What I think...

Is there a problem with democracy?

2009-11-04T02:54:00.000-08:00

Democracy is a great form of government. It gives 'power' to the people. Wahoo, how awesome is that! The funny thing is... a lot of people take that for granted. Many people can't be bothered voting in elections or can't even be bothered to read about politics in the news. This is odd because didn't our forefathers wage many wars and make many sacrifices to ensure that everyone had freedom, and to make sure that everyone; men, women, blacks, whites, gays, lesbians, jews, christians, muslims (the list goes on) were treated fairly and equally? Yes, well, I can recall some fighting about that in the past. And that is why we need democracy; to help ensure that those people in power represent the interests of the general population.

But is democracy really all that great? As Winston Churchill said, "democracy is the worst form of government- except for all those others that have been tried." So yes, democracy has its problems. For example, what would happen if there was a referendum on wheather we had to pay taxes? Of course, some people would vote in favour of paying taxes, but I wonder how many people in New Zealand would vote in favour of not paying taxes. Because isn't it 'uncool', or somewhat 'geeky' to want to pay your taxes - people would give you an odd look if you said you had a desperate urge to pay your taxes. (I heard there was a referendum in New Zealand which voted overwhelmingly in favour of not paying taxes which the government just ignored but I can not find any sources for it).

Anyhow, some people do not even bother to vote in referendums or elections. In my opinion, this is poor judgement. Sure, of course your vote probably won't make any difference. But it is your duty and responsibility as a citizen to vote. I would think of having to vote as the cost you pay for democracy and the freedom to do whatever you want (within moral limits). Because many people in the past sacricficed their lives just so that you could vote and have your say. Everyone has to at least show them respect by casting a vote. Otherwise politicians would not have to answer to anyone and they would become corrupt and you would eventually lose your freedom if no one ever voted as an ugly green monster called dictatorship (or DICK-tatorship) slowly appeared in your backyard.

But I don't really like dictatorship either. Sure, democracy has its problems but I'm willing to put up with it.

By the way, I realise this is a bit of a long post and that this is the first post I have written in just over two years. I am trying to test wheather I could work up a passion to be a magazine columnist.

Monkies

2007-09-10T03:19:00.000-07:00

Monkies... Is that spelt monkies or monkeys? Cos I thought it was spelt monkies but that doesn't look right. Monkeys looks like a better spelling. Cos isn't there a rule that any plural for a word ending with "y" is finished with "ies" instead?

Anyway...
Something that amused me; a philosophical question that kept me pondering for days and the more i think about it the more new ideas or possibilities i think of for it.

Think about this

If you had an infinite number of monkies on type writers and there was an infinite amount of time, would these monkies eventually be able to come up with the complete works of Shakespeare?

At first I thought no way. But then I thought that if there was an infinite amount of time and an infinite amount of monkies then at some stage these monkies must eventually come up with something like Shakespeare, even if it does take them 2 million years to stop eating bananas and learn how to spell and use a type writer.

But then it came to my attention that after 2 million years, these monkies will have evolved and gone through natural selection processes (if you believe in evolution) and adapted to their own ecological niche. And then u need to realise that WE USED TO BE MONKIES! And us being homo sapiens did in fact come up with the complete works of Shakespeare, or at least, one of us did, Shakespeare himself, came up with his own complete works. And he evolved from a monkey. So then an infinite number of monkies with an infinite amount of time MUST indeed be able to come up with the complete works of Shakespeare.

This is hard to test through the scientific method. First of all we need an infinite amount of monkies. And we need an infinite number of type writers. But this is impossible. We can not have an infinite amount of anything as infinity is only an imaginary number. Therefore we will need a lot of type writers and a lot of monkies and measure their rate of progress towards writing the complete works of Shakespeare. We can grab a few monkies from jungles and zoos. And then we can measure how close the monkies come to writing the complete works over shakespeare over a period of, say, one month. This can then be divided to work out a monkey's exact number of words per second. Or it can be multiplied to extrapolate out in exactly what year the monkies would come up with the complete works of Shakespeare based on the progress of this sample group of monkies.

But then the technicality arises that if the monkies are now homo sapiens when they figure out Shakespeare, does this mean that we can not say that an infinite number of monkies with an infinite amount of time and type writers would actually be able to come up with the complete works of Shakespeare???

Or maybe I just have an infinite amount of time to come up with an infinite amount of thoughts.

I'll finish here.
P.S. I think monkies is spelt monkeys now. It looks way better.

That exam

2007-06-19T05:37:00.001-07:00

It was the day before the exam. I was panicking; I had barely done any study the whole trimester and struggled to recall much of the lecture material. I smartly realised that my best chances relied upon hypnotising my examiners through subliminal suggestions carefully hidden within my exam script; much like Darren Brown on his T.V. magic mentalism shows. It would be easy; use terms like "A" to imply a high grade and use terms like "percentage increase" and "good", "excellent" and "outstanding" to subliminally suggest to whoever was marking my paper that I should get a high mark regardless of the large amounts of bullshit i wrote down. So I studied techniques of hypnosis for a good two hours.

I soon realised I would never get good enough to hypnotise anyone in the small number of hours I had left and since when should you believe anything you hear on T.V.?! So I bravely turned to my treacherous text books. Text books should come with a warning; "may induce drowsiness". I fell asleep within 30 minutes of opening my text book.

Next morning I woke up. Brain was hardly working. Scary thoughts went through my mind in strangely short sentences; "Oh Crud. Fell asleep. Exam soon. Must cram. Get ready. Forget Shower. Catch Train. Study. Cram more. Study. Cram more. Brain melting. Forget Brain. Just cram."

I finally got into my exam. My head was swarming with rehearsed sentences and formulae. I felt sick; sick from all the knowledge and information that I had just crammed into my head. I just wanted them to start the exam so that I could spew and vomit all this information out of my head and onto paper. And so I forgot all about my sneaky idea of using hypnosis to get a higher mark. I also forgot many of the pieces of information I had recently shoved into my head.

Disclaimer: This story is based on a true story :P

Do you believe in the paranormal!?

2007-06-12T02:55:00.000-07:00

Last night I watched a tc program called Darren Brown:Mind Control. It was very interesting. He performed magic mind reading tricks like claiming he could see objects with his fingers, predicting how much money was in somone's wallet without the person themselves knowing how much money they had, and also convinced someone that they wanted a red BMX bike when in fact this very person had written down on a piece of paper that they actually wanted a leather jacket. Darren Brown claims that no actors or stooges were used at the start of the program and yet he says he is a big skeptic of the paranormal. I'm not really sure how he does it. Anyway today I spent 2 hours reading about hypnosis instead of studying for exams.

But just now one of my sister's friends has come over with supposed letters that a "psychic" wrote, translating messages from his deceased dad. And apparently it says things in the letters that only my sister's friend could have known and that had only happened recently.

Also recently i read in the back pages of a newspaper that a credible scientist had reported sightings of the Loch Ness Monster!?

In my psyc paper this trimester we looked at a possible relationship concerning a person's belief in the paranormal and their proneness to schizophrenia. Apparently there might be a strong relationship between the degree that a person believes in the paranormal and their proneness to schizophrenia.

Now I am unsure of whether I should believe in the paranormal or not. There must surely be some logical explanation for every "paranormal phenomenon".

Wondering how to plan my 21st

2007-05-14T04:03:00.000-07:00

I have just started planning my 21st today 47 days in advance of my actual birthday on Saturday 30th June. Best that I actually plan one rather than just hope that I would get "surprised" by an apparently spontaneous birthday party that appeared out of thin air.

So I have been pacing frantically around the house like Sir Edmund Hillary climbing Mt Everest trying to decide how I want this party to be like. My main goal is to make it "the night I will always remember!" It will be hard to make it especially different to any other party that I've had unless I try include new things into it like have a pool table or table tennis table or invite new people or have fancy lights around the place. I also intend to have a better sound system. So I was hoping instead of using those crappy speakers in the lounge that threaten to blow if you turn them up full volume, I could use guitar amps hooked up to a stereo... although I would have to hope Phil would lend me his cable for connecting the amps to the stereo and that Chris and Stefan would be able to bring their amps AND that all the amps can be connected together to play the same thing...

Anyhow, another thing to hope for is good weather. Parties just seem a lot better when the weather's fine cos everyone's in a better mood. Not to mention there's more freedom to go outside and have barbeques and stuff. But seeing as I remember what the weather has been like on past birthdays, I'd say the weather wuold most likely be overcast and windy... stupid birthday being in the middle of Winter... But you could say any day in Wellington is most likely to be overcast and windy cudnt you!

Well that's the end of this post. I'll now go and cut and paste this on to every other blog that I have... -_-

Just don't order a sex on the beach cocktail...

2007-04-08T23:20:00.000-07:00

Want to hear the most terrible joke ever? (I made this up by the way)

A man walks into a bar and orders a Sex on the beach cocktail. The bar-tender gives him a drink and he tastes it.

"Ew, yuck!" the man says. "What's in this drink?"
The bartender replies "salty water, sand and cum"
"But i ordered a sex on the beach!" shouted the man.
"And that's exactly what you got... just in a glass" said the bartender.
"Well who's cum is this in my drink?"
"The last man who came... he ordered a screaming orgasm"

Terrible huh?

Pointless Speculation

2007-03-26T04:11:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick list of pointless speculation.

Today I bought a bottle of G-Force, mango and pineapple bite flavoured. But on the label of the bevrage it had a picture of a mango biting a pineapple. This didn't quite seem right to me as I instinctively assumed that "mango and pineapple bite flavoured" should mean that it would be the pineapple biting the mango. However, this is arguable. Feel free to argue about this to someone when your are bored.

Anyhow, another oddity that struck me when I purchased the drink with my wonderful New Zealand currency was that the drink was coloured green!!! Yes, that's right. Green! And we're talking pineapples and mangos here. Neither pineapples or mangos have anything to do with green... (unless you want to be pedantic and say the leaves on the pineapple could be green). So as I went to try and read what colouring was in the drink, I noticed it said on the label "want to know why this delicious Mango and Pineapple fruit drink is green? We wondered about that too." This just shows that they coloured it green because they needed to colour it something and orange colour was already taken up by the orange flavoured G-Force drink.

A little update on my recycling; I've managed to accumulate about 50 bottles over the past 3 months from drinks like lift plus, Frank, Primo choc milk, V, coke etc, and I've now put them in a plastic bag and are ready to be recycled on Wednesday which is "recycling day" around here in Normandale.

my stereotype of a girlfriend

2007-03-06T02:43:00.001-08:00

I've been doing some thinking and I have just realised what my stereotype of a girlfriend is.

In my mind, I have an image of a girlfriend as being an individual who:
-Nags me to do things all the time
-Always wants me to text her all the time
-Expects me to do everything for her
-Expects me to know the answer to everything
-Will stop liking me if she manages to beat me at video games or sporting activities
-Someone who I have to spend a gazillion dollars on everytime we go out somewhere
-is like a big bag of luggage that I have to convince to let me drag them around everywhere

Seems like I need to adjust my thoughts and beliefs a little bit, eh?
And maybe I won't actually care about all those things above if I have strong feelings for someone

Eye see in 3D

2007-02-11T20:40:00.000-08:00

I have discovered something new about myself recently; I have two different types of vision that I can see with. That being I can choose to see everything in 2D or 3D. All this is because I have a wandering eye. When my eye wanders, I am only looking through one eye and so I only see things in two dimensions. This means I can have trouble judging distances.

But if I realise that my eye is wandering then I can realign them to see everything in 3D. I only realised about one year ago that I could realign my eyes properly to look "normal".

So why havn't I noticed that I could choose to see things in 3D or 2D? Well in the past I found it a lot easier just to look through one eye and let my other eye wander and so it became a habit and I always just looked through one eye and got used to living in a visually looking 2D world. So I am used to things looking 2D.

However when I adjust my eyes to look at everything in 3 dimensions, everything looks funny and well... dimensional. Like I can clearly see the distances of objects away from me. But it takes me more effort to keep my eyes aligned and 3D vision seems slightly disorientating that I would most of the time rather just see in 2D even though I know it's a lot better to train my eyes to align properly.

This now explains why 3D glasses never seemed to work for me.

Those f*@#-ing new hours

2007-01-18T03:52:00.000-08:00

I've liked working at the kiosk in the train station for New World but since I've had to get my time-table changed, and everyone elses' time-tables have had to be changed, I now have the dilema of only being offerred hours I really don't like at all. That or just leave New World.

The hours I'm being offerred while being at uni are:
Friday 3:30pm to 8pm
Saturday 6am to 2pm
Sunday 9am to 5:30pm

This comes to 21 hours work per week during the 1st uni trimester. This sucks because I only wanted 10 hours for the uni trimester so that I could be certain that I could keep up with assignments. However I've been told that I either accept all these hours or I get no hours. Ah yes, I need to mention that having these hours would mean that I would have almost no night-life whatsoever because to get out of bed on 4:30am on a Saturday to catch a 5am train to Wellington and also out of bed at 8am on a Sunday means that I will need to be in bed by at least mid-night on both Friday and Saturday when Friday and Saturday are probably the best days of the week to go bar-hopping in town. This majorly sucks! (Most of us would have already heard this expression => it sucks big fat hairy donkey balls).

I've talked to my parents about those hours and they have come to the impression that I have had everything way too easy and that I have just been cruising around for the last 4 months or so. But I guess it's just those early starts that cause me the most pain cos I am certainly not a morning person. I am a night person. I prefer hours in the evening. Not morning. Evening. But I am cursed with morning.

But as always, the thought that I don't actually have it as bad comparatively to other places in the world like Asia and Africa comes to my mind. I think of the people who are forced to sit in factories in Asia sewing clothes for 10 cents an hour all day for every day of the week. Or the people in Africa who are forced to work on a farm all day everyday to make food just to survive.

And here I am getting quite easily over $200 a week complaining that I will have to work 6am Saturday morning to keep my job and that I am being forced to have more hours than I actually want!!! I should be glad I've got some kind of job.

Anyway, accounting for those hours and all the uni stuff like assignments during the week will mean that I will have no social life for a good 3 months.

Sorry my friends.
My only hope for any clubbing around will be Wednesday.
Yea I know it's the end of my world as I know it.

I'd be interested to know if anyone has any tips on how to make it easier to be happy only getting 4 hours sleep a night.

Denying bananas

2006-11-15T04:35:00.000-08:00

Something that really annoys me is that no matter how much you try and deny something, people always think the way you don't want them to!

So as an example, pretend that i said I didn't like bananas.

Like if I said "I really truthfully don't like bananas", people can tend to think the opposite that you do like bananas. And no matter how much you say that you don't like bananas, people always start to think more and more that you do like bananas. In fact, it seems the more you try to deny the fact that you don't like bananas, people think more and more that you DO like bananas.

The reason I have for this is that the human mind doesn't pick up negative stuff very well, and so even though the person will conciously hear "I really truthfully don't like bananas", their mind will still interpret it as "I really truthfully do like bananas!" And also the more you try and deny it the more desparate you look at denying it that people think it must indeed be true!

So when you find yourself in one of those situations where the more you try and deny something the more people think the opposite of what your meaning, try say something that's positive.
So in the case of saying you don't like bananas, try saying "I like apples instead".

Did ya get all that?

Some bits of news

2006-10-26T04:54:00.000-07:00

Have to just list a few bits of news on here before I forgot about it. No, I'm not procrastinating about going to bed *cough*. I just simply have to say these things before I forget to say them:

-GREENPEACE. Quite a while ago I was approached by one of those Greenpeace Representative Sales people (who's name was Katie, I remember that for some reason) and I ended up joining Greenpeace while making $10 monthly donations which for the last 1 to 2 months I have been paying for with my Student loan money... well actually I've been paying for everything with my student loan money hehehe, but that's the way it goes. So I've been getting news from Greenpeace now, and one piece of news stood out: Kimberley-Clark Ltd. has been destroying ancient rainforests in North America to make its paper-tissue products. Its products are Kleenex tissues and Huggies nappies. So I'm going to boycott those products now as I find it sad to think that I might be blowing my nose on a piece of ancient rainforest... as we are quickly running out of those rainforests. Although those monthly $10 donations from my bank account are going to amount up to $120 a year (*ouch*) it's nice to think that it might be doing something worthwhile to the environment for a change. So I'm giving away money I don't have. That doesn't actually sound like a smart thing to do. That's where the next small piece of news comes...

-I appear to have managed to get a job as a barista at the new Railway New World Metro store for 30 hours a week starting 20th November, so I've been studying up all the different types of coffee and learning about coffee machines:espressos,cappuccinos, lattés, mochaccinos etc. Hehe but so much for studying for exams, although I've finished one exam and got one more to go on 10th November. (And I have a suspicion I'm also ment to sell Lotto tickets too... freaky)

RSI is a pain in the arse/hand

2006-10-17T04:36:00.000-07:00

Since I've been playing guitar a bit too much lately, I appear to have got RSI in my left hand. I played it literally all of Sunday, and then on Monday 3pm till I went to bed at about 1am, but only a couple of hours today cos of, well, sleeping in and going to dance and things. Although I'm fairly sure I've played guitar this much before at some time, I think it's just because I started trying to practice sweeping on Monday that the RSI started coming on. It's this damn song I've been trying to play. It's a rock cover for Canon by Pachelbel which was arranged by this guy called Jerry Chang (or Jerry C as he's better well known as). And it rocked! I was stunned, amazed, envious and my jaw dropped open when I saw him play it. And then many other guitarists have copied it and put their own video of themselves playing it onto the web and now I'm wondering why I've been having so much trouble learning to play it. Some of the bits in the song are easy but other bits are really hard, most especially the sweeping parts. But I reckon I could have learnt it in about 3 or 4 straight days, it's just this fricken RSI and "real life" that are the problems!!

If only I studied as much as I played guitar, I'd probably be set up for getting As in all my exams. I've noticed that I use guitar as a handy tool for procrastinating... often for hours on end. And then I use it for stress relief. And then I use it for when I'm bored. So basically all the time I'm playing it.

But this RSI is bugging me. I may have to take a break from guitar for a couple of days. URGGH!!! It's going to be HARD! Noooooooooooo!

But it's not really the pain of the RSI that's the problem, it's more the fact that I'm worried that if i'm not careful the pain could become permanent or become worse. Bad thing.

If you had asked me three years ago, I would have said the only way that I would ever get RSI would be from too much computer.

Turns out I would have been wrong.

One word: blah

2006-09-23T00:42:00.000-07:00

One word: blah.

Isn't it just funny how shops never advertise to say how they've just put up their prices. Like they advertise all the time to say they've decreased their prices or are having a huge mega sale... but they never advertise to say they've just increased their prices by 10% or anything. And ever since all this crisis in the middle east, prices have increased a lot.

