Writing, Communicating and Chatting

I reckon most of us do not receive written personalised letters anymore, nor write any to socialise with others. Even exchanged love notes are in texted electronic messages. Maybe the grocery list is still handwritten.

So called snail mail has been sadly reduced to advertising pamphlets. Contemporary society has practically done away with the pleasures of beautiful handwriting and we are reduced to only being agile with our thumbs.

Elegant writing instruments have become more rare and inevitably redundant. We do not have to sit up properly to communicate - more often than not we are not poised in ergonomic body positions when using electronic screens. 

An increasing number of us are not fully aware of our environment when we text on smart phones walking across busy streets and when driving vehicles. A whole generation has lost the significance of spelling correctly and become infatuated wirh Emojis.

The variety of gadgets to communicate has evolved to portable devices that echo our need to be mobile and have access to our records anywhere we are in the physical world. This has hugely made us depend on wifi availability, a resource which is controlled by only a few players. We can be held captive in this manner when speech and writing are no longer free to be transmitted instantaneously.

Each of us no longer has the thrill of having a private diary buried under a tree or in a secret drawer. Every part of our daily life is recorded by third parties and leaves a trail, even when we electronically delete it.

The shift from use of feathered quills to thumb pressing to write has only taken a few hundred years. It can be both exciting and frightening to imagine the future in this respect. Our records cannot be burned as they are no longer on paper. Yet they can be tampered with, misused and interfered by parties having covert negative intentions, as they can be traced much more easily than with paper documents.

The keyboard still survives but the desktop, email, laptop and tablet are all inevitably headed to oblivion. What is next?

Reflect at how our residential post boxes, email addresses, instant messaging folders and social media inboxes can be saddled with junk stuff and file attachments. There is this dire risk of not having ever being satisfied with whatever capacity is made available.

There may also be no need to write much in the future. We leave verbal messages on phone apps and can ask robots for verbalised answers. 

Yet on the other hand, we do not need to speak on the phone as we can "chat" silently on provider websites that facilitate text conversation formats.

Analytics of our data and images in cyberspace can lead to a new form of political and social control.

Nothing good is free, we do realise there is a cost to be paid for the benefits of on line real time uploading of messages, photos and videos of what we are doing to anyone in another part of the world - provided both sender and recipient can pay for and have access to the new god of wifi.

#yongkevthoughts

Where To For Dinner?

The pork cutlets melted in my mouth this evening, especially with the luscious gravy served at Gambino's Corrimal NSW.

Such is the pleasure of finding a gem of an Italian restaurant in the neighbourhood. Add to this a most engaging customer relations lady who lifts up the conversation and makes us able to relax on a weekday night, particularly one with drizzling and persistent rain showers.

The quality of a suburb cannot be enhanced by too much vehicular traffic, the number of pedestrains and the presence of too many competing businesses. When one enjoys a group dinner, it is both the lovingly made culinary served and the level of meaningful conversation that make a delightful end to a mucky weather of a day.

I forget the cold as I fork into yummy marinated greens and potatoes on the side served with my mains. We do not have to walk far at all between the car and the restaurant. There is no limit on the amount of time we can linger at our table. We can all come home within 15 minutes, even if we do not really want to.

The way cities grow in some parts of the world's most populated areas means making it rare to experience such occasions savoured tonight. Just getting to the restaurant can be a challenge in logistics, even if it is supposed to feel hip. There may be issues and risks of personal safety navigating home after dinner. The restaurant may have two seating sessions, so either one dines too early or too late. There is an increasing trend amongst Asian outlets to accept cash only. The state of toilets in city restaurants can change one's mood for the worse. And then you have to locate your car in a multi storey park.

So you have your choice where you prefer to dine. 

#yongkevthoughts

NBN - or I shall Never Be Neutered

Now is the time......to get real concerned as to how the NBN is being implemented for ordinary Joe and Jane Citizen across our Great Southern Land.


If we already have a viable existing telecommunications system,  why replace it with something less to be desired?   Can all the public monies used to fund NBN be please better utilised for improving health services, public school education and other areas crying for help in an increasingly socially inequitable country?   And we have a Federal Australian Government which is facing serious issues of balancing the national budget, repaying off huge debts and currently significantly having a large loan interest liability.   Why add to another huge and costly undertaking?


