It's been a real full on week! I think I've seen more people more times in the last week than in the rest of the month (and possibly the month before that as well). I would have expected myself to be sick of people by now, but it's actually been quite enjoyable and just good to get my social antennae back into gear again. I have to admit, I was a bit short on Christmas/holiday spirit going into the period. The magic of the season just wasn't there for me. Maybe because recently I've just been so into trading and getting on top of my new line of work that I've neglected the other parts of my life. It was good then to step away from it for a while and just hang out with everyone, which is something that I really enjoy. Kudos to everyone for restoring the magic of the holidays.
Recently I've been thinking a lot about living in the present versus thinking of the past/future. A lot of my focus this year has been on forward looking activities, like career choices, financial planning, wealth creation, goal/mission setting and just thinking about the future in general. Personally, it's been quite a large hurdle to clear between uni life and work life. All of a sudden I've got all this money coming in, which opens up a myriad of possibilities for me; but on the other hand, suddenly all of life's great responsibilities don't seem all too far away. One of my fundamental goals has always been that I want to be financially free by the time I start a family. Not so much for the accumulation of all the fancy bells and whistles in life but just to be able to spend that quality time with the wife and kids without 'having' to miss out due to career/wealth building commitments. I think I only really realised this year that playing house with another person is EXPENSIVE. For a person to get married at my age, they'd have to get into debt for pretty much the rest of their lives to afford the modern essentials of a decent furnished house and a car or two. Not to mention just how costly a wedding is. Not to imply that it's not worth the money being paid of course, but I think a strong marriage and family is hard enough to maintain as it is, without the additional pressures that inevitably comes with needing to stave off that debt. So a little forward planning now, a lot of heartache saved later.
Having said that though, being the very extreme person that I am, I think I have gone a bit too far in looking ahead and doing things for the future that I've missed out on enjoying the moments in the present that I have. After all, all we can be really sure of having is the now moment - once gone it is gone forever. Even though planning for the future is healthy and definitely has its place in life, living now is really important as well. It's quite easy to get into the trap of always having my head thinking and thinking about what I'm going to do for the rest of the day, next week/month/year/decade, always looking forward but never really enjoying the present. Looking back at the last few months I can see that I've really tired myself out thinking about things all the time. I suppose it all comes down to living out a healthy balance between the two. Live too much for the present and you end up with an unprepared future, but live too much in the future and you miss out on living.
I hate Facebook. I'm assuming that Facebook has kidnapped all my blogging friends since they have not posted in a long long time. My extreme hatred for Facebook is so extreme that I have awakened from my long blog slumber and now I am angry and hungry like a bear in spring (or whenever they wake up from hibernation). And the only thing that will extinguish this angry hungry state is much entries from everyone I know. Entries that I shall read during my long leisurely hours at "work". One would think that I might as well join "the Facebook revolution" since I have so much free time. No. No no no no no. No no. No. No. I already spend most my working hours and leisure time with my face plastered to a screen. I'm not about to live out my social life there as well. Seriously guys (and girls), I've got to draw the line at that. It's sad. Can't you see it's sad?? STOP FACEBOOKING!!!!
p.s. I refuse to go and read Kenny freaking Sia to alleviate my boredom.
No. Not me. My dad. He sent me this little comment in an e-mail recently. I find it absolutely hilarious.
"I sent you an address on e-harmony, it is a web site why they give good marriage advise based on Christian principles and lately I found out that it also provide young people to make new friends and also the possibility of matching them if chemistry do occur, so may be you can log in to register your self and find new friends from all over the world."
Not too long ago my dad discovered the wonders of the internet. Previously he only used it for e-mails and probably checked it two or three times a day. Then he got broadband and it just opened up a whole new world of cyber possibilities to him. First of all, he decided to install CCTV cameras in every room of his office so that he could spy on his employees while he is travelling. He even upgraded our broadband quota here from 8GB to 20GB because he couldn't spy properly. No joke. Not too long after, he wanted to pawn off the monthly broadband charges onto me since I just started working. Uh, no, you spy, you pay. Then he decided that he wanted us all in Perth to use webcams and Skype to have a fuller communications experience with them in Kuching. Of course in between that he had discovered MSN Messenger as well so he could keep track of how often me and my brothers were online and also to find out exactly how we have spent our time during the day. Needless to say he was quickly blocked from my list. And now he's discovered online dating sites. Ah, the beauty of modern technology. It's a good thing the younger generation is always a few steps ahead.
