travelling without....

.....no, not "moving" but instead, much better: without paying!

And it get's even better than that.
It's First Class without paying.
That's 12 hours of gentle, relaxed flying where I can actually lay down and have proper cutlery with my meal and hopefully, decent bread instead of the usual strangely plastic roll or fridge cold brioche.
Perhaps more importantly, I get decent copies of newspapers and magazines and the space to turn the pages. It makes the thought of flying all the way to HK to sort out some dodgy plumbing and to buy another bed and telly and other bits of small furniture not too tedious as well, I get the same comfy flight back.

Eck,
I just realised that I really will be flying to do some shopping.
How Jet-Set of me.


Bring
It
On.

horse, cow, dog shit...

....ain't got nothing on you.

I am one that is usually willing to give people the benefit of the doubt when it comes to certain matters and despite the many times that I have had people tell me otherwise, I still believed that it is possible that there is just some sort of misunderstanding but I can ignore it no longer.

It is all horse shit.
Nothing but a fantasy hiding and hidden by lies, deceit and conceit.
Selfishness, arrogance and narcissim of the highest order all topped off with more than just a dash of hypocrisy.

What is this you ask?
Nothing really.
In fact it is nothing to do with me or even any one I really know.
Sort of.

The real question is why do I care?

I can stomach many things but hypocrisy is something that has always gotten my proverbial goat. In fact, if there was such a thing as a Hypocrisy Imp, he'd have a Gulag full of my goats but there isn't and all I have is a little virtual voice reminding me that she had already told me a long time ago that he's just an arsehole.

What I can't help but wonder is if people can really be that blind?
Can a person be so involved with themselves that they can't see past their own fantasy world?
Can a person be so fixated on fairy tales that they really can ignore and completely dismiss past behaviour because the current fantasy is "better" than the previous?
Can a person really be so without regret and remorse as to instantly forget things to suit their fantasy?

But ack, it really isn't anything to do with me.

The only thing I should say is that I do hope I am wrong, or actually, that I was right in the first place and that it was all just a misunderstanding of sorts.
Chances?
As I said already, I'm not a betting man.
If I were, the first thing I'd do, is do what horse racing punters do; look at past form.


oops.

where-ever I lay my hat... revisited

And yet another song reference.

This time though, there is a much better reason for it.
I don't recall mentioning it here before earlier this year, mum has finally , after dithering about it for (insert your choice of deity here) knows how many years, bought a small flat in Hong Kong. Ok, technically, it's not really in Hong Kong but in the New Territories.

Before this, every time any of us has gone to HK, we've always stayed at a relative's place; either at one of her sister (my aunt's) places or at one of my uncles' (her in-laws') place. This was never ideal, especially seeing as there is a very specific reason why I don't have a home where I'm supposed to but seeing as the parties involved aren't around anymore, that's never really been an issue but still; not ideal.

So this is it.
After many years of being homeless, I now do have a home.
That was why I made two successive trips to Hong Kong with a 3 week break in-between travelling at the beginning of this year; to sort out the paperwork and attempt to make a start at settling into the place.

Like the best laid plans, waste followed.
Admittedly, I only had just over a week. not including the weekend, to complete the exchange, before looking for and buying furniture and pushing them to deliver withing 5 days. That's the bit that failed. I had planned to exchange the day after I landed, then spend the first day/evening checking out furniture (praise whatever is holy that stores don't close until 10ish) and at the latest, buy stuff within the next two days. I was effecient enough in my browsing to manage to buy a fridge/freezer and bed. Unfortunately, my not understanding of how HK pay as you go mobiles work, meant I couldn't confirm and take delivery of the bed until the day I was due to fly. I also managed to stand up a friend I was due to meet for dinner who probably still hasn't forgiven me...

Short of it is that I never even got to stay at the place for one night, let alone the four I had planned. Once the fridge had been delivered, I had even bought some basic cooking ingredients, a nice big Tefal Wok, dining set, knives& forks, glasses, cups, chopsticks and other essential household bits; all of which are still sitting there gathering dust and probably going mouldy in the damp HK air.

But that doesn't matter.
Come January, for the first time ever, when my sister and I land in HK, we won't be making our way to an aunts' place, or an uncles' place, or my grand-ma's place but to our place.
I know I've said that I'm not one for sentimentality or that I am one who needs to feel like I belong but there's something about even the thought of having our place that does something to a usually miserable git.
It helps that I also already have a bed there and three rather big and plump pillows waiting for me.

There's still work to be done before it's a proper home though and that's something that's a little worrying as mum will be there two weeks before me and my sis arrive, which is two weeks of potential shopping disaster...

Anyway, it isn't a big place and there's nothing in it to make it interesting and I've only really got a few pics to show for it.

The View


























The bathroom sink and the shower
























The kitchenette
















It really isn't much but it makes such a difference mentally to even the idea of a trip there.

Maybe there's something to that "feeling at home" lark after all.

yes sir, no sir, how high sir?

This is brief and an extension of a previous post and is a simple question that I may have posted before.

What is more important?
Someone to congratulate you on everything you do, to sing praises and blindly ignore faults and errors?
Or someone who is going to tell you when you are in the wrong and that you maybe need to take a look at your behaviour?

The answer is quite simple really, if you don't want to hear criticisms, don't do anything that can be criticised. You can argue that it's not your fault but if you didn't know that you were doing wrong then for that reason alone, someone needs to tell you that you were, no? If you did know you were doing wrong, then that's even more reason for someone to tell you so you hopefully won't do it again.


