The wee hours

This morning, I got up at 5am to buy a laptop.

Thank you, I hope your collective gasping will lead to a whole bunch of adverse weather conditions to torment the damn butterfly that keeps creating climatic chaos by flapping its wings.

Some people like to suffer for their art. Me? I like to think that my suffering is the art itself. Basically, what happened was that yesterday I discovered there was a crazy IBM Employee purchase deal involving a very limited number of laptops going for half price. So of course, being the overzealous and misguided romantic that I am, I decided to purchase one for my girlfriend Jenny despite knowing full well that I am more likely to receive expressions of incredulity and surprise rather than the lavish praise that my warped geek-imagination would have me believe was coming my way.

Long story short, I took advantage of a little bit of, shall we say, insider knowledge, to ensure that I was guaranteed to get one of these things – ie. I had to get up really, really early to beat everybody else. Wow. I am so smart.

As it turns out, I was the 5th person to make an order. 5th dammit! Apparently there was one guy who made an order 10 minutes after the promotion went live just before 3am in the morning. (At least I can tell Jenny that there were at least 4 other people in IBM who were even more desperate than me).

So here I am at the end of the day, and what do I have to show for my efforts? Nada. Zip. Zilch. They didn’t call me to confirm the order, and my Jenny is still sans-ThinkPad. I’m thinking that the other 4 guys ahead of me just bought them all and are probably listing them on eBay even as we speak (ok, ok… as I write, and you read… yes, even with the inherent time difference between when I was writing this and when you get around to reading it – there were quite a few laptops… yes, I have also considered the metaphysical implications of my addressing you when you might not even be reading this at all, kinda like that jazz about sounds of trees falling in forests and one hand clapping, etc.)

For the fellow geeks out there, the model that I picked up (supposedly, *ahem* pending a certain phone call *ahem*) is a ThinkPad X40 ultraportable with 12.1″ screen, 1.3GHz processor, 40GB hard drive, 256MB RAM, Windows XP Pro and all the usual accoutrements such as wireless, modem, USB ports and the like. Priced at $1,125.62 (Less with salary sacrifice option.)

Frontpaged and credited!

Hooray! My writing exploits continue in their relentless march to bring me ever closer to fame (but unfortunately, not fortune). My short essay “My toaster exploded” is today’s feature on David Chin’s 1000words.net (direct link here).

Luckily, nobody seems to have discovered the “plot holes” in my accompanying essay, eg. if I got out my digicam to take the pictures after dinner, then why are the rissoles still in the toaster? :P

(Edit: oops, I just realised that in addition to the spelling mistakes, typos, bad plot and everything else, I got the brand of the oven wrong too! It’s a Ronson. Erk.)

My room is never dark

My room is never dark. Even at night, I have my own personal constellation of lights twinkling away, pushing back the void, preventing me from being consumed by the velvet blackness. The twinkling of my cable modem constantly flashing its presence on my desk. The stark white digits on my DVD player always showing the time – counting away the minutes and hours of my passing even while I am not awake to know it – proof of time’s passing while I am unconscious. The standby lights on my TV and computer – a reminder of the convenants I have with the machines that they will spring to life at my beck and call, soldiers always ready for battle – or in my case, entertainment.

Nature is never totally dark. By day we have the sun, by night the moon and stars. Even in the deepest depths of the oceans or the furthest caves, life brings light. Phospherescent fungi and luminous fish all work together to banish the dark from all the corners of the Earth.

In the beginning, God said “let there be light” and so there was, is and always will be.

It was the night before Christmas…

Here is my entry for the AC Nielsen iScan Scan Panel short story competition, for which I won a runner-up prize of a $50 Dymocks book voucher!

—-

It was the night before Christmas. I was six years old and I knew this was going to be the best Christmas ever. Who would have guessed that Grandpa would drop by? It would be the first and last time that I ever see him. I still remember it like it was yesterday, because he came dressed as Santa Claus!

Gramps was a pilot, and he delighted me and my brother with tales of his travels around the world, and gifts from amazing sounding places like Switzerland, and Thailand. How could you not believe such amazing stories: the city that never sleeps! Mountains so tall that they touched the clouds! Strange and wonderful people and their even stranger languages! In my mind, I was the luckiest boy in the world… my Grandpa was Santa Claus!

The next morning, just like Santa, he was gone.

At the end of the following year, my parents received news of his passing. Dad was a pragmatic person, and that night, he explained about death. However, I wouldn’t believe it. I couldn’t! Nothing would ever dispel the magic – my Grandpa, like Santa Claus, would live forever…

Oh what a feeling!

I had a bit of a Toyota Kodak moment today in Strathfield. As you can see in the above photo, parked on either side of my car was pretty much the rest of the Toyota range of passenger vehicles – all silver, no less. Might as well have been a Toyota dealer! From left: Camry, (my) Corolla, Echo sedan and Rav 4.