Imagi.nation #5

Here’s the last entry.

Computers help me enjoy life to the fullest from A to Z, from morn till night. Computers enable:

Aeroplanes to fly me to Crete and Kowloon, aerospace advances for me to see pictures of the moon.

Banking to be transacted at the speed of light, anytime morning or night.

Communication with family, friends and strangers; chatting, emailing and social
networking with Facebookers.

Documents to be electronically filed; making retrieval a job for juveniles.

Education via e-learning so easy to attain; entertainment technology gives me music, mega-movies, and the ‘rain in Spain’.

Food producing and processing to be modernised; satisfying my gastronomic craving for food healthy and nice.

Government red-tape to be snipped and shortened; so that waiting need not be a great big yawn.

Healthcare advances to treat diseases rare or rife; making me healthier to enjoy life.

Internet access to provide instant info at my fingertips; anytime, anywhere when there’s a need.

Justice systems to be streamlined to run smoothly; so that law and order is maintained in the country.

Kitchen and household gadgets like microwave oven and washing machine, to give me time for activities that’ll make me grin.

Libraries both brick and mortar and online too, to offer reading materials to make my knowledge accrue.

Manufacturers to automate production; offering quality products for my consumption.

News and views to be delivered instantly; whether celebratory or catastrophic they be.

Online transactions to become a cinch, banking and shopping can be done without a cringe.

Publishing to be done faster, giving me more literary gems like Harry Potter.

Quality assurance to be precise, rejecting inferior goods that will mar my life.

Retailing to be made easy and time-saving, just scan the bar-code, and I’d be paying.

Security systems to be high-tech, my family and property to protect.

Travel arrangements to be streamlined, telecommunications to open up the lines.

Utilities such as electricity and water to efficiently flow, to make my life comfortable and aglow.

Video games to keep the kids entertained, so that I have downtime to keep sane.

Weather forecasts to be more precise, so I can keep my laundry dry and nice.

X-rated shows to be downloaded in secret, and watched quietly in the closet.

You-tube to instruct or entertain, on whatever subject I want to fill my brain.

Zodiac predictions to be more veracious, so I can avoid events capricious and live life luxurious.

Imagi.nation #4

This is the fourth entry.

I no longer work as a secretary. I’m a writer now. The computer is a secretary’s best friend but to a writer, it’s her right hand. Without the computer, I would be so incapacitated as a writer, like working with only one hand. Okay, it’s a bad analogy but it’s 12-something and I have to post this up as it’s the last day of the contest!!

My brain is too befuddled after working on a 1,000 word article for a Merdeka special and my brain cells can’t churn up any more funny stuff. So, I’ll just be straight and staid.

- With computers, I can work from home without having to see my editor or even talk to her. All I need is internet connection. And my editor can keep sane without having me bugging her on the phone all the time (if she goes crazy over email harassing, that’s another matter.)

- I can gather information without having to step out of my house. No need to make trips to the library, no need to rant and rave when I discover that the library does not have the information I seek because they don’t have the budget to buy new books.

- I can conduct interviews over the email without having to travel long distances to meet the interviewee. Of course, some interviews have to be conducted face to face, but these are rare and reserved for people who are too important for email interviews.

- When I need to write about movies and tv shows, I don’t have to see the show over and over again or rent DVDs when I miss an episode. Information is at my fingertips via the computer.

So, of course, the computer advances my life as a writer by making things easier for me and saving me time and legwork. What it can’t do is to add another zero to my royalty cheque.

Imagi.nation #3

Here’s number 3.

In a world without computers, when manual typewriters reign in offices:

“Ms. Teh, what is this? There are so many mistakes in this letter!” Mr. Hong threw two sheets of paper onto my desk. I squirmed uncomfortably. The letter was smudged with correction tape (where you have to hold a piece of white tape over the letter you’ve typed wrongly and retype the wrong letter so that it would white-out the mistake.

