NOT FOR THE FAINT-HEARTED: Tales of Crazy Possession and Lethal Obsession

Finally, after over a month and so much trouble...

...we now have a permanent Internet connection! Woohoo!

The days of rushing to an Internet cafe are over, no more running home with empty pockets due to doing requirements from six PM 'til two o' clock in the morning! No need to squeeze several tasks into 1 hour of net surfing! At last! I have gained my freedom, and right now I am the happiest I have ever felt in years (well, not exactly the happiest, on account of those numerous competitions through which I have emerged rather victorious in between which have given me a much better feeling, but none as unique and as fulfilling as this ). In fact, I'm already thinking I should trash being emo, now that I have re-realized (Man, I'm glad I have!) that I am indeed a lucky person and there are a lot of things that I should be thankful for. But then again, no, for this is who I am, the person I've developed into over the years I have been in science high school (or rather, the person I became as a result of my own molding, considering that we are animate and can mold ourselves), and I could always be a cheerful emo. But throw away my personality? And squander this beautiful moment? No way!

Four years ago, I remember having accepted a challenge by my parents to open my piggy bank (that, by then, was totally full--in fact it weighed almost ten kilos!) and if its contents (both coins and bills, since my dad encouraged me to feed it with both kinds of money) summed up to a stunning amount of ten thousand bucks, I could get myself a really good birthday gift. It was a huge piggy bank, a giant plastic bear over two feet tall, which was given to me by my grandmother for my seventh birthday. From the start I was optimistic; I insisted on opening it a few weeks before my birthday so I could have time to decide what to buy with it. Turns out it fell short of ten thousand by a tiny amount--around nine thousand and seven hundred, I guess. Still, even though my dad was half-Chinese and embraced the same principles as his successful relations, he was kind enough to give me the money (which was always mine and never anyone else's, he had stressed from the very beginning) and the freedom to choose anything I wanted as long as I could afford it. Of course, I was a kid then, in spite of the appearance. So the first things I chose were an mp3 player (64 Mb ) and a digital camera (at that time, such things were new in the market). Why am I telling you about these things? Because when I realized (with the help of my parents of course--*through gritted teeth* thanks to them) that none of these things were worth their price yet, being expensive though they showed nothing but their potential to improve, I gave it up and cooked up a brand new idea: Internet service at home. Back then, dial-up was still the fad and it cost quite a lot since you had to have a telephone wired to your home (which often cost quite a big fraction of your monthly wages), a modem, and several Internet cards that run out fast, signalling "time to buy a new one!" Besides, it was slow, so one internet card could do nothing to you but send you home swearing. Even though I had the money to pay for it, they said, it wouldn't be very practical. As expected, the idea was junked.

Three years passed. Here I was, a day before Christmas, 2007. I had lost my phone, and had endured over a month of suffering with my old phone which encountered a lot of problems, and now I thought it was time to uplift myself (for my very own good). So I gathered all the stipends I had earned throughout my 6 months of being at the science high school (you see, the great thing about my school is that they give you monthly allowances and education is, well, "free." ) and man, did I have ten thousand! I told my parents rather earnestly, though by installment and for a long period of time, that I wanted a new phone (and needed a new phone) so I got to buy one. A Nokia N73. Cool. A Nokia N73 Music Edition (the black one). Cooler. With 3G... and Mobile Internet--the kind you can connect to your laptop and, ta-da! Instant Internet service--for ten bucks every thirteen minutes. Amazing... er, not so.

And so seven months passed. Of course, I got sick of it. How on earth could I do my assignments which pointed to the Internet as a source if all I had was this mobile connection that was slow and cost a lot! How could I afford to waste ten bucks every thirty minutes if I only got three hundred a month and wrote for an hour or so? Well, it's about time we get a permanent connection. For 990 a month, we could purchase a landline+DSL bundle. So we did.

Don't miss what happens next! Check on this blog tomorrow and I'll guarantee you your life.