Marsha Maung: Write. Cook. Read. Watch. Try. Innovate.

We've always kind of known that our devices, or more specifically, some parties, are always listening to what we're saying. That's why we will never turn our home into one of those 'smart homes'. Never . My boys would move out the moment the home is 'smart'. LOL. So would I, actually....  Anyway, my devices are pretty open to everything, though, because it's my job to listen. And in order to do that, I have to be open to be listened to as well.  Because, unlike others who can navigate their way around town without their GPS on, I will die. I have this rare spatial perception disease where I don't know where I am after I make a left turn. Any  turn.  During one of our usual dinner conversations, I've mentioned that I don't really know (in-depth) how the moon affects the tides on earth . I sometimes get curious how it visually look like.  And this is what appeared on my feed today on IG. It's not something I usually see on IG, TT, or FB, or...

I've been on Twitter since June 2008, making it 14 year old. Since I am not an influencer neither am I famous, my number of followers on Twitter have stagnated for quite a couple of years now. I think my engagement rate sucks pretty bad too.  But still, I stayed on because I liked listening to what people had to say about the happenings all around the world.  It gets mad-crazy sometimes but mostly, it's easy to ignore the stuff you don't want to see on Twitter. Just scroll away. It makes life easier. I loved the initial idea of Twitter giving everyone a voice and a platform to voice their concerns, share their ideas, connect with other people, speak their minds, promote their works or business freely and fairly.  That was the original idea.  Then let's talk about the whole Musk takeover. It really did not bother me that much when Elon Musk announced a potential takeover. So what? As long as it remains the way it is for the rest of us without the blue checkmarks, ther...

I know everyone still uses Google Chrome as their main browser (so do I, most of the time) but I've been exploring other browsers just because I want to see what they can do and also, I use them differently for work and personal reasons.  In year 2020 alone, it was reported by the University of Maryland that there is one cyber threat every 39 seconds. That's 2,244 attacks per day. 😲 The stat didn't sit too well with me because we are now more dependent on our phones and the internet than ever before. I don't even have much cash on me anymore these days because I use eWallets, debit card, and online transactions for nearly everything.  I mean, a bunch of colleagues went out for lunch and one person pays for the meal. The rest of us split up the bill and started transferring our share of the meal via TouchnGo and Grab. I paid my sister for buying reusable customized face mask she got from her friend with TouchNGo. A work superior borrowed cash from me (even though he is ...

Pandemic Problems: My body has absorbed so much soap and disinfectant lately, that when I pee, it cleans the toilet In a blink of an eye and it's almost the end of the year. Christmas is approaching. Mall decorations and the songs they're playing over the radio airwaves are telling us so but it doesn't quite feel like it, does it?  We entered the year almost in a panic, lumbering our way around a potentially deadly virus while holding onto the hope that it's just another one of those scares that never quite made it to our shores. We kept our ear to the ground and religiously hung onto the words of our Ministers, Health Officials, Government workers, and reporters. We tried to keep calm and most of us did what we had to do to keep ourselves, our family, and our friends safe.  But here it is....this virus. Hitting not just home but the world over the head. Despite how many movies we've seen about viruses and pandemics, reality is so much harder and real.  We've be...

No matter what the phase is that I am going through in my life, I try my best to be as grateful and happy as I can be. Yeah, sure, I get bamboozled by bad news and stuff (who isn’t, anyway, these days) but there’s always a silver lining in every dark cloud.  So cliche but I can’t help it. It’s the secret sauce to surviving.  On top of that, both my boys are now enrolled (albeit in a funny kind of Coronavirus way) into college and the spending is mind-blowing.  I am not alone in this, of course.  The rest of the world is with me  on this one but it doesn’t make it any easier. At some point, if you’re like me, we might find ourselves wondering if it was better for our kids to actually take a what-you-call a short hiatus while waiting for that darn vaccine.  What rubs me the wrong way is that we are paying full fees for college but are presented fed at the trough with a buffet of Masterclass-style and Udemy kind of services. I can’t help bu...

We're not even shy about it anymore - to post a negative comment, to jump to conclusions, to judge a stranger, to negate a report based on our personal views and interests, or to shame someone simply because we can. There were a few times that I almost made the human mistake of being slightly more human than usual, i.e. leaving my TEENAGE BOYS in the car while running in to pay for petrol, double-parking with my kids still in the car, or pissing someone off in a restaurant. It's stuff we used to get away with before the internet happened not that they're right, but it's not always wrong and some are easily corrected and forgiven. I stop mid-sentence, turn to my friends and boys and whisper, " Gosh, I better stop. What if this ends up on Facebook or something ". Why does every action I take in real life have to feel like I have a knife to my neck? Recently, an article was published in a local daily about how cutting out carbs from one's diet could res...

It's true...if I looked at a teenager's Instagram account, (a.k.a my kids' and nieces'), they're way out of my league. It's like a whole new different world that I am completely new to. There are no boundaries, no censorship, they say and post whatever the hell they want and feel like, it's almost always funny or emotional and it's a train wreck during their off days. Sometimes they are a little extra ( check the definition here  which basically means OTT) and yet, they don't really care. I told my son a few times that his meme-filled Instagram account (a sudden overnight shift from his anime-drawing-filled one) is giving me nightmares. But he doesn't change it, my comment left no mark whatsoever and he continued on with a laugh as if to say, oh, really. don't you like it? there's the unfollow button right there, mom . If there’s anything I miss about being a teenager, it’s this extra, unrestrained emotion. Teenagers don’t hold ...