If I were a betting man, I'd take bets but I'm not.
Besides, I don't like winning when it's easy.

and so the story goes....

The original date for this post was the 29th December 2007.

Now that ain't a good thing.
For a start, it shows just how bad I am at keeping track of things. Secondly, it shows how bad I am at following through with things.
Right now, after having browsed every news thread for that date I can't even begin to think what it was that inspired the title.

A part of me thinks it may have been gun related.
Another part thinks it might've been Afghanistan related.
There is also another smaller part that thinks it might be girl related.

What story?
I have always refered to people's perception of themselves and their lives as their "story" and I do have vague memories of something happening around December last year that would've prompted a post about my own story.
But is that it?
Did a single simple missed phone call deserve a post?
As I sit here, have read the headlines for things that happened on on before the date, I can't but think what a waste of time this would've been if it was the only reason for the post; a sodding phone call. From a girl.
How much more shallow, empty and pathetic can you get?

Of course, this being purely for my own satisfaction, I am allowed a little self indulgence once in a while; much like how the countless little Fiat 500s and Puntos offset the occasional Ferrari Scuderia's excesses.
Yeah, right...

I can claim to be many things but if something like a missed phone call did spur me to think about making a post, what does that say about me?
I'm not entirely sure I like the answer to that one.
But if it's important to me, then where's the harm, right?
Part of this thing is for me to represent myself, good or bad and only by letting it flow without censor would I be able to look back at an honest representation of me at that moment in time.
I'll admit that I am far from being uncensored here but I am trying.
Maybe next time, I'll use some actual names.



Titled: 5th December 2007
Published: 13th October 2008

.....only lonely in a crowd

.....when's the last time you had a look at the people around you?
How many of those people are ones that you met at work?
How many are random encounters?
How many have you known for years?

Something came up in discussion a couple of days ago that went a little like this:
"adults have no friends".

How true is that?

Me in my almighty non-commited wisdom said that it is when you are an adult with proper work and proper responsibilties that you know who your friends really are. I followed this with saying that when you are young, the people you hang out with when you have nothing to do, are just people you hang out because you have nothing to do.

How correct was I then?

The real question behind all this is:
what is a friend?
If we don't first define what "friend" means then we can't even begin to have answer for the questions about friends.

So where do we begin?
How about with what friends are when we are young? This seems like a good starting point as it is after all, the point in our lives when we first learn about friendship and when we first use it for our own (evil) means. We are without doubt, simpler creatures when we are children and so what we think of as friends then is naturally going to be the most basic definition.

To a child, a friend is someone who you can play with; playing being the most important thing when you are small and without any true responsibilities. Having fun is the reason for waking up early and sleeping as late as you can and having people to play with makes playing even better. So a friend is someone who you can play with? That by itself suggests that by the nature of playing, you and those you play with share a liking for something; after all, if you don't like Star Wars, you aint going to want to join in as Luke Skywalker #3 come playtime. So are friends those you have something in common with? But eck.... that means that technically we can be friends with half the people in the world if all it was about was commonality.

So does mean it's all down to fun and who you can have fun with?
Superficially, this is not much more than an extension of "commonality" but dig a little bit deeper and taken in a more adult context, this takes a definitely different path. Commonality does not automatically mean you can have fun together. A love of detective stories can mean a love of Frost as opposed to a love of Morse. A common liking for cars can be divided into fans of brands as in the real world, people's likes and dislikes fall into very specific sets. Again, this can be taken as simply a more in depth expansion of commonality which is indeed true were it not for one thing. People can have fun together even if they have nothing in common; hence opposites attract. How many tales have you heard of two people who get together simply for a bit of fun and don't let things progress beyond the bedroom? Of course, a little part of me thinks that this may just be another of those indicators of the state of modern society, when people find ways to get what they need without getting what they don't need or perhaps, want.

And there's the other point; are friends people we want one way or another? Are they people like us, people we want to be like or people we want?
How about all three?
Maybe.

What you want from a friend depends on many things and what those things are, like most things, depends on how honest you are.
I am perhaps, a little bit of a despot but paradoxically, I don't like to be seen to be so. In that respect, I am perhaps a bit of a Machievelli type who perfers to be behind the scenes. If that smells a bit too much like me being manipulative; I can't say that isn't true. In my defence though, it's not as if I am forever making or planning on making people do what I want; it is more like I like things done in a certain way and if at all possible, I would like you to do it , how I would like it to be done...
What that equates to, is that I like to have someone around who is louder, ruder and more arrogant than I am to well, distract from my own failings. At the same time, I also have a tendency to have people who are easy to manipulate.
What I mean is, people who are easy to guess their next move. In truth, I know that it is their predictability that I need because uncertainty is something I have a very hard time dealing with. Knowing how someone is going to react/behave is a comforting safety blanket.

So does that make them friends of mine or tools for my own gain?

But isn't that what friends are on one level? Simple tools to fulfil a need of ours? We are a social creature, so much so that those who are not social are termed "outcasts" so the basic most fundemental function of a friend is to be a companion; be it a companion to watch a film with, or have a drink with or in today's world, a companion who you only ever just talk to.
But this sort of companion does not need to be someone like us, someone we want or someone we want to be like.

Doesn't help, does it?

Logic dictates that when you have a thing that consists of variable interactions between different individuals that are dependent on even more variables, no single definition of "friend" is going to fit all friends.
It seems the best we can do is to identify what it is we like or perhaps more importantly don't like about any individual we call a friend and understand what it says about ourselves.


Titled: 3rd January 2008
Published: 12th October 2008