Sexism on the Internet?

Bradley Farless7 Comments

Every time I turn around someone is crying discrimination or sexism on the internet, even in situations where it’s blatantly obvious that the original writer’s intent was something else entirely.

People nowadays can’t seem to distinguish between what true sexism is and what’s meant to be taken lightly or meant to be used as an example. At the merest hint of something that seems not completely “Politically Correct” people are up in arms and there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth, as though the world will end.

Get over yourselves. Not everything is sexism and not everything is about you! Sometimes it’s just illustrating a point.

What’s got me going is that a recent article on Mashable was talking about Internet Explorer 6 and the need for people to stop using a legacy browser, as it’s slowing down advances in internet technology.

Here’s a quote from the article with the supposedly offensive text colored in red:

“While it’s great to see companies taking a stand against the broken browser, we can’t help but wonder whether this type of campaign will make any impact, given that many users of IE6 are only using because of work/IT restrictions or are in underdeveloped countries. David, co-founder of Weebly, gave us his thoughts on the matter:

“We think we can have a huge impact: For those users that are just unaware they are using an old browser (mothers, grandmothers), we’d like to encourage them to upgrade and have a better experience using our sites. For those users in corporate environments, we’d like to start putting pressure on the IT department to upgrade — the more users who complain about seeing the prompts (especially if coming from the top), the more pressure the IT department will have to either upgrade IE 6 or install FirefoxFirefox side-by-side with IE 6 for compatibility reasons.””

The real kicker in this case is that actual statistics shows that this particular demographic, as well as corporate users, are in fact the highest demographic of people still using IE6.

Right away though, someone jumped in with this comment:

“It’s pretty dumb and sexist to label “mothers [and] grandmothers” as the people who are ignorant of technology, and to separate mothers and grandmothers from the corporate world. Mothers and grandmothers don’t work? Males don’t use IE6?”

Are you serious? In the same way that IE6 is holding back the internet, this mode of thinking in which everything has to be politically correct is holding back the entire world in terms of self-expression.

Should we go ahead and ban all of our classic literature, because it contains mentions of things that aren’t politically correct?

Get real, and if you’re so damn sensitive that something as innocent as what was mentioned in that article offends you, then maybe the internet isn’t for you!

Here are some amusing images to put this all in perspective:

I’d just like to emphasize one more time that this mode of thinking is ass backwards. I’ve even seen people complain that a person is being sexist just because of their personal preference in women. What? Is a person not allowed to have a preference for what he considers attractive anymore?

This insanity has got to stop.

Singapore McDonald’s Seaweed Shaker Fries

Bradley Farless4 Comments

From what I’ve seen, the McDonald’s menu is tailored to the country it’s in, to appeal more to the locals.  In the Philippines there is a longganisa (Filipino sausage) and rice meal, for example.  Up until today I hadn’t noticed anything too different about the meals in Singapore, except for the choice of drinks.  There are different teas offered here, rather than the sweet iced tea you might be accustomed to in the US.

Today though, I saw something that was a big deviation from the norm.  Seaweed shaker fries.  They give you the large fries and a packet with some sort of seaweed flakes / flavoring in it.  They also give you a small paper bag.  You dump the fries and the seaweed flakes / flavoring into the bag and shake it up.  Then you enjoy your ‘seaweed shaker’ fries.  Sounded kinda gross to me, so I passed.  I don’t do the whole ‘up-sizing’ thing anyway.  The regular sized meal is full of enough calories, fat and grease as it is.

The “Next Blog” Button is Worthless

Bradley Farless8 Comments

This is just a short break from the series I’m writing to say that the “Next Blog” button located on the Google Blogger toolbar is worthless.

When clicking this thing, you should be taken to a random blog each and every time.  There are hundreds of thousands of blogs, if not more, on the Blogger system.  There’s no reason why I shouldn’t get an unique blog every time I click that “Next Blog” button.  Instead, I’m sent to the same 7 or 8 blogs over and over again.  Half aren’t in English, and the other half aren’t interesting or I wouldn’t keep “Next Blog”ing past them.

I mean, seriously.  If I click “Next Blog” and the blog I see is something I don’t like, and is also a blog that doesn’t have the toolbar, I click the “back” button and then click the “Next Blog” button again.  Why is it that if I do this, I’m taken back to the same blog that I just navigated away from?  Then why does it happen 3 times in a row or more?

Also, why is it that I’m taken to blogs whose written language is in something I couldn’t even guess at?  Blogger incorporates language settings, so why aren’t they being made use of?

The “Next Blog” button has a lot of potential as a content discovery method, but only if the way it’s implemented is greatly improved.  Every few months I give it a whirl, hoping for some improvement, and every few months I’m disappointed.

Google is a giant and the world leader when it comes to search and content discovery, so why are they failing at such a simple implementation of technology?  Is it really that hard to set this thing up so that you get a different blog every time you click it?

