Email Blues II – Misrouted Messages

This is a sequel of some sort to my previous post – Email Blues. The other day a colleague of mine phoned me and asked “how do you recall an email? “ Ayayay.. It was obvious to me that he copied an unintended addressee and wanted to intercept the message before it got read by the recipient ! Microsoft Outlook email has a recall message feature but works only when the recipient hasn’t read the email – yet. If the message has already been read, the recall becomes mere formality because yikes, the harm had been done.

I recall many years ago, when my wife was still working in Pinas – we were on a long distance relationship that time – she had mistakenly addressed her mail for me to her boss, the president of the company ( she was an exec secretary at that time) ! She was raring to go home and hit the send key prematurely , without re-checking the addressee field 😦 The boss intercepted her before she walked out and showed the message on her screen – unopened in the inbox. The boss quipped “ by the way, as you can see, I haven’t read it yet. The subject was a bit strange so I called you to be sure “ 😉 LOL. Embarrassing ! I ultimately received the email and was glad there wasn’t any steamy language hehe.. and it was her response about my planned vacation to Manila 🙂

The thought of sending an email to an unintended party scares me, especially if has to do with office matters which are confidential in nature. I also see a lot of people quarelling on an issue over email – ugh. Why do we have to be stupid to have a transcript, a log of a squabble? A phone call is always best when it comes to settling arguments or disputes because it leaves no track for people to pick up and use against you in future. We all know that email is not the user’s exclusive property. In event of a criminal investigation, employers and email providers are bound by law to turn over email correspondences to the government, and this includes text and Blackberry messages. It may never happen to us but it is important to know our exposure. For now, avoidance of misrouted emails is paramount. A second check of the TO and CC lines wouldn’t harm before we finalize the transmission with the send button !

 

STRANGE NOISES

One day, as I was doing the crossword on my 15 minute express train to work, I heard a strange sound coming from a guy who appeared to be dozing off, his head almost looking at the ceiling and with earphone wires dangling off his chest. Whrrrrrr….whrrrrrr.. This guy had both his hands in his jacket and was rewinding his Walkman tape ! I dunno but who would be lugging a Walkman unit these days when the dimunitive and handy MP3 player can store many more songs and play quality audio ?

I always prefer to take the cars at the west end of the train because I take the short cut route via the exits close to where our office is located. Before I claim my seat, I look around to check this particular middle aged looking guy if he is around because darn, he snores like a horse and I need to sit far away from him 🙂 Some people snore even of they doze off for a minute and this guy is one heck of a prolific snorer. It can be a real drag because you’d be making your seat mates miserable, more so if you are in a plane ! More than embarrassing , it disturbs people big time 😯

 

WHERE ARE THEY NOW ?

 
Rewind.. back to the summer of the 1989 at the CNE Grandstand, Toronto. I was one of the thousands impatiently waiting for The Nylons to finish with their gig so the Bee Gees can take the stage. Been almost 20 years and the venerable CNE Grandstand had been already been mothballed in 1994 yet the images of the opening song of that concert remains vivid in my memory. As the trio opened with Ordinary Lives, the audience burst into a thunderous applause and the words sort of gripped everyone with a very simple yet honest message :

We are ordinary people
Living ordinary lives

Such was the aura of the Bee Gees – family men, doting fathers, brothers in fact, Barry Gibb the eldest and the two younger twin brothers Robin and Maurice. It is amazing to see the group remain intact and make music for 40 years.  After all, they were family and the solidarity proved that blood is indeed thicker than water.  A sad moment in the concert was when they sang a song in honor of their youngest brother, Andy, an artist in his own right who died a year earlier due to drug overdose.  Tragedy struck the group permanently when Maurice died of illness in 2003. Future concerts of the Bee Gees is highly unlikely. The Beatles never had a concert after John Lennon died. As Ringo Starr said, it will be an odd feeling to be singing as the Beatles minus John. The Bee Gees are easily idenfied as the disco kings of the 70’s, noted for their outstanding soundtrack on Saturday Night Fever, the movie that launched the colorful career of John Travolta. Not many people know that they are capable of writing beautiful songs as they did for artists like Barbara Streisand, Dionne Warwick, Kenny Rogers, Dianna Ross and Celine Dion.

 
This song Charade was popularized by Pinoy artist  Hajji Alejandro with his Tagalog version – Tag-Araw, Tag-Ulan. The song became a hit in Pinas and was easily considered as the song that launched Hajji’s career as a recording artist. Ironically, Hajji’s version made the song easier to sing as a ballad, especially with the karaoke 🙂