Easy! I will begin, of course, with something about religion, because it is an endless trove of inspiring tales when you are looking for moral superiority. Also, religious people are most likely to click on links and make the largest donations. So maybe I should focus on something nice, because if I infer bigotry, intolerance and the genocide of... pretty much anyone outside their flock they might click away in outrage and switch back to wedding-cake-hats and under-age grindring. An unusual choice, I know: someone who is sworn into celibacy to be so keen on hats resembling the symbol of weddings. Hmm... I cannot think of anything nice beyond cake, so maybe it is time to move on to something nicer than religion. How about preventing racism? A great topic for displaying moral superiority, without the need for holy books (if anything, holy books are anything but helpful here). This is something we can all agree on. Like the fact that some words we say can hurt and therefore are not okay to say. Particularly if you are white. If you black, they are fine. And if you are Asian then it is a gray, area depending on how drunk and rich are the black people at the party. A long time ago I saw a clip where a famous comedian (famous because his main audience is American) was saying it is okay for some people to use a certain word, but not for anyone else. Those that are okay to say it happen to be his people, which is a common occurrence in pretty much any religious argument. I said I would not get into religion, though, so back to our comedian. He argued that some things are okay when he does them but not okay when anyone else does. For instance, playing naked with his little children. Because if he does it, it is fine, but when anyone else does it they are paedophiles.
Well, there are some wrong ideas in his argument. And by wrong I mean utterly stupid. First: he might be a paedophile even if they are his children; being the father is not a guarantee. Second: while lack of garment is certainly weird (albeit more for other adults rather than children), it does not make you ipso facto a paedo. It is intent of sex and pursue of said intent that make you one. Third: it could be other toddlers playing with his, in which case it will not raise any eyebrows at all, particularly in a hot summer day around a swimming pool or spouting hydrant (are hydrants still a thing? I used to see loads of them in 'seventies and 'eighties movies). The same is also valid for pets, swimming pool or not. Nevertheless, he got huge cheers.
If you cannot make it as a cheap entertainer in front of an uneducated audience, another option for reaching moral superiority is to preach (sorry) about how important your (actually very unimportant) work is. You need to start by giving it a fancy title to compensate for how meaningless it is. Aim for something like personal development guru, AdWords master, life coach, guerilla copywriter, marketing ninja, sales black-belt or anything with synergy or leader in it. After that, keep on telling people how what you do makes the world a better place. From time to time gather with your peers and give each other shiny awards. Wear something gaudy. Top it off with a flashy hat. For extra notoriety and cash, put out a book titled "The name-of-your-job-here's Bible".
Hmm, is there a pattern emerging here? No matter how hard you try, you cannot boast your moral superiority without being religious, racist and/ or incompetent.
Probably the easiest way to display moral superiority safely is to install a men's bathroom, a women's bathroom, and at least other 6 to 8 other bathrooms for the others, according to how much the sub-genre acronym has expanded since the last time I checked. Probably soon they will run out of letters in the Latin alphabet to include every option, but luckily there are also the Cyrillic and Arabic alphabet for future additional options. Many of the peoples using them are notoriously famous for compassion and openness on the topic, which will make everything even more meaningful.
Or buy a silicone wrist band with a message.
15 December, 2018
24 November, 2018
A useless guide to a wholesome diet
Many years ago, I watched a movie about a teacher with a knack for molesting teenagers doing a nice gesture for a troubled child haunted by the ghosts of dead people. (Are there ghosts of living people, too?) This is probably not the first sentence that a health guide usually begins with, but I find it to set a more accurate tone for the subject. If it makes you feel better, the teacher was not a child molester at all, but a kind, loving human being. And the child did not actually see ghosts in this movie but in another one. Anyway, the teacher told the kid he did not want anything in return, but that he could do a nice gesture for another person in need instead. From here, a chain of nice deeds cascades throughout the movie all the way to a flood of kindness and overall feel-good to the happy-end. Probably not the kind of happy-ending you had in mind when you began reading this; maybe you should not jump to conclusions so quickly next time, hmm?
Or should you? This being Hollywood, it turns out that the teacher was actually a molester after all. Anyway, this is not the point.
I think advice for a healthy lifestyle is a bit like that, in the sense that people who think of themselves as generous flood other people with links to studies from experts, personal experience and lifting quotes from famous people that emerged victorious after a long life-threatening struggle.
Also like in the movie, this trove of wisdom is offered for free. OK, maybe for a share, or a like, or a re-tweet, or all? No pressure, no pressure. Or maybe, just maybe, for a modest sum when enough text was hoarded from the above-mentioned studies and then combined with personal stories and motivating quotes to yield a new book (anything around 80 pages including pictures and charts seems just about right).
But just like that nice teacher turns out to be not so nice in real life, it turns out that the studies are not really from experts, the personal experience is personal fantasy and the inspiring quotes come from people that had good enough plastic surgery or Photoshop to camouflage the lard and airbrush the flabby skin. Let me expand on that (no offence intended).
The experts are people who think common-sense is not interesting enough to just eat reasonably and balanced and get your ass out of the car from time to time to walk for a change. This is neither financially rewarding nor fast enough for the hippos who stuffed their faces with choccies and greasy fast-food for years and suddenly expect to have a beach body in six weeks. Since a big ass goes hand in hand with a big ego, they are easily offended (imagine my surprise!), the experts need to come up with something better (and more profitable) than "your only chance for a beach body in six weeks is the one of a whale carcass beached for six weeks". So, they come up with exaggerated diets enforced by pseudo-science and imported ingredients. Not because exotic is interesting enough to sound plausible, but if it had grown close enough, they would have tried it already. Or maybe they tried it so much that it has gone extinct. Eat only tofu yoghurt with goji and acai. Of course, unless you happen to live near places where these magic berries grow -in which case you probably cannot afford them anyway- and substitute them with apple skins. You may add a spoon of synthetic honey, which has zero calories, unlike the natural one which has enzymes that encourage fat (not really, but real honey tastes nice and we all know it is never one teaspoon but rather half a jar, and half a jar does encourage fat). Eat only this during a full moon, because the it stimulates the midichlorians in the upper liver and enhances weight loss. For non-full-moon days stick to lean fats, steamed fish shanks and turnip and quinoa salad (replace the quinoa with other grains from 3 continents away if it happens to grow near your place). And an apple core for dessert, if you crave something sweet. (Really? "If"?) Just three weeks ago the pips in the core have been discovered recently (regardless of when you read it) to contain friendly bacteria that is beneficial for the intestinal traffic and overall waist line.
People who tend to share such advice often claim it worked for them and that they speak from personal experience. And also tend to be women in their late thirties or later, often living alone with at least two cats, sometimes divorced and often quite fat that they have profile photos taken from one side on social media. All the other photos are of their cats, or from an exotic beach where they went many years ago, back when they could still jump unassisted for an original photo in mid-air, preferably surrounded by less attractive women or fit men. The other photos of beaches they do not appear in are accompanied by a Photoshopped sunset and dumb quotes from failed, talentless celebrities. Which is where the uplifting quotes come from to complete the circle of resources for switching to a wholesome life. And remember to drink at least 38 glasses of water each day. Preferably with unfiltered lemons, if I remember correctly.
Since this guide would be incomplete without my personal experience, here is what worked for me: I bought an expensive (success demands sacrifice) silicone sieve for steaming food in any regular pot. It did cost more than a separate electric steamer, but it seemed wasteful to buy another device. I started with some asparagus. First start with the harder, lower bits, wait for a few minutes and then add the tips (nice tip for you right here). Then wait some more. In my case it was a lot more, as I got sidetracked by some Cypress Hill videos and trying to keep up with lyrics. After a lot more time, all the water from the pot evaporated and the sieve started to carbonize, lending a nice chewy texture to the asparagus and a strong smoky flavour to the entire kitchen. One fire alarm later, I continued with the cooking. I remembered there was some salmon in the freezer which could be a nice match for both the remaining asparagus and a healthy diet. Not to brag, but my memory is fantastic; the use-by date on the salmon was about two years ago. Unimpressed by such scary supermarket tactics I decided to cook it in the oven, as the steaming options were severely limited at this point. And it turned out quite nicely, thank you. There you go, a nice meal that is also healthy. The following day, when it felt repetitive already, I gradually introduced other super-foods in the diet. I replaced the fish and asparagus diet with quinoa, which tastes amazing stir-fried and mixed with caramel on top of chocolate ice-cream. When other important activities kept me away from the kitchen and house I relied on peanut m&m's as great outdoor snacks. Nuts are a healthy and nutritious super-food. Another healthy option is Harribo, as long as you stay away from unhealthy ones like Cola and stick to the fruit-flavoured models. Fruit is good for you, it is rich in fibre.
There you have it. I shall leave you with the famous words of Bruce Jenner, who fought a long hard fight against male-specific health challenges and won spectacularly: "In order to achieve your life-long dream, you need to cut the evil from the root".
If you found this uplifting, please share or like.
Donations are also accepted.
Or should you? This being Hollywood, it turns out that the teacher was actually a molester after all. Anyway, this is not the point.
I think advice for a healthy lifestyle is a bit like that, in the sense that people who think of themselves as generous flood other people with links to studies from experts, personal experience and lifting quotes from famous people that emerged victorious after a long life-threatening struggle.
Also like in the movie, this trove of wisdom is offered for free. OK, maybe for a share, or a like, or a re-tweet, or all? No pressure, no pressure. Or maybe, just maybe, for a modest sum when enough text was hoarded from the above-mentioned studies and then combined with personal stories and motivating quotes to yield a new book (anything around 80 pages including pictures and charts seems just about right).
But just like that nice teacher turns out to be not so nice in real life, it turns out that the studies are not really from experts, the personal experience is personal fantasy and the inspiring quotes come from people that had good enough plastic surgery or Photoshop to camouflage the lard and airbrush the flabby skin. Let me expand on that (no offence intended).
The experts are people who think common-sense is not interesting enough to just eat reasonably and balanced and get your ass out of the car from time to time to walk for a change. This is neither financially rewarding nor fast enough for the hippos who stuffed their faces with choccies and greasy fast-food for years and suddenly expect to have a beach body in six weeks. Since a big ass goes hand in hand with a big ego, they are easily offended (imagine my surprise!), the experts need to come up with something better (and more profitable) than "your only chance for a beach body in six weeks is the one of a whale carcass beached for six weeks". So, they come up with exaggerated diets enforced by pseudo-science and imported ingredients. Not because exotic is interesting enough to sound plausible, but if it had grown close enough, they would have tried it already. Or maybe they tried it so much that it has gone extinct. Eat only tofu yoghurt with goji and acai. Of course, unless you happen to live near places where these magic berries grow -in which case you probably cannot afford them anyway- and substitute them with apple skins. You may add a spoon of synthetic honey, which has zero calories, unlike the natural one which has enzymes that encourage fat (not really, but real honey tastes nice and we all know it is never one teaspoon but rather half a jar, and half a jar does encourage fat). Eat only this during a full moon, because the it stimulates the midichlorians in the upper liver and enhances weight loss. For non-full-moon days stick to lean fats, steamed fish shanks and turnip and quinoa salad (replace the quinoa with other grains from 3 continents away if it happens to grow near your place). And an apple core for dessert, if you crave something sweet. (Really? "If"?) Just three weeks ago the pips in the core have been discovered recently (regardless of when you read it) to contain friendly bacteria that is beneficial for the intestinal traffic and overall waist line.
