Today I had a couple of Jester’s Pies and I didn’t realise that I was overcharged 60 cents for them until later. At first I was peeved but then I remembered I had a “two burgers for one” deal last week. So technically I’m still in front.
The point is, all it takes is a little bit of perspective to change how you feel about anything. It all depends on how you look at it. That bargain that you thought was so worth it, actually took you half an hour to drive there and more time spent waiting in line to get it and to pay for it. So was the time worth the bargain?
Or, you may think that you are saving time by doing things the easy way now but how much is it going to cost you down the road when you have to clean up the inevitable mess from a sloppy job?
What you think that you have lost may not actually be much in the bigger scheme of things. And what you think is precious or worthwhile doing, may not be such a big deal in the long run.
No where is perspective more important than with matters of money. Do you need more money when you already have more than the average? When you don’t have to worry about food and shelter? Do you really need to buy more crap? If not to spend, do you really need to hoard away so much? Why are you working so hard for? What’s wrong with being content? Is more money worth the pettiness, the jealousies and the fighting for?
Money isn’t everything and you can’t take it with you when you die.
Greedy people are like seagulls
which eat and eat and eat;
insatiable without rhyme or reason rich115 @ flickr
(via everystockphoto.com)
The above thoughts came about when I heard news about my dad’s eldest sister and youngest brother (eldest and youngest of his family, respectively) coming to blows over how much my grandmother will give to them in her will. It all started when my uncle asked my aunty to put in more effort to look after my grandmother who is nearing 90. My aunty thought that since my uncle will get more inheritance (how they know I am not sure), he should be the one doing most of the work anyway.
What makes it worse is that she’s always been selfish and her family had already inherited a tidy sum from her husband’s parents. So why is she so petty for? Why does she need more money? How the hell would she be able to spend it all? It’s greed, pure and simple.
That it happened so close to Mother’s Day is quite disheartening too. I hope for my aunty’s sake who is 67, that her own children don’t follow her example. Then again, perhaps she would deserve it. Karma is a biatch.
Still on the topic of sex, last week Sam de Brito wrote a piece titled “Flogging a Dead Horse” (that’s another euphemism for you). In it, he quoted feminist Naomi Wolfe who had this to say about men’s fondness for porn:
In the end, porn doesn’t whet men’s appetites; it turns them off the real thing.
To which Sam adds:
As much as going to a bar or pub or the women’s shoe department of David Jones is an imperfect, sometimes contrived way to meet women, it does require social interaction, which I’ve said time and time again, is an essential component of being a functioning human.
Now, however, it seems many men, when offered this option, choose the far easier alternative of squeezing one out at their desktop.
Again, I have nothing against wanking, but I think internet porn can seriously mess up some guys; it raises unrealistic expectations, it desensitises them and turns them into sexual zombies.
I agree completely with Sam. I enjoy looking at and having social interactions with women. I think humans are social creatures, and that it’s an essential part of feeling alive. In this context, porn is a poor substitute even though it can be part of a healthy sex life if not taken to the extreme.
And I somewhat disagree with what Naomi Wolf says because I’m still very fond of real women. Much as I love porn and self-love, I much prefer the smell and feel of a woman who’s lying next to me. And when I have a partner, I’m definitely not going to choose porn, nor TV, or sports, or going out with the guys, or drinks or whatever, over sex with her. I’d be nucking futs.
I’ve said previously that meaningless sex is just dull. That sex without the emotional connection is like a fast food meal – it will satisfy you then and there, but it leaves an empty unfulfilled feeling after. Though now, I’d like to add a caveat to that. Meaningless sex can be great if the physical attraction is strong.
This thought hit me quite suddenly late Saturday night when I was feeling lonely in a sea of people, in the din and loud music of a nightclub.
I was wondering why haven’t I felt anything for anyone for so long? Then I remembered that I did have a strong feeling for someone which led to the best sex that I’ve ever had. But it was with someone whom I didn’t really fancy as a person at all. However, the strong physical attraction was such that it overrode any other considerations. In other words, it was driven by pure lust.
