Wondering how to plan my 21st

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...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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...