People who tend to share such advice often claim it worked for them and that they speak from personal experience. And also tend to be women in their late thirties or later, often living alone with at least two cats, sometimes divorced and often quite fat that they have profile photos taken from one side on social media. All the other photos are of their cats, or from an exotic beach where they went many years ago, back when they could still jump unassisted for an original photo in mid-air, preferably surrounded by less attractive women or fit men. The other photos of beaches they do not appear in are accompanied by a Photoshopped sunset and dumb quotes from failed, talentless celebrities. Which is where the uplifting quotes come from to complete the circle of resources for switching to a wholesome life. And remember to drink at least 38 glasses of water each day. Preferably with unfiltered lemons, if I remember correctly.
Since this guide would be incomplete without my personal experience, here is what worked for me: I bought an expensive (success demands sacrifice) silicone sieve for steaming food in any regular pot. It did cost more than a separate electric steamer, but it seemed wasteful to buy another device. I started with some asparagus. First start with the harder, lower bits, wait for a few minutes and then add the tips (nice tip for you right here). Then wait some more. In my case it was a lot more, as I got sidetracked by some Cypress Hill videos and trying to keep up with lyrics. After a lot more time, all the water from the pot evaporated and the sieve started to carbonize, lending a nice chewy texture to the asparagus and a strong smoky flavour to the entire kitchen. One fire alarm later, I continued with the cooking. I remembered there was some salmon in the freezer which could be a nice match for both the remaining asparagus and a healthy diet. Not to brag, but my memory is fantastic; the use-by date on the salmon was about two years ago. Unimpressed by such scary supermarket tactics I decided to cook it in the oven, as the steaming options were severely limited at this point. And it turned out quite nicely, thank you. There you go, a nice meal that is also healthy. The following day, when it felt repetitive already, I gradually introduced other super-foods in the diet. I replaced the fish and asparagus diet with quinoa, which tastes amazing stir-fried and mixed with caramel on top of chocolate ice-cream. When other important activities kept me away from the kitchen and house I relied on peanut m&m's as great outdoor snacks. Nuts are a healthy and nutritious super-food. Another healthy option is Harribo, as long as you stay away from unhealthy ones like Cola and stick to the fruit-flavoured models. Fruit is good for you, it is rich in fibre.
There you have it. I shall leave you with the famous words of Bruce Jenner, who fought a long hard fight against male-specific health challenges and won spectacularly: "In order to achieve your life-long dream, you need to cut the evil from the root".
If you found this uplifting, please share or like.
Donations are also accepted.
04 November, 2018
A useless guide to sun after the rain
The sun always shines brightly after the rain. You often hear it from gurus, religious people and in country music. It is meant to be an encouragement for optimism and hope, a belief that good eventually triumphs over evil, that things turn out well, no matter how bad they seem to be at present.
As it often happens with quixotic statements from the ignorant and uneducated, there are a few problems with this. I will take a brief look at them below to kill some time while the internet is down, and it still rains outside.
First thing that comes to mind: such a claim is evidently stupid in the case of rain during the night, cloudy sky or total eclipse. Assuming a reasonably even distribution of rain between night and day, the claim is false about 50% of the time. I am a bit generous here, because not all days are sunny. So far, not the worst percentage for the religious or uneducated but still far from what a reasonable person would consider... um, reasonable.
But let us not stop here. Rain is not always a bad thing. I hope you will not find shocking that it can be rather useful at times; rain brings water to plants, animals and humans. It clears the air. It makes a park look decent again after a festival. In an area affected by severe draught, rain means a crop that will not wither and survival for another year. The mentioning of sun soon shining brightly again under such circumstances is as considerate as saying "It will not last" at a wedding ceremony. Of course it will not last: in the best-case scenario where they live happy together, one of them will still die after some time; this is unavoidable. Just like a nice bit of rain will not quench the thirst of a desert-dry area in the long run. But this does not diminish its short-term benefits. Assuming another generous half-half division between useful and damaging rain, one can easily see the irrelevance of the statement in less than three out of four cases.
It would be unfair to the argument to hold a single-sided view and ignore the rain's damaging side. It can cause flooding, it can destroy the crops it helped to grow, and it can bring misery and death. Occasionally, it can even bring down the internet by taking down a utility pole or other equipment. But I am getting ahead of myself. The sun will evaporate away the surplus water that could threaten survival, it will bring warmth in both body and spirit. Feel free to imagine this more metaphorically, if you are so inclined, this is the best I could find; I am getting a bit hungry, too, and it is not my best state of mind for artistic constructions. Briefly: it restores the balance, it is a good thing. Just like the saying claims. However, timeliness is important, and the sun's schedule is not always matching the necessities of a small part of the world on a small planet that is only one among its many. And ours is neither the bigger (this is what I meant by small in the previous sentence), nor the more important planet, if we're being realistic. This may come as a shock to the more religious, but it does not make it less of a fact. All this means there will be times when the sun does come out a bit too early or a bit late. In one case, it cancels out the potential benefit of rain before it even gets to become too much. In the other, its sole purpose is to help you to better contemplate the disaster of your flooded house and to find your drowned loved ones and your destroyed possessions more easily. Sometimes it will be just on time, but the probability of this "perfect timing" is unrealistic considering the complex aspects of astronomy, geography, technological development and weather conditions involved. Pizza delivery is late almost of all the time, and their shop is much closer to my house than the sun is to Earth. Just saying... But even by granting a generous chunk of probability to such convenient scenarios, the overall relevance of the saying lands in the realm of a minuscule double-digit percentage, with a decimal sign between those two digits. And the first one is zero.
If there is anything to be learned from this all this, it is that the gullible favour irrelevant but easy solace to looking objectively at facts, learning from the outcome and trying to fix, prevent and improve. Another thing I learned is that the internet was down because the rain short-circuited some equipment near where I live. I hope they fix it before the sun comes out, but I will not be surprised if they do not. In the meantime, pizza? Anyone? I am not offering, I am begging.
As it often happens with quixotic statements from the ignorant and uneducated, there are a few problems with this. I will take a brief look at them below to kill some time while the internet is down, and it still rains outside.
First thing that comes to mind: such a claim is evidently stupid in the case of rain during the night, cloudy sky or total eclipse. Assuming a reasonably even distribution of rain between night and day, the claim is false about 50% of the time. I am a bit generous here, because not all days are sunny. So far, not the worst percentage for the religious or uneducated but still far from what a reasonable person would consider... um, reasonable.
But let us not stop here. Rain is not always a bad thing. I hope you will not find shocking that it can be rather useful at times; rain brings water to plants, animals and humans. It clears the air. It makes a park look decent again after a festival. In an area affected by severe draught, rain means a crop that will not wither and survival for another year. The mentioning of sun soon shining brightly again under such circumstances is as considerate as saying "It will not last" at a wedding ceremony. Of course it will not last: in the best-case scenario where they live happy together, one of them will still die after some time; this is unavoidable. Just like a nice bit of rain will not quench the thirst of a desert-dry area in the long run. But this does not diminish its short-term benefits. Assuming another generous half-half division between useful and damaging rain, one can easily see the irrelevance of the statement in less than three out of four cases.
It would be unfair to the argument to hold a single-sided view and ignore the rain's damaging side. It can cause flooding, it can destroy the crops it helped to grow, and it can bring misery and death. Occasionally, it can even bring down the internet by taking down a utility pole or other equipment. But I am getting ahead of myself. The sun will evaporate away the surplus water that could threaten survival, it will bring warmth in both body and spirit. Feel free to imagine this more metaphorically, if you are so inclined, this is the best I could find; I am getting a bit hungry, too, and it is not my best state of mind for artistic constructions. Briefly: it restores the balance, it is a good thing. Just like the saying claims. However, timeliness is important, and the sun's schedule is not always matching the necessities of a small part of the world on a small planet that is only one among its many. And ours is neither the bigger (this is what I meant by small in the previous sentence), nor the more important planet, if we're being realistic. This may come as a shock to the more religious, but it does not make it less of a fact. All this means there will be times when the sun does come out a bit too early or a bit late. In one case, it cancels out the potential benefit of rain before it even gets to become too much. In the other, its sole purpose is to help you to better contemplate the disaster of your flooded house and to find your drowned loved ones and your destroyed possessions more easily. Sometimes it will be just on time, but the probability of this "perfect timing" is unrealistic considering the complex aspects of astronomy, geography, technological development and weather conditions involved. Pizza delivery is late almost of all the time, and their shop is much closer to my house than the sun is to Earth. Just saying... But even by granting a generous chunk of probability to such convenient scenarios, the overall relevance of the saying lands in the realm of a minuscule double-digit percentage, with a decimal sign between those two digits. And the first one is zero.
If there is anything to be learned from this all this, it is that the gullible favour irrelevant but easy solace to looking objectively at facts, learning from the outcome and trying to fix, prevent and improve. Another thing I learned is that the internet was down because the rain short-circuited some equipment near where I live. I hope they fix it before the sun comes out, but I will not be surprised if they do not. In the meantime, pizza? Anyone? I am not offering, I am begging.
19 August, 2018
A useless guide to watching horror movies
Well, what better way to enjoy a quiet Friday night in than watching a good
film with some friends? Or what other way to enjoy a Friday night when you do
not have friends? Unless you actually like alcohol, but -in this case- you would
have a lot of friends. And you would be out. At a party, or in a bar, in a
park or under a bridge. It all depends on how committed you are.
Anyway, tonight is movie night. It is Friday, and since it also happens to be a 13, someone suggests a horror movie. Yes, I know... But for the superstitious this is relevant. I do not really understand how or why, but she is hot so she was invited. And she brought a friend, too. Unfortunately, not a woman, but fortunately not quite a man, either. I would say about 70/10. There is a lot of margin for error in these cases.
Without further ado, horror film it is. And by "without further ado" I mean a lengthy debate which I do not feel like contributing to since I am the host. I find it more diplomatic to escape to the kitchen and make some popcorn while everybody else carries on. At this point I am thinking there must be better ways to enjoy a Friday night and alcohol suddenly becomes appealing, but as a great host I focus on the kettle instead.
One bowl of popcorn later, I return to the couch to find people lured by the buttery flavour and soon disappointed at the sight of the empty bowl. At least it distracted them from the debate...
While some can be good, in general I do not hold high expectations for horror flicks. They tend to have a bad story, awful acting and either too much make-up. Or too little make-up in the case of Barbara Streisand (Yes, all her films are horror films; pay attention.) Still, fingers crossed! (Can you guess who that is already?)
When I return for a second time from the kitchen -with a full bowl this time- the lights are out and the screen is on and the film has already started. Here it goes... By the opening scene I can guess this is not a lucky exception. The dialogue is fake and forced. The guy on screen is rigid, and not in the good way for a horror. He is supposed to be alive and even cheerful despite all evidence of his acting. He is driving an expensive car somewhere in the mountains and speaking on the phone about a party where he is the main guest. Even the soundtrack is disappointing, more like elevator music than Psycho or any dun-dun-dun-dun, dun-dun-dun-dun...
