More Electronic Woes & Youthful Hazing
21st November 2008, Friday
The wretched chain of my gadgets committing premature suicide continued for this week...
On Wednesday, Mom returned home to realize the apartment in an electrical shutdown...She bemoaned that the authority hadn't sent us a letter to notify the shutdown.
Not taking much into account, I went to my room and started hearing this persistent ticking sound which sounds like an analog watch.
I traced it to my SCV set-up box which did not have the power indicator despite connected to the electrical point.
I deduced that the blackout in the afternoon could be caused by the set-up box, not after piquing once again, regrettably subjecting my folks to my tantrum...
The whole accumulation of the long series of faulty gadgets were driving me insane...
Fortunately Starhub got someone down to replace the setup box the next day...Kudos to them, my cable TV-less day is only one day long...
Last evening while the missus is having a late shower after we had returned from helping La Tendo packing up for the major event tomorrow; the water heating unit went dead.
Bewildered by how come a usually-sound electrical appliance would go dead (the missus was saying it could be blown fuse), I went to try the switch and managed to get it to work again.
The switch had been flimsy since day one and I wasn't surprise it will lead to the failure of the water heater eventually.
I feared for life that the heavily cluster of appliances in my room would be killing that few points available...let's hope not.
There was a furore for the past week with regards to a student in a renowned Junior College who was thoroughly humiliated during her birthday celebration in the school compound, and the authorities didn't do much to halt her classmates for the distasteful act.
It then drew a debate on whether hazing (the term coined for students engaging in mass taunting or humiliating act on a specific individual with or without the victim's consent) should be allowed in schools.
Of coursse the victim's safety was at upmost concern but the psychological aspect was also taken into account.
I had my own accounts of "hazing" in my youth and surely it was for fun with your friends...a certain ritual of cohesion and acknowledgement by your peers which was so crucial when we were young.
It was by no means bullying here but with the availability of mobile phone with video camera function and live streaming site, such incidents which had happened since the stone age days were blown out of proportion...
During National service, a sort of initiation in my obese (and yes heavyweight troopers here) company was to be at the end of a group piling activity or now termed as "taupok".
It was truly dangerous especially you have 6-7 recruits weighing an average of 180 pounds doing a Janga blocks on you...even those in the middle would be at the brunt of breathlessness
Fortunately no one got hurt through the male bonding...
Such bonding carried on to my naval days when a closely-knitted bunch of seamen on board a ship would always vent their everyday mental stress by doing all sorts of cruelty act on each other...some are so provocative, I couldn't even say it here...You just gotta join the navy to experience it...then again better not.
I didn't actually loathed such hazing as long as everyone had their fair share of being the victim...then again I tend to not struggle much as shown when I got into University and the guys from the club decided to come out with the "birthday sabotage" activities.
It began with Bernard who was nicknamed "The Birthday Bear" on a night we all stayed over and decided to strip him down to his undies in the middle of a lecture hall foyer...luckily we were the only one there...
Since then on everyone became a prospect of hazing, most of the time with stripping which I thought got the girls more excited than us guys back then.
During a leadership camp we finally caught a slimy fish in our vice president Kenneth who was a commando and always manage to break off our grasps but that day we had like 15 guys after his blood.
On the other side of the spectrum, there was me who willingly take off my pants to let them do whatever they desire with the shaving cream they had on hand, because I grew weary of struggling and somehow by reverse psychology, killed the mood for everyone.
Such hazing was surely a benchmark of our youth and as long as we do not jeapordize our safety and lives, I felt there shouldn't be much hoo-haa about the whole shenanigans.
The missus is spending another weekend at Kuala Lumpur but I would be very much preoccupied with the Anime Festival Asia, with everyone starting to get hype of the inaugural edition of this event which we hope would be a resounding success and a long tradition in the local otaku scene. More on that soon...
The wretched chain of my gadgets committing premature suicide continued for this week...
