Giving Up

pearlie

Don't be a Small Breath Ghost 小氣鬼

The Chinese language is truly a very pictorial language.

The word of the day for me is 小氣, siu2hei3 in Cantonese and xiao3qi4 in Mandarin.

Literally 小 means small and 氣 means gas, air, breath or anger. And 小氣 means narrow-minded. 

Sigh...it's just someone being very 小氣 today which was so frustrating. 

It makes me wonder why people do not look at the bigger picture but fret over the smallest of things.

pearlie

TNG eWallet went berserk today

I wanted to buy some stuff from Watson's during lunch today but I didn't bring much money with me and so I thought I'd use my TNG eWallet.

However I only had about RM70 in it and so I had to top it up. But it tells me that connection is bad and it kept asking me to retry. I have no idea how many times I did that, and before I knew it I had RM670 in my eWallet!

I hope it stops there and I don't wake up tommorow morning with the connections improved to have RM4000 in it. 

On top of that, 5 minutes after paying for my purchases and leaving Watson's with the stuff I bought, the payment was cancelled and I got the RM110 back. What?

I walked back to Watson's in the evening to report the matter but the problem is not solved. 

Nothing like that will ever happen with cash and credit cards. 

I could not talk to anyone from TNG and the email I sent is still sitting there without any replies. This is not a good thing. For a financial service provider, they cannot remove the human side of service, like we can still call in and talk to a banker because money is involved here. 

pearlie

After so many years of iPhones, this is a very frustrating phone to use

Some of you would know that I have always been an Apple person since I owned the iPhone 3G in 2009; followed by the 4 (2011), 4S (2012), 5S (2013) and 6S (2016). 

I even became the go-to-person among my friends when they need help on Apple and iOS stuff. I don't know why but I suppose I always make myself available to help them and I'd always try to figure things out for them. 

It all changed when I started to use the Razer Phone 2 and Android in 2019, when I run into so many problems I can't solve.

Maybe it's more the phone than Android. 

Android is alright. I find it hard to compare between iOS and Android because one is simpler and more intuitive while the other is more accessible and practical. I don't mind using one or the other now that I have used both. 

The problem I think is my phone. 

I keep having problems with it. My latest problem is that I have now lost access to my Internal Storage if I use the native Files app. I can no longer move my files to my Internal Storage because I can't get to it.

I wrote to Razer for help and I just got a reply to factory reset my phone. I don't know. I don't want to do that afraid that I will lose my stuff. I have never needed to factory reset any of my iPhones before. 

So now to move my files around, and particularly my photos, I am using three, yes three, apps. Google Go as a gallery app (yup, believe it or not, the Razer Phone 2 does NOT have a native gallery app to view photos), File Manager by Xiaomi to move my files and photos around and Files by Google to easily view where all the files are. 

That's too many and I'm bound to ditch one. So far File Manager by Xiaomi looks good except that all the icons and thumbnails are so small. I am sure the designers of the app are all in their 20s who do not realise some of their users would need a magnifying glass to use their app.

Let me go buy one now...

pearlie

Update: ah, I found the solution! I fixed it and in a way where the Razer people should know since it's their product! And not ask me to unnecessary factory reset my phone!!! 

How to get rid of crickets?

Some crickets have somehow gotten into our bedroom and it's wrecking havoc. They are so loud, it's hard to just ignore. 

And the irony is I've instinctively treated it as white noise...until my husband mentioned it. 

We tried hunting them out but the sound is so loud it's reverberated throughout the entire room. 

Any idea how to get rid of them?

Maybe the best way is get in a few female crickets...

pearlie

You sure it's Coke Zero?

My three favorite caffeine fix: coffee, tea and Coke, Zero to be precise, since I'm cutting down on sugar.

Whenever we are at our favorite place with free flow of drinks, my son will go fill up our paper cups and I'd always ask, you sure this is Coke Zero? 

And he'd just give me that look. 

But when I didn't ask him that question today was when it mattered. 

He drank it and said, "This is not Coke Zero." 

Apparently, it was switched between the two and I drank half a cup of sugar-filled drink. 

pearlie

Carless for 5 days

I just sent my car to the workshop this morning and I will be without one for 5 or 6 days. 

I got into an accident a few days ago. 

The thing is whenever I keep seeing car accidents on the road, I will eventually get into one. 

I know it's a form of confirmation bias that I'm experiencing but I have seen many car accidents recently happening right before my eyes. 

And before I know it, this car bumped into my mine. 

It will be a very inconvenient 5 days ahead. It already took me one whole hour to get to work this morning using the train. And I will not be as mobile as I would like to be. 

Not complaining. I am also taking the opportunity to have my whole car touched up and I'm going to enjoy the train rides. 

pearlie

I blank out on words far too often these days

My memory is getting from bad to worse. I don't think I had that much of a problem in expressing myself before but now words that I need get stuck at the tip of my tongue.

