I Am Bored

Every once in a while I will see a friend posting on Facebook "I am bored, what should I do?" And I will always think to myself, boy, do I wish I have that problem. Ever since college I wish a day can have 48 hours. That is, of course, assuming the non-fun essential stuff like school & work are not twice as long, so I can have the rest of the time to play or to catch up. That also is assuming that my time will stay on par with others so I won't age twice as fast. :D

So whenever I see someone so bored that they have to ask for advice on what to do on Facebook, I want to say two things:

1) GIVE ME YOUR EXTRA TIME!!! Once upon a time I read this science fiction story in which a guy, a taxi driver, has this device that can store extra time that people don't want. For example, my friend's two extra hour that they want to kill until their next event. Then he will be able to use those extra time that he stored up at his disposal, namely to travel the world. (The story went on to say that he met this girl -- a passenger - who was very intrigued by this idea and asked if she could travel with him. He declined because he did not want to share his stored up time with her. What a bastard! LOL)

2) Since #1 is just a fantasy, my next advice to my bored friends are: Start playing RPG games! That way you can spend all your free time grinding and leveling and buy lots of weapons and armors and other goodies. =D

ABCDEFG

Never get suckered into the ABCDEFG situation.

Let me explain what I mean by that. I have made this mistake in the past, say I want to plan an event and invite a group of people -- ABCDEFG -- to join. All of a sudden this turned into a GRE analytical problem: A will not go if D will be there, and E will not go if G will be there, but if I invite C, I will have to invite D???

The best solution, in my opinion, is: don't try to sort it out. Invite them all, and let them figure out who doesn't want to join. Never get suckered into the situation when you are the one deciding who to or not to invite.

Perspective

So I just came back from my first European trip. Before the trip I was going to write a blog entry about why I think European trips are overrated, but the husband asked me to not write it till after we came back. So here goes:

1) You can see the exact same thing in the comfort of your own home, on discovery HD channel
2) Much cheaper
3) No traveling anguish/hassle/issues
4) No random beheading in supermarkets

British woman beheaded in Spain resort supermarket

 5) No e. coli scare

After I returned, my feeling towards European travel did not change -- if I have never step foot on that continent my entire life, I am okay with that. 

That said, there was, however, an unintended result from that trip -- I realized that my perspective in life has changed since I returned. I guess traveling aboard really do open your eyes. All of a sudden, albeit not consciously so, it opened your eyes to a whole new world. It let you know that there is a world outside of your everyday life, even though I am always aware of the existence of Europe. Being there just made a real. All of a sudden, all the stupid daily squabble no longer matters. I no longer find myself obsessing about whether a coworker likes me... or if she doesn't, why doesn't she, because in the end, so long as we can maintain an amicable and professional relationship and shit gets done, does it really matter? I certainly was not put on this earth to please every person around me.

In short, the trip did not enrich me in what people always say about sight-seeing, learning the local culture (really? from all the touristy spots?), experiencing the other languages, etc., the experience has, nonetheless, had a profound impact on me.

Doomsday Bunkers II

Wow, these random thoughts about doomsday bunkers just won't stop coming to me. I got more questions. First and foremost, I will leave the research on what's this 12.21.12 Mayan calendar doomsday thing to each of your own research. All I have to say is, just because a calendar ends doesn't mean it's the end of the world, else our world will end on 12.31.xx at 00:00 every year. Anyways, as a somewhat morbid person myself, I certainly enjoy entertaining the doomsday idea, so let's just say it's real. A few other thoughts came to mind.

Many great person had wrote many science fiction stories with the same premises: doomsday, bunkers. Many of them optimistic individuals like to fantasize that they are funded by the government and people who get to "stay behind" are hand chosen. And to be the devil's advocate, who is to say there aren't such bunkers exist? You and I will probably never find out. Whilst I am not certain how well these "hand chosen" individuals will get along for an entire year in a bunker, now we are talking about random individuals who has the cash to afford a bunker, and I think it's safe to say that most, if not all, of these individuals probably have a pretty strong sense of entitlement and are used to being waited upon. The best scenario I can imagine is like a real, year-long Big Brothers show. There will be anarchy, and the most obnoxious ones will  be the survivors. A few more thoughts stemming from that.

1) The company selling the bunkers boast there's enough supplies for one year. How do we (assuming we own bunkers) know that is true? What if supplies run out after three months? What are you going to do? Sue the company?

2) There are computer rooms. These bunker people do realize that they might have computers to read ebooks, watch DVDs, or listen to audio books, but the internet will be gone, right?

