Prank Caller Paranoia

Posted by Will Ooi | Posted in Other | Tags: , | Posted on 09-06-2011-05-2008

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As unfamiliar digits flash up on the tiny LED screen of my desktop handset at work on Thursday morning, I answer the phone formally with my job title and first name, expecting a call from yet another backpacker with a European accent asking how to participate in (or rather, recklessly donate their bodies to) clinical trials, for as uninformed and mistaken as they are, we’ve been getting a lot of those calls lately. With our stock standard generic reply ready in my mind, I am taken slightly aback by a different query altogether unrelated to our work from a young lady with a faint yet still-identifiable, shaky and nervous tone. She asks if ‘Lucy’, my mother’s name, is there, to which I reply “no”. I clarify her target by offering the full name, “Lucy Bee?”, to which she agrees.

This being the first time anyone has ever called my work number asking for my mother, I ask this mysterious lady why she is after my mother and what the call is in relation to, to which she meekly replies “Solar panels…but that’s okay, I’ll check with reception”, before hurriedly hanging up the phone abruptly, leaving me with grand suspicions. “Reception?” I think to myself. “Solar panels??” Likely story.

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Memories of VHS

Posted by Will Ooi | Posted in Film, Other | Tags: , , | Posted on 11-05-2010-05-2008

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With modern eyes we now see them as ugly, primitive-looking things affiliated with old plastic cassette tapes and perhaps somewhat related to those equally-redundant computer floppy discs. How quickly technology has progressed from the days when having variable fast-forward and rewind speeds (fast, double fast, Triple Fast!) on VCRs warranted praise and worship, and how stubborn I was when DVDs first came out, adamantly insisting that I would never (ever) convert, clinging desperately onto my collection of VHS movies with their inconsistently-sized and ripped cardboard covers and maintaining passionately that being able to record from TV was a basic human right. And indeed, by not making recording a standard feature on DVD players haven’t we all turned into JB Hi-Fi bargain pile-raiding uber-consumers, needing to own entire series of shows and collector’s editions of movies when we could have easily taped them for free?

Well anyway, before I allow the nostalgia to forever be replaced by the progress of DVD and Blu-Ray user-friendliness, here are several of my fondest childhood and adolescent memories of VHS.

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Caption Contest: The Joker

Posted by Will Ooi | Posted in Film, Other | Tags: | Posted on 12-01-2010-05-2008

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The winner will receive a Will Ooi-autographed copy of a picture of Jack Nicholson holding a picture of Heath Ledger, being asked for an autograph… Read More

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How to Alienate Your Fans and Come Across as an Arrogant Bastard: Empire of the Sun @ Foreshore ’09 Review

Posted by Will Ooi | Posted in Other | Tags: , | Posted on 30-11-2009-05-2008

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Garry, like many of us, was ultra-keen to see Empire of the Sun, vocally expressive in his enthusiasm the moment we all met up with him in the morning on the day of Foreshore, Canberra’s annual music festival situated next to Parliament, holding onto this positive anticipation all the way through the day and excitedly displaying his glee through dance when the band were due to arrive onstage. Having just scooped the ARIAs a couple of nights earlier, his thoughts were that the band would as a result be in a fantastic mood to give us all a fantastic, memorable performance, whereas Pep had earlier warned us that Empire had been terrible at Parklife, “all style and no substance like an action movie”, but the overall expectation was that surely… Read More

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