No relationship came out of it, and the empty feeling did come back after. But at the time, it reinvigorated me and I was smiling for the next few days. However I must say that I feel ambivalent that the best physical relations that I’ve had was not also with someone whom I connected with emotionally.
Maybe that’s why I suddenly felt lonely when I’m not alone. And maybe I shouldn’t be having alcohol whilst having these thoughts.
The following is a series of tangential thoughts formed when I channel-surfed through Foxtel last night. Follow me why don’t you …
Channel V and Max TV were both showing 80s and 90s clips. As I secretly rocked to Wham, A-Ha and Transvision Vamp, I suddenly felt like digging out my cassette collection. I have a box in the storeroom somewhere. I also suddenly thought that I should maybe get CD versions of those since the tapes might have gone bad by now. I was mouthing the words to Transvision Vamp’s “Baby I Don’t Care”, tapping my feet to Wham’s “I Don’t Want Your Freedom”, and A-Ha’s “Take On Me” always make me feel emo. I so love the 80s.
Watching music videos make me want to buy CDs. Lots of them.
Surfed on over to The Disney Channel. Is it me or do they sex up teenage actresses too much? Even here on The Disney Channel! Even though she wasn’t tarted up as much, I still found myself fantasising about a prepubescent Hilary Duff on “Lizzy McGuire”. I feel so dirty.
Other than that, The Disney Channel is cool at midnight. I get to look at pretty girls without feeling dirty. Oh wait I do.
There’s only one way to get rid of that guilty feeling, so I surfed on over to a soft-core movie. Man, soft-porn sucks. You can’t see anything! Maybe that’s why they call it “soft”. Ha ha.
Brb. Toilet break.
Back to the music channels. A smokin’ hot Natasha Bedingfield is singing “I Wanna Have Your Babies” and she’s singing it to an Asian man! I love me some Natasha. Whatever happened to her brother Daniel Bedingfield? “Gotta Get Thru This” was such a great club song.
Hey hey you you, I could be your girlfriend! Damn, Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend” is annoyingly catchy. But she could sing that to me anytime. Woohoo!
Hmm, Michael Buble. Dude’s got a smooth voice. CD for mom?
Settled down to some dance music to end the night. Fedde Le Grand (feat. Camille Jones) and their “The Creeps” is hella cool. I love the design, and the look and feel of the video. And the breaky pop-pop-pop choreography. And the hot women in tight fitting office clothes. Male fantasy du jour. Great follow-up song to their “Put Your Hands Up For Detroit”.
Who knew I could have had such a great time in front of the telly, alone on a Friday night?
We had met on the bus through a mutual friend. The three of us would meet up for lunches because we all worked near the same area in the city. After a few weeks, I decided to ask her out.
At the time, I thought she was receptive. I’d ask her out for movies and dinner alone and she’d come. And we always had a lot to talk about. Little did I know I was already in the friend zone.
In between the times that I’d see her alone, we would go out in a group and there was always this other guy there. And even though they didn’t act like a couple, I could see from the way their friends were behaving that there was something more to it.
And I was right. The guy had been pursuing her before I had shown up and apparently she had told him she wasn’t ready yet and to give her some time. He had been waiting patiently for his chance. I think me coming along sorta sped things up a bit – they hooked up not long after.
I was bitter and disappointed. I chose to express it in a passive-aggressive way by writing her an email. In it I told her that I did like her and was sorry that it didn’t go my way; I had wished her all the best, and that I can’t see her “for a while”.
Truth was, I never wanted to see her again. I don’t believe in the “let’s be friends” crap. And I was actually more angry than I had come across in the email. I even deliberately chose a later bus just to avoid her.
In the email, I also told her that maybe she should had said something about the other guy, especially the times when we were out alone together. I told her that I would have gotten the hint and that would have been that. We would have saved each other a lot of time and energy.
She replied back, “I didn’t know you felt that way.” Please. You knew!