Quite a while ago I went into the Uni Stop shop to buy a pie, expecting the pie to cost $1.50. I even opened up my wallet to grab out a dollar coin and a 50 cent coin in advance, but to my striken surprise I was told the pies now cost $1.60 so I had to grab another 10 cents out or my wallet. AN EXTRA 10 CENTS. I was sad to let that extra 10 cents go but the benefits of having a pie instead of a 10 cent coin were too tempting.

And the other night I ordered some Domino's pizza. I expected the cost to be $20 for two pizzas delivered. So I talked to the phone operator and told him "Hi, I'd like, er, um, one Godfather um on thin and crispy, and er, one Mr Wedge on pan base"
The phone operator said "ok, that'll be $23.90 and will be at your place in 30 mins."
"$23.90!!?!?" I shouted
"Yea. Is that alright?" said the phone operator
"Yea, ok then", I said.
The price was slightly more expensive but seeing as I just can't ever resist pizza, I gave in. I even knew that Domino's pizzas probably cost less than $3 to make seeing as I used to work there. I was even glad they had resisted the temptation to add an extra 10 cents onto their price to make it a whole number interger of $24.00 *sarcasm*. But $3.90 is still quite a bit when your just a poor little student struggling to finance your normal life... not that I get pizza very often... Okay, maybe three times a month.

I blame all these price increases on the rise in stupid oil prices. It's always stupid oil prices isn't it. The Middle-East has a problem and then the whole world suffers from all the shops suddenly increasing their prices.

The Decision That Killed

2006-09-09T02:40:00.000-07:00

One decision that you make can change the rest of your life. One decision that you make within a split second could change everything. You might not have even realised that you had to make a decision. But one decision that you make can change a lot of things.

Like that movie called Sliding Doors with Gyneth Paltrow in it. The movie was set in two dimensions, or two possible outcomes that happened when she tried to catch the train. In the 1st dimension she was on time to catch the train where she got to work, had a miserable day then came home and then came home to be with her partner. However in the 2nd dimension she missed the train, was late to work and got fired, came home in time to see that her partner was actually cheating on her and her life all fell apart from then. But she rebuilt it. She grew her own business and found someone new who she really liked. As opposed to when she caught the train she never realised that her life was a false miserable one. As a twist in the end, the one in the 2nd dimension who missed her train ended up getting hit by a bus and dying in hospital. The moral of that story was: never miss your train. Oh yes, and never get hit by buses!

Though the reason why she missed the train could have simply been because she decided to make herself a cup of coffee (or anything else for that matter) in the morning when she didn't have enough time without missing her train and that killed her. But she made her decision, unknowingly that she had just signed her death warrant.

Each decision you make comes with a consequence. Even the failure to make a decision and do nothing, as technically, that could be a decision in itself. If you just sit there and do nothing, that is a decision, one that you may have taken simply because you couldn't decide what you wanted to do. Someone has quoted once that someone who makes a good CEO is someone who always makes a decision whether it be the right one or the wrong one they still make a decision. And everyday you have to decide something whether it be left, right, up down, front, behind, black, white, fast food, sea food, Chinese food. You can't escape it.

And it might be that you don't get to decide something for yourself. As people in high positions of power can influence you, or manipulate you or just totally f**k you over. Like the leader of some nuclear country might stupidly decide to go and nuke your home country as a demonstration of their superior power to the larger countries. Although stupid and foolish that might be, there are about 6.4 billion people on this planet and that's the potential to be a lot of stupid fools out there.

Or something slightly more likely is that you could be killed in a car crash because some drunk driver chose to drink and drive. Probably without thinking about it either, they may have just decided they wanted to go home, hopped in their car, drove off, crashed, and killed you as you were innocently going somewhere in a car. But that drunk driver probably didn't even think he would crash. In fact, he probably didn't even think cos he was too trashed. And that comes back to his first beer that he slogged down his throat that ended up leading to that fatal accident involving you.

In the Western democratic countries there are more decisions that people are able to make for themselves, as opposed to one of those Middle-Eastern dictatorship countries where all the power lies with one person. Liberty is good and evil is bad, and George Bush likes playing off the "good and evil" cliché, but you are most likely wise enough to make decisions for yourself. And even if you stuff up with a nasty mistake, at least you learnt something... unless you were lucky enough to get it right first go... Damn, you'd make me jealous.

And, ironically, as I've been barbbling away here, I have been trying to decide, or even procrastinating on deciding whether I am going to go up to a friend's house to watch dvds.

Bye

Peanut butter

2006-08-27T04:34:00.000-07:00

What's peanut butter without nuts? What's toothpaste without the paste? What is anything without a purpose to it? It's just... ThErE!

Too much time on my hands allows me too much time for getting depressed. It's easy to do. So many things to be depressed about: ageing, faults with my personality, change, having nothing to do, not having a reason for anything. I'm just here, passing the time until I kindly spit the dummy, pass the rope, finish the job. And so stupidly, anything worth having doesn't come easy... fuk that. Stupid real life HA! So if all your doing is working and your not enjoying living, then really, what is the point?

I'm pretty sure it's not uncommon to have small depressing thoughts.

Sometimes I get depressed about how old I am, and how my time is racing away and I'm not doing anything. Next thing ya know I'll be 30 then 40 then 50 then 60 and feeling even older. Then I'll be 80 and still wishing I was just even 20 years younger.

Oh well. Back to wishing I wanted to eat more fruits and vegetables and get more exercise everyday so that I could live longer and be more energetic... Stupid fatty sugary stuff. Why's it have to be so nice to have! If only fruits and vegetables were nice and easy to eat!

And exercise? Well that's easy to get if your doing a sport. But the only real exercise I've been getting is walking up to uni. Although I've been doing dance, it doesn't have much exercise in it... I've been thinking of maybe taking up something like karate, but the thought of how much exercise that would be is slightly offputting. One of the reasons I stopped judo years ago was cos it was too tiring... I just don't want to be a chubby old bald guy with glasses and a pot-belly. I just remembered Murphy's Law and how the mind doesn't recognise negative particples very well... if I think about it too much, it may just happen (argggh)

I've noticed they've changed the layout of the Windows Live Spaces. Personally, I liked the old style better. But why did they have to change it? It was absolutely fine the way it was before! No reason I can see for why they had to go and change the style apart from it might have been a nice little project to do for a while.

I would have also said that there was no reason for changing the New Zealand coins, but I hear it cost more to make a 50 cent coin that what the coin was worth! Haha! But the change has caused a lot of inconvience for many. (Ha, is there a slight pun there? lol)

So... the Middle East

2006-07-30T01:49:00.000-07:00

The Middle East has some major issues. We all know that. But no one seems to discuss it in our everyday lives except on the news. What the hell, i guess it is only on the other side of the world affecting oil prices and thus affecting the prices of everything else and could, at worst, lead to a horrible World War Three nuclear halocaust. But I doubt that. Tho that's not to say it could happen eventaully at this rate. But there has yet to be a SARS or birdflu epidemic as well. But I'd say it's only a matter of time until a new epidemic breaks out. These microorganisms have became smart through millions of years of evolution. To me, that's what makes sense. But I don't want to debate about evolution and religion. I know it's a sensitive topic. Tho I found myself accidentally getting into a debate about it with one of my old school classmates, Peter. At the end of our little debate, the conversation had gotten philosophical. And Peter said to me, "Sam, you should do philosophy!" After he said that I thought "he's right. Why aren't I doing philosophy?" So a couple of days later I went into the library to read a philosophical book about scientific essentialism and fell asleep within 20 minutes. (Here's the Wikipedia entry explaining what it is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_essentialism)

The other day, I had the pleasure of meeting someone from Iran. He was 35 years old and a very interesting fellow with lots of experience and Vincent and I talked to him for a while. Somehow I unknowingly mentioned the one word "dictatorship" and that set him off on a big rant, yet a very interesting rant at that, about what it was like to live in Iran and its differences to the Western world which he talked about for around 30 minutes. He told us of the story about how a few months ago, his 17 year old brother was walking along the street holding hands with his girl friend. He was stopped by the Islamic police and put in a cell where he was given 95 lashings by a whip. He then had to go to hospital afterwards, and I think that would have left a few scars on him too. He also talked about how in Iran you don't have freedom of speech. He said that "if it even looks like you are thinking about acting out against the *government*" then... , and he raised his finger on his right hand and drew it across his throat. He also remarked that Iran should be rich with all the oil it has. But the dictator just takes all the money, spends half of it on himself and his family and spends the other half on military and importing weapons from places like Russia.

After a while he had had enough had went to Germany for a while. And then came here to go to uni. He sold off everything in his home city of Tehran, including his jewellry business to get out of Iran and start a new life with freedom.

Freedom is something that many wars have been fought over and many have sacrificed their lives for, yet I don't think many of us in Western countries know what it's like to not be free.

Good old democracy

A year older

2006-06-29T05:55:00.000-07:00

Well it's 29th June 11:55pm and in 5 more minutes I will turn 20 which probably means as I write this post, I will currently be in the exact process of turning 20 years old;) But truthfully I won't really be 20 till another 35 minsutes, or until 12:30am cos that's "when I came around" but by then I probably would have finished writing this post by then. That is the funny process of becoming alive.

Have you ever tried remembering back to the furthest back in time moment where you remember being alive. For me that is a feeling of suddenly realising that I had a perception of consiousness (hey, it just turned mid-night so I'm kinda 20 now at the moment) which is of course no doubt inside my mother's tummy. But OF COURSE you have know idea what it means to be alive as you gradually gain a conscience inside ur mother's tummy (or uterus). So if you tried to remember what it was like before you were born, or in other words what it was like to not exist, then perhaps that is also what it's like after ur life has ended. But that's purely a speculative thought. But it makes sense in my mind. However I know for a FACT that in the past, as I have "existed", that I have been wrong so many times when I thought I was right that I couldn't count the number of times I've been wrong on both hands;) lol, and that's a conservative estimate. So why listen to anything I say? well probably of what I say makes sense and seems logical, and besides nearly everyone else is probably wrong on average just as many times as I am!

So I have ranted on about being right or wrong for about 10 minutes now when I originally ment this to be a philosophical-thought-inspring post and I am sure I've talked about everyone agreeing and disagreeing with eachother at some stage and how because of that we'll never achieve world peace, but that was in something like the third or 4th post on this blog.

But honestly, WHO CARES, as long as we can still carry on with our normal everyday lives involving lots of electrical appliances like MP3 players, computers and TV...

Right, I remembered that there was more important stuff in my life that I wanted to write here other than rant about random stuff, so Il cut the ranting and talk about stuff that 's happened to me lately.

SOPHIE: THAT dog! Sophie is a rat-bag. I've coined some nick-names for her, like by my consistent use of the term "rat-bag", Sophie's full name has apparently became Sophie Ratbag Field. Or when she's all real psycho around the place I like to call her Psycho Sophie (it's ment to sound like there's alliteration there), or more recently, THE Sophienator, only cos sometimes she acts like a dog with ADD.

On Wednesday Sophie sliced the padding on her paw and we had to take her to the vet to get a bandage and a bucket to try stop her licking her bandage, although we later discovered that she could still lick her paw anyway even with the bucket. But she got a lot of blood around the place like all over the carpet and on the furniture and on my hoodie and one of my pairs of jeans seeing as I had to hold her down and comfort her for 30mins to stop her from walking all over the place while we decided whether to go to the vet. In fact the blood stains are still there on the carpet, and I haven't checked my clothes to check that I got the blood stains out :S Yet we still don't know how she cut her paw...

Random thing: Kim works at the Canterbury shop in queensgate and someone there pointed out to her that on the Canterbury logo you there are the three C's but also the C's can be a picture of 3 kiwis. What's ironic is that the All-blacks don't wear gear made by Canterbury yet the Wallabies and the Irish and maybe the South Africans and many other teams wear the Canterbury gear with the logo which has the 3 kiwis but most ppl probably hardly ever notice the three Kiwis!!! LOL. Very clever!

And Wow, it's currently 12:30am right NOW which is pretty much the time I came "out", so right now I have just turned 20 exactly. WHOA! AMAZING! ANOTHER YEAR OLDER, ANOTHER YEAR WISER!!!... or just a few more seconds in this case...!

Computers and random wise brainy people

2006-06-13T06:17:00.000-07:00

This computer I'm currently on stuffed up withing the past two days; lately the screen has been having problems where it would flicker with distorted colours where the only way to fix it was to turn the screen on and off. Evenutally it became that we couldn't just fix the screen by turning it of, no no, now we have to actually get up and disconnect the powerplug for the screen, and it's still like that now. Not only that, but whenever we try to turn the computer off, the computer automatically turns itself back on again, so now we have to turn the computer off using a special switch located at the back of the computer. But with the screen, recently it appeared that the computer screen had finally cocked it: there was no picture on the screen. We checked all the power connections, turned the computer on and off only about a dozen times, and generally messed around with the computer for about 3 hours worth until I found that it was actually the computer that was having the problem and my dad found that the computer would finally work again by pressing the reset switch on the power adapter which was all tangled up in wires stuffed randomly behind the computer. Yes... I'd bet money that pretty much all of us have a little tangled mess of wires behind our computers.

I found that while the computer wasn't working, I did more normal things like do more reading, do more practical things and get to bed at a reasonable hour of 12am rather than 3:30am. Buuut, look at me now: now that the computer's working again, here I am writing this blog at 12:15am in the morning cos I'm bored and don't want to go to bed. In saying this, it has made me utterly CONVINCED that going on the computer is like taking drugs: they're both addictive. Observing habits of some of my other friends have also led me to this conclusion (wow, how sciency sounding, I said "conclusion"). And why do we all go on MSN when we can just use the phone? I'd say it's just so that we can talk to people while we furfill the appetite of our drug-crazed addictions of being on the computer!! Going on the computer must stimulate some sort of chemical inside us that we become addicted to. But I can't be bothered doing research. Often the feeling of mystery feels better than actually knowing the answer.

But also, sometimes we think we know the answer to something, only to find out that what we thought was the correct answer was actually the totally wrong answer . There's a story that shows this that relates back to ancient China: in some random Chinese dynasty, Chinese wisemen were debating to eachother about if you had a fish-tank filled up to the top with water, and then put large stones into the fish-tank, why the fish-tank wouldn't overflow. The wisemen debated for years and years over this until the Chinese emperor had the brilliant idea of actually trying putting stones into a fish-tank filled to the top with water. To everyone's surprise, the fish-tank DID overflow with water, and all the pointless debate about why the fishtank wouldn't overflow went down the drain. (excuse that very poor attempt at a pun if you can see the "attempted pun").

At the moment, but not literally right now, I'm reading a book called "A Short History Of Nearly Everything" written by Bill Bryson. I was laughing rather hard within the first two pages of the introduction. (The introduction talked about how we are very special since we are made up of a big sum of atoms arranged in an order that will never exist again after we die... And yes, i thought this would be a good moment to do a book review, haha, NOT). Currently I'm up to a chapter named "Elemental Matters" that largely talks about Einstein. And may I just say that, Man!, that Einstein guy was brainy. He was able to come up with the ideas of space and time and spacetime and gravity and write a big paper on it called "The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity" which was originally published in Annalen der Physik in 1916. Yet funnily he remained stuck working in a patent office. He tried to apply for a job as a lecturer at a university and was rejected. Then he applied for a job as a high-school teacher and was also rejected. And this is the guy who only had possibly the best thinking mind in history!!! But perhaps that was his problem: Einstein thought too much. Perhaps he couldn't shut up the thoughts in his brain. This actually sounds a bit like me but the day that I can sucessfully relate my mind to Einstein will be the day pigs fly; and cows; and sheep. However Einstein did have funny-looking electrified hair that made a normal person's bad hair day look like a joke.

Moo-vies

2006-06-04T21:20:00.000-07:00

Right, I just watched a real sad war movie. I very shamefully admit i had some tears in my eyes at the end of it, although I proudly say I still wasn't crying. It was one of those R16 movies (Ohemgee, an R16 movie? really?) and it was a Korean movie in Korean with English subtitles(sooo i see that the Koreans can actually make really good movies. It was called Brotherhood of War btw). My goal is to watch every single R16 movie that says "depicts realistic and graphic war scenes", cos ever since I first watched Saving Private Ryan, I have been ABSOLUTELY ADDICTED TO GRAPHIC REALISTIC WAR SCENE MOVIES!... all the blood and guts and shrapnel and mud and death and detached arms and legs flying everywhere: *druels* - so horrible to watch yet strangely faccinating. The main opening scene of Saving Private Ryan of the landings at Normandy at Omaha beach have left me forever faccinated over bloody battles and war movies. It's just a shame I can rarely stand horror movies.

Yet the one movie that has scared the shit out of me wasn't even a horror movie. Ever since I saw this particular movie I have had nightmares of it for probably at least 6 years after I saw it. I still shiver to think of watching it again nowadays. Basically this movie played on one of my biggest fears: being something I'm not. Funnily it was just a sci-fi movie as well. The thing about Star Trek First Contact (yes, I am guilty of having once been a Trekkie, but I have changed my ways) that scared me the most was the idea that the Borg could just jam a needle in your neck and then within a few seconds your skin would turn all pale and you'd become one of them, just a plain simple Borg drone... that certainly gave me a nervous twitch. And have had the occasional nightmare ever since.

And then the funniest movie I ever saw? well there are a lot of funniest movies I ever saw;) like the Hot Chick, Austin Powers, the Mr Bean movie, the Longest Yard was quite funny, Jackass was hilarious, I seem to remember Dodgeball was quite funny and although I haven't seen Anchorman I've heard that's quite funny as well.

But I don't have an absolutely favourite movie. It's too hard to give that title to just one movie. Many of them are really good. Something Homer Simpson would say: "sooo much fine quality entertainment packed up into just one little box."

Thoughts

2006-05-20T06:57:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I tell other ppl I think I'm retarded... well I have those moments where I think I truely am retarded, but when I think about it properly i know I can't be retarded. It just seems like I am (to myself).

Sometimes when I talk I slur my words together and mess up my pronounciation so that I actually have to stop speaking mid-sentence and think about what I'm trying to say and how to say it right. This happens even when I'm not bliming goddamn drunk. And just to top this off nicely, my lazy eye and goofy-sounding voice add a "nice" effect.

Ok. So there's that. But here's another thing. It can take me longer than everyone else to get a joke sometimes. Like, someone would tell me something totally outrageous and I'd just casually shrug it off like I usually do anyway even without realising it was a joke! Then the other person would say "Sam, it's only a joke." Heh, it makes me wonder if my mum dropped me when I was little:O

When I was little, this little "disability" would help me since I would react in a very good way without knowing that I was giving a good reaction and also without realising it was actually a joke. This made some ppl (i.e. my parents) think I had a good sense of humour and they even told me so. But parents will tell you anything to boost your self-esteem even when it's not true.

