NEIL HUMPHREYS!!!

HE HAS A MOVIE COMING UP SOON! Is this the most exciting news or whattttt!!?!!?! I AM SO GOING TO WATCH THIS MOVIE (regardless of its quality). And thank god, he finally has a website!!! The movie poster and the website look totally amateurish but I hope it’s like that because he’s trying to be funny….. If not, Neil, I’m willing to be your web designer. Just leave a comment if you ever get to read this. Despite my overwhelming love for you, I won’t do it for free. ***** In cyberspace, no one hears you scream curses Neil Humphreys, neil’sworld (c) 2008 Singapore Press Holdings Limited How do you fight back against the nerds who make you pay to have a website in your name? I DO not like computers. I never have. No, that is not strictly true. I liked them when I was a teenager because I could take West Ham United from the Fourth Division to the English Premier League title in consecutive seasons in the original Football Manager game. The 1980s graphics were archaic. The players were all matchstick men who moved at a snail’s pace, could neither tackle nor dribble and kicked with just one foot. There has never been a more accurate depiction of West Ham players. But that was the extent of the usefulness of the home computer in my bedroom. There wasn’t even the Internet, so the closest thing resembling a scantily-clad woman that I ever saw was a girl at school called Maria Snuffleupagus, who would wiggle her bottom for 50 pence and a bag of chips. Apart from Football Manager, I never grasped the function of a home computer. Besides, my prophetic mother always said too much time spent on the computer was bad for one’s eyesight. How right she was. When a man first typed the words ‘romp’, ‘amateur’ and ‘webcam’ into a search engine, optometrists worldwide must have rubbed their hands together. Being a bit of a Luddite, I held back on acquiring my first computer and I’ve been paying the price for my technical ignorance ever since. Today, every working moment is spent staring at various computers. They are the bane of my life. I dislike them because they lie to me. I was surfing the Net this week and I was informed that I had performed ‘an illegal operation’. How did I commit an illegal operation in my own office? It’s not like I was removing someone’s kidney and selling it to a towkay. How would the computer know anyway? The damn thing wouldn’t be any the wiser if I stood on the desk naked and shouted: ‘Goodness gracious, great balls of fire!’ Matters came to a head when I ventured into cyberspace recently, after a movie producer proposed the surreal idea of turning my Singapore books into a film. These things need to drum up financial and corporate interest first, I was told, and one of the ways to do that is to set up a website for the potential film. That’s fine, I said. No problem. Away you go, young, mad movie producer, let me know how it all works out. ‘We think you should set up your own website, too,’ the producer replied. Sure, I said, whatever you like. I’ve never had a blog or a MySpace thingy, and I wouldn’t be able to find someone’s Facebook with a map and compass, but it can’t be too complicated to establish a website, right? Did you hear that? That was the sound of IT-literate people releasing a hollow, theatrical laugh across Singapore. In space, according to the movie Alien, no one can hear you scream. In cyberspace, according to me, you can’t punch anybody. I was instructed by my newly found ‘web designer’ (isn’t he Spider-Man?) that a domain name was required; that is, the address of the website. ‘Can’t you keep it simple and use my name?’ I asked. ‘You can’t,’ replied Peter Parker. ‘You already exist in cyberspace.’ Or at least my name does. Type in neilhumphreys.com and you get the website of Neil Humphreys, general builder. Apparently, I know nothing about computers or cyberspace, but I am a gifted plasterer willing to renovate your entire house at a competitive rate. ‘Unless I get a diploma in cement mixing, I can’t use that domain name,’ I said. ‘How about neilhumphreys.net?’ suggested Singapore’s Spidey. ‘Fine, go with that,’ I said. ‘The domain name will cost you about $200.’ ‘For my own name?… I shouldn’t have to pay!… Why?… Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life!’ I turned into John Proctor in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. The web designer explained what I was paying for but he lost me somewhere after web hosting and FTP set-ups. Now, if you buy an HDB flat today, it’s yours; you can see it, touch it and drop buckets of water on the annoying neighbour’s washing below. The property is something tangible. How do you buy a piece of cyberspace? It’s infinite, isn’t it? And more to the point, who gets the money I’ve paid to buy my own name? Forget the mafia and the triads, this is the greatest money-making racket since my sister filled an old bottle with water, threw in half a dozen rose petals and tried to sell it to the auntie next door as perfume. This is revenge of the nerds. Having spent their formative years tapping feverishly into calculators while the rest of us turned them upside down and wrote the word ‘boobs’, this is payback. ‘Our day will come,’ they thought, ‘a day when you will pay us for permission to use your own name. Without us, you will literally be just a number in cyberspace.’ Well, I am not a number, I am a free man (that one was pinched from TV show, The Prisoner) and I have parted with over $200 to make neilhumphreys.net a reality. There are no webcams or scantily clad women, I’m afraid, although I am trying to get in touch with Maria Snuffleupagus.