wasn't expecting this, were you?
well, neither was i. i normally wouldn't be found dutifully tapping away at my keyboard, typing a new entry into my blog at 11:30 pm, but as i've the spare time, i thought i'd better get myself into the habit before this page becomes stale.
anyways, boys and girls, tonight it's about the dysfunctional people that are my parents.
as some of you know, my dad has an 'enterprise' in Paupa New Guinea. don't ask me where that is, i don't quite know either. all i know is that he fancies the handicraft there. from downright ugly ceramic castle lamps to carved wooden dolphins, everything needed to satisfy my father's exceedingly bad taste [he's the one who purchased the Nokia 8910 Midnight Edition, remember?] can be found at the local village, where you cannot find any 'village idiots', because they, frankly, all are.
so, the Big Move into The Realm Of The Insane [Hougang] involved much packing of aforementioned crap into tiny, not quite large enough, cardboard boxes.
but, first, let me sidetrack a little. those living in Hougang would probably want to know why i've labeled it as a nuthouse. well, simply put, it is. listed below are some reasons why:
1 - this one's obvious. it houses the Woodbridge Institute Of Mental Health. that's read as 'crackoville'
2 - the children here are hyperactive. the afternoon session kiddos are up early to carry out their daily wake-up call for the entire neighbourhood, playing and shrieking, screaming and shouting. the noise from the playground reverbs up between the blocks, and as a result i can listen to thrilling conversations regarding the very latest in Japanese Trends [it's the what, Bey Blades, is it, now?] and the shrieks of laughter as they run around each other.
now, if it all stopped after they left, i wouldn't complain as much. but once they trot off to school, the morning session kiddos take their shift, and when they're joined by the afternoon session kiddos in the evening, they don't stop till 'round 11 pm. that is just wrong.
3 - the area is virtually inaccessible, due to a lack of MRT connectivity. but even if the trains had been running by now, would i feel safe throwing my life into the carriage of a fully-automated train travelling at 90 km/h? [10km/h faster than the older ones] but i guess i should be thankful for even this limited connectivity. we're moving into a worse place, which, don't worry, i shall have lots to rant and rave about.
4 - completely and utterly nosy neighbours. this unit that we've rented is a corridor one, meaning that people will walk past on their way into their houses. unfortunately for us, we're used to keeping the windows open, and will simply pass out if the were closed. this, apparently, is interpreted as a free-for-all signal for all and sundry to come witness the spectacle. the next-door neighbours consist of some of the most unattractive people i've met. there's the balding old man, his loudmouth-typical auntie wife, the first son with his girlfriend/fiancée/wife, the fat slob of a whimpering peeping-tom secondary-school second son, and finally the endless noisemaker that is the youngest daughter.
all have learnt to stop blatantly staring through our windows, after use staring back at them with our own looks, ranging from threatening to deranged. all but the peeping-slob. he still feels compelled to stare through our windows every time he walks past, with this pathetic look on his face. a pervy never changes his habits, i suppose.
5 - 'shopping centers'. one has no less than three names, [Hougang Point, Hougang Festival Market & Central Place] and the other has a block number. [Block 205, Heartland Mall Kovan. Kovan, incidentally, is a daft name.] also, where the heck is Hougang Green? i've heard rumblings about this mystical location, but haven't exactly seen the place.
now that i've established some reasons for loathing Hougang, let's move one, shall we?
last night, without anything better to do after finishing their dinner, my parents decided to haul out our entire collection. dust mites were released, wood shavings were vacuumed, dorsal fins were glued on and individual sculptures re-wrapped. i was sneezing my nose off due to my allergies.
my mom also decided this was a good time to re-iterate that i should sell my HP Vectra. that's my first PC. there is NO way i am selling that. this is, like, the fifth time she's asked me, and i've told her four times, rather politely, that i am not selling it. but she, apparently, is adamant about it, and i think i'll just let it drag out 'till she forgets again.