This leads me to another thing: giving compliments. I've always been uneasy about receiving them and giving them. When/if I receive one, I'm always unsure about how to acknowledge the complement. Fooor example:

Random person:"You're really good at sport!"
You:"Yea, I know I'm really good at sport!".

The one and only problem with saying this is that IT SOUNDS REALLY COCKY! So therefore I never directly agree with someone when/if they give me a complement. Or another thing you could say when someone gives you a complement is disagree with them about it:

Random person:"You're really good at sport!"
You:"Oh, well not really, I really suck at sport!"

One problem with saying this is that it can come across that you are disrespecting the other person's opinion. So it's almost like a lose/lose situation. So the only solution I have to this when someone gives you a complement is to just simply say "Thanks". And smile.

Nowadays, I never give a complement unless I know that I can be completely sincere about it. And I can't usually be sincere about it, so I hardly ever give complements. Which sucks, cos I know that technically complements are ment to make ppl feel good.

In the past I know I've been guilty of over-analysing many things. And it appears I'm still like that now. I figured it came from having a science-like mind. But hell, one of my uni lecturers, Dr Northcote, (who of course has a pHd) told me I was managing to over-analyse a Proton NMR spectrum. WTF! I didn't know I could actually be THAT over-analytical!!!:O I think it's funny, yet bizarre at the same time.

That reminds me, another classic time where I've been told that I think too much/over-analyse was by an instructor at Hangdog. (Notice the name of my blog title: this is me and what I "think". How fitting) He was trying to explain to me how to use a safety harness and how to stop someone from falling when they climb the wall. It took him 3 goes of explaining it until he just said "look. Stop thinking and just follow what I tell you." So I tried to limit the amount of thoughts I let enter my brain...And then I understood it. That's really odd/funny. Maybe all our problems are just perceptions in our minds.

So i reckon it's good to think but just not too much. Too much thinking is bad. Unless thinking lots is who you are, then shouldn't you just try and be yourself and nothing else even if that means you think too much. There comes the point where you just have to accept character traits that you dislike about yourself and deal with them, rather than resist them and end up looking insincere... right? It makes you think.

Sleep

2006-05-02T02:15:00.000-07:00

Hmm, just now I got one of those pop-ups which shows $10,000 flashing in large yellow writing with a red back ground. Only two problems with this pop-up:

1) The rest of the pop-up was written in arabic so I could not understand a single word of what it said!
2) I notice it said $10000 (ten thousand DOLLARS). In general, DOLLARS implies American DOLLARS! And the accepted legal currency in Saudi Arabia is the Saudi Arabian Riyal (SR). So why's a pop-up written in Arabic using dollars?

Anyway, that wasn't what I was meaning this particular "BLOG POST" to be about (lol). Nope, the reason I was writing this post was to complain about what a horrible day I just had:O Nope, JUST KIDDING, I had a pretty good day today;)

Anyway, I'm going off what I was intending to "rant" about again *cough*

Ahem *clears throat*

Right. My day started off with getting up today at 9:40am. It was a Tuesday today and that was good cos Tuesday is the only working day of the week where I don't have to get up at 7am! And I only had to set one alarm clock this morning, cos I have recently been using two alarm clocks to make sure that I don't sleep through their horrible disturbing ringing noises (Alarm clocks are just things you love to hate!!!!!;). However, when I got up today, my lower back arm muscle was all stiff and painful. It hurt as much as getting a dentist filling done without anesthetic:O I don't know why my lower back arm muscle was sore, since it was all fine before I went to sleep. I must have been sleeping in some awkward position. This isn't the first time I've hurt a muscle in my sleep (geez, it's not like I do hard-out fitness routines in my sleep). I've twice had a stiff painful neck from sleeping in some awkward position that I don't know what it was cos I was asleep!

Some people do funny things when they're asleep. I've known myself to sleep while holding one of my arms vertically straight up into the air, where I would suddenly wake up and wonder what I was doing with my arm up in the air like that:O Don't worry, I haven't started sleep walking yet;) But my mum has apparently sleep walked once or twice:S I hope that's not a gene that you can inherit!:O

And when hypnotists hypnotise you, they get you into that very suggestive state which is just before you fall asleep. Maybe it's even a special type of sleep if you will. But I don't know. I'm not a hypnotist... Although I would like to be hehe...

The Rolling Stones and moo-sic

2006-04-19T04:43:00.000-07:00

Hmm, I'm bored. That's surprising cos I don't get bored much. So I figured I'd write another post.

I went to THE Rolling Stones Concert yesterday(18/04/06) and it was great. The stadium was pretty much sold out with about 35,000 people there all cheering for the Rolling Stones. And that beats the number of people who were at Edgefest since at Edgefest there was probably about 8,000 people whereas for just the Rolling Stones there was 35,000. But this is hardly anything compare to what the Rolling Stones are used to! They once did a free live concert in Rio De Janero in Brazil with 1 million people in attendance to watch them live!!!:O That's a quarter of New Zealand!!!!

And with all this trashy punk rock music that I normally listen to, it makes me think that I really do listen to only a small range of the type of music released like Green Day, Goodnight Nurse, All American Rejects, Elemeno P, Blink 182 etc. (I can't list all my favourite bands cos it'd take too long;) ) Though I have been trying to listen to other types of music a bit like I really like a song from KT Tunstall called Suddenly I See! And I also try to throw in a bit of classical music and country music sometimes! And Jack Johnson, James Blunt and Goldenhorse are awesome too! I think it's good to listen to a wide range of music since it just seems better for the brain that way!

Anyway, back to talking about the Rolling Stones concert (geez isn't it amazing how the mind can wander sometimes.) The concert was good but it was almost ruined for me since I had 2 ppl in front of me smoking cigarettes and another 2 poeple smoking cigarettes to my right. I ended up breathing in the smoke for a bit after which I started feeling a heavy compressing feeling inside my chest which felt like I had just been drugged.... So I started holding my breath, and then I couldn't concentrate on the concert anymore. (RANDOM FACT: ur brain uses up most of ur oxygen intake, so if you don't think as you hold ur breath, you can hold your breath for longer!!!) . Eventually I swapped places with my dad and they stopped smoking so much, but I was told that I shouldn't care since it was a blimin' Rock and Roll Conert!!! But I say that just cos it was a Rock and roll concert, doesn't mean your invincible to everything around you! And you still feel any effects afterwards! But yeah, I don't think my ears had that typical high pitched ringing sound in them after the conert!

And I might stop writing here since I fear that I could have written too much and be boring everyone with my ranting.

So bye bye, toodle doo, ta ta, au revoir and till next time!
(Ahhh, random thought, why do we say "Rock and Roll" rather than "Roll and Rock"?)

Completely Oblivious

2006-04-01T23:32:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I wonder if maybe it's better to just be completely oblivious to everything so that it's easier to not want to think about things too much...

Socialising's ment to be fun... right?

2006-04-01T02:34:00.000-08:00

Socialising's ment to be fun... right? Well for me it's ok but often times there are other things I'd rather be doing.

Like when I'm by myself, I can do what i want, be how i want, eat what i want, behave how i want, and with no one to boss you around and tell you what to do it's just a whole lot easier that way.

But I do try to keep up contacts cos otherwise I get left behind in the dust... bad thing.

I rarely get bored either.

It's not bad being alone. But sometimes I wish I didn't like it this way.

Ranting and classical music and ranting again

2006-03-25T05:45:00.000-08:00

Who listens to classical music nowadays. I've just been listening to some on the radio as I was driving my sister's bf home tonight since I couldn't be bothered changing the radio station in my dad's car. Plus classical music is a good change from the stupid old hard-core punk alternative style music that I'm used to hearing. Why is it that if you are aged between 13 and 24, you probably listen to lots of hard out punk alternative music!? I mean there's a lot of other types of music out there like jazz and classical!!! But I'm starting to like the sound of those bands that are punk alternative but incorporate famous classical music tunes into their solos and riffs. It's almost like classical music on the electric guitar. But then is it possible to consider something as being "classical music" when it's played on the electric guitar with distortion!? Or can classical music only be with violins, clarinets, flutes etc. What I actually think on this is that we only like the type of music we do because everyone our own age listens to it and so therefore that type of music becomes a way of identifying who we are, since you never see someone who's 80 years old listening to a Disturbed song do you?
Nope, they'd more likely be listening to music of old jazz musicians from the years around World War II since it is what they are used to and is what they used to listen to when they were young, plus it is a way of identifying their generation! "Cos they don't take shit from their future Generation!"

Asking who we are, I'd say we are stuck in our own small little worlds and are happy to be as well. We turn a blind eye to the things that we'd rather not confront, we pretend everything is all perfect, and we tell lies when we think the truth can be too hurtful. Life is great in New Zealand and the scenery is very beautiful but in places like Africa, rape, murder and poverty are common place. Some families there may be lucky to have a bowl of rice for dinner meanwhile here in New Zealand, think of the countless numbers of sandwiches you threw out at lunch-time cos you were too full to finish them. Or think of how we can quickly drive anywhere in the Wellington region within 30 minutes almost anytime we want. Many families in Africa and other third world countries can't afford any transport or cars apart and so they can only walk somewhere which would take them about quadripple the time than if they could drive.

Now in this paragraph, I just want to point a bit of fun at the New Zealand government. Have you ever seen those ads for Labour's Working For Families Package!? And how in those ads they have this girl sitting comforatbly on a sofa texting on her cell phone with two happy looking parents in the background standing in their flashy white modern looking kitchen. Well this ad is advertising offerrings of more government subsidies to middle class families. Yet the funny thing is that some of these middle class families still earn an income that is taxible under the highest tax brackets. So in effect, these middle class families are paying the government lots of money in tax and then getting the money back as government subsidies. This would be all well if getting the money back didn't involve doing lots of paperwork, filling out forms and just general hurdle jumping over everything. (Those of you who have had to enrol at a university or apply for a student loan would know all about having too much form-filling paperwork to fill out.;) So effectively the government is just taking the money and then recycling it back to these middle classed families. What is the point of that?

Anyway...

1 Hour Later:

Ok, well I just got home from picking up my parents after their trip to Australia in Brisbane. They said it was rainy there but it wasn't too much like a storm because the storm only hit the north of Brisbane (wow, I've already done 1 hour 20 minutes of driving tonight!) But they got me a nice 200 mL bottle of Jim Beam which will nicely fit inside my pocket so while at uni I can at least arrive to lectures half unsober for once!

And, i'm sorry but I have to add this: recently I invented a new abbreviation.
A.R.T. can stand for All Righty Then
But then also, hehe, get this:
F.A.R.T. can stand for Fuking All Righty Then!

Lol, they say that once you reach middle age, you become more juvenile as you get older!;)

Goodnight!

Famous Tips From Society!

2006-03-12T22:39:00.000-08:00

Ok, another thought has hit me today.Ya know how there's been all those advertisments in the past that say things like:

- Eat 5 fresh fruit and vegetables a day
- Drink 8 glasses of water a day
- Get at least 8 hours of sleep a night
- Recommended daily intake of fat is 30 grams
- Don't share drink bottles
- Always wash your hands after going to the toilet
-Don't hook up with more than one person within a two week time period
-Slip, Slop, Slap and Wrap (put on a hat, put on some sunscreen and put on some sun glasses)

Well, I have one teeny ween incy bitsy little question to ask: DOES ANYONE ACTUALLY DO ANY OF THAT SHIT!???

Ok well I certainly don't manage to eat 5 servings of fresh fruit and vegetables a day, I don't drink 8 glasses of water a day, I aim to get 8 hours sleep a night but that doesn't happen much now, I'm always concious of whether I am eating around 30 grams of fat every day, but I never share spit from drink bottles. I always wash my hands after visiting nature lol and I'm often very careful about kissing, although I don't often put on more than a cap and sunglasses when I'm out in the Sun!

I've been observing people a bit lately, and from what I can tell, everyone only actually does a small proportion of those things listed above.

This is like an extension to that last post on hooking up sitting just below this one. But does anyone really listen to what the government tells them is healthy and what isn't. Another example is smoking. The government's like "DON'T SMOKE THESE THEY ARE EXTREMELY BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH AND CONTAINS OVER 200 DIFFERENT POISONS!"

Yet lots of people are just like "meh, it makes me feel good and it's too hard giving up, so I'll just keep smoking and see what happens."

Does anyone actually have much bliming sense in this world which is filled up with utter stupidity! But then again, who actually listens to what the government tells them? except for countries run under communism or dicatorship! (only cos people are forced to do what they're told under those types of governments!) But then wait, maybe everyone should be forced to do what's best for themselves! And then again, isn't everyone perfectly capable of knowing what's best for them by themselves!? Maybe or maybe not, but one thing's for sure, the workings of everyone's minds are COMPLETELY UNLOGICAL! (or is that illogical?)

But for now, I'm going to stop writing here and go drink lots and lots of alcohol so that I get the kind privilege of feeling like crap the next morning and vomiting all over the bath room floor. (That was sarcasm by the way!)

Just another point: I think it's a lot better drinking just enough alcohol to get that sensational buzz but not enough alcohol so that you end up vomitting everywhere like an errupting volcano!

Wow, do you have any idea how long (in years) all that ranting has been building up inside my mind, yet I only managed to put it all into words now!

Also, another useful tip: if you have to do it, use a condom!

Thank You!

Small Rant About Kissing

2006-03-10T23:37:00.000-08:00

Here's a little rant!
Apparently, 1 out of 5 people have Meningococcal bacteria asleep in their saliva.

"French kissing with multiple partners (within a two week time period) almost quadruples a teenager’s risk of spinal meningitis, a potentially life-threatening disease, according to a study." http://notfrisco2.com/leones/?p=1802

In this case, multiple partners includes any number of partners greater than one. And according to the website above, hooking up with multiple partners increases your risk of getting Meningococcal bacteria by 3.7 times. So remember back to the last party you went to and who hooked up and so that means that those who hooked up with more than one person are now 3.7 times likelier to get meningitis? But then again, if this is true, why is it that half the teen population hasn't ended up in hospital from meningitis? Perhaps the chance of getting meningitis in the first place was already really low anyway.

The meningitis vaccine only protects you against one form of meningitis so you are not protected from getting other forms of meningitis. Although the vaccine would protect you against one form of meningitis, it is still worth getting. I just got my 3rd and final shot the other day!

And now also, another problem with hooking up is that there's not much worse than hooking up with someone who has a cup full of saliva in their mouths, so much so that u can hear the distinctive "slish sloshy" noise of the saliva moving around inside their mouths! And then when they have chocolatey globules of saliva, that's even worse!:O

Something that gets me is how can people at parties casually go round and pash everyone else!!? Damn it, this is annoying me!!!:O

Gumtrees

2006-02-24T04:51:00.000-08:00

Recently, we had to get some gumtrees cut down on our property... if you look towards the front of the house, it was three gumtrees sitting on the bank to the left of the front of the house. It was a shame because I really liked those gumtrees, but now they are gone. I liked those gumtrees because they made me think of a savoury smell whenever I saw them outside my bedroom window, as well as the gumtrees had a relaxing holiday feel to them.

We had to pay for the gumtrees to be cut down. It cost $6000 to have them cut down. It would have otherwise cost $20000 if it wasn't for the tennis court that enabled the heavy machinery to be wheeled in. They had to be cut down because they were potentially unstable.

But all of this started when a "concerned citizen" wrote a letter to the Hutt City Council saying that the trees could potentially be unstable. Then the Hutt City Council sent an Arbourist in. The arbourist said that the trees were potentially unstable. So we had to advise the insurance companies that the trees could potentially be unstable (so the insurance companies wouldn't cover us if any damage occurred because of the trees). So then we had to get them cut down because we wouldn't be covered by insurance plus we could have been liable for any damage that occurred to anywhere (including the public roads at the bottom of the bank?) or anyone because of the trees, which I'm pretty sure we would not be able to pay for... or someone could have sued us for damage done because of the trees... in the end we got the trees cut down...

And it is very tempting to be annoyed at the original and innocent "concerned citizen" for causing all this... especially because after the trees were cut down, many people were glad because they had a better view of the city, and we think the person who complained was mainly just after a better view.

So why is it that we end up paying for the trees to be cut down when we didn't want to get rid of them, when the people who did want the trees cut down (because they got a better view) didn't have to pay a cent. Lets all be glad that the person who was really concerned about potentially unstable trees around the neighbourhood was bothered to go and write a letter to the council about how unstable the trees were. I wonder what other "potentially unstable trees" he's noticed around the neighbourhood.

I hate being forced to pay for things I didn't want anyway. That just doesn't make sense.

I just feel like we've been ripped off, when this whole thing was a community matter.

There is an old grey gumtree
Standing in the rain of my backyard
I see it and I know
I have sympathy for it
It is standing there alone
No birds around
No harvest of any kind
It’s just a grey old gum tree

I’m alone, without my emotions
There is no feeling to my existence
I’m empty, I’ll fall asleep here
Under this grey gumtree
Which is about to be cut down
Because it is overgrown
It’s just a grey old gumtree
Of course it’s just a grey old gumtree

No one to look after it
No one to trim its leaves
It is so old and over grown
It’s just a grey gum tree

The clouds in the sky
Rain where the grey old gumtree lies
There is no sunshine
It’s just a grey old gumtree

I’m alone, without my emotions
There is no feeling to my existence
I’m empty, I’ll fall asleep here
Under this grey gumtree
Which is about to be cut down
Because it is overgrown
It’s just a grey old gumtree
Of course it’s just a grey old gumtree

Zen philosophy

2006-02-20T03:27:00.000-08:00

The other day I was shopping at the warehouse (where everyone gets a bargain) and a book filled up with quotes on Zen philosophy caught my eye!

On the back of the book tho is a quote that says:

"Sit quietly doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself"
(Zen Wisdom. I don't think there's a known author)

Now, I interpret this quote as saying like "go with the flow!" or do nothing and everthing will sort itself out.

But I often do nothing anyway. If you know me, you probably know that I am someone who often does "nothing". But look where doing nothing has got me!!!!:O

So then maybe I will completely ignore this quote of ancient Zen wisdom that was developed from hundreds and hundreds of years of thinking and wondering by Zen philosphers... meanwhile I'm not even a 100 years old. Not that being 100 years old is young or anything;)

Here are a couple of other quotes of Zen ancient wisdom!:

"Do not seek the truth. Only cease to cherish options" (This one sounds confusing.)

"I drink tea and forget the world's noises." (Sounds random but has some sense.)