And it only gets worse; the superstitious one is getting more and more engaged in a conversation with her friend, everyone else is rather focused on the popcorn and snacks and make enough noise to keep me awake. Well, at least the conversation in my left ear is about make-up, so there is still some hope. And the guy on-screen made it to the cabin in the woods eventually. It does look surprisingly better than the rickety ruins you are used to see in horror movies. This one looks more like a penthouse. Nice cars parked in front, nice pool, the lot. I get the first shiver of horror: oh, please, I hope this is not another Twilight! The guy in the expensive car rings the doorbell and... well, this is not Twilight. The lady is not a midget and definitely not flat. The conversation is just as bad, though. If I could only focus on the cars... Look, that one is a McLaren Senna, and there is a Regerra next to it and... oh, they went inside. Wow, this looks even more expensive than Twilight! And the action is more paced, too: these guys are not taking two hours for a kiss, 20 seconds seem to be enough. And they are not slowing down a bit... Hold on! What the hell is this? I am not so sure this is a horror! What are they.... Yes, definitely not a horror, except only for that snooker table. That is not how you treat a Strachan! At least put a towel on and take your stilettoes off, you cow!
Damn it, who chose this? Surprise surprise, it was the 'uncertain' friend. Apparently, you look for a movie in the adult section because... they are not suitable for children. I cannot help it, and I reflect that he did not look suitable for children, either. The room goes quiet, save for the panting in the background. It is unanimously (with one exception) agreed that I crossed the line: I assumed the dubious friend was a 'he'. How crass of me! How insensitive! How can I not see that he (sorry) identifies himself (sorry again) as a she? Of course, how could I not know? Well, in my defence, the Adam's apple and hairy chest are pretty good clues. No, not enough? Alas! Another lovely evening that I have ruined for everyone.
The hastily misjudged mumbles an excuse about some other event, grabs her purse (Ooh!) and her 46-sized shoes (Ha!) and makes a dramatic exit. Followed by another excuse and her friend. And more excuses and eventually everybody else.
Looks like another quiet night in, after all. Well, there is a good side to such fast pace of the action on- and off-screen: plenty of snacks and popcorn left. And enough time to start over with a proper film.
As I reconfigure the plates and couch for a single-person layout, the superstitious friend returns. Could it be...? Yes, but of course, what else? She forgot her phone. Would she be interested in another movie? Well, she is not quite sure. Maybe she should stay a bit more at least, so that I can explain. She seems reluctant, but eventually agrees.
Dun-dun-dun-dun, dun-dun-dun-dun!
Not really, that is her phone ringing; somebody is feeling depressed and cannot be left alone right now. Quite the contrary, I think, this could be win-win. For us and the humanity in general. She leaves before I manage to explain, though.
I guess not all horror movies have happy-endings...
Anyway, tonight is movie night. It is Friday, and since it also happens to be a 13, someone suggests a horror movie. Yes, I know... But for the superstitious this is relevant. I do not really understand how or why, but she is hot so she was invited. And she brought a friend, too. Unfortunately, not a woman, but fortunately not quite a man, either. I would say about 70/10. There is a lot of margin for error in these cases.
Without further ado, horror film it is. And by "without further ado" I mean a lengthy debate which I do not feel like contributing to since I am the host. I find it more diplomatic to escape to the kitchen and make some popcorn while everybody else carries on. At this point I am thinking there must be better ways to enjoy a Friday night and alcohol suddenly becomes appealing, but as a great host I focus on the kettle instead.
One bowl of popcorn later, I return to the couch to find people lured by the buttery flavour and soon disappointed at the sight of the empty bowl. At least it distracted them from the debate...
While some can be good, in general I do not hold high expectations for horror flicks. They tend to have a bad story, awful acting and either too much make-up. Or too little make-up in the case of Barbara Streisand (Yes, all her films are horror films; pay attention.) Still, fingers crossed! (Can you guess who that is already?)
When I return for a second time from the kitchen -with a full bowl this time- the lights are out and the screen is on and the film has already started. Here it goes... By the opening scene I can guess this is not a lucky exception. The dialogue is fake and forced. The guy on screen is rigid, and not in the good way for a horror. He is supposed to be alive and even cheerful despite all evidence of his acting. He is driving an expensive car somewhere in the mountains and speaking on the phone about a party where he is the main guest. Even the soundtrack is disappointing, more like elevator music than Psycho or any dun-dun-dun-dun, dun-dun-dun-dun...
And it only gets worse; the superstitious one is getting more and more engaged in a conversation with her friend, everyone else is rather focused on the popcorn and snacks and make enough noise to keep me awake. Well, at least the conversation in my left ear is about make-up, so there is still some hope. And the guy on-screen made it to the cabin in the woods eventually. It does look surprisingly better than the rickety ruins you are used to see in horror movies. This one looks more like a penthouse. Nice cars parked in front, nice pool, the lot. I get the first shiver of horror: oh, please, I hope this is not another Twilight! The guy in the expensive car rings the doorbell and... well, this is not Twilight. The lady is not a midget and definitely not flat. The conversation is just as bad, though. If I could only focus on the cars... Look, that one is a McLaren Senna, and there is a Regerra next to it and... oh, they went inside. Wow, this looks even more expensive than Twilight! And the action is more paced, too: these guys are not taking two hours for a kiss, 20 seconds seem to be enough. And they are not slowing down a bit... Hold on! What the hell is this? I am not so sure this is a horror! What are they.... Yes, definitely not a horror, except only for that snooker table. That is not how you treat a Strachan! At least put a towel on and take your stilettoes off, you cow!
Damn it, who chose this? Surprise surprise, it was the 'uncertain' friend. Apparently, you look for a movie in the adult section because... they are not suitable for children. I cannot help it, and I reflect that he did not look suitable for children, either. The room goes quiet, save for the panting in the background. It is unanimously (with one exception) agreed that I crossed the line: I assumed the dubious friend was a 'he'. How crass of me! How insensitive! How can I not see that he (sorry) identifies himself (sorry again) as a she? Of course, how could I not know? Well, in my defence, the Adam's apple and hairy chest are pretty good clues. No, not enough? Alas! Another lovely evening that I have ruined for everyone.
The hastily misjudged mumbles an excuse about some other event, grabs her purse (Ooh!) and her 46-sized shoes (Ha!) and makes a dramatic exit. Followed by another excuse and her friend. And more excuses and eventually everybody else.
Looks like another quiet night in, after all. Well, there is a good side to such fast pace of the action on- and off-screen: plenty of snacks and popcorn left. And enough time to start over with a proper film.
As I reconfigure the plates and couch for a single-person layout, the superstitious friend returns. Could it be...? Yes, but of course, what else? She forgot her phone. Would she be interested in another movie? Well, she is not quite sure. Maybe she should stay a bit more at least, so that I can explain. She seems reluctant, but eventually agrees.
Dun-dun-dun-dun, dun-dun-dun-dun!
Not really, that is her phone ringing; somebody is feeling depressed and cannot be left alone right now. Quite the contrary, I think, this could be win-win. For us and the humanity in general. She leaves before I manage to explain, though.
I guess not all horror movies have happy-endings...
09 July, 2018
A useless guide to visiting the fjords with a troll
I have known Sabine for more than nine years. Of which, for the first five she was the wife of a good friend of mine. Now they are separated. He is married now, has three children and two cats. And a wife with a drinking problem. Her drinking problem is related to his gambling problem. And one of the cats is blind. Still, it could have been worse. He could have stayed with Sabine.
Most of the times Sabine and I get along well. By most of the times meaning the times when I manage to keep my mouth shut and not be honest to all her chatter about her ex-husbands (she has been married twice so far) and former or current partners, or other great stories. Because everything happening to her is fascinating and amazing and fantastic. And she tells it all like it is a trifle, but often makes pauses for you to exclaim "wow, that is formidable, you are so interesting". To be honest, it is incredible. Incredibly boring, especially after hearing it all for more than eleven times. Still, it could be worse. She could have children. There might not be enough hours in a day to tell all the wondrous things her children did. Because they would be the smartest, most beautiful and interesting children in the world. She does not have any, though. She only has a chihuahua and she never mentions it, as I passingly mentioned once how I kicked a chihuahua. I also mentioned, still passingly, how much I hate dogs. Which is a lie. Well, sort of a lie. I love dogs, save for those tiny ones that look like they go into fibrillation every time they poop.
If I could have any pet I wanted, it would be a hyena. Then I could invite Sabine to walk our dogs together and I could discreetly ask my hyena to eat her chihuahua. However, owning a hyena is difficult. They are messy, and it is hard to collect bits of flesh from everywhere and wash blood stains off a carpet. Um... a friend told me that. Eventually I would stick to a 'pure-breeds' mongrel; I am not going to spend eight hundred dollars on a single breed when I can get a mix of four or five pure strands for free at the shelter. It would be like going to a mix-and-match candy shop and paying for a single type of Haribo’s when you could get a bit of everything for free, including peanut butter m&m's and chocolate biscuits. Who would do that that? Unfortunately, I know who: my colleague Martin, who accidentally ate a Haribo Cola once and he liked it, but he is too afraid to try anything new. All this discussion about candy has made me a bit peckish, hold on.
(Four minutes and one jumbo-size bag of Haribo’s later...)
Where was I? Right. Any animal larger than a cat could gobble her chihuahua. But hyenas have better personality than cats, are fierce fighters and are able to laugh. Laughter is good. Without it we could go insane at Sabine's stories. Still, it could be worse...
Last month I went on vacation with Sabine. She was between boyfriends or may the current one was unavailable or something, and I was... her last choice in her list of friends but the only one available for that weekend with cheap tickets. She suggested Norway, because she wanted to see a fjord. And the cheap tickets, too.
I was hesitant at first (I always hesitate at her initiatives), but I said yes. When I was in third grade I saw a picture of a fjord in the geography book. I liked it so much that I made a drawing of me on a sleigh at the top of the mountain and I imagined how amazing it would be to drive it (that was the technical term then) all the way down. At that age I did not tend to bother much with aspects such as accelerating for many hundred meters on a steep rocky slope and plunging straight into icy water. It was a fantastic sleigh, but my teacher did not appreciate me drawing on the school's books. To this day, I am not sure if she was jealous of my adventure or the Cockosaurus, a dinosaur with a huge penis that I had drawn on the same page near a bear that presumably lived in fjord-ish areas (another technical term from those innocent days). But a punishment was involved.
When fjords were mentioned, sleighing down on one was my first thought. Now that I am a grown-up I am aware there are downsides to it; I would have to carry the sleigh back all that way once finished. I still wanted to go, despite all that. Including Sabine.
The trip started well, my first fun memory was in the airport. They asked Sabine to pay extra for her oversized suitcase, which was more than the ticket itself. I nodded compassionately to her bitching for the entire duration of Denmark and the Northern Sea while pretending I only kept the noise cancellation headphones for the engine and that I was not listening to anything. My rhythmic nodding almost gave me away during a song or two but in the end, she calmed down before landing. Passport control, thorough exploration of the duty-free (she realised she wanted headphones), car rental, nice drive to town, hotel check-in, walking tour and dinner. Next morning, we were ready for adventure.
