Perez Who?

So I've never liked Perez Hilton. I mean, I'm sure he's a nice person in real life and all that, but to be safer, let's say that I've never liked his public persona.

For starters, his real name is Mario Armando Lavandeira. To go with a name like Perez Hilton is a bit like, wtf? I shall call him Mario Armando. Because that's his name. Secondly, have you ever seen what he looks like? He's a fat and ugly mofo. There's no law against being a fat and ugly mofo, but there should be if you're making a living off making fun off celebrities. I don't have anything against gossip bloggers. I, myself, depend on The Superficial for my daily light reading at work, but I feel that once people start calling themselves 'celebrities' and joining reality shows with other pseudo-celebrities, that's where I draw the line. I've said all this before, and I'll definitely say it again if someone asks me.

The source of this rant is of course the ubiquitous news story about how Mario Armando was 'attacked' by Will.I.Am and his honchos. Apparently, the sequence of events went like this:

1. Will.I.Am sounded off on Mario Armando.
2. Mario Armando gets annoyed and says 'Why should I respect you? I don't respect you ... you're a fucking faggot'.
3. Skirmish.
4. Someone knocks out Mario Armando in the melee.

So, Mario Armando gets angry because he's a reporter (let's go out on a limb and call him a 'journalist') and the subject of his reporting becomes angry at, let's say 'alleged falsehoods claimed against him'. I may not actually be a journalist so I wouldn't really know, but isn't that (gee, I don't know) part and parcel of being a journalist? And then Mario Armando the genius also instead of saying "Hey, man, don't hate the playa, hate the game", goes on to say "you're a fucking faggot".

This is, to me, akin to someone bumping into me at clubs several times and then knocking over my drink. Ehem. They deserve it.

Oh, the fun continues. Mario Armando proceeds to tweet about it calling on his Twitter followers to call the police and ask them to go to his location. Yes, because the police have nothing better to do than answer hundreds of calls asking them to go save the life of a man who was punched in the face. Nope, no car accidents or emergency situations. None.

I felt a bit callous when I tweeted that it was stupid for someone to tweet about how badly they've been hurt and how they need the police rather than call the police and ambulance (since oh my god he's so badly hurt) themselves. And then, thanks to the lovely The Superficial and John Mayer, I felt validated.

Let's make this clear. This isn't a tirade against Mario Armando. I don't hate Mario Armando as a person, but I hate how he makes himself out to be a celebrity and acts in the dim limelight that casts upon him every so often.

Moving on up

So I'm thinking of moving out. I know, I've already moved out of my parents' place. The difference is that this time, I'm thinking of moving somewhere to live alone. Well, the only real reason I'm going to be living alone is because I feel that I need to move away from my sisters and there are no close friends who are moving out now so no potential housemates. I mean, it's likely that my house will serve to be a weekend house for some, but no one permanent. No, that wasn't a hint at sexual activities.

Let's run through the reasons why I feel I need to move (again). This is just as much to sort through my thoughts as much as anything else, because I always feel a bit more organised and sure of myself when I list out reasons for doing things:

1. I can have my cats with me. The apartment my sisters and I are supposed to be moving to is owned by my parents and they refuse to let me bring my cats, regardless of my reasoning or begging.
2. I will have less frustration over irreconcilable differences with my sisters. I love them, but we each have little idiosyncracies that don't sit well with the others. They're small enough that it would seem silly to make a big deal of it, but after living with it for a while it builds up. You know?
3. I want to have a permanent place to hang my hat. Somewhere I can make cosy and really call my home. A place that I can make my own in my own style suited to the taste of my comforts.
4. I won't have to worry about rent, or moving out once the tenancy agreement is expired, or unnecessary wastage of electricity, or other things along those lines.
5. I can have as much alone time as I need.

There. That's sorted. Tomorrow, I break the news to dad because mum's away in Russia for a week or so. I've told no one in my family, so I hope my dad is as supportive as I need him to be.

Beware, call centre staff

Today is the day that I catch up on all my 'calling up and sorting out' errands. Not to say that I don't have any work. Actually, I have quite a lot of work. I'm just procrastinating. Anyway, my point is, you'll probably see more than one entry like this today.

