Taking my series further global, here’s Pathetic Fool 5 from Malaysia.
I discovered this one at a Skybar in Kuala Lumpur. She brought with her a framed photo of herself and set it on the table before being seated. Throughout her dinner, she kept looking at her own photo and asked her lover to take pictures of her, with her framed photo.
I am not sure whether she was crazy or just vain.
Although, ever since my surgery, my sinusitis has been much better, it still flares up from time to time. In Bangkok, it has been more or less fine last 2 years. But last weekend, it suddenly flared up. I suffered from bad headaches for 2 days and couldn’t take it anymore. Normally, I know exactly which spray to use to relieve my symptoms, but in Bangkok, it is not available OTC. This meant, I needed to go to a doctor (hospital) for the medication. Normally I go to Bumrungrad for other ailments, but this time, in a bid to save money, I decided to go to Samitivej Sukhumvit Hospital. Big mistake!
I got an appointment soon enough and went to see the ENT. Didn’t have to wait too long, saw the doctor within 10 minutes. I explained to the doctor that I am a long time sufferer of sinusitis and informed her which medication generally relieves my symptoms.
She said straight away this doesn’t look like Sinusitis and sent me for a CT scan.
For a sinus headache.
Once the CT scan was done, she looked at the slide and said this is not Sinusitis and referred me to a Neurologist. I complained that I just need a steroid spray but she sent me for a neuro consult anyways.
The neurologist ran a battery of tests on me and told me I have a migraine. I told her I have no prior or family history of migraines but she prescribed me a bunch of medications anyways.
Then I was sent back to the ENT. By this time, the formal CT scan report had arrived and guess what it said – “Severe sinusitis”. The ENT asked me to take the migraine medications and on top of that prescribed me some sinusitis medication too. Including the spray I wanted. They also scheduled 2 follow up appointments, one with the ENT and one with the neurologist.
Eventually, I walked out of the hospital with 9 medications (out of which only 1 that I really needed). I paid THB 8500 for this farce of a treatment. The insurance only covered THB2000, so I ended up paying THB6500 from my own pocket.
Chutiya Banaya
After coming home, I threw away 8 medications, used the spray and experienced relief within an hour. Then I slapped myself 21 times and swore never to go to Samitivej hospital again.
Continuing with my series of services sucking balls, the latest entry is about Grab, the South East Asian super-app.
Basically, this app is a notification spam machine. Below is a screenshot of notifications born from 1 ride I took. Let’s analyse them starting from the first one at the bottom.
Speaking of the app, there’s a notifications section in it, which is 100% spam.
Unfortunately, unlike the other services, there’s no way to stay in Thailand and not use Grab. You need it to order food , order stuff from different stores (Okay, you can use FoodPanda for these 2 things, too) and get around. There’s no ride hailing company in Thailand that even comes close to Grab.
Just debating whether to turn off notifications altogether from the app.
My friends know about my eSim suffering for quite some time, as I have been doing constant RR about it for months now. Still, I thought I should put my ordeal in words to document it for my future self.
The story starts some time in 2020. Me and the wife were living in India, happy with Jio SIM cards for our Indian numbers. Both numbers were registered under my name. Then we found out we were moving to Bangkok. I was not sure if I could get eSIMs for our Bangkok numbers and our phones could accept only 1 physical SIM card at a time. So I decided to convert our Jio SIM cards to eSIMs before going to Bangkok.
I regret doing that, to this day.
Turns out, it is ridiculously easy to get eSIMs in Bangkok. Never mind, no harm done. But then, I realised we could not buy new phones because the Indian eSIMs can not be transferred to new phones. Never mind, we don’t need new phones anytime soon. I thought I could convert back our SIMs to physical SIMs the next time I went to India. Then we would be free to buy new phones in Bangkok.
Then I went ahead and killed my wife’s phone (And the eSIM inside it) attempting underwater photography.
We use our Indian phone numbers to authenticate Indian banking transactions and what not (Indian society is built on OTPs). It was imperative we replaced her SIM as soon as possible. Suddenly, the pressure to go to India and replace our SIMs was real and immediate.
The process is pretty straight forward. You walk in to a Jio store, the personnel use an app to do biometric verification and click a photo of you. Then the request is sent to a back-end team for verification and once approved, your new SIM is activated.
I booked the cheapest tickets possible and travelled to Kolkata within weeks. I thought it would be a simple transaction and I would soon return with physical SIMs for both our numbers. My wife would get her number back and I would be free to buy a new phone. How wrong I was.
After a sleepless night travelling, I woke up early morning to find a Jio store and request a SIM replacement. It took them only 20 minutes to issue me new physical SIMs for both our numbers and was told they would be activated within 4 hours. Happily I went on my way. Soon, the 4 hours were up and the physical SIMs were still not activated. So we went to the Jio store to follow up and were told the requests were rejected due to “photo mismatch”.
