Friday, June 17, 2016

"I Know Latin" Guy + How Singtel Makes Money


No entry in May partly because I was busy with work (!), including a week-long interpretation, in the second half of the month.

On May 14, I had dinner at Paragon after work with people from my client company in Fukuoka. Then I moved on to CC, my first time to do so since late March. There I met that guy who apparently can’t stop showing how intelligent he is by claiming or insisting, again, that he understands Latin. I could have clobbered him right there then because I am sure that he doesn’t know probably anything about how Latin words and phrases are used in today’s English, but I was rather restraining myself without commenting on his claim. The reason of his claim is that he is aware of medical terms of Latin origin, and it doesn’t mean at all he knows the language. To be able to say one knows any language, he should have enough knowledge of it which allows him to read a book written in the language without much difficulty. He is so far from it. I’ve never seen him read (or simply carry) any kind of book or any kind of printed material in Latin or use any Latin words or phrases in his talk. This is another example of showing disrespect to language and showing how pathetically ignorant he is. Does he really think saying “I know Latin” makes him look intelligent?

And he said to me, “I respect you.” I don’t need to be respected by him or anyone. He started talking to me by complaining, “You refused to accept my friend request on Facebook!” I didn’t refuse it. I just ignored it. Facebook is really becoming too much if only because I can’t keep up with all those uploads. And I have no intention to be controlled by anything like Facebook. The guy is vulgar (rough, boorish, even violent), jealous, ass-kissing, boring, all-penis-no-brain. Oh, he was mentioning that he (and his wife and baby girl) would be going back home though I don’t know when.

In March, I received a letter from Singtel notifying the termination of the 3G broadband plan I had been subscribing for so many years. The company was suggesting a new 4G plan which would be much faster and cheaper (and 50% off for 24 months on top of it). I duly switched to this new plan and one night experienced a connection speed which became impossibly slow. I filed a complaint to Singtel and the reply said that the switch to the new plan was successful. Then, the bill came for April which showed an amount more than three times bigger than before. I filed another complaint demanding explanation, which said I had exceed the data usage available for the plan, and an extra charge system kicked in. And then the bill for May arrived which was more than four times larger. I checked my data usage of the past few months and found that my usage habit, as I knew, had not really changed much. Singtel answered my old plan was for 50GB and the new one for only 10GB. This is how they make money.

I don’t remember since when, but my right middle finger “jerks.” It’s as if it had some kind of spring mechanism. My left wrist is better but no pushups possible. My right index finger still looks funny though with some improvement.

After two months, I have yet to receive news of an arrest. I think that the police force of that country is incompetent or corrupt or both.

Alcohol intake record:
April 21 (Thu.) – May 13 (Fri.): none
May 14 (Sat.): a lot of beer
May 15 (Sun.) – 18 (Wed.): none
May 19 (Thu.): beer
May 20 (Fri.): beer, white wine and shochu with water/hot tea
May 21 (Sat.) – June 16 (Thu.): none

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