With the Ex finally packed away and out of the
neighbourhood, I finally succumbed to the mother of all power-sleeps for the past
couple of nights. It’s the last day of my summer holiday. I’m almost happy to
see that it’s cloudy and threatening to rain this morning: as a day like this,
with me being physically bent out of shape as I am right now won’t then be such
a big loss*. Just to make me extra super happy today <sarcasm>, my
desktop PC died (driver warnings for my video card, and then no power). If it
can’t be repaired and resurrected, and if my automatic backups haven’t been working,
I’ll be shittin’ kittens. I’m thankful for managing to salvage and save a few
things that I didn’t keep on my drives. Thank goodness for Cloud networking.
These past few days did me no good at all for restoring my
body, the vehicle I needed to use to refresh the other two important things of
the personal trinity: the mind and spirit. I managed to accomplish one “bucket
list” type goals (half-marathon), but not to my greatest satisfaction. I ran much
better times for a half marathon distance during my earlier training for it.
I actually don’t have a formally written out “bucket list” of
anything. Given the cloudy weather, and the lack of physical constitution to do
much else but put ice packs on my hamstrings, and write, it might be a good day
to chill out, put my tech worries behind me, relax, and dream up of one.* The
things that would be on it would probably be too personal to share publicly;
it would be far easier to divulge the things that definitely won’t be on such a
list. To help organize a more interpretable schema for this, I consulted with a
page I found called 525+ Ideas for Your
Bucket List, on the Daring to Live
Fully website. Some of these things of note for me are:
Skydiving: It
amazes me how stupid some people are to put this as one of the first things, a
top priority, to do on their bucket list. It should be the last thing to do
since it’s something that presents a higher probability for them to kick the
bucket sooner (or be scooped up and carried away in one if their chute fails to
open). Para sailing would be different because I’d be able to see a pre-opened
chute while safely on the ground, which I wouldn’t be so far off of it once
aloft. Not so with skydiving. The only way I could be persuaded to willingly leap
out of an airplane is if the damn thing was on fire and imminently going to
crash; even then, I’d probably be desperately trying to blow out the scorching flames
with my lips first if it meant I didn’t have to jump. If there was someone ever
strong enough to manage unhooking my clawed adrenaline-locked fingers from the
fuselage, I know my breathing would suddenly stop and all things gastro-intestinal
in me would instantly liquefy. Once I’m dropped out of the aircraft, I’m sure
that those contents would be automatically and volcanically expulsed from my
body. It would be a scene of me rectally skywriting out a great big brown
exclamation mark as I plummeted to earth, screaming and praying for my chute to
open.
Eating Fugu:
Seafood aficionados whine and complain about how inedible the world’s oceans
stock of fish (especially top of the food chain species like tuna and
swordfish) are becoming with all the environmental contaminants and pollution,
yet some of the same such people who opt for the exotic will rave about daring
to try dining on a species of fish which, if improperly cleaned and prepared,
is poisonous enough to kill a person in seconds. Fugu, a Japanese delicacy, is
a puffer fish, usually prepared in a sashimi style. Its gonads, liver, and
other internal organs contain the powerful neurotoxin called tetrodotoxin, which induces muscular
paralysis and pulmonary failure leading to death, even in trace amounts. It has
no known antidote. It’s the culinary equivalent of skydiving. No thanks . . . pass
me a maki roll instead.
Fire Walking: I
fail to understand how tramping across coals that are hot enough to be used to forge
iron is supposed to make someone a better person. I wonder how often this new
age gong show is attempted at some beach resort by some tourist that is
willingly wanting to be ‘liberated’ and ‘enlightened’ by this experience, who
probably just complained a few hours earlier about how hot the sand was along
the beach.
Becoming a Chef:
My friend gifted me Anthony Bourdain’s book, Kitchen Confidential. It was an adventuresome behind the scenes
peek at the subculture, big egos, and cut-throat competition involved in the
kitchen activity and shenanigans of culinary services in the restaurants that
he used to work in during his career. It was humourous, entertaining; it also totally
dissuaded me from giving any further thought of trying to enter the stressful
craziness that is the restaurant business as a professional chef. I have my
Food Safety Certificate, and I like cooking fine enough, but have I do it on my
own terms and my own pace. I’d have an extremely hard time taking orders from
some jerk customer to make a steak somehow rarer, or trying to pander to some diner’s
feeling about how something isn’t seasoned right, and being left at the mercy
of their stupidity and vagueness of being unable to find the exact words about
how it’s supposed to be for their liking. Worst of all, after making all this
stuff with pride, I could be easily be insulted by watching some weirdo pervert
it by slopping some ungodly and obnoxiously inappropriate condiment on it.**
Becoming a Vegetarian:
I won’t ever consider a lifestyle of going totally meatless, despite developing
more of a Buddhist perspective on things***. The reason why there was such a
leap in human brain development during the last Ice Age was that humans consumed
rich protein and animal fat. We eat, or have killed, animate life forms by even our most mindful patterns of consumption, and in turn we are being eaten by
them right now by some microscopic form of them. That’s just reality of nature;
any higher moral standing, health agenda, or sanctimony involved with not
opting to eat meat, or trying to detach myself from the cycle of having
sentient lives taken for consumption, doesn’t make me righteous enough for them
to stop eating me. I’ve tested myself with eating no animal protein
for a while. I can’t say that it agreed with me very well. Three days was the
most I could tolerate. I see the most zealous of vegan maniacs preaching vegetarianism, who are still wearing leather, feathers and furs, a bit of hypocrisy there. I’ve made a point of cutting down a bit (mostly because
of the cost) but not eliminating it entirely.
Learning Astrology:
Oh geez, do I really have to explain this one? Predicting things with the stars
is ludicrous, and it’s alarming to me just how many people depend on it to make
major life/financial decisions.
Speaking of financial affairs, the other way I’ve been
trying to force myself to sit still today was to re-acquaint/educate myself
with the FOREX market, and the ins and outs of currency trading.**** I set up a
demo account with a trading site; playing around with the equivalent of 50
grand worth of digital monopoly money to test my wits and technical analysis
ability. My style is to put very little faith in fundamental analysis. I don’t
who said it, but I’m inclined to concur with their quote stating, “If you take
all the economists in the world and lined them up, they still wouldn’t be able
to reach a conclusion.” Perhaps they rely too much on astrology.
*- Still
doing some recovering after my masseuse finished ripping and shredding up all
the muscle tissue between my scapulae and metatarsals.
**- Did you
just put soy sauce on those perogies I just made? You ought to be dragged out
into the street and shot! People salting, or overusing sauces/condiments on the
food I cooked before they even try it, and then dare to express complaint or
criticism to me about how it tastes, must have some sort of death wish as well.
***- According
to scholars, the historical Buddha lived and died eating meat, thus I fail to see the reasoning why in some Buddhist circles that eating meat is so abhorrent given that the Enlightened One did so himself. It’s
only in tropical regions blessed with having a year round plant growing season,
like in India and Southeast Asia, where butchered meat can spoil quickly in
such a climate, that eating flesh may be construed as repulsive, and
vegetarianism gets to be a more natural and sensible dietary option for such civilizations developing
in such regions: which get incorporated into the holy practices in faiths like Hinduism, Jainism, and then later adopted into monastic practice in Buddhism.
****- If
there was a high –falootin’ career in the very abstract, yet analytical, in the
realm of commerce/ economics that I knew I couldn’t fail at, currency markets
and trading would probably be it. I’m not willing that great of a risk taker
though, especially at brokering (i.e. gambling with) other peoples’ money.
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