great, she's shouting for us to go to bed. see you in the morning. [i didn't say which morning]
Tuesday, October 29
8:30 am and an 8910.
yep, it's eight-thirty in the morning.
why am I up at eight thirty, you ask? well, my dad's in town, and because we share a mobile line, there's frequent switching of the SIM between his phone and mine. so, as per usual, he woke me up, becuase i was waiting for messages and didn't return the SIM to the useless titanium shell that is my father's Nokia 8910 Midnight Edition.
why, may i ask, is giving the phone a different colour worthy of elevating it to 'Special Edition' status? Perhaps i should start calling my phone the Ericsson T68m Ziroccan Gold from now on.
why he shelled out over a thousand & two hundred dollars for that lump of crap in the first place is beyond me. i asked him about it, and his reasons were the spring-loaded soft-touch auto-opening mechanism, the analog clock screensaver, and the look and feel of the useless device.
now, let me explain why i think it's a ton of hot shit.
1 - the spring-loaded soft-touch auto-opening mechanism. that thing drives me up the bloody wall. have you any idea how irritating it is to press the two latches on the sides, wait a few seconds for the phone to rise to its full height, then read your new message?
2 - the look and feel of it. if you haven't noticed, there're no buttons on the phone when it's closed, excepting the power button and the two latches. [i say latches because they're very low-quality] which means that there's no way of answering or rejecting calls when it's closed it. the build quality of the phone is horrible. the top of the phone wobbles and rattles when you're typing a message on it. hardly what's expected from a phone with such an exorbitant price.
there's also the problem of the rubbish screen. it's lumbering on with a low-resolution, 4-level grayscale unit. now, i admit that the grayscale [black and three grays] is an upgrade from the monochrome [black only] of previous Nokias, i'd prefer the high resolution of the 6510. but then again, why grayscale when Ericsson can offer a 256-colour, high-res display on a $300 phone? [that would be the T68m]
and how about the general lack of usefulness? if i wanted a phone just to make and receive calls on, i'd buy a Motorola. It runs the basic Nokia interface, meaning it's incapable of most things, already. surfing WAP over GPRS is slow, considering it can only interpret the pages into blocky text. it seems to block out most of the graphics that i see in glorious colour on my T68m.
the Bluetooth on that phone is another issue. on my Ericsson, you can talk on the headset with your phone, say, in your backpack, send images, ring tones, themes, notes, contacts and appointments between phones, or between the phone and a suitably tricked-out PDA or PC. you can even play Bluetooth games between phones. now, the beauty of Bluetooth is that it's a wireless technology. that means, for all you technology know-nothings out there, that it can communicate with another Bluetooth equipped device up to 10m [200m for some on high-powered chips] without having to worry about aligning any IrDA [Infrared Data Association] ports, or some idiot blocking your IrDA beam.
now that you've gotten a taste of the wonders of Bluetooth, you'll wonder what the fools at Nokia have been doing. all you can do with Bluetooth on the 8910 is ... nothing. its primary, and only use is to communicate with an un-launched, and much delayed, Nokia Bluetooth Headset. whereas Ericsson has already got five Bluetooth accessories on the market. so the poor Nokia has no Bluetooth friends. boo-hoo. not my bloody fault.
3 - the analog-clock screensaver. surely, i don't have to explain myself for loathing this.
there's plenty more to complain about the bloody thing, but, seeing that i've already deviated much too far from the original topic of my father waking me up, i'll teleport you lost souls back now.
now, back to the story. he also wanted to know the result of last night's EPL match [who is Bolton and Sunderland, anyway?], and he, of course, has no idea how to work the Teletext or the computer. which kinda explains why I'm perched on my swivel chair, clakking away at my keyboard when i really should be playing The Sims Unleashed or watching the two movies [Gattaca & The Whole Nine Yards] that i've recorded since goodness-knows-when, instead of ranting about my anti-Nokian tendencies.