Pa... Pa... I don't need an online dating site to meet the ladies. I've already exhausted that avenue and now no reputable online dating site will accept my registration. I've also tried speed dating, group dating, replying to personal ads in the paper and Chinese/Russian/Indian mail order brides. Why, the only thing I haven't tried is actually meeting someone in a normal social setting and getting to know that person over a prolonged period of time and letting the chemistry occur naturally. I know, sounds so outlandish and new-ageish but you got to roll with the times my main father man.
Normally***** I try to refrain from posting more than once per day to try to hide the fact that I just have too little useful and productive things to do besides writing random accounts of my rather fun filled life for my ever increasing army of readers. That's all well and good, except I have reached the point where everyone knows just too well how much free time I have on my hands so with no more illusion to maintain I shall open up the floodgates of my wise and stimulating words upon you all. Just take a moment to savour that deep sense of joy and satisfaction birthed forth by my new found blogenerosity (it works spelling wise but it sucks if you try to imagine it phoenetically).
Okay, so why didn't I just continue writing on a new paragraph in my confession of gambling addiction followed by a quick recovery with minimal damage to my bank balance post? Well because it was such a beautiful piece of writing that it deserved to stand alone and be commented on for its merits, not lost in the middle of an aimless meandering post to be destined for obscurity forever (this post is a prime example of such a aimless meandering post). Plus I realised that in May I averaged a post a day, in June it dwindled to a post every two days and now in July I have really hit rock bottom - 2 posts for the month. I'm surprised you are even reading this. Don't you have any standards? Boycott any blog that doesn't give you a fresh new post at least once a week! I know, one of my posts is far superior to a thousand of other posts by those other mere mortal bloggers. I just have to throw in a shameless plug for Kenny Sia's blog here. Kenny, you are truly the inspiration for generations of would be bloggers. There's hardly a day that goes by without me trawling through friends' blogs to find someone has linked your page to theirs. If it were anyone else's blog that was being linked, I would rightly and justly have thought that it was a shameless attempt to be associated to someone even remotely famous which is lame and stupid. But you have vindicated them with your very insightful and high quality posts that you publish ever so frequently. And you are so humble as well. As Malaysia's premier blog personality, you just pay absolutely no heed to your lofty status and don't even milk all that fawning over your distinctly average writing to boost your sponsorship deals/ego/whatever motivates you to keep on being so average. And Kenny, if you are reading this, googling yourself and reading what other people say about you on their own private blogs is very, very childish and shows just how insecure you are. And if you are thinking of profiling this blog on your blog to fulfill what you may think is every (wannabe bandwagon hopping hanger on pimply faced) blogger (who links your page on their page)'s (wet) dream, not all of us have sold out mate. Oh snap.
Shameless hollow praising and then insulting Malaysia's top blogger aside, it's quite frightening to think that just a few years ago blogging was a relatively new phenomenon. And now it has taken the world by storm. Everyone has at least three social networking websites that they have their personal profile on. Everyone has a rant and a rave about their life that they absolutely cannot just limit to letting their close friends and family suffer through - they've got to annoy the rest of the world through the internet community as well. And the scary thing is that there are more and more sites popping up to host these absolutely inconsequential textual diarrheas all around the world absolutely free of charge. For goodness sakes you virtually vicarously living people please stop all this nonsense on the internet. No one gives a shit about what you ate for breakfast and how much you hate it that there are soldiers that are totally unrelated to you in any way fighting in a war halfway around the world and the hidden agendas and machinations of the local/state/federal politicians in your country. So stop wasting your time and more importantly the server hard drive space of your Voxes and Blogspots and go and bore the people who have no choice but to bear with your stupid stories and opinions: your friends and family. And no, I don't mean those people that you knew five years ago that you got back into contact with through friendster/myspace/facebook the other week who you have now rekindled your deep mutual connection with through reading their likes & dislikes, testimonials, favorites and personal spiel about themselves. And definitely NOT those people that you are connected to through your mutual friend that you knew five years ago that you got back into contact with through friendster/myspace/facebook the other week who you have now rekindled your deep mutual connection with through reading haha I bet you skipped over this part thinking that I have just cut and pasted exactly what I have written just the last sentence before this but you are so gravely wrong and have now missed out on this little fun part where I make fun of you when you don't know you are being made fun of and personal spiel about themselves.
