Speechless

I realise that I haven’t posted for very, very, very long, and you can skip this post if you want, because it is very, very long. Right now, though, I’m speechless. I tried composing MSN display names in both English and Chinese to express the depths of my revulsion and anger, but I fell short each time. You should be glad that I don’t mention names in this post, even though I really should, since nothing you’ve done has given me any reason not to.

I opened the conversation by asking about our timetable. Specifically, I asked whether there were Maths and Chinese tomorrow, since those were the subjects for which we had homework. You answered, and it could have ended there.

Then you started it all. Out of the blue, you said:

hey i just wanted to say
OKAY DO NOT EXPLODE AT ME OKAY ><
i just wanted to TELL YOU
sanely.
um
try to “explode” less easily k please

Already, in that paragraph, if you can call it that, you were treading on eggshells, assuming that I would explode at you for no reason whatsoever. I took it in good faith, though. I asked you where this was coming from. “From me,” you said, helpfully, like that was what I wanted to know. “What triggered it?” I clarified.

a lot of stuff
like just
me jsut telling you to chill then you blowing
i dont even know how you do that :/
it’s just that
we’re kind of supposed to be, i dont know, friends? so yeah it’d be nice

“That was because I dislike being interrupted with irrelevant stuff, especially when I’m not even agitated to begin with,” I said (notice how I said it all in one line instead of flooding the screen with sentence fragments?).

please don’t explode or anyth ><
yes, everyone hates being interrupted but they dont explode at people who’re apparently friends
please?

You were treading on eggshells on the assumption that I would explode. That was starting to grate. The constant flooding of “PLEASE DON’T EXPLODE! DON’T EXPLODE!” in a serious conversation in which I was perfectly calm was getting on my nerves. Also, “apparently friends”? Can you say “emotional manipulation”? With a little guilt on the side, too!

“Then could you please stop telling me to calm down for no reason?” I said, calmly and without exploding. The reason I’m only putting your words in blockquotes and not mine, by the way, is that my words were in the form of sentences and generally only occupied one line. Your words can’t be formatted into normal-sounding dialogue, though. Oh, no.

ok it’s just
very
very
TIRING
when
i’m just talking to you but then you “blow up” for like no real reason
so let’s just both compromise ok

I don’t think I’ll even comment on the screen-flooding anymore. Also, notice how I had already told you why I had been angry that day, but you chose to ignore that and dismiss it as “no real reason” instead? Great, isn’t that? Still, you’re offering a compromise. Let’s see what it is.

(name removed) says (9:22 PM):
like that time after debate all i was doing was saying i had to go home then you started “yelling”
who was the first quadriplegic in zero gravity? says (9:23 PM):
well, you said I was ranting at you when all I was doing was pointing out flaws in your argument
(name removed) says (9:23 PM):
pleasepleaseplease i’m not TRYING to argue with you

I think it’s safe to say that I was getting more than a little fed up with the constant appeasement at this point. Especially since all I tried to do was clarify why I had been “yelling”, complete with scare quotes. How was I supposed to clarify anything if I couldn’t say anything without immediately being smothered with unnecessary appeasement?

who was the first quadriplegic in zero gravity? says (9:23 PM):
…
(name removed) says (9:23 PM):
oh come on you dont have to NITPICK
not everything’s a deate
*debate

I thought seriously about quitting the conversation here, since obviously everything I said was either “arguing”, “debating” or explosion warning signs, so we wouldn’t get anywhere. Never mind. I stuck with it anyway. I shouldn’t have.

“I’m not arguing or debating!” I said, using an exclamation mark for the first time. This was the first time I betrayed my facade of calmness, by the way. With a single punctuation mark. Prior to that, I had been perfectly calm.

Fast-forward through a little escalation and ridiculous accusations.

who was the first quadriplegic in zero gravity? says (9:26 PM):
give me two examples of blowing up in random conversations in the last month
(name removed) says (9:26 PM):
oh believe me you dont want me to list
ariel just try okay?
okay. let’s put it this way
who was the first quadriplegic in zero gravity? says (9:26 PM):
because I really don’t remember any at all, and you obviously didn’t deign to mention them
(name removed) says (9:27 PM):
do you consider me a friend, after everything?

Why don’t you want to list two examples out of the myriad explosions I’ve supposedly perpetrated? Could it be that…*gasp* there aren’t any? Oh, and then BOOM! You hit me with a truckload of emotional manipulation. “PLEASE!! TELL ME IF YOU CONSIDER ME A FRIEND! AND I KNOW IT’S COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT TO WHAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT BUT HEY [you don't like punctuation] IF YOU SAY YES YOU’VE GOT TO LISTEN TO WHAT I SAY WITHOUT ARGUING DEBATING OR EXPLODING!! ><” I really hated typing that sentence, by the way. It hurts the eyes.

who was the first quadriplegic in zero gravity? says (9:27 PM):
however, I do not understand what you are talking about
what are you talking about?
(name removed) says (9:27 PM):
you, blowing up at awkward tmes
*times

Great. That’s really what I had been looking for. I had been looking for some explanation of why exactly you thought I exploded left and right, not a reiteration of the subject matter of the conversation. My English isn’t that bad, you know.

You then raised two examples. The first example was me supposedly “yelling” at you when you were walking away after debate while I was trying to talk to you because you had to go home. Not only had I already explained that, I had also not been yelling at all.

The second example was me supposedly “exploding” (you love this word a LOT!) when you interrupted me during a discussion of Season 6 to tell me to calm down, despite the fact that I was not at all agitated. Understandably, I did not react favourably to having my train of thought cut off because you felt the need to crack stupid half-jokes, as you later described this interruption. However, I remember my response, and it was, “Could you not interrupt me? I hate it when you do that!” Yes, it was annoyed, but I was annoyed because you were annoying. I certainly did not explode, or even raise my voice more than a little.

