My Unifi Experience
"Dude, it only takes me less than an hour and a half to download a movie" my colleague proudly beemed to me over lunch one fine day. We were discussing about TM's unifi broadband service and my colleague was one of the 1st people I knew to have it installed at his place.
I couldn't believe it when he told me that. 1.5 GB in under 2 hours? My current streamyx could only deliver a 1.5 GB download over a night, but nothing more.
Ever since then I was on a mission to determine when on earth unifi would appear at my neighbourhood. Eventually over time I had gotten news about people saying that TM was laying some cables beneath the manholes in my neighbourhood, and 3 months ago, I saw the first "promotion counter" at my local shopping mall.
I signed up for it pretty fast and fastforward two months later, I already have unifi in my house. I won't go through the details set up however I must say that Jason has done a fantastic job in detailing out his unifi installation and review.
The speed so far has been amazing. I decided to put my colleague's statement to the test by downloading a movie with relatively high seeds and to my shocking amazement, it really was first! I managed to download the movie (1.5 GB in size) under an hour!!
I am still testing out the speed to see how long it will take to download movies/series with lesser seeds and peers. But so far it's been quite amazing.
But I guess the best thing about this whole unifi service (to me) would have to be the iptv. I was playing around with the system earlier today evening and I really loved the whole idea (though not novel at all) of VOD (video on demand). I love the idea of paying to watch for something and the subscription is really really easy. Just select the movie you want to watch and just put the purchase PIN and viola, you'll have a movie available for your viewing pleasure over the next 48 hours! Quite nifty and I am eager to try it out one of these days (over a long weekend or something).
Anyway my own speed tests will be ariving shortly. I did conduct my own speed test just a couple of minutes ago before writing this post down and the results were not as impressive. Well this is simply because I am halfway downloading some stuff anyway. Will conduct another test sometime tomorrow or so.
The Joy of writing
I have to admit that the last couple of days have been rather edifying for me. What started as a desire to return to my writing last week turned out to be more complicated as I found out that my username and password for my blog had somewhat "changed". To be honest, I was quite surprised. I mean who the heck would want to even "hack" my account??
Anyhow, I managed to solve the problem sometime mid-last week but I gotta say that the "additional delay" in my writing splurge got me even more hungry to pen my thoughts down. I guess that's what happens when you have to wait for something you really want a little longer isn't it? In anycase it's great to be writing again.
And this time, I have begun to just develop a more-free flow writing style. In the past I was quite adamant that my writing style be of the highest quality as my goal was to use my blog to improve on my writing eloquence. Well, when you have that sorta pressure breathing down your neck, it's quite obvious the mood to just generally write also diminishes with it, as you start thinking that "nothing I ever write will be of worthy publishing and for people to read".
But the truth of the matter is, when you write from the heart, as the heart is not bounded by rules, so it will also reflect in the craft that is being produced, in this case your writing. And when you write with such joy and passion, those feelings are echoed and shared in the words. And that's what I call "the joy of writing".
The ability to just freely express yourself through words and later share those stories with those around you is something I have found to be quite valuable and its something that I do treasure deeply. It also helps clear the mind as once the thoughts are hard-coded into something tangible, the mind is able to freely "let it go" without much difficulty and begin to process newer thoughts and ideas.
Ahh, to have finally rekindled that joy of writing once again...
What’s in a name?
I am halfway reading through Jefferey Archer's "Kane and Abel" and I just finished reading the part where George Novak proudly tells Wladek that when he goes to America, he is planning to change his name to make it sound more "english sounding" versus his current polish name (Jerzy Novak). It just got me thinking how easily people can just change their names. I have had friends (chinese ones) who could easily change their names and could pick their own english name to suit their whims.
Ever since I was young, I could never understand why my name (my real one) was so long. It's not that it bothered me anyway, but I often would wonder how could I make my name shorter so that people could remember me better? My attempts to make my name shorter didn't happen anyway. In school, I would introduce myself normally, without trying to "style-up" my name or tell people "my name is so-and-so, but just call me <a-much-shorter-name or a nickname> would be fine!"
It never did occur to me that I should even bother to make my name shorter or more easier for others to remember. To me, I always felt, if a friend wants to remember me, he or she would make an effort to remember my name. If he/she can't remember my name, or at least try to make an effort to learn how to say my name properly, then I don't think he/she is serious in being a friend to me. If people found it difficult to pronounce my name, I would obligingly teach them, as to me I was always taken up by people who always took the effort to learn how to say my name. As for the rest, well I just didn't bother!
This cardinal rule of mine worked well in university (which explains the number of "close buddies" I had anyway), but when I reached workinghood, it sorta changed. I didn't still feel the need to shorten my name so that people would remember me better, however this time around I DID feel the need for people to remember me. Not so much because I wanted them, but simply because I know that it would help in building better relationships with them. If a name is too much to remember, people (especially career folks) would have a higher tendency to forget you. And when they have a tendency to forget you, well that's not really good anymore.
Of course, if you rationally think about it who cares what your name is as long as
- Your name is not a bad-sounding word
- You are friendly and are nice to people
- You are good at what you do
However sometimes I feel it doesn't hurt to have a cool sounding name 
But oh well, I guess at the end of the day, a name is just a name, but how you live up to that name (or your name) is far more challenging and more in your control versus changing your name.
