Hearing in Poetry

"Our hearing is a choice and dainty sense,
And hard to mend, yet soon it may be marred,
Blows, falls, and noise... all these...
Breed tingling in the ears, and hurt our hearing."

~Physicians of the medieval medical school of Salerno.

For My Fellow Colleagues & Working Friends

*credit to Faiz Mokhtar :)*

Beware of Scheming Devils

Everyone should take note of this. I think it has been going on for quite a while but people are not really aware of it.

I was nearly scammed a week ago. It actually happened to my older brother, except that his X-Box's hard drive was 'lost' and mine was my camera's memory card and battery. So what happened was, my camera was broken and naturally I sent it for repair at the shop I purchased it from (in Digital Mall, PJ). They charged me RM50 just for the cost of quoting repair charges to Canon. I obliged, as I had no time to go to a Canon store myself. It took them 2 weeks to quote the charges to me, which I refused as it was too expensive, and another 3 weeks for me to get it back.

I remember clearly that I did not take out the memory card and battery, and the salesperson also did not give it to me. He only gave me the camera casing, so that only the camera is sent off to Canon. But when my boyfriend picked up the camera, he didn't know, and so he brought the camera back to me without the battery and memory card.

The next day both of us went back to the shop to claim the memory card and battery. I waited in the car as there was no parking, while my bf went to talk with the guy. They argued (according to bf) and bf let the guy talked to me on the phone. The guy repeatedly said he always ALWAYS always give back the memory card and battery to customers, or if he had taken those things, it would have been written on the receipt, which in my case, he didn't write. So I argued with him back, saying I know I didn't take those things, and said, 'why would I lie to you?!' He defended himself, saying he knows what he did, blablabla. I knew at that moment he's cheating on me and so I said 'whatever' and told my bf to take a picture of the shop (in case I want to write to newspapers or something).

My clever bf not only took the picture of the shop, but also the receipt. After we left the place, about 20 minutes or so the guy called back, asking how many GB was my memory card. I told him, and he said he found one memory card. I checked back my receipt of the camera purchase and reconfirmed with him and he said, he found both the memory card and battery. Huh. The photo-taking must have made him chickened out.

So I got those things back. But my brother wasn't as fortunate. The same thing went on, where the guy said no, he didn't take the hard drive or he would have written it on the receipt and all that BS. My brother didn't take pictures of the shop, so the thief got away uncaught.

But please, be very aware of these kind of people. It might happen to you. This is a public service announcement and it is the truth.

The Wedding Singer

Recently there were a lot of weddings going on, especially since it was a school break. I've attended some as the partner for Faiz Mokhtar, who was invited from his friends and colleagues. So far all of the receptions were held at the bride's or groom's houses. Each wedding (hrmm, maybe except for the Terengganu one) will put on full blast wedding songs, easily vibrating the guests' eardrums to the limits. Sometimes it was a live wedding singer; sometimes it was a record. Either way it annoyed the hell out of me because I really hate noise pollution. Plus, I'm an audiologist, I should be concerned about this. Someone should be out there with a dosimeter to measure the level of noise the weddings are producing or something.

Exposure to noise could actually cause Noise-Induced Hearing Loss (NIHL). There are 3 types of NIHL: Acoustic trauma, Noise-Induced Temporary Threshold Shift (NITTS) and Noise-Induced Permanent Threshold Shift (NIPTS). NIHL usually affect the high frequency sounds, although constant noise exposure will also cause it to spread to low frequency sounds. I will update more about this; but for now here are some pictures of me attending weddings with my partner in tow :) From here, we can see my boyfriend's fave batik :P



Seremban


Keramat


Kuala Terengganu


Muar


Petaling Jaya

Final Submission

I submitted my thesis.

No feeling. None at all.

What's that? Euphoria? Did I say that?

I didn't even make a copy for myself.

I forgot, actually, haha.

But yay, everything's settled.

Thank you so much to everyone who has helped.

Sincerely from the bottom of my heart.

The lucky ones, I've even highlighted in my 'Penghargaan'. You guys are the reason the thesis is completed.


"I can no other answer make, but thanks and THANKS!" - William Shakespeare.