What I would have preferred was this: if you didn’t like me, don’t agree to go out with me. Or you could have made it obvious that I was strictly a friend. I know you were probably trying to protect my feelings but sooner or later, they were gonna get hurt anyway.
Or maybe you weren’t doing that at all. Maybe you were stringing me along to see which guy you’d end up liking better.
So you were either selfish or indecisive, or worse, both. Call it sour grapes or whatever, in hind sight I’m glad that we didn’t get together. It would have been short-lived anyway. And because we weren’t a couple, I had met her. But that’s a whole different story altogether.
Being stuck on dial-up speeds at the moment reminds me of using the Internet in the early 90s. The Internet then was a brand new thing, my computer was a Pentium 100, it was running Windows 3.11, and my modem was running at 24kbps (24000bps then, compared to 1.5Mbps or 1500000bps and above now). It was hella cool for the time, and I fantasised a lot about being like the Whiz Kids.
Back then the Net was predominantly for two things: chatting and discussions on the newsgroups. Website browsing as we know it today did not exist – it was too slow over the modems. Even then, the sites were very rudimentary and we only ever visited “homepages“.
Chatting was either done using “talk” and “ytalk” through a telnet terminal, or IRC. IRC was where all the action was. Although it is used much less now, it still exists today indicating how addictive it can be. Sex channels and all their variants (#sex, #netsex, #cybersex, #hottub etc.) were the most popular for the obvious reasons.
The discussions on the newsgroups were much like forums and to a certain extent, blogs today. People would write up an item and people would post their comments under it. Newsgroups would have names like “rec.culture.asian.american”, and “soc.culture.tv.australia” indicating what the group was about. And as with everything to do with technology, you can’t get away from the sex and sleaze: alt.sex.stories, alt.binaries.pictures.sex etc.
The primary reason the above were popular during those dial-up days was that they were mostly text and therefore fast through those put-put-putting modems. But modems have drawbacks.
The modems are connected via the same phone line as the house phone. Unless the line was dedicated for just modem use only, and most people did not think the cost was justified, the modem would cut off whenever someone accidentally picks up the handset. Or if you have call-waiting on the line and a call is coming through, that would kill the connection too.
“Sorry, I got disc” was a very common phrase.
What was most frustrating but really funny now was that the disconnections happen at the worst times.
Scenario 1: after trolling through countless newsgroups and actually finding some good porn in a 10-part bundle, and downloading 7 or 8 parts of it, you get disconnected. Noooooooo!
Scenario 2: after trolling through countless IRC sex channels, you finally got someone to go private messaging with you. Score! As you furiously type out your sexual fantasy, “I run my hand down your back and slowly pull you in closer, and I nibble on your … *boop* You are disconnected.” Noooooooo!
Both of which had happened to me more than once. Those were the good old days. Woohoo!
One additional downside to absorbing 3 people into the household, is that your Internet download quota gets breached very easily, thus getting the connection shaved down to dial-up speeds. Yes us poor plebs in Australia have Internet connections with download quotas – those who are unfortunate to be on Bigpond even have their uploads count as part of the quota.
So my connection at home is currently shaved during peak times until Friday but off-peak (2am-12pm) I’m fine. Though obviously I am either sleeping or at work during those times. It was so slow last night that I was frustrated enough to actually pull myself away from the computer. Very difficult I’d tell ya – I suddenly felt empty. Hahaha!
And blogging at work is always a tricky thing. You would have noticed that I haven’t done so in a very long time. So in lieu of a better thought out post, here are some of my earlier Flickr photos to tie you over.
With Uncle Chris and cousin Jeff in 2004. I looked very skinny here because I was still working at my restaurant – physical labour is good for weight loss. That’s a tip for you ladies trying to lose weight.
With ex-staff of mine Cheryl who is now back in Singapore, 2004.
With cousin Yvonne, aunty Cass and her sons Reucas and Reugan in 2005. At the launch of Reucas’ previous band’s EP. He’s now in the band called “The Colors” (link to their MySpace page).
Thamanoon and I drunk on Romanian moonshine (ingredients: sugar, water and yeast!), 2005.
