The Adventures, Mishaps and Musings of Me

It's fun to read American financial textbooks that were written and published before the financial crisis. Especially when you compare their hard line capitlist banks-do-it-best attitude of a few years ago to the we-need-government-intervention attitude of now.

If you type the words "how to" into google and hold off typing anything more, a little box comes up with (presumably) the ten most common searches beginning with "how to". I was amused by the following list, replicated here (exactly) for your own enjoyment:

-How to write a CV
-How to kiss
-How to get pregnant (!!!)
-How to lose weight fast
-How to make money
-How to get rid of spots
-How to lose weight (twice?)
-How to make pancakes
-How to get a six pack (Yeah, because only girls have an insecure body image...)

Are these really the top things that the human race wants to be able to learn to do? Most of them all revolving around ones looks? It has to be said, we really are an insecure lot...

Let me put it this way.  One of my best friends is Russian, and thus should have done a year of national service.  He didn't because his rich Daddy was able to give a brown envelope containing $20 000 (yes, that is dollars not rubles) to the "correct authorities".  He tells me that this is standard procedure for all kids of the Russian elite. 

So, equality?

I also have another two Russian friends who got out of national service.  One who was so nervous in the medical exam they thought he had a heart condition, and another who should be doing national service, but is hiding in Italy and hoping the Russian police don't find him (so far they haven't). 

From a purely economic point of view, it seems to me a collasal waste of government funds to train people for the army who simply are not suited for it.  Funds that could be used to deal with social problems instead.  Besides, from a bleeding heart liberal viewpoint, what right does a government have to interfere in the lives of it's citizens so much as to force them to put their life on hold and, essentially, give up a year to the government?

Tradition be hanged.

If God was omniscient, he should have known the human race was a bad idea from the start.

I think it shows how image concious the planet is in that it would be incredibly offensive for a thin person to say to a fat person, "For goodness sake, STOP EATING THE CAKE AND LOSE SOME WEIGHT!!!"  Where as it's not seen as rude for a non-smoker to preach to a smoker that they should "QUIT SMOKING, YOU'RE KILLING YOURSELF!!"

And let's not even get started on the biggest of all hypocrites: The drinker who has the nerve to criticise the smoker. 

What is the one true factor that joins the whole human race together in all its diversities, male or female, black or white, east to west, north to south, American, European, Australian, African or Asian?

The need to consume proccessed Mac Donald's fast food muck.  Thus, the success of a Mac Donald's in almost every country across the globe.

May the blessed yellow M become the symbol of world unity. 

Pop songs often have such dark subtext, wrapped up in soft, fluffy, packages of colourful music videos and catchy melodies.  For example, "Kiss with a fist" by "Florence and the Machine" that can be viewed on You Tube here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpsDegqioVA

To be honest, I find that far more disturbing then anything Marilyn Manson has ever produced.

P.S. I love Marilyn Manson.

You know how they say people learn from their mistakes?  For instance, drinking orange juice after brushing your teeth leaves a disgusting taste in your mouth.  I know this.  I have experienced it many, many times.  Yet did I just now brush my teeth, then ten minutes later pour myself a glass of orange juice to drink?

Yes. 

Was it disgusting?

Yes. 

Will I learn from this?

Unlikely.  I've done it a hundred times in the past and I'm likely to do it a thousand times in the future. 

... So much for learning.

I spent the weekend over at a friend's mountain town Villa, chilling by the pool, drinking good wine, eating good food and getting sun burnt in temparatures well over 30 degrees.  On Sunday night there was an insane lightning storm - no thunder, no rain, just a bit of a wind and a hell of a lot of fork lightning.

We managed to take some photos of this insane power display of nature alla below:


Around midnight, while watching the lightning storm, I was struck with the realisation of just how inconsequential my life really is.  Even with a glass of wine in hand, it was a rather sobering moment.

Perceptions of body piercings are ridiculous. 

It's incredibly silly to me that you can stick bits of metal through your ear, one in each earlobe, and people at prissy dinner parties will regard this as "lovely", where as if you stick bits of metal elsewhere, such as your lip, belly button and, heaven forbid, upper ear, those same people who regard ear lobe piercing as "lovely" will consider you a complete tramp.

Not to mention that many teenage girls are queing up for the procedure of ear piercing and yet are blanching at the idea of a vaccination.  Value of ones health vs beauty?

...

And, of course, if you're a girl that doesn't want their ears pierced it obviously means there's something wrong with you.

You know, it's been coming to my attention of late that the only way to succeed at life is to lie constantly.

"Hello, it's nice to meet you."

"No, it's not my fault."

"Yes, I love you too."

Because after all, if bad things always happen to good people, then that's not much incentive to be good is it?

