Why Would I Write

Category: Random

  • Out With The Old

    Today I spent about an hour clearing random shit from my room. Since it’s the new year, I figured that I’d tidy up my room a bit. I went through my desk and four drawers, picking up and throwing away stuff that I didn’t need. Turns out I had a lot of shit that was lying around. Bills, cards, broken pens, pieces of paper, my old TESOL assignments and teaching material, books, batteries, 56k modems (I found two of them), broken cables, used organizers, and press kits from my short stint reviewing movies a few years ago.

    Initially, I took the time to go through each item and realized that it would take too long, so I only took minor glances and what they were before deciding to throw them away. I had tons of rubbish, ended the night throwing away four bags of random shit.

    I applied the following principle to efficiently clean my room: if it was something that I hadn’t touched in years and there was no reason to keep it, I threw it away. I mean, if I hadn’t needed the items in years and I didn’t even know they were lying around in my room, they were as good as missing and it will probably be unlikely that I’ll ever need them in my lifetime. Hopefully this won’t come to bite me in the ass in the future, but we’ll see.

    I made some surprising discoveries – I found a lint roller and a portable vacuum cleaner. Two items that I had purchased in the last month. Could have saved myself some money if I had bothered looking for them (or remembered I had them in the first place). I also found my old cellphones – the Galaxy S2, Moto G and Redmi Note 3. I think they’re still semi-working, but I have no use for them. I’ll probably donate them or keep a couple around to mess with them.

    Next up, time to go through my cupboards to find even more things to throw away.

    I’m probably going to throw away my empty alcohol bottles because I don’t think it’s cool to keep them anymore. Also, they are a waste of space and a possible hazard. I’ve got tons of boxes that I kept because I thought they looked nice. They’ll be going too since I’m not going to move anywhere or resell those items they contained. I’m also going to go through my closet to get rid of clothes I never wear anymore. This should be fun!

    I’m retiring Music Mondays because I feel like they’re a bit too samey (both the bands I recommend and the way I describe them). Monday posts are now going to be miscellaneous!

  • Time Internet Telemarketers

    Earlier today I received a call from a Time Internet telemarketer. I’ve no idea how they received my phone number but they knew where I was living. He immediately started his pitch, telling me about faster speeds, lower prices bla bla bla. I told him I wasn’t interested. He asked how much I was paying for my current plan, I told him. He pitched again – cheaper, faster. I told him no. He hung up the phone. The whole interaction reminded me of my job in PR previously – I made a lot of calls to publications, sometimes cold, just to invite them to our events. I also had to call up other people for venue inquiries and bookings. It was probably one of the worst aspects of the job.

    I always felt like I was being an annoyance. Personally because I’m not much of a phone person these days (I used to love speaking on the phone as a teenager, not anymore) and it felt so inefficient to me. You spend five to ten minutes on each phone call, with no guarantee of getting a positive answer. Compare that to sending an email or text message which takes less than a minute to send to everyone (after you’ve crafted it, of course) and it’s pretty much the same result. Interested media will reply/RSVP, uninterested ones will ignore it. On the plus side, you haven’t wasted half your day making calls to people who may or may not be in the office or attending another event/meeting. And you didn’t need to be verbally rejected, after all the effort you put in.

    I don’t know if the media enjoyed receiving calls from PR people, but I sure as hell don’t enjoy receiving calls from telemarketers. I know these people are only doing their job and I shouldn’t hate them for it, but if there was a less annoying way to sell products to people. Like email or text messages? Hmm. Then again, people probably think that customer interaction is an important aspect of their company/product. I’d like to see the numbers for the success rates of telemarketers. If people are still doing it in 2017, I have a feeling it must be working somehow. If not, companies are just flushing money away hiring people for the job.

    Personally, I’m okay with ads even though I use adblockers on my computer mostly because I hate pop ups and any possible malware risks. But the best form of advertising to me has always been recommendations by friends and endorsements by people who I care about i.e. esports players, teams, tournament sponsors, streamers. When I decide what product to purchase, they play a factor in my decisions. However, when it’s an endorsement by someone irrelevant (i,e. movie star or badminton player promoting anti-virus software) I immediately dismiss it. If someone I know has personally used something and recommended it to me, I think that is much more effective.

    Like in the case for Time Internet – if my neighbor told me that he switched from Unifi to Time because it was cheaper and he could download Steam games much faster or his Twitch streams were 1080p with no lag, that would have probably pushed me over the edge into signing up for Time. Right now, Unifi works perfectly for me at home so I see no reason in switching. And it’s not something I can easily switch back to if I was unhappy with Time. Also, it would be a hassle setting up my home network again. Also, if more people switched to Time in my condominium, that should free up the congestion on Unifi’s lines and make life better for me, right? kek

  • Thoughts on the 25th

    My favorite cafe, Doiffee, is closed today. Strange, because it used to be open all the time, even on public holidays. Which was what I liked about the place. I had somewhere to go for good coffee and quiet environment to do my writing. No biggie, I relocated to Encore today. A pretty good cafe as well, known for its desserts. The coffee here is good, the tables are a bit small if you plan to use a laptop with an external keyboard, which seems to be the only way I write these days. Typing on your laptop’s built-in keyboard is for plebs. Just kidding, it’s just much nicer to type on a proper keyboard.

    A few years ago, I wasn’t really into mechanical keyboards. I felt that regular keyboards could do the job as long as you could type on them. Now, I own four of them and I’ve been investing in keycaps to replace the stock ones I have. I’m browsing a lot of /r/mechanicalkeyboards in my free time as well. It’s become quite a hobby, dressing up these pieces of plastic. I guess the next step would be ordering a kit and building a keyboard of my own. I’m not enthusiastic enough to do that just yet. Because it would mean I’d have to pick up soldering skills. Hah! But I’ve learned to never say never. Thanks Justin Bieber! Thanks Seng Yip!

    Yesterday I flipped through the newspapers – the first time in a long time. There was nothing that really interested me, and I didn’t feel like I’ve been missing out all that much. I mean, whenever there’s big or important news, I’ll see it on my Facebook feed or on the Reddit front page anyway. That means anything unimportant has been filtered out, and I don’t have to waste time reading about it.

    Obituaries are still a thing. I’ve always wondered why people announced the death of somebody. Doesn’t it just draw attention for money-grabbing relatives to crawl out of the woodwork, looking for a slice of the pie? Does anyone have so many relatives that it would be impossible to inform all of them via text or phone call? I guess people use obituaries as a way of celebrating someone’s life, however necessary that may be. Then again, I believe that money can be better spent instead of being used on afterlife amenities. Dead people really don’t give a shit what happens after they’re gone (they can’t).

    Last night, I drove by a couple of churches that were counting down to Christmas. I wasn’t interested in joining the festivities. I haven’t been to church to worship for about ten years. The same amount of time I’ve been working. Coincidence? Not really. During my first job, I stopped going to church because I was working six-day weeks and wanted to rest on the seventh day. I started going less, and after a few months I realized that it made no difference to my life. Eventually, I stopped praying and even thinking about God. Then I discovered how funny religious jokes were and how liberating it was to not live my life by some arbitrary rules found in a really old book. I mean, we already have enough rules to live by in this country and at our workplaces – why bother adding another set to the mix?

    The best part about this time of the year is the music that gets played in public places. I think we should have Christmas songs playing all year-long. It always makes shopping a pleasant experience. Also, Christmas songs are fun to sing along to.

    The world stops running for a day today, at least for most of the world. And in a week’s time, it’ll be another break for the start of the new year.