Well, not quite ready yet, first she had to get ready for the great outdoors. Make-up for twenty minutes then twenty more minutes to cover in six layers of professional ski and winter clothing. Because Norway is cold. So cold that I also had to put on a light hoodie over of my shirt, there was a light drizzle. But it could easily escalate into a tropical hurricane, according to Sabine's vast experience with urban mountains. When she was done she was so well covered that her make-up had become one of the foundation layers (you see, ladies, I know a thing or two about make-up), beneath two hoods, a scarf, and a polar-expedition-grade hat. Finally, she was ready. Properly equipped, we went all the way to the hotel restaurant for breakfast. And a story about the fifty minutes on the phone in the middle of the night with her ex that still wants to be with her. And the impossibility of escaping such drama. I suggested Silent Mode. I suggested it for breakfast, too, but she did not get it. On the way out, the lady receptionist told us it would be a great day for sight-seeing and suggested us a... sight worth seeing that was a bit further but unreachable by coach. For me it meant no tourists taking pictures on iPads and hopefully no gift shops. I was all in.
Finally, ready for adventure. Well, fist coffee. And another story. Not sure if it was about the same ex or a different one, hard to tell. Then back to her room, she forgot her headphones. Then searched for headphones through the entire luggage and found them on the night-stand. Car. Drive. Incomplete ex story because half-way through she remembered she had new headphones. Like a teenager, Sabine enjoys her bad music at maximum volume, which means I could hear it, too, from her tiny in-ear buds and over the car engine. It sounded worse than the navigation instructions in Norwegian, but it was better than stories I had heard many times before.
One long and beautiful drive and one not very beautiful parking toll later, we were at the top of the fjord. I will not lie, the sight was brilliant, despite the apparent lack of sleighs. The mountains, the trees, the water, it looked majestic. Rain had stopped, and there were just a few clouds to make the sun not so annoying. Perfect, just how I liked it. It was so beautiful that even Sabine managed to shut up for a while. Thank you, lady receptionist! And thank you, headphones! All this splendour and not a single tourist in sight.
Alas, there was still one...
I had enjoyed the sight for a while, and even managed to identify the trekking path to a nearby waterfall. Finding directions is always a challenge for me. I was just about to go when it began...
Can you please take a photo of me? Thanks. Wait, it is blurry! Can you do it again, please? Yes, a bit better. Wait, my face does not appear in the photo! Let me take my hoodie off! Better. Now! And now! Hmm, that should do, I guess. Wait, now take one from the side! Again, I will arrange my hair to look like it is not arranged. Now take one when I'm jumping and in mid-air! No, take it when I am highest in the air! I know a phone is not a professional camera, try to estimate how long it takes and press the button before! Hmm... I will jump from that rock, but make sure the rock does not appear in the photo! Now take one when I'm gazing into the distance! No, a bit more to the side. Try to take in both that tree and the river! Like that. No, it is too much to the side! You never listen! Wow, what a nice bird! Did you manage to get it in the photo? Of course not. Could we wait a bit? Maybe it comes back. Where are you going? Waterfall? Great, maybe we can take some pictures there.
Between each photo there was a pause for walks to and from the camera, criticism and complaints, various changes like making the face visible, rumpling hair, arranging the hair back because it would hide her face, jumping several times with the hands high, knees high and laugher forced, finding a rock, more jumps, moving to and fro finding the best tree (because they do not look the same at all), moving to one side, composing for a serious, meditative pose and so on. The time saved on shorter complaints was used for uploading the picture to Facebook. While internet is fast and coverage is great even in the most remote areas, finding an appropriate message to go with the picture is not fast at all. If you ask me, the message is not great at all, either. But who has the time to ask me? I should focus on taking better pictures.
Finally, we moved on... to shortly stop at every twist and turn in the road that was Instagram-worthy. And in Norway, there are quite a few. Fortunately, the appeal of waterfall photos would set us back in motion quickly.
If I had a target of a minimum number of words in a story, I could simply copy and paste the section from above, replace fjord with waterfall, make small adjustments here and there. And it would not be cheating, because it happened absolutely the same. Setting thresholds for minimum work are not my thing, though; my style is rather focused on avoiding the maximum. To put it briefly, it was like Groundhog Day. The only difference is that there is lower chance to fall in love with Sabine than with Rita. I apologise if you do not know Groundhog Day. You could go, watch it, and come back here if you remember to, and it would still be faster than recollecting the fjord photo session in the context of the waterfall. Bottom line, it was the same. Except that when she demanded an eighteenth meditative photo at the edge of the waterfall I pushed her into the abyss and was surprised to notice how her shrill screaming could briefly cover the thunderous noise of water falling from a height of more than seventy meters. As my phone is slower than her fall from such height, I did not manage to record her fall and the subsequent crash and death. I guess she was right: I am bad at taking photos of people jumping. Well, live and learn. In my case, not hers. What I learned after my trip to the fjords is that maybe I should buy a new, faster phone.
After a lovely and quiet rest of the afternoon in the great outdoors I returned to the hotel. I thanked the lady receptionist for her great tips, it was such a lovely trip. She asked where my friend was, but I did not know her well enough to tell her the truth about Sabine's great "trip". I said instead that she went shopping for a new jacket, which was unfortunately the truth because in reality I did not have the heart to kill Sabine. She is still my friend and very much alive.
Still, there is a silver-lining to this story. Later at the hotel, she got undressed for a shower when her phone rang. It was her current boyfriend and she went to the balcony to talk in private. I do not understand why, because I was not in the room at the time and later at dinner I was served a 40-minutes summary of that 15-minutes conversation anyway. The fish was excellent, though, and what was also excellent -this is where the silver-lining kicks in- was that she got a severe cold when she was in the balcony. Her throat was so inflamed from her coughing that she could barely speak, and her nose was so red and swollen that she did not want any pictures the following day. She only settled for a couple of landscapes she managed to shoot by herself. They were deleted later, during the flight back home; coughing while taking pictures makes them even worse than mine, apparently.
I was a gentleman all the way and took her home and helped with her two suitcases. Now there were two; luggage fees and Norwegian prices cannot stop Sabine from shopping. We were welcomed by her chihuahua. It tried to bite my hand when I accidentally placed one of the suitcases on its sleeping rug. I would not kick a dog, but I think a video of a chihuahua being thrown in a waterfall would gather even more views and Likes on Facebook than Sabine gets in an entire weekend at the beach in a provocative swimming suit.
Most of the times Sabine and I get along well. By most of the times meaning the times when I manage to keep my mouth shut and not be honest to all her chatter about her ex-husbands (she has been married twice so far) and former or current partners, or other great stories. Because everything happening to her is fascinating and amazing and fantastic. And she tells it all like it is a trifle, but often makes pauses for you to exclaim "wow, that is formidable, you are so interesting". To be honest, it is incredible. Incredibly boring, especially after hearing it all for more than eleven times. Still, it could be worse. She could have children. There might not be enough hours in a day to tell all the wondrous things her children did. Because they would be the smartest, most beautiful and interesting children in the world. She does not have any, though. She only has a chihuahua and she never mentions it, as I passingly mentioned once how I kicked a chihuahua. I also mentioned, still passingly, how much I hate dogs. Which is a lie. Well, sort of a lie. I love dogs, save for those tiny ones that look like they go into fibrillation every time they poop.
If I could have any pet I wanted, it would be a hyena. Then I could invite Sabine to walk our dogs together and I could discreetly ask my hyena to eat her chihuahua. However, owning a hyena is difficult. They are messy, and it is hard to collect bits of flesh from everywhere and wash blood stains off a carpet. Um... a friend told me that. Eventually I would stick to a 'pure-breeds' mongrel; I am not going to spend eight hundred dollars on a single breed when I can get a mix of four or five pure strands for free at the shelter. It would be like going to a mix-and-match candy shop and paying for a single type of Haribo’s when you could get a bit of everything for free, including peanut butter m&m's and chocolate biscuits. Who would do that that? Unfortunately, I know who: my colleague Martin, who accidentally ate a Haribo Cola once and he liked it, but he is too afraid to try anything new. All this discussion about candy has made me a bit peckish, hold on.
(Four minutes and one jumbo-size bag of Haribo’s later...)
Where was I? Right. Any animal larger than a cat could gobble her chihuahua. But hyenas have better personality than cats, are fierce fighters and are able to laugh. Laughter is good. Without it we could go insane at Sabine's stories. Still, it could be worse...
Last month I went on vacation with Sabine. She was between boyfriends or may the current one was unavailable or something, and I was... her last choice in her list of friends but the only one available for that weekend with cheap tickets. She suggested Norway, because she wanted to see a fjord. And the cheap tickets, too.
I was hesitant at first (I always hesitate at her initiatives), but I said yes. When I was in third grade I saw a picture of a fjord in the geography book. I liked it so much that I made a drawing of me on a sleigh at the top of the mountain and I imagined how amazing it would be to drive it (that was the technical term then) all the way down. At that age I did not tend to bother much with aspects such as accelerating for many hundred meters on a steep rocky slope and plunging straight into icy water. It was a fantastic sleigh, but my teacher did not appreciate me drawing on the school's books. To this day, I am not sure if she was jealous of my adventure or the Cockosaurus, a dinosaur with a huge penis that I had drawn on the same page near a bear that presumably lived in fjord-ish areas (another technical term from those innocent days). But a punishment was involved.
When fjords were mentioned, sleighing down on one was my first thought. Now that I am a grown-up I am aware there are downsides to it; I would have to carry the sleigh back all that way once finished. I still wanted to go, despite all that. Including Sabine.
The trip started well, my first fun memory was in the airport. They asked Sabine to pay extra for her oversized suitcase, which was more than the ticket itself. I nodded compassionately to her bitching for the entire duration of Denmark and the Northern Sea while pretending I only kept the noise cancellation headphones for the engine and that I was not listening to anything. My rhythmic nodding almost gave me away during a song or two but in the end, she calmed down before landing. Passport control, thorough exploration of the duty-free (she realised she wanted headphones), car rental, nice drive to town, hotel check-in, walking tour and dinner. Next morning, we were ready for adventure.
Well, not quite ready yet, first she had to get ready for the great outdoors. Make-up for twenty minutes then twenty more minutes to cover in six layers of professional ski and winter clothing. Because Norway is cold. So cold that I also had to put on a light hoodie over of my shirt, there was a light drizzle. But it could easily escalate into a tropical hurricane, according to Sabine's vast experience with urban mountains. When she was done she was so well covered that her make-up had become one of the foundation layers (you see, ladies, I know a thing or two about make-up), beneath two hoods, a scarf, and a polar-expedition-grade hat. Finally, she was ready. Properly equipped, we went all the way to the hotel restaurant for breakfast. And a story about the fifty minutes on the phone in the middle of the night with her ex that still wants to be with her. And the impossibility of escaping such drama. I suggested Silent Mode. I suggested it for breakfast, too, but she did not get it. On the way out, the lady receptionist told us it would be a great day for sight-seeing and suggested us a... sight worth seeing that was a bit further but unreachable by coach. For me it meant no tourists taking pictures on iPads and hopefully no gift shops. I was all in.
Finally, ready for adventure. Well, fist coffee. And another story. Not sure if it was about the same ex or a different one, hard to tell. Then back to her room, she forgot her headphones. Then searched for headphones through the entire luggage and found them on the night-stand. Car. Drive. Incomplete ex story because half-way through she remembered she had new headphones. Like a teenager, Sabine enjoys her bad music at maximum volume, which means I could hear it, too, from her tiny in-ear buds and over the car engine. It sounded worse than the navigation instructions in Norwegian, but it was better than stories I had heard many times before.