After connecting to the NBN, my landline telephone broke down in services three times in six weeks.  In all my previous many years living in this beloved nation called Australia, I have never had any issues with my landline telephone connection, even with copper wire.   My previous landline phone has never gone dead, until post NBN.


NBN tells me over the phone to just deal with my chosen provider if I have any issues with the NBN installation, pre or post.   NBN cannot help.


The Federal Government talks up of the glories of having NBN, unnecessarily raising expectations in the minds of ordinary people like me.   It is indeed a most exciting time to be an Australian, to know the gap between political talk speak  or hype and the inability of NBN to engage with customers, deliver the technical quality in telecommunications as promised and understand deeply that NBN is not a poster boy for innovation that this country needs.


 My selected provider says a lot of things are subject to NBN control.  As a customer, I am left in the gutter, comparable to between a rock and a hard place.   Providers who deal with the public, like me, need the money plus business - and cannot afford to aggravate the NBN.   They dare not criticise the NBN, period.  


===================================================================


I am not holding my breadth anymore. 


Speed connection with NBN is nothing better than pre-NBN days, unless I am willing to dish out an additional AUD 30 more per month to upscale my internet speed plans.


My provider tells me there are things that the way NBN does things has a shortfall, but they cannot be criticised, as NBN dishes out the parcel of revenue to eager outsourced providers and contractors  -  as every resident and citizen in continental Australia eventually will face the prospect of having to change over to this god-like entity called the NBN. 


Before I took up NBN connection, I had access to one of the best telecommunications services Australia can be proud of, even if I know other nations are now providing even better and have uplifted the game....but I was content.   The monster in the room is that every one knows that Australia is left behind in this perspective  - excuses are given that 
Australia has such a huge land mass and such a low population, which I recognise as well. 
So I call to the politicians and NBN to factor this constriction that Australia faces - and not promise glorious and better things with NBN installation.   WE are indeed a low population clinging on to a huge land mass.


Now with the NBN installation kicked in, this new arrangement has disenabled my existing back up battery with my landline, which I understand is critical in the event of an electrical supply shut off.    This back up battery is a significant element for the operation of home medical alarms, emergency call systems, fire alarm, emergency lift phones and monitored security alarm systems.


NBN does not tell the public why the back up battery has to be disenabled.  If customers, who have moved on to NBN connections, want to reinstall a back up battery, they have to bear the costs themselves for doing so.


The NBN arrives at your front door with no democratic choice given to you.  No one in person over the phone discusses with the resident about the impending  rollout or its implications.  The attitude from the NBN is "take it or leave it" - showing arrogance to prospective customers, which is rather jarring in a country that promotes human rights and political correctness in a big way, under our Westminster system of parliamentary democracy.   


Are we as commoners in Australia forced to install NBN?  I know that the Government has given NBN roll out targets, to cover more portions of this Great Southern Land.   I shudder when I see NBN advertisements on the media  - to me it just means NBN is way behind its agreed performance targets.


Strange looking men, contractors hired by NBN,  built an outside NBN box above my existing outside Telstra box   - they do not even talk to you and when approached, say nothing, know nothing and  keep their distance from us.      I heard that NBN has targets to achieve in covering specific  suburbs in their roll out  - and akin to war machines. act in surprising the local populace - and treat human beings with no rights at all in consultation, choice and being informed in a civilised way. 



The contractors sent by NBN to install an outside box broke a chunk of the piping between the existing Telstra box and the new external NBN box.  I phoned NBN and got no follow up.  I saw a contractor hanging outside my house by chance and he said he could do nothing.  He actually asked me to repair it myself....by going to the local Bunnings store.


Letters are sent by and written by NBN  in an unfriendly  manner and language.    I note an irritating feature of telecommunications companies in Australia is to spend huge on a budget of sending snail mail letters - and when I phone up NBN, I am placed on a "circuitous telephone and wait on the line" experience, which says so evidently that NBN does not really want to talk to me and listen to my queries.  


On a side note, Telstra still sends me hard copy letters by traditional post even if I owe them nothing and  I no longer use their services -  this has been going on for more than ten years, easy.   Many people I ask just chuck the hard copy letter they receive from NBN.   Perhaps Telstra has a generous budget to waste on printing and mailing.