I was flabbergasted. The only reason I could think of was when I had bought these numbers, I had longer hair and now, I had recently shaved my head. Either ways, I begged the staff to do the process again. We waited half an hour and again – rejected. With time running out for my return flight, I dis-heartedly bought a new number for my wife and left India with my tail between my legs.
My wife had to travel to India to change her phone number with government agencies and bank accounts. I still have an eSim for my India number. If my phone were to die tomorrow, I would have to go to India again with no guarantee that I would get a replacement SIM.
Also, I cannot buy the iPhone 14 Pro Max 512Gb Deep Purple that I so desperately want.
All because of one mistake. Fuck my Life!
PS: US eSim users don’t face these issues because in the US, eSims can be transferred freely between different phones using bluetooth.
As of writing this post, Google has a 91.46% market share in search engines. As such, I understand straight away that this post would be controversial; but hear (read) me out.
For the last 2 decades, I have regularly used bing as the search engine of choice. I don’t remember why I started using it, but it must have had something to do with my Microsoft ecosystem phase. Either ways, I did dabble with a few different search engines (Read: DuckDuckGo, Ecosia) for a while, but used Bing overwhelmingly.
Over these 2 decades, I got used to people ridiculing me for not using Google. Recently, I started to wonder what I was missing out on. So I decided to bite the bullet and see what I was missing out on. I decided to use Google exclusively for a few weeks.
I was overwhelmingly disappointed.
I am a big fan of Wikipedia and refer to its articles multiple times daily for reference. Google just doesn’t want to show me Wikipedia results, for whatever reason. Here’re the search results of a popular tourist place on Google vs Bing
Google takes up more than half of the page to show me news reports from Chiang Mai. Then it takes up space to show me useless questions about it. Only when I scroll to the second page to I see a Wikipedia article about it.
Bing, on the other hand shows me some ads, but the Wikipedia entry is right on the first page where I can see it. I love how Bing shows Wikipedia results at the top of most search results, exactly how I would want it.
Let’s say I want to see photos of the scientist Werner Heisenberg. Here’re the image search results from Google and Bing
Its because of irrelevant results like this that people end up embarrassing themselves this way.
Bing has this nifty tab called “Work”.
Clicking on it shows search results from the company’s own Intranet. I find this immensely helpful while using Bing at work.
I don’t think I need to share screenshots, but Bing is much better for this purpose, trust me.
Bing shows beautiful wallpapers on its homepage. Google has its doodles but I prefer Bing’s wallpapers. Although if you search directly from the address bar like me, you would miss it most of the times.
Overall, I don’t think I would be changing my default search engine any time soon.
To continue the series of posts about my battle with anxiety, I bring the latest medication withdrawal fail story.
As I wrote here, after my last misadventure with SSRIs, I stopped taking them altogether. Since I felt fine for the next few weeks, I assumed that I don’t really need them and forgot all about them since.
However, ever so slowly, my anxiety started to creep up back on me. There weren’t any drastic symptoms. Just things like worrying too much about work, thinking about work at night or during weekends. Also, the ever present feeling of dread that something will eventually go wrong.
I was very proud of myself for having successfully(?) given up this medication and wanted to prevent another medication withdrawal fails. So I decided to continue without it.
After I spent 3 successive weekends obsessing over work and dreading Monday, I decided I would keep my mind open about resuming the medicine and gave myself 1 month to decide, till my next doctor appointment. I didn’t last 1 month.
Last weekend, after dreading work all Saturday and most of Sunday, I decided to give up and go back on the medication there and then. I called the hospital & requested to see the doctor the same day. Thankfully they were able to put me on the waiting list and I saw the doctor within the hour. He took pity on me and put me back on Lexapro.
After bagging the medication, I immediately felt better. The world looked brighter and life seemed more beautiful. Of course this was a placebo effect as the medication takes up to 2 weeks to work. Over the next day or so, the placebo effect wore off, but a week since starting the medication, I already feel better.
Second reminder to myself, to not mess with medication that work well.
Also, it’s not worth avoiding medication (and for what?) if it works for you and makes you feel better
LinkedIn is supposed to be a “professional network”. However, as you can see below, it is anything but. I have posted about it before, but now I will go into more details
People posting personal news/updates instead of Facebook/Instagram.
Twerps posting sob stories for sympathy.
People posting inspirational quotes or unasked wisdom
1-click AI generated messages wishing people on their work anniversary.
Peddling Religious shit
The worst kind, as per me. People who have taken a contract (theka) to share breaking news with the rest of the world.
I am not currently looking for a job, so I don’t need LinkedIn as such. However, deleting the account makes me feel insecure. As if that perfect job I always wanted will somehow evade me.
It is pathetic, however, to see that people don’t understand the difference between networks like Facebook and LinkedIn.
