The Silent Room

My dad once asked me over dinner “Why is Wikipedia free of charge?”. His curiosity was simply because back in his university days, searching for information and gathering knowledge usually means spending hours at the library, pouring through thick and heavy encyclopaedias, theses, journals and various reference books. Back then, those kind of things came with a heavy price tag.

Yet, today, he found a good record of the history Applied Statistics, a little trivia for him to share with the students attending his lecture to make it a bit more interesting. He did in a matter of minutes, and completely free of charge. Oh, you bet he’s loving it. My dad also absolutely loves Google. He uses it to cross reference between theorems and formulae, and to dig out extra info about the latest news.

He types with two fingers on each hand, and without much confidence in his touch-typing – but that’s probably because of his deteriorating eyesight. He used to code in BASIC and COBOL. You see, my dad is over 60 years old. He has changed his cellphones three times because of preference [he has come to favor Nokia over other makes], and not because the previous ones stopped working or anything.

Oh, my dad loves technology, alright. Sure, he runs into a couple of problems once in a while. Whenever that happens, he’ll either give me a quick call, or Google for it himself.

However, my Dad doesn’t blog. He doesn’t even fancy writing to begin with. He doesn’t even fancy non-textbook reading either. His regular diet of light-reading revolves around national news, world news, the stock market and his Math-related textbooks.

My mom, however, loves blogs. She doesn’t blog herself, but she has a long list of blogs in her bookmark. In case you haven’t noticed, my mom loves technology, too. She has taken a fondness over digital photography, and she’s better at using Google’s advanced search features than my dad.

She used to touch-type, but like my dad, she also lost a bit of confidence in her typing. However, she still manages to skillfully type using at least 3 fingers on each hand. Here’s the thing: she’s already a grandmother to five beautiful grandchildren.

My parents have lived in the vinyl disc era, they collected a mountain of audio cassettes, have bought a VCR, used a handheld camcorder, have installed OSes from 5.5 inch floppies, have stacked piles of 3.5 inch floppies, burnt CDs, and lately, they have been carrying around 1GB thumbdrives and portable harddisks.

They have changed the ribbons of a typewriter, a dot-matrix printer, skillfully operate photocopying machines, refilled the cartidges of a bubblejet printer and replaced toners for a laserjet printer.

My mom can tell between a spam, and student’s email submission of an important thesis. My dad can tell if an SMS was a scam. Our house have been struck by lightning countless times, and they know how to care for electronic equipment when approached by a storm: switch them off. A solution like that is probably too fucking complicated for a certain senior newspaper columnist to comprehend.

In case you can’t tell, here’s the bottom line: my parents are awesome. They pwn you.

So Mr. Rehman Rashid, sir. I have no idea how old you are, not that I ever gave a flying rat’s ass about it, anyway. My parents have lived through the age when technology growth was exponential, unforeseen, and clearly unstoppable. They embraced it, just as how they embraced the fact that the Internet has improved their work efficiency, and that they can no longer afford to leave home without their cellphones.

They weren’t political figures. They weren’t figureheads of society. They weren’t revolutionary or extraordinary in any way. All they did was work an honest job, and raise four children. Sure, they have some minor complaints about being taken out of their comfort zone all too quickly, but they know better.

Unlike you, Mr. Rehman, sir, who has ignorantly continued to hold on to things that no longer serves to improve your work efficiency, or clinging to the good ‘ol days when the typewriter was so unbelievably futuristic that listening to music from a little box smaller than your wallet was completely unimaginable.

Your melodramatic editorial serves nothing but to prove how much you are against human development and how much tolerance you lack. It also sounded like it was written by a wimpy, angsty, pimple-infested pre-puberscent blogger who listens to too much Linkin Park and Simple Plan. Your use of tongue-twisting buzzwords elegantly showcases your supreme intellect, by placing on it a plaque titled “Neanderthal Man“.

What I’m saying, Mr. Rehman, sir, is that you are a sad case of a man who lived for far too long than he really should. Instead of living a healthy lifestyle by quitting smoking and controlling your sugar intake, you could have indulged yourself in life’s luxuries and died happily in your comfort zone of the good ‘ol days riddled with Pop-Yeh-Yeh, dangdut and absolutely obsolete technology.

You say a lot of people can’t tell the difference between a rectum and an opinion. Fortunately for you, I’m one of those that can and I can see that apparently, your opinions came out from your rectum.

I guess that means you’re a superhero hero too eh, Anal-mouthed Man?