Crank call, revenge or insanity?

Posted: 13:37 hrs (GMT+8)

Every few weeks, this happens.

I don’t know why this guy keeps calling my house. Why I’m always the one who answers his call. And why the only thing he does is shout curses at me through the phone before hanging up. All he does is shout, “CHAO CI BAI” (if you didn’t get that, it’s like calling someone a cunt).

Is he crazy, senile, taking revenge for something or just a random troublemaker? Maybe it’s a whole family of them, because once (but just once), it was a woman who did the cursing.

Or maybe… Some troublemaker is redirecting phonecalls to my house. It happened a long time ago at my old house; who says it can’t happen again?

Crap la. Can’t these idiots just leave me in peace?

 

Change of theme

Posted: 15:04 hrs (GMT+8)

I changed my blog theme from “Kubrick” to “Connections”. I think the sidebar is nicer. Although the look has a lot of green, it’s easier on the eyes than the previous theme. I’ll be changing the header image eventually.

Do let me know what you think of this new look.

 

Sucky lunch

Posted: 14:01 hrs (GMT+8)

Bee hoon (skinny white noodles) in fish soup does not a nice meal make. Especially when there are remnants of deadly bones hidden in the mess of ingredients.

I don’t want to go that way.

 

The 5 Stages Of Grief

Posted: 19:38 hrs (GMT+8)

I’ve been looking for this for a while. It started when I randomly thought of Mason from the TV series “Dead Like Me” and remembered the 5 stages were talked about in the first episode. I find it interesting and rather accurate. I bolded some main points.

Why paste it here? Just because I can. Also in case I need to find it really quickly again.

* * * * *

(Quoted from Wikipedia)

The Kübler-Ross model first introduced by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book “On Death and Dying”, describes, in five discrete stages, a process by which people allegedly deal with grief and tragedy, especially when diagnosed with a terminal illness. The stages are known as the Five Stages of Grief.

Stages

The stages are:

1. Denial:
   • Example – “I feel fine.”; “This can’t be happening, not to me!”
2. Anger:
   • Example – “Why me? It’s not fair!” “NO! NO! How can this happen!”
3. Bargaining:
   • Example – “Just let me live to see my children graduate.”; “I’ll do anything, can’t you stretch it out? A few more years.”
4. Depression:
   • Example – “I’m so sad, why bother with anything?”; “I’m going to die . . . What’s the point?”
5. Acceptance:
   • Example – “It’s going to be OK.”; “I can’t fight it, I may as well prepare for it.”

Kübler-Ross originally applied these stages to any form of catastrophic personal loss (job, income, freedom). This also includes the death of a loved one, divorce, drug addiction, or infertility. Kübler-Ross also claimed these steps do not necessarily come in the order noted above, nor are all steps experienced by all patients, though she stated a person will always experience at least two.

Others have noticed that any significant personal change can elicit these stages. For example, experienced criminal defense attorneys are aware that defendants who are facing stiff sentences, yet have no defenses or mitigating factors to lessen their sentences, often experience the stages. Accordingly, they must get to the acceptance stage before they are prepared to plead guilty.

Additionally, the change in circumstances does not always have to be a negative one, just significant enough to cause a grief response to the loss (Scire, 2007). Accepting a new work position, for example, causes one to lose their routine, workplace friendships, familiar drive to work, or even customary lunch sources.

The most common factor is when the person doesn’t have the capacity to change their situation, at least not without considerable loss to themselves, thus a person who would go through these stages would not need to continue if they found a way out of the situation: e.g., If a person losing their house was at the bargaining stage but then somehow found a way out of the situation, then they’d have no reason to become depressed. So the ’stages of grief’ could be linked to a lack of control or ability, e.g., people who have lost limbs, people on the bad end of an ultimatum, people under threat, and so on.

 

Region Free PC DVD player – For free

Posted: 23:47 hrs (GMT+8)

TEBS came back from the US the week before New Year’s. She brought my M*A*S*H* dvd that I’ve been waiting for (among other things).

Bez and I decided to watch it a few nights later. Excited, I popped it into my disc drive. That’s when I hit a snag: My player is Region 3 (Asia) while the disc is Region 1 (US). As you probably know, you can only change the region of your dvd a few times before it locks itself, deeming it completely useless. I didn’t want to do that. What’s the point of having a great movie but being unable to use it? Since I already had the original, I didn’t want to go down the route of getting a bootleg version either.

Although it was nearing midnight and I had school the following day, I began my search on Google for a region free program for my PC. An hour later, I emerged triumphant. I found this page by VideoHelp.com. Of the 7 tools listed, 5 were free to use. I decided on Remote selector and it worked like a charm. Although it no longer updates, it’s good enough for me. It’s less than 1MB in size and easy to use.

Initial setup:

After downloading, run Remote Selector. Go to “Control”, enable it, then tick all the boxes. The settings will be saved in a separate file.

Actual usage:

1) Run Remote Selector. Select your player (DVD player program) from the dropdown list. I’m assuming you have one (I use PowerDVD).

2) Go to “Control”. There’s a big button at the bottom that says “Start player”. Well, go on and click it.