“I didn’t explode, actually,” I said, introducing this radical idea for the first time. Rubbish such as “it was as if you were blowing up” followed, as if it was a fake explosion staged for my enjoyment, or something similar.

Now, let’s fast-forward a little, to when I perfectly calmly explain why I thought you were wrong.

who was the first quadriplegic in zero gravity? says (9:32 PM):
most of the examples you’re probably thinking of aren’t explosions at all but merely a combination of annoyance on my part and oversensitivity on yours
no offence, but I think you’re reacting too strongly
(name removed) says (9:32 PM):
um
no offence, but i dont think you do that to anyone else and it makes it really tiring being around you

You see, I didn’t shout, didn’t TYPE IN ALL CAPS, didn’t throw emotional manipulation at you. I merely tried to explain why I thought you were mistaken. Unfortunately, this was completely wasted on you and you chose to ignore the part where I mentioned oversensitivity, resulting in a garbled reply. Your oversensitivity makes it really tiring to be around me? Well, yes, I can understand that.

who was the first quadriplegic in zero gravity? says (9:33 PM):
you’re making yourself out to be some kind of nuclear war survivor when really the things you’re talking about wouldn’t have been construed as explosions by other, less oversensitive people
(name removed) says (9:34 PM):
okay let me ask you something
do you see [friend 1] or [friend 2] exploding in the canteen when i interrupt them or tell them to chill?

Exploding. Exploding. What about “I am not exploding” do you not understand?! I had repeatedly stated that I didn’t think I had exploded, that I thought you had misconstrued my annoyance as explosions, and you responded by working on the assumption that I had exploded. Right. That’s brilliant. I can totally see why you’re so “zibei” all the time. With that kind of intellect, I would be too.

Fast-forward a little.

who was the first quadriplegic in zero gravity? says (9:37 PM):
could you offer me some proof that people other than you who understand the situation think so?
(name removed) says (9:37 PM):
how about people who’ve seen it and think it’s a bit too explosive

You know, when I ask for proof that people agree with you, raising “people” as an example is frankly stupid.

And then you added these “people” into the conversation and the snowball of my revulsion started rolling, gathering more and more disgust and exasperation as the conversation progressed.

(name removed) says (9:42 PM):
why does it always have to be concrete to you, ariel

Yeah. Why can’t I just be satisfied with general hand-waving at abstract statements I don’t agree with like everyone else?

(name removed) says (9:42 PM):
why does it always have to be concrete to you, ariel
(name removed 2) says (9:42 PM):
you explode
t literally
(name removed) says (9:42 PM):
why can’t it just be two friends telling you not to go over the edge?
who was the first quadriplegic in zero gravity? says (9:42 PM):
because random handwaving at generalisations is rubbish?
(name removed 2) says (9:42 PM):
though i wouldn’t mind that
(name removed 2) says (9:43 PM):
to be frank
actually
to start with

I was really, really getting tired of the screen-flooding. There’s no need to compulsively hit your Enter key after every three words. Other than that, though, throughout this entire conversation NR2 would continue to hunt for “demeaning statements” and pounce on them whenever they occurred, which was quite often because by that stage I was getting fed up with the sheer mind-bending stupidity. One of the first things NR2 said, though, was that she wouldn’t mind if I literally exploded. How’s that for demeaning? Hypocrisy, anyone?

(name removed) says (9:43 PM):
it’s not a random generalisation
ugh
who was the first quadriplegic in zero gravity? says (9:43 PM):
I didn’t say it was a random generalisation
(name removed 2) says (9:43 PM):
1) it’s not a random generalisation

I pointed out that I hadn’t said it was a random generalisation, I had said that it was random hand-waving at a generalisation. In other words, their hand-waving was random, not their generalisation. I should really have quit the conversation at this stage, since it was obvious that I wasn’t talking to anyone who could understand simple English, but I persevered anyway.

(name removed) says (9:43 PM):
3)
you dont have to sound so
(name removed 2) says (9:43 PM):
i define that as exploding
(name removed) says (9:43 PM):
okay NEVERMIND i shall not say
(name removed 2) says (9:43 PM):
and
who was the first quadriplegic in zero gravity? says (9:43 PM):
honestly, without concrete examples, that’s all you’re doing, randomly handwaving at a generalisation and expecting this thing you started to go away
(name removed 2) says (9:43 PM):
demeaning
right

This is where the obsession with demeaning statements started. I just thought I’d point it out.

(name removed) says (9:44 PM):
YEAH, my point being, DONT GO OVER THE EDGE
LIKE
who was the first quadriplegic in zero gravity? says (9:44 PM):
I asked for concrete examples, and the two you gave me I clarified
(name removed) says (9:45 PM):
a NORMAL
friend-to-friend
reminder
i can’t even DO THAT
(name removed 2) says (9:45 PM):
for example
(name removed) says (9:45 PM):
without THIS happening

Yes, you can remind me of things without THIS happening. You cannot, however, randomly accuse me of things I didn’t do and ignore everything I say in my defense without THIS happening. That just isn’t possible. Sorry. Also, nearly everything NR2 says has been edited to make words complete, because NR2 has too many seizure-inducing emoticons that pop up randomly and make gibberish of what she attempts to say.