One long and beautiful drive and one not very beautiful parking toll later, we were at the top of the fjord. I will not lie, the sight was brilliant, despite the apparent lack of sleighs. The mountains, the trees, the water, it looked majestic. Rain had stopped, and there were just a few clouds to make the sun not so annoying. Perfect, just how I liked it. It was so beautiful that even Sabine managed to shut up for a while. Thank you, lady receptionist! And thank you, headphones! All this splendour and not a single tourist in sight.
Alas, there was still one...
I had enjoyed the sight for a while, and even managed to identify the trekking path to a nearby waterfall. Finding directions is always a challenge for me. I was just about to go when it began...
Can you please take a photo of me? Thanks. Wait, it is blurry! Can you do it again, please? Yes, a bit better. Wait, my face does not appear in the photo! Let me take my hoodie off! Better. Now! And now! Hmm, that should do, I guess. Wait, now take one from the side! Again, I will arrange my hair to look like it is not arranged. Now take one when I'm jumping and in mid-air! No, take it when I am highest in the air! I know a phone is not a professional camera, try to estimate how long it takes and press the button before! Hmm... I will jump from that rock, but make sure the rock does not appear in the photo! Now take one when I'm gazing into the distance! No, a bit more to the side. Try to take in both that tree and the river! Like that. No, it is too much to the side! You never listen! Wow, what a nice bird! Did you manage to get it in the photo? Of course not. Could we wait a bit? Maybe it comes back. Where are you going? Waterfall? Great, maybe we can take some pictures there.
Between each photo there was a pause for walks to and from the camera, criticism and complaints, various changes like making the face visible, rumpling hair, arranging the hair back because it would hide her face, jumping several times with the hands high, knees high and laugher forced, finding a rock, more jumps, moving to and fro finding the best tree (because they do not look the same at all), moving to one side, composing for a serious, meditative pose and so on. The time saved on shorter complaints was used for uploading the picture to Facebook. While internet is fast and coverage is great even in the most remote areas, finding an appropriate message to go with the picture is not fast at all. If you ask me, the message is not great at all, either. But who has the time to ask me? I should focus on taking better pictures.
Finally, we moved on... to shortly stop at every twist and turn in the road that was Instagram-worthy. And in Norway, there are quite a few. Fortunately, the appeal of waterfall photos would set us back in motion quickly.
If I had a target of a minimum number of words in a story, I could simply copy and paste the section from above, replace fjord with waterfall, make small adjustments here and there. And it would not be cheating, because it happened absolutely the same. Setting thresholds for minimum work are not my thing, though; my style is rather focused on avoiding the maximum. To put it briefly, it was like Groundhog Day. The only difference is that there is lower chance to fall in love with Sabine than with Rita. I apologise if you do not know Groundhog Day. You could go, watch it, and come back here if you remember to, and it would still be faster than recollecting the fjord photo session in the context of the waterfall. Bottom line, it was the same. Except that when she demanded an eighteenth meditative photo at the edge of the waterfall I pushed her into the abyss and was surprised to notice how her shrill screaming could briefly cover the thunderous noise of water falling from a height of more than seventy meters. As my phone is slower than her fall from such height, I did not manage to record her fall and the subsequent crash and death. I guess she was right: I am bad at taking photos of people jumping. Well, live and learn. In my case, not hers. What I learned after my trip to the fjords is that maybe I should buy a new, faster phone.
After a lovely and quiet rest of the afternoon in the great outdoors I returned to the hotel. I thanked the lady receptionist for her great tips, it was such a lovely trip. She asked where my friend was, but I did not know her well enough to tell her the truth about Sabine's great "trip". I said instead that she went shopping for a new jacket, which was unfortunately the truth because in reality I did not have the heart to kill Sabine. She is still my friend and very much alive.
Still, there is a silver-lining to this story. Later at the hotel, she got undressed for a shower when her phone rang. It was her current boyfriend and she went to the balcony to talk in private. I do not understand why, because I was not in the room at the time and later at dinner I was served a 40-minutes summary of that 15-minutes conversation anyway. The fish was excellent, though, and what was also excellent -this is where the silver-lining kicks in- was that she got a severe cold when she was in the balcony. Her throat was so inflamed from her coughing that she could barely speak, and her nose was so red and swollen that she did not want any pictures the following day. She only settled for a couple of landscapes she managed to shoot by herself. They were deleted later, during the flight back home; coughing while taking pictures makes them even worse than mine, apparently.
I was a gentleman all the way and took her home and helped with her two suitcases. Now there were two; luggage fees and Norwegian prices cannot stop Sabine from shopping. We were welcomed by her chihuahua. It tried to bite my hand when I accidentally placed one of the suitcases on its sleeping rug. I would not kick a dog, but I think a video of a chihuahua being thrown in a waterfall would gather even more views and Likes on Facebook than Sabine gets in an entire weekend at the beach in a provocative swimming suit.
01 July, 2018
A useless guide to underwater life
A couple of years ago, a team of Danish Scientists have discovered a Greenland shark that is 400 years old. It was found a few hundred meters away from its school, lost and dehydrated from all that crying. The research team offered it soup and tried to make contact, but their attempts were in vain, except for the soup. Its lack of response was attributed to its old age and the fact that it was a female, which is a bit sexist but can be true. Many moons ago, when I was a young support monkey I had an older colleague and she displayed the same grumpiness when subjected to stress. I tested that for 180 times and eventually gave up when she hooked up with a friend of mine that is no longer a friend of mine. Win-win, I guess.
The shark's age was determined by radiocarbon dating its eye lens nuclei. My colleague also had eye lenses in a small box on her desk, but since my experience with pulse of carbon-14 produced by nuclear tests is not that vast and equipment was not available nearby, I looked at her ID card lying on the very same desk and computed it in my head. I am not very good with large numbers either, so it took a few attempts and time.
Four hundred years is a long time. If you ask Christians, that is 10 percent of our planet's age. Which means that according to their schedule the shark's grandpa could have been contemporary with Jesus. Possibly. By that I mean that any imaginary thing is possible when evaluated through the lens of religion, no matter how stupid.
I imagine that sharks would be irritated by the noise of flip-flops when someone walks on water, as well as the applauses of its unwashed audience on the shore. Sandals and flip-flops make more noise on water, as sound propagates better than through sand. And on top of that, these are made out of wood. I guess it helps a bit with flotation. Oh, did I ruin the "magic" trick by explaining it? Either that, or that person is a carpenter and is too cheap to spend on havaianans.
If I were a shark and had to face such nuisance, I would give 25-30 pieces of silver to someone in the water-walker's entourage to get rid of the noise source. Like convince him to move someplace else, I guess. His pick, what could go wrong?
Of course, I could just move to other waters, but as a matter of principle I do not skimp on comfort. And 30 pieces of silver are easy to come by, I have 8 sunken pirate ships in my backyard and they are packed with that stuff. The bigger problem is actually finding someone reliable enough to carry the job through. I knew a whale that told me that once he had to bribe 8 people until he finally got rid of the noise. He had become so annoyed with the situation that one day he just couldn't take it and swallowed one of them. After some time, he got fed up with him and spit him back to shore. I did not wait to hear the rest of the story, but apparently that person became famous by embellishing the events to whomever cared to listen. It is complicated to deal with people, so it comes as no surprise that after a few hundred years one would just give up and move to a quiet place la Greenland. Sure, you need to pay attention to the big slabs of ice falling on your head from time to time, but overall it is a cool place to live.
And yes, I could just tackle the issue myself and out-perform the walking on water with a spectacular jump-and-grab and turn the water into red wine, but I find little satisfaction in sorting my own problems myself.
If I had to impress a bunch of gullible unwashed mob by claiming I can do magic, I guess an easy one would be to tell them I could turn water into wine, close my eyes for a bit, mumble some gibberish and then tell them it is done: white wine. It works every time there are no sommeliers in the audience. I heard once that before deciding on red wine, Jesus was working with prosecco until people figured out how he made the bubbles.
Where was I? Oh, yes. This is whom I'd gladly clip any time: Aquaman. I am a people person... sorry, I meant shark, as you know by now, but this prick is a horrible human being. Remember Ichthyander? Of course, you do not; you are too young and books are harder than movies. Well, Aquaman is the complete opposite. He is the under-water equivalent of Bono. Even if he did not talk so much you would always know where he is by the long trails of make-up he leaves in the water. Also, he spends ages in the shower and leaves more hair in the drain than Ariel. At least she could sing and... had other talents, too (and she tasted nice despite being intensely distressed after we broke up). But this guy? None. With Marvel getting so desperate about profits and coming up with so many franchises, I guess now there are now 5 to 6 superheroes per person already. I would not know what to do with so many. I could use the Strange doctor that can teleport me from place to place when I am too lazy to swim. He seems like a nice person. And he could tell me nice detective stories in the rest of the time. Sure, Stephen Fry has an even better voice, but his audio-book is still more than 60 dollars on amazon. And he is not so great at time travel, should the need arise. But the other super-heroes? I have no use for them. Maybe one to clean around the house and do the groceries, but that's it. I could keep Aquaman to do that, just for spite. But given how incompetent he is, he would probably make more mess than tidying and would get the wrong kind of sea weed. Oh, fun idea: I could also keep Hulk and unleash him from time to time on his ass. And when he's done being beaten up, he can start arranging the furniture back to where it was. Hulk would also be great when he is calm. Brilliant scientist, he is. He could probably fix the TV, post-smash. Which reminds me, MotoGP is on in 5 minutes. Well, children, this concludes today's guide to underwater life.
I hope you have learned a lot.
The shark's age was determined by radiocarbon dating its eye lens nuclei. My colleague also had eye lenses in a small box on her desk, but since my experience with pulse of carbon-14 produced by nuclear tests is not that vast and equipment was not available nearby, I looked at her ID card lying on the very same desk and computed it in my head. I am not very good with large numbers either, so it took a few attempts and time.
Four hundred years is a long time. If you ask Christians, that is 10 percent of our planet's age. Which means that according to their schedule the shark's grandpa could have been contemporary with Jesus. Possibly. By that I mean that any imaginary thing is possible when evaluated through the lens of religion, no matter how stupid.
I imagine that sharks would be irritated by the noise of flip-flops when someone walks on water, as well as the applauses of its unwashed audience on the shore. Sandals and flip-flops make more noise on water, as sound propagates better than through sand. And on top of that, these are made out of wood. I guess it helps a bit with flotation. Oh, did I ruin the "magic" trick by explaining it? Either that, or that person is a carpenter and is too cheap to spend on havaianans.
If I were a shark and had to face such nuisance, I would give 25-30 pieces of silver to someone in the water-walker's entourage to get rid of the noise source. Like convince him to move someplace else, I guess. His pick, what could go wrong?
Of course, I could just move to other waters, but as a matter of principle I do not skimp on comfort. And 30 pieces of silver are easy to come by, I have 8 sunken pirate ships in my backyard and they are packed with that stuff. The bigger problem is actually finding someone reliable enough to carry the job through. I knew a whale that told me that once he had to bribe 8 people until he finally got rid of the noise. He had become so annoyed with the situation that one day he just couldn't take it and swallowed one of them. After some time, he got fed up with him and spit him back to shore. I did not wait to hear the rest of the story, but apparently that person became famous by embellishing the events to whomever cared to listen. It is complicated to deal with people, so it comes as no surprise that after a few hundred years one would just give up and move to a quiet place la Greenland. Sure, you need to pay attention to the big slabs of ice falling on your head from time to time, but overall it is a cool place to live.