Mr. Hong jabbed the carbon copy with his pudgy finger. “What’s this? Paper eaten by cockroaches, is it?”

On the carbon copy, I’d applied the eraser too vigorously and there were a couple of holes in the pink tissue. “Cockroach!” I pointed to the floor near Mr. Hong’s feet. He took a few steps backward, looking around fearfully.

“Coward,” I muttered beneath my breath.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“I’ll type it out again,” I said.

“Good. Make it perfect,” he said as he strode off.

Ten years later…

Mr. Hong threw two sheets of papers onto my desk. “Ms. Teh, this letter is perfectly typed. You get an A+ for this but I’m not happy with this carbon copy. What are all these white dots?”

My electric typewriter was a wonder compared with the manual typewriter. There was auto correction: all I had to do was to tab the backspace key and the mistake would be erased automatically. Yahoo! But carbon copies still had to be corrected manually with the liquid paper and the oft-corrected copy did look like white polka dots splashed across the pink tissue.

“They look like polka dots,” Mr. Hong spoke my thoughts out loud. “I could cut these out to use as ribbons for my daughter.”

“Cheapo,” I muttered under my breath.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“I’ll type it out again,” I said.

“Good. Make it perfect,” he said as he strode off.

Twenty years later…

Mr. Hong placed some documents on my desk. “Ms. Teh, this is excellent work. If you keep this up, I can assure you of a fat increment at the end of the year.”

I beamed at his broad back as he walked away. I hope the increment would be as fat as his behind. I leafed through the contract which he had signed. All the pages were pristinely typed, all mistakes having been corrected on the computer screen before the document was printed out. I hummed Abba’s Money Money Money as I patted my computer lovingly. The computer is a secretary’s best friend.

Imagi.nation #2

Important : To win RM50 cash voucher and a copy of my new book, please comment on this entry or any other Imagi.nation entries.

Here’s my second entry for the contest.

As Elaine had pointed out in the comments, the previous entry ended abruptly. Well, it wasn’t done yet. Here’s the continuation…

To recap, the topic is on how computers would advance my lifestyle. Using the same scenarios, here’s how.

The newspaper woman screeches to a halt at my gate at 7.20 a.m. She gets her papers early, by 6 something, thanks to the super-duper computers at the newspaper office. Text can be easily cut and pasted, copy moved around and graphics inserted with a few key strokes at the computer and the latest edition can go to press and roll out by the wee hours of the morning. And I get to read the latest news while having coffee and toast. If it’s a rainy day and the papers are delayed, I can always log on to the internet and access the online edition.

At the NRD which has installed state-of-the-art computers which can speed up the application of ICs, my son can apply for his IC, get the photo taken there and then, and complete the whole process in less than 15 minutes.

Any dish I want to whip up to impress the in-laws, I could google on my computer and get a long list of recipes. For certain dishes, I could even get a step-by-step video instruction filmed by kind hearted souls to help cooking novices.

The computer with internet connection is truly a goldmine of information. Whether I want to look up information on ‘boils’ or acquaint myself with matters of the heart (for my mother’s heart condition), I can do so quickly without having to leaf through tomes of encyclopaedia or making a trip to the library or bugging my doctor friend.

Computers are truly indispensable. Without them, we might as well be Flintstones chugging along on bicycles.

Imagi.Nation contest : Help me win to win!

Samsung is one of my favourite companies. I’ve won some cool prizes from them (trips and a phone) and now there’s another opportunity for me to win something I’ve been hankering after : a notebook computer!

To have a shot at the prize, I need to blog about one of three topics. That isn’t a problem. But I need help from you, dear readers, to help me win the contest by commenting on the posting as that’s one of the criteria for judging. To provide some incentive, I’ve decided to make this into a contest for readers of this blog.

What you have to do

Comment on my blog entries for the Samsung Imagi.nation contest.

