Father Sez

I am sure that I am not alone in being concerned that a slowing economy would see increases in crimes like burglaries, snatch thefts and the like. In this present environment of widespread economic gloom and doom, people take extra protection to safeguard their properties.  Some keep guard dogs, others install alarm systems and yet others rely on some serious outside help. 

Last week, The Star, a Malaysian paper carried an almost unbelievable story. Titled “Burglar who picked the wrong house”, the story is about a burglar who broke into an unoccupied home cum grocery store (the owners had gone off on holiday) and found himself trapped and unable to get out.  

When the owners (a husband and wife team) returned, they found the burglar fatigued and dehydrated after spending 72 hours without food or water. To quote the burglar,

“I was blinded once I was inside and felt like I was in a cave. Each time I wanted to flee, I felt a ‘supernatural figure’ shoving me to the ground,’’

I got this picture from a story in the Clare Herald on three cavers being trapped. Fortunately the cavers were not in any danger.

This story is more likely than not to be believed and I am sure that the reporter and / or the paper will be receiving tons of calls and letters to find out the identity of the store owner and his mysterious and very effective security system.  

A fair number of Malaysians believe in the supernatural. After all, Muslims, who make up the majority of Malaysians, believe in supernatural beings or Jinns as stated in the Quran. I have heard many stories about people who have somehow managed to learn to control some of these Jinns, some for good use, perhaps like being a stern security guard, and others for not so good uses. 

The people in charge of Fort Knox’s security systems might do themselves some good by taking to the grocery store owners! 

The Fathersez family also has some unorthodox support in our home security system. We live in a gated community and there are security guards who patrol the area fairly frequently.  In addition we follow a tip that I read in one of Lillian Too’s books on Feng Shui. At night when we lock the doors, we place a broom against the front door. I haven’t the faintest idea what this means or what it is supposed to do.  

Surprisingly this “tip” had also been told to my wife by her grandmother. Of course, grandma did not learn this from Lillian, rather she must have followed her mother who in turn most probably learnt it from her mother.  

Also I have always loved those well kept aquariums with all the colourful fishes. Our attempts at rearing fishes have been miserable. Rather than giving up altogether, we opted for the climbing perch which is quite hardy and needs negligible maintenance. Apparently this ikan puyu or climbing perch, is also supposed to have some special powers in keeping “unwanted beings” away from our home. 

All I can say is that, by the Grace of the All Mighty, our house’s security system has worked, so far, at least!

Quite a bit has been written about internet addiction (a Google search turned up 4.9 million pages). Internet addiction seems to be ranked up there with other more punitive forms of addiction like gambling etc. 

To quote Louise Nadeau, a professor at Montreal University’s Department of Psychology:

“The problem isn’t widespread but we know of serious cases in which teenagers don’t leave the house, don’t have interpersonal relationships, and have been isolated in front of their computer screen for the past two or three years, and only speak in the language of the characters they play with in network video games,”   

And whilst I am not a teenager nor play any video games, it looks like I may be one of the characters the good professor is talking about.  Checking my mail, looking up the political blogs, reading the online news portals, and checking my blog stats 3 – 4 times a day sure seem sufficient criteria to put me in this classification of an internet junkie.  

To make us want to check the Net is a pull that is difficult to define. Certainly it is not important, much less urgent, yet there is this craving. I am a late starter. I think it was only in the late 90’s that I started using email etc. We were then in Ghana and not having phone lines in our house we had to use cyber cafes. So the use was not that prevalent.

When I returned to Malaysia in 2001, by then all office computers were hooked up and we were online all the time we were in the office.  Now we also have Internet at home. 

The following study by Kimberly S. Young of the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford on the same issue was published in 1996. So perhaps now the malaise is even more widespread and deeper rooted.

There have been times when I have gone without looking at the Net for a day or two. This is usually when I am traveling and the transit airports did not have facilities that were cheap. Perhaps the longest was the one week I spent in India when my mother passed away. Somehow I feel that week should not count. 

Now I want to purposely try a week without any connection with the online world.  I’ll be in Jakarta for the rest of this week. I’ll be coming back late on Friday night and on the Saturday we have a full day planned for visits to family and friends. I am going to Jakarta without my laptop (just swinging my arms like a tourist (as my old geology professor told a bunch of us after returning from a 3 day field trip)). So it will be about 6 days without accessing the Net.  I want to see how strong the pull would be.

I am confident that no important messages such as those requiring my services to resolve the world’s financial crisis or to settle the repatriation of the Nigerian princes untold millions in an African Bank will be missed as I’ll still have my cell phone with me.  

The only negative may be that my Reader Inbox will be overflowing and I may not respond to comments as soon as I should. 

Let’s see how this “semi medical” exercise goes.   

Note: 

No, my son and I are not at the above depicted stages yet. And we are sure we’ll never be. The pictures are from Google Images.

Picture Credit: The Star, Malaysia 

You know the feeling. You are in your car, merrily driving along to wherever you want to go. Then you get caught in a traffic jam, right smack in the middle of something like that shown in the picture above.

You sit patiently, as the cars move slowly, almost inch by inch. Then you see some drivers using the emergency lanes, overtaking a stretch of cars and then cutting back well ahead of you. Doesn’t this make your blood boil? These characters contribute to the jam, as cars have to slow down when this people cut back into the main lines. 

This is a very frequent sight on Malaysian roads and especially marked during the mass exodus from the main cities that happen at every major Malaysian festival. 

I used to get really upset with these guys. Do these emergency lane users really think that the rest of us are blind and do not see the emergency lanes? Do they think that the rest of us are stupid and do not know how to use the empty emergency lanes and then cut back in like they do? 

Last week as my family and I were doing our Hari Raya rounds this happened. We were trapped in a long stretch of snail like traffic and then these “heroes” started using the emergency lanes and then cut in well ahead of us. As I watched these fellows, I could feel my blood pressure rise. I wished I had a magic wand that I could just wave and puncture all four of their tires and get them stuck for hours.  

Then a thought suddenly struck me. Perhaps these guys had a very sick child on board whom they were rushing to a clinic or hospital. Or maybe some other sick relative. Maybe it was because of this that they were forced to drive the way they were doing. I know I would if I were to be driving my very sick child to a clinic and I faced something like that kind of traffic. 

Immediately my feelings of disgust and anger at these people dropped. And I felt a lot calmer. And a far lot better. This is what I do now. If I cannot avoid it, I just sit through a traffic jam, and calmly watch these guys merrily cut in and tell myself that they are doing this because of some emergency.