holiday mode

office hours are finally over. i’d normally continue with work while waiting for my sis, but this time my mind just can’t take it.

so instead, let’s talk about some random topics. things that doesn’t need too much thought. or at least thoughts that require deadlines.

so.. let’s talk about me. lesseee… a lot of people claim i look chinese. based on my experience so far, i won’t deny it. however, that does not mean i can pass myself as a fully chinese person. it’s true that when i meet chinese strangers, they usually start talking to me in cantonese. but at the same time, when i meet malay strangers, they’d talk to me as if talking to any normal malay.

so, in conclusion, i looks both malay and chinese. at the same time! i look chinese to chinese, and malay to malay. i guess this happens cuz of the way we socially interact. relationships are usually linked by something, most of the time similarity. when you meet someone for the first time, you try to relate to him/her, checking what your similarities are. since eye contact is ALWAYS (usually) the first mode of interaction (unless you’re drunk), you try to see what physical features the person has that are similar to yours. hence a chinese person will look for chinese features, and etc etc. later of course, the relationship develops based on further interaction via action and talk, overriding any first impressions. so as soon as i start talking, or say “i don’t understand chinese”, the relationship takes another turn for better or worse.

after reading back my previous paragraph, i’d like to apologize to anyone who has visual disabilities. color blindness not included.

so as much as i want to act chameleon, i can’t, because i can be perceived in a variety of ways, even in ways i don’t want to be.

so to my friends, please keep me safe.

and to the next topic. do toilet seats belong up or down? i haven’t done any research on this, but the more tidy female characters in The Sims prefer them down. for guys, it would usually stay up, cuz otherwise stray jets might hit the ‘areas of concern’. we can’t let the ladies suffer like that, can we? on the other hand, leaving it down will allow users to see what’s on the ‘areas of concern’ so that measures can be taken to prepare those ‘areas’ for occupation. at the end of the day, most people after being relieved couldn’t care less of what they leave behind, so you’d have to look out for it anyway.

so i vote down. lift up before using, for the male urinating position, and put it back down after. irregardless, wash your hands. with soap. 😛

if only our public toilets were smart enough to clean our seats for us, and to also determine our gender and mode of execution to prepare the proper setting. it’ll probably happen sooner or later. we’ll see.

somewhere in the mess called my head, i thought up of an idea just in case i were to leave my current profession. i’d call it the IT Bakery. it’d be a bakery, like bread talk and their counterparts, except that the venue will be immensely packed with technology in action. and we’d sell these techs too, and maybe do tech consulting on the side. we’d also have stuff from thinkgeek.com and all the stuff that make geeks go crazy. details are sketchy but at least it’s something to start with.

usually when an idea starts, you drill down to the product to make sure it meets market demands and all that. but somehow my mind wandered off to the venue’s security system, which is designed to protect patrons more than the tech in the store. with so much expensive stuff lying around, you don’t want to skimp on security, man. so i was thinking of having a foot-wide grid of walls that can drop down from the ceiling in cases of emergency. an operator at the back, severely protected by panic-room like infrastructure, will be able to oversee the automatons of this system. the walls will drop to isolate patrons from intruders if they’re apart, with intervention necessary by the operator if they’re together. the walls would have holes in them, big enough to breathe and small enough to avoid bullets from passing through. each wall will have its own servo to allow flexible escape routes. the walls also, would have to be bullet proof to a certain extent. vertical-wise, the walls would be hollow, allowing smaller multiple versions of themselves in between for those tight situations where certain limbs would need to be pinned down. the lower edge of these walls can’t be sharp, maybe padded, and are pressure sensitive to avoid crushing people (altho overrides would be allowable).

this is assuming of course, that law provides that an owner of a premise is allowed use of lethal force to defend his/her property.

to avoid attacks from outside, the outer windows would also be thick and bulletproofed. and to avoid collateral damage during police raids and to also help friendly forces in, the set of windows would lift up and hide itself away like a garage door, and the grid walls can lift up at certain places, triggered by cooperation with police forces, to reveal the perps.

and it goes on like that.

usually i wouldn’t immediately post any of my funky brain childs publicly, but otherwise i’d forget all about it and wouldn’t be able to revel in my madness. and i don’t have the resources to implement these ideas anyway, so might as well let someone else try. of course, please tell me if you do. 😛 i don’t talk about cost, since that would then make it within my circle of influence and therefore limited in some other ways. no point being sensible when ranting. 😛

woo.. that’s a lot of text. and i have another 20 minutes to spare.

hm… bleh. oh, and the bakery would need to be backed by publications like Stuff (*winks* at tiff & steph).

damn, i’ve been gritting my teeth a lot today without realising it. was it the coffee, or the workload? hm.

hm hm hm. here comes the hm section where i can’t really think of what to type.

*10 minutes later*

yay, sms from sis! bubbye! yay for my colleague too, who dropped by my lonely cubicle for a quick chat.