I'm a rotten banana
6 September 2007, 12:37 am. 24 Comments. Filed under Rants.
There are times I like to shy away from drama but when I'm incredibly tired of studying, all I want to do is rouse some kind of... fun.
I was at the mall today after study group with my friends, and I was walking with a white guy. I then met my friend Sean and his bunch of friends, including this guy who's been hating me for years without reason. So I said hi to Sean and basically... that was it.
But that was not it. Sean just told me on MSN that after I left, the other random-hating guy called me a "rotten banana, all black outside and white inside." Sure, I'm darker than many other Taiwanese girls but I'm nowhere near how he described. Along with that, I don't see how I'm white inside. Most of my friends are Asian and I can read/write/speak Chinese fairly fluently. Anyhow, I don't think there's anything too bad about being white inside as I've been overseas for quite some time but what was with the "rotten banana"? I've never gotten into any arguments with him before and the last time we met up we were pretty polite with each other.
Unfortunately, no politeness behind the scenes. This guy has been passing around rude stuff about me over the years and I've ignored them. But as I said, since his comment interrupted my study this time, I just want a bit of fun. I spammed a bit on his online profile but here goes my Sunday plan:
LOL I see a monkey.
Eat me.
But let's wait till you evolve.
Soz hun
It was only intended for Sunday spam because my friend didn't want to be caught passing "secrets" to me while memories are still fresh.
Well, monkeys love bananas. So I should take his comment as a compliment with full pride, right? Despite being "rotten", I'm still a "banana". The monkey still loves me. I bet he has a crush on me now. Cheating on his girlfriend? Boys, don't cheat on your girlfriends. That's bad. But he's a monkey, I should forgive him.
Oh look, spelling mistakes all over! He's an "it", not a "him". Forgive me too.
To prove it's really not so bad being a rotten banana after all, upon searching "rotten banana" on Google Images, I get a hottie on second page of results.
Monotonous + rigid = professional?
19 August 2007, 2:34 pm. 15 Comments. Filed under Miscellaneous, Rants.
Have you ever noticed that in an attempt to sound "professional", perhaps, things come out monotonous and rigid?
Let's look at dictionaries. Why is it that they always expect you to go round and round until you find your answer? Back in school, I remember teachers always telling us that a definition answer should not contain the word we were asked to define. And yet, the first definition you find in a dictionary often gives you no answer at all. Taking an example...
prudential adj. 1. Arising from or characterized by prudence.
prudence n. 1. The state, quality, or fact of being prudent.
(and finally...)
prudent adj. 1. Wise in handling practical matters; exercising good judgment or common sense.- sourced from Answers.com
But I've seen worse...
chancery n., pl. -ies. 1. a. A court of chancery. b. The proceedings and practice of a court of chancery; equity.
...- sourced from Answers.com
Anyhow, I couldn't find the answer I was looking for until I scrolled half-way down the page.
Aside from dictionaries, call centres piss me off. I was trying to call the Inland Revenue Department (government tax agency) to ask about a little question that took two minutes to resolve. But I was having to hold on to the phone for at least twenty minutes while complaining about it on MSN.
First I get some annoying music, then suddenly it stops and I think "Ooooh it's coming", then it switches to some Maori song. That probably happened six or seven times until I got another stop. I heard someone say "Hi" so I said "Hi", and the robotic, monotonous voice says "... Thanks for holding on the line..." By this time, I felt really stupid I was talking to a robot and the robot babbles on but not too long afterwards, the same robot says "You're speaking with ******, how may I help you?" It was then natural for me to hesitate and process through my head whether they decided to name their robots or was I finally lucky enough to hear a human being (despite her sounding like a robot). A quick temptation came to me, prodding me to ask her, "Are you a robot?" But I wasn't rude enough to do so.
It's this thing with bureaucracy. Everything needs to be in order, I suppose there's good and bad sides to it, but then sometimes you wait so long for someone to answer your call, and they direct you to a different department, then another department, then another and another. Essentially, you walk in circles, again.
I can't really blame them though. It's a common perception to most, if not all of us that professionalism is defined by monotone and rigidity. All the information, Terms of Service and policies in "professional" businesses are written in straight, rigid tone. Do most people even read them?
On a side note, I finally got my Internet bandwidth uncapped!
Damned businessmen
15 August 2007, 4:30 pm. 25 Comments. Filed under Internet, Rants.
Dammit. I busted my monthly Internet bandwidth. Again.
Some of you in the nice Northern Hemisphere may be thinking "WTF Internet bandwidth" but yeah, that's right. Telecom Xtra is the monopoly over our broadband Internet here and we get crap service at high prices. The plan we're with gives 6 GB Internet bandwidth at the damned rate of $49.95 NZD ($36.00 USD) a month, not to mention we have one of the slowest broadband speeds in the OECD already.
Neither my sister nor I know what we did to suddenly bust the 6 GB bandwidth just four days before the recurring date but right now I'm having to suffer 56K dial-up speed. I can't even load my site properly in Mozilla Firefox. Actually, let me rephrase that: I can't load any page properly in Firefox so I'm back to Opera again. It's killing me.
I had always been complaining about the crap broadband speed we got—about 150~200 KB/s downloading from most sites—but now I understand what real pain-in-the-arse means. Last night, I was downloading a file at 4 KB/s. The second file I downloaded was progressing at 0.5 KB/s. All this is due to the bloody rich firm that provides the bad service. They have no competition to face in the industry so it doesn't matter what price they set or what service they give, we all have to pay them. Die.
And to add to all the slow Internet killing my mood, I accidentally bidded on a 1 GB MP4 player on TradeMe when I thought it was a 2 GB. It wasn't purely my fault since that auction came up in the search results when I entered "2GB MP4 player". Anyhow, I won that at $57 NZD and realised I made a mistake fighting over it with another bidder. I then went after the 2 GB one I really wanted and won it at $59 NZD. Yeah. $2 for 1 GB upgrade. I should laugh? Heee. But, no.
It was the same seller that listed the items and I mailed him straight afterwards asking if we could please cancel the trade and I would be willing to pay any costs he had incurred in listing the auction, which would amount to something no more than $3.95. And he replied me:
Please pay $10 (admin and restocking charge) to our bank account
"Admin and restocking charge" my ass. It was just a Chinese guy bringing cheap MP4 players in from China and reselling here for triple or quadruple the price and he's charging a sixth of the item's price for some admin and "restocking" crap. The item hasn't even been dispatched! I shall now give the 1 GB MP4 player to my friend who doesn't have one since if I do resell the item, I don't think I'd find another stupid girl who'd bid up to $57 for it thinking it was a 2 GB.
So now, I am broke again. But at least I'll now treasure my 200 KB/s download speed to come in two days. (Perhaps only for a week in, though.)
