If you notice, I hardly blog about my father. It’s not because my father doesn’t play a big part in my life. Quite the opposite really. He plays a very very huge part in my life growing up and even up till today. The thing is that my father is a VERY private person. He accepts that I blog and reveal things about myself sometimes but he made me promise never to put his picture on my blog.
So my Dad has always received very little coverage. But today I’m going to talk about him a little bit. My Dad came from a fairly poor family. He spent many of his years building a career trying to provide for my brothers and sisters and he did a fantastic job at that. He’s traditional in many senses. So much that every Chinese New Year I would have to kneel down and serve tea for him as his son. Something that I enjoy actually.
As traditional and old fashioned he is, my Dad keeps up with technology. He’s on Facebook, uses an iPhone and uses all sorts of apps regularly. Most of it he learned on his own. So his birthday is coming up this week and my brothers and sister and I thought that it might be a good idea to buy him a new phone. We were at first thinking about an iPhone 5 but when I asked my Dad about it he said that he wanted a Samsung Galaxy S3 instead. That kinda worried me a little. Because as much as I am a fan of the S3, I acknowledge that the iPhone is a simpler phone to use. But my Dad’s reasoning for not wanting the iPhone: “What for? It’s the same as my current phone just a bit longer?”.
I guess my Dad is one person unaffected by the iPhone 5 hype and his point was pretty objective. So we got him as S3 and I helped him set it up and showed him the features. After I gave him the introduction on what the S3 can do he said “Wow… really powerful ah this phone”. Then he told me that he already has had lots to absorb and wanted to take an afternoon nap.
An hour later he came to me and said “Tiam (he calls me Tiam)! Help ! I’ve suddenly added everyone on my contact list on Facebook!”.
I realized that when I set up his phone I actually opted to sync his contact list with his Facebook account. So he added every contact on his phone as his Facebook friend. He had everyone from friends he hadn’t seen for years, the plumber, the gardener, my uncle’s driver or even Polis Diraja Malaysia.
Today my really private Dad unknowingly sent out hundreds of Facebook friend requests. He had people responding to him all day saying “WOW LONG TIME NO C!”.
Today my Dad became the friendliest person on Facebook.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space