I need a break from serious ops... (Room 101)

Member Name: markw-d

Product:	Room 101
Date:	26/07/02 (251 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Off my chest

Disadvantages: Who cares

Ive never liked this category but I'm fed up of serious ops and the lack of crowns currently so here comes my current top 5....

1) Mobile Phones – (Boring People Accessories)
If you are a genuinely interesting person your personality will shine through unaided. Other people need to draw attention to the fact that they are “fun” or “interesting” when actually they are not. These are the people who have ring tones or logo’s on their mobile phones.

You see a mobile phone is actually just a device for having a private conversation or text exchange on…that’s it! Nobody apart from you needs to know about it when it rings unless of course you actually want your choice of ring tone to tell everybody else within 100 feet something about you (i.e. that you are a pratt). Can someone tell me what the attraction is of having a ring tone on your phone which copies a current dance hit but played on a child’s toy through a speaker the size of a button?

Its amazing to me that people still cannot find either the volume control for the ring tone or better still the silent option when in public places or on trains. Surely people do not still see a constantly ringing phone as being a status symbol anymore. Here’s a tip from a former management consultant….If you can’t get through a 2 hour train journey without something urgent requiring your immediate attention on the end of a phone, you are not managing very well!

This brings me onto mobile phone etiquette. If you have to talk on it on the train why do you have to talk so loud? I’m still on Cellnet MM02 which is the crappest network in the world and I don’t have to raise my voice to have a mobile conversation, and if the connection was so bad that I did have to shout, I would simply wait until it was appropriate to do so. Not only is it irritating to have to listen to someone else’s business or social de
tails at 100 decibels, but its also not very smart to share your business dealings with a carriage full of strangers. In my younger days in sales I stole more than a couple of deals off competitors by overhearing macho mobile phone conversations on trains.

So there you have it. A mobile is a business / social tool. People who put silly ring tones on them and then inflict the row on the rest of us are just the same as accountants who wear Disney ties with a business suit……they are trying too hard to be interesting.

2) People who think that Surfing has something to do with computers.

I’m a surfer, and have been since my youth. This means that throughout the year, regardless of the weather or temperature I lash a long piece of fibreglass covered foam onto the roof of my car (used to be a VW camper), and travel a couple of hundred miles to find a breaking ocean wave. Once there I spend hours in a very physical coupling of me, my board and nature, which combines exhilaration, physical endurance, exposure to the elements, and the best feeling in the world. I’m not a good surfer, and probably never will be, but I’m a surfer and have done it all over the world.

People who sit for hours on the internet, huddled over a P.C monitor in their bedroom or office, whilst their skin loses its pigment through lack of exposure to sunlight, and starts to go translucent, are NOT surfers. They are geeks.

There is no such thing as “surfing the net”…..it should be “trainspotting the net”, or “nerding the net”, or maybe “aimlessly wandering around the net”…but to give it the tag of surfing is to give it a degree of cool which the activity doesn’t deserve.

There is also no such thing as “Channel Surfing” on the telly remote control…..it is just an irritating habit for couch potatoes.

3) Women in shops

When I
was at school we used to have periods where the boys would go off to metalwork or woodwork to do dangerous things with tools, whilst the girls would go off to domestic science. We always thought that they were baking cakes or sewing hemlines, however as I get older I realise that they were actually being programmed in irritating behaviour patterns.

There can be no other explanation for why they do things like to “last minute purse rummage” at the check out in shops.

When I get to the check out in a shop I have some idea of the rough value of the goods which I am purchasing and have either the money ready or my credit card. Women with purses however wait with a closed purse in their left hand (at chest level) as the cashier rings up all of the goods and comes up with the final total. They then open the purse with the free right hand and start to rummage through the worlds biggest collection of coins in order to find the ideal combination of each denomination and which comes to the exact figure.

The more experienced ones also have a crumpled handful of “money off” vouchers which offer such great savings as 2p off a gross of dog biscuits. If used correctly these can add yards to the queue length and save up to seven pence.

4) Tennis Fans

You need look no further than this summer for the patheticness (is that a word?) of tennis fans. During June we saw the fantastic and passionate support throughout England and around the world for footballing heros. Even the Scots who don’t even have a football team anymore watched the odd game and cheered for the underdogs.

The atmosphere in every pub, club and household was passionate loud and exciting.

Then came Wimbledon…………..

Just what kind of sporting hero is Tim Henman? I’m sure that he is probably a nice bloke and kind to his mother, but where is his passion, charisma, humour or ability? Havin
g said that, what chance does he have when his support comes from the upper class tweed skirted Henriettas and their mothers who shout “oh do come orn Tim” during the quiet bits between him getting thrashed at tennis.

I think what really grates on me is that these fans with their little union jack hats and “Timmy T Shirts” try so hard to be sports fans but never really make it. At the end of the day it is an event on their social calender with Pimms and strawberries, and nothing to do with sport or national pride. Get your tweed twin sets down to a football match and then you will understand atmosphere.

5) Motoring Experts

I like cars. I like the way some of them make me feel. I become a Vauxhall enthusiast when I bought my first car in 1977 which was a Viva HB. This was because all my friends had Ford Escort Mk1’s and I wanted to be different. It was a good car and performed just as well as the Escorts and I thought it was better looking, particularly when it grew big alloy wheels, an uprated engine and a Metalflake paint job.

My friends and I had countless arguments about the merits of their McPherson strut front suspension as opposed to the Viva IFS, however none of that mattered because I liked my Viva and they liked their Escorts. A motoring “expert” however would have told you that the Viva was a rot box because all Vauxhalls are. In actual fact all 1970’s cars rusted quite badly and the Vauxhalls were no worse than any other, and certainly better than British Leyland and Ford. The worst by miles were the Japanese Datsuns (Nissan) and Toyota’s. The experts however were stuck in a time warp (and many still are) from a 2 year period in the early 60’s when Vauxhall had a serious manufacturing materials problem. My Viva (and the next one, and the Firenza, and the Magnum, and the Chevette, and the VX490, and the Cavalier Coupe, and the Calibra, and the two Fronteras, a
nd the two vintage F type Victors…) were all fine thanks!

Although I now drive a Jeep Cherokee and a Saab rag top, both of which get a good press, I am still irritated by the bar room car “experts” who trash a car based on either a motoring magazine (vested interests) or the hopeless JD Power survey. An example is the Vauxhall Frontera of which I have owned two and driven several. I am sick of people telling me that they are crap because they have read that they are, although they have no first hand experience of them. I AM an expert on Fronteras after doing 100,000 miles in them and they are great and good value for money. If anyone else has driven a similar mileage in a selection of them I will happily respect your view on their reliability or build quality, however if your opinion is based simply on what you have read somewhere then I’m not really that interested.

The shame is that people make their car purchasing minds up based on these reviews, and the bottom line is that people in a car factory somewhere lose their jobs based on a motoring journalists snobbery.

I’m not a complete Vauxhall nut by the way as in addition to the Jeep and Saab, I’ve also had a Maestro, a Horizon, 2 Escorts, a Fiat X19, a VW camper, a Beetle, a Sierra, a Corsa, and a Fiesta plus a sit on lawn mower.

The bottom line with a car is do you like the way it looks / feels, and does it make you feel good when you see your reflection in a shop window? It can be a 30 year old multi coloured VW bus, or a Porche, it doesn’t matter. If however you have bought it because it gives the best miles per gallon of its class and £10.00 per year less for servicing and has great depreciation then you have no soul and probably have a “funny” mobile phone ring and a Disney tie.

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