Archive for July, 2009

Six days ago

You know when you call a company, and have to go through various menus, pressing numbers corresponding to the topic of your enquiry? Those are awesome. If you just responded “Err, what?”, I presume you’ve never tried to call a company that uses voice recognition rather than number pressing and refuses to recognise your voice.

10 hours earlier: I was somehow silly enough to leave my mobile phone in the back of a taxi1. Anyway, the next morning I called up the taxi company (for 2AM would’ve been a useless time to call), only to take far longer to get through than what is tolerable, due to poor voice recognition software2. After that ordeal, I get a message telling me to call their reception number instead, where I found out I would have to file a police report.

Off to the police station I went, and where I was told something along the lines of “You look nervous. Do you realise it’s a federal offence to report this if your phone is just broken, do you want to continue?” I don’t know, maybe I was nervous to be in a police station for the first time. I don’t even know whether I had it insured so filing a false report would be pretty useless, not to mention the fact that my phone is somewhat old and I imagine not worth much, either.

Six days later, and no word, so I shall probably get a new one. Oh, and isn’t it inevitable that once you lose a phone, a lot of people will text you? I’ve been asked various times whether I received people’s text messages.

  1. I had been storing, keys, money, and phone in one of my jeans pockets (my wallet lives alone in the left pocket, while other accessories have to share the right when I am sans bag), but transferred my phone to my jacket pocket to sort out payment, and it must’ve fallen out. My jacket pockets are rather large and have a big opening, after all. [↩]
  2. I was required to say things like “yes”, “no”, and “lost” (for lost property), and I know at times I can have the tendency to mumble a bit, but I spoke extremely clearly, and it even reverted me to the first menu when it couldn’t understand “lost”. Yep, sigh. [↩]

Posted on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 in Daily Life · No Comments »

Koyaanisqatsi

Koyaanisqatsi movie posterLast year, I had to study two pieces of music by Philip Glass that were in the soundtrack for Koyaanisqatsi (pronounced “koy-ahn-iss-kaht-see”, and meaning “life out of balance”), which I was told was a documentary sans narration. Sceptical as to how a documentary with no narration (or interviews, etc.) could possibly work, I watched one scene that I was studying music for, and did not see how, exactly, it could be classified as a documentary.

Recently, I was reading a discussion about documentaries, Koyaanisqatsi was recommended, and I got the urge to view it in its entirety. It was only then I realised what a fascinating documentary it actually was. It’s not the sort where you’re supposed to learn a lot about a particular topic; rather, it exposes you to different cultures, ways of life, and environments, juxtaposing them all. For example, the opening scene of aerial shots of a desert, is juxtaposed with the next scene of flowing oceans. Similarly, a scene of an empty city is placed next to a scene with heavily sped-up footage of a busy city.

Each scene is accompanied by a piece of music by Philip Glass, who although seems to make all his works rather similar, writes some beautiful music. My favourite scene by far of the movie was “The Grid” (part one, part two, part three).

In conclusion, I recommend this film, and am planning to watch the rest of the trilogy.

Posted on Monday, July 27th, 2009 in Media · No Comments »

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