Nonsensical Googling, Nonsense Googling

Well, the kiasu parents are right, you know. Watching too much TV can plant false impressions about stuff on us.

We have all watched the many James Bond and Matrix and Transformers and National Treasure and what not. And we've all seen the fancy screens whenever there's a computer at work.

There's a very cool looking bar, with the title "transferring data" on top, with all the binary numbers and beeps and nonsensical hexadecimal stuff flowing at the background. And then there's the silhouette of two Razr phones, one filled with high tech blue lines, the other empty. As you watch, an arrow appear, moving from the line-filled-Razr towards the empty one, with the label "cloning device". Then a popup appeared "Cloning complete", with a beep.

Even everyday actions have been exaggerated. Googling a simple keyword brings astounding effects. Firstly the screen refreshes itself immediately. There's also the animation, a wipe from the top to bottom. And of course there's the never to be missed audible beep that accompanies the click of the mouse.

And I haven't started on printing yet.

I don't know about you, but the last time I tried googling, the beep was missing. Well, maybe I had lousy speakers. But then the screen didn't refresh itself immediately. Um, we don't expect the best from Streamyx. So what about the eye-catching screen wipe? Is there something wrong with my browser?

Anyway, I was trying to google names. You know the way in movies, where every single piece of missing information can be found from the internet? For example, need to know who Bruce Edelson is, just google it. And you'll get your information.

With the fancy beep, wipe, and the instantaneous speed of course.

So I typed in my sister's name. Ping! Two results appeared. They didn't tell me a lot about her, but then there was her name in the list of the winners of some sort of competition, along with the names of some of her ex-classmates.

I typed in my dad's name. Ping! Two pages of results appeared. I've seen several shops with his name on their signboards, but the entire two pages were filled with results relevant to my dad. Well, why would someone write about some cobbler online anyway? I mean the shops with dad's name, not dad.

I typed in my friend's name. Ping! Pages of results popped right in front of my eyes. After skimming through the many links, most of them based in Singapore, I found several pages which are definitely about him. Having a common name really generates rubbish results with not many options of narrowing the search.

And so I proceeded to type my name in. Rubbing my fingers together (the pages don't load instantly as in the movies, as I said, so I had time to rub my hands), I waited.

Ping!

One page.

None of them related to me.

Hey wait, there's one. It belongs to the Facebook profile of my friend's.

Oh well. Happy googling. Remember to put your name in quotation marks while you search. Just remember not to spend the Mid Autumn Festival watching TV this time around.