On the way to read someone else’s Friday AFR because mine was stolen
This past week has been on the best that I have had in a while, and it is all due to the fabulous weather that Sydney has enjoyed. The week has been a constant battle between the clouds and the sun with the clouds showing the sun where to go; behind it, and gave the city a gratuitous downpour. This brought back many memories for me, most of them happy. It brought back my feelings of nostalgia of standing in front of Chanel in London trying to avoid the ambiguous weather: it was sunny but everything was getting wet. It also brought my favourite past time of people gazing. So for the better half of this week, I sat in front of the window, with a cup of steaming coffee watching people running around below trying to avoid the rain and occasionally, someone falls and everyone laughs.
But more than that, the cold weather brought out my cold weather clothes – pristinely preserved since the last time it was cold; when I was in Europe. So naturally, I started to think about vacationing again, and that was when I noticed a special ski report in the AFR. So when I opened the pages, staring back at me was this hot girl holding what had to be the hottest item in town: black Chanel skis.
I’m definitely going skiing.
On the way to steal the daily office newspaperDeath and taxes are the only things that are certain in life. Fortunately for us, we can manipulate taxes; which dissipates its burden somewhat. Just look at the deductions that everyday people are allowed to claim on their income tax; and the additional deductions people can make if they own a small business; and the additional additional deductions you can make if you are one of Australia’s wealthiest people who are able to afford the best lawyers and accountants to legally minimise tax whose fees are also tax deductible.
As such, this ability to influence taxes makes people not so scared of them. If that wasn’t the case, you’ll see people running around pre-financial year end doing everything in their power to minimise tax, a la, salary sacrificing to super, frivolous expenditure and the sheer number of sales versus buys on the stock exchange to trigger capital losses.
But for the other certainty: death; it is not so malleable and the only time people actually pay attention to it is when they realise they don’t have much time such as having a near death experience, discovering that they or a close one is ill or paying too much attention to the evening news bulletin. But the one thing that most people are scared of, even more so that death, is aging. The thought of losing ones’ faculties and beauty is enough to drive the multibillion dollar cosmetics and elective surgery industry all the while supporting Pfizer, makers of Viagra; and being bombarded by airbrushed models in our daily lives is not going to help negate that fear.
However, there is no need to fear death, and indeed, aging; and for this, I owe it to a fabulous woman. She has changed my view of aging, possible for ever. Her name: Germaine Greer.
"If I tell you this secret, will you sleep with me" said a very famous and powerful young Hollywood stud-muffin
"I’ll sleep with you anyway" was her response
The moral: Being old doesn’t mean you don’t get any
"But it all got too complicated, so I slept with his assistant instead"The moral: You don’t have to be a Hollywood stuff-muffin to seduce old women
On the way to the bookshopHave you every played the lottery when four of your numbers come up with the rest still to come. You get this feeling - I think it is called hope; hope that the impossible might happen. This always happen in games of chance because the odds are always working against you. So for the next few minutes you sit there, praying/wishing/urging your numbers to come up.
What happens after that I wouldn't know because I don't play the lottery. But I play a different kind of lottery. One where the probability of scoring is practically zero but where the expected utility is immeasurable.
But that probability just rose a notch when I heard:
"I pretty much do everything" - Paris Hilton
There is hope for us all.
On the way home sitting on the trainWhen I say that I hate missing the train/bus/unreliable public transport, people tend to look perplexed at me when I give them an incredulous look at their suggestion that I perhaps run so that I don’t miss it. Ever since I started working, the one thing that I never did is run for any sort of public transport as I was always on time; rather, I believe that the public transport should wait for me which is never the case.
Running, for anything, is fine when you are young and immature of your environment and social position, unless of course you run for a living, but even that is just qualifies as an excuse. I believe that patience is a virtue; one that is sorely missing in today’s hectic and zoom zoom lifestyle. To frivolously run is to show ignorance of the one surety in life: death. Running brings you closer to death, famously proved by Albert Einstein in his Theory of Relativity as running compress the time you have allocated to perform tasks, thus compressing the time until death, all in relative. Some might say that this allows you to accomplish more task and get more out of life, but they are usually the people you see running and in most instances, for no significant reason.
Running also portrays an unappreciative nature towards the finer things in life that only come with time. For example, the age old axiom of wisdom and age; or aging of cognac in century old oak barrels; or romance of luxury cruise liners and rail travel; or the fine patina on Vuittons that takes years develop; or the rich history of art and aristocracy; or the miracle of compound interest; or the sense and sensibilities of an era gone by.
The movie Sliding Doors is a testament to the horrors of running and in particular, running for public transport. The movie documents the alternatives of Gwenth Paltrow’s character when she misses the train. The what if she made it scenario involved her living dull and boring life void of the finer things in life. The what if she didn’t make it scenario involved her meeting and falling in love with a beautiful stranger, exploring new boundaries and enjoying the finer things in life. Perhaps that will happen to me when I next miss the train.
But the other night on the train home, I saw a girl running frantically towards the closing doors. She wasn’t exactly svelte and moved remarkably fast for someone of her large stature. She made it of close, managing to slide between the doors before they closed. She was also wearing a bag slung across her chest; the bulk of which was on the other side of the train doors – now locked. She was trapped between the proverbial rock and the hard place, in this case, between looks of amusement and embarrassment. Perhaps if she was nimble or possessed the extraordinary flexibility of a yoga master, she might have freed herself from her bag. So as the train started to move, her expression turned to absolute fear, her friends screaming out loud and me, sitting there, smiling inwardly knowing that I had caught the express train with the next stop not due for a long time.
So now people might understand why I don’t run for public transport. The what ifs of not making it outweigh the what ifs of making it. And more importantly, I might ruin my shoes, my expensive shoes.
on the way back to work after a gym sessionPeople always ask me what I want to do with my life. My response: to be successful. However, there are a million ways to measure success and it was this thought that captured my attention for the better half of the gym session. I naturally came up with the most obvious answer of a million dollars.
But what is success and how do we measure it? Would a person be consider more successful if they won a million dollars through a lottery than another person who earnt a million dollars working their way up the corporate ladder? Or the person who was bequeathed a million dollars compared to someone who married for and then murdered for money? Or the multi-millionaire and the billionaire, both having more money than one spends in a life. Who is more successful? It is quite a slippery slope argument where there are multiple gradients of success.
Furthermore, can success be measured as notoriety or public awareness? Examining politicians and celebrities; is the person with the most television/magazine/newspaper exposure the most successful. Or perhaps the one that orchestrates the greatest controversies, a la demise of a political leader or the sexual exploits of a morals/family-oriented campaingner. And what yardstick do we use as a benchmark?
Ignoring materiality and greed and all of its supposedly evil forms that propagate consumption of wealth, luxury, cuisine and leisure; can success be measured by the person who has found true love and happiness, as taught by all those old world stories, Disney and Sex in the City and parodied in Seinfield and Desperate Housewives? Or perhaps the sadist who has managed to capture a foreigner and hold them hostage, eliciting feelings of terrorism and fear?
Success, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. However, venturing onto the SMH website, I came across an article that places an universal definition of success (
available here): immortalisation by Madame Tussauds as a wax figure. And who has achieved this success? Politicians, celebrities, great thinkers and shakers of their contemporaries and now, joining the coveted list; Paris Hilton.
An inspiration to those who have an aspiration for success.