And yes, I could just tackle the issue myself and out-perform the walking on water with a spectacular jump-and-grab and turn the water into red wine, but I find little satisfaction in sorting my own problems myself.
If I had to impress a bunch of gullible unwashed mob by claiming I can do magic, I guess an easy one would be to tell them I could turn water into wine, close my eyes for a bit, mumble some gibberish and then tell them it is done: white wine. It works every time there are no sommeliers in the audience. I heard once that before deciding on red wine, Jesus was working with prosecco until people figured out how he made the bubbles.
Where was I? Oh, yes. This is whom I'd gladly clip any time: Aquaman. I am a people person... sorry, I meant shark, as you know by now, but this prick is a horrible human being. Remember Ichthyander? Of course, you do not; you are too young and books are harder than movies. Well, Aquaman is the complete opposite. He is the under-water equivalent of Bono. Even if he did not talk so much you would always know where he is by the long trails of make-up he leaves in the water. Also, he spends ages in the shower and leaves more hair in the drain than Ariel. At least she could sing and... had other talents, too (and she tasted nice despite being intensely distressed after we broke up). But this guy? None. With Marvel getting so desperate about profits and coming up with so many franchises, I guess now there are now 5 to 6 superheroes per person already. I would not know what to do with so many. I could use the Strange doctor that can teleport me from place to place when I am too lazy to swim. He seems like a nice person. And he could tell me nice detective stories in the rest of the time. Sure, Stephen Fry has an even better voice, but his audio-book is still more than 60 dollars on amazon. And he is not so great at time travel, should the need arise. But the other super-heroes? I have no use for them. Maybe one to clean around the house and do the groceries, but that's it. I could keep Aquaman to do that, just for spite. But given how incompetent he is, he would probably make more mess than tidying and would get the wrong kind of sea weed. Oh, fun idea: I could also keep Hulk and unleash him from time to time on his ass. And when he's done being beaten up, he can start arranging the furniture back to where it was. Hulk would also be great when he is calm. Brilliant scientist, he is. He could probably fix the TV, post-smash. Which reminds me, MotoGP is on in 5 minutes. Well, children, this concludes today's guide to underwater life.
I hope you have learned a lot.
18 March, 2018
Coffee-shop and Daffodil
Right, coffee-shop. Not any kind, but new coffee-shop. Coffee-shop 2.0. Where should I start? Fancy chairs, rich menu and decorations, professional baristas. Fancy chairs means there are not two of the same, each trying to out-pass the others in terms of looks and funkiness, made from 19 different materials, with the only thing they have in common being overall lack of comfort. But hey, you know, design!
Design also overflows in the menu, with long descriptions for coffee, in an attempt to make it as exciting as the chairs: single-source, double-roast, hand-picked, fair-trade, gluten-free (probably unlike some bits in the chairs), organic milk (anything but cow is acceptable), virgin cinnamon, sugar without any clarification about its virginity but definitely brown or cane. The list goes on and on. It is so big that you need a full-size wall to handwrite it all in chalk. Preferably by someone suffering from Parkinson, a doctor or someone that has not learned how to write yet. The former can be controversial, and doctors can be harder to find, but luckily you can always find the latter among the staff.
For each item on the menu there are sizes: from 0.2 ml, for a strong roast that will give you a mild heart-attack, all the way to a bucket. And nothing else in between. If they decide to squeeze some intermediary sizes, Latin words irrelevant to volume are to be used.
The other walls are adorned with local art, because, you know, support for the community and struggling artists. The art on display is like finger and macaroni paintings toddlers do in kindergarten when the teacher has forgotten to lock up the sweets cupboard. Swap the paint and macaroni for markers, pebbles, sequins and glitter and there you have it. Sometimes it is done directly on the wall or, for extra zest, on old posters, vinyl discs or any flat surface they were too lazy to take out to the bins. Well, there is a reason local art is local, and that reason is related mainly to quality. Still, the new coffee-shop remains hopeful that good intentions compensate whatever lacks in skill and broadcast it on every surface not taken by the menu: walls, cupboards, radiators, and sometimes even in the bathrooms.
Fortunately, at the end of the day, the outcome of the struggle remains contained locally. Those that are not local will be spared and will only have to deal with their own... and so on, and so on.
Baristas masterfully lead this whole symphony of sensations. You can tell them apart from the cattle by their impeccably dramatic uniforms of beanies and ironically non-matching aprons. Conjoined in a graceful dance around their immense silvery alchemy machine (the coffee maker), they are pushing buttons, scribbling furiously and unintelligibly the customer's name on paper or extruded polyester cups. Said cups are then fed by said baristas to the said machine, buttons are pushed, and the precious brown fluid fills them to the brim a couple of minutes later. Or only filled half-way through, to save room for the upcoming milk-foam art and the complimentary sprinkle or two of precious nutmeg or cinnamon (virgin, remember?) powder from a never-ending jar with a sieve on top.
To the untrained eye all this may look easy, but mastering such craft requires long time and suffering. The long time is for growing the beard and the suffering is for the tattoos, truck-tire earrings in the ears and piercings everywhere else. Attitude, mumbling, and a tank top are added to the mix, and the magnificent outcome is deemed worthy to handle the sacred coffee machine. And blissfully mix up the orders.
If you want to gain the barista's respect, you will ask politely for anything with at least six words in the title. And try to sound like it is not the first time you're reciting the drink's pompous title. Then say your name. Wait two to three minutes. Repeat your name. Wait four minutes more. Spell your name. Offer to write it yourself. Get mumbled or scoffed at. Pay. Wait patiently for other twenty minutes, even if there is no queue; art requires sacrifice. Quickly whiff or gulp to relish your concoction and step out before the local art and music irreversibly scratch your retina and eardrum. Thank you and have a blessed day. Or, if you get it, man, take out your MacBook and spend the next six hours clicking and basking in the potpourri of coffee flavour, visual art and music.
Wait! Oh, my! Silly me, but I forgot to mention the music.
When not violating the copyright off whales snoring or dolphins farting or some twigs cracking in the Amazonian forest, new coffee-shop music is another nod to local musicians. The kind of musicians that do not know how to play any musical instrument. Those that go the extra mile and do learn subsequently display their skill in the live band at their friends' weddings. Most of them do not. And they take pride in making their music on specialised devices. Devices with lamps for pure, analogue sound. Because digital sound is not pure, brother, you know? Anyway, the raw, analogue sound is then taken processed through ready-made filters, presumably for more purity, and then tuned on a computer connected to keyboards with many buttons. Whilst still remaining analogue. And pure. The pure end result is a monotonous series of beats of various frequencies dubbed over elevator music. If there was a woman available during the recording, you may spot a diluted lamenting blur in the song from time to time.
I met once such a "musician". He was named Daffodil and he was almost fifty. He used to describe himself as a new player and promising talent. I thought that would be a perfect name for this kind of artists. Daffodils are among the first flowers to bloom after a long harsh winter. They are supposed to symbolize rebirth, youth and creativity, awareness, and self-reflection. Or probably this is how they would describe themselves.
In reality they are the last flowers you would use in a bouquet and are usually thrown in for free as filler by florists before they get too wilted. Such perfect irony is indeed rare and to be heartily enjoyed.
18 February, 2018
A useless guide to writing an easy self-help book
A lot of people tend to write self-help books these days. My heart melts when I see so many accomplished gurus willing to selflessly help other people for as little as a lot of money.
Writing such material is a lucrative business and involves very little effort; it is as easy as copying and pasting some text from other books you can find on-line, websites, and social media throughout most of your book. And as difficult as some typing if the sources you get your, um, inspiration from are not available in digital format. Regardless of the path you choose, what makes such an endeavour so simple is the quality of your audience. In fact, the only challenge is to aim low enough to reach a vast mass of gullible idiots.
Here is how.
First, introduction. You cannot just jump in a book like this without a proper introduction. These are four to five easy pages, which is a lot in this case. Here you thank your life partner for stimulating your creative juices for optimal flow. You may also throw in some thanks for your parents, children, teacher or even your pet. Its silent but continuous and unconditional love, etcetera... It does not matter much who or what, if it stirs cheap emotion. Then, you thank your agent and publisher for the tremendous support they have provided. This is because you cannot really be honest and bastardize them for their fees and percentages, since they can see it before it goes to print. Also, you are buttering them to take mercy and publish your next treasure of wisdom, should you not get enough money from this one. However, a bit of genuine gratitude is due since they have published your garbage, which is quite an accomplishment for you. And testament for their greed and lack of standards.
Then you move on to the next introduction, in which you explain why you are giving away the secret of success. It is not about selling nonsense for twenty-nine to forty-nine dollars to a few thousand losers too busy daydreaming about a scheme to get rich quickly that they fail to see this is just your scheme to get rich quickly.
An easy approach is to mention a made-up event that changed your life, a dramatic turning point that defined your future, successful self. Like you were feeling stuck at work, you were struggling with your personal life, your friends seemed to distance themselves from you and you felt utterly lost. You seemed to be the only sad human left on Earth, struggling to breathe while people around you seemed happy and without a worry. Until one morning, after yet another sleepless night, and before a crucial event at work that day. Your job was on the line or maybe you already got fired. You felt your life was over and were contemplating jumping on the line and end it all as the subway was approaching. Or even jumping from the bridge, if you feel public transportation lacks gravitas. In which case, you may consider swapping the incoming subway with a silent, ice-cold, deep, grey river... It is at that exact point that you witnessed the revelation, the ray of sunshine in the rainy day (the ray of sunshine also works in the subway station, in this case it is a metaphor), the answer to all your questions, and how easy it was. This is what you want to share with your dear audience in the following section of the book. Keep it accessible, people of low intellect like to relate to such stories if they believe it could happen to them, too. It brings you closer to your audience and keeps them engaged enough not to think of a refund.
Once introduction is sorted, you need to get some content. This is about your story, your experiences. And your teachings, too; challenges that moulded you in the successful writer and leader and successful entrepreneur that you are today.
Luckily, the internet provides enough stories that might have happened to you. And it provides the teachings, too. If using a search engine sounds intimidating, get a Facebook or LinkedIn account and become friends people working in sales, marketing or as office managers (the politically-correct title for receptionist). Keep your eye on pictures of a seashore, possibly with a shell and definitely with some text in quotes. Focus on keywords like humbled, overwhelmed, awed, blessed, reverence and wonder. That is the title of your next chapter. And the content is one click away. In less than a week, you should have gathered more than enough material. Other gem indicators include pictures of famous people, also with a quote. If you want to take things to the next level, check out for posts which contain pictures of airports, boardrooms with smiling people coming out of them and shaking hands, or a man in a suit holding a pen at a desk. The more blurred the background, the better the potential for insight. Or at least a tree in the window and sunshine flooding the room.
Since this is the lengthier part, here is another trick to maintain a good flow: typeface and size. Quotes in Helvetica and Arial, and in smaller size, are about darker experiences; use these first, to make the reader appreciate more what already have but forgot they did. And as you get progress towards the end, shift towards items in Comic Sans; they are about optimism and positive outlook. The bigger the font, the more uplifting the outcome. Which is a great technique to segue into the happy conclusion.