A Poor Example of Leadership

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When I went through leadership training two of the basic principles we were taught is that you should never ask your subordinate to do something you weren’t willing to do yourself, and you should lead by example.

So, here’s an example of a failure of both of those sound leadership principles.

You ask your employees to work extra hours, without pay, to meet unrealistic goals.  You do this regularly, and your employees, having no choice but to comply for fear of losing their jobs, do it.  Rather than staying behind as well, to ensure that your personnel are getting the job done, and to show that you too are sacrificing for the good of the company, you leave on time every day.  As you go out the door on time every day your subordinates are still slaving away at their stations, becoming more and more filled with resentment at their mistreatment.

The result is that you create a hostile work environment, where the employees resent their jobs and resent you for asking them to stay behind when you’re not willing to do it yourself.  These are major failures in leadership, as you undermine your own authority and cause your employees to stop caring about their work.  Employees will start performing to the minimum, rather than trying to excel, because they have no desire to impress you, as they don’t like you to start with.  Eventually that dislike spreads to dislike for the job and the company as a whole, and employees start biding their time until another opportunity comes along, rather than making plans to invest in their careers with the company.

There are right ways to lead and manage people and they’ve been identified as the right ways to do things because they work.  I wonder at how some people attain managerial positions and yet these basic tenets of management and leadership seem beyond their grasp.

(Image Source)

The Abuse of Non-Resident Workers in Singapore

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If you’ve been keeping up with my blog recently you’ll have read that Singapore can be a pretty rough place for a foreigner.  There’s plenty of racism and discrimination from locals.  Unfortunately, this type of discrimination is also common in the work place.

In Singapore business, appearance is everything.  Companies want to present the best image they can, regardless of the internal cost and that’s usually going to be at someone’s expense, because they want a certain level of service to be rendered but at the same time they don’t want to put forward the capital or manpower required to adequately meet their goals.  Someone winds up suffering, and those someones are typically foreign workers.

You see, being in Singapore on a work permit is a rather unique situation.  People usually apply for jobs in Singapore through recruitment agencies in their home countries.  If they’re approved they receive a card that designates them as being about to legally enter Singapore without needing their passport stamped and remain for the duration of their work contract.  Now, people that do this sort of thing are either looking to improve their lives, or they have financial obligations at home, like a family to support.  Either way, they have to maintain their job.  If a person loses their job they’re only given so many days to find a new one before they have to leave Singapore, and sometimes that time-frame is only 2 weeks.  You see what I’m saying?  There’s a lot of pressure to make sure you stay in your employer’s good graces, because you’re almost guaranteed to have to leave the country if you leave your job.  Moving from one country to another can be a big deal.  It can be even more stressful when your income is cut off and you have obligations to meet.

In other words, there’s really no wriggle-room.  You work, or you get put out and you have to leave the country.

Being the pricks they are, people like to take advantage of that here.  They create unrealistic expectations in their KPIs.  They ask employees to stay longer hours, often unpaid, to do more work, even if that employee has exceeded the target set for the day.  This is done so that the company can get around hiring more people to manage the workload more effectively, but is an abuse to the worker.  In the case of maids, I’m sure there are far worse abuses that happen despite the strict rules regulating maids in Singapore.

Regardless, there’s no much of a recourse for these foreign workers.  If they decline the request to work the longer hours too many times, they’ll simply be let go and they’ll have to pack up the life they’ve made in Singapore and return to their country, often with not much to show for their efforts and no immediate prospects for work.  If they file a complaint with the company?  Same result.  File a complaint with MoM?  Well, something might happen in the future but the company would find a reason to fire that person.    Change their job?  Well, it’s not always that easy.  Most foreigners come to Singapore on a contract, so they can’t change jobs.  If they can, it could be hard to find one, and if they do, and there’s even the slightest delay in the paperwork, they could have to pack up and leave the country and then come back once the new contract is approved.

You see what I’m getting at here?  The labor laws in Singapore regarding foreigners are either not strict enough or they’re not being properly enforced to protect the interests of the foreign workers that are being hired.  These people are employees, not slightly paid slave labor.

(Image Source)

Damn Flying Pigs…

Bradley Farless4 Comments

This past Friday I was excited about going to the mall to get something nice to eat and then shop around a bit.  My wife and I also had plans to go out and enjoy ourselves over the weekend.  Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.

It was strange, really.  All day I felt fine.  Once I got to the mall though and walked inside I started to feel tired.  Then I realized my muscles all felt like they were aching.  So, I sat down and when I sat down I realized not only how tired I was, but that even my butt cheeks were aching.

We wound up not staying at the mall for very long.  I didn’t eat much either.  My appetite was disappearing.  By the time I got home, I really felt like crap.  In a short two hours I went from feeling fine to feeling like I’d been hit by a bus.

