14 posts tagged “life”

I consider myself to be lucky. I am not suffering in a war zone, I don't have to worry about where my next meal is going to come from. Although I do sometimes get a run of bad luck. I'd rather not have bad luck than getting good luck. Am I only prone to getting bad luck ?

To date I've never won anything that requires luck i.e prize draws, lotteries, finding money in the street. My dad has won some stuff from prize draws. Some people I know have found money in the street a couple of times. I've even heard of people who win the lottery a few times too (not the top prize).

To test this theory about me. I'm going to enter a free competition a day, just one. There are some forums where these get posted and people who obsess over it. They post there winnings in thier signature and they seem to win regularly. There is no skill to it right ? So far I've been doing this for a month and nothing yet. After a year if I win nothing, I'll know what to always expect.

Recently retired Microsoft founder Bill Gates gave some tips to high school students. I am not a fan of Microsoft but some of his tips are spot on. I just thought besides the basic reading and writing, they don't teach you much stuff you can use in real life, like if  did I ever use pythagorus's theorem ?

RULE 1: Life is not fair  -  get used to it!

Well people don't play fair too do they ? Bill should know about that !

RULE 2: The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

RULE 3: You will NOT make £30,000 ($60,000) a year right out of high school.

RULE 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

So true ... teachers are soft.

RULE 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: opportunity.

RULE 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes  -  learn from them.

RULE 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills and listening to you talk about how cool you are.

Yeah my dad reminds us how rich he would be if he didn't have any kids.

RULE 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT.

RULE 9: Life is not divided into terms. You don't get summers off, and very few employers are interested in helping you "find yourself". Do that in your own time.

RULE 10: TV is not real life. In real life, people have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

RULE 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one!
This is the funniest one ! Nerds have their place in the world like everyone else.

I drank two bottles of beer on Saturday, first time I've had beer in six months. Then I woke up with a slight hangover, my alcohol tolerance must be at an all time low.

Luckily my face doesn't turn red while drinking anything alcoholic, unlike my father and my brother. Apparently this is because out ancestors put tea leaves in water instead of yeast. I think my dad could get drunk eating a wine gum.

I never really drank any alcohol until one day at my first job, the company annual dinner provided free beer. So some guy at our table found it his duty to ply everyone with alcohol until it came out of our ears. I ended drinking around a dozen cans of beer in one night, everyone thought I was going to keel over, strangely I didn't feel a thing ! I kind of pretended I was drunk so I didn't have to pay the cab fare home ... !

Somehow I ended up drinking every Friday with the colleagues, we used to bitch about work and discuss the women in our lives. Those were funny times, but things move on. If we all sat down for a drink like before, we wouldn't have anything to say to each other .... sad.

If you asked a four year old kid this question for their entrance test into school.

There are five birds in a tree, a farmer shoots one of them dead, how many birds are left in the tree ?

What would be your immediate answer ?

Well when the kid answers "none because they flew away scared from the sound of the gunshot.", you would applaud them for thinking outside the box. Instead the teacher's reaction was to berate the child, stating they were wrong and the insisting the answer was four. People like that should not become teachers !

Lately in the news is the Austrian guy who shockingly locked away his own daughter away for 24 years. The repercussions of this have an effect on a whole country and it's people. Local radio stations in London and the BBC have been asking "Are you Austrian, and if so how do you think this latest abuse scandal will affect your country's citizens and Austria's reputation internationally? How do you think your country will cope with this in the long term?". I find it bizarre how you could link the actions of an individual who is not elected to a whole country. Granted there has been two other similar cases of people getting locked away in cellars but does that mean the whole country and everyone in it is at fault ?

We are seeing too much of this mass labelling, when it's only the actions of a few. It's unfortunate, it's life.

What do you do when you feel old to recapture your youth ? Buy a brand new sport's car ? Nope can't afford one. Instead I bought a new bicycle. Hand crafted in Taiwan, it has a front suspension so I can attempt some downhill jumps and ride on some trails.

