Category Archives: life

scorpio death pattern

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Not that much has been going on since I last wrote here, not that much good stuff anyway.

Quite a few months ago, when Kitty first announced she was prego with Space Prawn, I told a guy at work who for story’s sake, we’ll call old matey. I told quite a few people at work, but old matey’s response was the most odd. He happens to be very much into astrology & numerology, so he quickly asked the due date and told me Space Prawn will be a Scorpio.

Scorpio2

At this point, being slightly skeptical, I didn’t really know what to expect from a Scorpio, but what he told me next was when it got weird. “There will soon be a death in your family” he said, “it always happens before or after a scorpio is born”.

I didn’t think too much about it again until my Grandma died last month, aged 96. What makes it a little strange was that Grandma was still quite healthy, a doctor even recently gave her the all clear to make 100. But she suddenly died.

So it sorta stuck in my mind a bit. I have since done a bit more research about Scorpios, and what makes them what they are. I have a brother (of three) that is a Scorpio, and he is exactly how they are described. To completely honest, it’s a little scary, if Space Prawn is like my brother then we’re in for a treat! </sarcasm>

I spoke to old matey at work after my Grandma’s funeral to find out a bit more detail. Apparently Scorpios are very fascinated by death, and that the intensity of a Scorpio’s mind means that a family member must pass for them to be born.

The strange thing is my Scorpio brother is fascinated by death.

Odd times.

a quarter life crisis

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One of the problems I have with modern life is how fast we grow up. We are told to make so many crucial decisions at a very young age that determine what we can do with our lives.

For example, I was making decisions about my life when I was twelve years old. I was quite young in high school and so in Year Eight I was choosing Year Nine/Ten electives that would impact on my Year Eleven/Twelve electives that determine what course I could do at University. Quite obviously, what you do at Uni dictates what you do when you finish Uni. So effectively I was choosing a job in IT when I was twelve years old at school because I liked computers and I was the ‘smart kid’.

A problem arises after you’ve been in the workforce for a few years and realise you don’t actually like doing what you thought you would like doing when you were twelve. Enter the quarter-life crisis:

From wikipedia:

Characteristics of quarter-life crisis may include:

  • feeling “not good enough” because one can’t find a job that is at one’s academic/intellectual level
  • frustration with relationships, the working world, and finding a suitable job or career
  • confusion of identity
  • insecurity regarding the near future
  • insecurity concerning long-term plans, life goals
  • insecurity regarding present accomplishments
  • re-evaluation of close interpersonal relationships
  • disappointment with one’s job
  • nostalgia for university, college, high school or elementary school life
  • tendency to hold stronger opinions
  • boredom with social interactions
  • loss of closeness to high school and college friends
  • financially-rooted stress (overwhelming college loans, unanticipatedly high cost of living, etc.)
  • loneliness
  • desire to have children
  • a sense that everyone is, somehow, doing better than you.

I am not an expert but I thought this shit normally happened when you were going bald and approaching forty, but now it’s happening when you’re in your mid to late twenties. See what I mean about growing up quickly?  They’ll soon redefine ‘over the hill’ to be over twenty-five.

One of the things that I didn’t learn until recently is that is healthy to change your mind. It’s one of the things that growing up quickly makes us forget. When I was young it was okay to change your favourite colour from one day to the next, but now its hard to admit that you changed your mind about what you want to do in life.

It’s hard to tell someone close to you that you’ve changed your mind, especially when you’ve been vocal about your opinion/decision in the first place. Back in the days I told Kitty I would never own a mobile phone and that I hated them (with passion!). But I changed my mind, and I still remember meekly having to explain why to her when I bought my first Nokia. I felt like a hyprocrite.

So maybe its better to take life slow and change your mind regularly. That way, hopefully when you get to a particular place in your life it is where you want to be, not where you wanted to be.

on fixing things

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We recently watched Lars and the Real Girl. It’s a great film and the one thing I really loved about it was how Lars’s brother Gus reacts when Lars introduces his new girlfriend Bianca, who is a life-sized anatomically-correct doll. At one stage Gus says to the doctor: “We’ve got to fix him, can you fix him?” I can easily relate to how Gus felt and how he just wanted to ‘fix’ the problem with Lars.

I’m not sure if it’s a male thing or because I work in software that I relate so much. In software we have things called bugs which are problems found during testing. These bugs are fixed so that they don’t end up in the software when it is released. Not all software bugs are easy to fix, but almost all of them can be fixed. Sometimes I translate this view into life, why can’t we just fix things?

Unfortunately in life, it’s not that easy. Some things aren’t quickly fixed. Some things we can’t fix. For example, housing affordability is a complex issue with lots of different viewpoints and outcomes for many different people. I would love if we could just fix the housing affordability problem in Australia, but unforunately it’s not that simple.

