The old school Asian man …

May not compliment his wife on her cooking
But he will eat anything she cooks without complaints.

May walk ahead of her
But he will always turn around and wait
Before walking off again.

May not praise her looks all the time
But he never criticises her either.

May not always show that he cares
But he will wake up at 5 in the morning
To pick her up from the airport.

This old school Asian man is my father and today is his birthday. Happy birthday dad!

BJ and I in Kings Park, circa 2000. And yes, she’s heard that joke about her name many times.

When I saw last her in Sydney, Jan 2007

This afternoon I had bumped into BJ, one of my best friends from way back. She’s been living in Sydney and country New South Wales. I hadn’t seen her in 4 years and since then she’s had a baby. We’ve kept in touch with the occasional SMS and calls but as our lives got busier (hers more than mine of course) those had lessen. If only she was a more avid Facebook user. Heh.

I was walking out of the office towards the post office nearby and there she was on the same side of the street pushing her baby in a pram. It felt kinda surreal and I actually squinted and focused for a while to make sure that she was who I was seeing.

We walked and talked and it felt like we have never lost touch at all. Of course it helps that my life hasn’t really changed much since the last time that I’ve seen her (forever lonely – sob. Heh), and she’s still as I remembered her. The conversation was effortless. I’m kinda blessed that I have a lot of friends like that.

It got me thinking about the timing of this chance meeting. If I didn’t had to go to the post office today, if I had ate my lunch a little slower before leaving the office, then I probably wouldn’t have met her today. Although, she would have called me sooner or later and I would have met her eventually soon enough. But I don’t fret over such trivialities. The important thing is that I met her today and that made my day great instantly .

And yeah I got thinking about “Sliding Doors” again.

I had a conversation yesterday that reminded me of what I had wrote previously about sharing a lover. I’m pragmatic about it and my opinion of it remains unchanged and that is: if everyone concerned knows about the situation and is honest to each other about it, and that everyone’s needs whether financial, emotional or physical are met, then it can work.

But things can get complicated if kids are involved. Do you tell the kids and when do you tell them? If you tell the kids would they get bullied or teased in school about it? Kids do not have the emotional capacity and maturity to be able to understand it. And neither would most of their parents. Modern society is still not capable of accepting such a liberal arrangement yet.

Note that I said “modern society”. Whilst on one of their several trips to China, my parents encountered a tribe called the Mosuo in Yunnan Province. It is a matriarchal society and their approach to sex and child-rearing is decidedly liberal in the modern sense and there is no word for “father” or “husband”.

The traditional Axia system is marriage-free. Mosuo men call their beloved women Axia (“intimate companion”) and women call their lovers Azhu. They are not bound by marriage and will live in their mothers’ homes all their lives. Every adult Mosuo girl has a special Azhu house of her own where her lover can visit during the night but must leave early the next morning. If the girl wishes to stop the love affair she simply closes the door and then the man will not return. The lovers have no economic or legal ties: Their relationship is based only on mutual love and affection, where the will of the female is highly respected. If children are born into the family, they belong exclusively to the mother’s side and inherit her surname. They are raised with their mother and uncles and are not introduced to their father until their adult ceremony.

Mosuo: A Mysterious Matriarchal Group in China.

For more reading:
Mosuo – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Is China’s Mosuo tribe the world’s last matriarchy? | Life and style | The Observer.

And here’s a good Youtube clip (embedding is disabled) – Mosuo Women – China.

If you are a fan of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report living in Australia, you can either watch it by subscribing to Foxtel or you can watch the clips online after it has aired on Foxtel. This was a fair situation I thought. But this appears to have changed. Now, you can only catch the shows on Foxtel – the online clips are no longer available to Australian fans and from what I read on the show’s forums, to all fans outside of the United States.

This is not the first time that it has happened either. It does not make sense that they would do this once, reverted back to the status quo and then revoke access again. What has changed? They are not saying. Currently the thread on the forum about this issue runs 15 pages long.

“Video unavailable from your location”? – The Daily Show Forum.

However a fan had posted a good workaround on page 3. And this is it:

1. Use Firefox and install an add-on called “Modify Headers“.
2. Using the add-on, add a header of “X-Forwarded-For” with a value of “12.13.14.15″ or any IP that you know is an IP address in the US.
3. Set the add-on to be “Always on” in the Options.
   On the Firebox button (big orange one) click on Options – Add-On Bar, then click on the Modify Headers icon in the Add-On Bar (bottom-left corner) and select “Start”. (thanks to helpful comment from Annoyed below)

And say goodbye to this …

I’m currently in Melbourne for work and this Ajisen Ramen outlet is in the little Chinatown behind my hotel in Glen Waverley. I went there on the recommendation of my colleague Hong. The place was quite busy and people continually streamed in and out of the place so waiting for a table wasn’t that bad. Though it’s easiest if you were alone like me or in pairs.

Service was quick and efficient. Bonus marks for the pretty waitresses.

I had the Ajisen Ramen ($9). This photo doesn’t do the ramen justice. The pork-bone soup is full-bodied and lingers in the mouth even after you’ve swallowed it, and the noodle is just nice – chewy but not too chewy. It could have done with more than just two slices of thick pork and half of a hard-boiled egg but that’s just me being greedy.

You would think that after my years of working in IT support that these two things would be instinctively done every time. But in the heat of the moment, I’d forget my lessons learnt. So here are the top two things that I can impart to anyone looking to work in this field. Are you ready?

1. When speaking to a customer who may not understand the nuances of modern technology, ask to speak with someone else who is more technical. For example: their internal IT support or the youngest child in the house. You don’t need the additional stress of passing technical info through a non-technical conduit which will surely double the time needed to resolve a problem.

   Be careful with this one though. One time I did this with a female caller and she immediately thought that I was a sexist pig.

2. The placebo effect cannot be underestimated. This week whilst dealing with a difficult customer, I was reminded how effective it is by two of my colleagues. Instead of thinking how a change might not solve the problem at hand, know that a change done by you is better than inaction or suggesting that the customer look into possible problems at their end.

   This is particularly useful when the customer is stubbornly insisting that you do something, anything to fix a problem that cannot be or is difficult to attribute to your company. So even if it’s moving a problematic website from one server to another server that is identical in specs, which you know will change nothing, it will be enough to placate the customer. And they might even sense an improvement when there isn’t one.

   Ultimately all of us customer service types are in it to make the customer happy. So whatever works, right?

But no matter how obsequious we are required to be at our job, remember this: not every customer is right.