Thursday, December 28, 2006

Singapore Offline

Most of us probably didn't know that a earthquake that registered 7.6 on the Richter scale struck Taiwan on Tuesday 1.47am. We probably wouldn't care until we notice that nothing that requires internet access seems to work anymore. So in the morning, as a unsuspecting Singapore wakes up to the new reality, shrieks of horror and confusion echoed through the island when the dread PAGE NOT FOUND errors flooded every monitor screen on the island.

6 of the big fat pipes used by our Internet Service Providers were not operational. The earthquake didn't just shake and destroyed southern Taiwan. It went about breaking the optical fibers in several places laid around the sea near Taiwan. Apparently, nobody noticed this right after the earthquake because we were busy snoring away. Then came office working hours. At 8am, the Internet feels sluggish. By 9am, it was so bad that international Internet access gave up the ghost and responded with timeouts instead of our cherished World Wide Web. The demand for bandwidth caused the remaining surviving optical cables to buck under the heavy load.

Then the great Singapore Offline begins. Everything powered by the Internet twisted got out of shape, gave a long whine and finally drop dead altogether. Our reliance on the Internet was apparent in moments. Even the most resilient email timed out and got lost in cyberspace.

"Foong ! My MSN and yahoo doesn't work...how come ah ?"
"Reuters cannot update ..."
"Is Internet down ? When will it be up ?"
"Why no email ? Cannot be that I don't get emails leh"

IP phones dropped dead. Emails got lost in time outs. WWW yielded "PAGE NOT FOUND". Pushmail devices fell quiet. Traders couldn't submit their bids nor check the market status. MMORPGs players couldn't kill anything online. Youtubers couldn't get their fix. And the list went on. The digital silence was maddening.

The consolation prize is that locally hosted sites were still available. Unfortunately, our Singaporean content on the Internet is a measly tiny but compared Singapore and Japan.
Oh well, just cross your fingers that this doesn't happen too often.

Monday, December 11, 2006

The growing up, and the growing old

The growing up, and the growing old

The inevitable change in my family is here, and will be here for good. I feel that I can no longer trust my parents' ability to make decisions for our family or even themselves. As the years makes its relentless toll on all of us, I started to lost faith in their judgment, decision and problem solving skills.

  • Insufficient information input from sound channels
    Lousy friends, hearsay, market aunties and uncles, misinformation, misleading/misunderstanding reports from media -> Bad information sources. Their sources are frequently as good as they are. The /ignore + /kickban type. Cannot withstand further scrutiny.
  • Poor logic flow, faulty reasoning
    If you draw a flow chat, things don't connect, breakage everywhere, infinite loops and all hell break loose. Being trained as a programmer, it's easy for me to see deadends and loops.
  • Inconsistency
    Double/Triple standards, moving goal posts, changing their facts and statements to fit the situation.
  • Reliance on guts feeling instead cold hard facts
    To me, it's as good as random generator. Will you choose a monkey to drive a school bus packed with overgrown gorillas ?

  • Refusing to believe that they can be wrong
    Finding it hard to admit mistakes, intolerant to the fact that the kids are pointing out their flaws
  • Leaving things to fate
    Certainly not my style. Being passive will rather you a punch bag, a magnetic dart board and most importantly, nobody will respect you and just have their way with you
  • Meek, fear of authority, afraid of trouble
    Their lack of education leads them here. Their lack of proficiency in the English language makes everything impossible to understand for them. So fear the government ! The pen is mightier than the sword ! The English text all over the place is so scary ! I don't blame them. It is just as scary as my visits to Malaysia when there are no English or Chinese words around.
  • Afraid of external negative impressions for their own failures
    Children telling the parents what to do is bad. Worse still if people get wind of this. Why can't they be proud of it instead? I will be a very impressed and proud father when my kid offers me a good explanation and suggestions.

So I tried 3 approaches

  1. Try explaining
    As the years go by, their ear wax seems to have thicken as well. I can spend time standing there explaining how to do things in the proper manner. But the next moment, they screw things up because they aren't listening. Wasted my time.
  2. Try giving simple instructions
    They refused to listen, do things their own way and screw things up. When seeking an explanation for their failure, it goes back to approach 1.
  3. Screw it. Let them perish on their own
    Being in the same family, their failures will also affect us. Maybe it's time to take the hard way out. Which brings us to point 3a and 3b ...
    3a) Seize control of the family
    Nothing to gain, not interested, waste of time
    3b) Start my own family, ignore the current family
    Actually, I am interested in this one. Interested parties please email me.

Nothing vex me more on their brutal refusal of the reality quicksand they are standing on. Most frequently heard crap ...

  • I am your [mother/father] and I know what's right (They don't)
  • I know what to do (and actually they are clueless)
  • Don't tell me what to do (and continue to screw up)
  • If we can raise you up, there will be no problem this time (I am actually amazed that despite their apparent missteps throughout my life, I am still here, alive and kicking)
  • Start raising voices, then claim that you are rude to them (Desperate face saving move)
  • Try to divert to another topic, refuse to come back to the point even if it's totally off track (Smoke bomb tactic)
  • Why change, this works before ... (The world moves on without you then)

Their ego and image as the perfect parent is so important, so much more than doing things right, and it ends up making themselves into fools.

So I told my sisters some years back that...
"Our parents are not making sense as we are growing older"

A couple of months ago...
"I think our parents stops making sense already"

And yesterday night, I told them that...
"You can safely ignore them will I say so"

They can get hyper worried over situations, which I took minutes to resolve and settle. I really find it hard to understand why they have to procrastinate so much even when I offer them the solution and my help.

Like it or not, the tide will change as reality sets in.

Money = Power

As the breadwinners, the children will eventually gets the last say in the important decisions in the family. Nothing works without money nowadays.

Despite all the parents bashing above, I still love them. I don't need much from them, just cooperation is all I ask for. I will try to respect them but regaining the lost respect is really hard. Hopefully they don't screw up something major and give us (the children) long term problems.