Found in my email inbox

‹sarcasm›Wow, am I lucky or what?!‹/sarcasm›

Dear Sir/madam My name is Mrs. Linda Chang from Hong Kong I am 63 years old, I am a dying woman who have decided to donate what I have to the poor/churches/ mosque/motherless babies/less privileged/widows.I was diagnosed with cancer for about 2 years ago and now i have few months to die according to medical Report. I want you to help me donate from what I have inherited from my late husband to poor/churches/ mosque/motherless babies/less privileged/widows. I want this to be the good work i do on earth before i die.I have decided to WILL/donate the sum of 9 million US dollars which i have with a bank abroad to you to enable you help the motherless and less privilege and also for the assistance of the widows. At the moment I cannot take any telephone calls right now due to the fact that my relatives (That have squandered the funds I gave them for this purpose before) are around me and my health status also. I have adjusted my WILL and my lawyer is aware. I wish you all the best and may the good god bless you abundantly, and please use the Funds judiciously and always extend the good work to others. 20% of the funds should be taken by you for your effort and time. As soon you get back to me, I shall give you info on what I need from you then you will contact my bank and tell them I have willed (9 million dollars) to you by quoting my personal reference number: Jlk/Wds/95773/50015/GwrI/3196us/uk and I will also notified my bank that I am willing that amount to you for a good, effective and prudent work. I know I don't know you but I have been directed to do this by my mind. Thanks and god bless. Regards, Mrs. Linda Chang. lindachang53@yahoo.com.hk

Care for some cheese with that whine?

So, I had hoped to write about my adventures this past week, but I'm angry and frustrated at the moment and I need to vent.

I haven't been able to do much here in SF that costs money because I have been waiting for unemployment and school financial aid funds to come in. I finally received some financial aid money earlier this week. "Great," I thought, "At last I can do something fun this coming weekend." Well, those plans went down the crapper.

My roommate Fernando has been shopping around for a laptop, and found one online at Amazon.com that he liked. Before he left Brazil he had purchased what he thought was a kind of prepaid debit/credit card, safer than cash for traveling (since so many places won't accept travelers checks anymore). However, there weren't enough digits on the card to be able to use it to make purchases online. Turns out that in the US it can only be used at ATM machines. He asked me if I could order the computer using my debit card and he would give me the cash to deposit into my account. Sure, no problem. (He ended up having to go to several ATM machines at different banks, since each had a withdrawal limit, costing him $50 in fees).

I deposited the cash and placed his order with Amazon on Thursday. He ordered the computer and a DVD box set. He paid extra to have them shipped the next day so he could use the computer over the weekend. On Friday morning, before I left for class, I noticed that Amazon was trying to charge my account twice for the $1,300 computer. This resulted in me having a negative available balance. I had to go to class and didn't have time to worry about it, but I figured it would be adjusted Friday evening when the bank did their posting.

Fernando received an email on Friday morning stating that they had shipped his DVD set, but not the computer because there was a "problem with the credit card." I couldn't access my bank account information nor contact Amazon Friday after class because the Wi-Fi at my hotel wasn't working. Grrrr.

Now it's Saturday, and the Wi-Fi at the hotel still isn't working. I'm at the public library right now, where fortunately I can connect to the Internet. My bank account still shows two charges for the exact same amount--$1,313.11--pending against my account. This means I have a negative available balance, which means--once again--I'm broke for the weekend. Even if I could contact Amazon, my account won't be straightened out until after Monday.

No, I did not hit the send button twice when placing the order. If that had been the case, Fernando would have received two confirmation emails when the order was placed, which he didn't. Additionally, the full amount of the order--$1,362.95 for the computer and DVDs--would have been charged twice. However, only the computer price is being charged twice, since the DVD charge of $49.84 came out of my account on Friday.

I know it will be taken care of, it just sucks that I'm spending another weekend in SF with no moolah. And now every other little problem that comes up is magnified in my mind. For example, our room was cleaned on Friday and the old towels replaced with a new bath towel. Yes, singular, one towel. There have been two of us staying in the room for 3 weeks now, and we've always received two bath and two hand towels. So Friday evening when I discovered this I asked for another bath towel, only to be told that the housekeeping staff was gone for the weekend and the front desk didn't have a key to the towel closet. I let Fernando use the bath towel Friday night since he was going out to a party at his school and wanted to shower. I ended up drying myself this morning with the tiny hand towel.

Yeah, I know, it wasn't the end of the world. But for me it's irritating on top of everything else.

OK, I've finished whining. I better do my schoolwork for my online classes at CR. Fortunately I can do it here at the library.

GRRRRRR!

Welcome 2008

Had a rather bumpy ride this holiday season. Theresa's older sister died suddenly of heart failure on December 23rd, leaving behind two kids, her husband of 22 years, and many sad family members and friends. She was only 48.