Sometimes Kitty has issues with how things go at work, mainly to do with office politics. I often take the view of “why can’t you just fix it” but I need to remind myself that it’s not that easy. Problems take time to solve, just like Lars’s relationship with Bianca.

The trailer is below.

i’ve been to the mountaintop

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“If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the twentieth century, I will be happy.” Now that’s a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land. Confusion all around. That’s a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars.

~ “I’ve been to the mountaintop” – Martin Luther King Jr, April 3rd 1968: one day before we was assassinated.

bursting the security bubble on insight

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It was interesting frightening to watch Bursting the Bubble on Insight tonight. I still can’t get over how much debt Australians have taken on; Insight mentioned that we as individuals have seven times greater debt than during the recession in the early nineties: scary!

I read a lot about housing unaffordability in Australia and I have read lots of stories about Australian families who have bought overpriced housing (what housing isn’t overpriced) because of the alleged security that a house provides.

The one thing that Insight successfully showed tonight is that an expensive house with a large mortgage doesn’t actually provide security at all, it just quite the opposite. How can any person with a large mortgage requiring multiple incomes and uninterrupted employment just to service the debt at current interest rate levels feel any bit secure? Isn’t that what security is about, feeling secure?

I would feel insecure with a mortgage large enough to pay for the apartment we rent. I would feel insecure buying any apartment in Brisbane at the moment knowing that we would need two full times jobs for 30 years just to service the debt. I feel secure renting a place knowing that we have a few years rent in savings in case something goes wrong. I feel secure knowing that I could quit my job tomorrow and we could still easily afford rent and living expenses from just one salary. Now that’s security.

the first day of spring

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Yesterday was the first day of spring which meant that I turned a year older in a weird milestone kind of way. I don’t yet feel a year older but I guess this will happen over the coming year.

One bonus about yesterday was I got some nice gifts. Kitty paid for my return ticket to L.A. which is way too expensive but very cool. She got me little things too like a Las Vegas lonely planet and some T2 plus a mad card with a monkey on it.

Some gifts

Some of my gifts

I love monkeys. Kitty was actually born in the year of the monkey, so that’s probably why she means so much to me. I myself was born in the year of the rooster, and being vegetarian, roosters probably don’t mean much to kitty.

We went to Mecca Bah in the Valley for dinner with the oldies which was superb. I forgot how good Turkish food can be. We’ll have to again, soon.

personalised number plates & apple macs

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What do personalised number plates and apple macs have in common? To me, they’re both extremely pretentious, that’s what!

I really don’t get personalised number plates:

  1. Why would pay heaps extra (to the G-Man) for something when you can have the vanilla standard issue for no extra cost?
  2. Why would you want to be singled out? Personalised plates make your car stand out, and this can’t be good when you’re somewhere you shouldn’t be (like at the 24-hour KFC drivethrough at 2am on a Wednesday morning).
  3. What happens when you’re checking into a motel and they asked for your number plate? Especially if it’s something like HOT-69.
  4. Personalised number plates on a pretentious car makes it even more pretentious. Like the Porsche I saw with the numberplate SOLD. But vanilla plates on an expensive car can even make it ok: I saw this new 300K+ Bentley with stock standard vanilla plates and I was like “yeah”.
  5. Personalised number plates on a cheap car (bomb) just look stupid. Isn’t your money better spent on basic vehicle safety and maintenance?

Likewise, I really don’t get apple macs:

  1. I’m so not a fan of microsoft but no matter how many ads apple make it isn’t ever simply a binary choice of windows or mac. Because there’s this thing called Linux that is as simple and elegant as a mac, but without the associated pretentiousness and price tag.
  2. Apple try to sell this whole ‘operating system’ thing but that’s so 1998.  Every one uses the internet and the internet doesn’t really care if you’re running a mac or not. You can use firefox on any operating system, and the internet is still the internet. You can still read this post and you can even create a web 2.0 blog, all without a mac!
  3. Apple profit on how prententious its customers are. For example, they bought out a notebook called the BlackBook. It was cunningly US$150 more than the same white MacBook for one simple reason: it wasn’t previously available in black, and it wasn’t the standard apple white. What other computer company can get away with charging you hundreds of dollars for a different colour paint?

So, if you want to be less pretentious, sell your personalised plates and 24 inch super glossy imac on ebay. Then buy an cheap computer somewhere and install Ubuntu on it for free. Apple won’t pester you to buy their new increasingly bloated operating system every year, and besides you can get a new version of Ubuntu for free every six months. You can then donate all that spare cash of yours to help someone less fortunate, or at least earn 8.25 % on it. I don’t think that’s pretentious.

Update (10 June 2008): Apple’s new 3G iPhone is only available in white as a limited edition, more expensive 16 gigabyte model.