Coffeephoria

Why is it that many songs I can remember from childhood are not the sweet little music but morbid and disturbing?  For example…

London bridge is falling down, falling down falling down
London bridge is falling down, my fair lady.

or…

Rock-a-bye baby in the treetop
When the wind blows the cradle will rock
When the bough breaks the cradle will fall
And down will come baby, cradle and all

And for Chinese songs (translated), such as…

Two tigers, two tigers, running fast, running fast
One has no eyes, one has no tail, so peculiar, so peculiar

or Taiwanese songs such as…

Grandpa wants to cook salty, grandma wants to cook bland,
The two fights and breaks the pot, wa ha ha

Shouldn’t songs for kids be all cheery and fun?  Where did all these songs come from?

When I bought my SanDisk Compact Flash card, I read online that many people had problems with their rebate even though they had submitted all documentation.  In order to cover my bases, I decided to create a video documentation of my putting every piece of documentation in the envelope and sent my submission.  After a few weeks, I got this…

I’m amazed at how informative the internet is!  Anyway, I made a call to the the number, and the operator put me on hold for 3 minutes and came back to say the rebate was approved and will be sent to me.  Still, I can’t help but think if this is a tactic to save money on their part for all the people who never bothered to call in.

The morale of the story is, always document properly all your rebate submissions and always follow up!

If you don’t know Parking Wars, it’s a Facebook game where one can have their own street with five parking spots, three labeled “No Parking”, and two labeled with colors for which it is legal to park.  Each person starts with two cars of different colors, and you have to park on your friends’ or your neighbor’s streets in order to accumulate money, which then can be used to purchase more cars and accumulate more money.  If you park illegally and they catch, they can give you a ticket and tow your car.  The more money you have, the more cars you’ll automatically receive, up to six cars.  After the six car, you would have made a million dollars and can save up to buy cars with special powers.  One of such cars is the Ice Cream Truck, where you can accumulate money faster at 1.5 rate for cars on the same street, and another is the Tow Truck, where you can tow cars next to your car and cannot move for 6 hours.

Now one of my neighbors, John, seem to have quit the game, so I’ve been using his lot for my personal use to accumulate money.  Recently, however, his friend or neighbor started invading my space by parking on John’s street and leeching my hard-earned ice cream!  How dare they!  To deter this behavior, I saved up and bought a tow truck, anxiously awaiting the day I get to bestow revenge on him.  I was so overcome with joy the night I got the tow truck that I even dreamed about waking up in the morning to give him tickets!

The next morning, the anxious moment arrived to deliver the tickets he deserved, so I parked my tow truck next to his car ready to hit the “Ticket” button, only to find that the button was… missing!  Oops!  I made a mistake of catastrophic proportions by parking next to his legally parked car instead, and worse of all, I’ve shown my ace in the hole as I revealed my tow truck in plain sight and cannot move it for 6 hours.  Argghh… my masterplan was foiled!

While I was writhing in agony, a most delightful development unfolded–the return of the Neighbor!  This time, I devised a painstaking plan to tow two of his cars at the maxed out amount at the same time, so I purposedly parked in a way so that he would be parked in two No Parking spots with one space in between where I would later strategically place my Tow Truck.  After a day, the fish was on the hook…

Unfortunately when I checked the next morning, he had already moved his cars away and back, so once again my devious act was dereailed again!  So I patiently waited another 12 hours, and this time, I promptly delivered him with two woeful tickets in less than 10 seconds for a whopping $16580 total.  Mission accomplished, finally!  Bye bye neighbor.  Thanks for the money and I don’t expect to ever see him again.

Except, defying all logic, he’s back, occupying the same exact spots at which he was mercilessly ticketed.  Here’s watching the clock…  🙂