"Silence is a friend that will never betray."
Confucius

Some parts of Zen philosophy I agree with, but other parts I'm not too sure about.

Caring About Things

2006-02-05T05:53:00.000-08:00

Why is it I can't be bothered doing some things. I can't be bothered doing so many things so often. And is it a good idea to care that one can't be bothered to do anything. I hear a continous debate in my mind about whether I should care about particular things or not... Sometimes I care, othertimes, I don't care. But then sometimes I feel guilty for not caring...

Occasionally, I hear someone use the phrase "I don't care!"

Okay, now for something FUN. Let's completely analyse this phrase "I don't care!":

When someone says they don't care, does that mean that they really don't care, or does that mean that they just don't want you to think they care, or does that mean they're just reaffirming to themselves that they don't care because they're uncertain about whether they actually care or not. LOL

One simple phrase made to be so confusing!!!

Oh well, I don't care!

LOL

Ok, I'm going away to some place that's about 5 hours drive away from Wellington (I keep forgetting the name of where I'm going. Waikarkoura or something like that) next week for about 5-8 days implanting seismographs into the ground for my dad's work. I'm getting paid so that's good, but i'm worried about how much work i'll have to do and whether it's within my working capacity. Oh well, only one way to find out!;)

And so today, I was the only one home tonight... so i had to organise dinner somehow. We had hardly anything in the cupboard, so I had to get dinner by other means;) I thought about getting pizza delivered, which, from Pizza Hutt, would have cost about $24 for two pizzas delivered. But instead, I went to the supermarket and bought 2 cans of soup, 2 cans of baked beans, 2 large packets of peanut M&ms, one packet of sesame cracker biscuits, one 2.25 Litre bottle of coke and some barley sugars for $22. What a SAVING! compared with buying 2 large pizzas for $24. assumging there's 16 pieces of pizza from 2 large pizzas, that's like 67 cents per piece of pizza (yes, i used a calculator to work that out;) ) And yes I was very proud ;)

Maturity

2006-01-19T22:51:00.000-08:00

I get feeling sometimes it looks like I am not very mature! Well, one of the reasons for that is because I have this belief which is: "being mature means you have to be very boring!!!"

Until someone can tell me why being mature doesn't mean you have to be boring, I will probably continue to be acting as mature as I always have (or unmature as I always have) lol.

So I ask this question: how do you be mature without being boring!?

Try explain that! lol

What it means...

2006-01-15T03:33:00.000-08:00

So it's time i wrote another blog post.

Recently, i've been having lots of interesting thoughts to write about in this blog, but i keep forgetting them when i get back onto the computer to write a post!!!

Ok, so i went up to Carterton again today and helped work renovating that house. Today i just painted the walls of the lounge

Today, I suddenly thought "what does it mean to be a teenager?" Even though i'm nearly not a teenager anymore, i still only found myself asking that question just now. I guess that question has a general socially steriotype answer to that, but the answer must surely be slightly different for everyone :S sex, sometimes drugs, puberty, growing up, leaving home, to name a few. And being a teenager is often the time when you first experience not being able to clear ur mind of the big 3 letter S-E-X word. Today, i was thinking that it sounded like a good title foe a novel: "What it means to be a teenager." But then again, I can't be bothered writing a novel anyway. Takes too long, and you have to be a good writer and have a big imagination.

And then there's the concept of dating. God damn, i frustrate myself to death thinking about what other ppl do about dating, things i've done wrong in the past, things i should do better in the future, whether there are certain rules to it...
sometimes i wish there was no such thing...

On the guitar, I've certainly got little caluses on my left hand fingers from playing it too much...

And the beer i started brewing with my dad's help is coming along nicely. I tried a small cup of it today before putting it into the second fermentation process part, and it was already fizzy! And it tastes pretty much like normal draught beer so far, tho i thought it had a slightly larger bitterness to it than normal draught beers. But, that''s ok. It tastes normal enough, and there's about 23 litres of it:P
Guess i'll have to have some sort of party eventually lol.

But then I have a self conflicting belief about parties. For me, parties always seem better when you have had less of them. As in, when u have too many parties, they starting seeming to be no more than just getting together, drinking as much alcohol as you want, staying the night, and having a hangover or feeling rather shitty the next morning. Which is not good. And... parties don't seem to be as much fun when ur not drunk :S And then there seems to be a rule or an idea that a party is not a good party unless there is at least one person who throws up. Now what's fun about throwing up!?

And then im also cautious about parties since my sister had a big one and there were gate crashers, ppl kicked pot plants and someone kicked a hole in the wall, not to mention all the empty alcohol bottles lying around the place. A party very often trashes the places they're at as well. And in my experience, it's always been the gate crashers that do it. And, to be honest, in some ways i think i prefer to just be alone, eating pizza and drinking alcohol in front of the tv.

At times when I feel lonely, I like being alone, yet I don't like the fact that I like being alone. Self-conflicting. I fight that sometimes, but should I fight against who I am?

Oh well. I don't think there's anything I can do except to carry on doing the things I'm doing...

Turtle facts

2006-01-02T02:08:00.000-08:00

Here is an interesting site about turtle facts.

Be careful that you have a fast enough computer cos this site has little green bar thingys that move from side to side in the back ground:P

http://www.angelfire.com/realm2/spellcast/turtlefacts.html

Now you can amaze your friends about how much you know about turtles.

Have fun

Another evening goes by

2005-12-23T17:57:00.000-08:00

I've just been pacing around my room pointlessly, thinking about what has happened. I've been hearing news about relationship troubles between my uncle and aunty (...or should I say, my now ex-aunty :S ) It's quite complicated and it doesn't seem that my aunt and uncle will ever get back together, and i may not be able to see some of my cousins as much as I did (but I hardly ever saw them anyway) because of it.

But it has made me wonder. Is there much point to relationships anyway? they are so complex, yet very fragile, and if you are not careful, you may not be friends afterwards either. But if you are lucky, a relationship may bring happyness and fulfilment for a very long time?

And now it is Christmas eve. Yet I don't feel jolly. Maybe it's cos i'm so bored of Christmas Eves and Christmas's from my past 18 other Christmas's and Christmas Eve's that I've had. We just got our Christmas tree up last night! But when Christmas time comes, the shops just WILL NOT let you forget that it is Christmas. It's Christmas Eve now and I still haven't finished my Christmas shopping. I have to go out soon and finish it, but I have hardly any money... only just enough money to buy a few cheap Christmas presents... since last week I only had $1.67 in my bank account to survive off. However that did work as extra strong motivation to get a job...

I now also work part time at the Hutt Golf Club in the kitchen. I am in charge of making chips, wedges, fish and shoe string chips (somehow ppl always get a laugh from that!), and doing some dishes. And to my surprise, I seem to be allowed to wear what I want while I am working, as long as it is tidy/not scruffy. I may also get to assist in the bar so I can sneak in some more bar tending experience while I'm at it;)

Is it just me, or does Christmas get more draining as you get older?

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Hang Dog

2005-12-16T23:19:00.000-08:00

Why is it that I've been feeling a little bit more grumpy lately? I can only guess that it's a mixture to do with money worries, jobs, relationship stuff and frustration about the hard things about life.

I went to Hang Dog yesterday. I climbed the easy wall right to the top easily and comfortably. I even had a go on one of the walls with an overhang part, but my arms weren't strong enough to lift me up passed it.

I thought trying to climb those walls at Hang Dog would bring back old memories of climbing a portable wall that was brought to my old primary school one time, which I climbed to the top on... but only just since I was shorter and more afraid of heights back then. But I remember feeling afraid as I was climbing the old portable wall that was brung to my old school about ten years ago.

At Hang Dog, when I was being shown how to belay, it took me embarassingly longer than everyone else to understand how to do it. The instructor showed me how to do it twice. After my second attempt, he said "STOP THINKING AND JUST FOLLOW!"... those words stand out in my mind... it's just another example when I've thought too much...even thought I can't remember what I was thinking about at the time. Yet I find it amusing anyway. It's good to be able to laugh at yourself in times of trouble and peril.

Mind Stuff

2005-12-16T23:18:00.000-08:00

At the moment I'm reading a book about "Mind Power". It talks about mind techniques such as visualisation, affirmations, seeding, beliefs etc. One of the things it says is that people should spend 5 to 10 minutes everyday visualising about their goals that they want to accomplish. It specifically says that you have to visualise the goals as if you have already accomplished them.

But apparently that sort of thing only works on supposedly 60% of people. So how do you know if ur one of the 60% of people where it does work, or one of the 40% where it doesn't work? Because it's more difficult to try visualising something when you have the doubt in your mind that it might not actually work on you.

But then again, what if it actually works on everyone and the only reason that it doesn't work on supposedly 40% of people is because 40% of people don't believe it would work on them anyway.

But then a counter argument against that is that everyone has a different psychological make-up and therefore it could only work on 60% of people...

... I think too much... lol.

So about the last post (this is especially for e-j!!! ;) ) the reason why the frog could make it up to the top of the tower when all the other frogs couldn't, and when the odds were stacked against the little frog, and when the village people howled insults and negative affirmations at the little frog was... *wait for it*... was because the little frog was deaf! That's right! Deaf! :O

No steriods, no cheating, climbing lessons or magical powers! lol

The tiny little frog was deaf. But then in the story, you kinda have to wonder how the little frog didn't see all the other bigger frogs falling off the tower as well... so maybe the little frog was half blind as well ;) either that or the little frog was just so fixed in concentration!

So there could have been other factors as well that helped the little frog. As Spongebob would say: "use your ImAgInAtIoN!!" *big cheerful whining tone* lol.

Freaky frogs

2005-11-30T17:06:00.000-08:00

I thought about something lame for the title of this post like "a frogs tail", but that's just too lame! besides, frogs don't have tails.

Anyway, here's an interesting fable about a frog:

Once upon a time in a magical kingdom (of course), there stood a large tower. One day, all the bravest frogs from land and sea decided to run a competition to see which frog could climb to the top of the tower first.

All the competing frogs gathered at the bottom of the great tower ready to climb. Meanwhile the towns people and peasants had heard about the grand competition of the frogs and also gathered at the bottom of the tower to watch the frogs attempt to climb it. But many of the towns people were skeptical and thought the frogs were fools for even considering to try climb the great tower.

At the word "go", all the frogs began to climb. The crowd booed and shouted. Many frogs fell off after only climbing a metre. The crowd continued booing and shouting.

"Give up! You'll never make it!."
"Why try? You're not going to reach the top of the tower"
"Stupid frogs!"

And as the crowd continued to boo and shout their forceful insults, more frogs fell off and eventually, the frogs realised how impossible the climb to the top of the great tower was. This continued to happen until only a few frogs remained. By this time, the remaining frogs were quite close to the top.

The crowd kept booing.

"Foolish frogs! You're all tired now. You're not going to make it"

Eventually the few remaining frogs fell off... except for one little frog who managed to reach the top of the tower.

Why did this frog make it to the top of the tower when the other frogs could not? Well you may have heard this story before, but if you haven't, take a guess!

...

But I'll tell you why the tiny frog was the only one to reach the top of the tower in the next post.

N.B: it's not because the little frog had climbing lessons!;) and I do not know if the tiny frog won the love of a beautiful princess either... but that's how a typical fairy tale would go aint it!;)

Day in Carterton

2005-11-16T00:05:00.000-08:00

I was up in Carterton again today. I was helping to renovate and paint a house that we bought there a while ago. I did two coats of paint on the bottom wall skirtings of one of the bedrooms without getting any drops of paint on my clothes. I was quite proud of myself *cough*

Also, Sophie (my dog) seems to be finally becoming toilet trained. Today when we were up in Carterton, I was walking around in the garden with Sophie, and she automatically did a nice big poo outside without any encouragement for her to do so. I saw the whole thing with my own eyes as proof and I've got to say, it really was a sight to see! *cough* *circkets chirp in background at lame joke* Well we were very proud of Sophie's "accomplishment".

On the way home, we quickly drove past a restuarant with a sign that said "all-day breakfast!". And after reading the sign, I had one of those wonderous thoughts: does "all-day breakfast" mean you can eat breakfast food at the restuarant any time of day e.g. have bacon, eggs, hash browns and sausages (yum) there at 5pm in the evening. Or does it mean that you can eat a breakfast there that will last you all day? Personally, I'd like to hope it was the first answer because I'd quite like to be able to eat hash browns, eggs, bacon and sausages at, say, 5pm in the evening... That's one of the things that annoys me about McDonalds: i really like their breakfast food, but I'm never up in time to go to McDonalds before 10am, and so I am forced to either order a value meal/meal deal/combo or walk out and eat somewhere else. Usually i just can't be bothered going somewhere else so I order a combo anyway. But still, I WANT TO BE ABLE TO EAT HASH BROWNS FOR LUNCH!! :O

Grrrrrr sigh

2005-11-11T19:45:00.000-08:00

People in the world are like scavengers, vultures, piranas. They take everything they can get away with. They try to get every little cent out of everthing possible. And they'll eat anything they can. You can't trust people to respect your property. Because they don't even have any reason to care anyway. No matter what happens to your possessions, no ones cares unless it affects them in some way or especially inconviences them.

Our brain is programmed to do everything it can to survive. If we can easily survive, then we will do everything we can to make our survival more "luxurious". So instead of having to live off the bear necessities for survival, we'd like to have other luxuries along with that. Like fries are quite nice. You can say "Yay, I'm alive. Yes, I'd like fries with that."

You don't have to understand what I was meaning. I'm just letting off steam for the fact that I lost my wallet, my car keys and my phone in the same day, all in separate situations. So the casualty count goes like this:

Wallet: I've now lost 8 times
Phone: Only lost once
Car keys: Lost twice.

I'm to starting to consider my wallet to be a 'lucky wallet' since it has always been found again, and I've taken it everywhere I can think of for the past 10 years... It's been so long, I can't remember how long I've had my wallet for, but i've been counting how mant times I've lost it.

But that's not why I'm pissed off at the moment. The reason why I'm pissed off is that someone took $70 cash out of my wallet and all my gold coins. I had plans for that $70 and I worked hard for it. Now I've lost it. And that was about 40% of all the money I had, and it was going to have to last me until I got a permanent job.

Ok, so you might say I got off lightly. That's possibly quite true. But I've got off lighter than that all the other times. It's just now, some jerk went and took all my money out of my wallet. Fine, that same jerk was probably the one who returned my wallet after having raped all the money from it. So then, I would now call that arsehole, whoever it was, a kind and considerate F***ing jerk.

If you've ever had something stolen from you, you'd know the feeling!

Keep moving!

2005-11-09T02:57:00.000-08:00

I've been a fool. It's time I woke up again. But I keep falling asleep AGAIN anyway! Someone make sure I stay awake please!

From the wise words of Homer J. Simpson: "You tried your best, and you failed miserably. The lesson is... never try."

Things and stuff

2005-11-06T04:24:00.000-08:00

I hate POPUPS. I'm always reminded of my pure hatred of them whenever I get one of those intrusive "things" pop-up onto the computer screen, and yet I still havn't gotten around to downloading Mozilla. (The name "Mozilla" always reminds me of mosquitoes, where POPUPS are the mosquitoes and Mozilla is the mosquito repellent). Considering that whole "getting-around-to" thing, I don't even want to imagine what i'd be like with DIY in renovating a house. I'd probably knock down a whole wall and then never rebuild it again;) Sounds quite fun actually. In fact, I've tried it before. Just grabbing a hammer and being allowed to smash the hammer into the wall as hard as you like, and then tearing the wall to treads. Hm, the DESTRUCTION :P

Anyhow, that was a bad start to what i originally intended to be a philosophical post. Meanwhile someones altered the writing on the blog to obcenely small standards so that I have to squint to read what i am writing, and i can't figure out how to change the writing back. I have already checked under control panel... HEY, i just had an idea! When i looked in control panel, I should have used the Help section which Microsoft so kindly provided (thumbs up to them!), I'll try it now:

*5 mintues later*

... well surpringly enough, I just solved my problem now, and it didn't involve using Control Panel. It was as simple as just clicking "Font size" in the blogging menu, and clicking "large".

On another topic, I am running out of words to use to change topics on posts. I've already used: anyway, anyhow, on another topic, now, however, well, ... I need some more words I can say, otherwise I'll have to keep using those words which starts sounding silly after a while... or I can just quickly and suddenly change topics...*cough*

Here's a quote I like:

"From fear comes courage, from defeat comes victory, from disorder comes order." (Sun Tzu's Art of War)

I actually got that quote off the Discovery channel ages ago and thought it made so much sense that I would have to remember it!

That may have sounded like sarcasm but it truely does have sense to it. I interpret it as meaning without one thing, the other one means nothing. In other words if no one feared anything, then courage would have no value since everyone would be courageous.

I guess it's sort of like the idea that to clear up a mess, you first have to make a mess. For example, to tidy your desk, you first have to sort everything into piles (make a mess), and then put "the piles" into the appropriate places (clear the mess). However, there is the sort of person that would just take everything off their desk and simply chuck it in the rubbish! Although, I am the opposite of that: I will go through everything on my desk and sort them into piles, and then eventually when I get to the mouldy green mandarin lying under all the mess, I will go and chuck all my piles of stuff in my wardrobe (but not the rubbish bin, since the rubbish bin is not a very good retrieval system), and jam my wardrobe doors just and promise never to open my wardrobe doors again... yet it's one of those weak promises I never keep...

I worked at a bar the other day. It was a bar up in Trentham Gardens. I only work there on a casual basis though. But I had to work as a "caterer" instead of a "bar-tender" which was a shame because bar-tenders get paid more of the same number of hours as the caterers, and yet I was perfectly capable of working as a bar-tender. I was also working a 8 hour shift that day so I brought some lunch. That consisted of some Eta chips, a banana and some pecan nuts, and I was even going to bring a lunch box but I couldn't find my old one. It felt much like going to school again. And then I found out that we actually got lunch at work from the buffet including rice, salad, potatoes, meat and lots of nice stuff. I'll admit that I was rather dismayed that I had wasted those precious 5 minutes getting my home lunch ready, and then found out that lunch was provided anyway.

Hm, I'm surprised out how much I've had to say tonight... I don't usually have much to say. But I have to stop writing and got to bed now.

Goodbye

More Reflective Thoughts

2005-10-31T03:49:00.000-08:00

Life is f**ked. Everything's f**ked. Things don't make sense. Not many things are logical in this world. One must think outside the square to solve the problems they can not solve. Sometimes ppl do horrible things to you intentionally, and sometimes people do horrible things to you unintentionally.

Everything is about balance: when someone dies, someone is born. Everything has an equal and opposite reaction. What goes up, comes down. For everything and every action, there are consequences.