A weird thing happened this morning.  I woke up and thought:  "Oh, I'm going home today."

"Researchers found drinking tea with a temperature above 70C inceased the risk of oesophageal cancer eight-fold. 

But if you let your cuppa cool for five minutes it should be safe to drink, experts have said."

The above quoted from Yahoo news. 

What would we all do without such experts to tell us that we should let our tea cool from 70 degrees?  Thank God for science; proving once again that, if you try hard enough, you can link cancer to everything.

What's a good indicator of how corrupt a country is?  The existance of a prominent punk rock scene or its lack of one.

If there is a punk rock scene constanly yelling about corruption in their country, then said country is pretty clean.

When there is NOT a punk rock scene yelling constant claims of corruption, that's when you've got to worry.

Computer systems that are so inflexible as to completely prevent humans from applying common sense to problems, will eventually be the death of society.  Period.

I'm sure it can be argued that it is better for profitablity and efficency for companies and organisations to have such computer systems that "act intuitively" to restrict employees from ever having to perform value judgements i.e. use their brains, thus speeding up tasks and ensuring they always follow an exact logic.  But, there will always come a time when a bit of "out of the box" non-quantitative thinking can provide a simple solution to a problem and if a computer system prevents the use of such common sense, then said computer system is no longer an asset i.e, it becomes a pain in the ass for all involved.

Le sigh.

Of late, I've come into contact with way too many administrative people whose answer to everything, albeit I'm paraphrasing here, is:  "Computer says no".

This strangulation of human intuition cannot be a good thing.

Individual human life, I think, is best defined as a huge web of worries.  Everyone's life is constantly plauged by things to worry about.  Whether it be small things:  "Has my ebay purchase got lost in the post?  Am I being ripped off by my broadband provider?" Or all important, unanswerable, vague concepts: "How am I going to leave my mark on the human race?  Is my life going somewhere?  Am I fufilling my potential?"  To things that seem madeningly important, but are actually completely inconsequential and distract you from the things you should be worrying about:  "Does that boy in Class 7C fancy me?  Do I fancy that boy in Class 7C?  Do I fancy that girl in Class 7C?"  To that universal, omnipresent worry:  "More things are going out of my bank account then are going in it!" 

You fall into the web of worries as a teenager (school, friends, family, crushes) and from there on in the web only gets bigger (university, exams, friends, family, boyfriends/girlfriends, work, money and The Future) and bigger and bigger and bigger (work, friends, collegues, marriage, children, mortgage, bills, age, death, The Future etc. etc. etc.).

But, however big your web of worries is, it makes absoloutly no difference.  You don't think "I'm seventeen, comparitively, I have little to worry about."  No, you think:  "Oh, Christ, I'm never gonna make it to University; Does my boyfriend fancy my best friend; Does my best friend fancy my boyfriend; my parents better not realise I'm smoking; my parents better not realise how many detentions I've got this term; are condoms 100% effective?"  Worries, however insignificant or significant; however founded or unfounded consume your thoughts and it is no consolation that compared to others you have little on your plate.

For instance, I don't care that at 19 my only main worries are passing exams and not overspending on pizza:  It's still causing me complete anxiety!

Luckily, we can distract ourselves from our worries with friends, movies, books; video games, alcohol, drugs, shopping, sex, sport and food (regardless of the fact that most of these things cause the worries in the first place).  Unluckily, solitude for anxiety ridden reflection is just around the corner.

The News made me laugh today: 

"According to new official government guidelines, children under 15 should not be allowed to touch alcohol at all, parent supervision or not.  Studies have found that it can lead to brain damage and encourage binge drinking."

If you want to encourage young teenagers to down a bottle of vodka, the above is exactly what you should tell them.

Maybe one day the British government will learn that the answer to every problem is not to suffocate the country under more rules, recommendations and regulations.  Apparantly, "one day" is a very long way off. 

Italian ladies who work in post offices are lovely.  They are the athesis to evil Italian cleaning ladies.  Sadly, they don't quite balance eachother out because I come into contact with Italian post office ladies perhaps once a month, where as cleaning ladies thrust their evil presence on me twice a week.  I think this is one of the little unfair-ities of life.

Yesterday, after living in Milan for two months, I went "shopping" for the first time.  And by "shopping" I mean look at a bunch of things that are worth more the my entire bank account and loudly declare that there is no way they can justify pricing a pair of shoes at 700 Euros compared to the production costs.  Something that would be more fun if I spoke Italian or the shop assistants spoke English.  But, you know what the truly horrorfying thing was? 

My friends didn't see it that way at all.  Sure, they'll nod at my rants, but a few seconds later they'll be heading to the cashiers.  250 Euro coats were bought.  100 Euro converses were bought.  50 Euro T shirts were bought.  I guess the sad truth is that it's because they're richer than me.  They're parents have (somewhat stupidly) given them credit cards - the value of the Euro is a lot less in their mind than it is in mine.

