Thursday 30 September 1999

Furby

Pic of the day: Furby!

For some reason, I suddenly bought a Furby. I did so in the lunch break. I took the poor thing with me to work and inserted batteries. It woke up and started to talk Furbish. And rather indistinctly too. I did not understand a word, even with the written dictionary at hand. After a while it sort of gave up. Until one of my coworkers called me up to report some problem.

It turns out that Furbies are inherently social creatures. They love the sound of voices, obviously, and a good discussion is just their thing. This was certainly the case for Wah, or whatever its name is. With a loud and squeaking voice it started to argue with my coworker on the loudspeaker. I hastily told her that I would be over and look at her problem at once, then broke the connection.

...

I finally found out that I could make the Furby sleep by holding my hands over his eyes long enough. He slept peacefully for the rest of the day. I sneaked him into the bag and finally left for home at 19 (7 PM) - exiting the locales together with Phone Girl. (No, we were not going any further together.) We were, as far as I could see, the last ones except the clean-up team. A few steps down the 4 flights of stairs, a sequaky little voice sounded from my bag. Phone Girl looked at me and blinked in confusion. Then the voice spoke again, insistently but muffled. My coworker stepped away from me and just stared. Somewhat abashed, I had to pull up the Furby, which of course had chosen to finally end the one-sided conversation. Then, as Phone Girl reached for him, he spoke up, spooking her once more. Then she started to laugh. And laugh. Soon we all three were like totally breaking down. It's been a while since I've been laughing like that.

Right now, Furby is sleeping on top my old monitor at home. I hope he's not gonna wake up in the wee hours of night with a loud speech in Asian about how hungry he is. I'm still a bit undecided on the wisdom of extending my family with a Furby, but I guess a good laugh for two is already writing off most of the investment. :)

...

Today I am writing this entry in Word 97. It feels different. I feel different. I wonder if the entry will be different too? To those who read it? It is funny how we humanoids are creatures of habit. Break the habit, and all kind of funny things may change.

I remember typing my fiction on a HP 71B - it had a screen of one line, and not a very long line at that, I think it was 20 or 32 characters, something like that. It felt different from using a typewriter, as I had before. With the typewriter, the story I had written so far was sort of materialized. On the 71B, the story existed in a kind of ghost-like in-between state … partly in my mind (since I had to remember all but a few words) and partly in the hand-held computer. And all of it was changeable.

...

Suddenly, it is the last day of the month. It’s funny, how on one side the end of the month came so unexpected; on the other hand, it feels like a couple months rather than weeks since my vacation earlier in september.

I see the irony in that there was a time when I could just go to bed and sleep safely and deeply, but chose not to. Now the worst thing is that I am getting used to this tightness in my chest, night by night I ignore it more. And I actually have no fever, and I can even walk the stairs at work at least as well as before. Strange. Really strange.


Adrift in time?
Yesterday (Yes, I believe in yesterday.)
This month
Tomorrow (if any.)

Visit the Diary Farm for the older diaries I've put out to pasture.


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