(name removed) says (9:46 PM):
ariel we’re NOT ACCUSING you please
(name removed 2) says (9:46 PM):
or somewhere along that line
(name removed) says (9:46 PM):
-agh-

I’m going to achieve what you haven’t done. I’m going to prove that I’m right with actual concrete evidence. Watch me.

who was the first quadriplegic in zero gravity? says (9:46 PM):
I just did a Ctrl+F for “accusing”
guess what?
I haven’t brought it up at all
the only ones who have brought it up are you

HA! I’m sorry to sound childishly triumphant here, but I’ve proven that I never accused you of accusing me of anything! Instead, you’ve just been pointlessly appeasing me and treading on eggshells on the assumption that I would explode!

I shall fast-forward through a long stretch of conversation in which I attempt to recap what happened in the conversation to disabuse you of the notion that I was overreacting in some way to your “gentle reminder”.

(name removed) says (9:49 PM):
apparently i’m NOT the only one
who was the first quadriplegic in zero gravity? says (9:49 PM):
quite frankly, that’s because you have pushed me to the edge with your hopelessness
(name removed) says (9:50 PM):
right, i’m so hopeless, deserve to die for all the absolutely unforgivable stuff i did
who was the first quadriplegic in zero gravity? says (9:50 PM):
if you say so
(name removed) says (9:50 PM):
okay
who was the first quadriplegic in zero gravity? says (9:50 PM):
remember, I didn’t say that
you did
(name removed) says (9:50 PM):
forget everything i said in the whole darn convo and go on randomly “expressing your annoyance” at whoever you feel like
(name removed) says (9:51 PM):
it’s not like anyone can do anything anymore

Here I was pushed off the edge by the onslaught of self-pitying angst. I completely gave up on trying to censor myself or on trying not to explode. Actually, I did censor myself a little, or I would have been screaming vulgarities a few lines up.

A little while later…

(name removed) says (9:53 PM):
and i decide to tell you
so you wont KEEP exploding at me

I was tired of it. I was tired of you constantly referring to my actions as “explosions” and constantly sidestepping the issue that I really didn’t consider them explosions at all. I exploded for real.

who was the first quadriplegic in zero gravity? says (9:53 PM):
I AM NOT EXPLODING!
(name removed) says (9:53 PM):
and then this happens
who was the first quadriplegic in zero gravity? says (9:53 PM):
really, are you blind?
are you deaf?
are you brainless?
(name removed) says (9:53 PM):
YEAH, maybe i am

I didn’t care about not hurting your tender feelings anymore. I let loose with the insults because you had provoked me to it. Throughout the whole conversation, you had repeatedly accused me of exploding despite my attempts to defend myself. We could have agreed to disagree, but you chose to completely ignore my attempts to defend myself, never mind that my opinion was worth as much as yours. Never mind that I really didn’t think I had been exploding, and I had the last word on that because I was the one who had supposedly done it in the first place. Never mind all that. Your opinion reigns. “Exploding” and its variants continued to be your terminology of choice.

More and more people were added to the conversation. Strength in numbers, after all.

You raised another example, a long-ago one wherein I had exploded in the canteen after you stood up and started walking away in the middle of my sentence. That was the only example of an explosion I conceded. However, we had already resolved that one, and it was long ago. Something else had to have set you off for you to suddenly raise the issue. I asked for more recent examples, because I really couldn’t recall any.

A few thousand lines of weeping emo angst at how I was making your life intolerable followed, along with digressions about musical instruments. I tried in vain to recap the conversation to bring sanity to it.

Suddenly, this gem appeared:

(name removed 3) says (10:08 PM):
oh um maybe the problem lies in miscommunication?
your explosions are her… well. I don’t know, clever arguments I guess.

A glimmer of hope reappeared. Someone who didn’t think that their opinions were infallible! Someone who would even consider the possibility of a misunderstanding!

After changing my display name (“your stupidity and self-pity really leave me speechless”), I replied with this:

你的愚笨与自怜实在令我哑口无言。 says (10:09 PM):
yes, exactly!
thank you!
you have pointed out what they have failed to see
why can’t you consider for one moment that you aren’t infallible?

Unfortunately, because of the average IQ of the conversation, nobody knew what I was talking about.

Braving storms of screen-flooding and whiny yelling, I conceded that a misunderstanding could have taken place, accepting the fallibility of my opinion.

The question was, would they do the same?

你的愚笨与自怜实在令我哑口无言。 says (10:11 PM):
okay, so I accept that there could have been a misunderstanding
(name removed 2) says (10:11 PM):
you give us the impression
你的愚笨与自怜实在令我哑口无言。 says (10:11 PM):
do you?
(name removed 2) says (10:11 PM):
that you are, indeed, perfect
你的愚笨与自怜实在令我哑口无言。 says (10:11 PM):
do you?
(name removed) says (10:11 PM):
and in the process you have to tell everyone they’re stupid but thats beside the point

This was frustrating. I should have given up.

你的愚笨与自怜实在令我哑口无言。 says (10:11 PM):
right, as opposed to your constant self-deprecating misery
(name removed) says (10:11 PM):
MISERY
你的愚笨与自怜实在令我哑口无言。 says (10:11 PM):
“OH NOOOOOOOOO! I HAVE A 3.71 GPA! WHAT DO I DO???!!!!”

You may know who I’m talking about now. Remember, I didn’t say it out loud. It’s the person who goes around “stressing” and “depressing” about ridiculous things, never mind that “stressing” and “depressing” aren’t even supposed to be used that way in the first place. I mean, you are depressing, but I don’t think that’s what you’re trying to say, is it?