I guess what I am trying to say is that we should all stop this inane blog posting and spend our time on more worthwhile pursuits like waking up at the same ungodly hour every day, getting ready for our vocation and then giving 100% of our energy towards making the people who employ us very rich and wealthy through conscientious efforts in work to not only get our jobs done but also to brainstorm for new breakthrough fresh ideas to help the business/government organisation thrive like never before. And then having spent ourselves padding the pockets of those so far up the hierarchy that they don't even know our names, we then find another 100% of reserve energy to thrill and enrich the people that we know and love - our real friends and family. Now that would be a much better way of spending our time, don't you agree?
****(disclaimer***: there is absoulutely no irony and sarcasm intended in this post and any detected is purely your superior intellect shining through and has no direct relationship to the purposes of the author. please take everything said in this post entirely on face value alone. *the author is in fact very angry and bitter about life and is about to sink into a dark chasm of depression and hate. **but do feel free to post seemingly concerned and caring comments designed to condescend from the top of your moral high horse.)
*no, i'm actually not!
**i'm kidding!
***this whole section was intended to be funny too!
****don't read this part if you don't read disclaimers normally.
*****I'll bet you are one of those people who don't read those star marked thingies when they are on things like advertisements until the very end which is too late because you have already been hooked with their cleverly disguised promotion which seems like such a great deal that is has formed a lasting positive impression in your mind about the product that the explanation of the star marked term later on can do nothing to deter you from following up that positive impression by buying that said product.
First of all, apologies to the many, many people who have checked and rechecked my blog anticipating the next scintillating entry by yours truly only to be utterly and thoroughly disappointed at my lack of new exciting and entertaining material. I've been rather preoccupied with this little thing called life recently. Fortunately for you, my captive audience, that little flight of fancy has ended and I am yet again trapped in front of this little glowing screen to recount how I have spent my days in the past week or so.
Recently, I found myself hooked onto a little thing I like to call... gambling ridiculous amounts of money away on cards. Boredom is a funny thing. It can cause you to feel extremely sluggish and lazy to do anything at all. It can also drive you to do increasingly stupid things in pursuit of non-boredom. It can even cause you to feel extremely sluggish and lazy to do anything at all except to do increasingly stupid things in pursuit of non-boredom. It was in the third situation I found myself one afternoon, having finished all of my work for the week. I did not want to engage my mind in anything remotely requiring me to think with the logical and analytical part of my brain, so my usual favorites of chess and scrabble were out. So I hopped onto the bandwagon of the increasingly popular texas hold'em poker phenomenon. I started out innocently enough, ruthlessly beating the pants of amateur poker players for large amounts of pretend money. Then, having convinced myself that I was a pro worthy of taking on the world's best, I decided to make a foray into the dark and seedy world of... online poker rooms playing for real money (gasp). Soon I found myself in high stakes games of 1c small blinds and 2c big blinds. The pace was fast. The competition was ruthless. The bets were... tiny. And I was losing copious amounts of cents per minute. So I decided to up the stakes in a bid to regain all the cents I had lost. And I started winning. Winning big. Soon I found myself with a profit of more than 150%. Surely I possessed poker playing abilities far greater than the world had ever seen. Surely I should write my resignation letter now and live the rest of my life cleaning out the bank accounts of the also rans of the online poker gaming community. Then, as quickly as I won all that money, I started losing it until I even lost all the money I put up in the first place. Surely now the disciplined and level headed Thad would throw in the towel and call it a day. Nope. I had checked all that logic and analytical mindedness at the door remember? Of course what else would any idiot do but to bet more money to try to recoup those losses? And me being THE idiot par excellence decided to do just that. Needless to say $500.00 later I regained all my logic and analytical skills and a good dose of remorse with it too (in case it is unclear, it is not a $500.00 gain - it is a $500.00 loss. Do feel free to comment on what a waste of money that was and what 101 better ways that money could have been spent). Although, in retrospect now had I punted with another $500.00 it could have been double or nothing. Hm... what's the site again?