07HRSptBlkStipe

I haven't ridden a bicycle in years, the last time I was on a bicycle. I managed to crash into the ground and cut my head with blood dripping down my brow. That wasn't the worse part, I also fractured my arm which led to internal bleeding. So my elbow swelled so much that I couldn't move my arm. I ended up in hospital having to be impaled by gigantic syringe to drain out all the blood.

I've only come across this song "Wear sunscreen",  while listening to the 10th Anniversary album soundtrack of one my favourite movies, William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet. I'd like to go through the original speech by Mary Schmich, with some of my thoughts of them.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen
would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved
by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more
reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this
advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You
will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until
they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at
photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much
possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You
are not as fat as you imagine.

[I was fatter in my younger days, I guess the message is enjoy today right now, it's the youngest day you'll ever be.]

Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying
is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing
bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things
that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you
at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.

[My mum would do good taking this advice, me too. Things that may or may not happen, endless scenarios ...]

Do one thing every day that scares you.
[I wish I could and I guess I should]

Sing.
[I'm good at singing the Katamari Damacy theme tune to annoy my niece ! ]

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with
people who are reckless with yours.
[yeah I was reckless ... sorry]

Floss.
[Personally, I prefer mouthwash]

Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead,
sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's
only with yourself.
[The last sentence truly resonates with me, the race is only with yourself, if I keep that in mind I will be a lot better off.]

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you
succeed in doing this, tell me how.
[This is like a crime and I am one of the worst offenders, bad images from the past replay themselves in my mind without warning ... argghh]

Keep your old love letters.
Throw away your old bank statements.
[Someone threw away all my old love letters, yet I have my bank statments from years back filed neatly in chorological order ... sad]

Stretch.

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with
your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22
what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most
interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them
when they're gone.
[I'm freaked out whenever I kneel for longer than a minute my right knee feels a pop.]

Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children,
maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the
funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do,
don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either.
Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's.

Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it
or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument
you'll ever own.
[Body and mind.]

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living
room.

Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.
[Always read the label.]

Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel
ugly.
[Most of those magazines are photoshopped anyway.]

Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone
for good. Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your
past and the people most likely to stick with you in the
future.
[I feel closer to my siblings than when I was a child.]

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you
should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and
lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people
who knew you when you were young.
[When I meet a precious true friend, I will blog about it. ]

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard.
Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you
soft. Travel.
[Never been to either of these places, but I plan to]

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians
will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll
fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable,
politicians were noble and children respected their elders.
[There is nothing we can do but do accept these truths.]

Respect your elders.
[Even if you don't believe in what they say.]

Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust
fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when
either one might run out.
[Rely on nobody but yourself.]

Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it
will look 85.
[If I have still have hair when I am 40, I'll be happy]

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who
supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of
fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over
the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen.

As a kid I have always been saving money, saving much more than I spend. I've kept that habit right up to now, except I have to spend much more. This has allowed me to remain debt free (except for the mortgage), but sometimes I can't help thinking what have I done with the saved money except let it sit in a plain old savings account. I have some investments for my pension, so when I am old I don't think I will be that poor begging for food. My conclusion is I need not be saving all the pennies slavishly and spend some money and enjoy it. However not on frivolous junk that I don't' need, It should be spent on experiences and time out with the people I care for.

Went on holiday in Manchester for a week, ate a load of food, gained some weight, then become ill for a week and lost a load of weight. It's been a bit of a yo yo recently. I haven't keep up with my blog. It's not just me half of my neighbours on vox don't even post anymore.

I've got a million and one thing to do with moving to a new place and also the company moving to a new location next month, so much stuff occupying my mind and yet nothing seems to be done. It's like the analogy of a messy desk. Everything on the desk needs to be but you don't know where to start or what to do. Right now that's going to have to change, things must be streamlined and I need a structure.

This week (hopefully) I am going to attempt to create a "Getting Things Done" system GTD with my pocket Moleskine that I have. My current system of writing stuff on my left hand doesn't seem pratical when I have lots of things to do, although my left hand is with me at all times.