However, sometimes we are not aware of every action we take... we may do something without being aware of it... we may not be able to help not doing it. And meanwhile, no one can tell for certain what someone else is thinking of what we have done. Sometimes it's easier just to say "I don't care what other people think." But do we really mean it? Maybe we're just covering insecurities we'd rather not remain aware of. Perhaps its better to know what other people are thinking so we can take the proper actions for it. Because it's troubling when someone who's meant to be close to you can't even talk to you about the things that are really troubling them... because you are the one that's troubling them! ... unfortunately, I see this happening rather often and it goes against logic... I often see this in relationships. And we talk about people behind their backs. It is so strange. However it is disrespecting to talk about someone to someone else while standing in front of the very person you are talking about.

Sometimes people appear very different to how they are actually feeling. Sometimes someone may look like they know what they're doing but in reality they have absolutely no idea what they are doing... or why they're doing it. Someone may look strong and in control, but deep down they are insecure and don't know what to do. Appearances can be deceptive.

FEAR! Why do we fear things? I believe it is something programmed into our minds to help us survive. Because in the caveman days, fear was very important. It was what kept you alert and on your toes; it was what told you to run when you faced imminent danger. What i'm saying is that fear is a body defense mechansim designed to keep you out of danger. And yet people strive to get rid of fear because they do not like being afraid. Also, we fear the things we can not explain. So occasionally we try to come up with explanations to explain things we would otherwise fear. For example, if ghosts exist, why should people fear them? Simply because we can not explain the existence of a ghost? yet there is nothing more to suggest that a ghost couldn't hurt us anymore than a normal human could. Maybe less.

Another thing that I find is that the more of something I have, the more I want it. Such as I've had a lot of time recently but I've always felt like I havn't had enough time and I always want more time. And I also find the more junk food I eat the more junk food I want to eat.

But I'm thinking too much at the moment so I'll just stop now and just carry on living my tiny insignificant life like a tiny insignificant dot in this gigantic universe.

The cliff.

2005-10-30T03:07:00.000-08:00

I can still remember a dream I had a recent night ago. It was an interesting dream and a bit freaky tho I've described it to a couple of people, and before then I didn't realise how symbolic it could have been. But on a sidenote, I consiously remember hearing about this myth where if you dream that you hit the ground, then you die in your sleep. I've always wondered if I'd dare try to dream that in my sleep.

Well in my dream I was on a cliff. The sky was purple and the cliff was orange. The cliff was vertical and I was near the top of the cliff. But below me was a very big drop to the ground. I think it was about a 1000 km drop below me. I would keep looking down and I would see clouds and then about 500 km down I would see seagulls. And at the very bottom of the cliff there was a small river. As I was near the top of the cliff, I could feel a light wind whistling past my ears and begin to freeze them. I wanted to turn back and stand on the ground again but I couldn't because I was too far up the cliff and because having came this far it wouldn't be right to just turn back. Anyway about 1000 km up, I was near the top of the cliff and only holding on with my bare hands: no safety line and no one to catch me if I fell... but I was dead scared of falling and very afraid. In my dream I felt like my own hands and determination to reach the top of the cliff were the only things stopping me from a 1000 km drop and a horrible death. And to me that was very scary.

Anyway my purpose for climbing this cliff was to reach these little caves situated near the top of the cliff and to retreive these little purple diamond rods that were stuck to the inside walls of these caves. So eventually I reached these caves and I pulled myself up into them while always too aware of the big drop below me. I grabbed the diamond rods and rested in the cave for a while, not wanting to climb the rest of this cliff.

Eventually I climbed out of the caves to climb the rest of the way. But now I was even more scared because now the cliff overhung at a 45 degree angle... so I would have to climb out at 45 degrees while overhanging this 1000 km drop below me with no safety equipment.

Anyway I reached the top of the cliff and pulled myself up onto the top while still very aware of the big drop below me. I wondered about how ironic it would be if I climbed all this way and then fell just before I got to the top.

But I pulled myself up and I remember feeling very relieved. Then this lady appeared. She was caucasian, and had orange hair, freckles, glasses and she wore a white lab coat. I was about 15 cm taller than her. But she said "ah I see you got the diamonds back. Well done Sam. A+." Then I remembered that I was a student climbing this scary cliff like many other students had to do. And one of the reasons why I was so pressured to climb this cliff was that if I failed/fell, I was worried that I wouldn't be able to do something other people could do... and then I would wonder if I truely tried my hardest.

The dream was almost like a nightmare because I was so afraid of falling yet pressured to go on. However it isn't how I would have imagined a nightmare to look like. This dream seems rather easy to interpret (i.e. the cliff was life) yet the "apparent" symbolism seems too easy to figure out. I think it's more complex than that.

A very musical conversation

2005-10-26T04:11:00.000-07:00

I was having a conversation with Phil the other day. It was funny... in a silly way.

We were discussing what bands fit different types of genres.

"hey Sam, do you know what sort of band the Offspring are?" said Phil.
"Um, i think... ." I paused for a while so I could carefully think about my answer."They'd be rock!"
"Nope!" Phil said."They're punk!"
"So then that makes them punk-rock! I exclaimed
Phil grinned. "Noooo, they're just punk!" he said.
Then being my neutral orientated old self I said "Well if we say they're punk-rock, then we can both be right!"
"No!" said Phil, "...Ok then, do you know what sort of band Linkin Park is?" Phil asked me.
"Oh, that's obvious. They're alternative!"
"Nope. They're..."
I quickly interrupted Phil to say my explanation. "Well Linkin Park is alternative because it's 'alternatively' NOT what "adults" prefer.(Ha ha ha) *I quietly laugh at my joke under my breath* "I don't think my parents would prefer Linkin Park at least."
"Hmm, yea..."

I can't remember what exactly happened after that. But a point i'm trying to say is that it's hard to classify what sort of music a band plays. Such as later in the conversation, we started talking about System of a Down and how it is the hardest band to classify since it plays a variety of different sorts of music. Same goes with Greenday. Greenday plays a wide variety of music as well and was even accused (by some magazine I think it was) of falling away from its punk image.

I think i'm more likely to like a band if they play a wide variety of music.

Job Searching

2005-10-25T04:19:00.000-07:00

Well I have to make this a quick post now. I.E. I have to write this post in about 10 minutes since I have to get up early tomorrow (hehe, say... 10am) and look for a job again.

But here's a little story about when I was looking for a job today.

I was searching for a job in the Hutt News when I found a job search agency *which will go un-named* . I rung them up on the phone and a nice female computer voice answered the phone. It said:

"You have reached *insert job agency name here*. To find out about permanent jobs, visit our website at *.........*. For temporary jobs, press 1 now. For the Minister of Justice collection officers, press 2 now. For the Minsiter of justice, press 3 now"

At this moment I became very confused. "I don't want a bloody government department. I just want to enrol at this job agency... maybe I've got the wrong number..." So I hung up.

Eventually, I decided that I would press 1 when I rung the job agency up again. I went through all of the "You have reached *insert job agency name here*. To find out about permanent jobs visit our..." and then i pressed 1 as I planned.

But then to my dismay, there was another stage to go through. Then the pleasant computer voice said in its usual cheerful tone: "Press 1 now for heavy truck driving jobs. Press 2 now for factory and labour jobs. Press 3 now for office and administration jobs. Press 4 now for hospitality and restaurant jobs. Press 5 now for computer programming and database jobs now." Again, I became confused... because I wanted jobs from both 2 and 4. I couldn't decide which number to press. So I hung up again.

After minutes of pondering whether I should press 2 or 4, I decided that i would press 2. So I rung the job agency up again, and once more I got the nice cheerful female computer voice which said *again* "You have reached *insert job agency name here*. To find out about permanent jobs visit our..." where I again pressed 1. Then I got up to the next part which again said "Press 1 now for heavy truck driving jobs. Press 2 now for..." where i pressed 2 as I had planned!

When I pressed two, i thought that was going to be the last time I would hear the cheeful computer voice... I was wrong. The computer voice then told me about how much I could expect to be paid for a job in that industry (which ever industry it was. I had forgotten what industry I was applying for by that time) and a whole lot of other stuff as well that i can't remember.

And then, to my absolute horror, I discovered that I would have to record my personal details and contact details as the 'kind' computer voice prompted me to, and that a phone operator would listen to the recording later and get my details.
Well my first thoughts were "screw that!" and I hung up the phone.

I'm surprised they didn't tell me "your call is important to us."

There is something about talking to a computer voice that sounds invalid and unofficial. Maybe i'll be able to make myself bothered to try again tomorrow;)

POP-UPS

2005-10-22T04:54:00.000-07:00

POP-UPS: they're everywhere on the internet. Yet they are rather annoying. In terms of economics, pop-ups have a "negative demand". Don't the really smart people who make the pop-ups know that!? And besides, no-one believes what pop-ups say anyway! In most people's minds, including mine, they are just another chance to download more adware, or trojans, or useless internet stuff that does nothing.

A few times I got a pop-up that said something along the lines of "CONGRATUALTIONS, YOU'RE ARE THE 1,000,000th visitor to this site. Now you may recieve the grand prize of a free cruise ship tour to the Bahammas. All you have to do is ring this number!!!" I thought about ringing the number but then I realised that it was most likely MERELY A SCAM! Where if you rung up, $100 in toll call fees would be charged to your phone account and you wouldn't even be able to get through to anyone. That's just my guess, I haven't tried it.

It's funny how pop-ups always advertise for things like online gambling, casinos, virus scanners, spyware scanners, adult sites, green cards to the United States, online dating or even smiley face downloads. Pop-ups never advertise for other things that don't sound so dodgey! But then i spose, anything that a pop-up advertises has got to be dodgey!

I love the pop-ups that say "your computer may contain unwanted adware or spyware. Download this for protection". Well to answer that... OF COURSE YOUR COMPUTER HAS UNWANTED ADWARE OR SPYWARE otherwise you wouldn't be getting that pop-up!

And then the "pop-up blockers". I find they're not able to block many of the pop-ups. And I've tried hopelessly to delete the adware that is making the pop-ups but often times I can't figure out what files are making the pop-ups. And the adware scanners don't seem to pick them up. Plus you get the pop-ups back again when you start surfing the internet again anyway!

Who makes these pop-ups!? Why do they make them? Is it because they want to annoy everyone or just because it's a cheaper form of advertising? Well I don't trust anything that a pop-up says! I wouldn't do anything that a pop-up says to do either.

Fun list of things to do during the Summer!

2005-10-19T04:20:00.000-07:00

Well my exams are over now but that's besides whether I passed them or not;) I'm just glad they're over cos now I can get onto my "fun list of things to do during the Summer!!!":P

Last night (the date was 18/10/05) I went to another marketing survey thing where i got paid $50 for saying what i thought and contributing to a group discussion on the sale of alcohol. (Basically I get paid for saying what I think, lol. Now that's a dream job!:P) Anyway, all that talk made me decide that I want to make and prepare pure ETHANOL(that's the chemical name for alcohol) at home!

So, I added that onto my "list of fun things to do during the Summer" which so far now consists of:

- Make ethanol at home
-Jump of Eastborne wharf
-Go yachting
-Go jet skiing
-Go to Big Day Out
-Get better at guitar
-Eat half a "family meal deal" at McDonald's (Half a family meal deal consists of one large drink, one medium drink, one large fries, one medium fires, one big mac, one cheese burger and two deserts... i think, However someone may correct me on that;) )
-Start a part-time business, hehe

That's all i can think of at the moment. But ill see how realistic this list is at the end of Summer.

Tests/exams

2005-10-17T01:46:00.000-07:00

Here I am. Again. Writing a post. Again. Sitting at the computer listening to music. Again. Scrambling my brain staring at the computer screen. Again. And u get the point.

I've got exams coming up (again). But it's not like I've never done an exam before. Nope! The whole business to do with exams started way back in primary school.. I remember sitting my first ever test. Believe it or not, but in primary school, I actually found sitting tests to be fun because I could see how well I was doing, and I could look forward to the excitment of getting a test result back (good or bad). However, that was before I knew that tests/exams count towards important aspects of your academic record. That was also why I enjoyed tests cos it gave me time to get lost in my own thoughts and I would just finish the test questions off at the last minute. Hense why I often didn't do very well in tests at primary school.

But in secondary school, well that was when tests/exams started to become annoying for various reasons that i don't feel like mentioning lol.

Anyway... exams to me are hard to study for since studying is so hard to do when there are so many things happening around you (that are a bit more interesting)

So... Today I didn't play guitar until 6:00pm tonight. That's quite a good record for me. Usually it'd be one of the first things I do after I get out of bed (that's apart from the days where I have university) The thing I've been trying to work on the most is creating solos where the notes fit together. But that's relatively easy. The hard bit is finding something that sounds good! So far I've learnt the major scale, blues scale and Dorian scale patterns for on the fretboard. I'll get there eventually but sometimes I wonder of perhaps I should have taken a Music degree instead of a Conjoint Science and Commerce degree. However I don't think I want to abandon chemistry and I want to know the "commerce stuff" for the outside world.

LIFE IS REPETITIVE!

2005-10-11T02:27:00.000-07:00

Sometimes life feels so repetitive. Our lives are made up of seconds which make up mintues which make up hours which make up days which make up weeks which make up years which make up decades which make up centuries, and by the time a century arrives, ur probably dead already.

And when you die, i can imagine some greater entity (maybe god/(a) god, if he/she/one exists) telling you "oops, your life has slipped by already. Too bad."

I feel like im not old enough to do anything great yet, so I just live in my own tedious little world (I like to call it 'cycling') where I just cycle between guitar, university, study, tv, sleep, guitar, tv, university, study, sleep, with the occasional "party/social get-together with friends" in between. And all this makes up my week (which makes up most of my year, which could make up a decade, which could easily start making up my life).

But maybe i'm being pessimistic about saying that this is what i'll do until i'm dead. Well this is what il be doing, except over the years there will be small variations in my 'cycle'.

It's possible that in a few years, my cycle will start going like this: "guitar, job, tv, sleep, guitar, job, tv, sleep, AGAIN with the occasional 'party/social get-together with friends" in between."

And then a few more years later:

"guitar, job, look after kids, tv, sleep, guitar, job, look after kids, tv, sleep, with the occasional 'social get-together with friends" in between." But probably no more things quite resembling a 'part-tay' because I will be too old :(

And in my mind, a week would usually pass like this:

Monday -"hmm, a Monday. Well time to start a new week. This time i'm going to try harder. But isn't there a good movie on tonight?"

Tuesday- "Ah yes, another day. I wonder what's on tv tonight. I can't wait till Wednesday cos then it will be half way through the week and closer to Friday."

Wednesday- Ah Ha!. I've survived through Monday and Tuesday. Time for a beer.

Thursday- So close to a Friday. On Friday i'l be able to relax.

Friday- I'l just get through the day and then I can relax and drink and maybe go to the movies and I can look forward to the day off tomorrow.

Saturday- I either do nothing or i go do something with friends

Sunday- Aww the end of a week-end and time to go back to working/university tomorrow.

And then it's MONDAY again! WooOOO HHoooOO

I'm not complaining or anything. I'm just simply saying LIFE IS RATHER TEDIOUS!

BUT, i suspect deep down in my mind, I like life to be tedious for some reason. And a funny thing is I DON'T LIKE the fact that I possibly LIKE life being tedious.

I know another change I can look forward to in my 'cycle'! And that is becoming a part of the "rat race". In other words becoming a part of the work force.(In no way do I want to be on the dole either. I think you should only be on the dole if your disabled from working, or if your really old;) )" But every time I catch the train to Wellington (or when I catch the train back from Wellington) I see everyone (probably hundreds of people) rushing to catch the train. And all these people are either wearing black suits, rain coats, fancy jackets, or in other words, typical office clothing. They are a part of the work force and trapped in the "rat race", I keep thinking of them as sheep being hearded or a bunch of mindless zombies. And I know that i'm getting sucked into the rat race and I'm strugglin to find a way to get out. One of my solutions has been to try start a business (could be by a partnership;) ) which could help stop me from becoming just another "suit" :( (Not just me. I think there are other ways other ppl could get out of the so called rat race as well.)

And that's another thing. Why is life full of so many paradoxes!
(I've written enough now. Paradoxes are another topic)

M.I.B. S.O.P.H.I.E.

2005-10-04T01:39:00.000-07:00

I saw a white van today that had M.I.B. written in black on it. Then I thought: "so the Men In Black" are REAL!!!!" But then I realised... No one had flashed me afterwards... lol

Anyway, my dad came back from London today after being away for ten days. I can tell he spent a lot of time in book shops cos he's given us a lot of books as "coming-home presents" (as I will call them). Still, I know im really spoilt and i wasnt expecting anything anyway, but the books are really faccinating to read. (One of them was about how to speak Latin.)

And Sophie (she's my dog)... she's been ok. However Kim and I have made up a new nickname for her: RATBAG!. Yep, Sophie is a ratbag!.

Things she does that bring her this name:

-Sits on the sofa when she's not allowed to be on the sofas. I often used to say to her really loudly "SOPHIE, OFF SOFA!" but apparently she gets confused between her name, Sophie, and sofa. So now i just say "OFF SOFA!"

-She still occasionally goes toilet on the carpet. In which case we say "BAD DOG. BAD DOG. OUTSIDE!" And then we put her outside to try teach her that there are consequences to her actions, and (last but not least) to not piss/poo on the carpet.Sometimes it seems like she prefers to piss inside on the carpet.

- She still likes to chew on shoes or what ever she can get her paws/mouth on. The other day she got into a bag of icing sugar and smeared it all over the kitchen floor. We vacuumed it up and it was funny cos she started barking at the vacuum cleaner. It appeared as tho she was sad to see her supply of icing sugar disappear.

And now Sophie seems to be learning how to push doors open. This is very worrying since it diminishes our only line of defense for our precious shoes and clothing lying on the ground in our bedrooms.

Anyhow, Sophie is quite a funny dog. The funniest thing she does is when you are doing something, she sits on the ground in front of you, tilts her head sideways and stares at you confusingly. When she does this to me, it makes me feel like i have to do something interesting to entertain her.

Complaining, ranting... G STRINGS!!!

2005-09-30T03:07:00.000-07:00

Iv just been playing guitar at the moment. I broke another string. That now comes to 8 strings i've broken so far. And i'm starting to think it always seems to be the G string or the D string that I break. The fact of having to go buy another G string always stands out in my mind inthat I have to go to the person at the counter and ask for a G-string (the type of G string as in clothing... well u can hardly call it clothing can you?;) )

Er, ahem, anyway. Now after considering the number of rantless posts I've done recently, it should be about time for a new rant by now... But i can't think of anything worth ranting about. What random person would want to hear a big long rant anyway. They often come off as just complaining.