Of course, to many people out there $500.00 is no laughing matter. It could be the difference between a good credit rating and a tarnished one. It could be the difference between having a roof over their head or a night on the street. It could even be the difference between life and death. It's a good thing that I can afford to lose it though, although I wouldn't advise anyone reading this to take such a flippant attitude towards $500.00 unless you are an engineer earning excessive amounts of money. In that case it really isn't such a big deal at all.
It's Tuesday today! Which means there is only two days of work before I fly back to Perth for my weeklong break. This working fortnight has been a real challenge for me, to be totally honest I didn't want to be here at all. I started counting the days till I leave from day one, which is really bad cos I just tend to drag my feet at work. I've become really good at my job actually, these days I can do my job quickly and with the minimum of fuss which I'm proud of myself for. And I know my superiors are happy with my performance too. I do feel that I'm just cruising a bit here, starting to stagnate, getting into my little comfort zone. I don't know why, but I just have this thing in me that makes me dissatisfied whenever I feel like I'm not being challenged. It's a good thing, since I was a child I've always been curious and I love asking questions and learning about how people and things tick, but I've got to learn to just chill out sometimes and not just keep pushing and pushing myself. It's a work in progress.
Having these big blocks of time during the day during which I do absolutely nothing work related has given my mind much freedom to think and reflect on a lot of things. I just hate it when my days are absolutely packed to the point where I don't have the space in time to think. One of my favorite pasttimes is sitting down at my desk or lying on my bed and just thinking about stuff. I get so much done this way. If I don't get my regular thinking time I start to lose perspective and get bogged down by everything that happens around me. It just feels like I'm reacting to situations instead of proactively making things happen. I hate the feeling of just being carried along by the prevailing currents, which is why every now and again I will stand up and question the status quo and try to go against the grain. I have to say, it's my best and worst characteristic. I guess the defining factor is whether I have the wisdom to gauge when the time is to challenge and when the time is to follow. Another work in progress.
Some of you readers who have known me for some time now will know that when I was a teenager (I'm no longer one fortunately/unfortunately) I had the worst cutting tongue. If you think it's bad now... you haven't known me long enough. I used to get immense pleasure from making someone look stupid/making fun of someone with words, I've always been good with words thanks to my parents' endless supply of books for me to read since I was a wee child. I was full of sarcastic & smart-arsed comments and I wasn't afraid to let them fly at every opportunity. I wasn't a pleasant person to talk to in those days. Then there was one night in youth meeting that I remember quite vividly, we were having some worship time and I heard God speak into my heart, "Thad, I want you to be an encourager". And I remember thinking, yeah right, that is so far from what I am right now. But true enough, by and by, somehow this smart mouthed tearer down of people became a person who cares about others and puts in a few words now and then to build them up. And that was all God.
Sadly, I missed out on the latest monthly award. But, as you can see, this person trumps me big time.
Dear Mr. International Terrorist Cell Master,
Following the non-appearance of your jihad soldiers at 0800 yesterday morning at our pre-arranged rendezvous location, my plans to strike and eliminate certain key members of our oppressors lie in ruin. Following decades of ruthless dictatorship and blatant lies to the innocent construction workers of our tiny nation, we were afforded this one-off opportunity to take out these infidels with one surgical assault on their secret hiding place. However, due to your inept organisation we have now lost this chance to end the suffering of our peoples forever. In addition, I will bill to your account these 4 foot wooden stakes we had purchased to impale and display their decapitated heads as a reminder for future generations against the mistreatment of our peoples and our forefathers. You have truly destroyed the dreams of generations of innocent construction workers.
