No, I'm not avoiding you or giving you "the cold shoulder". I just started work, waitressing at a restaurant. Can't use phone on the job, though I can sneak a peak at messages. Full time, 9 hours a day, 6 days a week. I'll plug the place I work at, if you ask. I'm not stupid enough to state where I work on my journal, kthxbai.
Now it's TOR not GLOR. I work in Boost Juice, Vivocity. It's the best juice bar ever, do drop by.
Yesterday I realised just how much of Mummy's english vocab is derived from ours. As we ww
ere watching TV, she commented, 'the picture is very...' She was obviously trying to find the right word so I helped her by suggesting,'exciting? slow? boring?' She said, 'No. (pause)Retarded'.
Yes. My mother's pwers of description in english aren't very strong but her repertoire does include words like:
Cool
Happening
Retarded
Rubbishy
Gross
Random
and
Rocks
It's Gloria's fault, I tell you.
One usually has to guess wht Mummy means from various noises, gestures and expressions. Once she tried to explain the difference between brown and green kaya. Apparently, brown kaya is more (reapeatedly open and close fingers into fist slowly, using small up and down motions of the hand simulating an upside-down squid). Also, the difference btw duku and langsat is that 'duku is duku' and 'langsat is langsat'.
Thursday, December 14, 2006
I met up with a friend the other day, and had a lovely day despite her being quiet at some points. True to form, I babbled inanities in the mistaken belief that one might strike home and lead to a renewed conversation. Little did I know that she was rolling her eyes internally. Cutting to the chase, here are excerpts about me from her blog entry.
I'd say they are not wholly undeserved.
"So I found it shocking that a friend of mine didn't know her way around her phone... she's still using the damned thing even though it's big enough to be, as the older folk call it, giah lai kah tzeem eh tzng tao (a brick you use for cracking crabs)..."
"We tried to send some of my ring tones to her phone, except she didn't know how it worked, which elicited another slow-mo-turn-with-incredulous-stare action sequence from me."
"It's a strange fear of the technophobes that they'll somehow cause the device to spontaneously combust if they pressed the wrong buttons, although common sense suggests that installing Explode buttons on consumer electronics is probably a bad idea. "
"To me, being technologically backward when one isn't robbed of the ability to keep up with the times suggests a certain, well, laziness. Being proud of not knowing anything about tech stuff just screams a fear of being ostracized and told to stand in a corner until they master their pre-polyphonic phones. "
Sound familiar? Yes, it should to those who know me, or Gloria's sister. The person whose PDA phone is trying to commit suicide, and whose top of the range, S$200 camera is held together with scotch tape. But to the people who say: Just get a new one! I say: you give me the money then I buy a new one lah!
Those very same people will then ask, 'How come you got so much money to go australia holiday then?'
It's a question of priorities. What people chose to spend money on is indicative not just of their personalities but their circumstances. Right now I have a lot of time and no money. I'm collecting experiences, not consumer durables. I have the rest of my working life to acquire those things, as and when I want them.
I've written an email to my friend and it pretty much sums up how I feel about techy gadgets:
My incompetence must seem staggering to you. I think I ham up my self-deprecation (not just to you but in general) because it's an easy way to get people to laugh and relax as they feel superior to me in this respect.
What can I say? We all know self-deprecation is an art. The point is that people in the know know that you are really just pretending to be inferior, while the people on the outside let their guard down because they think you are a fool. Also, kids love it.
The truth is, I do know how to use my phone. I've been using it for years. Obviously.
I don't know how to use the more complicated functons like the pdf and excel programs because I cannot foresee ever needing to use them. I don't know how to put mp3 ringtones on it because I have never wanted to. I know how to use exactly the functions that I want to, or need to.
I have this phone because it was free. I would never have chosen it on my own. Why the hell would I need a PDA type phone? I know how to use the connectivity functions, I can surf the net, do emails, chat, play games, use the planner.
But I don't.
Because I don't actually want to do these things on my phone.
Maybe I am actually just bloody irritating and should just get on with it without pretending that I don't know how to do the techy thing in question. But oh! It is so much fun when my sister gets exasperated with me and does it instead. I like to think it's rewarding for her to be able to help me with some trifling task. Then again, maybe I should just ask her to do stuff for me out of the goodness of her heart. (haha fat chance)
Actually the part of the entry that really made me sigh wasn't what I've already pasted above. I wouldn't be affected by people saying I was a bloody fool due to my technological incompetence. After all, gadgets don't really matter to me one way or the other. As I said, the ones I have now are perfectly adequate for my purposes. Anything I should come to require in the future I will deal with then. But then again, I'm not likely to need anything more. Most gadgets are entertainment-related so I won't need to use them for work. I already know how to use a blackberry.
The part that made me sad was, 'And technology is the one thing that shows one's adaptability and speed of processing information more than anything else. Being able to pick up a console of any kind and navigate around it has become a basic skill, and those who don't have it have a much more difficult time than those who do.'
I'm grieved to see that she links ability to learn to use new technologies so closely with the general skill of adaptability. (although such a linkage would come in extremely useful when writing CVs btw)
Referring to a less tech-savvy older person, she said, 'While personality and motivation helped, I think the basic ability to adapt and change and learn was something that made him a lot more successful than his peers.'
I completely agree. From experience, four years of achieving my personal goals (of getting a good job, doing well in uni, making genuine local friends) in a foreign country (and dealing with colleagues, landlords, bosses, government, banks, companies, judges, examiners, clients, students, members of the public, ) requires a whole lot of adaptability. But having to adapt my IT skills to different systems is really at the bottom of my list of things which are hard to adapt to.
I heed this warning call to be open to change and learning. But... wait! My recent life so far has been about that. And I'm not complaining about being less successful than anybody else I know. Perhaps objectively, I am. After all, I am only a shop girl. But I'm a happy shopgirl.
