Android TV Box In The House

The time has finally come for my Lioness and me to unsubscribe from our Smart TV and switch over to the Android TV box after weighing all the pros and cons. I've also combed the internet to find out whether Android TV boxes are legal here before this.

In a nutshell: they are still considered legal at the time of this writing, though they remain in a somewhat grey area of limbo to be reassessed down the road. If such TV boxes had been deemed 100% illegal already at the time of this blog post, then all the vendors selling them openly in high traffic shopping centres (and they seem to be all over the place) would have been busted by now, no?

So we both went to buy one today without worrying that we were doing something shady and not legit. The brand we ended up selecting is Mele, and we bought a 50 bucks 'Air Mouse' bluetooth controller to go along with it, since I've anticipated that it would be a pain in the butt trying to navigate the menus and such without one.

For me personally, I never cared for conventional TV since the 90's. Since then, I only watched TV like once or twice per year, believe it or not. I got the news I needed mostly via print media and after the internet hit us, the news I've needed was just a click or two away.

As far as I'm concerned, my 'TV' has been YouTube ever since 2007 when I first got broadband connection for my house. Then when I got my first smartphone in 2010 which allows me to be online wherever I happen to be from thereon, that was the final nail in the coffin for conventional TV for me. I'd rather be able to search for what I want to watch right now and right here, then wait for the TV to broadcast my targeted subject matter at goodness knows when.

And no, I'm not the usual TV drama series person. I am very selective when it comes to those since they mean a huge chunk of time investments, and the drama series that really had my attention, I can count with the fingers of one hand. Almost all of them were Japanese with English subtitles that I can still watch online if I wanted to. So no big loss for me when it comes to drama series that I hardly even touch.

I'd go so far as to say that I'd never have subscribed to our smart TV years back if it wasn't for the fact that my Lioness still likes to watch TV. But like me now, she agrees with me that going online is still the best way to go, so out went our Smart TV subscription (and its associated monthly fees) and in comes the Android TV box with no monthly subscription fees - that's just the reality of it, make of it what you will.

Note that this blog post is not to discourage anyone from zapping their smart TV subscription, no. We are all different and there's still something charming about going old school, laying comfortably on the couch and randomly surfing TV programmes instead of having an aim of what to watch. There are times when you stumble upon something that interests you while randomly switching TV channels, yeah? It's like a sudden pleasant surprise.

Also, depending on where you stream your programmes from, you might find that smart TVs (and even the old dodo non-smart ones) gives you a clearer picture.

Even though I personally wouldn't care if I owned no TV in the house (as long as I can go online) if I were living alone (which I'm not), what my Lioness told me is something I agree with: "家里没有电视机会不像家." (A house without a TV will not feel like home).

Our TV at home will be here to stay for a long while, it's just that we have decided to stream online instead of continuing with the conventional way. And I approve of the fact that YouTube comes with our new TV box and I can load apps on it.

Looking back, for better or for worse, the magnitude of changes that the internet brought about when it comes to watching programmes and such, in comparison to conventional broadcasted ways, are certainly nothing short of 'revolutionary'.

(Update from the future: we changed out our Mele TV box for Unblock Technology's which cater to our viewing needs better.)

A New Job

I got myself a new job that starts today, which job scope is something I've never experienced before. Because it's something new for me, I'm looking forward to this new learning adventure. Yup, I view every new job as an adventure.

An adventure is a venture that involves risks, which even if you've done as much calculated risks as you could about it all and asked as many prior questions before you decide to dive headlong into it, there will still be uncertainties you'll never be certain about until you get your hands dirty by actually experiencing the venture first-hand, which is how every new job is. The interviewer can only help you with this much, the rest will be up to you to discover for yourself.

Thus, going into a new job or a new company also requires a fair amount of courage to face that which is unfamiliar and unknown in the initial stages, just like in embarking on an adventure.

I can't reveal what my job entails because I'm a man who keeps the deal of my employment terms & conditions on my end. Every job that I've left, I've never revealed any of their confidential information or trade secrets that I've promised not to on black & white. I once had a colleague who said something way back in 2005 that I still remember till this day and always will:

"Even if your company has developed a rotten reputation in the industry, never allow your own reputation to go bad."

And that, ranks as the best advice I've ever heard in all my years of working. To make this work, my philosophy is: always respect your clients and customers and never promise anything that you know you and your company cannot deliver. Trust is not a given, it's something you have to earn. Honesty builds trust and empty promises break trust. That's how it goes.

Regarding my new job, all I can reveal is that my new company is doing a joint project with the government, which accounts for things being classified. After the initial on-the-job training, I will be going lone wolf all by myself to do my job, and mondays to fridays will see me travelling about the south-western part of the country as I go to my different daily allocated areas in said sector to get to my work sites. The job ad did mention "work near home", which is why I got assigned to the south-western team.

I've always gone for jobs that require me to travel about alone, which is something I've grown to love and already grown accustomed to for years. Besides helping me to keep fit since I'm not stuck on a chair in a cubicle for the whole day but have to be on the move constantly (with all due respect to you cubicle warriors out there), such jobs also teach me to be self-reliant and independent. Since you are going at it alone, you are also your own on-the-spot problem-solver. My only nemesis is heavy rain, which impedes movement speed.

As you can imagine, one has lots of freedom doing such travelling lone wolf jobs and I love that freedom and not having to deal much with the politics back in the office I don't care about, since as far as I'm concerned, I've been hired to work instead of being paid to play games.

In my opinion, some office politics are unavoidable sometimes, but any company that allows their office politics to go seriously out of hand has lost focus and not worth working for, since an out-of-focus company won't last for too long with all the nasty internal power struggles that are detrimental to the united growth of the company as a whole in the long run.

Back to lone wolf travelling jobs: such jobs also mean the need for self-discipline, since when you go about your job alone, you are the only one who can make sure that you are doing your job properly and that you are not abusing your freedom.

Throughout my working life, I've seen people getting fired because they abused their freedom: they got caught skipping work secretly for multiple days and such. Why ruin something good for yourself and have your freedom taken away from you just because of complacent laziness?

Even if you go for multiple coffee breaks and make pit-stops at shops in the mall to check out some goods in-between visiting your clients, customers or work sites, just make sure you deliver what you are being paid to do for the day and go home with peace of mind, even if you go home earlier than usual because you happen to complete your work for the day at a faster rate and you don't have to report back to the office at the end of the day. This is what I mean by 'self-discipline'.

Speaking of going home earlier once you've completed your job for the day, my new job officially allows me to do just that and my pay will not be affected in any way. So I have to make sure that I do my job properly to the best of my abilities and not have this privilege taken away. Since my work time is entirely in my own hands and I can go home once done, I won't complain at all should it happen that I be required to work till later than usual occasionally. Give & take.

In actual fact, based on what I've been taught and shown so far, the tasks required of me is nothing too difficult at all, so it would be stupid to turn complacent and ruin the privileges that come with the job. I'm hoping that the colleagues in my team, who have their own assigned work areas, have the same line of thought - the worst thing that can happen to any team is to have black sheeps that ruin everything for everybody else.. but I'm not holding my breath on this just yet even though I'm hoping for the best; as I've said, trust is something to be earned and we don't know one another well enough yet.

However, I already know that there is just one particular aspect of the job that I hate while everything else seem ok, but you gotta take the good along with the bad and there's no such thing as a 100% perfect job without flaws that rub you the wrong way, yes? So far, it's just this one thing that I don't like, but I can live with just one single bad issue if everything else holds up to be continuously ok. We shall see.

But ugh, me having to deal with a slight fever and cough is not helping me much during my first day on the job. Still, I shall survive.