gambitch - now available in blue

Friday, January 07, 2005

Nelson Mandela announced earlier today that his son Makgatho had died of AIDS. His death means that the elder Mandela's fight against the AIDS virus has now taken on an all-new and personal dimension. He said as much in his public address, when he acknowledged that he had never expected that the war on AIDS would claim a victim so close to home, and asked for increased efforts in bringing the pandemic under control.

I feel that Mandela should be saluted for his courage to come out and publicly acknowledge that his son was afflicted with this disease. As the son of a hugely respected public figure, the fact that Makgatho was an AIDS victim had the potential to become something of an embarrassment, simply because in the eyes of conventional wisdom, AIDS is not like most other diseases, like SARS or bird flu. Most other diseases people contract through no particular fault of their own (unless you're of the belief that eating meat is morally repugnant, for example). AIDS is different; people stereotypically think of it as a disease of decadence. You get it from either having promiscuous sex or doing drugs. Thus AIDS is supposed to be a representation of immorality, a tainting brand that we don't want to carry. Yet Mandela had the courage to say, quite matter-of-factly, that his son died of this disease. He didn't care that people might start gossiping and wondering how Makgatho got the disease. It didn't matter anyway; the man is dead, so what would some speculation change?

Nelson Mandela has moved on since his days as a democracy activist and fighter against apartheid. His new enemy in recent years has been the AIDS virus that has ravaged his beloved homeland of South Africa. He has been vocal and forthright, unlike some of his successors who have come across as being simply in denial. Mandela wants us to face up to AIDS, and turn it into "an ordinary disease like any other". It is not going to be easy, but it is definitely possible.

Now if those bloody pharmaceutical companies would just decide to release their purse-strings...

gambitch [ 7:06 PM]

Thursday, January 06, 2005

It has been less than a week, but already the letters, text messages and telephone calls of complaint have been coming in thick and fast. They say different things, but share the same general message.

We know you're shafting your new acquisition, and we know you're shafting us. And we don't like it. We mean it, totally.

Of course, freedom of protest doesn't mean anything if there is no positive response to the protest.

Democracy is not about freedom of speech. It is more than that. America has freedom of speech (except on television and in the press, maybe) but America today is not democratic. The two things are not the same.

Back to the grind.

gambitch [ 7:28 AM]

Tuesday, January 04, 2005

In-between discussions about binary trees and Pascal's triangles, about folds, slides and Venetian leaves, about staff movements over the transfer period, about form teams and relegation candidates, and about why Newcastle would be really out of place in the Nationwide (oh, they call it the Coca Cola Championship now?), I quipped that mobile phones are becoming more and more like cars. That is, the newer they are, the more prone to breakdowns they get.

I am the proud owner of a very old and reliable mobile phone, having decided against changing it for the past five years or thereabouts. With advertisements selling new Nokias, Samsungs and Motorolas and proclaiming how they were fashionable or how they had all these cool functions I would have no use for, I am pleasantly surprised I have resisted the temptation to change phones for so long. Part of that is because I've always been the type to use things until they really cannot be effectively used anymore. My mobile phone is fine, apart from a cracked screen and a couple of keys that I have to press a little harder before getting a response, but none of these things actually have much of an effect on performance. If Santa Claus offered me a new mobile phone for free, all I would ask is that the new phone be tri-band and allows me to program multiple ringtones, while retaining the excellent reliability of my current phone.

Multimedia messaging, colourful wallpapers and built-in cameras are all things I have practically no use for, and I don't really need my phone to be either Bluetooth or WAP-enabled. They're nice to have, maybe, but the extra things aren't really much to rave about when I'm not about to join the hordes of the digitally connected eager to surf the Internet while on the move. We have lived without them in the past, and I can fully imagine myself living without them in the short-term future. Longer-term I would prefer not to speak too soon, since twenty years ago, when I was a wee toddler, not many people even knew of the Internet, and compact disc technology was a very new thing that most of us had no access to.

Of course, twenty years ago Saddam Hussein was merely a regional irritant and a despot at war with his neighbours, hardly threatening to harm the world's interests. But that's just putting things into perspective.

gambitch [ 11:24 PM]

Sunday, January 02, 2005

After watching a substantial amount of television today, I have a few things to say.

I want my newscasters back! Stop messing around with the schedules! And someone recall the voice-over staff!

I absolutely cannot stand it when they bring in this new newscaster who, in short, smiles too much and tries to be too relaxed and story-telling in the way she delivers the news. Also, I cannot shake off the horrific fact that she tries to look too cute when it is evident she's not exactly 18 years old - I have seen her on bad makeup days, so I should know.

I seriously miss the entire fleet of previous newscasters, most of whom the new owners of this particular channel they have chosen to dump in the name of rationalization. No discredit to the newscasters who were already with the competitor channel, but this is an entirely professional and excellent bunch who have been given the unceremonious sack, every one of whom has proven much better than they used to when they worked for someone else. The mass dismissal smells of jealousy, although I need not worry too much about the futures of those who no longer read the news out to us. I am sure all of them will have infinitely better careers in the days ahead. But I am still bitter. No names mentioned, but I loved them all so much, and I will miss them infinitely.

And can these people stop playing with our schedules by introducing new shows at terrible hours, and un-synchronizing the schedules? I know what they're up to with tricks like these. They don't fool me. But they will conspire to ensure that I stop watching my beloved channel after they have mutilated it beyond all recognition. Dropping the good shows and sliding the schedule so that we'd all be psychologically tricked and lured into staying on with their hopeless, pathetic home-grown product that so does not deserve viewership save for the news and certain imported shows... I tell you, it is absolutely sick.

There will be no choice. We will be tricked into watching the same crap on the same one channel because our minds are too lazy to channel-surf. We will conveniently forget to switch channels and follow the shows we really want because of these little gimmicks of hypnotism. We will be conned into dragging down the AC Nielsen ratings just so that there will be a flimsy, yet sufficient, excuse to kill off the remnants of that which we held dear, so that we will have the dreaded return to boring, dumbed down monopoly.

Thy evilness I abhor, yet I have neither the money nor the power to reverse thy destiny. For I ride the BMX and you are chauffeured in a BMW.

gambitch [ 12:03 PM]