The next morning my wife took my temperature and I was running a fever at 38.4 C.  I wound up sleeping most of the day away.  In fact, I did a lot of sleeping from Friday evening through Monday afternoon.  On Saturday night my fever peaked at 39.4 and then started dropping.  By the end of Sunday it had fallen to 38.4 and then by Monday morning it was at 36.6.  It went up briefly to 38 again on Monday but it returned to normal in about an hour.

It doesn’t sound like much when I put it that way, as just a chronological list of temperatures, but those were some rough days.  Those are the types of fever temperatures that make it hard to sleep and make you think those weird thoughts while you’re laying there. If you’ve ever had a fever and your mind started to wander I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.

I never did go to the hospital.  I’ve always been a stubborn idiot like that when it comes to being sick.  I hate hospitals.  I remember one year I was sick and dizzy and was still doing physical training in the morning and going to work because I just had too much to do.  Weird right?  Well, I also didn’t want to be bothered with going to the hospital just to be told that I had a cold or flu or something and I should just rest in bed, drink fluids, and take something for the fever and then get a huge bill for being told something I already knew.  I didn’t really have any clue as to what I had.  I just thought I had a regular cold or flu.

Anyhow, by Monday afternoon the fever was completely gone and I was fuzzy headed and exhausted but fine.  I wound up sleeping most of Monday away and didn’t get out of bed until 4pm.  After all that sleeping my brain was running on overdrive and I was catching up on internet stuff so I wasn’t able to sleep until 6 am or so and then I had to get up again at 9 am to make it to an appointment.  So, I wound up sleeping most of Teusday afternoon and evening away too.  It feels like the last 4 days just sort of slipped away from me.  I don’t even remember most of the days I was sick, since I had a fever or was sleeping the whole time.

So, how did I actually find out it was H1N1?  Well, I passed it off to someone I live with.  They went to the doctor right away and the doctor confirmed what it was.  They complained of the exact same symptoms: sudden muscle ache and fatigue, followed by fever.

Well, at least I don’t have to worry as much about H1N1 anymore.  I already have some antibodies ready for it for a while.  I’m still tired though.  I guess it’ll take a while for me to regain my strength.

(Image source)

Undisciplined Children on a Singapore Bus

Bradley Farless11 Comments

On Friday afternoon I was on the bus, heading to the MRT station so I could meet my wife for dinner. I was on a single story bus in the standing area, leaning against the padded rest.

(For those of you not familiar with Singapore buses, I found the photo at left on Jom Naik Bas!, which seems to be a blog dedicated to reviewing modes of transportation, mostly in the Malaysia/Singapore area.)

So, anyway, I was standing there, leaning against that rest and chatting with my wife via SMS. There were two kids playing around in front of me (towards the rear of the bus). I wasn’t paying much attention to them, but after a brief stop, when the bus lurched back into motion, the kids stumbled. Like I said, they were goofing off, being noisy, and they weren’t holding onto anything. So, one of the kids stumbles and stomps down on my foot. I was only wearing slippers (flip-flops), and the boy had rubber shoes on, so it hurt. I wasn’t that upset about it because it was an accident, so I stood there, looking at the kid, waiting.

What was I waiting for? Can you guess? Well, apparently the boy didn’t know or care, because instead of doing what was proper, he glanced at me briefly and then went back to playing. His mother, who was sitting to my right and saw the whole thing, didn’t bother to speak up either.

Why did I have to be the boy’s parent for a few minutes on the bus that day? Why did I have to teach him a lesson his mother should have already taught him, and should have scolded him for forgetting?

I closed the cover on my iPhone and put it in my pocket and then I leaned towards the boy and said, loudly enough for his failure of a mother to hear as well, “You know, the polite thing to do when you step on someone’s foot is to apologize.“

The kid looked at me as if he were shocked. Is it so uncommon a thing to ask people to be polite to each other? No reaction from the mother. Perhaps she doesn’t care about what her child learns? I bet she would have reacted if I had simply reached out and smacked the boy in the back of the head. That probably would have made headlines here. I can see it now: “Ang moh asshole abuses boy on bus for stomping his foot and not saying sorry.”

Anyhow, the boy looked at me, all shocked, and said, “Oh, sorry.” Then returned to playing with his friend. I was satisfied at the time, but later I would remember that honorifics are used in this country. I don’t exactly think of myself as an “uncle“, though I’ve been referred to that way before by kids that are about 10, but a “Sorry, sir” or a “Sorry, uncle” would have sounded much more convincing to me.

The kid is probably already spoiled if he’s that indifferent to other people’s space, or to the fact that he caused injury to another person. I blame his parents, and I blame society. This is where it starts. The kid doing something wrong and the parent not correcting them, or no one correcting them. This leads to a self-centered “me me me” attitude that produces kids who think they walk on water, foreigners are trash, and anyone who does an “un-glam” job is a failure.

There will be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth when that bubble bursts.