你的愚笨与自怜实在令我哑口无言。 says (10:12 PM):
no, don’t elaborate
I accept that my statements may have been misinterpreted as explosions
(name removed) says (10:13 PM):
misinterpreted!?
你的愚笨与自怜实在令我哑口无言。 says (10:13 PM):
do you accept that you may have misinterpreted my statements as explosions?
see, here you go again
do you think there was a misunderstanding or not?
(name removed 2) says (10:13 PM):
i am so sorry to
that
t are indeed explosions
你的愚笨与自怜实在令我哑口无言。 says (10:13 PM):
no, they are not
(name removed) says (10:13 PM):
frankly, no i dont think it was a misunderstanding

See what happened here? I conceded that my behaviour had been ambiguous and open to misinterpretation. I conceded that just because I didn’t see my actions as explosions didn’t mean other people held the same view. I had openly admitted my fallibility, but would they do the same?

…Well, would they?

Of course not!

We went on in this vein for a while, with them doggedly clinging on to their infallibility while simultaneously trying to claim that of course they didn’t think they were infallible, oh no. With the exception of NR3, they continued digging up ancient examples of explosions that I had conceded and that we had resolved.

Eventually, I said:

你的愚笨与自怜实在令我哑口无言。 says (10:15 PM):
look, I am not interested in digging up the past
do you have any recent examples?

Simple-minded as they were, though, they interpreted that literally to mean that I didn’t want them to raise any examples that came chronologically before the conversation, whether they had happened a minute before, a month before or a year before. This was frankly stupid.

I pointed out that one of the incidents they were harping on, the Geog/Bio incident, had already been resolved. I backed this up by quoting verbatim from the conversation in which we had resolved the conflict. However, they failed to understand the concept of evidence, and we were back to square one:

(name removed) says (10:22 PM):
why does it always have to be backed by concrete evidence for a friend’s advice to just be understood by you

Yeah. Why didn’t I just accept outrageous accusations without proof? Why didn’t I do that? Life would be so much easier.

I took a deep breath and tried to restore inner tranquility.

你的愚笨与自怜实在令我哑口无言。 says (10:25 PM):
we all know that I’m exploding now
and I won’t apologise for that
however, I am exploding because I am angry at you for repeatedly accusing me of “exploding” when I do not believe that it is true
你的愚笨与自怜实在令我哑口无言。 says (10:25 PM):
so if you want me to stop exploding, perhaps you should prove to me that it is true?
你的愚笨与自怜实在令我哑口无言。 says (10:26 PM):
you need to prove to me using unresolved incidents that I have exploded repeatedly in recent days
你的愚笨与自怜实在令我哑口无言。 says (10:26 PM):
okay
working on that assumption, could you please raise concrete examples of recent explosions?
recent ones that haven’t yet been resolved?
because you’ve brought this issue up anew after not mentioning it for a long time

I explained why I was angry and told them exactly what they needed to do to prove their allegations and force me to concede them. Yay for having a brain!

(name removed) says (10:27 PM):
how about the one where, we were talking, about, season 6
and discussing the last s5 ep
(name removed) says (10:27 PM):
and you decided to express your annoyance
at something i honestly don’t get
(name removed) says (10:28 PM):
or when i half-jokingly told you to chill
and you went “I AM NOT AGITATED!!!!!:
*”

So you’ve decided to play my game! That’s good. Let’s see how this will work out. Hopefully it will be less insane.

你的愚笨与自怜实在令我哑口无言。 says (10:28 PM):
no, I didn’t
(name removed) says (10:28 PM):
right

I had the courtesy to let you finish your example without barging in and retorting, but you couldn’t even let me get past my first sentence before responding sarcastically.

I clarified:

你的愚笨与自怜实在令我哑口无言。 says (10:28 PM):
okay, don’t interrupt me
I’m clarifying
I had the courtesy not to interrupt when you were raising your example
firstly, I was annoyed that you had interrupted me

(name removed 2) has left the conversation.

你的愚笨与自怜实在令我哑口无言。 says (10:29 PM):
the sudden physical touch may also have set me off
forgive me, but I just don’t like sudden physical touch
secondly, I did not go “I AM NOT AGITATED!!!!!” like you said I did
maybe I raised my voice a little, but I definitely didn’t explode on the scale you say I did

Your response?

Wait for it.

“Actually you kind of did. Is it safe to talk now?”

Why do I waste my time like this?

Then everybody else left the conversation. Leaving a trail of emo angst behind you, you started declaring dramatically that you would follow suit. Unfortunately, you failed to realise that MSN doesn’t allow one member of a two-person conversation to “leave”, or the remaining person would end up talking to himself. This detracted from the drama of your exit.

Then you went offline, which ruined everything.

—

Forgive me if I don’t add commentary. I think I added plenty above. All I can say is…what on earth were you thinking?!

Nitpicking chain mails

This is fun.

Doctors say he will be a vegetable for the rest of his life, if he ever comes out of the coma – his brain is too damaged for him to live a normal life.

He’ll be a vegetable if he comes out of the coma? So he’ll emerge from the coma one day, only to make the seamless transition into a vegetative state, never mind that the latter is worse and wouldn’t really qualify as coming out of the coma, would it? (Wikipedia: A persistent vegetative state is a condition of patients with severe brain damage who were in a coma, but then progressed to a state of wakefulness without detectable awareness [emphasis mine]. It is a diagnosis of some uncertainty in that it deals with a syndrome, not an etiology. It is classified as a Permanent Vegetative State [PVS] after approximately 1 year of being in a Persistent Vegetative State which is called so after 4 weeks in a Vegetative State [VS].)

Therefore, this severe stress that I’ve been through caused Carissa to be born a premie with Down’s syndrome as well as chronic colitis.