Had your jihad soldiers arrived at the pre-arranged time and place, it would have been as simple as planting plastic explosives on the 2 foot thick lead enty access lock, storming and eliminating the guards in the midst of the confusion and then taking captive these infidels for further 'questioning' at our underground headquarters. Suffice to say they would have a very painful anatomy lesson... the parts of their body that they can and cannot survive with, and the pain associated with removing each of these slowly... with a blunt weapon. This would, in our eyes, be a fitting repayment for the slow and painful process they have put us through in the normally swift undertaking of road construction.
However, you failed miserably despite all of your assurances to the contrary. We had long held the opinion that rogue elite soldiers from secret para-military-para-government-para-intelligence organisations provided far superior service compared to you rabble, but you convinced us with your 50% off vouchers and free demonstrations of your destructive capabilities in democratic countries. So we went along with your organisation against our better judgement only to be proved right by your no show yesterday. Now even the most ineffective of secret para-military-para-government-para-intelligence organisations wish to have nothing to do with us upon discovering our association with your ramshackle group of so called 'professionals'. We are the laughing stock of the entire contracting federation, doomed to yet more generations of slavery and drudgery.
In line with the conditions of our agreement, we have no choice now but to engage the services of the ex-Afgan-ex-Iraqi-ex-Pakistani-ex-Iranian defected logistics agents. They are extremely costly to hire, however at the very least, they managed to demonstrate advanced planning and foresight in transporting and removing what is known to the Western world as WMD from the now US colony of Iraq to the secret offshore location of Hawaii. We will acquire these weapons of mass destruction and unleash them upon these invertebrates once we have demobilised to a safe distance from ground zero. We will also be passing on the costs to you for our week-long meeting with these ex-Afgan-ex-Iraqi-ex-Pakistani-ex-Iranian defected logistics agents in Hawaii. We trust that you will not divulge this information to anyone prior to the execution of this plan B. We do not wish to be forced to unleash the sick and twisted form of biological warfare known only by the top secret code name of 'Mardi Gras' upon your extremely fundamentalist home nations.
Regards, Frustrated Engineer
I'm starting to grow a bit of a moustache. For those who know me or at least seen me in a church service before, you'll know that I have (in certain peoples' opinion) a naughty habit of picking stubble off of my chin. It's a bit of a subconcious habit really, when I am listening to someone speak I will just tend to remove these unwanted hairs. I've made a concious habit to stop doing it though, although occasionally I will still pluck off the occasional protruding hair or two. Anyway, this time when I embarked on my two week tour of duty in the wilderness I forgot to bring my razor along. I realised the first thing when I got into my room, hang on my toiletries bag is a bit light... what is missing... and I couldn't figure out at first but when I woke up the next morning and begun my daily ritual of brushing teeth, shower, mouthwash... oh I forgot to bring my razor. It's been 10 days since I've shaved. It doesn't look too bad actually, I might keep it for a while. I'm definitely getting a haircut when I get back though, my hair is getting a wee bit too long for my liking. It's handy to have short hair for when I wake up (or sleep in rather) a tiny bit late, I can just hop out of bed and grab my bag and head off (after a quick gargle of mouthwash so as not to unleash some horrible form of biological warfare upon my colleagues) without worrying about hair sticking outwards at awkward angles. I get really bad morning hair when I wake up. Really bad.
This is somewhat random, but there was once Galvin was teaching me bass (one time in camp we all had a mini music workshop in the afternoon and seeing that everyone went for either guitar, piano or drums leaving poor Galvin without a student I decided to break the mould and keep him company), and the song that he was teaching me was Glory, Glory Lord. Quite a groovy song, I was quite mesmerised actually. So mesmerised that when he had finished his demonstration and passed on the bass to me, I was concentrating so hard and my jaw was hanging just a bit too low and I just lost my ability to retain my saliva for half a second and the tiniest bit of spit just managed to slip out of my mouth (well actually it was more than a tiny bit) and landed on the bass. I was quite embarassed and quickly recovered my motor functions and wiped the drool off the bass hoping that no one saw it but unfortunately I had not honed my ninja like reflexes to perfection just yet and someone saw me and pointed it out to Galvin and he was absolutely mortified. I'd like to say that I got a new bass guitar after that but he managed to get a wad of tissue to remove any residual dna I left behind and needless to say that I did not get very far with the bass.
