How many charities do you support? That’s right, you! One of the few things that I’m proud over in this world is the fact that I support (financially and ideologically (yes, that’s a word!)) Amnesty International, Greenpeace, The Swedish Red Cross and Unicef. And I just signed up for a new Unicef program (“A Drop of Water”) and got a cool pin to put on my jacket for it.
I know I’m really patting myself on the back here, but my point is – what do you do? I wanna make you feel bad if you’re not supporting one single charity, so bad that you’ll have to start after reading this. And I wanna make the ones that do give something feel a little better. And I also wanna make a point to everyone who says I’m too obsessed buying stuff for myself (most recently a new $1500 TV) and thinks that I’m too tight!
I would be blood donor too if the hospital that’s close enough to walk to would allow me to give blood there…
This may come off as a bit cold or just asshole-like, but am I the only one who’s tired of all dedications / memorials and stuff that’s gone on over the past year? It seems that when someone, especially if they are famous, dies it has to be made into something huge and special. Two great recent examples of that is Aaliyah and Lisa ‘Lefteye’ Lopez. Both made decent music and they may both have been good people, but with all stuff that’s been done in the media (like the recent MTV VMA dedication to Lopez) you’d think they were up for some saint-status or something.
And then ofcourse there is all the 9/11 (which by the way, we swedes would write 11/9). Naturually it was a terrible event and a huge loss of life, completely over the top and I in no way condone what happened. But why was I asked to hold a minute of silence last wednesday? Anton, a friend at work, got really upset, borderlining mad over this entire thing. At first I thought he was overreacting, but at the end of the day, with all the hype in non-american media, you’d think it was the biggest disaster that ever happened and that the world “owes” america (especially their government) something?! Wtf is all that about? Ofcourse I feel sorry for what happened and to the people who lost a loved one, but it has in absolutely no way affected me or my life, so why should I feel anything about that entire thing? Let’s reverse it – can any one american say why we swedes should hold a silent moment or two next saturday (Sept. 28th)? I’m pretty sure not a single one of them can, because why are they suppose to know that is the date when Estonia sank! Which, if you’ll excuse the cold Vulcan part of me, was atleast 10 times worse, percentage-wise, for sweden than 9/11 was for US of A. “But Estonia was not an act of terrorism against civilian targets” you may say. True, but the Estonia disaster was a random event that killed about a thousand people, which I consider a far worse human disaster than some misguided terrorist who’s been fooled into thinking that USA is the devil. But from their perspective, just how wrong are they? I’m not gonna try and justify what they did, but lets face it, USA has a huge tendancy to play cop in the world. And as long as they have the UN support, that’s fine with me. But I can atleast understand why the islam world are getting upset when the US government is demanding that Yasir Araft be replaced by someone more US friendly!
I, myself, am pretty US friendly when it comes to the people, it’s just their government I object to.
“Dude, if you’re so against it why do you have a memorial for Eden!”. That’s different. That was a personal tragedy for me that I dealt with in this way. I have never ever asked anyone to feel sorry for me or a minute of silence for him. Not even when the 6 month mark came and went did I tell anyone! And it’s not like I’m doing a huge thing about it either, it’s there, read it of you want to. Or not.
So I’m on call this week. Again. For the third consecutive week! I work as a computer consultant, and one of our most important customer is this big lawfirm that I’ve been working at on and off for the past year. And as a part of us taking over their network, we have an on-call service for them. And I’m it again. There are three major points to being on call – 1) Be close enough so you can get there within the time specified in the contract 2) Make 100% certain you can answer the cell phone when they call. This includes staying up till midnight (can’t go to sleep and hope you wake up when it rings!) and also making sure there is a clear reception where you are and 3) be 100% sober. Now, any of these three things I can do, no prob. But combine them all, for an extended amount of time, and what kind of life do you get? No going out for beers with the pals, no going home to my parents, no going to the movies and you can forget about dating. And this is the third week in a row!
Naturally there is an upside – money.
But does that compensate giving up the freedom of just going to a movie if you feel like it, or to drive down to my parents for a nice dinner or something?… There must be some part of me that thinks so, otherwise I wouldn’t be doing it. Again and again.
Guess it all goes back to the old saying – “time is money”. I just wish you could reverse it and buy more time 🙂
Ask me how long it took for me to drive home the other day! Long enough to hear 26 tracks of Moby’s “Play”-album. “But that album only has 18 tracks!”. You’re right, it does, which means that I listened to it almost 1 1/2 times. I don’t know how much time that actually is, should be around 90 minutes. That’s right, I prefer measuring time in what I actually do, or what I would do if I wasn’t stuck in traffic. Because time really is, much like money, something artificial that we humans have created. The only three naturally occuring cycles are days (Earth’s rotation), 4 weeks (the moon’s orbit around the Earth) and years (the Earth’s orbit around the sun), the rest is just made up of a bunch of people. Don’t know exactly where I’m going with this, I guess I just want people to stop and smell the flowers a bit more often like I do. And I still don’t have a wrist watch 🙂
I did something this weekend that I don’t think I’ve ever done before. I never logged onto my computer at home! Seriously, from about 11 on friday night until I got to work at 8 am this morning I never logged onto my computer, not to check my mail, not to check my icq, not to read the latest Natalie-news! It’s not the first time I’ve been without computers (that week in Kenya was a real trial!), but it’s the first time I’ve been home, with a computer available, without going online or anything. And it felt good. Real good as a matter of fact. So relaxing just kicking back and doing other stuff than programming or webdesigning or graphics management or gaming or something. Does this make me sound pathetic? Don’t know, you’ll have to be the judge of that.