the little mermaid. hik.

I was looking up at this basic tutorial of building databases and then they use the same case study again: building up a video rental system.

Who would want to even start a video rental store nowadays? There are lots of pirated DVDs everywhere, and you can get an original VCD at 20 ringgit.

Oh yeah, I’ve forgotten that those tutorials are from the United States and they do not have pirated DVDs. And they would rather go to the cinema or buy video tapes instead because original DVDs are not cheap.

Talk about video tapes, dad bought me an original The Little Mermaid video tape at 39.90.

Remember those tapes back in the nineties?
At that time, considering my age and the existence of ten ringgit pirated tapes, a 39.90 original HVN is not cheap. Instead of the black colored body, this tape has blue and red plastic body, and the box cover has hologram stickers on it.

And of course the video picture been played is relatively the clearest during that time.

Mom, most of the time will always restrict us from watching videos. Unless we already have our homework done.

Due to this restriction, and because I cannot stand not watching the original Little Mermaid video often, I waited until three o’clock in the morning, when the whole house is dark, I tiptoed to my dad’s study room and played the video on the small TV there.

TV those days have funny kind of distortion sound on the speakers. And this distortion is of course more noticeable when there were not a single sound could be heard in the middle of the night (except the ringing sensation in your ears because it was so silent). And of course there was the sound of the tape being inserted inside the player, and the mechanical sounds of it being played.

All these slight noises, would be suddenly be extremely loud when I tried to secretly watch Little Mermaid at three am in the middle of the night. They made me cringe and I hoped that no one would wake up.

Funny, the silly naughty things that I am capable to do when I was a kid.