Hello, I blog!
I share all my sporadic and toilet thoughts in here, because I am random like that.
Hello, I am not a ‘Sir’
I’ve been really fickle about my hair. Some days, I just wish it’d grow faster. And on other days, I just can’t wait to get it all chopped off.
My last haircut was about a month ago – where I decided to retained my short (extremely layered), slightly tomboyish crop. It’s grown out quite a fair bit now and once again, I’m undecided.
Mum and I was at Parkway Parade this evening. While strolling along, I was eyeing my reflection in the glass door next to me – particularly my hair.
“Hmm, should I cut my hair again?” I wondered aloud.
Mum just stared at me – I knew very well how she felt about me having short hair in general, so I didn’t really need an answer.
We walked on.
And when we walked past the food counter at Yoshinoya (a Japanese rice set fast-food joint), one of the guys behind the counter – in a fit of over-enthusiasm (because the joint was empty at that moment), decided to yell out.
“Hello maam! Hello sir!”
I looked around. There was no one else in the vicinity except for my mum and me.
“Sir?! What the fuck?!” was my outburst, directed at no one in particular.
The fellow behind the counter at least had the grace to look sheepish. Mum on the other hand, couldn’t stop laughing for quite a while.
As for the answer to the question, “should I cut my hair shorter?” Well, it’s quite obvious that I’ve gotten my answer. No.
How to stop a kid from crying
Just imagine you’re in a public place. Doesn’t matter if the place is quiet or noisy to begin with. Nearby, you spot a couple with a really young child no more than three years old. For some reason or another, the kid suddenly starts bawling at the top of his/her little lungs while the parents struggle to control the kid (but in vain).
Grarrr, when will the kid just shut the fuck up already? Most of us would think.
Well, one of my best friends has this theory of how to get kids to quieten down. Kids often yell, scream and cry for attention. Positive attention, she says. They want to be mollycoddled by the parents, and basically have the parents fall to their knees coaxing the life out of them just to get them to stop crying.
And when the parents actually give in, they are reinforcing the behaviour. In future, the kids will resort to making one hell of a noise to get what they want because … well, it worked before, didn’t it?
So, she says, what if we gave them attention that is contrary to what they want instead?
She continues. The next time you see a kid crying, look in their generation, point and laugh. She assured me that so far, this has had a 100% success rate for her.
This evening, I decided to put her theory to the test.
While queuing at a restaurant, this kiddo standing nearby suddenly began bawling loudly. The mayhem lasted for a good two minutes and showed no signs of slowing down. The younger cousin and I were trying our darnedest best to hold a decent conversation but it was hard when every sentence was punctuated with an even louder wail.
In a mixture of exasperation and bemusement, I decided to share my friend’s theory to the younger cousin.
“So you see, my friend has this theory. Next time, when you see some kid crying somewhere and the parents can’t seem to calm them down, you should just start laughing at the kid.”
That was when I did a live demonstration – on that kid.
Imagine me looking straight into the kiddo’s eyes and laughing. Not a loud, MUAHAHA kind of laugh – but a slightly muted version of that. Well, I was trying this for the first time, so I wasn’t quite sure about err … how the parents will take to it.
And damn, it worked.
The kid clammed up instantly and looked straight at me. Big wide, innocent eyes. As if wondering “waiiiiiiii is this girl laughing at me?”
And it was back to blissful silence.
Awesome. My friend is such a genius.
Caveat: I doubt the parents were very pleased, though – because the kid’s dad was constantly shooting me disapproving looks after that. In response, I returned him a look that was meant to say well, it seems like I can control your kid better than you. (;
How to use a computer 101
Teaching a novice about the intricacies of computers can be perplexing. What is one of the easiest tasks to you (or even something you do on a regular basis) can be an uphill struggle for someone else. And what’s frustrating is how to properly articulate how things work and what you should do to someone who barely doesn’t have the faintest of knowledge about how to use a computer.
Not to mention how I have the patience of about ten raging buffaloes.
Here are some snippets of the conversation.
On missing email:
“Eh, why this person keeps sending me the email I asked for but I cannot receive ah? Something is wrong, I need to buy a new computer, you know?”
“Maybe it went into your spam,” says I.
“What is a ‘spam’? How do I see whether the email went into my spam?”
“You see that link called ‘spam’ on the left hand side when you check your inbox? Click it.”
“Oooh.”
Silence for a few seconds.
“How come it’s like that, ah? I think I need to get a new computer already.”
“It’s nothing to do with the computer. That’s how email works.”
(Note: She is using web-based Gmail, by the way. And guess who signed up for the account for her. -.-)
Well, one thing for sure – she doesn’t need to know about how I muttered “it’s something to do with the user” under my breath, well out of her auditory range.
On thumbdrives:
“Eh, Brenda ah. Tonight, I need you to help me install my thumbdrive, okay?”
“You don’t need to install a thumbdrive. Just plug it in and you can use it already,” says I.
“Oooh.”
Silence again, for a few seconds.
“Then how do I know how to plug in the thumb drive ah? Where do I plug it in?”
“Have you done a jigsaw puzzle before?” I asked.
“Yah?”
“It’s the same thing. Just try plugging the thumbdrive into all the holes. If it doesn’t fit, then it doesn’t fit. And if it does, you’ve got the correct one.”
I don’t believe in spoon-feeding. Best is to let the person learn through trial and error, I always say. And I have too little patience to be her teacher, or a teacher to anyone, for that matter.
Find Me
