Abstinence.

This is somewhat a reflection of or a response to Zafra’s Duh Therapy.

The perfect way to avoid something, anything at all, is abstinence. I vowed not to go to mall and be tempted to buy unnecessary things. I vowed not to buy any books until I finished reading all that I’ve got. I vowed not to overspend. I vowed to keep my financial statements organized. I vowed to avoid looking at posts online advertising gadgets, gadgets and more gadgets. I opted looking at anything free. Free workshops! Free seminars! Free food! <– (uh, not really). ^.^

And yet, I was subscribed to this blog which recently reviewed "HP Mini," the new notebook that would topple all the Asus EEE series. And damn, such good specs! 1-2gb RAM. 120-160 HDD. Super nice speakers. You can opt for Linux, Vista Basic or Vista Business with the respective prices 24,999, 29,999, and 34,999.

Somehow, I wanted to kick myself for opening that link, but then I only read the entry with the goal of reading all the unread posts on my reader.

Click here for pictures and first-hand account of the one who reviewed it: A Bugged Life.

Oh, and one thing more, no amount of optimism can make me appreciate Saturday shifts.

His Name is Stag.

There once was a boy named Stag. Let’s say he’s dead. When he was living, he actually didn’t know the intellectual capacity of his siblings. Not because he felt that they didn’t exist. More so because they did not actually had healthy or serious conversations at home that exercise their brains. They just cracked jokes and or teased each other.

Then, he was allergic to anything that has feelings. He’d rather have distance. He had lots of friends, though. As in met a lot of people who thought of him as a friend. But he really didn’t know what that word meant. When ‘friends’ ask him for help, he’d give out a hand alright. He would listen, give advise or anything he could offer. But when they start to become clingy, he’d move back to his own dungeon.

Sometimes, he wondered why his parents named him Stag. Is it from the word, stagnant? But then, he’d rationalize that being totally consumed with one’s own mind is not really stagnant. His mind was working, he just prefer not caring. Maybe his parent’s thought that his heart was stagnant. They even thought it’s what killed him.

McLife.

How do people hold on to their principles and beliefs in life? Do they flaunt it in the open? Or pretend to be someone else and be eaten by their own principles? They say that knowing one’s self is a lifelong process. Some people discover themselves - what they are, what they want to believe and how they want to be - early on in their lives. Some do when they reach adulthood and had plenty of ‘experiences’ that teach them lessons. Others, well, they only realize it shortly before they die.

The thing is, before you reach the stage where you really know the direction you want for yourself, when the principles you set for yourself is perfectly clear, there are people - close or not - who’ve known you in the ‘past’ who thought of you differently - most especially if you’re the type who don’t speak your thoughts out loud and lazy to correct the people around you. What you do instead is to offer them books to read.

Would you rather go tell everyone in your life that you’re not what they think you are, or would you just keep the same quiet, not-so-caring attitude and then write a blog entry about it? Would you rant about correcting them the difference between a person who like the nature and the environmentalists, or between a health-freak and the vegetarians? But then it will lead to a lengthy discussion with you telling your arguments, and then it will end up getting you frustrated for not airing them the way you want them to be understood.

Would you inform them you are an emotionless creature who’d rather be left alone with books to read and stories to write than converse with human beings? That would be hurtful, but then you try not to feel. How would you explain to them you don’t believe in the existence of love and you want to be single all your life, without them thinking it is out of bitterness or some ‘holy’ calling? How would you tell them it is a very objective decision, plainly drawn out from your sheer ’sense of living’?

Would you let them know you have discarded all religions and hasn’t been inside the church for months now? Or would you also avoid a lengthy argument regarding that? Would they understand that the church is only a vehicle for more poverty to continue? That what the church does is only a small portion of what the world is doing now.

How would you say that we live in a very stupid world that teaches selflessness, when it is the very thing we should teach against? Would you tell your own child to forget his or her self in pursuit of others’ happiness? When you go to ‘relief’ or ‘charity’ works, would you also teach the people you help - young and old - to be selfless? Think how would that help them to progress.

Things change. It is impossible for any person to know another person completely. We can only get portions of who they are. If you’re the quiet, not-so-caring, emotionless creature, might as well not to send wrong messages, such as ‘portions’ of exactly the opposite of your own principles.

Chaos

There was a time when she used to collect five peso and ten peso coins. She’d put them in a coin bank and after a year, would crack it open and then put the coins in plastic bags, php500 per bag. Then she’d go to the nearest bank and deposit the bags of coins to her ATM account.

Recently - that is, in the last two or three years - she resorted to spending the said coins rather than saving them for a year. It could have been brought about constantly being broked (err, broken?). However, she still had managed to save a few bags in 2006, kept them in her overly chaotic old things aka unimportant, outdated wasteful materials, and had forgotten about those.

And then when she came home last week, she found out that aside from her, her other two family members were utterly penniless, as well. Alas, the power of coins can save you. She rummaged through the overly chaotic old things aka unimportant, outdated wasteful materials to look for the long forgotten bags of coins in order to uplift their situation from being utterly penniless to err, slightly penniless.

Actually, she never found the coins.

Lesson learned? Well, you get to choose: either never underestimate the singkong butas, or be very, very organized.