Crime and Punishment

Do not buy this laptop...ever

It amazes me to think how important the skill of rhetoric is. What the ancient Greeks learnt as rhetoric has today become the techniques of propaganda and persuasion. Recently, I am in need of good rhetorical skills because of a serious problem that I am suffering from. In an earlier entry, I spoke of having a bad Internet connection in my room. I even went as far as to blame the Internet Service Provider for its bad quality and accused them of intentionally refusing to help me. Eventually, after numerous attempts to acquire a refund from them, they did send a technician to check on my computer during the night, which was when the connection usually dies. It seems that the problem was not with the ISP, but with my laptop. The techie was unable to provide an accurate description of the problem, claiming that these issues were really hard to debug because they occurred so randomly. The best hope for me, he suggested, was to have the computer checked out at a computer hardware store and hopefully, someone there would be able to find out what the problem is. All that he could think of was that my Ethernet card (or whatever that is) is faulty or that there was a problem with the driver.

I tried to think how it was possible that I did not notice this problem earlier. I realized that when I got my laptop, I had been using the wireless at home, so there was no problem with the Internet. When I moved into campus, I had to plug in a cable to use the Internet, and that was when the problems started. This new problem was just the latest in a string of problems that I have been having with my laptop. I realize now what an awful mistake it was to buy an Acer laptop. First their graphics driver kept on crashing whenever I played Halo 2 (when I played Half Life 2, it occasionally crashed as well). Then I realized that if it went into sleep mode, I couldn’t wake it up. Whenever that happened, I was forced to shut it down prematurely, thereby causing further damage to the hard drive. Thus, I have reconfigured my settings so that it would never enter sleep mode, no matter how long it stays on. In addition, the microphone was not working, even though Windows said that the device was working perfectly. With all these problems getting me all worked up, I am not keen on paying anyone to fix them. As the nearest Acer service centre is all the way in Ottawa, I have no other choice but to go home and get it fixed there, and that’s where my rhetorical skills will have to be used. I need to convince those Acer guys that their laptop sucks, and that they owe me for all the trouble that it has given. No matter what, I am not going to pay for any repairs, even if I have to fiercely threaten them. Damn Acer…

With my finals approaching and all the term papers due, I really need my computer to work but now that I know the problem is with the computer, rather than the ISP, there is no one else that I can express my rage to. I just can’t wait to go home and get it fixed (hopefully, for free). Something else that I need to pick up in KL is lots of wrapping paper- the clear, transparent ones that we use to wrap books to protect them. For some reason, I just can’t find them here. Not a single bookstore sells them. As for winter, it has snowed a couple of times, but it’s not that cold yet. I’ll have to wait for next year to truly experience winter. In fact, I haven’t bought any thick winter jackets yet. The main reason is because I don’t like the way they look, all puffy and fat, but I also want to see how long I can last with the jackets that I currently have. Even if the temperature were to suddenly drop, I can always wear lots of layers.

The October Country

Knowing that I wouldn't smile if I posed for a photo, someone tried to secretly take one of me when I was laughing...not a good one as you can see...

At the Mexican restaurant. It was Marcus' birthday (the guy next to me), so we made him drink tequilas...as you can see, I don't smile in pictures

At the skytrain station on route to the Indian restaurant (I just can't remember the names of these restaurants), you can't see it from here, but Vancouver's public train system is soo much better that Malaysia's

My pumpkin in the dark...

The month of October has passed at last, and although my exams are definitely not over, I am given a temporary respite from the work (temporary being one or two days). Much has passed in the last month but I am now trying to avoid retelling my trips/ outings in favour of speaking my thoughts. Still, I would briefly touch upon certain events that I attended and enjoyed.

The end of October is marked by the arrival of Halloween. Sure, Halloween is a corruption of All Hallows Eve which is simply the eve of All Hallows (Saints) Day, but here in Vancouver (as in many parts of North America), it has become overly commercialized. Statistics (don’t ask me where I got them) show that pubs and bars earn more on Halloween than on Christmas. The streets were full of people in costumes, some creative, others just plain weird. I myself was too lazy to acquire a costume; otherwise there would be pictures of me wearing it here. On the Saturday before Halloween, I went to Playland, a local carnival that was celebrating Halloween with their annual Fright Nights event. I went with a few others from the International Club because they had discounted tickets. Anyway, the primary attractions were the Haunted Houses. There were 5 of them this year but due to the shortage of time, we only got to see 2 of them. This marked the first time I entered a professional haunted house- previous haunted houses I ‘visited’ were amateur ones. The quality that was put into the houses was astounding with really great makeup for the actors and lighting. Of course, no photographs were allowed inside. I also ate dinner at an Indian restaurant and a Mexican restaurant with other international students. Won’t spend too much time talking about them except to say that the Indian food was good, the Mexican food- bad! I ordered what sounded good on the menu but turned out to be a huge red pepper. It was super spicy and it was about the size of a rugby ball. Luckily I managed to eat the whole thing (mostly). The one event that I really enjoyed was pumpkin carving. I forgot to buy a pumpkin, so I had to share one with my friend Andy. Even though that was the first time we both carved a pumpkin, I must say that we didn’t do that bad of a job. I really like the snarling look that I drew for it.

Now I am going to rant about a problem that I have been suffering from since the day I moved in. Actually the problem got worse these last few weeks, and that is BAD internet connection at night. The problem with my dorm is that Internet service is wired, not wireless. That means to use the Internet in my room; I have to plug in a cable. During the day, the Internet is fine and smooth but at night…it disconnects like every 5 seconds. That is such a big problem because obviously I need to do work at night which is when I have no classes. However, you can imagine that getting thrown offline every 5 seconds is well…annoying to put it mildly. In fact the connection just died a second ago as I was composing this entry. I called the service providers and their lame excuse was that there were too many people using the Internet and that is why the connection is unstable. What? That is the most useless response I ever heard. Why am I getting charged the same amount as everyone else when I’m getting crappier service? I was really quite surprised that they didn’t even suggest that I try pressing certain buttons or some other stunt that might improve my situation but would probably not work. They just blatantly gave me that stupid excuse. At first I tried to ignore the problem but after finding out that the library closes at 10 pm and my room connection was as bad as ever, I really had enough. I sent the Residence Internet service providers threatening voice messages that clearly showed I was furious with them. I raised my voice more and more with each message to show my anger. Finally, when they didn’t seem to call me back, I lost my temper and sent one more message (yesterday in fact) where I yelled at the top of my voice. Of course my whole floor heard it and thought there was an insane shooter on the loose but after I assured everyone that it was just me, and that I was displeased with the Internet, the situation went back to normal. Nevertheless, my yelling did inform the person in charge of my floor to put in a maintenance request. I have yet to hear from them, and the Internet is still as bad as ever. Oh well, I am definitely getting a different Internet provider next year, and hopefully I can demand that my current provider reimburse me for the horrendous Internet quality that I have been having. I can go on about the other problems about my campus, but I think that deserves its own entry.