Another one bites the dust.
Monday, August 27, 2007
The weather has been pretty crazy these days, swinging from oppressively hot to depressingly rainy within hours.
Perhaps, because of this, people around me have been falling sick. Like a true hypochondriac, I was worried for the past 2 weeks or so that I would be struck down with a virus of some kind sooner or later.
And true enough, I fell sick within days of worrying.
I wake up, and it feels like there is a mountaineering expedition going on inside my throat. Pickaxes, pitons, crampons, knives, and then they start a fire in there.
Then I go 'What the hell is that?! Oh wait, it's my throat that's glowing. Close your mouth, it's keeping me awake.'
To make things worse, I've been having problems with my nose. People say that I should be glad because most guys my age are having relationship issues, monetary issues, but seriously, they've got no issue until they've got a sinus issue.
Every single morning, I wake up and my nose just starts running. To be honest, I have no problems with that at all, except that it makes me look like a drug addict.
I end up using a lot of tissues because during the mornings and nights, my nose just keeps running. In the day, I perspire. This is really bad, because it means that I need tissue whenever I am awake.
And it doesn't help that my parents give me a dirty look everytime I bring a new box of tissues into my room.
I think it might be something drastic like pneumonia, but people around me (the same bastards who gave me the germs) keep reassuring me that it's just a cold.
Well, this 'cold' has been going on for almost six days, assholes.
Anyway, fret not, people. Despite being saddled with mounting health problems, I shall persevere in this blogging thing.
And you people should be thinking to yourselves, 'So sick and he's still blogging? Damn! He is one brave son-of-a-bitch!'
Author: Ye » Comments:
They are the cartoon heroes!
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Oh my. Once again, I took two weeks to update my blog again. I think I should change the blog into a fortnightly column instead, don’t you think?
Well, I’m really sorry for this. However, I hope you guys understand that blogging is a big effort for me. I am terrible at writing in English and everytime I try to post something on my blog, I have to submit my posts to a couple of my friends for vetting. My friends are really slow readers, so it’s not entirely my fault that my blog gets updated so infrequently.
Anyway, did you hear about this ODEX saga?
Basically, ODEX is this Singaporean company that imports cartoons from Japan, pack them into low-resolution VCDs/DVDs, and try to sell them to kids at about $10 to $30 each.
Ingenious business plan huh?
Surprisingly, their business did not do well.
Apparently, cartoon fans have decided that ‘Hey! That’s quite an expensive price to pay for pixelated cartoons! Why don’t we download quality cartoons from the Internet for free?’
ODEX’s low-resolution VCDs/DVDs faced a huge competitor in the form of the Internet, which offered good quality versions of the same cartoons for free. Their sales dipped drastically, as a result.
It is very sad.
One day in 2007, however, ODEX had another ingenious idea (after deciding to sell low-resolution cartoons at $10 each). They started sending letters to cartoon fans who were downloading cartoons, and threatened to sue them unless they pay some money to ODEX.
Now, I am not a legal expert, but I have this gut feeling that threatening people to pay you is against the law.
This saga also reminds me of a little fat kid from my primary school.
A long time ago, when I was still in primary school, there was this little fat kid in my school who would buy big packets of sweets from the neighbourhood store for three bucks each.
Fatty would then try to sell these sweets at fifty cents per candy to other little kids. However, the other kids were smarter than him and refused to buy, because they could get it for free from their parents.
Fatty got angry and started threatening those little kids who did not buy candy from him. He demanded for their recess money and used these to buy more sweets and sell. This went on for quite a while.
One day, the teacher found out about what Fatty was doing and caned him in public for bullying. The Fatty had three cane marks across his butt-cheeks and a ton of sweets that he could not sell.
Will this happen to ODEX too?
Oh! And there seems to be a twist to this saga.
Some people on the Internet (here and here) seem to have found an interesting nugget of information.
Apparently, Mr Stephen Sing Xin Yang, a director at ODEX and Secretary to Anti-Video Piracy Association of Singapore, made gloating remarks on an Internet forum.
He was using the moniker ‘xysing’ and here’s a capture of what he said:
I have no idea what 'double-6-ed' means, but I definitely would not want to be 'double-6-ed' by this guy, also known as Mr Stephen Sing Xin Yang:
Well, after reading his comments, I was tempted to call him a ‘callous bastard who gloats over the misfortunes of others and delights in causing misery to young innocuous kids.’
However, I am a careful social blogger and I have an image to uphold. Hence, I checked with my legal team and they advised me to call him ‘Mr Stephen Sing’ instead.
I guess I have no choice but to obey the law. If I don’t, ODEX might just send me a letter because I didn’t buy stuff from them.
Author: Ye » Comments:
