The Curious Diary of Mr Jam

by Nury Vittachi

  Switching to my email, I am thrilled to find I have received a letter from someone called PartyQueen_99, a HUMAN reader of my blog from Beijing. That means there are at least two of us. She tells me that creative Asians are definitely establishing a presence on the internet—and she has attached a news item as proof. It is about two old people who used the internet to fall in love and get married. Wu Jieqin, an 81-year-old Beijing art professor, married Jiang Xiaohui, 58, a retired Sichuan railway worker, it says. “The internet doesn’t belong to the young alone,” Wu told the Beijing News. “There are no rules against old people seeking love online.”

  Oh yes there are, I find myself thinking. The internet is for people my age and downwards, isn’t it? Society has gone to immense trouble to make sure there are no free public computers where old people hang out (park benches, senior citizen centers, graves) and loads where executive types hang out (coffee shops, airports, white collar detention centers).

  It strikes me that the main barrier we erect, of course, is language. We write LOL for “laugh out loud,” G2G for “Got to go” and TDSFABMMMIOFNNN for “This Doesn’t Stand For Anything But Makes My Message Impenetrable to Old Folk, Nyeh-Nyeh-Nyeh.”

  Even the instructions on connecting to the internet baffle the elderly. My mother thinks “right click link” is a dance move and “refresh browser” means “give the dog some water”. I write these thoughts on my blog, in response to PartyQueen_99’s letter.

  Monday, April 21

  A woman named Sonia Franks turns up at the coffee shop this morning. She says she objects strongly to yesterday’s “disrespectful” posting—and not surprisingly, since she runs computer classes for old people. Another human reader of my blog! That’s three, counting me. She invites me to visit her group. I agree to pop in after lunch.

  * * *

  It’s nearly 5 pm. I am writing this blog/ column/ diary entry having just got back from visiting the “elderlies” (that’s what they call old folk in Hong Kong). It was really rather fun. The interesting thing is that they use computers just fine, but they don’t know any of the modern terminology. So they use their own words for things. If you talk to them in jargon, they misunderstand everything, sometimes hilariously. The visit inspires me to start composing a little booklet, which I can perhaps issue as part of my projected book of philosophy:

  A Dictionary of Internet Terms for Elderly Asians.

  Hard drive:

  Going all the way to town on a bullock cart.

  Desktop Icon:

  Buddha statue.

  Laptop:

  Portion of your trousers stained by curry spills.

  Wireless:

  Radio.

  Backup:

  What you were doing in the buffalo cart when you ran over a peon.

  RAM:

  Dangerous sheep with horns.

  8-bit:

  Teeth mark on your arm after you encounter RAM (see above).

  Random Access Memory: The way your brain remembers a meal you ate 50 years ago but can’t remember the names of any of your wives.

  Web: Thing made by a spider.

  World-Wide Web: Thing made by a REALLY big spider.

  Web sites: The corners of ceilings, broken shed windows, and sometimes your head if you fall asleep in the armchair too long.

  Floppy disk: Cause of pain in your lower back.

  Disk Operating System: Bed frame on which you lie while your Thai masseuse walks on your back to get your floppy disk straight again.

  On-line: Where the servant hangs your wet sarong.

  Off line: What she does with your dry sarong.

  Debugging: The once-a-year cleaning of the kitchen.

  Technical support: Strappy thing that you wear under your clothes for embarrassing reasons.

  Mac: Strange, round western sandwich, too big to fit in mouth.

  Broadband: Trouser belt.

  Mousepad: Fashionable rodent home hidden behind wall.

  Viral marketing: Massage parlors which give you sexually transmitted diseases.

  Downtime: Sleeping under a tree.

  Software: The sandals you’ve been wearing for 20 years.

  Server: Waitress.

  Remote server: Waitress who will not flirt with you.

  Mainframe: the first bit of the rice storage barn to be finished.

  Bar code: Always go outside the arrack hut to vomit.

  ROM: City in Europe where the Pope lives.

  Loop: (See Loop)

  * * *

  This afternoon, 192 people from Little Hui’s school sign up to my Facebook list. It appears to be his entire year group. This is getting out of hand. I decide to hide from my Facebook account for a few days.

  * * *

  Sheila Coen phones and invites me to meet her friend Betty, who bears a sad tale. I track them down at a café nearby. Betty is 30-ish and looks shell-shocked. The previous day she had gone to work and noticed a job ad in the newspaper, she says.

  “Look at this,” Betty had commented to her colleagues, innocently. “The department must be expanding. They’re looking for someone with the same skills as me.”

  No one smiled. That’s when she realized it was her job which was up for grabs.

  “How long do you think I have?” Betty asks me. “Sheila says you’re a well-known expert on getting sacked.”

  Nodding modestly, I tell her that she is almost definitely in a condition known to serial sackees as “Dead Man Working”. “You are in this state during the one to two weeks between the boss issuing orders for you to be sacked, and the human resources guy completing all the paperwork.” I tell her that office workers should always watch for danger signs. “Watch out for when your bosses start communicating with you only on paper, even if they are just saying Hi.”