This is where the whole chain mail starts to unravel. I can accept severe stress causing prematurity, but Down’s syndrome? The chain mail states that the baby is two weeks old; if we assume that she was born at the viability cutoff, about 21 to 24 weeks depending on the baby’s condition and the presence of medical facilities, this would make the baby’s conception 26 weeks ago at the most (i.e. about six months). Now, when the first catastrophe mentioned in the chain mail, the author’s son’s accident (which led to the coma from which PVS would be an improvement!), occurred on 13 January, the author would already have been two months pregnant with her baby, by which time the baby would already have had Down’s syndrome since it is genetic. And that’s at the very fringe of viability.

We worked out a deal with AOL where for every 12 forwards I will get 15 cents.

Even if the email is sent from Hotmail users to Yahoo users to Gmail users without ever reaching an AOL user’s account, like it appears to have done in this case, judging by the list of contacts everybody mindlessly forwarded this email to? Since AOL obviously wouldn’t gain any money from such email chains, this means that the only way it would be able to do that is if it were sitting on a pile of money in the first place, in which case why must such a deal be worked out?

—

If you don’t repost this in the next 10 minutes, the clown will appear by
your bed tonight, while you’re sleeping and the same ending will happen to
you.

This must be a gravity-defying clown with exceptional levitation abilities, since I sleep on the top bunk of a double-decker bed.

—

MY NAME IS HANNAH… I AM 15 YEARS OLD WITH BLONDE HAIR AND SCARY EYES. I HAVE NO NOSE OR EARS. I AM DEAD. IF U DO NOT SEND THIS TO 15 PPL IN THE NEXT 5 MIN. I WILL APPEAR TONIGHT BY YOUR BED WITH A KNIFE AND KILL YOU.

Again, are you gravity-defying or really tall? But I suppose knife-wielding maniac ghosts with nothing better to do than care about whether living people annoy each other with chain mails have good levitation skills.

THIS IS NO JOKE SOMETHING GOOD WILL HAPPEN TO U TONIGHT AT 10:22 SOMEONE WILL CALL U OR TALK TO U ONLINE AND SAY I LOVE U….PLZ DON’T BREAK THIS.

What happens if I sleep before 10.22? Would this mysterious person wake me up to fulfil a chain-mail prophecy? Wouldn’t that convey something other than love…creepiness, perhaps?

—

Please forward this email so that we know you are still using this account.

Ah, one of my favourites. It’s also been circulating since I was P3, but it landed up in my Yahoo account. What was the point of that? Anyway, so Hotmail can track the path of this particular email, as well as identify the users who sent and received it, but it doesn’t have access to basic user activity statistics or to information about any other emails that users have sent, conveniently making this ridiculous ungrammatical email the only way Hotmail can tell whether its users are still active? That’s nice.

We need you to forward this to at least 20
people. I know this seems like a large number,
but we need to find out who is really using their
account.

So someone who forwards the email to five people isn’t active, but someone who forwards it to 20 is? As far as I can tell, the former is just less annoying.

—

Out of all of the billions of people who live in
the
world, there has to be somebody born on each date of the year.We are
going to try to accomplish the task of seeing if we can fill the calendar up with
a birthday on every day of the year.

Well, yes, 6.5 billion is more than 366. Thanks for enlightening me.

—

Hey… Do you want to be in the famous Guinness Book of World Records? Well just sign this!

In 2013, the Guiness Book of World Records is going to be doing a segment on ‘the longest chain e-mail.’

The problem with chain mails is that they spawn multiple chains. For example, if one person forwards this email to 20 people, and these 20 people each forward their emails to 20 people, there would be 400 different “longest chain e-mails” circulating out there, each competing for an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records. Now, imagine 5000 signatures.

If by the time of
March 17th, 2013; along with 5,000 SIGNATURES, it will be posted in the book along with all of the names of the kids who signed it.

You know exactly when the Guinness Book of World Records is going to publish its 2013 edition? Actually, this should be 2014, because the hardcover editions of the book always come out in the last few months of the year before the year named on the cover of the book. But that aside, I highly doubt the Guinness Book of World Records is going to print all 5000 names in its book. It only listed 11 supercentenarians in its 2008 edition, for goodness’ sake. Doesn’t anybody read this stuff before sending it to the world at large?

—

a girl was pushed down a sewer opening by 5 girls in her school, trying to embarrass her in front of her school during a fire drill. When she didn’t submerge the police were called. They went down and brought up 17 year old Carmen Winstead’s body, her neck broken from hitting the ladder, and then the side concrete at the bottom.

I did you a service by removing all the unnecessary line breaks and more-than signs, people. Firstly, isn’t it a good thing that she didn’t submerge? Wouldn’t that have meant that she didn’t go underwater? That was probably a typo for “emerge”, though, so I’m going to ignore it. Since her neck was broken, wouldn’t the resulting quadriplegia (so high that the muscles of respiration were paralysed, likely given the manner of death) preclude her carrying out any of the threats mentioned in the rest of the email? Unless, of course, she was going to ram people into sewers with her wheelchair. But would her wheelchair be ghostly too? And her ventilator? Are the mobility devices of ghosts held in a similar existential status? Hmm. Chain mails can raise such deep existential questions sometimes.

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Well, that’s it for today. It would be futile to hope that this post managed to lower the circulation of these chain mails, though. After all, there’s always the chance that disfigured knife-wielding ghosts will appear floating next to your bed in the middle of the night to kill you because you didn’t annoy enough living people with your chain mails, regardless of what I say. (:

Interruptions

I positively hate to be interrupted. It cannot be helped. I do not think anybody enjoys having all the effort they’ve put into composing and uttering their sentences wasted because somebody who is otherwise neurologically intact has such a short memory span that he can’t hold what he’s about to say in his mind for more than ten seconds.

