Came back home yesterday only to experience some crazy telecommunication breakdown in my home. Everything started when I went on my usual routine which was to turn on my laptop to go online and check my mails/surf etc. But what I saw was a sickening page that kept telling me I was not connected to the internet. I thought... ok... perhaps some page refreshing might do the work. But no. It didn't. Ok... so then I thought... perhaps wireless isn't working. Shall try the other laptop tt was connected to the phone line. But No... it still did not work. OK... well then perhaps it cld be that my modem was hung. Turned it off and on and checked the screens again.. but hell no. I was still "not connected". WTH! After trying out for so damn long and I'm still not connected??!
There there... this was the sickening screen tt stared back at me the whole time last night.
If I cldn't even surf the net, cld I even be able to sign into msn? Tt's right... another sickening troubleshoot message popped out. argh.
Ok, so my internet was down. Let me try calling singnet. So I reached out for my home phone to start dialing... but hey... there was no tone on my receiver wadsoever. All i heard was a deafening silence. Damn.. what's going on? First thing tt came to my mind was that perhaps there was some screwups in the payment of bills so i called mum who was still at work. Told her whatever was happening and she said... hey... don't tell me someone stole our line? Haha...the next she told me was tt perhaps our bills weren't paid or there was some probs with the giro system or...? Anyways, she ended the call with a "no use guessing la.. I'd call singtel now since my mobile line's with singtel. Call u back" *click*
Ok... so mum called back kinda quickly to say tt apparently, they've received many calls. And they've sent some engineers down to the area to check out what the prob was cos it looks like only our area was affected. "Oh ok.. so we weren't the only ones affected huh."
So with internet down, what other sources of entertainment cld i seek? Yeah!! TV! Besides it's already close to 7pm. 640pm in fact. There's still Tyra's show to catch before Kinship II. And guess what? Yeah, ur right. The freaking tv was down too. %^#$
Great. So My TV's down too.
I'm soooo bored! I need some entertainment! So, i ended up searching through mum's stash of vcds/dvds and whipped out one korean drama which I've never watched but heard of. "All in" was it. Some gambling show tt spans over abt 20 discs? Good.. this can entertain me for a while I guess.
After watching till abt 9 plus, mum came back surprisingly early and asked me if everything was settled. "No. Even the TV's down." "What? I wanted to watch some show on popiahs!" "Huh? Popiahs?" Hahaha... I got distracted and started talking to mum as the drama continued showing. After a while, we got bored so we opened our main door and realised tt our other neighbours had their doors opened too. It was weird cos usually most of us had our main doors shut, until once in a blue moon. (there r 3 other families living on the same floor as us - a malay family, a chinese family and an indian family. Wow... totally multiracial eh? haha) Cool. So tt facilitated some kampung talks which was fun. We went over to Chopra's and asked if she had the same prob. She said yeah... and her experience was almost the same as ours. The first thing she did was to check through her phone bills in tt pile of letters. Haha... So, we went home visiting which was kinda fun actually. Cos it's like open house/house warming? Just tt it's only amongst families on level 9. How cool's that?
GL called me halfway through my home visits and apparently, his side was affected too. Wow! Never knew it stretched all the way there. Anyways, we made some plans for cny and he also claimed tt he'd be coming over to nus main campus from bt timah campus more often. And of course, cheapo him made me agree to treat him when he comes over. Wth! Hahaha... I'd make sure he treats me when i go over to BTC! Haha! Time to rip ur pockets!!!!! Wahaha... kidding. Janet said she was freaking out cos she had some impt work emails to send out so hopefully her internet wld not fail her. She was lucky cos her cables served her well. It was just us, the unlucky ones. And yeah... she was an irritant to have texted me the following: "Eh nothing abt it in e news! haha or mayb those affected dun even hv communication w outside ;)" and "haha like prisoners of war...radio? k lah slp early" Wth! Coming from a good friend! Hahaha...
As u sld already know, I dun sleep tt early but too early, which explains why I'm called a panda. But well.... I was not accustomed to sleeping at 1230. It was still early and I was still wide awake. And yes. Everything was still down which means no entertainment. What was i to do? Bored Bored Bored!
So guess what I did?
Surprise Surprise! I double clicked this doc after wks of not doing so. Now aren't u proud of me? (Hey wait... wait till u hear the rest.) Wow.. it actually looks pretty foreign to me. But it was good... cos by 130am, I was already sleepy and all i did was like what? 2 paragraphs of crap? Haha... I'm hopeless.
Wow... never really knew how impt such technologies was to me or how much our lives have evolved to have us depending so greatly on them until today. Sometimes, it's a scary thought that perhaps E.M Forster's "The Machine Stops" may not actually be too far-fetched for us after all. Kampung days can be fun to urban dwellers like us but how long can we last?