But, you know what's even more horrorfying than that?  After all my scoffing at overpriced fashion, I still gave in and bought a leather Scarface belt and paid... a little bit more then I know I should have.  But, at least it wasn't money going to a corporation, the shop was a rather wonderfully different high street shop so I'm supporting local business and the belt was leather, Scarface and just too cool.  But, that's the same arguement as my friends saying it's alright to spend 2000 Euros on a Gucchi handbag because "it's pretty".  Ugh.  I'm a hippocrit.

And you know what else is awful?  I would really, really love a pair of those "leather on the outside, fluffy on the inside" converses (are they being sold all over the world or just in Milan?).  And if I did have money to burn and thus had a spare 100 Euros, I think I would give in and buy them... instead of paying 40 Euros for the non-brand ones.  Oh, geez, I really hope I wouldn't.  Dear God, I hope I wouldn't.

Luckily, at the moment, with my present bank account, there is no flipping way I would EVER spend 100 Euros on a pair of shoes, espicially when you can get the same thing for 40 Euro's but without a stamp.  Let's hope that mentality will never change.  But is that really much better?  I do own 3 pairs of shoes that are perfectly wearable and yet I really, REALLY want those leather/fluffy 40 Euro converses (I'm now saving up to buy them *shame*).  They're most definately a voluptuary good, an unnecessary THING that I just want.  And I can't help it.

Ugh.  I would like to think I'm above fashion and all that crap.  But, the sad thing is, I'm not.

Damn it.

Let it be known that I adore Shakespearian tragedies.  At the moment I'm chomping my way through King Lear and loving every page!  You know what the really great thing is, though?  My friends at Uni share my Shakespeare love!  This wonderful appreciation of Shakespeare by young people that I've met in real life is a weird novelty to me. At school, if Shakespeare was ever mentioned it was followed shortly by "Kinda gay?" or something equally dull and derivitive.  I can't name another person at school who (with the exception of my literature geek entusiast sister) willingly read and enjoyed Shakespeare, where as over here if I mention I'm reading Lear an interesting conversation instantly blossums!

Why is this?  Is it perhaps that I'm now surrounded by fantastically intelligent people who love literature more then my friends from England?  Fantastically intelligent Bocconi students are, but so were my English school friends - I went to a grammar school, I was surrounded by the top 20% of the country and almost all of them, without exception, were going onto University.  As for Bocconi students being more interested in literature, the statement "I'm studying economics" should answer in the negative.

So what is it then?  Why do international kids love Shakespeare and Brits dislike it?!?  Well, I think the answer is just that:  They are not English.  Or rather, they have not gone through the English school system and had Shakespeare rammed down their throats with a side order of essay homework.

I realise that school is trying to introduce you to the world of literature, broaden your horizions and all that, but studying Shakespeare from the age of 13 is not the way to do it.  Heck, even I ended up disliking it!  In Year 8 we did "A Midsummer's Night Dream", which bored me; Year 9, we did Macbeth, which I was indifferent to and, for GCSE, we did the Merchant of Venice - again, disinterest and boredom.  All in all, the opposite effect was reached by the end of my English Literature GCSE - I (and almost everyone else in my year) was completely turned off Shakespeare.

It was only when, whilst feeling particulaly bored one day, I randomly picked up Hamlet from my sister's book shelf and started to read that I rediscovered the true greatness that is Shakespeare (O happy day!).  I was reading it only because I wanted to, not because some adult was telling me to - for pleasures sake and, thus, pleasure it gave back!  It is a rediscovery that I am alone amongst my English friends for making.

What's your point? You may be asking.  This:  If we want young brits to appreciate Shakespeare (and we should) we should not force it on them from such an early age.  At 12/13 you truly cannot see the point in reading something that seems at times if it is in another language, intorducing it to them at that age is pointless.  Rather, I believe it should be first introduced at GCSE, where students are old/mature enough to appreciate it better.  My second point:  The play that is studied should also be carefully considered.  For instance, "The Merchant of Venice" simply isn't compelling (this being illustrated beautifully by the flat film version with Al Pacino that was made recently), basically, the play selected for study, the first piece of Shakespeare that a young person is introduced to, must be a good 'n!  To be honest though, I truly believe the best way to get into Shakespeare (or anything for that matter) is to discover it naturally by yourself (like my international friends), not have it forced on you leading to an automatic dislike.

Please note, this is not a rant at the English school system, an institution which I believe to be one of the best in the world as (espicially at A levels) it teaches the ability of free, independent thought; rather, it is a nitpick.  

Albeit, an important nitpick.