Thursday, August 20, 2009

Pointless Post #33

Saw gas at 106.5¢/litre today. Yay! Although, I barely listen to Praise 106.5 anymore.

And in a kept promise to myself, I killed 2 wasps yesterday (see very end).
Fried them with the bug zapper. They should know better than to come indoors.

Also, I'm not a big fan of corn. Corn on the cob, canned corn niblets, frozen corn kernels, and other corny (haha!) items are not foods I'm very fond of. Processed corn is ok I guess, like tortilla chips. However, I have always loved and will always love popcorn. Beautiful.

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What are Pointless Posts?

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Bachelors of Business Admi...NO! Sociology ftw!

For my Bachelors of Business Administration (BBA) at SFU, I have 112 out of 120 credits needed to graduate (why isn't is "undergraduate?!"). Its a little weird to be able to see the end after... erm, so many years. I think I'm quite sentimental in the fact that I reflect a lot on my past experiences. I reflect a lot on all the awesome, silly, and lame things I do (and say). Mostly lame and silly. Ok, mostly lame. So its no surprise that I've been doing a lot of reminiscing about my experiences of almost everything since I've started my undergrad studies at Simon Fraser University.

I remember being told in first year that for some reason, it takes SFU students a little longer to finish a four year degree than most students from other universities. I scoffed (I literally threw my head back and contemptuously laughed... ok maybe not) at that, but nope, for me it's true (technically, because I’m doing co-op it’s now considered a five year degree… right?). I also remember being told in first year that it's common for SFU students to change their faculty of study to get a degree in something other than what they first started in. I think that mostly applies to Arts students (or, general studies, whatever its called). I didn’t scoff at that, but I have daydreamed about that, if that statement was true for me. In the past few years, I have grown deeply interested in the broad topics of anthropology and sociology. I think, if I may humbly say, it’s because I have been blessed with more wisdom in understanding people and also being able to experience immense empathy from my observations. I never would have understood the things I do now, five years ago.

So why anthropology, but more importantly, sociology? Humans are so freaking amazing. It sometimes amazes me at how one person can do something completely sadistic, torturous, sadistic, and evil towards another person. Nothing else on earth can do what a human does. People are completely jacked up. But then I’m reminded of myself, and the things I think of in my head against other people. It turns out I’ve grown increasingly violent the older I get. I daydream beating people up. Sometimes random people.

There is a yappy girl talking loudly on her cell phone who won’t shut up. The bus is full and she is sitting in a row of two seats, leaving the window seat empty beside her as she sits on the aisle seat. Her backpack is in the middle of the aisle on the floor and she does not care less that her high pitched voice is driving me and everyone else nuts or that her bag is blocking the aisle as people try to step over it, as they make their way to the back of the bus as they try and make more room. I walk over to her and push her bag so that it pins her leg into the seat in front of her as I grab her cell phone and wind up tennis-forehand-style as I slam the phone into her face.

I’m late and running through the Sky Train station to make a connection, but I am blocked by a tall guy meandering slowly through the station as he talks to his two buddies. They are still in front of me as we step onto the escalator. They don’t move to the right, but stand in the middle of the escalator blocking the flow of human traffic. They continue to stumble off slowly, blocking the entire path as I see my Sky Train leave without me. They reek of alcohol and their drunk laughter carries throughout the whole station like hyenas, except more irritating. I size the tall guy up, and imagine my right foot delivering a high kick into his throat, cracking the cartilage in his trachea.

The Bible is so true. Jeremiah 17:9 (NKJV) says:
The heart is deceitful above all things,
And desperately wicked;
Who can know it?

As demonstrated, I know that too well.

But back on track, humans are so amazing in the way they interact with each other. This is the reason why everyone loves to people watch. It is enjoyable for people, to stare at other people as they go about their business. I think most people have done this in the mall, a restaurant, etc. Little kids are often more entertaining for their innocence and naivety. It’s also amazing (or rather shocking) what little kids know and say to each other, but I think that is because they are just imitating something they heard.

Anyways, regardless of all this, I’m glad I’m still in business, because I’m sure that sociology has tons of reading and papers to write, and in general, I am lazy.