Tho I do have something to complain about:

1)How guitar strings break too easily and how steel guitar strings are the more of a pain than nylon strings.

2)How life is as frustrating as being in a silent room full of people and having to let out this big thunderous reaping fart

3) How life is like a big long repetitive loop, kinda like a car going round a roundabout a billion times, or simply like a bowl of Fruit Loops

And my favourite thing to complain about:

4) Why is it that anything worth having doesn't come easy! Stupid reality. Whoever or whatever made up existence should have made it so that everyone can live as comfortably as they like with minimum effort. *sigh*

Hehe, life has its cheap thrills too. Lol like spitting off a sky scraper and waiting for ur spit to hit the ground. I spat off the Eifel tower once. I timed how long it took for my spit to hit the ground. It was ages ago but I think it lasted 8 seconds till it hit the ground.

Also having water fights, insulting ppl in foreign languages and playing practical jokes are cheap thrills too.

Work, elections, and other crap.

2005-09-17T22:35:00.000-07:00

Ouch. Mucsles hurt. Painful to move. It's from working on a house up in Carterton. I had to help dig a small trench to fit a water pipe under the ground and it didnt occur to me to do any stretches before hand and now all my mucsles are really stiff. I woke up this morning from the dream I was having...

...I can still remember the last dream i had: I was on a random beach. The sun was setting making streaks of pink and gold across the sky and I was getting a history lesson about a famous battle that happened on the beach and I found a real dead decayed body still lying on the beach from a battle that supposedly happened around 1850AD...

Anyway, I woke up this morning and I found it really painful to move and it took me a while to remember why i was feeling sore and what I had done the previous day to stiffen my mucsles. I just thought it was interesting how long it took me to remember why I was sore, although it was only a few seconds, it was a few seconds of complete utter confusion.

Another thought: New Zealand has just had a general election and i was tryin to think about how ppl decide who they're gonna vote for (as it was the first time i'd ever been able to vote!:P). Anyway i had five ideas about how ppl decide how they're gonna vote:

1) they vote for themselves and for their own personal gain, possibly based on bribes from the other parties. e.g. lower taxes, interest-free student loans.

2) they vote based on emotion influenced by who their parents voted for, who their gf/bf voted for, or just what ever the party reminds them of.

3) they vote based on who they think is going to win. e.g. someone may support Labour but they vote Act because they think Labour needs some decent opposition in government.

4) they just vote for what ever leader they like the "look" of the most. i.e. iv heard some ppl desribe Don Brash as looking like a monster, and Iv heard other ppl describe Helen Clark as very manly.

OR

5) THEY DON"T CARE!!! They know nothing about each party's policies and don't care about who gets in government so they just don't bother voting... or they just didnt get around to voting.

Sooo, the way i see it, the tinyiest things influence who we are goin to vote for.

Like I heard this woman was goin to vote for Labour but then she saw a little float on the road that was Edward the Green coloured train off Thomas the Tank Engine with Green party supporters on it telling ppl to vote for the Greens. Anyway she changed her vote to Greens based on that cos she thought it was funny;)

OR another, more well known story was that Mark Blumsky, the National candidate for Wellington central, lost (again) to Marian Hobbs because he fell down a flight of stairs.

OR another story was that Rodney Hide (he's the ACT leader. I just have to point out that I got to shake his hand the other day;)), he won the Epsom seat because he said "PICK ME, PICK ME!!!" Also not to mention, at university the other day, his party was giving away these funny yellow badges that said "FUCK LABOUR. VOTE ACT!"

Anyway, my point is that we vote for the silliest reasons. Meanwhile we are meant to be voting in politicians who we think will represent us the best in parliament, and who will play a major part in determining the fate of New Zealand for the next three years.

... so now after writing half a post about voting, I must be looking quite boring right about now...
Oh yea, you might also be wondering who I voted for (or u dnt care lol). Tho im not sure it's a good idea to say who we vote for. My mum won't even tell me who she voted for even tho she keeps saying she regrets her vote now.

Sidenote: if ur still having sleepless nights about that silly little probability problem on the last post (yeah, right) ... The answer was C) 0.3333'. I don't quite understand the explanation myself but it's to do with since having already thrown a heads on the first coin, that rules out the possibility of having thrown two tails. Therefore 1/3 outcomes=0.3333'. {HH, HT, TH} (There, i just explained something i dnt really understand myself.)

If u have a problem with that answer, tell me, and il go try debate it with my stats lecturer!;)

Education... probabilites

2005-09-12T03:36:00.000-07:00

Well my results at uni have been consistently dropping this trimester. I think it's got something to do with my philosophy that a grade/result is merely a letter/number written on a piece of paper, and as long as you have the knowledge, you don't need the grade... which i spose iv used as an excuse to slack off with studying.

Maybe it's to do with all the mind sets i've had about education:

As i've heard it, school was originally started in Greece in some year BC where it was designed to educate and mould ppl into a system whereby they were better able to serve the lords and kings of the land, and that system has largely carried on into modern times. In other words C.E.O.s and large business owners are the "lords and kings" now and we go to school to learn how to be good employees...

Completely off the topic, here's an interesting probability question:

If you toss two fair coins, and one of them is a heads, what's the probability the other one's a heads also?

Is it:

A) 0.5
B) 0.25
C) 0.3333'
D) 0.6666'
E) I couldn't give a sack of horse manure but can I have the coins anyway?

Well... you think the answer's going to be written on this post now? nope, not yet, it'll be a couple more days first lol.

Touch typing

2005-09-07T04:11:00.000-07:00

Iv ben ptractuicing otouch typing recently, which is what im doin now as i type. I am also not deleting the mistakes i make as i type either, hense the mistakes at the start,. I;l'm typing very slowly at the mioment bytut il get faster the more i ptac practice.

The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog

UI have rin run out of things to say now while touch typing so i am going to go now,.

Good bye

Sophie

2005-08-30T11:00:00.000-07:00

Well my new dog, Sophie, has turned out to be very adorable yet remain a big ratbag the whole time.

So far my biggest fears have came true and she's done an uncountable number of pisses and poos on the carpet. I still can't decide what i prefer to clean up the most. Piss doesn't look so bad but is harder to get out of the carpet. Poos looks very unsightly and can smell horrible but it's as easy to clean up as just wrapping it up in newspaper and putting in the wheely bin outside;)

Sometimes it seemed like she was deliberately trying to go on the carpet. One time when Sophie was with my mum, Sophie peed inside so my mum kicked her outside, then Sophie walked back inside again through the back door and did poos on the carpet inside as well.

Sophie always wants attention (well i spose all pets are like that) and she will always follow you around the house. She's afraid of being outside in the dark by herself and will start barking and yelping if she's forced to stay in a room by herself.

Not to mention, i'm always worried that she'll sneak into my room and tear up my shoes cos she loves to chew on things. We have chewy treats and dog toys for her to chew on but she quickly gets bored of those.

Sophie has to stay around the house to let her immune system adjust to the neighbourhood. Also we have put small gates up covering the back of the house so that we can put her outside so she can't run anywhere. But we've also put in a little dog door in the conservatory tho the gates cover that door as well.

I spose it's ironic that Sophie does shit on the carpet, yet is a "little shit" herself.

Lol, forget I said that. That was mean.

She's nothing u wouldn't expect from a puppy and she's going through a learning curve at the moment.

One thing I like about her is that when I come home at the end of the day, she comes to the door at looks at me, in a type of dog greeting manner that says "Hi!"

"Exciting" ways to get money

2005-08-23T22:55:00.000-07:00

I was listening to the radio (ZM) where I heard about some things that people were selling on TradeMe. I found them amusing enough to write about them in my blog. Here they are:

-The last cigarette ever legally smoked in a New Zealand bar. This is funny as it's only a cigarette. People smoke these everyday. The only thing that gives it value is that it was the last "legally" smoked cigarette in a bar in New Zealand.

- A heart-shaped potatoe chip. Apparently it truely is in a heart shape, and it's a relatively big potatoe chip. It was found in a BBQ flavoured packet of Kettles. The seller suggests giving it to a loved one... or something like that. The highest current bid so far is $11.00... so that's an idea. If Kettles could make funny shaped chips in all their packets, they could make a lot more money, such as selling a whole packet of heart-shaped chips. That would be more exciting than your average packet of normal oval shaped chips.

- Unopened 15 year-old coke bottle. This is currently selling for $100... And if you've been into my room, you might know that I have lots and lots of uneaten sweets and candy from over 8 years ago at least. I like to think how much these could sell for now, or if I waited another 7 years... But really, I can't imagine why anyone would want to buy these sorts of things.

And did you hear about the farmer who sold all the animals on his farm and grew lots of trees instead and so was able to start selling carbon credits? Well... I just thought that was a prime example of how "money can grow on trees" ;) That's the sorta way I want to earn money in the future. This involves buying things that will bring you money whereby you don't have to do a thing to earn it. The most common example of this is rental property; you receive a weekly cashflow of a particular amount of money for allowing tenants to stay there. And the best thing is that this money comes to you even if you don't "lift a finger" all week. You don't have to do anything until the tenants move out, whereby you can renovate the place a little bit and then find more tenants and so the very nice weekly cashflow starts coming again. Not to mention the value of the property inceases over time :P

... hmm, maybe I've been reading too many "get rich quick" books, lol.

Big news

2005-08-19T05:15:00.000-07:00

Well... I got some big news last Wednesday... I didn't think I should say anything cos I wasn't sure if it would happen... and I'm not sure if i want to get one... but we're getting a new pet.

My parents saw her while up in Carterton in a shop window. I haven't seen her yet but apparently she's really cute. And my parents made me guess what it was before they told me. I was given a couple of clues:

1) it's got four legs
2) it's about 30 cm high

My first guess was a horse! (Lol, i don't know why i said that first. I spose I just thought it was more likely that my parents would randomly buy a horse.). My second guess was a cat. But then my dad had to remind me that I'm allergic to cats so they couldn't have got a cat.

You can probably guess by now what it is. (IT'S A PUPPY!)

WE"RE GETTING A PUPPY!!! :O :D :S

It's a doberman. Just like my old dog Cora. Cora died from cancer in her throat 11 years ago when she was 16. I still miss her. And she's buried at my old house in the back yard so I may not be able to visit her grave again for a long time.

After Cora died, i was devastated. I cried a lot and mourned her. The reality I faced back then was that I had to get used to life without ever seeing Cora again in the house, or strolling around outside. She was a very friendly and peaceful dog. (And when we had Cora, I was given my first chance to eat dog biscuits. Honestly, I didn't think they tasted that bad!!!).

And after that I felt like I did not want to go through the pain of losing another pet. And so I felt like I never wanted to get another pet ever again... The sad thing is that we all have to face losing someone whom we love in our life eventually... But now my parents have gone out and bought a new puppy. And they tell me that since I have the university holidays at the moment, I have to look after her :O

So the reality I now face is:

- a smelly house
- possible piss stains on the carpet
- torn up shoes and socks
- going for dog walks
- howling whenever I try playing the guitar
- drops of slober scattered around the house
- dog fur

AND the most HORRIFYING PROSPECT is:

- bits of poop lying around outside that someone will have to clear up. And while she's a puppy, there'll be the possibly added bonus of little bits of poop lying around inside that someone will also have to clear up. (Hopefully not me)

We've been trying to think of names for her as well. We want a name that is more like a family name. Not a name like Fang, Spike or Chopper!

So far, the possibilities I've heard of are: Polly, Pipi, Sophie, Cassie, Kelly.

She's coming tomorrow, so this might be my last "petless" night for a long time. But i'm certain we'll give her all the love and attention she needs and will fit in fine.

Click!

2005-08-17T05:36:00.000-07:00

Earlier tonight, my dad was discussing some of my problems with me and how to fix them, and then he suddenly blurted out a quote to me: "nothing ventured, nothing won!"

Alarm bells rung in my head. A big clicking noise went in my mind. I felt like a big torch had suddenly been shone into the inner depths of my mind.

I used to know that quote a long time ago and would apply it to things... until i forgot about it.

If you know me well, maybe you can see in so many infinite ways that quote can be applied to me.

Anyway, I feel like I can convince myself to do so many more things now... I hope.

This hurts

2005-08-17T00:30:00.000-07:00

My ego's stricken. My limbs feel like falling off. I feel different and useless that makes me truely wonder if I am mentally retarded compared to everyone else. Life feels rather bitchy at the moment and I feel terrible for things I have mistakenly done without realising the consequences. There are some things I don't say on blogs and this is one of them.

... I've had a lot of draw-backs and ego killers now that I know the only thing I can do is try get up again, carry on, and keep trying.

Reflective thoughts

2005-08-16T03:37:00.000-07:00

hmm... I haven't wrote anything much lately. But i'm planning to change that now... I've had so many thoughts lately about how life works. I'm struggling to sift through my mind to recover and decipher all my thoughts that I've had recently.

So many times, I have wanted something but not been bothered enough to do anything about it. What is it about me? Sometimes I feel like I can't be bothered to do anything about something that I really want... in fact, that's all the time. If only I had more motivation to do things, I could probably do really well. I think that the level of success someone has with something is relative to how badly they want to succeed with what ever it is. For example, a famous actor. When a famous actor first starts out, they would have had a very big passion for acting. With that passion, they would have became really good at acting, and enjoyed acting too. They didn't have to force themselves to do it, and they would have had an abundance of self-motivation to help them because they enjoyed it... I am talking about the inner fire that drives them on.

I was told something rather funny today. That my voice sounds like the type of voice a motivational speaker would have, and that I should be come a motivational speaker; I wasn't expecting that. I had never ever ever considered myself to be anything like a motivational speaker. I'm too quiet, I'm often shy, I don't have much to say, and I consider myself to be more of a listener than a speaker, even tho that is a character trait about myself that I don't like, but I have learnt to accept it because so far in all my years, I have found that fighting things about myself that I don't like doesn't get me anywhere.

I have learnt to accept that I am someone who is a "lone ranger". Often times, I prefer to be alone. And i didn't like this, and i used to try and fight it but it got me no where. No matter what I did, I still preferred to be alone... Don't get me wrong, I like being with ppl and doing things with other ppl, but I have trouble standing long periods of time around ppl. By long periods of time, I mean approximately 20 hours. As a person, I tend to look into things more and see them happening, rather than make them happen myself. This is another thing I don't like about myself and i have realised that I can't seem to change it.

As time goes on, from all the ideas that I have about how to live life better, I always come back to this one: "you just have to be yourself". Oh well. That's not the end of the world i spose.

A bit sad I think but still fun

2005-08-15T07:27:00.000-07:00

Hehe, is this sad or what?

I'm recording myself playing Holiday (yes, the song by Greenday) on electric guitar, and then playing it back and singing along to it :O

LOL!

Electric guitars... and custard?

2005-08-06T03:16:00.000-07:00

I bought an electric guitar last thursday (Big day for me;)) It's blue and white and due to some sort of crazy mentalilty in my mind, I keep wanting to relate my guitar to custard... Yep you heard/read right: custard. I know electric guitars have nothing to do with custard, it's just I keep thinking of custard when ever I see an electric guitar now. And I've forgotten how this odd idea even got inside my head.

Funny thing is I don't like custard. I haven't eaten custard in years. Let alone seen it. The last time I remember eating custard was in a crappy old baby creéche (close to Hutt Valley High School) when I was about 3 years old where a snotty mean lady was trying to make me eat it... it's funny the things we remember...

How often have you ever had a dream about something real and then woken up, and then ur not sure about whether what u dreamed about was real? But most times by thinking about everything that I did the day before, I can usually work out whether what I dreamed about really happened.

Da polleece

2005-07-30T05:51:00.000-07:00

Wow, i got pulled over by a police car today which is the first time that's ever happened to me.

It happened as I was driving along to an interestion near Station Village (has Western Hutt station in it and lollipop's playland). I approached the intersection, and not expecting to see any cars, I started accelerating. While I was accelerating, another car came by which just happened to be a police car. I quickly slammed the breaks while making a skidding screeching noise... The police car gave way to me to let me come out, but seeing as I don't tihnk it was at a Give Way sign, it was probably so it could drive behind me and pull me over... which he did after driving behind me for a few seconds before turning on his blue and red flashing lights. A small dose of andrenaline came through me at the time and I began to prepare myself for a large fine for any reason that I could not think of (maybe I didn't have a current WOF or maybe I could have possibly been charged for wreckless driving, I wasn't sure. And that was the one moment so far in my life where I myt have killed myself if I didn't have my license with me)...anyway the officer got out of his car and checked my licsense (he possibly wanted to make sure I wasn't on my Restricted seeing as it was around about 10:20pm) and WOF and asked if I lived around here and where I lived. He even suprisingly told me he thought I had an English accent!!! and asked for an explanation of what I did at the intersection. Finally he told me to brush up on my Give Way Rules... mind you I know them well enough, it's just that in some conditions (like night-time rain) it's hard to see which places on the road have Give Way signs.

So eventually I came home. Told Mum and Dad about it. However I should admit that I was all really amused about it. They didn't really tell me off or even give me some "tips" on road safety. After that I just went up stairs and played guitar. Playing guitar is like the thing that I do when i'm either: happy, worried, stressed, frustrated, annoyed, angry, bored, or even procrastinating. In other words I play guitar all the time when ever I can when I'm at home. I'm more crazy about the guitar now than I ever was about the clarinet or the saxophone. I might have to marry it one day. Hey, it beats picking ur finger-nails (just joking).

Civil Industrial Action

2005-07-27T03:02:00.000-07:00

Today at uni there was civil industrial action taking place by uni staff or library staff, not sure which, whereby they were trying to stop students entering the central library by forming a big line of people accross the entrance to the library (which was supposedly called the "pivot line"). They held signs in the air demanding higher pay and one of them was saying through a speakerphone:

"We ask that you do not cross the pivot line. This is industrial action by university staff. We are doing this to disrupt the actions of [our employer?] and to catch their attention which involves blocking use of the library. This is for higher pay, but also, we believe we are doing this , in the long run, for the benefit of students and their education as well. We ask that you respect this and do not cross the pivot line."

As other students ignored the protesters and crossed the pivot line, they would say:

"again, we ask that you do not cross the pivot line."

They claimed it was also for the benefit of students' education, but I had assignments and other work I had to do whereby it would be bad for my "education" if I could not enter the library.

However even though the protesters were trying to make people not go into the library, they did say that they could not stop you if you tried... and I spoke to one of them to try show respect for what they were doing and had a small conversation with him... but even though I felt a little guilty about going crossing the pivot line and into the library, I still went.

Heh, and as I crossed the pivot line, I noticed that the protesters did not politely make a little space for me to walk through so I had to give a little push to get through which I thought was slightly amusing.