Voila, your player is now region free! No more worrying if that second-hand DVD you bought on eBay has only one region-select left.

* * *

After all that work, I still haven’t managed to find the time to watch my movie.

 

Silly clock

Posted: 23:17 hrs (GMT+8)

These few days, if you see me up late at night, it’s not really by choice.

The radio-clock in my bedroom went funny a few days ago, first starting to blink obnoxiously. When I tried to fix it, it gave me an attitude by refusing to shut off the radio. I squeezed my arm under the table and unplugged it. Or more accurately, I yanked the plug out while the mains were still switched on because I couldn’t reach the main switch.

So here I am today, sitting like a zombie at my computer, currently fascinated by a brown spot on my shoulder. Was it always there? Can I get it off? Will it spread? Is it dangerous?

I know how you feel, Melman

But I suppose that’s the least of my worries at the moment. With my clock out of commission, the visibility of time and therefore my awareness of it reduced drastically. Usually, I don’t sleep beyond 1am. The first night, I ended up sleeping at 4am because I had thought it was almost 1am for hours. It happened again the next night.

I guess I could do something to fix my problem, like change the batteries or get a new clock. But who has that kind of time?

I’m way too busy trying to catch up on lost sleep.

* * *

(Edit: 23:52 hrs, 7 Jan 2009) I fixed it sometime in late December 2008. All I did was plug it back in (while the main power was still switched on, naturally) and jiggle some wires around. It came back to life in perfect order. As amazing as that is, I wonder more about why I didn’t get an electric shock.

 

Just a year

Posted: 22:39 hrs (GMT+8)

I’m nearly one year into my current relationship. I have to say I’m rather surprised at having lasted this long, considering how quickly the previous ones ended. Maybe it’s true that we do learn things from time and experience.

I still feel that the quality of a relationship is up to the two people in it to decide. So what if we last another 10 years if it goes downhill from here? It isn’t all about the length of the relationship, and it’s certainly not a contest among couples.

For now I’m content with the way things are going. I’ll leave it at that and see how far we can go, not just in time but also in depth.

 

Intuition

Posted: 00:46 hrs (GMT+8)

How many times have you done something brilliantly by instinct, only to screw it up because you started to think about it?

Your thought process is restricted/dies when you’re asked to explain it.

Can you explain intuition?

Experience teaches us instinct.

When they said experience is everything, they forgot to mention the bit about instinct.

Practice until you get it right, then until it becomes instinct.

Instinct doesn’t follow a plan. It doesn’t follow any form of logical thought. One moment you’re doing something and the next second you think of the next step, although you can’t really justify it. It just happens to be the best move. Since it doesn’t follow a logical train of thought, predicting things conciously is difficult or near impossible. So why bother? In the end it only places a mental barrier to our thoughts, steering the train of thought away from the perfect-ideas-that-popped-out-of-nowhere.

My writing can do with a lot more improvement. I’m going to gain as much experience as I can, working first on making my writing correct, making it clearer, then making it more interesting.

I won’t be satisfied until people can look at my writing and say, “I understand completely what you’re trying to say. And I wasn’t bored to death.”

And noone has to know how I did it.

 

Sad and yellow

Posted: 17:09 hrs (GMT+8)

On the shelf above my computer, there are 5 books. I haven’t had the time to read my books so they’ve been left on the shelf, untouched for months.

Now I’m sad because the edges are starting to turn yellow. They’re still kind of white on the inside pages but I feel really disappointed in myself, especially since one of the books hasn’t even been started on yet.

As much as I want to keep buying books, I guess I should wait until I can afford a bigger bookshelf to protect my books. Maybe I’ll just borrow them or donate them once I’ve read them.

Maybe the only books worth keeping are those that I enjoy a lot, or classics or popular titles that are just nice to wave in visitors’ faces.

 

MostFun games

Posted: 15:37 hrs (GMT+8)

Just added a new link on my links out page. One day I’ll clean it up properly.

I’ve had this website on my bookmarks since last year but didn’t have the time to write about it.

I love MostFun.com! MostFun boasts hundreds of free games with no time limits. Check it out for yourself and don’t be surprised to find out it’s true.

Other websites only give you an hour’s worth of gaming time as a trial but MostFun has no restrictions. Unintrusive (and sometimes rather entertaining) ads will pop up from time to time, paying for your free game. You can choose to buy the game if you would rather not have any ads at all.

If you think this is just going to be something like any other website with free games, know that these aren’t extremely low budget and poorly-made flash games. They are all professionally-made by game publishers. People do pay to play them.

A few games I’ve tried and recommend:

• Cakemania – Addictive point and click game. Do get 2 and 3 if you like it.
• Diner Dash – Help Flo run her Diner in this classic point and click game.
• Blood Ties – Find the hidden objects to bring yourself one step closer to solving the mystery.
• Tradewinds – Battle and trade on the seas in several amusing storylines.

Do note that the game player is not up to date with the website. After you download the player, it’s a better idea to get the game straight from the website as it might not show up in the game player’s list.

And yes, like their note at the bottom of their site says, guaranteed safe and virus free.