  Sheila, who was also once made redundant, nods. “At one place I used to work, I noticed that our company website had been re-edited to refer to me in the past tense: ‘The project leader at the time was Sheila Coen.’ That’s when I knew I was on the way out.”

  I sympathetically order Betty a spicy laksa. She needs something with a bit of a kick to raise her spirits. She asks me how the final deed happens. I describe it to her: “Your final minutes will have arrived when you get a call inviting you to a meeting in your boss’s room. You stand up. You look over the cubicle wall into his room. You see your boss there, looking grumpy and rubbing his sweaty palms. Bad sign: The boss is accompanied by the human resources director. Worse sign: The company lawyer is with him. Worst sign of all: So are the security guards.” Ah, memories.

  “What’s it like being long-term unemployed?” Betty asks.

  “I’m not unemployed. I’m independent.”

  “Sorry. What’s it like being long-term independent?”

  “It’s not that bad. Your clothes turn to rags and fall off. Your children are taken off to the workhouse. Your landlord throws you out of the house. You subsist on crusts and say to yourself, I would fain have filled my belly with the husks that the swine did eat. You shrivel to skin and bone, and you eventually die on the street, where your bones lie unnoticed for weeks, before they are swept away and dumped in a landfill. But other than that, it’s okay. I’ve had worse.”

  Tuesday, April 22

  Your friendly neighborhood vidushak decides to risk logging on to Facebook again. I find 242 people waiting in a queue to be signed up. Several of them have bitter comments on their pages, such as “Why hasn’t he approved my friend application? Am I not good enough?” (That is from someone insulted at having been kept waiting six hours.)

  I now have a total of 1,256 “friends” on my friends list, mostly strangers, many of whom write in languages I don’t understand: Chinese, Tagalog, Pokemon and Teenager. I get out a calculator and work out that at the current rate of growth, my Facebook list will encompass everyone in Asia in seven and half months, and the entire population of the world less than two days after that, including newborn babies, who will sign up on their way from
the womb to the receiving blanket.

  “How exclusive is a social group which has every person in the world as a member?” I ask Ah-Fat sardonically. “No need to answer. Just roll your eyes.”

  As I log on to write my diary, I hear the noise of a large man squeezing between tightly packed tables (the thud of falling stools and the mutter of apologies). Des Mohani has turned up at the noodle shop to give me some encouragement with a piece of good news. He maneuvers through the crowded café, like an arctic icebreaker nudging floes aside.

  “You’re in the money! A newspaper editor of my acquaintance has been looking at your blog and wants to print extracts,” he says. “I told you it would make you famous. Now we’ll see your eyeball-count really start to grow. He may even pay you.” One up for the digital evangelist.

  Friday, April 25

  My child comes up to me this morning with a question. “Daddy, can I have a Facebook page?” I’d been waiting for this. Indeed, I had been rehearsing the head-shake and the firm-but-fair negative response (extremely hard for dads to give to daughters). I shake my head. “No, darling, you’re not old enough. You have to be 13.”

  “But all my friends have one. I’ll be the ONLY ONE left out,” she wails, her big damp eyes instantly growing to the size of the moons of Jupiter.

  “Nonsense,” I reply. “I know exactly how this works. ONE idiotic, over-permissive parent in your class allows their underage child a Facebook account and the other 29 kids quote that case as evidence for their having one.”

  “No,” she replies calmly. “All my friends have one except me.”

  I do a quick survey by typing the names of her classmates into Facebook and discover that she is right. What’s more, I quickly learn that almost every kid I knew had a page, even ones much younger than she was. Toddlers had their own pages. New-born babies had their own pages. Unfertilized ova had their own pages. It’s only a matter of time before a sperm sets up a Facebook account on his way to the ovum (status line: “Got up early, washed my hair, hoping today’s the day me and some cute egg become a zygote”).

  My daughter is waiting there, arms folded, waiting for a response. Aiyeeah? What to do? I tell her that I will decide tomorrow.

  In the middle of the night I have a brainwave triggered by severe substance abuse (the ingestion of a three-alarm curry with X.O sauce).

  Saturday, April 26

  At breakfast, I tell my daughter that I will set up a Facebook account which I will SHARE with her. She can give it her name but since it is my account, anything posted on it will be copied to my email address.

  Two days to go before the two back-to-back gigs that Ms. Sun has booked for me.

  Sunday, April 27

  As the end of the month approaches, I work out my income from writing this month, which has been entirely on the internet.

  Monthly total before tax: Nil.

  Monthly total after tax: Nil.

  Weekly average: Nil.

  Daily average: Nil.

  On the plus side, the math is easy.

  Meanwhile, the Facebook plan is working brilliantly. My daughter logged on this morning, and was instantly playing the built-in games which have made Facebook popular with youngsters. She is becoming “Facebook friends” with other kids in her class. She is happy. I am happy. Problem solved.

  Monday, April 28

  Maybe not. This morning I log on to see that she has approved a Facebook friend request from someone claiming to be pop star Miley Cyrus. Eyebrows furrowed, I log on to her account and unfriend that person.

