 2009

The Thing About Big Companies

Been a while since I've rant about something here. No surprise there since everything have been fine so far... till tonight. I think the problem lies in big companies in general. I will get back to that after I've explained the situation. So basically I am avid gamer specifically in Warhammer Online at the moment accessing using Streamyx broadband and those two combos really annoying sometimes. It has its ups and downs but most of the time it just plain piss me off.


So here is the situation. I woke up in the middle of the night thinking I could probably play an hour or two before going back to bad, ASSUMING the connection on Streamyx broadband would be much better around late in the night. Boy, was I wrong. I couldn't even go through the auto patcher (this is the part of the online game experience where you wait for your game to check if there is any updated files or what not before letting you start the game). Constant timeouts.


After a few attempts, I restarted my modem and basically retried. For those who don't know that's the routine of most Streamyx users I know, you have to restart your modems to get "good IPs" which has smoother connection and less lost packets. But when I tried to go into my game server it just timeouts. So what is a customer to do after having this two problems alternately after a few tries? I go for the Customer Support I guess since the funny thing is, I could access other servers. I thought hey maybe it's the game.


Now comes the main part of my rant, Customer Support. Rule of thumb for big companies who want to provide Customer Support; provide them only if you are going to do well with them else don't provide it at all cause people would be so pissed that they wouldn't even be using it at all. Applies for both Streamyx and Warhammer Online.


Streamyx users already knows the usual response from the CS people. First they will ask you to restart modem, yadda yadda yadda and after half an hour nothing was right still and you've wasted a large sum of money calling their 1 300 number which is not free. Warhammer Online being under EA is no better either. Famous for having crappy Customer Support from day 1. I have experience their poor service numerous times in the past.


The thing is, there is one question that keeps popping up in my mind. Why provide the service in the first place? Why? Seriously why get people's attention on the product if you're not going to be providing a good product in the first place.


Customer Support and also complains are almost impossible to reach to the correct people in Malaysia I have to sadly say. There are only three things that will happen when you are using some sort of Customer Complain/Support. It's either a) it's so troublesome that you stop halfway into your effort and you end up not reporting anything b) you've successfully reported something but it just doesn't reach the proper people c) they don't give a crap about your complains cause what is 1 - 2% of complains out of their full range of customers to them? The infamous "You don't like don't use" attitude.


I know this is not reaching out to anything really and this is just nothing more than ranting my frustration to myself. But I really wish there is something that can be done.

Monday, January 19, 2009

Honor Thy Father

Lately I've been wondering whether I've been resentful towards my own father. I guess it doesn't sound weird to most people who knows me since I rarely talk about my family members that much and I don't really mention about the people I know to my parents. I think these are just two worlds that shouldn't mix... for my own safety I guess. I don't want to wake up to a call from my dad one day going "Hey why did you dump so-and-so, bla bla bla".


Anyways, yes I don't really mention them to people close to me even. If I ever do, then it's pretty rare I guess. The reason why I've been thinking about this is, I've been having these weird dreams about my dad pissing me off somehow and making me go really mad till I can even wake up in tears of defeat lol.There goes my day. Whenever I have one of those dreams it just spoils the rest of the day.


The latest one was about how he kept asking me to do stuff. Now I am not trying to talk bad things about my dad or anything but seriously he does that a lot in real life. I wouldn't say I've quarreled with him regarding it before, but once or twice I've voiced this matter out to him. And he would sort of imply that he is trying to teach me how to do this and that by asking me to do it. Note that some of the task can range to a measly one such ask bringing the TV remote to him which is like arm's reach if he just sit up.


I remember I've sort of voiced up in quite a bad manner by telling him how he resembles a snake that don't have legs and hands. Well, I wouldn't say I regret it or anything but I still respect my dad as a father figure and anything so small doesn't really matter to me in the end. But the dreams really bother me. Do I really still keep some sort of rage and anger towards my dad? I think it's something I should find out one day.


I think being around my dad for the past 20 over years have made me sort of numb to anything that people throw at me in my daily life. Somehow the things he does or say sometimes can really be annoying and really really frustrates me. I guess that is a good thing right? LOL