When the alarm does go off, get up and prepare for your day as you would for an office job: take a shower, and get dressed - New York Times Whenever I tell someone that I work from home, or am a freelancer, I almost-never fail to get envious sighs from them. A sigh, especially from a very tired working mom or dad, that tells me that, perhaps, they wish they were in my shoes. While I also point out the perks of working outside of a home, I DO concede that there ARE benefits to working from home. Working out of your jammies, so to speak. I remember the days when I would:-:- cook and work at the same time breastfeed while making phone calls or answering emails (rewind 15+ years ago) walk out of the house with paper clips in my hair (because really, who has time for pretty little Hello Kitty hair clips when you're harried) get no proper sleep all day, every day and apparently a real Living Dead thought that I could master everything on my own go berserk at the smallest thing...

Some people make the mistake of promoting their business(es), outright, on Facebook. I've given, and will continue to give (but mute them) them the benefit of the doubt every time they have an update on FB, to be personal instead of being a business. There are many reasons why people should be just  people on Facebook. Who's on FB ? Your friends, family, long-lost school mates, relatives, friend of friends and some random strangers you added because they looked harmless. Do you want to be their friend/family or do you want them to see you as a business? Humans . While it is not a good idea to post EVERYTHING on social media (these days), it's OK to promote or ask your friends and family for support. Most people would do it for free and repeatedly because....they know YOU, not your business. So, it is preferable for you to remain a human. We've seen this concept work with intention-focused groups whereby groups of people come together online and offer each other s...

I used to play Starcraft some 10-odd years ago and I kind of like LOL, League of Legends, because they're kinda similar  in some ways. More technical but similar playing styles and they also have many more characters to take on, roles, powers and what-nots. Instead of being limited to Protoss (my favorite - teehee), Zerg (ugly creatures, will never play them) and Terran (boring ostracized human soldiers), they have a lot of more options. I am jealous. I mean, look at this. I WOULD indulge in either games if I had the time to, actually, but the fact is that...I don't. And I don't think my laptop is capable of handling the game, anyway. But my kids play LOL and I do get updates  from them, from time to time, albeit I overhear them talking about it in the car (to each other, not with me) or playing it in their rooms so, I know a little about it, so, when I heard that the Selangor Cyber Games 2017 is going to be held at Paradigm Mall, a short distance from home, I...

If there's one thing we should never schedule in , it's leisure time - Time.com / Health.com  ( The Scientific Reason Why You're Not Enjoying your Free Time ) Some people, because of the force of habit, or the sheer lack of time, have to schedule everything in, before it becomes official. And yet, these person(s) happen to also be the consistently unorganized ones. This is from sheer observation of these individuals, I am exempt because I am one of those habitually late  people who just want to appear out of nowhere like the Stars that we are. No, kidding. We're the five-more-minutes people that you hate so much. “Can I put the phone away for two hours and not think about it? Can I go to sleep without the phone in my bed?” Salsitz said. “Can I wake up in the morning and brush my teeth without checking my phone? - USAToday But we have come to a stage whereby most of us are addicted to our phones, whether to remind us that the kettle is already boiling or it's...

Even obsolete hashtags has its uses, folks. So, even if you're too busy to write something as a prelude to your postings, use your discretion and use those useless hashtags to keep your followers informed. At least.  I will qualify myself with this - TheStar Online is not the only one. I've seen others on Twitter do the same, tweeting nothing but a link. Let's just say that if one is lazy or does not have the time (or brainz) to write something short about the link, at the very least, come up with a hashtag that describes the link. For example, if you're about to provide a link to your own Instagram food picture, use #food #foodie #deliciousdieme #foodporn #eat #eating Sometimes, as nonsensical and obsolete as the #'s are, at least they tell followers about what to expect from the links that they are about (or not) to click on. That's the least you can do for your followers who might be interested in what you've just shared with the web-niverse. Thin...

If there's one thing everyone hates, including my 'otherwise quite calm second child', is slow internet. For some reason, we were experiencing too many bouts of such incidences a week ago. For me, the internet is largely used for work, social media, streaming of shows and stalking people on social media . So, if the internet gets slow, I stalk less people and read a book or the newspaper. For modern folks, especially people my kids' age, there is no alternative to the internet. Well...hardly. They talk on the internet. They play games on the internet. They watch on the internet. They read on the internet. They socialize on the internet. They learn on the internet. They get homework on the internet. They get their assignments done on Google Drive, really! The internet is everything to them. To many of us as well but, as mentioned, we older people have an alternative because we lived half our lives without the internet. We still suffer, nonetheless, but muc...

Admit it, we all get worked up about things. It could be that fella who took your parking spot, the woman who won't stop complaining about you or maybe it's just the bank that keeps calling you about a new loan they want you to take advantage of. pppfftt...I know. Anyway, we all have moments we wish would just go away and disappear. I found this neat little tool on the internet and it is so simple, you will smile in the end. Promise. Feel stressed? Take a 60 second break right now . XOXO, Marsha

Remember the time we used to blog in complete peace? How not every single person, dog, kid or guitar have an internet account? Remember Multiply, the site before Facebook? Oh my, how I long for those days. Bloggers and writers are met with hate once in a while, the same way your words can heal or positively impact someone on the internet, it can also bring on the wrath of 'insulted' people...especially these days. Not to say that it didn't exist back then because it did. I remember someone told me to 'stick to writing, your singing sucks and don't deny it because it is THE TRUTH ' on Multiply when I tried to record my singing on sucky equipment (rewind 20 years before smartphone apps) and brazenly 'showcased' it to my 'friends' on the internet. I argued that it was not THE TRUTH because it was merely his OPINION (and he's entitled to it) not because I am the best singer in the entire Universe  but I have been told that I don't croak....