I think the thing that amazes me most about human interactions and relationships is family. God is quite funny. He lets us choose our friends, but He doesn’t let us choose our family. Sometimes we want to choose our family, or find new ones, but we can’t. Sometimes we want to pick and choose different family members and remove some here and there, but we consider God cruel as He won’t let us. This is actually a two-way safety precaution because from the other perspective, our family members didn’t exactly choose us either. So we’re stuck with each other either way. It’s quite astounding the things I do and say with my family, and what they do with me. We accept it because we’re family. If we did the same things with friends, those friends would probably run for the hills, but with family, it’s ok for some reason just because we’re related. Usually. There are exceptions.

I sincerely thank You God, for family. Just please don’t let my friends know I’m related to them. 8^p

Wow this post is all over the place…sorry!

Monday, August 03, 2009

Seven point five months and ongoing with 7-Eleven Speak Out Wireless Canada

If this post sounds familiar, its because I did a semi-review kind of thing last September 2008 for Virgin Mobile Canada, but I dumped them in December 2008 (roughly 3 months after my post, hardy har har) because my top-up expired, as well as I found a cheaper provider. Narf and zort!

Back in December 2008, I was quite fed up with the 30¢/minute rate and 15¢/sending text (free to receive) rate of Virgin's because that ate up money quick (and because of how they had kept increasing rates previously). A good friend told me about 7-Eleven Speak Out Wireless Canada, which I initially thought was ridiculous at the time because one doesn’t usually think of mobile phones when one thinks of 7-Eleven. Anyways, after reading many websites, forums, and other reviews of other people, (mostly from the awesome: The Unofficial 7-Eleven Speak Out Wireless Canada Consumer Page -- http://www.speakoutwireless.ca) I decided to switch to them because they sounded quite legit and reasonable after all my research.

At the time, Speak Out was offering a wonderful incentive for me to switch: buy $100 worth of airtime (what Virgin calls “top-up”) and get a free phone! The super duper Nokia 1208! The worm danced in front of me and I bit the hook. It didn’t hurt. And the worm was delicious. Tasted like molded plastic and 96 x 68 pixels.

The cool thing about Speak Out is that their initial rates are 25¢/minute, but if you buy airtime worth $75 and up, they say that they’ll charge you 20¢/minute! Actually however, they just give 25% more airtime so when I bought my $100 airtime and free phone and activated everything, the system said I had $125 remaining (but the system would still charge me 25¢/minute). I was happy.

Actually I’m still happy.

I talked to Virgin Mobile reps before switching and of course they tried to get me to stay by offering me free top-up, but it wasn’t much. For the most part, Virgin’s customer service is good, but I haven’t had any problems with Speak Out’s. Actually, I think I’ve only called Speak Out’s reps once or twice when I was initially activating my phone and porting my number to my new Nokia 1208. Because my airtime expires after 365 days, I haven’t called since.

One bummer thing about Speak Out is that there is a monthly 911 fee where they subtract 99¢ each month from my airtime, so actually, if I were to buy $100 worth of airtime for one whole year, it’s actually about $113. Maybe another bummer thing is that it cost to receive text, but sending/receiving texts is just 5¢/each so that’s okay. But they don’t charge for voicemail and caller ID. Yay.

So what about the Nokia 1208?

It’s significantly smaller than my old hunkajunk Nokia 6015i and of course is lighter. It doesn’t have a camera or can play mp3s, video or fancy stuff like that, but it has a FLASHLIGHT! So cool! It also has neat converting stuff (weight, length, temperature, currency, etc) which apparently is standard on most phones… so actually, my new phone is still quite lacking and sort of outdated still, but the most important thing is that I’m happy with it, and it’s far unlikely to get stolen. I can even change the background colour and themes! It’s on a soothing blue now. Hmmm, one annoying thing I forgot to mention about this phone is that I can’t change the background text, as it constantly has the words “Speak Out” across it every time I look at it. It’s not life threatening though.

Here’s the only picture of my Nokia 1208. I was comparing it to a gigantic curry puff in Shah Alam, Malaysia during breakfast. Look how gigantic that thing is! It was mainly filled with potato but it did have some meat. It was reasonably spicy and the pastry part was great. Probably fried in dirty oil, but do I care? No. I think my aunt bought it for me from a street peddler. Mmmm. I like food.