Prizes

Main prize : RM50 cash voucher and a copy of my latest book, Stretching your Dollar$ and $ense – More than 300 money-saving tips for anyone and everyone. (The book is slated to be out in bookstores in August. By the way, this contest is relevant to the book. One of the ways to save money is to win prizes in contests!)

Two consolation prizes : A copy of the above book.

Bonus : If I win the contest, I may throw in some other goodies as well, but this is dependent on what I win. In any case, even if I don’t win, the main prize and consolation prizes will still be awarded to my blog readers. Bottom line : if you help me win, you win too.

Closing date

Friday, 31 July 2009

This is my entry for the Samsung Imagi.nation contest. I’ve chosen Topic 3 : Enjoy life to the fullest with electronic products. What is the best electronic invention you can’t live without? How would it help advance your lifestyle?

Imagi.nation Entry #1

The human brain is smarter than any man-made computer. Alas, my brain is not smarter than even the slowest computer, so I do need the computer to make life easier for me.

How would the computer help advance my lifestyle? Perhaps the best way to show it is to paint a scenario of life without computers.

I get the morning papers late. There’s no super-duper computers for our newsmen to use. They have to type it out on manual typewriters, do a massive amount of cutting and pasting, then send them out for printing.

I need to take my 12-year old to the Registration Department to apply for an IC. After school, we dropped by the department. The queue snakes out the door and into the lift lobby. I didn’t know there are so many sweaty 12-year olds in town (the smell of their perspiration is nauseating). There’s no super-duper computers to streamline processes, so everything must be done manually : filling in of forms, checking information, taking photos etc etc. It takes us two hours to get the process completed and two months wait before the IC would be ready for collection.

My parents-in-law’s birthdays (since they are one month apart, they’re usually celebrated together) are coming up soon. I’ve decided to cook Tung Poh Yoke, a braised pork dish. I remember reading the recipe in the newspapers but I had not cut it out. I went through the stack of old newspapers in the store room. By the time I went through the last sheaf of newspapers, my hands were black with ink and I had not found it. My son must’ve used it to clean the windows the other day. There’s no super-duper computer with internet connection or I would’ve just typed in Tung Poh Yoke into the search engine and voila, the recipe is mine for the cooking. Now I have to think of another dish to impress the in-laws with. Drat and double drat. Perhaps I should just buy the dish from the restaurant and pass it off as mine but M-i-l might not be so easily fooled.

Later that evening my friend called to talk about her ailment : boils. What are you boiling, I asked initially, feeling surprised as I know she doesn’t cook to save her life. “You don’t know what are boils?” she asks, shocked.
“Sorry, ah the line is bad. I call you back.” I say. Then I cut off the line and make a beeline for my book shelf. There’s medical encyclopaedia somewhere. Oh dear, somebody has taken it.

The phone rings again. “If it’s Aunty Mimi, tell her I’m in the toilet,” I whisper to my son. Fortunately, it isn’t and he doesn’t have to lie for mum. Finally I find the encyclopaedia : in the shelf downstairs. I quickly look up “Boils.” There’s no super-duper computer for me to look up this ailment or I would’ve the information at my finger tips in a snap. I call up Mimi and manage to talk to her intelligently about her medical problem.

Update

Life has been pretty hectic : writing, teaching, cooking, chauffeuring, sending mum to the hospital and so on so forth. I did sit down to write two new posts. As you can see from the earlier entry, my story of Goldilocks got gobbled up by the internet gremlin. After hitting ‘publish’, my entry disappeared as the Streamyx connection went bonkers. In fact, Screamyx has been pretty shaky of late, which is very, very frustrating indeed. Another time, I wrote about some of the funny stuff my kids said, and that too got eaten up by the gremlin. I should’ve typed it out in Word first, then cut and paste into the blog. If the internet connection went bonkers, at least I have a copy in Word.

I need your help. Details in the next posting.

Goldilocks and happy endings

S