After the external NBN box has been set up outside my house, I am barraged by these regular letters stating that the NBN network will replace my landline networks and that I need to get into an NBN plan before a stated due date -  otherwise all my accessible telecommunications will be switched off,  with no other option given to me as an Australian citizen.   NBN spells out that all landline phones, landline internet, EFTPOS and ATM services, fax machines and Teletypewriter devices, monitored security alarm systems, medical alarms and emergency call systems shall be switched off, if the customer does not take up NBN installation.


It is just the sub-standard way in which NBN carries out its installation process and then followed by the lack of delivery of viable service to the customer after installation - this is not on.   Throughout NBN does not communicate sufficiently with the customer.


The preamble promise by NBN in this written letter is that the NBN network is designed  to give Australians "access to fast and reliable landline phone and internet services".
This constantly sent NBN letter promises me four key things, which have not been fulfilled by the NBN post installation:

Faster downloads.


Fewer dropouts.


Better productivity.


A brighter future.

The Incredibility of Getting Away With It

Accountability can be so lacking, or am I just under stating the state of such things?


When there is obvious misdemeanour - or worse - several parties reckon all is done with by proclaiming a Sorry.   The structures of legislation or governance spend money on elaborate structured commissions of enquiry, but the hearings consist of pre-staged replies from representatives of the guilty.   The seriousness of the matter at hand is undermined and ignored by the parties going through the motions, without any apparent attempt to explain why it occurred in the first place or what those responsible are going to avert the causes in the future.


The unspoken costs in psychological trauma of being inflicted in an unfair manner can never be measured by compensation in subjective financial terms.   Is accountability restored in part by the shaming in public by the media?   What is more obvious is the lack of effectiveness and authority of the regulatory bodies set up in the first place to prevent, identify and punish crimes of cheating, greed, fraud and general taking advantage of less empowered individuals.     What happened to the esteem and ability of such regulatory agencies in the first place?  What is the point of funding toothless tigers in the realm of compliance agencies?


It is evident that in our contemporary society, there are powerful entities that are deemed too important to be sufficiently punished for significant misdeeds, or that their existence is deemed to be so necessary that the government of the day has to keep them afloat, no matter what their negative deeds are.   Too large to go under, too connected to be kept afloat by every means, perhaps by tax payer money.   Such is the state of things that perhaps capitalism wrought.    The truly free forces of the market, supply and demand do not apply to such institutions - they are exempted from what happens to others in the wild law of the commercial jungle.


Service levels can be so obviously inadequate, but such providers are not criticised enough for corrective action.   Entities are set up with judicial firewalls between them so that when a related parent commits the crime, the punishment can be pushed to the separately set up entity, without inflicting any responsibility and damage to the parent.


The threat of financial penalties are managed by sufficiency of provisions made and by the setting up of apparent compliance teams to project an image.   The costs of financial damage imposed by regulatory agencies are passed on to customers in terms of extra fees.   The mindset in managing misdeeds is not to correct behaviour and repent, but to avoid costs in strategic planning and on-going execution.


So we have a working system to perpetuate negative behaviour in various sectors.   Those responsible are thinking short term, as they will not be around to support a longer term and more effective change in the factors that cause such an environment.


Those responsible for such misdeeds really think they have got away with it, but the true cost has not surfaced yet.


The widening gap in accountability and the lack of rewards in doing the right thing is a malaise of our modern society.  Whether it is in the election of so called democratic governments, the modus operandi of our economic system or in the signals we encourage in our younger generations, the price for it all will come.  We shall not get away with a reduction in accountability, at whatever levels of our lives and community.


It all starts with the individual - you and me.  If my lies are deemed fake news inflicted by others, the only casualty is the casualisation of truth.    If the boundaries of accountability are pushed further and there is no wholesome penalty for our laws and policies, who is going to take seriously our framework of legislation and penalty structures?


A strong society is built on morals within not just the family, but all the entities whom we rely upon for the conduct of our day to day lives.     If accountability is undermined for such entities, what can we be more uncertain of?


Do we overlook accountability in the pursuit of more financial accumulation, the nurturing of specific powers and in the build up of ego?

Tang Court Cantonese Restaurant, Langham Hong Kong

The elegance begins with fine cutlery and silver ware.

The King prawns were substantial but the sauce was even better.

Classic pork chops in gratifying batter.

The serving chopstick pair is different from what you use yourself on your plate.

A gem of the ocean, done Cantonese style.

The classic spring rolls, only to be surpassed by the melting pork belly with crackle.