Archive for the ‘Light-hearted’ Category
8 Apr, 2008
Money and Happiness
Money brings to me its own intrinsic reward. For as far as I can remember, I’ve always liked accumulating money. I hated spending it, most of the time. I liked money for its own sake, and would often ask myself before major purposes: would I rather have the money, or would I have whatever it was that I was intending to purchase? In most cases, I kept the money.
Now, that brings me to question of how money can’t buy happiness. I was, as usual, counting my chickens before the eggs have hatched: how much money was I going to earn today by going to work?
I thought about it, and wrote down the number which potentially reflected what I was going to earn. It didn’t look like much, but neither was it insignificant (let me quality this by mentioning I’m a student). It donned — sorry, dawned — on me that this amount of money wasn’t its own reward. I didn’t feel excited thinking about it.
So I thought about the stuff that it could buy. After thinking through various alternatives, I figured that I didn’t want to buy anything. I had, essentially, all that I wanted or needed. Then I thought about how not wanting to buy anything actually, in a weirdly philosophical way, meant that I was saving my money, thus, in a more weirdly philosophical way, I was getting twice my salary:
Total earnings
= Salary - Things I want to buy with salary
= Salary - (- Things I don’t want to buy with salary)
= Salary + (Things I don’t want to buy with salary)
= 2 x Salary
Having my potential earnings multiplied by two left a smile on my face. Perhaps money doesn’t buy all kinds of happiness, but it sure does bring some form of happiness to me.
27 Feb, 2008
Chinese Dogs
I was re-reading the book Thick Face Black Heart by Chin-Ning Chu when I came across this (unintentionally) funny sentence:
These simply rules of discrimination are common among the world’s businessmen and political leaders, as well as among Chinese dogs.
Apparently the author doesn’t think very much of businessmen and political leaders!
26 Feb, 2008
A Song
there couldn’t be a sadder day
than the one that i am in today;
the life that i once knew is gone;
and all that i have left is this song.
i couldn’t believe my eyes
when i saw you with another guy;
i thought i was mistaken
but it seems your heart was taken
and i thought, i’d just stand there — and die;
but the rage inside of me
broke out, flew up and soared free;
without knowing anything
i stormed toward him
and his balls met my knee.
the scream he let out –
more a whimper than a shout –
made me feel like laughing.
but as his eyes met mine a-staring,
i suddenly had my doubts.
i’d seen this man before,
standing at your door
asking you to come out for dinner;
he is your dad! and i am a goner!
blasted away into folklore.
there couldn’t be a sadder day
than the one that i am in today;
the life that i once knew is gone;
and all that i have left is this song.
27 Dec, 2007
The Girlfriend and the Close Friend
And so, one day, you decide to get romantically involved with some girl. For the first few days, weeks even, everything goes great. Your friends are happy for you, some ecstatic even, and they congratulate you on your new-found love.
But due to your commitments to this new-found love, you start spending less time with them. You don’t even notice it at first, but they bring it up to you.
“You’re spending all your time with her,” they say, trying to remind you of the fact that you’ve only known her for a year, while you’ve known them for 10.
When you think about it, you realise that (but never say aloud) that’s precisely why you’re spending more time with her.
One day a close friend quarrels with your new-found love. It just so happens they’re about to pounce on each other when you enter the room and stop them. She looks at you, hoping that you’d defend her, while he looks at you, thinking, “f***ing hell, if he says anything in her defence I’m gonna rip his head off.”
You look at them, and start thinking, “this is gonna be interesting,” and just stand there. They anticipate your next move, but your lack of moves leaves them both perplexed and annoyed. You understand one thing: whatever you do, whatever you say, whoever you choose to side with, you’re screwed. And so you just stand there.
You try to break the tension by telling a joke. Before you’ve even gotten to the punchline, you’ve managed to get them both on the same side. They start smiling and talking to each other again, and the conversation is interspersed with punches and kicks thrown in your direction. Though you hurt plenty physically, you’re glad inside that you’ve managed to get them to be friends once more.
7 Nov, 2007
Friends in PHP
// Can I can be your friend too?
Class Friend {
if ($joke)
laugh(”Jeez, you’re funny!”);
elseif ($laugh)
smile(”I’m glad you enjoyed it”);
elseif ($cry)
comfort(”Things will get better”);
elseif ($lonely)
hang_out(”You wanna go anywhere today?”);
elseif ($angry)
calm();
else
offer_chocolate(”Want some chocolate?”);
}
// And so I guess we’re friends now?
Real_Friend extends Friend {
// There are no functions that you can see in this class.
// There are only hidden variables, with unknown values.
// Stop analysing. There’s nothing here. It’s intangible.
}