i need to vent. i'll be looking for my Midtown Madness 2 CD now.
why am I up at eight thirty, you ask? well, my dad's in town, and because we share a mobile line, there's frequent switching of the SIM between his phone and mine. so, as per usual, he woke me up, becuase i was waiting for messages and didn't return the SIM to the useless titanium shell that is my father's Nokia 8910 Midnight Edition.
why, may i ask, is giving the phone a different colour worthy of elevating it to 'Special Edition' status? Perhaps i should start calling my phone the Ericsson T68m Ziroccan Gold from now on.
why he shelled out over a thousand & two hundred dollars for that lump of crap in the first place is beyond me. i asked him about it, and his reasons were the spring-loaded soft-touch auto-opening mechanism, the analog clock screensaver, and the look and feel of the useless device.
now, let me explain why i think it's a ton of hot shit.
1 - the spring-loaded soft-touch auto-opening mechanism. that thing drives me up the bloody wall. have you any idea how irritating it is to press the two latches on the sides, wait a few seconds for the phone to rise to its full height, then read your new message?
2 - the look and feel of it. if you haven't noticed, there're no buttons on the phone when it's closed, excepting the power button and the two latches. [i say latches because they're very low-quality] which means that there's no way of answering or rejecting calls when it's closed it. the build quality of the phone is horrible. the top of the phone wobbles and rattles when you're typing a message on it. hardly what's expected from a phone with such an exorbitant price.
there's also the problem of the rubbish screen. it's lumbering on with a low-resolution, 4-level grayscale unit. now, i admit that the grayscale [black and three grays] is an upgrade from the monochrome [black only] of previous Nokias, i'd prefer the high resolution of the 6510. but then again, why grayscale when Ericsson can offer a 256-colour, high-res display on a $300 phone? [that would be the T68m]
and how about the general lack of usefulness? if i wanted a phone just to make and receive calls on, i'd buy a Motorola. It runs the basic Nokia interface, meaning it's incapable of most things, already. surfing WAP over GPRS is slow, considering it can only interpret the pages into blocky text. it seems to block out most of the graphics that i see in glorious colour on my T68m.
the Bluetooth on that phone is another issue. on my Ericsson, you can talk on the headset with your phone, say, in your backpack, send images, ring tones, themes, notes, contacts and appointments between phones, or between the phone and a suitably tricked-out PDA or PC. you can even play Bluetooth games between phones. now, the beauty of Bluetooth is that it's a wireless technology. that means, for all you technology know-nothings out there, that it can communicate with another Bluetooth equipped device up to 10m [200m for some on high-powered chips] without having to worry about aligning any IrDA [Infrared Data Association] ports, or some idiot blocking your IrDA beam.
now that you've gotten a taste of the wonders of Bluetooth, you'll wonder what the fools at Nokia have been doing. all you can do with Bluetooth on the 8910 is ... nothing. its primary, and only use is to communicate with an un-launched, and much delayed, Nokia Bluetooth Headset. whereas Ericsson has already got five Bluetooth accessories on the market. so the poor Nokia has no Bluetooth friends. boo-hoo. not my bloody fault.
3 - the analog-clock screensaver. surely, i don't have to explain myself for loathing this.
there's plenty more to complain about the bloody thing, but, seeing that i've already deviated much too far from the original topic of my father waking me up, i'll teleport you lost souls back now.
now, back to the story. he also wanted to know the result of last night's EPL match [who is Bolton and Sunderland, anyway?], and he, of course, has no idea how to work the Teletext or the computer. which kinda explains why I'm perched on my swivel chair, clakking away at my keyboard when i really should be playing The Sims Unleashed or watching the two movies [Gattaca & The Whole Nine Yards] that i've recorded since goodness-knows-when, instead of ranting about my anti-Nokian tendencies.
i need to vent. i'll be looking for my Midtown Madness 2 CD now.
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