Granted, I don’t put much effort into composing my sentences; they mostly just flow out. But I do put plenty of effort into uttering my sentences, especially since I’ve had a stammer since I was 8! If you had a lack of fluency so severe that stall owners ask you if you can speak Chinese when you try to tell them that you want to buy a packet of Twisties in the void deck, especially since your proficiency in the two languages has been more or less equal since you were 6, would you enjoy having people barge in halfway through your sentences to ask the person who is listening to you about yesterday’s Maths homework?

Like I say in debate speeches, that question was meant to be rhetorical, but some people might have a different answer. You could say that the person might want to say something important. But I am not in the habit of creating 100-word sentences longer than Primary One compositions. Unless it is a matter of life and death, can’t you wait five more seconds for me to finish what I’m trying to say before barging in with your urgent question about negative numbers? Wouldn’t interrupting me while I’m valiantly trying to force a word out of my throat only make me take longer to finish my sentence?

You could say that I should be able to finish my sentence after the interruption. That’s easier said than done. Unless you have been literate and articulate since the age of two but suddenly unable to get five-word strings out without pausing since the second year of primary school, you have no idea what it is like to have the effort it takes to expel a sentence from the mouth brushed aside like so much worthless junk.

I am not trying to look for sympathy. I am merely saying that it is basic courtesy not to interrupt other people while they are talking, especially if those people are obviously finding it difficult to utter a coherent sentence without punctuating it with ill-timed pauses!

I especially hate it when somebody interrupts me during my sentence and then makes a big show of getting me to calm down. If you want me to calm down, stop putting my clauses asunder! Stop cutting my sentences into pieces and making them even more pause-filled than they already are! Stop making me look like I’m making a mountain out of a molehill when you are the one intent on blocking my path with obstacles wherever I go!

I do not mind you finishing my sentence for me if I am trying to convey a simple message without success. If I am trying to tell you that I am going to walk to the rubbish bin to discard my food packaging, but I get stuck on “rubbish”, there is no harm in your putting a stop to the wastage of valuable recess time by filling in the rest of the sentence for me, especially if my meaning is obvious. What I cannot stand is the hijacking of my airtime by other people who obviously don’t have stammering problems and who couldn’t care less about the difficulty I’m facing in getting my message across.

Here’s an example of what usually happens:

Me: “I…I’m going to walk to the -”

Other Person to Listener: “What homework was there yesterday? Was the Maths due today?”

My message gets completely lost in this exchange, because the listener has no idea what I’m going to walk to – the washroom? the classroom? – and diverts her attention to answering the Other Person’s questions about homework instead. By the time she’s finished telling the Other Person about homework, she’s probably forgotten that I even opened my mouth to talk in the first place. I’m certainly not going to sit there clutching my food packaging during the whole exchange, so I walk off and am perceived as rude for abandoning a conversation. We are sitting at the 113 class table. Aren’t there plenty of other people you can ask who aren’t already in a conversation?

I positively hate this obnoxious behaviour. I do not mind if the interruption involves few actual words but little more than a gesture and a nod, but having to put my sentence on hold to accommodate your irrepressible need to know when yesterday’s homework was due is an imposition. I only acquiesce because I do not wish to cause a squabble over something perceived to be trivial by other people who can speak fluently, and because I do not wish to be perceived as petty. But that doesn’t give you the right to continue presuming my transparency.

Heavy-handed lumbering

I’m sorry for not blogging about school, but that’s not the main point now. I am maintaining the anonymity of everyone in this post by not mentioning names or identifying details beyond schools, and I trust that my commenters will have the courtesy not to identify those involved. There, now you can’t accuse me of defamation. (And if you insist on speculating wildly and projecting this post onto yourself, any resulting negative feelings/hysteria/mental breakdown are/is not my responsibility. Thank you.)

I hate heavy-handed lumbering into other people’s affairs.

I hate it more than I hate bad grammar and twitting and stupidity. (Although stupidity comes a close second.) I cannot stand it when other people interfere with things that are quite frankly none of their business and force the parties affected to live by rules enacted by those who do not have the benefit of any perspective beyond that of the voyeur surreptitiously peeking into a drama in someone else’s apartment using a periscope constructed from materials bought at a primary school science fair.

I cannot stand it when people jump to conclusions based on evidence so minuscule as to be virtually nonexistent and implement policies based on what they think is the bird’s-eye view. I cannot stand it when they pretend to be authorities on the subject when they have virtually no information to go by. I cannot stand it when their actions affect those actually involved, those who know much better than the “authorities” do but who are forced to obey the rules of the uninformed self-appointed legislators.

It’s surprising, really, how people can overestimate their information in this manner. You could have nothing more than a scrap of information scavenged from somebody’s half-eaten meal, but armed with this mindset you could fancy yourself omniscient. And only deities are omniscient, so your next actions will obviously be made from a pedestal among the clouds.

It is like switching on the television halfway through a show. You won’t understand what’s going on. Jumping to your feet and moralising about the plot would only interrupt everybody else’s viewing experience. You would also look stupid as the plot unfolds and you are proven to have been more wrong than the people who said that if you went too far in one direction during a journey around the world, you’d fall off the edge. But it wouldn’t really bother you, would it? Just as long as you managed to blast a hole through the TV with the flames of moral indignation and thoroughly ruin everyone’s day.

Myopia, blindness, condescending interference, call it what you will. The fact remains that you need more than a few crumbs of information caught under the table of the truly informed to make a decision that will affect other people’s lives. To make judgments with profound ramifications on other people without weighing more than a tiny scrap of data that barely moves the needle on the scale and that needs tons of bias to weigh the scale down is indefensible. No matter what.