3) The most plausible way the world is going to come to an end, in my humble opinion, are a) natural catastrophe like an asteroid crashing into earth and kicking up dusts, blah blah blah, very much like how the dinosaurs went out or b) not so natural catastrophe such as a nuclear war. So what happens if the world's still no inhabitable when the supplies ran out? Are they going to start killing / eating each other? In all honesty, way before the year is up (assuming the supplies last that long), it will be like Lord of the Flies in close-quartered bunkers. People will be murdered way before then.

4) Say it's safe to come out of the bunkers after a year. Then what? Civilization will be gone. Everything will have to start from scratch again, farming, hunting, construction, societies, etc.

No, thank you. If I have great financial means AND truly believe that 2012 is the end of the world. I'd rather quit my job and enjoy my life until then.

Doomsday Bunkers

 http://money.cnn.com/2011/03/22/real_estate/doomsday_bunkers/index.htm?hpt=C2

I read this article on doomsday bunkers on CNN today. And a series of questions just keep popping into my mind. I should first clarify my standing that I do believe that the earth/life as we know it will eventually come to an end. It's a very simple concept, planets are born and they die, the earth will die one day, and so will the sun, whether you are religious or not, there are overwhelming evidence that these are facts. So it's a matter of time when our solar system goes out of existence. I suppose the super optimistic can believe that that will only happen after we have figured out a way to live elsewhere.. but I digressed. Here are some of my other questions:

1) There's always been earthquakes, just not as serious, but there have been quite deadly earthquakes even documented in history. The 2006 tsunami in Thailand was even more devastating, so why do people think that an earthquake, a tsunami, a nuclear plant meltdown (a consequence of the earthquake/tsunami, hardly an independent event), and civil unrest in Libya a sign of doomsday? I can't quote you bible, but pretty sure these are not the signs of revelation.

2) Okay, so you bought a bunker, at which point are you going to move into this said bunker? I mean, we are now testing trace (harmless) amount of radioactive materials in the west coast. What if it's a little more than harmless? What can I do? Can the husband and I quit our jobs, pack the cats up, and move to a different state? No, life really goes on as usual until utmost necessary, so how do these people determine when to give up their lives and go live in the bunkers? And, in the event of a natural catastrophe destroying the earth, what's the plan to get to their bunkers before the disaster hit?

3) The company selling these bunkers are boasting a 4-star hotel like living condition. There's medical bay, dental services.... are they staffed with doctors and dentists also? Do they bribe them with free bunkers? Also, let's not forget that 4-star hotels are backed with a lot of man power. It won't be 4-star hotels without the concierge, maid, laundry service, restaurants, etc. In the event that doomsday and fallen upon us, and money became meaningless, how do you even find maids?

Okay, I can see them offering free bunkers to "employees," but once everybody is secured inside the bunker.... what entice them to honor the contract? What will be the consequence if they don't clean the rooms? Jail (also available inside the bunkers), or shove them out of the bunkers so they can die of natural causes?

My questions go on.....

Blind Sided

As a general rule of thumb, I don't like being blind-sided. Of course we all know that life is full of surprises, so in order to avoid surprises the best I could, I am a worst case scenario person. I always tend to imagine what kind of possible tragedy can happen to ruin the happiness. Needless to say, that's not the healthiest mentality, but I digressed. That being said, you can well imagine my surprised when, after a routine checkup and a routine pep smear, my doctor told me that I was tested positive for HPV virus. I mean, I'd definitely be less surprised if I was diagnosed in my college years, for example, rather than after being married for 7 years. But the cells were still normal, said my doctor. It might never affect me my entire life. I put that thought aside after a few days.

Then a positive pep smear, followed by a negative one, followed by a more positive one and I was sent to a specialist. And a biopsy was in order. The biopsy was, to say the least, crude and barbaric. There was no anesthesia -- although I wasn't sure the procedure that followed a few weeks later requiring anesthesia and a needle was any better -- just the doctor and his instruments getting in there and doing his business. The pain was not horrific, but the experience was less than pleasant. When I got back to my car, I felt so violated, even though I have consented to the procedure, that all I wanted to do was to sit there and cry.

The biopsy result turned out to be high-grade abnormal, that's one level below cancerous -- should we leave the problem unattended, it will most certainly turn into cancer. Two weeks later I went back for a procedure that essentially cut out all the bad cells. Cut out! I sure hope some 20 years down the line people will look back and gasp at how primitive this cutting out method is, yet this is the only option that we have, in 2011!