A few months ago, I joined a gym. I was not getting any younger and thought I should take better care of my health. I started going 2 months ago, and thankfully am able to maintain discipline. In these 2 months, I had a chance to observe the other patrons and categorise them.
The bodybuilders are serious about working out. One look at their physique and it is clear that they have been working out for years. They don’t come to the gym to undertake in any kind of nonsense; they know exactly what they want to do, do it and leave. They hardly talk to anyone.
Mostly men, the sole aim of these guys is to lift as much as possible. Form be damned. Looking at them, it is clear that they are lifting way beyond what they should. In fact some of them have movements which are borderline funny. Almost like dancing. Or like fits.
These are mostly men and with each rep, they let out a savage grunt which can be heard well outside the gym. The surprising thing is that they grunt like this even when lifting lighter weights. The only reason I can think they do this is for attention. They want everyone to look at them while they are lifting, so end up sounding like cavemen. At the end of each set, they also throw their barbells/dumbbells with such force as to shake the floor.
These people spend more time on their phones than working out. Most of the time they are glued to their phones and in between their social media chores, manage to do a few sets. They also ask the trainers to take pictures & videos of them working out.
These guys calculate everything. They calculate exactly how much time it took for them to complete a set. Time their rest period to the second between sets. They also obsess over their heartbeat rates and select their weights according to it.
These guys are always busy doing something. Between sets they are always fiddling with their weights continuously or doing some light exercises. They never sit still and always fidgeting around.
These ladies are seriously ripped. They are the female versions of the gym bodybuilders. They are no nonsense and take their workouts very seriously.
Mostly Thai women, who spend at least an hour getting ready for the gym. They all come in expensive cars and have personal trainers at their disposal. They spend less time working out and more time being massaged/fondled/chatted up by their trainers. Most of them are already in good shape so for them, the gym is just a social get together. I find them the most irritating.
Mostly Thai men and women, they use sanitisers to wipe the bench/seat before and after every exercise. Not only the benches, they also wipe the dumbbells/barbells/handles. They have accepted that no one except them will go to such lengths to maintain hygiene and are cool with it.
These people are morbidly obese. They confine themselves to the cardio section of the gym and rarely waddle into the weights section. They dress inappropriately as per their body shapes and are always dripping with sweat. Strangely, they don’t exercise too much. They move very slowly on their treadmills/bicycles/rowing machines; their exercises are very low intensity. However, they are in the gym for hours. When leaving, they always act as if they had a very intense workout and are beat. It doesn’t bother them that they have made no progress in months.
Ok, so I know I promised I will never be on Facebook again. But I have a good excuse. I ended up with a lot of things I didn’t want and the only way to sell second-hand stuff in Thailand is on the Facebook marketplace.
I thought I will use Facebook only for the marketplace, not for social networking, but I received a few friend requests, ended up sending a few. One thing led to another and I ended up just like last time.
Basically even the most decent people in real-life become insufferable on Facebook.
Some start thinking that they are celebrities
Why does this guy have his headset inside his mouth?
Some people cannot step out of their homes without letting the entire world know.
What about those 1-tap fake AI generated birthday greetings designed to make you feel special?
Some people think they look cooler than they actually are.
Public displays of affection by wife and husband to force the world to see how much in love they are
Finally, the worst kind. People who think they have taken a contract (Theka) to be the first to update everyone with the latest news.
Anyways, the purpose of this post is to remind me why I shouldn’t create an account the next time I am tempted.
Recently, I had a misadventure with my serotonin levels. As I posted earlier, I have been on Neuris 1mg- An Antipsychotic & Lexapro 5mg- An SSRI for my Generalized Anxiety Disorder since I moved to Thailand.
Now, the Lexapro, in Thailand costs 15 times what it cost in India. Always one trying to cheap out, on my last doctor’s visit, I asked him if he could prescribe me a cheaper alternative. He prescribed me Fluoxetine 20mg instead and I happily went on my way chalking this up as a win.
After a few days, I started noticing signs of heart palpitations and sweats through the day. I had recently joined a gym so I chalked this up to the workouts. However, the palpitations became worse with time.
It was not until my family left for vacation leaving me alone with my dog at home that the symptoms hit hard.
I was in a state of constant anxiety. My heart felt it was going to burst out of my chest. To make matters worse, I took a Lexapro, too. It really pushed me over the edge and after suffering all day from a constant state of agitation I dumped my dog with the neighbours and went to the ER.
They said I have Serotonin Syndrome, from an overdose of SSRIs. They shot me up with a sedative and sent me home with a few pills of Ativan. Ah! Bliss!
I slept for 11 hours and woke up the next day feeling much better. Things didn’t go back to normal immediately, but I could feel the improvements over the next few days; all I had to do was not take the SSRIs.
Lesson Learnt : Don’t mess with medication that work, just to cheap out.
PS: On SSRIs, I used to have vivid movie-like dreams. After stopping the SSRIs, the dreams stopped, too.