Apologies

My apologies for leaving my blog to gather dust for three weeks.

I think the recent tendency to photograph every public infraction and post it on STOMP is absolutely ridiculous. Very few posts are even remotely newsworthy; most are examples of garden-variety inconsideration that could have been settled at the scene, some are pointless paranoia (“I wonder if it’s legal to bring a strong laser pointer into Singapore?” is one example I’ve seen before) and some have dubious intentions.

One example of a pointless, overblown post with severe consequences is this. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that their version of the story was correct. In that case, wouldn’t they have been humiliated and punished for nothing, all because one person couldn’t resist taking photographs of them and putting them on the Internet instead of asking them to stop at the scene?

Let’s see what happens if their story was untrue. My question is, would posting this online solve anything? Was it necessary to stamp out this behaviour? The poster was obviously capable of using language to communicate with the parties at the scene to request a stop to the behaviour he perceived as inappropriate, so why didn’t he use it? Without even trying that, the most basic step in stopping this “unsightly” behaviour, he skipped two steps ahead, omitting even reporting their behaviour to the school, but jumping straight to posting a photograph of their actions on the Internet. Was that necessary, or was it merely an indefensible example of inconsideration far exceeding anything they did that day, since the poster had not thought about the fact that it would affect them so severely?

This is one of the more severe cases. Another case involved a boy raising funds for either his school or charity (it was quite long ago) who was seen taking a 20-cent coin out of the tin. Unfortunately, the poster involved was the kind who just couldn’t resist taking pictures of any and all perceived infractions and posting them online for all to see. And what was the result? The alleged theft turned out to be playing with the coins because of boredom. Apparently the poster, so eager to photograph the infraction, had not noticed him putting the coin back afterwards. Unfortunately, because of somebody’s enthusiasm about blowing an inconsequential act of boredom out of proportion, the school had to get involved. Why? Because the boy had been bored. Do we really need an entire website, or a section of a website if you want to be picky, devoted to such nonsense?

The pointless articles about people hogging seats with bags or not giving up their seats also fall into the category of nonsense, although they certainly cause less severe consequences. Such inane posts are utterly pointless, because they are nothing but whining after the fact. Inconsideration is bad. We get the point. But why didn’t you confront the person at the scene? If you were sitting, why didn’t you offer your own seat? Why did you choose to delay the whining and impassioned social commentary until it was too late for your words to affect the situation?

And what about nonsense such as this? Three students had been playing cards on the MRT, an activity that is not proscribed by any authorities, other than self-appointed ones. But it was theoretically possible that there was a rule against playing cards on the MRT, a rule completely invisible in comparison to the much-publicised regulations regarding eating, drinking and smoking, just like it is theoretically possible that when I left my history notes in class during a trip to the washroom, somebody stole them, replaced them with a brand-new exercise book and wrote false information in my handwriting. In that scenario, however, I do not choose to post my suspicions on the Internet complete with a photograph. The poster in this case appears to think otherwise. Despite admitting to having nothing more than curiosity about whether playing cards on public transport was allowed, he posted their photograph online anyway. Who cares that there’s at least a 50% chance they’re innocent? Other commuters, most of whom are at least twice the age of these students, might be so impressionable that they do the same! Never mind that there’s nothing actually wrong with that.

The poster mentioned nothing the students had done that he knew to be wrong. The students had not been throwing cards around. The students had not been putting cards on the floor to watch commuters slip. The students had not been using a seat as a table on which to leave their cards while playing. The only reason for the post was the poster’s ignorance disguised as curiosity, but for some reason that was enough to justify humiliating three innocent students on the Web and leaving permanent records of their actions online when their actions hadn’t even been worthy of comment in the first place.

Of course, although such rubbish tends to dominate the articles posted, there are also genuine grievances such as foreign objects in food (how do you get a roll of masking tape in your food?). One example is this. In this case, the woman’s actions were genuinely inexcusable and caused real inconvenience, and the poster was not an outsider poking his nose into somebody else’s business; the poster was genuinely inconvenienced and endangered by the woman’s insistence on occupying the wheelchair slot with luggage.

Such articles, however, are few and far between, lost in the onslaught of inane rubbish about seat-hogging commuters and things that are simply other people’s business. What is the purpose of this portal anyway? I do not think it was created to allow users to police society for infractions of their personal moral code and lord over everyone else in their pompous self-righteousness. I think that one important function it is supposed to serve is to remind society of the existence of inconsideration and inappropriate behaviour and of the need to stop it. But when we reach the point of saturation, the point of diminishing returns, the point at which individual articles about seat-hogging and impassioned social commentary about students on public transport cease to make any meaningful impact on society, how can we say that the purpose of the portal is being served? Don’t such actions simply turn STOMP into a vehicle for exacting revenge, a website devoted to the perpetration of acts that would be called cyberbullying and voyeurism in any other context but that of self-righteous moral pontification?

First day of school

I don’t think I slept more than a few hours on the night before the first day of school. I went to bed at eleven, but I couldn’t fall asleep; instead, I was trapped in sleepless consciousness until the light was switched on and I was called out of bed at half-past five.

After getting out of bed, I changed into the PE shirt and culottes before going to eat my breakfast. After my morning routine was complete, I went down to get onto the school bus at 6.25, because we had been told that it would arrive at half-past six.

Unfortunately, this information had been wrong, and I had actually held everyone on the bus back by five minutes. My apologies, everyone!

On the bus, I occupied myself with mental replaying of debates and flame wars, as well as with thoughts of additional sentences I should have appended to my final post on my LEAD blog before it was wiped out as a result of my graduation. Soon, we arrived at the school.

