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.