  When she returns from school, I give her a stern lecture. “The real Miley Cyrus is too busy to be your friend. THIS Miley Cyrus is almost definitely a deranged, 200-kilo, gun-toting truck driver with halitosis and a wart on the end of his nose.”

  She replies: “But I LIKE truck drivers.”

  * * *

  I have my first adult gig for several weeks. In experimental mode, I tell a western joke to an audience of people mostly from Bangladesh at a South Asian gathering.

  Q: How many civil servants does it take to change a light bulb? A: Forty-five. One to change the bulb, and 44 to do the paperwork.

  Nobody laughs. But this time it doesn’t bother me. It’s an Asian audience. I understand these guys, now, having spent all that time in schools. They may be laughing on the inside. Or they may not be laughing at all. Or they may not know the rules of the game:

  I talk

  you laugh

  I talk

  you laugh

  I talk

  you laugh

  I talk

  you laugh you clap.

  I stay cool. Instead of panicking on stage and ruining the session for myself and the audience, I calmly do some experimentation. I tell another joke on the same lines.

  Q: How many Taliban fighters does it take to change a light bulb? A: A million and one. One to change the bulb and a million to rebuild civilization to the point where they need light bulbs again.

  Again nobody laughs. I change tack for the rest of the speech, talking about growing up in various parts of Asia, and redeem myself surprisingly easily.

  Tuesday, April 29

  Mulling over what I learned last night, I realize that the whole “How many people does it take to change a light bulb” joke genre doesn’t work in most parts of Asia. The humor is built on the fact that the listener has to expect the answer to be “one”. But in Asia, no one does. Organizations are severely understaffed or over-staffed. I have a cutting from the Daily Star of Dhaka reporting that 122 people were involved in the fixing of one toilet. Light bulb jokes in this region are not perceived as attempts at humor. They are more like civil service entrance exam questions. Thinks: Perhaps I should subvert the genre, using it for non-jokes.

  At the gig tonight, I decide to try out some Deliberately Not Funny Light Bulb Jokes, created just for Asia.

  Q: How many Chinese government workers does it take to change a light bulb? A: That’s an official secret. (In China, everything is a secret unless it is specifically listed as Non-Secret.)

  How many Thai Prime Ministers does it take to change a light bulb? A: Nobody knows, since Thai Prime Ministers don’t last as long as light bulbs. (Also not a joke—light bulbs last years.)

  Q: How many Filipino premiers does it take to change a light bulb? A: Two. One to screw it in and one to screw it up.

  Q: How many dumb Asian TV interviewers does it take to change a light bulb? A: Er, change it to what?

  This time the audience laughs loudly AND nods appreciatively. In Asia, the most entertaining thing you can do is simply tell the truth. Then I talk for 10 minutes about how Asians have no sense of humor. Everyone roars.

  Afterwards, the host says: “If we had known you were going to be this good, we would have paid you a proper fee.”

  * * *

  Arriving home, I notice that my daughter and her friends are discussing a new Facebook discovery: the wall-message function. Wonder what that does?

  Wednesday, April 30

  This morning I receive an automated email from Facebook which has 75 words on it, most of which consists of disclaimers and links. But the actual communication transmitted in the email consists of a single word. “Teehee”. Then I receive another 75-word email ushering in another one-word sentence. “yeah!!!!” it says. A few minutes later, a third one arrives. It says: “xactly”. I log off.

  Later that afternoon, I re-open my email box. There are dozens of emails in it, forwarded automatically from small children using Facebook. They say things like: “LOL” and “ROFL” and “woohoo” and so on. The messages are a result of my daughter and her buddies having a chat. The nearest these kids get to a whole sentence is “Wassup?”

  I sit pining for Miley Cyrus, the 200-kilo gun-toting truck driver. I miss him. At least he could manage a two-word sentence.

  Chapter Five

  ONLY WE CAN SAVE THE WORLD

  In which the vidushak is given a mission

 
Thursday, May 1

  In typical Asian fashion, three generations of my family have been living crushed together in one medium-sized apartment. We knew this situation could not last forever. Well, a change has finally been made. From now on, FOUR generations of us live squeezed into one apartment. My children just phoned me to say they have gone to an animal shelter and adopted a small, yellowy-brown mutt.

  They bring it to the flat. I take a look at it. “It’s a mongrel,” I say.

  The kids ask: “Is that good?”

  I nod. “Definitely. It’s the rarest breed in the world. No two are alike.” They are impressed. Having signed the paperwork with the dog shelter, the children and their mother cheekily go off for a long weekend holiday, leaving me in charge.

  Friday, May 2

  I call friends for advice. “Make sure it pees and poops in your flat,” says one. “If it does, that’s a huge compliment. It’s telling you that it feels at home.”

  This news amazes me. “That’s a compliment? When the Queen finally invites me to Buckingham Palace, should I pee on her throne and poop on her two-hectare Persian rug? “

  “In the days of yore that would have been the right thing to do,” says my advisor. “But probably not today.” Later, I dial a veteran dog owner for a more knowledgeable second opinion. “No. Make sure it DOESN’T pee or poop in your flat,” she says. “Otherwise your home will look like a dog-toilet for evermore. So, no change there.”