I wanted to tell a friend that the swipe keyboard feature is native to the Android phones but I went blank on the word "native".

I was saying a prayer this morning in church while I was worship leading and I said, "we offer to You God our whole selves, no exceptions," but I got stuck. I wanted to say "no exceptions" but I blanked out.  People may have thought that I paused for dramatic effect but in reality, I was frantically searching for that phrase in my head but it was nowhere to be found. 

What do you do when this happens?

Since I'm in the middle of a public prayer, I had no choice but to say something that means the same, even though it's not at all the same. 

It's frustrating. 

pearlie 

My iPhone is bricked

 

My iPhone 5 is stuck at the Apple logo forever. I've set it to the DFU mode to get it restored but I get an error message saying, "The iPhone software update server could not be contacted. You do not have permission to access the requested resource."

That's it. I have a brick in my hand. 

pearlie

p/s 24 July 2016: I finally got it fixed. I tried using my home PC to get it restored. It did not read the phone at first but when it did, the restoration was completed without any error messages.

A Thousand Words #186

 

pearlie

How I got my airbag changed in half a day

Honda has announced the recall of cars with relation to the faulty airbag some time last year and I had immediately checked to see if my car was affected.

It was.

But when I called my regular Honda workshop to get it changed, they kept telling me that I need to wait for the letter from Honda.

I just got the letter last week on Thursday.

A death was reported this week on Monday of a woman who got involved in a small collision. The airbag was deployed and she was killed from material protruding from the steering wheel.

I went on the alert and felt I need to get the airbag in my steering wheel changed immediately. I called the same Honda workshop. The earliest date that they can set an appointment for me was August 18! This means I will be at risk for one and a half months. I know I have driven my car for seven years without any incidents, but because of the reported death, I am getting paranoid.

I quickly called another workshop and thankfully they welcomed walk-ins. I went there immediately, waited two and a half hours to get registered, and another hour for the airbag to be changed.

But I got it done in a half a day. At least now I can drive around without a nagging feeling that I might get into an accident and die.

pearlie

I think I have misophonia

I realize I cannot stand repetitive sounds. They drive me up the wall. I woke up this morning to exactly that and it irritated me so much but I couldn't get it to stop. I did not even know what sound it was. It sounded like a drill or a bird but with its steady incessant steady beat, I'm not sure. 

I checked it out online and found that I may have this condition called misophonia. "People with the disorder are not bothered by the loudness of sound — rather, the softer, repetitive, common sounds are the ones that drive them up the wall."¹

I found that this is such a common problem that there is a website all about it: www.misophonia.com. There is a self-test available with the different levels of the condition and I think I'm between a level 4 and 5 - not very serious but bad enough for me. 

I am ok with white noise or people talking all around me, like when I'm in a Chinese restaurant which by the way is one of the noisiest places in the ordinary world. But I really get irritated with repetitive sounds that keep to an incessant beat. Argghh!!!

pearlie

1 Misophonia: When Annoying Noises Send You Into A Rage, Huffington Post

My addiction

 

I don't drink much coffee anymore. But I have picked up another addiction - Coca Cola. And if I drink any in the night, like I just did, I would be wide awake the whole night, like I am right now. 

I must stop this. 

pearlie

One TV series that should not have been discontinued

I have watched all three seasons of Lie to Me before and loved it. I am watching Season 2 again in iFlix and since I can't remember much of it, I am having a good time. I still do not know why the series was discontinued just after three seasons. It should have been continued for many more. The episodes all have good storylines and the characters were so memorable, Lightman, Foster, Loker, Torres and Reynolds. And if you check its ratings in IMDB, it carries an average rating of 8.0. So why on earth did they stopped the series? Tell me why?

pearlie 

A Prayer for the Unkind

We all get an onslaught of unkind treatment from nasty people, especially from strangers, from people we don't know safely tucked behind the walls of a car, the anonymity of the Internet. 

For me, it usually happens on the road. I would get honked at and usually when someone honks at you in Kuala Lumpur, it is almost akin to a blare of profanity directed at you. I usually do not know what to do with them. I would normally flare out in anger at the discourtesy and indecency. I'd have a conversation with God because he's the best person for me to go to whenever I'm angry. I know I must not allow them to spoil my day. It is a small thing after all but it does feel so big. 

God would temper me and I would end up having to pray for them and my prayer would be something like this. But I must say that this prayer looks tame because I am guilty of some imprecatory lines thrown in sometimes!