On January 2nd, after 38 years of driving, I got my first speeding ticket. Not that I didn't deserve many over the years. Mr. Officer clocked me at 45mph in a 35mph zone. I'm thankful he didn't pull me over just a few minutes before, because I was talking on my cell phone while driving, which officially became illegal here in CA on Jan. 1st. I've got to dig around and find my hands-free paraphernalia. So, I now get to experience the joys of traffic school.

I leave on Sunday to finish up my TESOL certification in San Francisco. I'm jazzed! I've been writing to a nice guy in Taiwan whom I met through MySpace a few weeks ago. He lives with his partner in Zhonghe. He's given me plenty of good advice, and has been a great source of encouragement. Turns out that he helped design the course that I'll be taking at Transworld Schools. It's a small world indeed. (I've received much good advice from many kind people, including Holly, whose Taiwan Chronicles appears to the right)

I now have a new laptop computer, which I love. It has a built-in webcam so I'll be able to communicate with family and friends while I'm in SF and then overseas. My old desktop PC had accumulated so many junk programs and files that it continually bogged down, plus it was running on a bootleg copy of Windows, so I couldn't get the necessary updates. I'm determined to keep this laptop as "clean" as possible. When I first set it up I made sure to delete all the unnecessary introductory crap that came installed on it (like Norton...shudder). I bought a genuine version of Microsoft Office, and I've downloaded only a few necessary-to-me programs (Avast! anit-virus, iTunes, Skype, FTP Commander, and Hong Kong Mahjong). Windows Vista doesn't seem too different from XP. I got an mp4 player for Christmas which holds my music and Chinese lessons, and I got a 2GB flash drive for my photos, so I still have most of the 120GB hard drive free.

All our orderers are fulfilled!

I estimate that I receive at least a dozen spam emails per day. Normally, I open up the spam folder and scan the list of senders before I empty it, just to make sure a legit email didn't get sent there. I also like to skim the subject lines because they provide some light humor.

Based on the 32 spam messages that I received over the past 48 hours, I've discovered the following:

  42% of the senders feel that my penis is too small (how did they know?!). They guarantee that I can "make her grin with a larger male organ."

  29% are confirming my online prescription order. I must have ordered Alzheimer's medication, because I don't recall placing any orders.

  23% are sharing their passwords with me for porn sites. I figure these folks must have spoken with the 42% above and decided that, with my shameful dimensions, I'm constantly dateless and hence in excessive need for porn.

  6% are anxious to give me hot tips on stocks and "the finest Replica watches."

Out of curiosity, I opened one of the emails offering me a free porn password:

Of course, these people who claim to know such intimate details of my life--like my substandard wiener--should know that I judge the quality of porn sites by their adherence to standard rules of English grammar. I mean, c'mon!

Damn computer, and a couple of books

Yeah, well, my PC blew up again last month, hence no blog entries for awhile. It's still in the shop, so I'm writing this from school. I'm hoping to have enough money to buy myself a laptop before I leave for SF in January, but with Christmas coming up, I seriously doubt it.

Now that I'm sans computer I have more time to read. Since I hadn't read a novel in quite awhile, I went to Borders the other day to see what would catch my interest. It took great self-control to pull myself away from the language reference section (do I really need another book on Sanskrit morphology?)

I ended up buying The Best Little Boy In The World by Andrew Tobias aka John Reid. I devoured it in one day. I found myself relating to so many of the thoughts and feelings Tobias had as a child and teenager. Although some critics dislike his ego, I admired his honesty, which, for me, solidified the credibility of his story. These same critics must have missed Tobias' many self-deprecating references to his feelings of self-importance.

While perusing the shelves at Borders, I realized that, as someone who hopes to be teaching English overseas very soon, I was completely unfamiliar with Shakespeare's works. I figured I should have at least a basic familiarity with the person popularly regarded as the greatest writer in the English language. My only exposure to The Bard was in 10th grade when my English class was forced to read Julius Caesar. Remembering the indigestion that 16th Century English caused me back then, I opted to get one of those "Shakespeare Made Easy" books, where the original language appears side-by-side with a modern translation. Because I'm a beginner, I figured that comedy would be more palatable than heavy drama or tragedy. I decided on Twelfth Night.

I finished reading the play last night, and yes, I did enjoy it. Although I managed to read the original English, I had to turn to the modern version after every few lines to truly understand what was going on. Yet, I'm glad that I got to see the original also, because there were many instances where the full effect of Shakespeare's clever use of language was apparent only in the original.

I'm still plugging away at Chinese. After a couple of months, I'm finally gritting my teeth and tackling the written language along with spoken. So far I know about 40 characters. I can recognize the meaning of others, from my one year of Japanese, but that doesn't help me with the pronunciation. My goal is to know enough phrases and written words to survive somewhat at the beginning. I know that I won't really improve until I'm in Taiwan and forced to speak.