I'd say they are not wholly undeserved.
"So I found it shocking that a friend of mine didn't know her way around her phone... she's still using the damned thing even though it's big enough to be, as the older folk call it, giah lai kah tzeem eh tzng tao (a brick you use for cracking crabs)..."
"We tried to send some of my ring tones to her phone, except she didn't know how it worked, which elicited another slow-mo-turn-with-incredulous-stare action sequence from me."
"It's a strange fear of the technophobes that they'll somehow cause the device to spontaneously combust if they pressed the wrong buttons, although common sense suggests that installing Explode buttons on consumer electronics is probably a bad idea. "
"To me, being technologically backward when one isn't robbed of the ability to keep up with the times suggests a certain, well, laziness. Being proud of not knowing anything about tech stuff just screams a fear of being ostracized and told to stand in a corner until they master their pre-polyphonic phones. "
Sound familiar? Yes, it should to those who know me, or Gloria's sister. The person whose PDA phone is trying to commit suicide, and whose top of the range, S$200 camera is held together with scotch tape. But to the people who say: Just get a new one! I say: you give me the money then I buy a new one lah!
Those very same people will then ask, 'How come you got so much money to go australia holiday then?'
It's a question of priorities. What people chose to spend money on is indicative not just of their personalities but their circumstances. Right now I have a lot of time and no money. I'm collecting experiences, not consumer durables. I have the rest of my working life to acquire those things, as and when I want them.
I've written an email to my friend and it pretty much sums up how I feel about techy gadgets:
My incompetence must seem staggering to you. I think I ham up my self-deprecation (not just to you but in general) because it's an easy way to get people to laugh and relax as they feel superior to me in this respect.
What can I say? We all know self-deprecation is an art. The point is that people in the know know that you are really just pretending to be inferior, while the people on the outside let their guard down because they think you are a fool. Also, kids love it.
The truth is, I do know how to use my phone. I've been using it for years. Obviously.
I don't know how to use the more complicated functons like the pdf and excel programs because I cannot foresee ever needing to use them. I don't know how to put mp3 ringtones on it because I have never wanted to. I know how to use exactly the functions that I want to, or need to.
I have this phone because it was free. I would never have chosen it on my own. Why the hell would I need a PDA type phone? I know how to use the connectivity functions, I can surf the net, do emails, chat, play games, use the planner.
But I don't.
Because I don't actually want to do these things on my phone.
Maybe I am actually just bloody irritating and should just get on with it without pretending that I don't know how to do the techy thing in question. But oh! It is so much fun when my sister gets exasperated with me and does it instead. I like to think it's rewarding for her to be able to help me with some trifling task. Then again, maybe I should just ask her to do stuff for me out of the goodness of her heart. (haha fat chance)
Actually the part of the entry that really made me sigh wasn't what I've already pasted above. I wouldn't be affected by people saying I was a bloody fool due to my technological incompetence. After all, gadgets don't really matter to me one way or the other. As I said, the ones I have now are perfectly adequate for my purposes. Anything I should come to require in the future I will deal with then. But then again, I'm not likely to need anything more. Most gadgets are entertainment-related so I won't need to use them for work. I already know how to use a blackberry.
The part that made me sad was, 'And technology is the one thing that shows one's adaptability and speed of processing information more than anything else. Being able to pick up a console of any kind and navigate around it has become a basic skill, and those who don't have it have a much more difficult time than those who do.'
I'm grieved to see that she links ability to learn to use new technologies so closely with the general skill of adaptability. (although such a linkage would come in extremely useful when writing CVs btw)
Referring to a less tech-savvy older person, she said, 'While personality and motivation helped, I think the basic ability to adapt and change and learn was something that made him a lot more successful than his peers.'
I completely agree. From experience, four years of achieving my personal goals (of getting a good job, doing well in uni, making genuine local friends) in a foreign country (and dealing with colleagues, landlords, bosses, government, banks, companies, judges, examiners, clients, students, members of the public, ) requires a whole lot of adaptability. But having to adapt my IT skills to different systems is really at the bottom of my list of things which are hard to adapt to.
I heed this warning call to be open to change and learning. But... wait! My recent life so far has been about that. And I'm not complaining about being less successful than anybody else I know. Perhaps objectively, I am. After all, I am only a shop girl. But I'm a happy shopgirl.
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
So my estate was fogged today. And about a million cockroaches came crawling out of every conceivable place a nasty thing like that could possibly hide. They were all sizes, from a grain of rice to as long as my finger. It wasn't possible for me to walk in a straight line and I even changed course a few times. At least three would have entered the house if we hadn't taped up the rubbish chute before the fogging.
My life has been fogged but I wish the cockroaches would leave me alone.
My life has been fogged but I wish the cockroaches would leave me alone.
Monday, December 11, 2006
So me, Gloria, and my cousins, Felicia, Peter and Mavis went out for a night on the town last week and here are the photos to prove it.
Mavis isn't in this photo. She's in the next one.
Here's Mavis and Glor with a bellini.
And here's Felicia and Peter, who are siblings.
And here's my favourite inanimate object in the whole world: Bolbol. You can make out Small Colourful Bolster in the background, and Ster Ster beside it. (It's fairly obvious which bolster is Small Colourful Bolster and which is Ster ster).
For more photos, check out my Flickr account at www.flickr.com/photos/victoriaho
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Post prom post to be done later as have had no time to sit and jot one down properly. Can't do now as cousin is staying over. We went to loof today, we enjoyed it muchly and will go back some other time. Lychee martini and Berllini made us very happy. Little cousin Peter was irritating.
*Mavis waves hallo*
In other news, I am now single again.
*Mavis waves hallo*
In other news, I am now single again.