Monthly Archives: May 2005

Week Ahead

★ Posted on at 08:54 am ★

Heh, one of the more eventful weeks to be over the next few days.

There’s a beer festival coming up which my friends have already decided we’d go. I think it’s a $35 entry fee, but you can test a pretty wide selection of beers there.

Over the weekend, there’s the FA Cup final clash between Arsenal and Manchester United. With the Premiership crown now belonging to Chelsea, it will be a big match between two giant clubs for their remaining trophy of the season.

There’s also the premier for Star Wars Episode III, which I have been anticipating since Episode I was announced way back in the mid 90′s. Gonna get some tickets for the Thursday morning midnight session. Heh, still recall watching Episode I with Jack. It was probably the most expensive film of all time I’ve watched. I had already acquired tickets for a Thursday night screening. Jack not wanting to lose out to his friends in KL who were watching it early morning the next day decided that we should go find a place that still had seats for the midnight screening. Can’t recall how we arrived at Jam Factory (it’s a shopping mall of sorts, not an actual jam factory, a mistake that tells another story) and there no tickets left. I think we checked a ticketing booth and there were still tickets available at Sunshine (some place in the suburbs) and from there we took a taxi all the way to that land of far, far away. Heh, in total, the movie added up to about $50, including the ticket and the cab rides back and forth. Talk about fan loyalty/obsession.

There’s also the Champion’s League final (yes I know it’s in another week, but it’s all too exciting) and I’m actually looking forward to it. Last year’s finals were Porto against Monaco, two relative unknowns at the time. Heh, against all my predictions, the final will be played out by Liverpool and AC Milan. What the outcome is, everyone can only speculate. Both have long histories in winning the European cup, so it’s anyone’s game.

Heh, can’t wait until Wednesday evening.

Not Routine

★ Posted on at 07:26 pm ★

Today is probably the least routine day of the entire month.

Called home to give my thoughts on what to do with the newly reformatted computer that my mom uses. Heh, I assembled that computer and gave it life, even connected it to the world wide web. Don’t know how it died, but it needed to be fixed at a shop (RM40 gone like that) and all the user settings were lost. Anyway, I think it should be fixed by now. I’m sure my brother will find a way. Heh.

Got a call before work from my boss to go buy some scourer scrubs. Had to take a detour from my usual itinerary to pick up the stuff. Work was more hectic than usual today, with things popping up unexpectedly and was a little grouchy having to rush through the usual routine. Well, half way through decided I just needed to get it done and over with. Managed to finish just on time, so that wasn’t too bad.

After work, promised my work colleague to go fix his friend’s computer. Arrived at his place and met this family from China (about that in a while). Sat down in front of the computer and was stunned. Heh, Windows in Mandarin. Yes, I know I can read Chinese, but my vocab isn’t up to scratch, so things like Control Panel, Networking, settings etc weren’t showing up in front of me. Took me a while, but finally managed to get the hang of it. Heh, which really, really surprises me. I think I’ve spent so much time around computers and Windows that I could navigate the settings even without understanding half the words in front of me (I could pronounce those words, they just had no inherent meaning for me). I have really bad experiences troubleshooting old computers, and this one was just downright ancient. From the bootup screen, I recognised the processor as a Cyrix 233MHz processor. That’s probably either a 586 or a 686 architecture designed chip, which dates back to my high school days. The computer was easily 7 or 8 years old. I’m like OMG, do such things still exist, and more amazingly, it still runs!

The computer was able to access the Internet before, I don’t know what happened to it after that. I suspect a COM port conflict with the mouse, as the mouse would die on me everytime I tried to dialup the Internet connection. Although I’m not very sure as the Chinese error message suggested there was no dial tone, although that couldn’t be the case as I had already tested the connection with a phone. Unfortunately, I was unable to fix the problem and went with my colleague for dinner. I think everything was pretty routine after that.

Yes, about the family from China. It’s actually quite amazing for them to come over here. Husband and wife plus a kid. From the 20 odd minutes I was there I observed that they didn’t speak much English but managed to find their ways over here to Melbourne. The dad was computer savvy at least, so even if he didn’t know how computers worked, he could still navigate himself around the Internet and play the built in games in Windows (someone must have set it up). It really is an adverse situation, coming to a foreign land and not speaking the local language well but still being able to survive in such a place. Kind of reminds me of my grand parents and their ancestors who came over from China to settle down in Malaysia. I admire the resilience of some people who actually strive to make a better living for themselves and their future generations.

The Transition of Portable Music

★ Posted on at 08:13 am ★

Never do I plan anything that works out quite the way I want it. On the contrary, things usually work out the opposite to my intentions.

Was wanting to save a portion of my weekly paycheque this week. At this moment, it’s all gone due to visiting friends over the weekend and a friend’s birthday. Currently broke until I get paid again at the end of this week. It’s sad.

* * *

These days especially, every Tom, Dick and Harriet (as not to discrimate against the sexes, heh) is seen sporting an iPod. While the actual player is usually concealed in a bag or a pocket, the white earphones are a dead giveaway. It is the player of choice here due to the heavy marketing that Apple practically splurges on it. Billboards and passing trams all pass on the message that the iPod is hip and cool, go spend a couple hundred and get one, you’ll love it.

iPods used to be for the elite rich who could pay the heavy pricetag for it. Now with new models in the Mini and the Shuffle, the iPod has now extended its grasp and influence among the hoi polloi*.

When I started Uni, most people had a Discman and would usually be listening to a select number of songs on the albums they bought. CD burners were just becoming affordable and people could be their own DJs and compile their own list of songs. However, the Discman wasn’t the perfect portable device, due to it’s larger than Walkman size and the fact that you couldn’t do any vigorous exercises with it. It still ran on AA batteries and battery life wasn’t fantastic.

At around the same period, the upperclass would have their MD players, which could be sourced relatively cheaper from Hong Kong at that time. MiniDiscs were a proprietary technology of Sony’s (Sony has a lot of proprietary technologies, their Memory Stick, ATRAC compression techniques, Betamax while it was still alive etc.) and was a pretty sophisticated technology back then. It also had the form factor of being small and portable, which made it popular to people who could afford the hefty price tag it had.

Going further back in time when my brother was still in Junior College, there was the Walkman. The really cool ones that cost as much as an iPod Photo today were the slim ones that were barely larger than the cassette itself. Cassette tapes, heh, non digital lossy audio quality kind of technology. It persevered for over 20 years.

Fast forward back to the present. MP3 players are becoming commodity products now with the market dominated by copycat Chinese products. I don’t know about the build quality of these things, but they’re so cheap, even having one that will last you a year or two won’t be too detrimental to your budget. Music listening habits have changed. These days consumers are more fickle with the music they listen to and don’t spend as much time on a single song as they used to because devices can carry so much music that you just don’t need to repeat a track, let alone finish listening to your vast collection of music. Heh, used to listen to tunes to death, and would be able to pick up the lyrics just from the recursive, mantra reciting kind of style.

Was writing this post as an observation to changing lifestyles. When technology improves, everything becomes a commodity. Like the first Ford motorcar that only came in black that only the rich could afford to today’s multiproduct car industry. These days, everyone can be seen enjoying their music on the go.

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* A new phrase I learnt last night watching Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. What better way to learn something than to put it straight into practice. Heh…