Sunday, December 27, 2009

 

soldier of love

I've lost the use of my heart
But I'm still alive
Still looking for the life
The endless pool on the other side
It's a wild wild west
I'm doing my best
I'm at the borderline of my faith,
I'm at the hinterland of my devotion
In the frontline of this battle of mine
But I'm still aliveā€¦..

from sade's great new song Soldier of love...

Thursday, December 10, 2009

 

books for guidance

no, this is not about all those shitty motivational books by the like of fucking deepak chopra or that lateral thinking asshole guy...i hate these kinds of books and i hate those fuckers that read them more. in fact come to think of it i hate everything in this world apart from sex and money of course. and beautiful animals and trees...and books and paintings...shit come to think of it i don't mind this world at all....when i'm not thinking too much about my fellow humans ....

i read somewhere , oh yes i remember now, in the new yorker book of business cartoons. there's one very nice cartoon i like. the caption is the truest thing in the world. it says. money is the report card of life. gets me mad as hell to think that those corrupt bastards in politics get a distinction in their life report card . i'd be happy just to get a strong credit. C+ say. oh i'm not complaining. i do get by. the thing is not to look up too much but to look down at the poor sods that are below you. there are millions of them. may be billions. looking up make one envious and mad but looking down has it's own drawback too. it makes you depressed.

i was having this lunch by myself today and this nice honest looking chinese guy may be in his forties came in. he wore presentable clothes and with a tie on (god, i hate fucking ties and what i hate more is fuckers who wear ties in this hot climate. these fuckers are dumb.) and he was carrying two leather brief cases and one big black garbage bag full of leather goods. he was trying to hawk leather belts and wallets it gets me depressed as hell. i mean this guy is presentable enough . why does he abase himself by going round in restaurants trying to sell this stuff and achieving nothing apart from annoying people who want to have a quiet meal? if i want to have these stuff i'd go to petaling street and buy all those fucking fake guccis or whatever. this poor guy doesn't even know the most basic marketing strategy. you just don't fuck around when people are eating their noodles. that's another good philosophy to get you by in this world.

what makes me depressed as hell is that he's trying to make an HONEST living. but he's not doing it right. he could have done so many other things apart from fucking around in restaurants while people are eating. and if you want to take it in a broader sense this also applies to all those who ring your door bells at home trying to sell fucking water purifiers and all that sort of shits. and all the rest of intruders and touts and spams. they are all the same. they shove things up your nose and i hate this kind or marketing strategy.

i'm not sure if that poor chinese guy was influenced in any way by all those motivational books . who knows i won't put it past those asshole authors to cook up all kinds of demented "can do" ideas in all those books and some credulous folks just gobble 'em up line hook and sinker as the saying goes. i never read any of these books so i may be wrong.

but that does not mean that i don't find some good advise and guidance from the kind of books that i read. more often than not these 'gems' come to you unasked and in unexpected ways. take the three books that are currently in my office. all three are books that you can pick up and read at any page in any order and you may sometimes find some basic truth and 'guidance' from there.i stack them in this order. at the bottom is the giant book of dirty jokes. There isn't much gems in it, in fact it's full of dross and mostly the jokes are gross. but you do find some good philosophical ones like this one: A divorcee took an office job and said. "I hope I'll find sexual harassment on the job". or this;

Two kids were having an argument about whose farther could beat up whose father.
One boy said, "My father is better than your father."
The other kid said, "Well, my mother is better than your mother."
The first boy paused, "I guess you're right. My father says the same thing."


and on top of this joke bible i put the modern day bible. It's The Dilbert Future: Thriving on Stupidity in the 21st Century. unlike the giant book of dirty jokes, this book is full of good advise and a very valuable guidance to navigate our modern and complex world. despite myself, i immensely benefit from it. Take this prediction #31 which is coming into reality as we speak(or blog) now. Note that this book was written way back in 1997 (published under Harper Business :A dicivion of Harper Collins Publishers no less).

Prediction no. # 31 states;

in the future skilled professionals will flee their corporate jobs and become their own bosses in ever icreasing numbers. They'll become entrepreneurs, consultants, contractors, prostitutes, and cartoonists.

well, that 'future' is now.

and the book on the top of the stack is The Meaning of The Glorious Koran - An explanatory translation by Marmaduke Pickthall. this is a very battered and dog eared well thumbed 'bible' that i got as a present from a fellow student friend a long long time ago. he is now a vice chancellor of one of the most wellknown local universities . for the non muslims and those muslims who are ignorant of the qur'an , let me say this. the Quran is a grim fire and brimstone 'bible' full of admonitions and exhortations. Mostly very logical and 'doable' for the practising muslims but right bloody difficult to adhere to for those muslim bastards who think they know better. every page has something useful or interesting things in it .

take this for example:



And lo! in the love of wealth he is violent. (surah al-Aadiyat verse 8)


or this.


Rivalry in the worldly increase distracteth you, until you come to the graves...(surah At-Takathur ; verses 1-2.)

fair enough. looks like human has been behaving exactly the same since more than fifteen hundred years ago.


Thursday, December 03, 2009

 

the scale of things

recently i asked a vietnamese friend how happy he is on a scale of zero to ten. zero being a state of total unhappiness and ten the opposite. and he mentioned eight. that is a very high number to me and i'm rather surprised a vietnamese can have such a high level of happiness. i guess they don't give much truck to freedom of expression and all that and couldn't care less how the country is run as long as they can have enough personal freedom to get what they want.

and he basically gets what he want which is chiefly- like most people in the rest of the world want -enough money and enough sex. and in vietnam sex isn't too much of a problem as long as you have enough money. the goat has at least two young mistresses less than half his age that i know of and he just bought a usd220,000 house which he paid for in cash(!) . the house looks terribly crappy to me but it is in disctrict 3 of saigon which is the second most expensive district after district 1 so he is happy. it's the location man, he says.

but here's the thing. it always make me wonder what can make human truly happy. it could be that this vietnamese guy probably say his level of happiness is eight out of ten because i asked this question when he had just bonked one of his young ladies and she was sleeping on his lap (we were in a taxi out of tra vinh) but i've seen him looking gloomy at other times. on a different trip with him he mentioned that he just had a 'big war' with his wife. i should've asked what his level of happiness then.

but when all is said and done there's probably nothing much that can be done. one day you're happy and the next you may not. happiness is just a state of mind and there are infinite ways how one try to achieve this. the problem is to maintain this fucking state of mind. i do try. and when i think about it, the reason why i keep on accumulating books which is growing at quite an alarming rate is just to keep my state of mind at a level of at least say six and above.like most people who are bibliobibuli i read books purely for pleasure (for happiness). does it work? yes and no.

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