On Wednesday, Mom returned home to realize the apartment in an electrical shutdown...She bemoaned that the authority hadn't sent us a letter to notify the shutdown.
Not taking much into account, I went to my room and started hearing this persistent ticking sound which sounds like an analog watch.
I traced it to my SCV set-up box which did not have the power indicator despite connected to the electrical point.
I deduced that the blackout in the afternoon could be caused by the set-up box, not after piquing once again, regrettably subjecting my folks to my tantrum...
The whole accumulation of the long series of faulty gadgets were driving me insane...
Fortunately Starhub got someone down to replace the setup box the next day...Kudos to them, my cable TV-less day is only one day long...
Last evening while the missus is having a late shower after we had returned from helping La Tendo packing up for the major event tomorrow; the water heating unit went dead.
Bewildered by how come a usually-sound electrical appliance would go dead (the missus was saying it could be blown fuse), I went to try the switch and managed to get it to work again.
The switch had been flimsy since day one and I wasn't surprise it will lead to the failure of the water heater eventually.
I feared for life that the heavily cluster of appliances in my room would be killing that few points available...let's hope not.
There was a furore for the past week with regards to a student in a renowned Junior College who was thoroughly humiliated during her birthday celebration in the school compound, and the authorities didn't do much to halt her classmates for the distasteful act.
It then drew a debate on whether hazing (the term coined for students engaging in mass taunting or humiliating act on a specific individual with or without the victim's consent) should be allowed in schools.
Of coursse the victim's safety was at upmost concern but the psychological aspect was also taken into account.
I had my own accounts of "hazing" in my youth and surely it was for fun with your friends...a certain ritual of cohesion and acknowledgement by your peers which was so crucial when we were young.
It was by no means bullying here but with the availability of mobile phone with video camera function and live streaming site, such incidents which had happened since the stone age days were blown out of proportion...
During National service, a sort of initiation in my obese (and yes heavyweight troopers here) company was to be at the end of a group piling activity or now termed as "taupok".
It was truly dangerous especially you have 6-7 recruits weighing an average of 180 pounds doing a Janga blocks on you...even those in the middle would be at the brunt of breathlessness
Fortunately no one got hurt through the male bonding...
Such bonding carried on to my naval days when a closely-knitted bunch of seamen on board a ship would always vent their everyday mental stress by doing all sorts of cruelty act on each other...some are so provocative, I couldn't even say it here...You just gotta join the navy to experience it...then again better not.
I didn't actually loathed such hazing as long as everyone had their fair share of being the victim...then again I tend to not struggle much as shown when I got into University and the guys from the club decided to come out with the "birthday sabotage" activities.
It began with Bernard who was nicknamed "The Birthday Bear" on a night we all stayed over and decided to strip him down to his undies in the middle of a lecture hall foyer...luckily we were the only one there...
Since then on everyone became a prospect of hazing, most of the time with stripping which I thought got the girls more excited than us guys back then.
During a leadership camp we finally caught a slimy fish in our vice president Kenneth who was a commando and always manage to break off our grasps but that day we had like 15 guys after his blood.
On the other side of the spectrum, there was me who willingly take off my pants to let them do whatever they desire with the shaving cream they had on hand, because I grew weary of struggling and somehow by reverse psychology, killed the mood for everyone.
Such hazing was surely a benchmark of our youth and as long as we do not jeapordize our safety and lives, I felt there shouldn't be much hoo-haa about the whole shenanigans.
The missus is spending another weekend at Kuala Lumpur but I would be very much preoccupied with the Anime Festival Asia, with everyone starting to get hype of the inaugural edition of this event which we hope would be a resounding success and a long tradition in the local otaku scene. More on that soon...
Japanese word of the day: 青年 ~se-i~ne-n~(Youth) With our brittle bones now, it's hard to do those things we did in the past...we used words to haze each other now...which is much more painful
posted by Kei at
4:12 PM
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