The procedure was only half an hour long. I drove myself there and drove myself home, totally The Good Earth style, where the woman worked in the field till it was time to give birth, went into the shack alone, gave birth, cut the umbilical cord, then went right back to the field, all those to save the money for a midwife so she can buy a set of new clothes. Or like in a dark movie where a young woman go into a dark ally to abort her illegitimate child. If that's what courage is, I'd rather not have any. Next time, I would not be doing this alone.

My Little Prius

I cannot talk about what I love about my Prius before I first talked about what I dislike about it. Frankly speaking, being my first Toyota and a model that has been out for 10 years, it has a few disappointing features, or lack thereof. Here goes:

1) The lack of little pocket storage places for various items such as cell phones, chargers, ear pieces. It has this ONE big "purse slot" where to pretty much dumb everything there. When a call comes in, it's impossible to separate out the ear piece, or untangle a cell phone charger while you are driving, what the heck? Give us a couple more compartments!

2) The headlight/dashboard. I have never forgotten to turn on my headlight until I got my Prius. Reason? Normal car's dashboard don't light up unless the headlights are on. So when it's dark outside and you can't see the dashboard, you'll know to turn the headlights on. But for the Prius, the dashboard is always on, so you can see it clearly in the day time AND in the night time. If I get into the car when it's still light outside and drive till it's dark, there's almost no chance I'll remember to turn the lights on. :(

3) Because of the unique shape, the blind spots are hard to see, and the back window is truncated into two halves by the back of the car. But I can overlook this one as I do like the unique look of the car.

Now, to what I like about the car:

1) First and foremost: the gas mileage!! What else?! As my husband would say, it's the car I've been wanted for 7 years. It's the Prius or bust. I didn't even look at a alternative when it's time to get a new car.

2) It makes a statement. I don't think I need to recap to you the stereotype of what type of person drives a Prius. Yeah, the car says it all. =D

2b) This cannot be an entirely separate point for #2. Coming from a very materialistic culture and one's value is judged by the brands of your clothes, watch, car, the Prius is a blessing. The car in and of itself makes a statement, it's neither a poor man's car nor a rich man's car (unless you are simply too poor to afford it). MANY successful dotcom entrepreneur in the bay area drives a Prius. In fact, with today's gas price, anybody without the real need of a gas guzzler but still driving one is simply an idiot. My point is, although this had never occurred to me when I made the decision on this car, it offers a wonderful way out of the keeping-up-with-the-Joneses match where you can break your bank to buy the most expensive Mercedes you can afford, and there's still always someone else driving a better one.

Mazel tov, Toyota. =D

Happiness

“If we only wanted to be happy, it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, and that is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are”

-- Charles de Montesquieu quotes (French Politician and Philosopher, 1689-1755)

(Source: Thinkexist)

Since there is a quote saying this, I guess I can safely assume that I'm not the only one who feels that way sometimes. I guess a more important question to ask is: why is it important for us to be happier than other people? After all, wanting others to be less happy than us means wanting others to be less fortunate than us. If we really sit down and think about this concept, you will soon realize that others happiness really does not affect our happiness. We don't need others to be unhappy for us to be happy. That is just unnecessary evilness on our part. Only when one truly understands that others' happiness bears no relevance to one's happiness will one be able to attain the true state of happiness.

Collect Them All

Everybody is familiar with the Collect Them All concept. It is a concept that has been exploited to death by immoral merchants. You may only want 8 of the 12 items in a set, all of a sudden the collect-them-all moment kicked in and you found yourself the proud owner of the 4 remaining items that you don't even find remotely appealing. The most evil of all? The ones where you don't know which one of the set you are buying, and usually most of the items in a set are the common ones, then 1 or 2 of them being the rare ones so you can potentially possess at least 50 if not more of the common ones before you can, hopefully, if at all, complete the set.

What I don't understand is: how did this collect-them-all mentality came about? What kind of evolutionary advantage are there in collecting them all? Perhaps it's vital to survival to collect enough food for the winter, or collect the proper tools for future usage, but to collect "one of each kind"?? Anyone care to venture any explanation to this inexplicable phenomenon?

Chores

One day, while griping about dishes, Hubby decided to Google "How to make my wife do chores?" At least that's what he claimed he looked up. The result to that? Google kindly informed my husband that his query had no matches and offered one of the four alternatives:

(1) How to make my boyfriend do chores?

(2) How to make my husband do chores?

(3) How to make my kids do chores?

