Why Would I Write

  • Face down receipts

    You know, one thing that has puzzled me for the longest time is how mamaks handle their receipts. If they don’t stick it in a cup or fold it up, they always hand it to you face down. And one of the first things you normally do is flip it the right way up to see how much the restaurant is going to extort you for that piece of fried chicken. This isn’t a rare occurrence or something strange that happened once in my life. It happens all the time.

    I can’t think of any reason why they would want to put the receipt face down. It’s not like it’s going to make the meal any cheaper. The numbers don’t change. Are they aware of the exorbitant prices they wrote down that they’re too ashamed to hand you the bill face up? And that by the time you finish turning the piece of paper around, they would have already walked away?

    I’m not complaining about the prices – after all I chose to go to that mamak in the first place. So why hide the price? No other restaurants seem to do this. Hell, you’d be hard pressed to get a bill in the first place if you eat in a Chinese restaurant that wasn’t serving “tai chow”.

  • 10,000 Summers

    While it sucks that bands break up, I’ve learnt how to deal with it. I relisten to old records – after all they’ve already been recorded. They aren’t going anywhere. You can always put them on and listen to them again (just like when your favorite bands change style and you don’t dig their newer stuff). But there’s one good thing can come out of bands breaking up – members going on to form new bands. Case in point: No Devotion.
    (more…)

  • ColWri2.1x – Essay Writing Assignment #1 – Teleporters

    An invention that you would like to create (or an existing invention that you think should never have been created):

    This appeared to be a pretty easy subject to write about at first – after all, what would everyone write about except a teleporter? Right? In my opinion, it’s one of the greatest devices that has yet to be invented (or at least I’m aware of). A teleporter will let people get from place to place instantly – eliminating traveling by vehicles. This solves a large number of problems – time spent commuting, air pollution and stuff like car accidents.

    However, instant travel can also create a lot of problems. For one, criminals can commit crimes and just escape to another part of the world instantly, making them hard to track down. New accidents could also be introduced with the use of teleporters – based on my experience with video games i.e. telefragging. A telefrag is a special kind of frag or kill that results when a player or monster stands on the location of a teleporter destination as another player teleports to that location. The monster or player who was originally standing at that location will instantly die. [Source]

    To solve the issues above, access to teleporters will need to be controlled or regulated. This means, people will be standing by to guard the devices as well as screen its passengers. Maybe known criminals can be implanted with chips that teleport them straight into prison if they ever escape and try to travel via a teleporter. I doubt I’ll be seeing any teleporters in my lifetime, but if and when they are finally invented, I hope they become as useful as I envision them to be!