JPod by Douglas Coupland

Farnie book...

Main characters - Ethan Jarlewski & his 5 co-workers at JPod, a no-escape architectural limbo on the fringes of a massive Vancouver video game design company.

Mocking fun at people who work in IT firms, the geeky characters who set tough questions to challenge each other in the forms of "finding out the non-prime number amongst a list of 8,363 prime numbers between 10,000 and 100,000", just to win beer & other nonsensical stuff you can bid from e-bay!

Also mocked fun at the rising of the sleeping dragon - China, and the stereotypical character "Kam Fong", a chinese gangster who smuggled people and do bad stuff all the time while very superstitious about fengshui & indulged in accupuncture. (Never knew ang mohs are this superficial about Chinamen...)

Anyway, Douglas Coupland was one of the character in the story as well, who managed to "save the day" by getting Ethan & his 5 co-workers out of JPod and worked in Dglobe at last! haha.... ironical... but farnie....

I liked the part where he made me think how true this reflected of our society nowadays - the reliance of the Internet for information. Tons and tons of them! But come on! Anything can be 'googled'... it has become an information overload age!

"... we're googling every ten minutes. The problem is after a week of intensive googling, we've started to burn out on knowing the answer to everything. God must feel the way all the time. I think people in the year 2020 are going to be nostalgic for the sensation of feeling clueless."

I thought that quite interesting. I think even without the advent of the internet, without the google and the yahoo, some people just feel that they need to know everything and anything! They can't beat the feeling of being left out, or just want to be smart and smug that they've got all the info in their hands!

Maybe its just human nature...

I really see some of these characters alive in everyday life! ;)

The day when the ground shook...

There was an earthquake measuring 6.6 on the Ritcher Scale in Sumatra (Indonesia) today, and it caused a bit of commotion here in Singapore where a few places felt the ground shaking.

Hong Leong Building, which is 2 streets down my office buildng, had 5,000 workers evacuated from the building. The tremours were felt around 11:50am and then around 1:50pm. We can feel the second wave of tremours, but I barely felt anything in the morning... Hmm... But our PA system was quite slow to react.

"This is a special announcement. The slight tremours you've just experienced were the result from the earthquake in Sumatra. Please do not be alarmed. Our building is safe, hence, there's no need for emergency evacuation."

The PA system only sounded this alarm around 1pm!!! Come on!!! It's already 1hr and 10 mins after the earthquake!! Who in the right mind would be still in the office to hear that message? Furthermore, it was lunch time. Sigh.. think the building management is a bit retarded!

Bad luck... we didn't get evacuated... hence, we didn't get the luxury of getting 1/2 day off! DAMN!!!! But thank god some nice clients and friends called to inquire about our safety ;) So sweet of them!!!!

As I've already experienced earthquake last year in Hualien (Taiwan), I think this is considered 'chicken feet' to me. Haha.... but still, its the first time I've ever experienced the tremours from earthquakes in nearby countries. It's an 'eye-opener' for sure!

Busy busy day at work today.... plus the quake.... sigh... when will this mad craze end???

I hope there won't be any more earthquakes or tsunamis happening in the next few days!!!

Link on the Evacuation of Hong Leong Building :

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/070306/5/singapore262327.html