The area near the entrance (I’m not actually sure what this is called) was filled with students milling around in happiness and confusion. I could identify most of the Secondary One students, because all the others were in the normal school uniform rather than in their PE shirts and culottes. However, some of the aforementioned Secondary One students hadn’t gotten the message printed on the schedules given to us during CCAO and were in the normal school uniform like the seniors.

After a while, I realised that many Secondary One students were crowding around a bulletin board on which the class lists had been pasted. I walked to the board. After failing to spot my name on the back of the board with 101 to 106 or 107 (I think), I walked to the front of the board and spotted my name on the 113 list. I counted seven other people I knew in my class, although I could have counted wrongly in my early-morning haze.

We flooded into the parade square (?) and sat in our classes. Since 113 was the last class, I sat at the extreme right of the parade square. The principal gave a speech welcoming us into the school and the seniors back into the school.

After assembly, we had quite a few talks. I enjoyed the principal’s talk the most.

After the talks, we had recess, I think. I couldn’t resist the temptation to buy some snacks from the snack stall.

After recess, my friend and I got lost for a while, because we were unsure where to go. We ended up sneaking into the history talk about ten minutes late. Fortunately we were in the last class and didn’t have to walk around the darkened room to locate our class.

After the talk, we went up to class! I think I know how to get to my classroom from the canteen, despite my poor sense of direction (this is an understatement). We met our form teacher and our PSLs, and we played orientation games. A lot of memory work was involved, as we had to memorise each other’s names, and we hadn’t yet gotten our name badges (I think ours are red). When we played “Blow, Wind, Blow”, and characteristics I exhibited kept getting called, I skidded around in my socks and ended up falling ungracefully on the floor.

After this, we went to the hall to learn cheers and the orientation song. There was also a long CCA talk that was virtually identical to the one we’d gotten at CCAO. After this, there were talks about the Regional Studies Programme.

At about 4, we were dismissed, but six of us went to NYPS for a reunion. After that, I went home with my mother in a taxi.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas!

The title speaks for itself.

The PSLE conundrum

The PSLE conundrum occurs when I am asked about my PSLE results. This is a rather awkward problem.

It would be boastful to declare my score of 275 up front when all that was asked was how I had done. That would be revealing too much information and would be considered arrogant. But I can’t possibly say something like “quite well” either, because that would be just as bad. To say “quite okay, lah” would be rather vague and wouldn’t convey too much information, as a wide range of scores are considered “okay”. Other circumlocutions such as “reasonably well” would have the same problem. Also, there is always the danger that downplaying my results too much would constitute an insult to those who scored lower.

Does anybody have any suggestions?

Reporting Day

I arrived at RGS early. I was in Group 1. Upon registering, we were given a bottle of water and a sheaf of papers held together with a paper clip. They contained papers such as our uniform order form and book list, as well as a programme for that day. My bag already contained a book (“The Case Against Homework”, hehe), a notebook and a pencil case. I added the bottle of water and held the sheaf of papers in case I needed it later.

We went up to the hall after this and sat according to our groups. We had been organised into groups in alphabetical order. I was unsure whether we should sit according to our number on the name list or anywhere we wanted within our row, but I didn’t want to go all the way to the 21st chair in my row and end up sitting in between two people I didn’t know or sitting between two empty chairs, so I sat with the other Nanyang girl in my row.

At about 9, the talks began. I saw from the programme that we had one and a half hours of talks to sit through. Although that didn’t sound very exciting, I tried not to jump to conclusions.

I can’t possibly remember the titles of all the talks, but there was a talk entitled “Welcome to RGS!”, a talk about the Raffles Programme, a talk about CCAs, a long, picture-heavy talk about Parents for RGS and a talk about Starting Right with Good Decisions. This lasted for an hour and 40 minutes, after which we got up from our seats and were led up to the classrooms.

We received many sheets of paper in the classrooms, including an Interbank GIRO form, a Personal Information Form (the form we received in P1 had a nicer-sounding title, P1 Pupils’ Personal Particulars, complete with alliteration), HMT and Third Language forms, and various letters. We also received an orientation bag (I’m not sure what it was called), which contained a good writers’ toolkit, bookmarks, a towel, two pairs of school socks, a school tie and a red ring file containing a message to the 2009 Secondary One cohort, a message to parents about PRGS and letters about subjects such as locker usage and parking, among others. The towel had the same design on it as the bag.

We wrote down our contact numbers. Those who had brought their EESIS forms submitted them. (I’m not sure what this stands for.)

After this, we went down to buy our school books and uniforms.

There were only about three or four bags of school books, but each bag was laden with school books and was thus rather heavy. We lugged these bags to the second floor, where I tried on uniforms.

There were three booths in the uniform room, for lack of a better name. The first booth contained a size 13 blouse, a size 32 pinafore and size XS culottes. The second booth contained a size 14 blouse, a size 34 pinafore and size S culottes. The third booth contained a size 15 blouse, a size 36 pinafore and size M culottes, I think. Extra samples and other sizes were available from a counter in the room. The booths doubled up as fitting rooms, although there wasn’t much privacy because the booths were basically folded bulletin boards, so each booth would only have three walls. The corner booths were the worst because anybody who stood at the side could potentially have caught a glimpse. Unfortunately, I was in the first booth.

I had to mix and match items of different sizes from different booths. After we had established the sizes of my blouse, pinafore and culottes, we tried the PE shirt on (as there weren’t enough booths, this was done by pulling it over the blouse of whatever school uniform the person was wearing). We could not try the PE shorts on, so this part was done by estimation.

After establishing my sizes, we went downstairs to buy the uniform. The queue was extremely long, but we eventually bought my uniform and went home in a taxi with our five plastic bags.