I Kill Kittens

I killed many kittens

When was the last time you bought an original music CD? What if God does kill a kitten every time you download music; would you still do it? I think most people would still do. It's like that one story I remember from somewhere in which the character is granted one wish with the catch that some random person somewhere will die in exchange. Just the same, we consume and pollute with the knowledge that the future generations will pay.

The Open Door

I bought two CDs last week - The Open Door by Evanescence and Shine On by Jet. Both are sophomore efforts by the respective bands. I've already downloaded both albums, and decided that they are worth buying. Well, I made the decision just about as soon as I heard they were coming out, really.

Shine On

The recording industry hates it that people share music online, but the people who download and share are also the same people who buy most of the CDs. We download to sample the materials before buying the CDs if we decide them worth buying; though there are bands like Bon Jovi and U2, whose CDs I pre-order even before they are released.

I really shouldn't be buying any more CDs, as I don't have the time to actually listen to them.

So, how many kittens have you killed?

__________
PS: Love the T-shirt!

PPS: Both IE7 and Firefox 2 are out. I have downloaded and installed them both, and still find the same problem with IE. Firefox rules!

Raya III: Break the Bank

Raya is the time we bleed our bank accounts dry.

We needed to buy drinks for breaking fast while transiting at Narita, so I went to a money changer with $10 (US). Guess what, I needed to fill out a form!

There may be some currency control regulations behind it I am not aware of, but it is quite absurd to have to fill out a form to exchange $10. I gave the form and a $10 note to a middle-aged clerk, who processed the form in the same manner we typically see when paying utility bills, and passed the form over to a supervisor to stamp. Only then, the equivalent amount in Japanese Yen was dispensed by a machine. I couldn’t believe that all that was required just to exchange $10!

And this is in 2006.

The bureau de change was operated by a bank, so it gave me a poor impression of Japanese banks. Not that our Malaysian banks are much better, anyway, but at least I didn’t have to fill out a form to buy US dollars at the money changer at KLIA.

I have two bank accounts – one with Bank Islam, my primary bank account into which IIUM deposits my salary; and one with Maybank. While Maybank is the bigger bank, Bank Islam gives the better service. Bank Islam still issues me an account booklet, which I get updated from time to time as I happen to be at the branch office on campus; and I can always check my account transaction history online at the bank’s online banking website, BankIslam.biz. They also charge me only 50 sen for interbank transfers when I pay for my credit card. Maybank, on the other hand, does NOT issue an account booklet, does NOT issue bank statements NOR allow access for them on its website, and charges RM2 per interbank transfer. Aren’t bigger banks supposed to have lower costs from economies of scale?

Talk about corporate greed.

Selamat Hari Raya!

Raya II: Homecoming

Sadly I don’t have any Indian/Hindu friend to wish Happy Deepavali to, :(.

I just got back from a week-long (inclusive of travel time) trip to Boston yesterday. The whole week leading to the trip, everyone at the office was saying that I was going home – balik kampung. It goes with the spirit of the season, I guess. Nothing much has changed at Kampung Allston anyway. While Kam did tell me before that he has sawn off the legs of my old study desk to turn it into a coffee table, I never thought much of it until I saw it, MY DESK! Other than that, it was almost as if I never left. Well, it hasn’t even been a year anyway. But the Barnes & Noble store at Downtown Crossing has been closed, as does the AMC cinema at Fenway I used to go to (almost) every Friday; now taken over by Regal.

We came for a conference in Cambridge, at a venue at Harvard. Dr Shabri, on his first trip to the US, really took the opportunity to snap pictures. I didn’t take any even though I have my camera with me all the time. Somehow there is a feeling that there will be other such opportunities - that I’ll be back.

One thing for sure though, is that the United States still feels like the other side of the world to fly to. We changed planes three times at Changi, Narita, and San Francisco between KLIA and Logan one way. In total on this trip we flew on five different aircraft types – Boeings 737, 747, 757, 767, and 777. The Muslim menu on the flights, prepared in the Middle Eastern or South Asian taste, is exactly the same that we could barely touch it on the return journey.

How long will it take till we have either [1] cheap super or hyper-sonic air travel, [2] hibernation technology so that we can sleep all the way through long journeys, or [3] instantaneous teleportation à la Star Trek?

How about the space elevator? (Illustation by Pat Rowling)

Selamat Hari Raya everybody, everywhere, whether you will be spending it at your very own kampung or not.

Selamat Hari Raya

Ustaz Samsuri asked me where I’m celebrating Raya. He smiled when I told him that I’m a hometown kid, with nowhere else to go but the same place I go home to everyday; or was a smirk? So I didn’t really get the question, which was really a variation of the when-are-you-getting-married question. That was a sneaky one; I bet my relatives this Raya will be more blunt.

Somehow I’m not at all too excited about the coming Raya. In fact, I never find Raya exciting, even as a child. After a month of fasting, we will go around visiting one another and get fat(ter). Well, Malaysians take Ramadan as a month-long food fest anyway, so Raya is just the culmination of it, in a way. It is just sad that we need celebrations like Raya as an excuse to visit friends and relatives; the rest of the year we are too busy with work.

But that’s the whole point, isn’t it? I guess that is really the reason I hate Raya, for it reminds me that we need to find an excuse to take time off to see each other – Raya, weddings, funerals, etc. So within the space of a week or so we squeeze in all the celebrating and visiting that the whole Raya experience becomes exhausting that most of us would find ourselves relieved when it is over.

By the way, right after is exam week, which means marking a bunch of exam scripts afterwards. If students hate exams, lecturers hate exams even more.

Heroes: Cheerleader chick may be related to Wolverine (Dean Hendler/NBC Universal Photo)

Now that we are well into fall (not in Malaysia though, we have haze!), the best thing going on for me at the moment is the shows on television. On Mondays there are Prison Break (season 2), How I Met Your Mother (2), and Heroes (new). Then there are NCIS (4), Veronica Mars (3), and Eureka (new) on Tuesdays; Grey’s Anatomy (3) on Thursdays; and Ghost Whisperer (2), Close to Home (2), and Battlestar Galactica (3) on Fridays. Stargates SG-1 and Atlantis have just completed their first half of their twenty-episode tenth and third season runs respectively, to be continued in February.

Yes, I’m a geek, and I don’t have a life. And the above are not in Malaysian television (sucks!). Thank God for the Internet, and P2P.