Father,

You remain forever with the faithful

Help us live in your presence

Help us be a river of joy

And a stream of peace

To people around us

Especially to those who are unkind

Those who malign others

May your holy presence be near them

That they will sense your goodness

And be drawn to you 

May they be changed

To be gracious and benevolent 

May they be drawn to you

And receive your gift of love and forgiveness

Amen

pearlie

My dependence on the cloud

I got news today that my 30G of free space in OneDrive will be discontinued and that it will be reverting to its basic 5G. 

I keep a lot of my stuff in OneDrive because of the large free space it offers and so that I will be able to get access to it wherever I am and whenever I need to. And now with the loss of that space, I will have to look for other options. 

I was reviewing all the cloud accounts I have and realize I do have a Box account that I have not really used. I have 50G of free space in there. There were some limitations which was why I have not used it much before. Looks like I have to transfer my stuff over before they reduce my space in OneDrive. 

But I might have to think about other alternatives what if Box also decides to do the same. 

pearlie

Traffic was literally at a standstill today

It was an unbelievable day. It took me 2 hours to get to work this morning when it ordinarily takes me just 45 minutes and that with the usual morning congestion. And on my way back from the hospital after visiting someone there, it took me 1½ hours to get home when it would just take half an hour. 

The commute back was longer than usual because there were road works in the route I took. But the morning traffic was unusual. 

The Star Online carried the news: Unusually bad traffic jam Tuesday morning. It said that, "The main cause of the congestion could not be determined." I however think it is because of the weather. It was raining, though not heavily but as the usual traffic slows down, it affected the entire system.

I remember reading in The Economist some years ago that any delays in traffic would cause further delays time four, if I am not wrong. For example, if a car was stalled at the middle of the road for 10 minutes would cause a traffic jam that will last for 40 minutes. I could not find the article now and so I could not confirm it as fact.

But I found this article which may just explain the unusual traffic congestion this morning: Traffic jam mystery solved by mathematicians. 

It says that, "Mathematicians from the University of Exeter have solved the mystery of traffic jams by developing a model to show how major delays occur on our roads, with no apparent cause...Their model revealed that slowing down below a critical speed when reacting to such an event, a driver would force the car behind to slow down further and the next car back to reduce its speed further still. The result of this is that several miles back, cars would finally grind to a halt, with drivers oblivious to the reason for their delay. The model predicts that this is a very typical scenario on a busy highway (above 15 vehicles per km). The jam moves backwards through the traffic creating a so-called ‘backward travelling wave’, which drivers may encounter many miles upstream, several minutes after it was triggered...When you tap your brake, the traffic may come to a full stand-still several miles behind you. It really matters how hard you brake - a slight braking from a driver who has identified a problem early will allow the traffic flow to remain smooth. Heavier braking, usually caused by a driver reacting late to a problem, can affect traffic flow for many miles."

I believe this was what exactly happened this morning because of the rainy weather. 

pearlie

Have you heard of this - betterment charges?

I was in a car accident end of last week. Not huge but the repair is going to cost some.  I have been busy making a police report and I spent the first half of today getting all the documents ready. 

In the midst of finding out what needs to be done, I found out about this thing called betterment charges. When the workshop owner mentioned it, I had to ask him to repeat the word a few times and I was not even sure I got it right. And I couldn't understand what he was trying to tell me.

I googled the word "betterment" hoping I heard him right and that was when I found out about it. 

It's a charge that insurers imposed on car repairs as a result of accidents when your car is more than 5 years old. It means that since you have had your car for so long, any work done on it will give you a better car and so you will have to pay for the "betterment" of it. Even if when you are claiming against the other party's insurance, you have to pay 20% of the costs of repair yourself.  

Like this one blogger said it, this is all bologne! And I agree. I did not purposely to get into an accident. It's an accident! And when someone else's car hit onto mine, it has to be fixed,  betterment or not. That is exactly why I bought insurance in the first place. 

This is ridiculous. 

pearlie

Buying ebooks

Buying ebooks in kobobooks.com is not fun anymore. There were many promo codes that I could use to get good discounts, but not anymore. And as a result, ebooks are expensive, what more with the weakened Ringgit.

However, in helping a friend find a book he needed, I just found out that Amazon have extended the sale of ebooks to other countries including mine. And the beauty is even though there are no promo codes available, the prices are generally very reasonable.

And since I have yet to complete my collection of the Preaching the Word Commentary Series, I checked up on it. But to my shock, the prices has really gone up, both in Amazon and kobobooks.com. Sigh...now I wish I had bought them all back then when I had unlimited-usage promo codes. I can't afford them now at more than USD30 per copy, in ebook format no less.

I bought the copy on Exodus for just USD6. It's now selling at USD33! Are you kidding me? An increase of 450%? This is too much.

pearlie

Total waste of time

I'm getting good at this - doing absolutely nothing over the weekend, and by the time I realised it, it is too late.

I need to be more mindful in the future.

pearlie