Woman Puts Public At Risk After Bringing COVID-19 Positive Mother To PPV For Vaccination, Published on SAYS, written by May Vin Ang, on 8th July 2021, 04:39 PM
Not on duty, and the cases are still high. Regarding this post, this is going to be slightly different, and I hope I won't have to write something like this again...
Just read a news regarding someone being selfish (I did say I'm limiting social media during my off days because it's stressing me out). They went for covid screening and they were tested positive (Granted they found out later, but how many times have we advised you, once you did your covid test, sit quietly at home, isolate yourself and wait for your results. The only time you are allowed to come is if you are experiencing any severe symptoms such as myocardial infarction (Heart attack), difficulty in breathing, chest tightness, shortness of breath... Life threatening symptoms, then yes, you are allowed to run out, because it's between life and death) yet they still went for their vaccination. And I'm sorry, I agree with the health personnel who was furious. This is one of the main reasons why our cases will never go down, because if people are just going to be ignorant, then it's difficult to suppress the case down. No, you won't miss your vaccine appointment, but you need to update in your mySejahtera app, that way you will get another appointment arranged by the government. Don't take things lightly.
Sigh, seeing the hate on the internet really made me sad. You know, I might as well just admit it now. I have severe social anxiety (This is why I don't engage much nor do I have a lot of social media accounts) - Funny, isn't it, that I'm working in this line of job - But I managed to pluck up the courage to several people whom I admired. Before you say entitlement, let me tell you I went into this with no expectations of a reply, I understand that they are all famous and that they get tons of emails/ messages everyday, so I usually accept that I won't get reply, seeing that my emails or messages will get buried beneath the thousands and thousands of emails/ messages coming in. There are the few who actually took the time to reply (personally, I might add, not through their PR assistant (If they have any)):
1) L.J. Smith
I did my college assignment about her, she's very kind, and she helped me provided several details about herself and regarding her upcoming works. I used to draw several arts for her characters as well (with my mediocre drawing and all). I was on deadline for my assignment, yet she gave me several pages of details about herself and I managed to complete my assignment on time, and scored a good mark. I don't write to her as often as before because now she's going through several things in life. I actually do plan to write to her again one day because I want to use one of my favourite paragraph(s) from her book, but since that book is not coming out yet, I'm not going to approach her till I have everything ready. She has been getting a lot of pressure from the net demanding her to release her last Night World book: Strange Fate, which was originally supposed to be released back in the 90's. May I remind you she nearly lost her life due to granulomatosis with polyangiitis. Let her release it at her own pace.
At that time, I was hunting high and low for one of his hard to find, out of print book. I usually don't disturb authors regarding these type of things. You can thank my sister for this one. At the time I do not know anything much about getting books online, so my sister said, "Why don't you write to the author directly and see if he has any copies left?" I wrote with little regards to it, because I thought he's a famous author, why would he reply to little old me who was hunting for one of his now rare to find books? Imagine my surprise I got a reply from the man himself few days later where he thanked me for the email and apologized, that he does not have any copies left. Fun fact: His books are notoriously hard to find, you can only get them in the UK. I just checked his website that his last Alex Verus book is coming out in November. I managed to get two of his books second-handed from Books n Bobs, but I hope he can release a box set. I would love to try reading the Alex Verus series from the beginning till the end, it looks fun. *I got the book in the end thanks to my friend who was studying in the UK and they ordered it through online. Thanks so much, you have no idea how much I'm grateful for your help.
