I Wish I Knew How To Quit You

I finally got my Astro setup hooked up during the weekend and I am only now accessing the satellite TV channels that other people have been watching for donkey years. It only took me about 10 years of suffering abysmal terrestrial TV reception at my apartment before I finally bite the bullet and subscribed to Astro services. The funny thing was I didn’t remember applying for Astro at all before their rep called me to make an appointment to install the satellite dish. Sure … I was thinking of applying for the service last week but I don’t think that Astro has mind readers on staff who pickup on these thoughts and send their reps to those just only thinking about subscribing to their service.

In any rate, they came and installed the receiver dish and the decoder at my rented apartment which they had the address correctly on their work order sheet. I now have 23 additional TV channels on top of the 5 that we have for free on terrestrial TV. Hopefully they bill me correctly as I don’t really know how much the whole package will cost me monthly.

I’ve always been a couch potato and have an on-going love affair with my TV. As a child I would spend hours and hours in front of the TV much to the distress of my parents. The TV was my nanny, my friend and my English teacher. Of course back then we only had the RTM channels and, if it was a clear day, TV channels from Singapore. I still remember the old console type TV set that we had back then with the wood paneling and folding cover that we were always reminded to close after watching the TV. I don’t remember if the one that we had back then was a color or black & white set but it clearly didn’t matter to me back then as long as I got to watch my “Sesame Street”, “Space: 1999”, “Combat TV” and not forgetting my absolute favorite back then “The Cumi & Ciki Show” which was a local puppet show much like Sesame Street.

I remembered that back when TV3 first started broadcasting, it was a big deal after having only public TV channels for so long. I was staying at Kelantan at the time when they started the channel and remembered thinking how lucky the KL folks were to get another TV channel to watch. Every time the family went back to KL for holidays, I would be glued to my relatives TV to try to absorbed as much of the broadcast that I could get. I remembered thinking that it had much interesting shows compared to the dreary ones that they were showing at the time on the other channels.

It were only 3 terrestrial TV channels for awhile before a few other private broadcasting companies tried to add additional channels with varying success. I can hardly remember the shows that they offered on Metrovision before that channel stopped broadcasting. Ditto for Channel 9 although I do remember that channel mostly for the worse reception quality for a terrestrial channel ever which was a pity because it had the “Star Trek: Enterprise” TV series that I really wanted to watch. NTV7 started strong with good shows but now seem to flounder around for awhile and seemed to be going now for more niche audiences rather than a broader appeal.

I’ve noticed that I’m more partial to watching the shows on TV3 and lately more to the newest addition to the terrestrial TV channel list, 8TV. I found that the English language shows on 8TV more interesting while TV3 was fast becoming too much like the stodgy older sister channel to 8TV in terms of content and editorial tone. With the channels that I get with my Astro subscription now, I get to add the Travel & Living channel that I can’t get enough of and AXN to my list of regularly watched TV channel.

With all these channel to watch and so little time it is no wonder that I’m more house-bound than a limb-less leper during the weekends.

I definitely have to watch less TV if I plan to have any semblance of a social life.