Yes, you are almost there. And at this point the reader is so enthralled that she will not even care you did not really explain that dramatic turning point you promised in the introduction and what exactly was your contribution.
All these elements can be combined in an uplifting pot-pourri of banalities that people who shared them on social media desperately need. Your book will not be reheated tea, it will be the elixir of wisdom which comes to reinforce what they already thought they knew when they shared that link. But now it is even better, it is in a book.
Once you gathered about a hundred and fifty pages of wisdom and "personal" examples, you can prepare for the ending. This would be the conclusion of everything you have shared so far, your recipe for their success. Hope for a better self and future. Hope for better life. Hope is priceless. And thirty dollars is a very reasonable price for that.
If this is not your first book and the previous one sold well, the price tag can go higher. Much higher. If only one is not enough, do not see that as a failure. Think of the next one as progress.
I know a guy who can barely read and wrote four in less than three years. Each more expensive than the previous. Because he is a famous athlete (he has nice abs and was cast in some French car ads in which he speaks about being successful), people keep on paying. Probably eating cake during reading, and dreaming about how they will be as lean and successful as he is. Starting from next Monday, definitely. In the mean-time, they can also enlist in his on-line ten-weeks personalised program.
Oh, and one more thing. The last bit of effort is for the last page, were some quotes and endorsements are due. Luckily, this is the publisher's job, and it boils down to making up some nice quotes from fictitious newspapers, like "I was torn to pieces" or "It truly changed the way I look at life". Pseudo-famous people like former Big Brother contestants or X-Factor panellists that have their own cooking show make great endorsers. Pretty much anyone who is on TV or in the newspapers and is not currently involved in a sex scandal will do. They have a very important role: to distract you for the price at the bottom.
Writing such material is a lucrative business and involves very little effort; it is as easy as copying and pasting some text from other books you can find on-line, websites, and social media throughout most of your book. And as difficult as some typing if the sources you get your, um, inspiration from are not available in digital format. Regardless of the path you choose, what makes such an endeavour so simple is the quality of your audience. In fact, the only challenge is to aim low enough to reach a vast mass of gullible idiots.
Here is how.
First, introduction. You cannot just jump in a book like this without a proper introduction. These are four to five easy pages, which is a lot in this case. Here you thank your life partner for stimulating your creative juices for optimal flow. You may also throw in some thanks for your parents, children, teacher or even your pet. Its silent but continuous and unconditional love, etcetera... It does not matter much who or what, if it stirs cheap emotion. Then, you thank your agent and publisher for the tremendous support they have provided. This is because you cannot really be honest and bastardize them for their fees and percentages, since they can see it before it goes to print. Also, you are buttering them to take mercy and publish your next treasure of wisdom, should you not get enough money from this one. However, a bit of genuine gratitude is due since they have published your garbage, which is quite an accomplishment for you. And testament for their greed and lack of standards.
Then you move on to the next introduction, in which you explain why you are giving away the secret of success. It is not about selling nonsense for twenty-nine to forty-nine dollars to a few thousand losers too busy daydreaming about a scheme to get rich quickly that they fail to see this is just your scheme to get rich quickly.
An easy approach is to mention a made-up event that changed your life, a dramatic turning point that defined your future, successful self. Like you were feeling stuck at work, you were struggling with your personal life, your friends seemed to distance themselves from you and you felt utterly lost. You seemed to be the only sad human left on Earth, struggling to breathe while people around you seemed happy and without a worry. Until one morning, after yet another sleepless night, and before a crucial event at work that day. Your job was on the line or maybe you already got fired. You felt your life was over and were contemplating jumping on the line and end it all as the subway was approaching. Or even jumping from the bridge, if you feel public transportation lacks gravitas. In which case, you may consider swapping the incoming subway with a silent, ice-cold, deep, grey river... It is at that exact point that you witnessed the revelation, the ray of sunshine in the rainy day (the ray of sunshine also works in the subway station, in this case it is a metaphor), the answer to all your questions, and how easy it was. This is what you want to share with your dear audience in the following section of the book. Keep it accessible, people of low intellect like to relate to such stories if they believe it could happen to them, too. It brings you closer to your audience and keeps them engaged enough not to think of a refund.
Once introduction is sorted, you need to get some content. This is about your story, your experiences. And your teachings, too; challenges that moulded you in the successful writer and leader and successful entrepreneur that you are today.
Luckily, the internet provides enough stories that might have happened to you. And it provides the teachings, too. If using a search engine sounds intimidating, get a Facebook or LinkedIn account and become friends people working in sales, marketing or as office managers (the politically-correct title for receptionist). Keep your eye on pictures of a seashore, possibly with a shell and definitely with some text in quotes. Focus on keywords like humbled, overwhelmed, awed, blessed, reverence and wonder. That is the title of your next chapter. And the content is one click away. In less than a week, you should have gathered more than enough material. Other gem indicators include pictures of famous people, also with a quote. If you want to take things to the next level, check out for posts which contain pictures of airports, boardrooms with smiling people coming out of them and shaking hands, or a man in a suit holding a pen at a desk. The more blurred the background, the better the potential for insight. Or at least a tree in the window and sunshine flooding the room.
Since this is the lengthier part, here is another trick to maintain a good flow: typeface and size. Quotes in Helvetica and Arial, and in smaller size, are about darker experiences; use these first, to make the reader appreciate more what already have but forgot they did. And as you get progress towards the end, shift towards items in Comic Sans; they are about optimism and positive outlook. The bigger the font, the more uplifting the outcome. Which is a great technique to segue into the happy conclusion.
Yes, you are almost there. And at this point the reader is so enthralled that she will not even care you did not really explain that dramatic turning point you promised in the introduction and what exactly was your contribution.
All these elements can be combined in an uplifting pot-pourri of banalities that people who shared them on social media desperately need. Your book will not be reheated tea, it will be the elixir of wisdom which comes to reinforce what they already thought they knew when they shared that link. But now it is even better, it is in a book.
Once you gathered about a hundred and fifty pages of wisdom and "personal" examples, you can prepare for the ending. This would be the conclusion of everything you have shared so far, your recipe for their success. Hope for a better self and future. Hope for better life. Hope is priceless. And thirty dollars is a very reasonable price for that.
If this is not your first book and the previous one sold well, the price tag can go higher. Much higher. If only one is not enough, do not see that as a failure. Think of the next one as progress.
I know a guy who can barely read and wrote four in less than three years. Each more expensive than the previous. Because he is a famous athlete (he has nice abs and was cast in some French car ads in which he speaks about being successful), people keep on paying. Probably eating cake during reading, and dreaming about how they will be as lean and successful as he is. Starting from next Monday, definitely. In the mean-time, they can also enlist in his on-line ten-weeks personalised program.
Oh, and one more thing. The last bit of effort is for the last page, were some quotes and endorsements are due. Luckily, this is the publisher's job, and it boils down to making up some nice quotes from fictitious newspapers, like "I was torn to pieces" or "It truly changed the way I look at life". Pseudo-famous people like former Big Brother contestants or X-Factor panellists that have their own cooking show make great endorsers. Pretty much anyone who is on TV or in the newspapers and is not currently involved in a sex scandal will do. They have a very important role: to distract you for the price at the bottom.
11 February, 2018
Personaliy types. (A useless guide to superficial discrimination)
During a discussion to a colleague about another colleague that was not in the office I had some sincere comments about said absent colleague. The kind of comments that are considered annoying and make people uncomfortable mainly because they are, you know, based on facts and reality. The colleague that was present mentioned he noticed I have the tendency to point out things like a, b, and c repeatedly about the colleague that was not present. (To be clear, we were not debating letters in the alphabet, they are just placeholders for things the colleague -absent at that moment- does and which I notice to be relevant and worth mentioning.) In my defense, I justified this by mentioning that the absent colleague kept on doing things a, b, and c on a regular basis. And that I was being polite by not going through the entire list of other things worth making comments about, in which case the Latin alphabet could not provide enough letters that would allow me to enumerate each qualifying as relevant to the conversation. I was only pointing to the more frequent ones which were enough to prove my point. The colleague that was present mentioned this type of reasoning was quite typical for my type of personality. After a slight pause of a confused "Huh?" accompanied by raised shoulders on mine and a semi-smile on his side, my semi-silent demand for details was met with an acronym of four or five letters. At this point the colleague that was present... you know what, from now on I will refer to the present colleague as X and to the missing
colleague as Y. This should keep things shorter. So: at this point X had to take an urgent call and said he would send me a link, then left the office and the conversation was over. Hmm, this idea may have been more helpful earlier on than at the very end of the story involving X and Y. Alas, I will keep in
mind for another time when I recount events involving a present person
(X, see?) and a missing one (or Y, as you already know). Live and learn...
The link shortly arrived in my inbox and I put aside all the other things I was not doing at that moment, clicked, and landed a website with a personality test. Which I took promptly. And I did great. And then I repeated it some hours later during a meeting. And then again two more times during the following inactivity peaks. Each time with different results, but still great. It turns out I have at least four or five personalities. There were about sixteen of them in total, but it is only fair to assume the other ones are not so great. After all, there must be something available for the vast majority of the population, too.
About a week after this I discussed these tests with X (that is the colleague that was present, please keep up). He said the two* personality types I came up with are very similar, and that slight variations are to be expected based on mood, time of day, tiredness and so on. And that both were pretty much what he expected. Mainly because he had the same type. The only significant difference between us was that he is introvert and I am not. Based on this, my first conclusion was that he thought the same about Y (the colleague that... please stop, ok?), but he did not voice it. What I can only think of as his upcoming acknowledgement was interrupted by the appearance of Y, at which point the conversation was obviously hijacked to more exciting topics such as a, b, and c. My self-preservation mechanism automatically triggered: I put my noise-cancelling headphones on and pretended to focus on the screen and carried on with further conclusions, among which:
- Surgical precision is not the first thing I would think of to describe such tests. They tend to attach labels that are not always relevant, and in some cases quite way off. A bit like someone going through a stack of résumés when looking to hire someone. You cannot really put people in a box based on two sheets with things they (claim to) have done professionally or on how they have been answering to ambiguous questions for thirty-five minutes. (It only takes twenty, but I needed a fifteen minutes break to eat some apples and check another important email about a drone being attacked by a falcon.) Maybe you could, in some extreme situations. If one of their bullets on the list of computer skills is binge drinking and reckless gambling, you can decide right there and then if they will make to the short list for the interviewing round at your bank. Or if they mention a final solution for over-population based on eye color and skin pigment. But most of the times you cannot.
- If X was my girlfriend she would make sure to point out that my different personality types only mean I am unreliable, like that time when she said to wait her up until 11 because she had something important to tell me when she would return from going out with her friends. And I did not listen to her and went to bed at 1:30AM, before she returned.
- After all this intellectual effort I am getting peckish, and I should move my focus on what I would have for lunch. Also, I need to buy some apples on the way back from the restaurant.
*To be honest, I did not come up with four or five different personality types, but two. To be even more honest, I did not even get two. I only got one, because there is no way I would bother to take the test more than one time. Even once was draining enough. However, that would have led to a much shorter story and less thorough and useless guide. That would defeat the purpose of the explanation in the title
The link shortly arrived in my inbox and I put aside all the other things I was not doing at that moment, clicked, and landed a website with a personality test. Which I took promptly. And I did great. And then I repeated it some hours later during a meeting. And then again two more times during the following inactivity peaks. Each time with different results, but still great. It turns out I have at least four or five personalities. There were about sixteen of them in total, but it is only fair to assume the other ones are not so great. After all, there must be something available for the vast majority of the population, too.
