Bad Name Cards, Drills, And Other Oxservations

Before I forget, I'll just say this: never, ever trust the business of making your name cards to someone with the design sense of a blind goose, and who decides to send it to a printing company that in the end makes the sophomoric efforts of a group of 5 year olds look better.

I blame it all on myself, actually. Should have vetoed the design before they sent it in, but since I was teaching the whole day I thought I could trust them with the simplest of things. I was wrong. There's the temptation to actually take a photo of the blasted thing and include it in this post, but at this time I'm still too mortified to even take a look at them. All 100 of them.

Boys and girls, if you were to take RM 30 and burn it on your stove you'd probably still be ahead of me. I'm left with a stack of sub-par name cards that are too ugly to look at, printed on paper that's just about the thickness and texture of two Double A sheets stuck together, and printed by a syarikat "orang kita" (if you miss the reference, ask around. I'm sure someone knows).

Bearing this in mind, it's been a lovely day. I'm in a nice, mean, sarcastic mood, and as I was driving back from work, everything (and I DO mean everything) took on a decidedly sucky mien. Some of my more coherent observations:

Having been assaulted by the annoying radio spots for the better part of the week, let me just ask you this: who the hell needs a surround sound phone? When you put the mobile in your back pocket, does the ringtone come from both your arse cheeks? Do you actually need to be surrounded in full surround polyphonic glory whenever your mum needs you to buy another tin of Purina for the kitty? As anyone knows, I love technology. But a surround sound phone makes as much sense now as the oft-touted underwater pen (and I'm curious to know if all those billions were justified) since according to popular lore, the Russians one upped the whole thing by using pencils in space.

Take that, NASA.

Anyway, the next thing that caught my eye was slightly better. Passing near SS16 I noticed an ad for a Bosch lithium-ion powered mini screwdriver kit retailing for just RM 159! Now, like other men (?) the notion of owning such a powerful, time saving device is irresistible (a few people will remember that for my birthday a couple years ago I went absolutely ga-ga over a Black and Decker Scumbuster, which I still use religiously) and I have a feeling I'll be owning one of them soon, you know, for those times when it's absolutely essential to have a powered screwdriver.

If by this time any of you are equating the usefulness of a Li-Ion screwdriver with a Surround sound phone, don't even think about it.

Next. Yeah, Zsarina's blogged about it, and I'll put in a word or two. What the hell happened to Malaysian Idol? This weekend's episode was about as exciting as a lobotomy, and probably more painful. The set was pathetic, lighting wouldn't have looked out of place on a porn shoot and the judges were..anemic. If this is what we have to look forward to every weekend, the producers are in for a surprise. Give us (and the contestants) a semblance of dignity, please.

So yes, now I'm at home, sweaty, full and slightly less mean. I've just downloaded a hell of a lot of movies to watch, upgraded my Xbox Media Centre (don't you just love that spelling of the word?) to the final 1.0 version, and I'm going to spend the rest of my night finishing my notes and generally staying away from anything that reminds me of name cards, surround phones and Malaysian Idol.

Goodnight, folks.