When I got inside the library, there was a suprisingly normal number of students inside, almost as if there was no protest going on at all!

Talking on the phone!

2005-07-14T03:36:00.000-07:00

I am talking to Vincent on the phone a the moment... I am going to ask him what I should write here soon..."SAINT BAROSSA THIRAZ is a bloody good wine! It's a lively and elegant red wine with peppery aromas and hints of mocha. It is 8.3 standard drinks!:O and it goes very well with camembert." That's what he says;)

Talking about wine is making me want alcohol so I am going to open some beer now:P

The smart and the not so smart

2005-07-07T22:49:00.000-07:00

Something that might astonish you is that I happen to envy people who can talk and talk and constantly yack on about things for ages; a real chatter-box . I think being able to do this fills in silent awkward moments during conversations really well. But anyone who seems to be like this, especially when they're trying to argue about things, becomes all fired up and will go on a verbal rampage about why they are right. People who are able to do this also seem to have more leadership qualities to them as well. But one thing I've noticed is that occasionally, people who are like this are often wrong. (Tho not always. I spose i am thinking of George W Bush). They're so certain about what they're saying is right, that they haven't bothered to go through what they said to check for any flaws in their logic***. I think that people who are 100% certain all the time are idiots since you can never be 100% certain about anything. For example, if someone said that they were 100% certain that an earthquake wouldn't happen within the next ten minutes after reading this, I would think that they were a bit "silly" as how can you be absolutely sure that there would not be an earthquake in the next ten minutes. Cos what if there was a set of ten minutes where an earth quake did happen. (If you have just read this and an earth quake did happen within 10 minutes of reading it... well i'll be damned).

Another example is if you flipped a coin. You can't be 100% certain that if you flip a coin, you will get a heads or a tails. What if as soon as you flipped a coin, the whole world blew up in a nuclear holocaust, and you, along with the coin, were destroyed, and thus...you therefore never got a heads or a tails. Therefore i think it is impossible to be 100% certain about anything. Maybe 99.99999...'% certain about some things but not 100% certain

George W. Bush is a brilliant example of this. He is a good leader, and people follow him, yet he is a pot-head. This also compares to Hitler.
Hitler supposedly was smart AND ambitious, or you could just call him bloody crazy, yet people followed him around like glue, and served his every bidding. Why did everyone do that? Why did the majority of people want to do what Hitler said? Could you just say that everyone in Germany around the late 1930's were complete dumbheads for following some crazy asshole!?... I don't think so.For Hitler trying to conquer all of Europe (and also eventually the rest of the world) and maintaining control over Europe was very ambitious; and I wouldn't call him an asshole for being ambitious. But I would call him an asshole for wanting to accomplish something that would spread so much pain, hunger, distress, famine, and terror upon millions of people... Yet people followed him, and carried out his orders, even though there were probably millions of poeple smarter than he (Hitler) was.

So this is one example of smart people doing what incompetant people tell them to do.

Now I mention George W. Bush. He's also certainly a good leader, but many people question how smart he is. George Bush has said many things that have made us question his intelligence. Typical "Bushisms" include:

"I know that human beings and fish can coexist peacefully."
"It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it."
"They misunderestimated me." ...............................

(George Bush quotes found from http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0743222229/ref=ase_pegasusstarpacif/102-3479214-6080921 .)

So George Bush is evidently not very smart at all. He sounds like someone who can feel 100% certain about some things quite often;) but he is still very good at leading his country.

So, sometimes, we have to ask ourselves this question: if someone was a really really good leader, and was excellent with people, yet could not think logically and did not even know something as basic as 1 + 1 = 2, would people still follow them as a leader?

My guess is that: ha ha, yes they would because people are suckers for people who are leaders who feel certain about themselves and who are able to charm people into doing just about anything. But that's not the point.

My point is that the world is full of really smart brainy people who sit back and do nothing for reasons being they may be too shy or unconfident, meanwhile the people who can't even add 1 and 1 together lead this planet, Earth, into destruction.

***If you have carefully thought about what I wrote and happen to find any flaws in my logical reasoning, i reserve the right to maintain that I am actually indeed very brainy. Thank you.

Random thoughts

2005-06-30T22:59:00.000-07:00

Here's a list of all the random thoughts currently going through my head at the moment:

-Hmm why don't I just write a quick post on my blog
-I'm tired
-I don't feel like doing anything
-I don't want to work tomorrow
-Damn, I don't get to watch the Lions vs All blacks game tomorrow because I am working
-I'm saying "don't" a lot
Yay my sis gave me Spongebob and Patrick boxers for my birthday but i suspect they're too small
-Why is life so demanding
-I'm so busy
-University starts again soon at the same time the school holidays start
-Ow the exzema on my hands is starting to hurt. Better put some cream on my hands soon
-F*** I forgot to ring my mum today about paying my university fees!!! Seriously, I only just remembered now:!!!S... awww, I don't know what to do!:(

It's my Birthday

2005-06-30T03:36:00.000-07:00

Wow it's my birthday today! I was born at 12.35am on 30th June 1986!!! Ya see, i was born in the morning, which is funny cos im not a morning person;) But, then again, I am a night person, and 12.35am is at night? hmm i fail to find a way to make that make sense so i'll forget i said that.

Now I will sing happy birthday to myself because I have no friends (just KIDDING) and everyone hates me (*JUST kidding!):

Happy Birthday to me.
Happy Birthday to me.
Happy Birthday dear Samuel Bradley Field.
Happy Birthday to me.

There are so many different versions of Happy Birthday. Here's an old version. (First of all here is my disclaimer: the following has levels of immaturity, lameness and language that may not be suitable for really mature people. I/we strongly advise discretion.)

Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
You're a hundred and two
And you smell like a poo

N.B. I HAVE NEVER SUNG THAT SINCE I WAS ABOUT EIGHT YEARS OLD BECAUSE I FIND IT TO BE VERY IMMATURE and LAME.

Lol, here's another "better" version that i got sent by text:

Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
You smell like a monkey
And you act like one too.

Here's another one I made up:

Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
You're now a year older
Look what you've been through.

UnIfOrM

2005-06-27T05:21:00.000-07:00

I have began to sense more than ever now, that wearing a uniform defines how people identify you.

The reason I say this is because ever since I have started working at Domino's, I have felt that I have became "just another Domino's pizza delivery guy". It has gone so far that I feel it has became my second identity: "normal me" by day, and "just another Domino's pizza delivery guy by night".

For example, when i went on my first delivery i ever did, I was delivering to a middle-aged women. When I went to meet her at her door, she said "oh hi, Domino's". She said "Domino's" as if I was the whole Domino's pizza company combined into one person, even though i had only just started working there and was only delivering a pizza. I felt like saying "HelloooOOO, my name's SAMMMM! Read the name tag, lady!", but I didn't because I know it's a common mistake for ppl to make, especially older people (I dunno why), and apart from that, she seemed like a pretty friendly woman.

Also, i fear that if my parents (or anyone else for that matter) see me wearing my work uniform, they will look at me as more of a system, rather than a person. (I always try to hide my uniform around the house, under a big pile of clothes or hidden away in my wardrobe).

I have never experienced this problem on this larger scale before. For instance, I did have to wear school uniform to both Hutt Intermediate and Hutt Valley High School, but the problem wasn't as bad then. I did feel like i was becoming a part of the school by wearing the school uniform, but it wasn't so bad because nearly all my friends had to wear uniform as well. And then, eventually, going to the school (either Hutt Intermediate of HVHS) became a part of my identity, and I began to wear my uniform with pride. Ya see, I was one of those ppl that supported wearing school uniform;)... for a number of reasons because:

1) You don't have to decide what to wear each morning
2) You don't have to worry about what's in good fashion sense to wear
3) You can save all your best clothes up for better occasions
4) School uniforms often make you look smarter

And there are possibily even more reasons that I can't think of right now.

But my point is... that wearing a uniform associates you with the organisation that the uniform portrays, even though it is just a whole lot of clothing, and you assume the identity of the organisation while you are wearing it.

Now, there is a type of person that absolutely annoys me. And that is the type of person who sees someone wearing a uniform, and then assumes that person to be just a drone/pawn of the organisation the uniform associates with, instead of an individual. This type of person feels that they can demand anything from anyone within an organisation. For example, if this type of person ordered a pizza from a pizza company, and their pizza hadn't arrived after an hour, they would ring up the pizza company and shout, scream and rant at the first person they came into contact with who worked at the pizza place, whining things to them like "where is my pizza?", "what is your problem?", "doesn't your company want to make any profit???"meanwhile the poor person on the other side is thinking or saying things like:"ok, i'm sorry. Relax while i go find out what the problem was", "it's not MY fault!!!", "go away you old rant!" and "doesn't this person see me as an individual. I am only an employee here and it does not affect me how much profit this company makes". (Don't get me wrong. Companies do need to make profit in the long-run.) I have never had this happen to me so far, but i have seen it happen before... because i see my dad as being like this. I love my dad heaps and heaps, but i try to imply my point to him.

Wow, i feel a lot better now, but i wasn't intending on writing this much... I only ment to write a couple of paragraphs. But this is the reason why i like my blog: I can write whatever i like in it!:D

The root of my frustrations

2005-06-22T22:06:00.000-07:00

I've been feeling increasingly frustrated recently where this frustration has built up into large quantites over a couple of months.

I feel the root of my frustration has been due to one thing: DRIVING.

I am SICK of driving everywhere. It's becoming so tedious. I feel like i havent had a day in weeks where i havnt had to drive anywhere. Another problem I have with driving is that i feel that the more i drive, the more impatient i become, which means the more likely i am to take risks while driving and so become more likely to be involved in an accident.

This is made worse by the fact that i also often have to drive around for work. (I would have preferred to work instore but they were really insistent that I deliver as well). The problem with delivering is that you have to make sure you can cover petrol costs, you have to use your own car which increases "wear and tear", but the biggest problem is insurance. The excess I have to pay for insurance if i crash is$3, 300, which, in my view, defies the point of having insurance because I am extremely unlikely to be in an accident that will cost more than $3, 300 in repairs or anything else. However, if I was under 21, this insurance excess fee would only be $1,600 which is still a lot, but is much less than the fee I would currently have to pay.

I also always have to drive my sis everywhere and i am getting sick of it and becoming frustrated (with her). Whenever I get a text message from her, i can always guess before i even read the text mesage that she wants to be picked up from somewhere. (I feel guilty when i become frustrated with other ppl as i reason that maybe i am just being really selfish).

So what I would say to someone who has their full license would be:" you should have got your license after everyone else has got theirs because after you get your license, everyone will want you to drive them everywhere"

-My advice to someone with their full license would be "encourage all your family and friends to get their full license as fast as they can.";)

-My advice to someone without their full license would be: "get your full license as fast as you can a.s.a.p.!";)

I'm ok with driving a little, but not too much.

Piiizza and fun-filled market research

2005-06-20T00:19:00.000-07:00

I might have got a job at Domino's Pizza... well actually i know iv got a job there, but there's only one complication: they want me to deliver pizza most of the time instead of being a customer representative. The main problem with delivering pizza is insurance: Domino's Pizz is meant to provide insurance but I have not been able to see a copy of their insurance policy yet, so i am not yet sure if i can deliver pizza.

Also, funnily enough, i am participating in some paid market research for some company (forgotten the name) about pizza and sushi! Coincidently they are both my 1st and 2nd favourite food respectively:P And i'm getting paid $50 for it, which will only involve answering about an hours worth of questions. That's equivalent to $50 an HOUR!!:D... but it's only for one hour;) They may even give me lots of pizza to eat while i'm "working"! :P:P:P

No longer classified as bs

2005-06-01T04:26:00.000-07:00

ATTENTION:

Due to a majority vote of three people, including myself, Maddox.xmission.com (see link on right-hand side-bar) is no longer considered to be a load of bs, partly due to rational and political reasoning.

Thank you for your attention.

Trains and exams

2005-05-24T00:49:00.000-07:00

Well... i can tell i need to write something more in my blog as iv been wanting to talk a whole lot of nonsense lately, ranging from conversation topics about snot from ur nose, to the Boogerman and about Upside Down Turtles... Yea, that's right... upside down turtles... Dnt tell me that all sounds random, cos I know it is. (I blame one person for all this, and her name starts with L!... You know who you are!! LOL ;)

On to another topic... On the way home today i accidentally caught the express train to Waterloo again, instead of taking the train that stops off at Ava. This is the second time iv done this, still encounting. I thought about catching a train back from Waterloo to Ava, but all there was were annoying express trains back to Wellington for the next 30 minutes, and i certainly DID NOT want to go back to Wellington. And it was under 30 minutes that i thought i could walk back to Ava anyway. So I walked back to Ava...

As it happened, I got back to Ava station just when the train "i would have caught" arrived. So it would have made hardly any difference in time if i had caught the train. Plus I had a monthly train pass, so it wouldnt have cost me anymore money if I had caught the train.

But I think it was a better idea to walk in order to get exercise and relieve stress, cos walking relieves stress. But i wasnt very stressed anyway, but being less stressed is always better.

Funny im not stressed since I have four exams coming up. I havnt really been studying for them. Im jst relying on me being able to come up with brilliant answers in the exams, hehe.

That's one idea for a Tui ad:

"I'm going to pass my exams without studying ...Yea, right"

You know that saying: "fail to plan, plan to fail."
Well in my case, it's: "fail to plan, plan to suceed."
Sorry, lame.

Dancing and toiletseats

2005-05-15T02:29:00.000-07:00

As i write this, on tv at the moment, there is a tv show on that's called something along the lines of Dancing With the Stars. I watched it for a little while, seeing everyone doing all these fancy moves, and then I began to think 'ok, as mildly entertaining as this is watching people dance and perform fancy dance moves, so what? so what if they can jump in the air and do a 360 spin?

Then i remembered the time when i was entertained by someone fitting their whole body through a toilet seat.

So just for comparison, would you prefer to:

Watch people do fancy dance moves OR See someone squeezing whole body through toilet seat

I decided that the toilet seat act was far more entertaining than watching people dance. Am I being immature, or does this make sense? (N.B. This is a rhetorical question. I know i'm not being immature and I know I'm making sense;))

Osama Bin Laden Joke

2005-05-06T19:57:00.000-07:00

This is a really smart idea!

"If captured, what should we do with Osama bin Laden?"

"Killing him will only create a martyr. Holding him prisoner will inspire his comrades to take hostages to demand his release. Therefore, how about this alternative?"

"Let the Special Forces, Seals or whatever covertly capture him, fly him to an undisclosed hospital and have surgeons quickly perform a complete sex change operation. Then we return her to Afghanistan to live as a woman under the Taliban regime."

SI Units

2005-05-02T22:02:00.000-07:00

I was looking through one of my chemistry textbooks and i found a page that defined the definitions of all the SI units. And so I started wondering things like, "how did they first decide how big a metre was?", or "how did they determine how long a second should last for?". So i read on, and found the definitions to be so interesting that i wanted to put them on my blog. (Only the most interesting ones tho. Cos they are interesting, i think anyway;P)

Metre: the metre is the length of path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/(299 792 458) of a second.

Kilogram: the kilogram is the unit of mass; it is equal to the mass of the international prototype of the kilogram.

Second: the second is the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom.

Ampere: the ampere is that constant curren which, if maintained in two straight parallel conductors of equal length, or negligible cross-section, and placed 1 metre apart in vacuum, would produce between these conductors a force equal to 2 x 10^-7 newton per metre of length.

Kelvin: the kelvin, the unit of thermodynamic temperature, is the fraction 1/273.16 of the thermodynamic temperature of the triple point of water.

Candela: the candela is the luminous intensity, in a given direction, of a source that emits monochromatic radiation of frequency 540 x 10^12 hertz and that has a radiant intensity in that direction of (1/683) watt per steradian.

Mole: the mole is the amount of substance of a system which contains as many elementary entities as there are carbon atoms in 0.012 kilogram of carbon-12. The elementary entities must be specified and may be atoms, molecules, ions, electrons, other particles, or specified groups of such particles.

(Source: Awlward and Findlay. SI Chemical Data. John Wiley and Sons Australia Ltd, 2002.)

2005-05-02T00:02:00.000-07:00

Shortest post ever

2005-05-01T23:58:00.000-07:00

/\ /
The above shall be the shortest post i've ever done.

Assignments and tutorials

2005-04-28T21:06:00.000-07:00

The assignments never stop coming. Whenever i finish one, there's always at least another one that i need to do: I do four papers this trimester at university in which I get one chemistry assignment a week, one economics assignment every two weeks, one Commerce and Administration(FCOM) assignment every three weeks, and one Marketing tutorial preparation assignment every two weeks. But together, all this piles up so that it seems that i hardly ever have a free weekend where I don't have to complete any assignments. I guess it's not that bad considering one of my friends from my FCOM tutorial has got 4 assignments to complete in 6 days! That's a lot. I'd have trouble doing that.

Also, i'm really liking my FCOM tutorials now. I always go to them slightly nervous for some reason, but when i'm there, i always have a laugh and get to talk to some interesting people. In fact, i don't ever remember yawning in my FCOM tutorials (I can't compare that to any of my other tutorials). And we do learn things as well. I think we've just got an interesting tutor who knows how to make things interesting (plus I have some interesting people in my group for which we are meant to run an imaginary business in. My group specialises in agriculture and is called "Cows R' us" hehe.

Aww, the shameage

2005-04-23T21:28:00.000-07:00

I was walking along the street today, and i walked past an ANZAC person collecting donations for anzac day. My first reaction was to walk straight past without even considering donating any money. Then in a period of a few split seconds, I thought about how horrible WWI and WWII were, and especially about the poor brave soldiers that fought and lost their lives at Gallipoli. It was then that i realised I had to donate some money. So i stopped walking and opened my wallet: I had a $1 coin and a $2 coin... I had to make a decision,

The options I had were either:
1. Forget about it and walk away
2. Donate $1 coin
3. Donate $2 coin
4. Donate both $1 coin and $2 coin.

If i just carried on walking away, i would be able to save some money which could be spent on other 'more important', selfish things like buying bottles of 1.6L coke rather than 1L bottles of coke... and well, money is hard to get when ur a full time student with no constant supply of income.

If i gave the $1 coin, i would have saved $1(or $2) which could be spent on other things like buying lunch when i was at university or to help pay for a train ticket if i was on the train and couldn't find my train pass. (Cos being kicked off the train for not being able to buy a ticket would be very embarassing.)

If I gave the $2 coin, i would feel better about having made at least a decent donation, and would be able to proudly tell myself: 'I am not cheap.'

If i gave the $1 coin and the $2 coin, i would be feeling so much better that i would probably have been on a natural high for the rest of the day.