About a week after this I discussed these tests with X (that is the colleague that was present, please keep up). He said the two* personality types I came up with are very similar, and that slight variations are to be expected based on mood, time of day, tiredness and so on. And that both were pretty much what he expected. Mainly because he had the same type. The only significant difference between us was that he is introvert and I am not. Based on this, my first conclusion was that he thought the same about Y (the colleague that... please stop, ok?), but he did not voice it. What I can only think of as his upcoming acknowledgement was interrupted by the appearance of Y, at which point the conversation was obviously hijacked to more exciting topics such as a, b, and c. My self-preservation mechanism automatically triggered: I put my noise-cancelling headphones on and pretended to focus on the screen and carried on with further conclusions, among which:
- Surgical precision is not the first thing I would think of to describe such tests. They tend to attach labels that are not always relevant, and in some cases quite way off. A bit like someone going through a stack of résumés when looking to hire someone. You cannot really put people in a box based on two sheets with things they (claim to) have done professionally or on how they have been answering to ambiguous questions for thirty-five minutes. (It only takes twenty, but I needed a fifteen minutes break to eat some apples and check another important email about a drone being attacked by a falcon.) Maybe you could, in some extreme situations. If one of their bullets on the list of computer skills is binge drinking and reckless gambling, you can decide right there and then if they will make to the short list for the interviewing round at your bank. Or if they mention a final solution for over-population based on eye color and skin pigment. But most of the times you cannot.
- If X was my girlfriend she would make sure to point out that my different personality types only mean I am unreliable, like that time when she said to wait her up until 11 because she had something important to tell me when she would return from going out with her friends. And I did not listen to her and went to bed at 1:30AM, before she returned.
- After all this intellectual effort I am getting peckish, and I should move my focus on what I would have for lunch. Also, I need to buy some apples on the way back from the restaurant.
*To be honest, I did not come up with four or five different personality types, but two. To be even more honest, I did not even get two. I only got one, because there is no way I would bother to take the test more than one time. Even once was draining enough. However, that would have led to a much shorter story and less thorough and useless guide. That would defeat the purpose of the explanation in the title
04 February, 2018
A useless guide to travelling light in a dark place
... or any place. I added dark in the title for comedic effect. You know,
contrast. Like blond ivory and every other race. Anyway, you are here now.
Moving on.
There are fewer things in life more entertaining than someone pulling a 16-ton suitcase on a gravel road somewhere down a hill. Except probably when they stop for a selfie. With either a tablet or a pink gold phone. All this on high heels, if that someone is a woman. I would say most of the time she is a woman, but I do not want to cause gender issues in this guide. So, to keep everybody happy, it could be a man on high heels. And yes, color is not important either. What is important is that you will not be laughing so hard two hours later when their armoire is crushing your leg during the bus trip to the next resort. For she will be sat next to you. (Or he. Or... Enough, I hope you got the point.) From the entire bus, she will pick you. If anything, you came together; she is -in reverse order of misfortune- your wife, your girlfriend, or your travel partner. Either way, you are stuck. And at the end of the ride you will be dragging your own shed-sized suitcase, limping on your crushed leg. Of course, you have a hernia-inducing suitcase, too. Maybe it is because she did not have enough room in hers, in which case there are 8 pairs of shoes packed tidily among the long dresses mandatory for the weekend (hers holds the make-up and the lighter things). Or maybe, if it is not her stuff, there are your three-piece suits with matching ties, shirts, socks, and belts. And the medicine. You never know when business opportunity knocks or polar mosquitoes might bite you with yellow fever. You are prepared for everything. And the price of not being able to climb those ruins or hike with the others at the top of the waterfall is not that big. You can guard the luggage at the bottom while she goes anyway, because nothing is more important than the background of a selfie. Particularly with that face and that body...
Regardless of whose barrel of moisturizer you are carrying, luggage -like misery- needs company.
Well, it does not have to be like this. All you need is a little planning.
Preparation for light traveling begins long before the journey and has nothing to do with what you are packing. A few days before the journey you should begin with emptying the fridge. As counterintuitive as it sounds, the shiny sticky ham goes great with wilted veggies (all of them) and sour soup. For desert, pair that moldy cheese with the 5-months-old yogurt and those wrinkled apples. Top with the rock-hard half-donut and wash with the bottle of wine you opened at Christmas that was too expensive to throw away. This works two-fold: you will not be stressed about food going bad while you are gone, and you will feel much better flying on an empty stomach. Oh, do not worry, it will be empty. And after about 40 hours of empty, you will appreciate better that airplane food.
With taken care of, it is time to plan your luggage. For three to four days, go for the small backpack. For more than that, get the other backpack (if you own more than two backpacks, you should fix those issues when you return). The golden rule is that you are already wearing half the things you need: trousers, socks, undies, shirt, shoes. All you need is two more undies, pairs of socks and shirts (one should be enough, but the unexpected might happen and you like to be prepared). At night you can wash whatever you wore during the day, and they will be dry and ready the next morning. If you need a jacket, wear one instead of packing one. If you are not going beyond the Arctic Circle, skip the puffy one that required 40 geese worth of feathers to fill; a vest or hoodie and a windbreaker will do. If it is a holiday vacation, add a swim suit and flip-flops. If you need a skirt -woman or not, I am not judging- wear trousers and pack the skirt. Skirts needs less space in the luggage. Besides that, after sitting 11 hours in a plane wearing a skirt, you will remember to wear trousers next time.
On top of that, basic toiletries (yes, they do have sun and mosquito cream in tropical countries), chargers and cables for the phone, camera, and whatever gadgets you might be taking. Think e-book reader or tablet instead of half a bookshelf or gaming laptop. An external battery to top things off and... and you are done. Yes, you are. Leave aside all the things that you need just in case for unexpected special occasions. I have not seen that many beach parties or mountain cabins that have a dress code for the barbecue.
Everything I listed above can fit in a backpack. With some room for souvenirs on the way back, too. Of course as long as you consider spices, fridge magnets or scarf instead of statue, whole leg of Jamón serrano or a big bottle of each weird drink with an exotic name you happened to gulp there. You will save a small fortune on checked luggage, you will be able to walk up- or downhill, you will have two hands available for better movement and for repelling insects or tchotchke merchants. If anything, you will be able to take selfies more easily. Unfortunately, I cannot help you with your face. Maybe a small bottle of moisturizer would have been better after all. Or a mask. Whichever is lighter.
One more tip, for people traveling with more people: if you live together, take out half their stuff from the suitcase the night before and hide it somewhere. If you do not live together, hide yourself shortly after you landed and make separate bookings if they show up with said 16-ton luggage. This will save you from between half a suitcase and a full suitcase and a troll.
There are fewer things in life more entertaining than someone pulling a 16-ton suitcase on a gravel road somewhere down a hill. Except probably when they stop for a selfie. With either a tablet or a pink gold phone. All this on high heels, if that someone is a woman. I would say most of the time she is a woman, but I do not want to cause gender issues in this guide. So, to keep everybody happy, it could be a man on high heels. And yes, color is not important either. What is important is that you will not be laughing so hard two hours later when their armoire is crushing your leg during the bus trip to the next resort. For she will be sat next to you. (Or he. Or... Enough, I hope you got the point.) From the entire bus, she will pick you. If anything, you came together; she is -in reverse order of misfortune- your wife, your girlfriend, or your travel partner. Either way, you are stuck. And at the end of the ride you will be dragging your own shed-sized suitcase, limping on your crushed leg. Of course, you have a hernia-inducing suitcase, too. Maybe it is because she did not have enough room in hers, in which case there are 8 pairs of shoes packed tidily among the long dresses mandatory for the weekend (hers holds the make-up and the lighter things). Or maybe, if it is not her stuff, there are your three-piece suits with matching ties, shirts, socks, and belts. And the medicine. You never know when business opportunity knocks or polar mosquitoes might bite you with yellow fever. You are prepared for everything. And the price of not being able to climb those ruins or hike with the others at the top of the waterfall is not that big. You can guard the luggage at the bottom while she goes anyway, because nothing is more important than the background of a selfie. Particularly with that face and that body...
Regardless of whose barrel of moisturizer you are carrying, luggage -like misery- needs company.
Well, it does not have to be like this. All you need is a little planning.
Preparation for light traveling begins long before the journey and has nothing to do with what you are packing. A few days before the journey you should begin with emptying the fridge. As counterintuitive as it sounds, the shiny sticky ham goes great with wilted veggies (all of them) and sour soup. For desert, pair that moldy cheese with the 5-months-old yogurt and those wrinkled apples. Top with the rock-hard half-donut and wash with the bottle of wine you opened at Christmas that was too expensive to throw away. This works two-fold: you will not be stressed about food going bad while you are gone, and you will feel much better flying on an empty stomach. Oh, do not worry, it will be empty. And after about 40 hours of empty, you will appreciate better that airplane food.
With taken care of, it is time to plan your luggage. For three to four days, go for the small backpack. For more than that, get the other backpack (if you own more than two backpacks, you should fix those issues when you return). The golden rule is that you are already wearing half the things you need: trousers, socks, undies, shirt, shoes. All you need is two more undies, pairs of socks and shirts (one should be enough, but the unexpected might happen and you like to be prepared). At night you can wash whatever you wore during the day, and they will be dry and ready the next morning. If you need a jacket, wear one instead of packing one. If you are not going beyond the Arctic Circle, skip the puffy one that required 40 geese worth of feathers to fill; a vest or hoodie and a windbreaker will do. If it is a holiday vacation, add a swim suit and flip-flops. If you need a skirt -woman or not, I am not judging- wear trousers and pack the skirt. Skirts needs less space in the luggage. Besides that, after sitting 11 hours in a plane wearing a skirt, you will remember to wear trousers next time.
On top of that, basic toiletries (yes, they do have sun and mosquito cream in tropical countries), chargers and cables for the phone, camera, and whatever gadgets you might be taking. Think e-book reader or tablet instead of half a bookshelf or gaming laptop. An external battery to top things off and... and you are done. Yes, you are. Leave aside all the things that you need just in case for unexpected special occasions. I have not seen that many beach parties or mountain cabins that have a dress code for the barbecue.
Everything I listed above can fit in a backpack. With some room for souvenirs on the way back, too. Of course as long as you consider spices, fridge magnets or scarf instead of statue, whole leg of Jamón serrano or a big bottle of each weird drink with an exotic name you happened to gulp there. You will save a small fortune on checked luggage, you will be able to walk up- or downhill, you will have two hands available for better movement and for repelling insects or tchotchke merchants. If anything, you will be able to take selfies more easily. Unfortunately, I cannot help you with your face. Maybe a small bottle of moisturizer would have been better after all. Or a mask. Whichever is lighter.
One more tip, for people traveling with more people: if you live together, take out half their stuff from the suitcase the night before and hide it somewhere. If you do not live together, hide yourself shortly after you landed and make separate bookings if they show up with said 16-ton luggage. This will save you from between half a suitcase and a full suitcase and a troll.
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