Call to Citibank

I lost my credit card sometime 2 weeks ago so I cancelled it and they issued a new one, which obviously has a new credit card number. I haven't got around to checking my mailbox quite yet, so I haven't received it or activated it. I did try to pay my credit card bill last week, however, by calling up the call centre, asking for the new number and Maybank2u-ing to them. Following is the conversation that occurred after I got an SMS from M2U telling me that my payment was rejected:

Me: Hi, can I find out why my payment got rejected?

Him: I'm not sure, ma'am, it might be because the card isn't activated yet.

Me: Well that's ridiculous, I called last week and the lady said it was fine if I made the payment. Who's going to pay me back my Interbank Giro fee of RM2?

Him: Oh, your card doesn't need to be activated to make payment. I'll activate your card for you now.

Me: What? You just said I don't need my card to be activated to make the payment, but I need to activate my card now?

Him: Yes.

Me: ... I don't understand.

Him: You need to activate your card.

Me: Why?

Him: Have you received your card?

Me: No, I don't have it yet.

Him: Oh, then it's better if you don't activate your card if you don't have it yet.

Me: I know. I'm not calling you to activate my card [fuckwit]. I just want to know why my payment was rejected. Let's not talk about activating cards anymore. Now will you tell me why my payment was rejected?

Him: Maybe it's because the account number is wrong. You'll have to check with them if the account number is correct.

Me: Can I check with you?

Him: Okay.

Me: Please read me the account number.

Him: xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx

Me: Okay, the account number was wrong. That was all I needed to know. Thank you.

Yep. Beware, call centre wallas. Today's the day of reckoning.

It's not what it looks like

You know what's a shame? I'll tell you what's a shame. Obviously, otherwise this wouldn't be a blog entry.

It's a shame that people think it's weird for other people to want to be alone. It's a shame that they automatically think that there's something wrong with you. There doesn't have to be something wrong with you to want to be alone.

For example, I love my alone time. I cherish it. I especially love it when both my sisters are away. I love just kicking back and watching TV and generally just being alone. That's another reason why going home for lunch is so awesome for me.

As an extension of this, I love going out for Saturday/Sunday lunches/dinners alone with a good book (and my Archos and heavy duty headphones on Sundays, because that's family day). For a long time, it was IT by Stephen King, just because it was such a thick book. I swear the waiters at Nero Fico saw the progress as I made my way through the book week by week.

And then of course, there are the glances by people who generally think it's odd that I'm sitting there alone having dinner on Saturday night. That sucks, because honestly, I couldn't think of a better way for myself to spend Saturday night other than just chilling out, having a good dinner and a couple of drinks, with or without other people.

Airbus Boycott?

I think most frequent flyers have noticed the unusually high number of aviation incidents lately. If you didn't, then take note. Most notable were:

• May 2009: Air France's Airbus A330 disappeared off the face of the earth [Link].
• Feb 2009: 50 people were killed when a small Colgan Air aircraft crashed into a house (Donnie? Donnie Darko?) [Link].
• Oct 2008: Qantas' Airbus A330-300 suddenly dropped in altitude [Link].
• Sept 2008: Boeing 737-300 crashes in Russia, killing all [Link].
• Aug 2008: Spanair's MD82 aircraft catches fire, 153 dead [Link].
• July 2008: Qantas' Boeing 747-400 developed a case of a hole in its fuselage while in mid-air [Link].
• June 2008: Airbus 310 crashes in Sudan [Link].
• Dec 2007: The year ended with another big crash in Turkey which killed all 57 people
  on board [Link].
• Sep 2007: Jetliner skids off the runway in Phuket [Link].
• Aug 2007: Twin Otter DH6 Turboprop crashes in French Polynesia, killing 20 [Link].
• July 2007: 191 died in Brazil as an Airbus A320 came in to land too fast in one of the country's worst aviation disasters [Link].
• June 2007: Plane crashes in Cambodia. Toddler is sole survivor [Link].
• May 2007: 114 dead as Kenyan plane crashes into swamp [Link].
• Jan - Mar 2007: 2007 was a particularly bad year for Indonesian airlines, with 3 aviation accidents in the first quarter of the year alone, one in each month. Not kidding. Quite unfortunately for Boeing, they were all Boeing 737s [Link].

I started to compile the list of passenger plan incidents since 2007 but it got too depressing after I got this many. There was an accident in virtually every month of 2007. It's pretty ridiculous, and it really doesn't help my recently developed fear of flying. Wtf.