In about 10 seconds, i had made my choice: I would give my $1 coin. So i walked up to the retired anzac soldier and told him i would like to make a donation. He didn't say anything but he smiled at me. I put the $1 coin into the donation bucket. As i did this, i had a quick look at what other people had given: all i remember seeing was a bloody $10 note. Someone had given a $10 note??! Aww i feel the shameage! (Unless it was just intentionally placed there...)

Then i took the red anzac flower that was implicitly offered to me. Judging by the anzac soldier's facial expressions, i think i might have rudely grabbed the flower out of his hand: Aww im so guttered!

Then i tried to pin the flower onto my t-shirt, and found i cudn't figure out how to pin it on properly. It kept falling off when i started walking. So i started smiling and tried to convey the message to the other people walking behind me, 'don't worry about me guys, i'll get this eventually', in case someone offered to help me pin the flower on. No one did.
But in the end i just stuck the flower in my pocket and marched on. Because to me, making a donation to a charity shouldn't be about getting recognition for it. It's more about having cared and made a donation to it, and in the case of the ANZACs, it is about saying "we shall remember them!"

(Hmm... maybe i shud have given all the money in my wallet... *Jokes*)

Now for something slightly different

2005-04-21T02:12:00.000-07:00

Soo... I need something to write about... what can i write about...i don't really know.... quick, I need something random to suddenly POP into my head so i can write about it.... PEANUT BUTTER!... naa, that's too random...ryt, i'm really bored so im going to count to ten: one two three four five six seven eight nine ten... nope, still bored. Ah well... life isnt always fair, ha.
Oh yeah, that reminds me about something i wanted to say.

Answer this: Why be normal, when you can be slightly weird, and so appear a lot more interesting?

e.g Pretend you are walking down the street and you see a business man walking down the street, wearing a black suit, a black tie, brown hair, carrying a black suitcase, practically blending in with everyone else and appearing to be ur average working person.
However...(can u see where i'm going with this?)
Now pretend you are walking down the street and you see someone a bit more 'different', such as a business man wearing a yellow suit, a pink tie, green hair, carrying a blue suitcase and standing out completely from everyone else...
Question: What person would you be most interested to know about?(Post ur answer as 'comments' if u want)

ok... and now, for the sake of being a little different, i'm going to write what i just said backwards...and if you like, u can also try reading it out loud... but that's only for really weird people...

)tnaw fi 'stnemmoc' sa rewsna tu tsop(
?tuoba ot detseretni tsom eb uoy dluow nosrep tahw :noitseuQ
...esle enoyreve morf yletelpmoc tuo gnidnats dna esactius eulb a gniyrrac ,riah neerg ,eit knip a ,tius wolley a gniraew nam ssenisub a sa hcus ,'tnereffid'erom tib a enoemos ees uoy dna teerts eht nwod gniklaw era uoy dneterp won
)nac uoy ees erehw m'i gniog htiw siht(...revewoh
ru eb ot gniraeppa dna esle enoyreve htiw ni gnidnelb yllacitcarp ,esactius kcalb a gniyrrac ,riah nworb ,eit kcalb a ,tius kcalb a gniraew ,teerts eht nwod gniklaw nam ssenisub a ees uoy dna teerts eht nwod gniklaw era uoy dneterp g.e

(Have you gone mad yet? Cos on my 'bullshit 'o' meter, that'd rate about a 9/10)

(I don't blame you for skipping over this bit if you did. It is rather pointless to read...)

(27/04/05: I'm thinking about deleting this post because it's absolute nonsense)

Top Fivers/Sevens

2005-04-16T02:36:00.000-07:00

My top five favourite food:
1. Pizza
2. Sushi
3. Potatoe top pies
4. chocolate
5. cracker biscuits

My top seven favourite drinks
1. beer
2. burbon
3. fizzy drink(coke etc.)
4. vodka
5. wine
6. chocolate milk
7. natural orange juice

Top five short jokes:
1. Why did the chicken cross the road?
Cos its car was on the other side
2. Why are soccer fields always wet?
Cos the players keep on dribbling
3. What has a bottom at the top?
A leg
4. Why should u never play golf in Wainui?
Cos where ever you hit the ball, it will always go down a hole
5. Knock knock!
Who's there?
I dunno...

Top five favourite colours:
1. royal blue
2. yellow
3. green
4. red
5. "grey-peach beige!!"

Top five things to do when ur drunk:
1. Get more drunk
2. Walk in a straight line
3. Say 'specificity' really fast as many times as you can
4. Tell everyone that u knew someone who was electroencephalographically challenged once.
5. Do things that u wouldn't otherwise be able to do and then excuse yourself for doing it because you were drunk.
6. slur all ur words and put 'sh' in front of every word that u say
7. play drinking games

Top five random numbers that i can think of at the moment:
1. 34746
2. 13
3. 542
4. 667
5. 1, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 001

Tops five pick-up lines for science students (from Vic magzine Salient:
1. Can I help you fill your test tube?
2. You and me have a chemical reaction
3. You wanna see my beta particles?
4. May I fertilise your egg?
5. I'm not wearing anything under my lab coat

Top five useless facts
1. Bill Gates earns $200 a second
2. All polar bears are left handed
3. Pigs can't jump
4. Bats always turn left when exiting a cave
5. Flys taste things with their legs

Top seven ways of saying hello to people:
1. Hey
2. Hello
3. Hi
4. *say hello in another language*
5. g'day mate
6. g'day governor *big aussie accent*
7. Greetings Earth human... muahahaha

Top five most commonly said things in a conversation:
1. lol
2. yea
3. ok
4. na
5. ...*snort*

Top seven ways of saying goodbye to people:
1. bye
2. c ya later
3. toodle-doo
4. *say good bye in another language*
5. fuck off
6. hasta la vista, baby!
7. G2g 2 bed now, bye

Why do i have to do a poem?... cos i can

2005-04-12T21:55:00.000-07:00

I actually feel like writing a poem today. This would be the first time ever that i have written a poem on my own free will. (I love living in a free country). All the other times i have been forced to write poems at primary school...

Like a flock of sheep, they follow;
The dog barks at them.
The grey coloured pigeons,
that eat the bread thrown to them.
One grey pigeon, tried to choke down;
a piece of bread, too big for it to swollow.
And spat it back out for the rest of them.

The rats, that live inside the walls of a house;
eat the crumbs left over lying on the floor.
They are apart of a race:
A race for the big cheese.
The piece of cheese never comes to them;
and they wonder:"if we stay in one place,
the cheese will find us eventually."
- And these rats, that keep racing.
Still never move.

The cheetah:
Who strides like the wind,
though it may be fast,
creeps up on its potential meal.
But the meal is aware,
and springs away before death.
What? Isn't it fair that one dies, so another can live?
Is it not the law of the jungle?
Perhaps, the cheetah thinks:
Has it just been cheated?

20/04/2005
There is a big blue clock downstairs.
It goes tick tock tick.
I stare at it.
It stares back.
Tick tock tick.
It seems to be mocking me;
telling me i will run out of time eventually.
Tick tock tick.
For when i do,
that might be the end.

Diets...

2005-04-10T03:42:00.000-07:00

Who needs to go on diets. No one really. Like, many dieting programs are absolutely nonsense. In fact, dieting companies probably want you to stay fat so that you can try their next break-through dieting program. 'Lose 10 kilograms for $10' or something like that. In my opinion, the most likely way to get fit and stay fit is not particularly to go on diets, but do get exercise. And what's the best and most fun way to get exercise? By taking up a sport such as tennis, rugby, judo, karate etc. These not only provide some means to get fit, but they are constantly every week or so(when you do practice for them, and play games with clubs or friends) and they are fun. And not only would these help make you fit, but they would also have a practical purpose to them. Such as if you played lots of tennis, you would become very good at it. Or if you practiced karate, you could defend yourself when your being attacked by some bastards up a dark alley.(Hit them with a 'Judo chop', or a 'Karate Deathlock'), when initially your only motivation was to get fit and stay fit and fit into those new clothes you might like to buy which you saw in the shop the other day.

Not me tho. I don't usually like clothes shopping. I already have all the clothes I need. Normally, i prefer looking for that latest release computer game that people are rating as a five-star "must have", "kicks ass" computer game... I got a really good deal the other day in fact: I got two games that together would be worth $160, and i got them both for $60. That's not even half price!:P I thought this was stealing and that i might get arrested when i left the shop, but the shop assistant said that's what the price was (so in other words, if the police had arrested me, i would have said "it wasn't me, it was the guy in the shop's fault". Then i can imagine the police saying "umm that guy doesnt even work here...")... Anyway, that didnt happen fortunately and I got them both. WoOt, yyaay... And now... I ask myself... does that mean i'm cheap? Am I a cheap bastard? Well, the answer to that is probably not. And that is because it was a sale. And we all happen to take advantage of sales when they happen. In fact you're probably not smart if u've never been to a sale. It is part of being human that we all go to our favourite shop's sales isnt it? In fact, it is a human right to go to all the sales we like. So now, since you have just about finished reading this post(don't start reading the others either yet), go look in the newspaper for the next coming sale so you can go and buy loads of cheap stuff.

What!? Time for another rant already? NCEA sucks

2005-03-20T22:21:00.000-08:00

NCEA sucks. If ur an NCEA noob, NCEA stands for National Certificate of Educational Achievement. In every subject, the topics that you study are called 'Achievement Standards'. Each Achievement standard (AS) is worth a certain amount of credits, usually ranging from 2-4 credits each, but you can get the odd achievement standard that is worth 5 or 6 credits. When you do a test for an AS, you are given a final mark for that AS which can be either Not Achieved(this is the fail grade), Achievement(Achievement or beyond is a 'pass the AS grade'), Achievement with Merit or Achievement with Excellence. No matter what grade you get as long as it is a passing grade, you still get the same number of credits. For example someone with Excellence will still get the same number of credits as someone who Achieved.

Now, something i dont get about the grades is why dont they just give you a (0 being not achieved)0, 1, 2 or 3(3 being Excellence) rather than introducing gimicky names for these grades like Achievement, etc.. with all this crap going on, you might as well invent some of ur own grades like Achievement with Awesomeness or Achievement with Distinction or Achievement with Brilliance or Achievement with Utter Nonsense. It's probably true that NCEA likes to say what people with each grade can do. For example in many ASs, the criteria for Achieved is often 'Describe', Merit is often 'Explain' and Excellence is often 'Discuss'. However NCEA tests never account for the fact that if you had one more night to finish your work, you might have been able to 'Discuss' your topic, rather than 'Explain' it, and therefore achieve with Excellence. Or when you do an NCEA test. Lets say you screwed the test up with one little mistake and thus got Not Achieved, but you know that if you could sit that test just one more time again, you would be able to get Excellence. In fact that nearly happened to me once. In a Level 2 physics internal, i was going to get Not achieved because i wrote a right answer, scribbled it out, then wrote a wrong answer right next to it. This little error was enough to make me fail the whole test, but since the teachers felt sorry for me, they gave me one more chance to correct my error (which I sucessfully did) and so got Excellence. But I can't help wondering how many other people have actually been screwed over by this 'one mistake, fail the whole test' thing. This is yet another reason why NCEA SUCKS BIG `#$@!^ %&^* *&(^($#@. Also not to mention that fact that if u fail an AS, you get shit-all for doing it. In other words, if you spent a whole weekend of your precious spare time finishing an NCEA Achievement Standard, and you failed it just because of some technicality(e.g. indented paragraphs rather than leaving spaces between ur paragraphs) then you get absolutely nothing for it. No recognition for trying to do it at ALL!!! Just like getting a 0% mark for it. But if your worried that ur spend ages working on an internal and fail it, then there’s a solution that someone I know did(AND IM NOT GOING TO SAY NAMES). For a physics internal, they just copied and pasted information off the internet for their work, then just gave a different web site as their reference so none of the markers/moderators could tell. Now believe it or not, they got a Merit. Which would be exactly the same as someone who spent their whole weekend trying to get Excellence, and got a Merit instead because their work wasn’t quite up to an excellence ‘standard’. Percentage marks are better because they give a much fairer, more detailed and clearer, indication of the persons abilities.

However, a problem that I have with all grading systems, not only NCEA, but Bursary, School certificate, Sixth form certificate etc., is that they intentionally discrimate against dumb people. I mean, if you were someone really dumb, how would you like it if someone came and rubbed it in your face that you are the dumbest person in your class, or possibly the whole school... (dumb sounds a too harsher word so i will say 'not smart')... if you weren't smart, you probably would have left school at an early age because you can not stand this grading discrimination crap being rubbed in ur face that everyone else is better than you... So what is this world coming to?. First, we discriminated women, then we discovered black skinned people so we discriminated black skinned people too. And now with all these fundamentlist hard-core Islamic terrorists around, we start suspecting every Islamic person to be a terrorist, thus discriminating peace-loving Islams as well. And, now, we have moved on to 'dumb' people: people who just aren't good at learning things. Is this fair? NO! So in these grading systems that every school around the world is guilty of using, every school is guilty of discrimination against these sorts of people, and so are 100% guilty of Human Rights violations.

Me work, No play

2005-03-19T00:55:00.000-08:00

I spent most of the day working today at Trentham Racecourse. The pay was good: $21 an hour. No, I'm kidding. It was somewhere between $10 and $12. And worked for about 7 and a half hours today.

And I went to Edgefest yesterday. And mother of god!, there are some weird people around. Such as, at Edgefest, I (1) talked/flirted(sorta) with this random 19 year old chick in the guy's toilets who kept wanting to tell me how much she wanted to lay 13 year old boys (2) had at least 2 chicks pinch me on the ass in the moshpit for no reason at all (I mean, what the hell!!!) And it hurt. *cries*:) (3) Had this little kid try scam 3 bucks off me for a glowstick, the little brat (4) After buying a blue glowstick, the festival camera kept showing me waving it arOund in the moshpit on screen( I swear, I so wanted to draw glasses and a moustache on the band players, but my hand couldn't reach high enough on screen)... And I nearly lost one of my good jackets but found it lying on the floor in the moshpit fortunately. However, I did lose my cellphone. I've tried ringing it like, 5 times, but no one answers. Some people can be so cheap that they steal cellphones. But i don't care because it gives me a good excuse to buy a new, even better one. At the moment, I'm definitely going to get a Telecom phone tho... probably one of those new basic flip-out ones .

Anyway, I can think of a dozen other things I should be doing at the moment like doing my chemistry assignment or writing up my legal assignment(both due Tuesday 22nd March), but I can't be bothered. I'll do them tomorrow (yeah, right!)

This is my chance

2005-03-15T22:39:00.000-08:00

Finally, a place where I can shit out all the bullshit I could ever want: Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. Now I also don't have to talk about absolutely stupid nonsense to people so much as well cos I can let it out here. That means I don't have to talk to someone, then leave them hanging, thinking, 'what the hell is Sam on about?'

Anyway, this is my first post on dis blog. Perhaps i'll make up a name for my blog...maybe i'll call it Bob (how original), so it'll be 'Bob the blog'. (Sorry, random thought. I'm full of random thoughts. They just come to me. I would estimate I have about 200 random thoughts a day).

Did you know that research scientists, probably from the U.S of A, discovered that people read words mainly by looking at the first and last letter. Without the first and last letter of a word, no one can understand what is being written. Try this:

'h uic row o umpe ve h az o.'

Bet ya couldn't understand what that said. It said 'the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.'

Now try this:

'cre o, o otherfuckin un h ike niffin og sse'

Lol, i'm not going to tell you what that said:)

Here's something I wrote a while ago but my views on it myt hav changed by now. (I jst can't be bothered reading it again to update it).

Here it is...

Have you ever wanted something real bad, but knew you had to stay away from it for your own good? Have you ever thought that there might be two ways of looking at everything, good or bad, in our world?

Lets look at what it means to eat pizza. Imagine it’s your favourite food. (it's my favourite food anyway). You want to eat it everyday or at least once a week. You love it. But what are the pros and cons of doing this? It fills up your hunger, it tastes nice, you don’t have to cook dinner, it’s easy to get(you just phone a pizza delivery restaurant) and it’s a real festive party food. Now the cons are: costs you money, makes you fat, contributes to pimples, makes you thirsty and clogs your arteries. To decide whether or not you are going to eat this pizza, you sub-consiously weigh these pros and cons against each other, and decide which of them is the most important to you. Most people will decide to eat it in the moment because it is a pleasant food to eat, and eating one pizza won’t hurt, or at least in the short term, even though it makes you fat and clogs your arteries. But ask yourself, in the long term, just how many of these pizzas do you have to eat to make yourself a big fat sweaty pizza-munching machine. Well I can’t tell you because I’ve never seen anyone eat so many pizzas. It’s like you eat the pizza because it’s good in the short term, but you know it’s for your own good if you stay away from it in the long term. But my point here is that there are always at least two ways of looking at everything. Why do you think it’s possible for people to have arguments? Obviously both participants in an argument think they’re right. But why? One of them has to be wrong don’t they? Sometimes it depends on what each person values the most. The United States government thinks they’re right in leading this war against terrorism and terrorist groups. Their main reasons for this are: to get revenge for the 9/11 attacks, prevent terrorists from making future attacks and gaining weapons of mass destruction, and to keep the morals of the western world alive. These sound like perfectly reasonable reasons so they must be right, right? So why are the terrorists insisting that the Americans are ‘infidels’, and attempting to prevail no matter what it costs them. Most of these terrorists are extremist Muslims(different to peace-loving Muslims) who believe that ‘god’ will give them credit for either converting people to Islam or killing people who are not Islam, and who believe that everyone must practice the Islam religion. So surely they are right if it’s ‘god’s’ will. Well they’re right as far as they believe. But wait!. What about what all the Christians, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists think ‘god’s’ will is. And what about the atheists? ‘God doesn’t exist so he can’t have a will!’. Someone has to be wrong don’t they??? (Btw, I’m not really religious) This is why we’re always having wars because everyone believes they are ‘right’, and so people will always fight on. And this is why, ladies and gentlemen, why we will never achieve world peace! Because there will always be someone who will disagree with someone else on a humanitarian issue. Anyway I think the world would be too boring if we achieved world peace, and everyone agreed with each other all the time. That’d be no fun. Everyone would most likely die of boredom. And that is why everyone should go on carry killing each other with their suicide bombers and home-made hand grenades. So much for having world peace.
(End)

Now I would like to say, since I wrote that, I may have changed my point of view on things... I just can't be bothered going through what I wrote becos i find what I write to be utterly boring so I havnt checked through it. But if u've read this far, you must be finding this slightly interesting. One question:

Can you understand what
what i'm talking about?

Did you read 'what' twice twice;)

Alrighty then.