I know for a fact that I’m earning the least amongst my uni peers.
I don’t have a girlfriend.
I haven’t had sex that I didn’t pay for in 5 years.
I don’t have everything that I want.
I wish I was little bit taller, I wish I was a baller …
I can choose to be miserable but I don’t because these are ridiculous problems compared to those who don’t have enough to eat, who don’t have a roof over their heads, who don’t have freedom, or who go to sleep at night worrying if they will live through the next day.
Compared to them, we have the luxury of choosing to wallow in self-pity. They don’t. So if you have a choice to be sad and miserable or happy, why wouldn’t you choose to be happy? Yeah it’s an effort sometimes but it’s worth it because the alternative sucks hairy balls.
If nothing else, I choose to be happy because it makes people around me happy, and I like being around happy people. So it’s win-win.
Work the past 2 days was hellish. The power went out at the data centre which houses the company’s servers, and the backup power system failed. Our services were out for most of yesterday and today. This led to a torrent of phone calls and emails from our customers which was to be expected. Some were understanding, “shit happens, eh?” Some of them were angry and abusive but as demoralising as it is, we’ve learnt not to take it personally.
It’s typical though. When things go well, we don’t hear a word: thank you’s are rare and compliments even more so. But the minute something goes wrong? Woohoo.
It got me thinking. Sometimes, we tend to take for granted the people who are closest to us. When they do things that are expected of them, we don’t thank them enough or even at all. I know I don’t thank my mom every time she does my laundry or cooks for me. Likewise she doesn’t thank me for taking out the rubbish or buying the occasional dinner, or when she needs me to drive her places. And it’s all because we are expected to do the things that we do.
I reckon we should say “thank you” more, even when we feel the other person should be doing the things that they are doing. I think we should feel less entitled to things and favours because we think that we’ve done what we were supposed to do, and so it’s only fair. I think we should feel more grateful for the little things that the people in our lives do when we ask them to do it, and even more so when they do it without us asking.
So yeah, thanks mom for cooking dinner tonight and every other night; thanks dad for always vacuuming the house; thanks Marvin for always bringing over pork products from work. And thanks Snoop for always cheering us up and helping keep all of our blood pressure low and reminding us always to appreciate the simple things in life. And thanks to everyone else for simply being in my life.
Two Sundays ago was a comfortable 27° – perfect for a day rave. We got to Claremont Showgrounds at around 2:30pm and everyone was buzzing and ready to go. This is the merry cast of the day: Tham, Lydia, Scott, Selina, Kayo, Simon and me.
And a couple of hours into it, we met up with Katie and James.
There was a sea of people in every direction.
Which meant two things: queuing up for drinks …
and the toilet was a major mood killer.
What made it worse was that we had the stoopidest bar system on the day: you queue up once to buy drink tickets which you then need to queue up at another set of counters to redeem the drinks with. Queuing up twice is not the worst of it; there were no proper lines and everyone was pushing in from every freaking direction too. Not happy, Jan.
And what did we end up doing? We can’t be arsed queuing up so often so we redeem a large number of drinks and ended up more or less binge drinking. Shhh, don’t tell my mom.
Anyhoo, we were there for the music and dancing. I enjoyed John Dahlback’s set.
I heard Chicane was good but I was stuck in the bloody drinks queue for half an hour missing most of their set. Argh!
Next up was Axwell, and he was bloody worth it for the entry alone.
After his set, our group were truly energized and there were still 3 hours of the day left. Woohoo! But to be honest, I didn’t quite get into Fedde’s set. It was middling with good bits here and there.
Therefore I was really hoping for deadmau5 to end the day on a high note. But disappointingly, his set was very mellow and chill.
After the show, we heard that Darren J and Laurent Garnier in the Sneakerpeeps tent were great. Them’s the breaks with these things – you really have to pick and choose and sometimes you do miss out on some good acts.
Overall it wasn’t the best day rave that I’ve been to but my friends more than made up for the lacklustre music.
Here are some shots of random punters and girls on shoulders to finish up this post.
Here are the highlight clips of Axwell, Fedde Le Grand and deadmau5.
You have to know a little bit about the Japanese psyche and culture to understand the humour in these ads for Japanese Fanta but man, these are hilarious.
Is anyone really surprised that Tiger Woods cheated on his wife? Despite being a golfing prodigy and genius, and being very well paid for it, he’s still a guy. And there’s a universal truth about most guys and that is: if we think we can get away with it, the temptation of free, easy sex with a beautiful woman is very hard to resist.
This afternoon, Woods updated his website with a predictably emotionless non-response to the allegations that said only that he had “let his family down” and he “regrets those transgressions with all [his] heart.” Although it’s not the dictionary definition, ‘transgressions’ in this case means ‘banging random chicks’.
But is Woods really sorry? Absolutely. He’s sorry he got caught.
What separates him from us mere mortals is that we don’t get approached by beautiful women all the time. Most of us would have to pay for that kind of attention and since we are not rich either, that reduces the opportunities and tempers down the temptation a lot.
Comedian Chris Rock undoubtedly put it best when he said, “A man is only as faithful as his options.” And few men have the sexual options of the most famous athletes in the world.
The line which Tiger Woods thought he wouldn’t cross? That probably became more and more blurry the more beautiful women that he interacts with, especially when these women are willing to sleep with him just like that. So, before he knows it he’s already crossed any kind of boundaries that he may have set for himself.
And this will continue to happen in general so long as there are women who are turned on by the mix of wealth, power and athleticism and who don’t care if the guy is already taken or not. But as long as the guy remains a good actor, or still hits a ball very well or remains effective as a politician, should we really be bothered? I think not, but it’s such good gossip, no?
