Selah to Hagah

I was properly satisfied this morning. Nothing but a darn well written article could make your day unassumingly.

While for some reason my broadband connection at home broke last night, I could still consumed my RSS readings here, at Mt. Alvernia Hospital. Again, unassumingly, eh? Having a less than 1 kg lappy to lug around surely helped.

Perfection.

The utmost enemy of mediocrity. Or for some, the pinnacle you get once in a while in mundanity that tastes like superb dessert. Yum.

I have a fetish.

I fall very easily for a good writing — a not too long one, please. Hence my hobby, blog reading. If you’re persistent enough, once in a purple moon, on a strange planet, it’ll appear. Darn. Good. Writing.

While I’m still faithful following a couple of consistently well written blogs, waiterrant and avanoo’s, after some time, they started to get too familiar. So, upon reading these words from a site named “Gamer’s with Jobs” with title began with “Best Buy” about Guitar Hero 3, it came as a refreshing surprise:

I try to catch his eyes, to make some feeble 40-year-old-dad gesture: maybe a nod, or a humble utterance of “nice.” But, his sutra complete, his eyes have gone to his shoes. His companions pat him on the back, not with a juvenile high-five, but with an almost loving touch, they way you’d touch an aging parent on the back when asking if they’re pneumonia was getting better. They turn away from us and walk back down the aisle in the direction they had come.

Jake squirms. I put him down and take his hand.

It’s warm and soft and surprisingly strong as he squeezes mine. As we walk out of the store, I have the odd sense of being aware of my breathing. For a moment at least, it becomes a conscious act.

My first inhale after finishing the last sentence was deep in contentment.

Made my day.

That or I just want to brag about my new gadget and the fact I’m blogging this from a baby-delivering hospital

As usual, I got this from del.icio.us/popular (social bookmarking) site. At first, I just did my regular trigger-happy clicking when later this post got me stunned. Furthermore, after reading one of the comments, I realized it’s somehow related to/inspired by Hurricane Katrina:

“Being poor is people wondering why you didn’t leave.”

I then googled some news and got another shock reading one of them:
Rapes, killings hit Katrina refugees in New Orleans

Please read John Scalzi’s writing below and open the link to read more thought provoking comments, e.g:

“Why is is so hard to remember poverty once you get past it, if you get past it? Why is it so hard to empathize with poverty if you have never had it? What the hell is wrong with us?”

This post makes me ponder really hard and difficult to hold my tears. Life’s full of ‘inconvenience’ (an understatement, I know) and surprises. I really think people do need God - sometime obvious, often too subtle.

Being Poor
John Scalzi - September 3, 2005

Being poor is knowing exactly how much everything costs.

Being poor is getting angry at your kids for asking for all the crap they see on TV.

Being poor is having to keep buying $800 cars because they’re what you can afford, and then having the cars break down on you, because there’s not an $800 car in America that’s worth a damn.

Being poor is hoping the toothache goes away.

Being poor is knowing your kid goes to friends’ houses but never has friends over to yours.

Being poor is going to the restroom before you get in the school lunch line so your friends will be ahead of you and won’t hear you say “I get free lunch” when you get to the cashier.

Being poor is living next to the freeway.

Being poor is coming back to the car with your children in the back seat, clutching that box of Raisin Bran you just bought and trying to think of a way to make the kids understand that the box has to last.

Being poor is wondering if your well-off sibling is lying when he says he doesn’t mind when you ask for help.

Being poor is off-brand toys.

Being poor is a heater in only one room of the house.

Being poor is knowing you can’t leave $5 on the coffee table when your friends are around.

Being poor is hoping your kids don’t have a growth spurt.

Being poor is stealing meat from the store, frying it up before your mom gets home and then telling her she doesn’t have make dinner tonight because you’re not hungry anyway.

Being poor is Goodwill underwear.

Being poor is not enough space for everyone who lives with you.

Being poor is feeling the glued soles tear off your supermarket shoes when you run around the playground.

Being poor is your kid’s school being the one with the 15-year-old textbooks and no air conditioning.

Being poor is thinking $8 an hour is a really good deal.

Being poor is relying on people who don’t give a damn about you.

Being poor is an overnight shift under florescent lights.

Being poor is finding the letter your mom wrote to your dad, begging him for the child support.

