invest in an earphone please

A couple of decades ago, I remember, one of the most annoying things that people do, was to check their phone messages on a speaker phone. You know, back when mobile phones were not so common, people actually called each other on the land line and left voice messages. Then there’s this type of fuckstain people, who checked their messages with the speaker phone (in lieu of using the handset) – which broadcasts their messages in max volume across half the office space. With many of them doing that, you can imagine how fucking annoying it could get.

That is why I hated working in my office desk because I just couldn’t stand listening to other people’s bullshit. Then came the mobile phone, and the shit just gone mobile. Now instead of voice messages in the office, you get douchebags watching videos on loudspeaker with their mobile phones! Just the other day, I encountered this middle aged Indian man watching Tamil movies on his phone in a hospital waiting area with zero regards to everyone around him. Then yesterday, there was this fat fuck watching Japanese fetish anime in Company T cafeteria, broadcasting Doraemon voice across annoyed patrons.

Kids, grown ass men, ladies, every fucking one – they do that all the time and it is fucking annoying. I think I am going into depression if I am not allowed to hurt these people legally. God fucking damn.

pour sand into own rice bowl

A friend was delivering my lunch and he was driving into my apartment compound. In the guardhouse, was this new guard. He was tasked with an SOP to register all visitors coming into the apartment. Since the car’s window was right next to the guardhouse’s, my friend requested the registration book to be handed out from the window. But to my friend’s bewilderment, he unexpectedly got yelled at by the guard – to get down from the car to write on the damn book himself. (the book was just right next to the guard).

Pissed off, my friend phoned me to collect my lunch from the guardhouse, because he’s not coming in. So I had to go outside the guardhouse to collect my lunch. Guard wasn’t too happy when my friend and I talked outside, about what unfolded before. The guard then chose to confront me when I was heading back to the apartment (I wasn’t planning to say anything to anyone, just wanted my lunch and be done with it). I didn’t know what he wanted, as he was bitching some shit in Malay that I couldn’t quite get. But I told him this (politely and articulately in his language) – ‘Delivery guys work very hard to earn a living in hard times like this and it wouldn’t be too difficult to extend some courtesy to them, such as conveniently handing over the registration book. Just pick it up, and hand over. Very simple.’

I thought the guard would understand, being a wage earner himself at this advanced age (he must be in his 60’s), but that fucknut of a guard told me this in a rather condescending manner – much to my own turn of bewilderment – “THIS IS NOT MY JOB!”. *facepalm * So his job was to sit on his ass all day and dispense crude remarks to innocent strangers? And he can’t lift his ass up for a second to pass the registration book over to visitors? And they’re wondering why guard jobs are all going to the foreigners? Fucking shit. He even tried to pick a fight with me when I laughed at his confused ass and told him he has a stupid process of doing his work (he thought I was calling him stupid).

I walked away, leaving him babbling behind. He was an old man, much smaller in size compared to me. It would have been sad for me to beat an old man up. But what got me thinking was, why was he given this job? Old man being a security guard. That’s like hiring a midget to be your basketball coach. And being in the job already, why does he have to pour sand into his own rice bowl by being such a prick like that? A job is hard to come by nowadays, and this asshat is wasting it away by being such a delinquent.

I later reported the guard to the management and I hope he loses his fucking job. Then, his job will be to really do nothing and contend with unemployment. I’m sure many other deserving people would like to apply for the position and be much more appreciative with the opportunity.

bad dad joke

I was home from work and missed my lunch with my daughter,

Me: “Did you enjoy your lunch today?”

My 14 yr old daughter – Regine: “Yeah, I had rice with ginger chicken”

Me: “So, your chicken had red hair huh?”

Regine: squints at me “Bad dad joke…”

She turned 14 today.

shitty neighbors

The world is full of shitty people. People who hide behind the facade of propriety but when an opportunity opens up, they will not hesitate to rip you off or rob you in the broad daylight. Just look at those Americans borrowing George Floyd’s name to loot and pillage stores and destroy public properties. Fucking parasites.

And it’s not only the Americans, there are many similar people who are like that living around us too close for comfort. They’re like the localized species of vultures. Recently, during my kitchen renovation, a lot of my shitty neighbors came to complain and tried to seek for compensation for their chronic age old apartment problems.

The one below me claimed that his ceiling was flaking off and leaking. Another claimed that the renovation debris was damaging her corridor, which was 2 floors & 2 units away. One claimed of dust, and the workers spitting at the staircase (when they’ve not even been there). The most ridiculous one was – the claim that my kitchen renovation damaged the paint at his balcony – which was like saying, your dead unknown relative is transmitting the COVID-19 virus to you via the phone from afterlife in another universe.

And people ask me why am I so antisocial…

asterisk

We had to go somewhere in the morning but my daughter Regine was still sleeping. My wife tasked me to wake her because I was the only one who could do it without getting hissed at.

*attempt to wake her by shaking her shoulders for about half a minute…

Me: “Wake up.”
Regine: *stretches* *opens her eyes*
Me: “If we have a cat, I’m going to make it sit on your face to wake you up”
Regine: “Ughhh that’s horrible”
Me: “You know cats don’t wipe or wash after they poo, right?”
Regine: “Yeah I know”
Me: “So the first thing you’d see when you open your eyes is an asterisk”
Regine: *Puzzled* “What?”

I showed her a picture on my phone of course, much to her consternation…

Social distancing

While we’re getting used to the new norm of social distancing, there’s something I would like to get off my chest.

Social distancing… I get it. Or at least think I get it. I get why we need to be at least a couple of meters away from strangers. I get why personal hygiene is important.

But what I don’t get, is for eateries to impose the ruling of 2 pax only per table. You’ve seen the pictures around. Tables with X’s marked on them to prevent people from sitting next to each other (example below). Some even with a plastic partition. I think that’s preposterous.

Can’t sit at the ‘X’

You see, usually patrons go dining in groups, of friends or family. Most likely commute in the same car, if not from a family living at the same address. At the very least, they’d be friends walking in together to dine in at a premise. If there’s virus to spread, it would have spread already. In the car, at the house, or when they’re walking in close proximity together. It won’t just happen at the table. So, why require them to social distance themselves at the table when they have already exposed to each other (not in a kinky way)?

Unless you’re sitting with strangers (which is not common in Malaysia – except some shitty dimsum outlets in Ipoh), limiting to 2 patrons per table doesn’t do jack shit. Won’t make it any safer. In fact, it actually makes the spread worse. A family of 4 with virus, now would spread to 2 tables (if the limit is 2 pax per table) instead of 1 – the restaurant owner will now have an additional contaminated table to clean up. See my point?

What the people should do instead, is to social distance the tables. You put buffer distance for tables. At least 2 – 3 meters away, one table to another. You keep the groups apart. But what I see now, is people sit apart from each other at the table, only to be back together after paying the bill… What is the frigging point then?

guard

So I have been ordering deliveries for weeks now, then suddenly the other day, the Dominos guy gave me a call. The guard wouldn’t let him into the apartment compound, he said. So I had to go down to the guardhouse to collect my pizza. The guard beamed me a wide smile. I asked him –

“Has there been a policy change by the management? Food deliveries are not allowed now?”
“Yeah, because of the corona”
“You’ve been allowing them in for weeks, why only change now?”
“Some residents complained”
“Complained, about food deliveries? What about postmen and parcel deliveries? I just saw one going in”
“Only food deliveries, postmen and parcels are allowed”
“So, the virus will only be carried by food delivery guys, but not the postmen and parcel delivery guys?”
“…”

The security guard at my apartment complex is paralyzed from the neck up.

VCRs

Was chatting with some friends online, and we reminisced the days when we had to surreptitiously watch porn on VCRs.

If you do not know what’s a VCR – it stands for ‘Video Cassette Recorder’. Basically, an archaic video player that uses magnetic tape (called VHS tapes) as the media. It works by pulling a roll of magnetic tape (inside a cassette) containing the video over a rolling ‘head’ to read/transmit signal to your TV.

One has to know that this VCR, operates mechanically. It requires some ‘work’ before you can play or stop a video. For example, you need to re-wind the tape inside the cassette to the beginning of the video, before you insert it to the VCR, press the play button and wait for head to engage before you could see anything on the TV.

Similarly, to stop a video, you need to press stop and wait for the spinning head to disengage and the magnetic tape to retract back to its position before it can be ejected (it takes about 3 – 4 seconds). That’s because the VCR uses a set of pins to pull out the magnetic tape to come in contact with the spinning head.

Now you can imagine the risk it poses when you’re watching porn with your cousins/friends on a VCR. More often than not, a parent gets into the room, boy panics, press the stop button and eject the cassette before the retraction completes, you’ll get tapes disemboweled from the cassette – tapes still inside the VCR, and the cassette is out of the VCR. That’s when the panic dials up a few notches higher. Most people would get caught at this point.

This problem has since been eliminated with the advent of technology. You can stream porn anywhere. But I have to admit, you don’t get the same rush anymore without all the risks.

Movement Control Order cat story

When the Movement control order (MCO) from the government came in effect to control the spread of the virus, I was 2 days into my kitchen remodelling work. The contractor had just done the hacking job, and was into plastering the walls. There was a big mound of sand in the middle of the kitchen when they had to stop work. So, I was left without a kitchen throughout the MCO duration. There was a plastic barrier to seal the kitchen off from the living room, and the entry to the kitchen had to be made from the makeshift backdoor and it was locked with an outer metal grille door.

About a week into the MCO, I smelled something rotten from the kitchen. Upon investigation, it was determined that the odor came from the mound of sand. I checked the sand out, couldn’t find any dead carcass or anything. I thought some organic matter from within the sand could have decomposed there so, I moved half the sand in a wheelbarrow out of the apartment. The remaining (too much to fill into 1 wheelbarrow), I covered up with a big piece of cloth. Problem solved… only for a couple of days.

division ‘unwanted bastard child’ 2

When I was doing my engineering many years ago, there was this story about a company, Company U, which every engineering student dreamed of getting into. It had an awesome starting pay, big office desk and prospect as bright as the sun. If you get the job, you’re set for life. The lecturer told us – to get into Company U, you’d need to get a distinction in Subject X, which approximately 70% of the engineering students would fail – and after which, only Company U hiring managers would deign to look at your resume.

I was like, nope, I don’t think I am that smart. Good shit never happens to me so, I didn’t give a shit. I didn’t fail Subject X, but I merely passed. So, I wasn’t even qualified for an interview.

Anyway, that was quickly forgotten. A decade or so later, Company U was bought over by this bigger asshole company called Company T (hey! that’s where I work!). It has been a while since they were bought over, and fate has it that my department got mapped under this ex-Company U organisation, and we get to move to the very building which many engineering students thought they’re going to ‘set for life’. But when I visited the place for the first time, the first thing that came to my mind was : people actually wanted to work in this place back then?? What the actual fuck??

As it turns out, the place is a shithole. The cafe was much shittier. The lab was inadequate, and the building layout was like a maze. And the worst thing is, the people there are conceited as fuck. Probably still think they’re in Company U. As I trod along the lab with my lab coat flowing behind me, I can’t help but imagine how low they must have gone to have me – the bastard child – in the same lab as them, as they stare at me with their judgmental eyes. Fuck them all.