(4) How to make my wife happy. :)

Unfortunately, I was unable to reproduce Hubby's search result for a screen shot. :( When I searched the same alleged keywords, I do see some "How to make my wife do chores?" postings. One thing of note is, since I have only civilized and evolved men in my life, when I see a statement like that I naturally, matter-of-factly assumed they meant "How do I make my wife to do [her half] of the chores?" Upon reading the 50+  comments mostly from women bashing the poster being an asshole and some of the other men's postings, evidently there are still men out there who strongly believe that chores are women's job??? Okay, maybe in the scenario that the man is the sole (and highly adequate) bread winner and they are kids-free; otherwise, I can't even wrap my mind around the concept! And these men can still find themselves mating partners? :-O

Roy Raymond (1947 – 1993)

I must admit, I have only recently heard of this Roy Raymond dude from the movie The Social Network. To sum up what so special about this Roy Raymond dude: for starters, he's the founder of Victoria's Secret, a name familiar to everyone living in this country. Raymond found said company because he found shopping for lingerie for his wife in a department store awkward and embarrassing. After starting up the company with $80,000, the company made half a million the first year. Five years later, the company was grossing $6 million and Raymond sold it for $4 million (not sure why). He tried another business venture selling children clothes and went bankrupt. Raymond committed suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, at age 46. Raymond is referenced in the movie The Social Network as a warning to Mark Zuckerberg of the risks of selling your company too early. (Source: Wikipedia).

It was interesting to note that when Raymond was mentioned in The Social Network, his second business venue, which left him near destitute, was omitted. Understandably, that part really bore no relevance to the movie. It did, however, mentioned that the company was worth $500 million two years later and Raymond jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. Now the story implied that Raymond jumped off the bridge simply from the regret of selling his company too early, despite the fact that he was still a multimillionaire! I spent a couple days after the movie pondering about that (yes, should have done a Google/wikipedia search sooner, so sue me for believing that blurb in the movie was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.) Surely $500 million is better than $4 million, but how much does one really need? Studies (who knows how did them and how) showed that yes, money do buy happiness, but only up to a certain degree. Which makes a lot of sense. Nobody is happy when they have to constantly stress over rent money, grocery money, etc. Once the basics are satisfied, we have some desires, let that be nice clothes, nice cars, big screen TVs, fine dining etc. Then it comes a point where infinity + 1 > infinity.... Is having a $15 million mansion, 10 cars, and a private jet going to add that much to your happiness? Venturing a guess with not too much authority, I am going to go with no.

Introducing the second venture, which left him near destitute, into Roy Raymond's story. All of a sudden it made a lot of sense! He didn't jump off the Golden Gate Bridge because he had $4 million instead of $500 million. He jumped off Golden Gate Bridge because he went from your everyday MBA to a millionaire then to poverty! That left me with a speechless "Wow!" Many of us will never even make $4 million in our entire life, let alone having the lump sum. But if you are going to go from normal to millionaire to poverty, is it better to have never seen the $4 million?

Movie Review: Devil (Spoiler Alert)

So I watched Devil over the weekend. Definitely get a 5 star. One of the best of these type of movies. Not too long, not too short; not too scary, not not scary enough. It's the Goldilocks of the horror genre.

My only thought is, "Wow, if all whores, liars, cheaters, and deserters deserve to die, will there be any humans left?"  Does the devil at least distinguish between the different level of whores/liars/cheaters/deserters? I mean, maybe other than the guy who killed the other guy's wife and kids (unintentionally), the others don't seem like your everyday hardcore criminal. Not even a malicious murderer. And, holy crap, if the devil has to spend half a day to kill four sinners, not to mention the amount of time he/she spent in arranging for them to all be in close vicinity, there's hella lots of work to do their job. One would hope that Devil is an entire team/group/corporation instead of just an individual!
 

Movie Review: The Social Network

So we watched The Social Network the other day and it was an amazing movie and it's not because it's loosely based on a true story. I mean, it is what got me to watch it but since all parties involved signed a non-disclosure agreement, one can only imagine how much truth there are in the story. Better yet, does it have more or less truth than a movie say Open Water? Regardless, the movie has its own merits, as evidenced by all the Golden Globe awards that it has received. The story telling was incredible, even the seemingly not-so-relevant with the girlfriend at the very beginning just reels its audience in instantaneously. The pace -- revealing of the inception/growth/success of Facebook along with the lawsuits -- was spectacular. And the actors were awesome too. It's arguably one of the best movies I've seen.