3) Jenny Trout (aka Abigail Barnette/ Jennifer Morningstar)
She has helped me tremendously a lot regarding other platforms, I mainly only used lulu.com as recommended by a friend. I found her completely by accident where she make really good, in-depth dives regarding the Fifty Shades trilogy, which you can read here (Jealous Hater Book Club). Bless her for going through the books, because I seriously needed to bleach my brain after what I have read, yet she takes the time to go through each chapter and dissect them thoroughly. She introduced me to erotica where she shows how BDSM should be conducted (WITH CONSENT), how you can write a good erotica novel with proper research. It doesn't have to be overboard, she just put in the fundamentals on how BDSM works in real life. I hopped onto Amazon Kindle - At that time, lulu was being funny, and interacting with some writers online, most of the advice I was given was to go to Amazon, it's all good now - because I saw she has her books there, along with Barnes & Nobles and Smashwords. The problem is....I can't seem to put my book(s) for free. I reached out to her through FB, and she gave me some solid advice, on how I should put the book(s) on multiple platforms like B&N and Smashwords, knock it down to zero, then approach Amazon. Unfortunately, despite my several requests, they denied it because they said my country is not recognized, even though I gave proof that some of my books are free on other platforms. The most I could do was knock it down was to 99 cents, and I still feel bad, because I'm charging a 80-ish page novella. So far, only lulu and Smashwords allow me to put book(s) there for free (I can't make it into the Smashwords premium picks catalog due to some formatting issue, but I followed the guidelines to get it into their site, at least...) Congratulations Jenny for writing the final book in the Boss series, I hope I can finish my writing this year as well and her books can be released as box sets or I'm able to get them here, because they are only sold in the States *gulp, shipping fees*
One of these things is not like the others. All jokes aside, I watched him around 2016 because of his artistry. You can't deny it, the man has talent. Check out his music, they are quite nice to listen to (And that's saying something since most of my songs are from oldies till early 2000's) Then all hell broke loose and no, I did not join the hate mob. I just back away quietly, and feel disappointed. Come around quarantine period, his videos came back onto my recommendation, and so I went back to watch his old content. I'll say it, he made poor choices, but constantly beating him down is pretty much like beating a dead horse to death at this point. Yes, he messed up, but so did I. I know someone who would never let me forget it that I made a small mistake (You can find it in one of the Lockdown Diaries.) I messed up a lot in real life as well, but as my doctor mentioned, "Failure is important as well, because otherwise how would you get the chance to grow?" At that time I didn't understand what my doctor meant, but I get it as I aged. When you make mistakes in life, you learn from it, grow from it and try not to make the same thing again. People seemed to judge him so harshly in the comments (In fact, don't read the comments. Some are just outright nasty) but can you tell me with a straight face, that you have never once messed up in your life? I messed up a lot in real life, fortunately for me, I don't have people monitoring my every move. It's unfortunate that he is an online content creator, because everyone gets to see his every move, and it's tiring. I said it before briefly, but I'll say it again: I admire him for moving forward despite all the hate he's getting. I admire that he does everything on his own, the music production he does? The music videos? The content he creates that we all enjoy freely? All done by him and funded out of his own pocket, unless otherwise stated like the mixing/ mastering and some artworks. He is basically a one man army. Sir, you earned my respect and support. I don't have other medias besides FB and Instagram, but one time I was floating around Twitter (good ol' Khairy) and I saw him tweet about something. I don't know what got into me, but I wrote a long message of support to him which was read, no reply. I accepted it, I don't expect any reply, then come one day I was nearly screaming internally at work due to some difficult patients, and he uploaded a music video of an acapella cover, and I wrote to him to thank him for making me laugh (It was pretty funny to be honest, but the song is nice as well) and asked him to take care of himself. I was surprised that I got a reply. It just shows that not everything is black and white, and working in this line, you often have to listen to both sides of the stories in an unbiased way, especially in my current job, because the phone calls and enquiries I received tend to be quite...interesting at times. This is one thing I learnt from my old boss, but at the end of the day as well, there is always some information withheld which we will never know. People always tend to paint themselves as the heroes of the stories, no one is going to say that they are the villains.
*I know a lot of people are mad at him for his dark humour, but I would say don't take it too seriously (nor personally, unless you happen to know him in real life?). I know people (mainly doctors) plus myself included who make a lot of gallows humour as well, it's a coping mechanism. Not a good one, but working in healthcare for so long...You tend to make a lot of dark jokes to cope during stressful times, especially during the pandemic.*
In conclusion, you don't like someone, don't engage, back off quietly. I have seen some authors and content creators behave really badly, I just stop supporting their content. You like their content? Then continue supporting them. Sending death threats, leaving hate messages and comments isn't going to help. What comes around, goes around. One day when someone does that to you in real life, then maybe you will know how the person of the receiving end feels.
That's pretty much it for this post. Thank God I got this off my chest, because I'm tired. I saw a lot of my friends getting their vaccination appointments, great. Go, full speed ahead, and wear black during your photoshoot if you can to help our contract medical officers.
Malaysians, social media go black in support of contract doctors, published in MSN News by Faye Kwan, 1st July 2021
*PS: Stop hounding George R.R. Martin, let him finish writing the Winds of Winter at his own pace.
**Today's case: 8,574 (Not too shabby...)
