Reading List

According to the Guardian, George Orwell’s 1984 is one of the top 10 books people claim to have read (but actually didn’t). I must say, the idea of reading 1984 would never have crossed my mind 10 years ago when all I read were fantasy epics. Now that I’m (supposedly) more mature, I’m glad that I’m expanding my reading list. I started reading contemporary fiction a few years ago, thanks to David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob DeZoet. Prior to reading that book, I never had thought historical fiction could be so engrossing.

Basically, no matter the genre, I like reading books that have these elements: adventure, comedy, good vs evil, and a little bit of romance. I generally stay away from books that are too dark. I would consider Orwell’s 1984 as “dark” but after reading Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84, I was curious about the other “1984”. It doesn’t have the elements of my kind of book but it still captured my attention. It was depressing reading it and the time I read it coincided with my starting work at a large organisation which was not unlike the organisation described in 1984. I suspect my reading the book at that time heightened my discomfort with the organisation I joined.

From there, I read a book I had bought a while back but had never gotten around to reading it: Kaleidoscope: The Memoir of P.G. Lim. Ever since I interviewed her in 2008/2009, I admired her. After reading her memoir, the admiration has grown stronger. She had achieved so much in her life that I could never hope to replicate. She was one of the first few Asian women to study at Cambridge. After graduating, she became a lawyer and then became a UN diplomat. Thoughts of retiring were put on hold when she was offered the job as the director of the Kuala Lumpur Regional Arbitration Centre. There was hardly a dull moment in her life. The memoir was also a revelation because she delved in the country’s pre-Independence days. I’m ashamed that there are a lot of things that happened back then that I didn’t know about. She wrote briefly about the May 13 riots and that was more than what I got from the history books I pored over in school. Some people are of the opinion that the root cause of the riots can’t exactly be pinned down to one factor and her book corroborated that opinion. There were too many elements going on at the time. One thing for sure is that we shouldn’t harp on who was to blame or who suffered the most. We should learn from the past and work for a better future.

After Kaleidoscope, I continued reading L.M. Montgomery’s Anne’s House of Dreams. I can’t remember why I stopped reading it, I like her books. It’s full of drama and humour and wherever Anne is, she can always find the beauty of the place and Montgomery’s writing evokes a sense of realism which makes you feel like you’ve been to that place before. I finished reading it yesterday and as usual, feel sad that I’ve reached the end. There are three more books in the Anne of Green Gables series and since I liked all five books, I think I will get books six and seven. The eighth one is titled Rilla of Ingleside, so it’s obviously not about Anne; I may not read it but we’ll see.

I am now reading Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, coincidentally another book in the top 10 list of books people claim to have read. The beginning was a bit confusing as the author dives right in but after a while, you get the feel of Maycomb County and the people in it. I can’t comment anymore because I really just started this book.

Back with TM

After trying P1, UMobile and Maxis, I made the decision (with a heavy heart) to sign up for TM’s UniFi. Why the reluctance? I used to use Streamyx a few years and was less than impressed with the service. Since then, I have tried other Internet service providers but the result has more or less been the same. It’s always the usual complaint: Internet connection is unstable, Internet speed is slow, cannot connect to Internet for days and so on.

The one beef I had with P1 was that everytime I called P1 for “technical assistance”, I would always have to switch on our ancient desktop which takes a long time to start and then have to follow their instruction which I never figured its relevance. Type in this IP address, type in that, key in this, reset the modem, restart the modem. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. One thing for sure is that the Internet connection is always unstable. It may be there for one day and gone the next and whole annoying cycle repeats itself again.

Once the contract period ended, I started to use UMobile for mainly two reasons: no contract and no installation (you just need a portable modem that you can plug anywhere). It was fine for a while. The speed was average but at least it was consistent. But alas, good things sometimes have to end. After 9 months or so, the Internet speed became really slow and sometimes unstable. The good part about calling UMobile’s customer service is that they don’t ask you to do mindless stuff with your desktop computer. I just call them, they do a few things and usually the Internet is back on. Of course, towards the end, nothing could be done and I had to stop using their service. The only main gripe was what took place when I wanted to terminate the service. The system was down that morning so they couldn’t terminate my plan. But if I did not terminate it that day itself, I would have to pay the full monthly fee for the next month. I said that’s not fair because the reason I couldn’t terminate was because their system was down. The UMobile staff asked me to go to their other service centre in Sunway instead. I stormed out. I wasn’t going to go ALL THE WAY to Sunway just because their system was down. I went back there in the afternoon and thank goodness the system was up and I was able to terminate my Internet plan.

Next, was Maxis Broadband (not Fibre Internet). Their broadband packages are pretty affordable but it comes with a ghastly condition: daily peak hour (8am-2am) and off-peak hour (2am-8am) quotas. For the the 20GB plan I signed up for, the peak hour quota was 5GB and the off-peak hour quota was 15GB. It’s a grossly disproportionate division of quota but I thought that since my family and I weren't heavy Internet users (we hardly download stuff), it should be okay.

The annoyance started halfway through the first month when we hit the quota. I was quite surprised but since the plan came with the guarantee that we could still continue to use the Internet, albeit at a slower speed (128kps), I thought it would be all right. Unfortunately, I suspected the speed was much slower than the 128kps promised. It was the first month, so we decided to give it another chance. But I think the quota was exceeded even faster during the 2nd month. When I called to complain that I couldn’t even use the Internet, I made a shocking discovery that the 5GB daily peak hours quota was (get this) for the WHOLE MONTH! Can you believe it? I thought the 5GB daily peak hour quota would be renewed everyday as long as the user has not exceeded the monthly 20GB quota. It’s ridiculous if you really think about it. For someone who uses the Internet during normal hours, she is only entitled to 5GB of quota for the whole month even though she is paying for the 20GB package. If the user wants to make use of the off-peak hour quota, she only has a 6 hours out of 24 hours to utilise it . Once I heard that, my mind was made up. Contract or no, I’m terminating this service.

I knew there was a termination fee for this service but I was not going to pay it so easily. The package gave a guarantee that I could still surf the Internet once I exceeded the quota but I couldn’t even surf anymore. It seemed hardly fair for me to pay the termination fee for a poor quality service. Unsurprisingly, I was told that I needed to pay the termination fee when I went to the Maxis Centre. I stated my case and then the staff told me that if I returned the modem, I didn’t have to pay the termination fee. I did bring the modem, so I didn’t have to pay the termination fee. My question is, why didn’t the staff mention earlier that I woulnd’t have to pay if I returned the modem?

From my experience with 4 Internet service providers, I must say that Maxis is the worst. The way their broadband package are priced is a disservice to the customer. I don’t see how anyone can get value from its packages.

The Case of The 6 - Update

Yay, I managed to complete the 6 yesterday! It was a close one. I thought I had to stayback at work yesterday but turns out I didn't have too. Not that it would affect the 6, but I really wanted to break my fast at home rather than at the office :P

I now have four more days to replace but I think I'll take a break from fasting for a while and start again next month ;)