I used to play this game called NationStates. The idea behind the game is that you're the main person in charge of a small nation-state somewhere, and you define the internal policies of your nation by making day to day decisions which shape the nation. Obviously there are detrimental effects and good effects related to every decision, I'd even take it as far as to say that good and bad are up to the nation's leader (i.e. me) to define. I ended up forming a nation of very very extreme measures taken to control my population. Crime is non-existent as all criminals are shot. The economy is in overdrive and everyone is extremely wealthy. The citizens have little to no freedom to speak of, basically whatever I say goes. I think it was a corporate dictatorship or father knows best state or something. Anyway, my point is that when you give people too much room to maneuvre, i.e. vote and decide things on their own, and especially pay too much heed to minority groups championing stupid interests, things in the country start to go to shit. I prefer a very pragmatic and no nonsense approach, the national interest overrules the individual(s) interests at all times. Anyone who doesn't agree gets shot. And surprisingly enough, my nation performs much better than so called free/democratic countries on things like happiness and peacefulness. Seriously, the way the governments of the world run things nowadays, it's just retarded. Too much heed being paid to weak and lazy people and such. I reckon if someone's over 25 and still behaving like an idiot, just shoot them. That solves so many problems.
I'm feeling sentimental. This always happens to me when I go trawl through other peoples' blogs. I'll stumble upon this random person from my past who has links to and obviously has kept in touch with A LOT of other people from my past. And then I'll trawl through THEIR blogs and I'll very quickly have a fast forward of how their lives have been going since I've last seen them. And then when I get satiated with their life stories I get sentimental.
Another surefire way to get sentimental is to listen to music from way back when I was still a pimply teenager (and dinosaurs roamed the earth). It amuses me how the older I get the more stories I have to tell about my life and how much more I enjoy telling them. A stark contrast to the teenage days of being awkward and brief about these things. A prime example: "So what did you do today?" (typically from parents), reply: "Nothing". In school as well, especially coming from an all boys school, we could be as noisy as anything (until the headmaster came strolling by the classroom) but I really can't remember what we used to talk about. Mostly about girls and computer games I think. Good times. We still used MiRC back then. a/s/l anyone? I remember when I was in Form 3, man this is so lame but heck, I liked this girl I met on iRC and I ended up sending her an e-mail telling her that I liked her and would she be my online gf (i know, i'm cringing too). She ended up printing it out and posting it on her class notice board. The bitch. No seriously I think I have a right to call her a bitch cos that is seriously nasty.
The things I used to do in high school... There was one fine day after exams were over and we were waiting for the school holidays to start, typically those times we'd be playing little games amongst ourselves, reading (or rather checking out) chicks mags and just generally having a good time. Well that day there was a double period when the whole form was meant to go to the AV room for some boring assed presentation of some sort, but a bunch of us were too cool for that so we decided to skip that and just hang around the class doing our own thing. Things were going well until the discipline mistress came sauntering by and saw us having a good time on our own in class. Oh we were in the shit now. She demanded to know what we were doing and why we weren't in the AV room like the rest of the form and obviously we all kept our traps shut. Then the bell rang for recess, talk about saved by the bell. She told us to go see her in her office after recess. So we all went to the canteen, had our food, and then come the hour of reckoning we all trudged along to her office buuut she wasn't there. We waited for about five minutes and she didn't turn up, so we all fled back to our class thinking that we were off the hook. Nothing happened for the rest of the day, and the last class was PJ (or PE as it is known in english) so we changed into our sports gear and went off to the field to play football. Unfortunately but ultimately quite fortunately for us the discipline mistress showed up mid-lesson demanding all the boys who cut the AV session see her there and then, but everyone was dispersed all around the field and could not be rounded up. So we got a stay of execution, but we were all to see her the first thing the next morning. Do you think anyone took her up on that? By the time the next day came, we all agreed that we'd just sit it out and see what happens, and true enough she forgot and we were off scot-free. Sweet, sweet escape.
The lesson from all this? DO NOT even attempt have an online relationship. That is SERIOUSLY lame. And don't ever take the initiative when it comes to answering to trouble that you got yourself into. Put the onus onto the person who wants to discipline you and more often than not that person will have better things to do than to make you answer to your crimes.