Being poor is a bathtub you have to empty into the toilet.

Being poor is stopping the car to take a lamp from a stranger’s trash.

Being poor is making lunch for your kid when a cockroach skitters over the bread, and you looking over to see if your kid saw.

Being poor is believing a GED actually makes a goddamned difference.

Being poor is people angry at you just for walking around in the mall.

Being poor is not taking the job because you can’t find someone you trust to watch your kids.

Being poor is the police busting into the apartment right next to yours.

Being poor is not talking to that girl because she’ll probably just laugh at your clothes.

Being poor is hoping you’ll be invited for dinner.

Being poor is a sidewalk with lots of brown glass on it.

Being poor is people thinking they know something about you by the way you talk.

Being poor is needing that 35-cent raise.

Being poor is your kid’s teacher assuming you don’t have any books in your home.

Being poor is six dollars short on the utility bill and no way to close the gap.

Being poor is crying when you drop the mac and cheese on the floor.

Being poor is knowing you work as hard as anyone, anywhere.

Being poor is people surprised to discover you’re not actually stupid.

Being poor is people surprised to discover you’re not actually lazy.

Being poor is a six-hour wait in an emergency room with a sick child asleep on your lap.

Being poor is never buying anything someone else hasn’t bought first.

Being poor is picking the 10 cent ramen instead of the 12 cent ramen because that’s two extra packages for every dollar.

Being poor is having to live with choices you didn’t know you made when you were 14 years old.

Being poor is getting tired of people wanting you to be grateful.

Being poor is knowing you’re being judged.

Being poor is a box of crayons and a $1 coloring book from a community center Santa.

Being poor is checking the coin return slot of every soda machine you go by.

Being poor is deciding that it’s all right to base a relationship on shelter.

Being poor is knowing you really shouldn’t spend that buck on a Lotto ticket.

Being poor is hoping the register lady will spot you the dime.

Being poor is feeling helpless when your child makes the same mistakes you did, and won’t listen to you beg them against doing so.

Being poor is a cough that doesn’t go away.

Being poor is making sure you don’t spill on the couch, just in case you have to give it back before the lease is up.

Being poor is a $200 paycheck advance from a company that takes $250 when the paycheck comes in.

Being poor is four years of night classes for an Associates of Art degree.

Being poor is a lumpy futon bed.

Being poor is knowing where the shelter is.

Being poor is people who have never been poor wondering why you choose to be so.

Being poor is knowing how hard it is to stop being poor.

Being poor is seeing how few options you have.

Being poor is running in place.

Being poor is people wondering why you didn’t leave.

The problem with diamonds isn’t their scarcity, but their abundance.

A friend of my wife was asking for some articles about diamonds and its overly priced facts. I myself has known the ‘truth’ since 2003, which was about 6 months after I bought my first (and last ) diamond ring for my fiancée back then. But I don’t have any regret. After all, this was for a lady I will share the rest of my entire life with. Still, I’d consider myself lucky because she shares similar opinion since I revealed the ‘truth’ to her.. (or maybe not that similar )

Here are some articles from my ‘research’ (googling around):

• A Perception of Rarity (part of “How Diamonds Work”)
  Some diamonds, like the Hope Diamond, are extremely rare. However, most diamonds are much more abundant than we are led to believe.
• Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond?
  While those who attempt to sell diamonds often experience disappointment at the low price they are offered, stories in gossip columns suggest that diamonds are resold at enormous profits.
• Ten Reasons Why You Should Never Accept a Diamond Ring
  from Anyone, Under Any Circumstances, Even If They Really Want to Give You One
• The Diamond Invention
  A whole book about the subject, long but very comprehensive.
• The New Diamond Con (August 3, 2000)
  The problem with diamonds isn’t their scarcity, but their abundance.
• Is a diamond’s price a true measure of its value?
  (contains a little note about Epstein above)
  … but I bet if your wife knew the real story she’d prefer her next gift to be a nice socket-wrench set. Diamonds are a con, pure and simple.
• Africa’s Diamond Wars
  Across vast stretches of Africa, diamonds fuel war.
• The New Diamond Age
  Armed with inexpensive, mass-produced gems, two startups are launching an assault on the De Beers cartel.
  “It’s too perfect to be natural. Things in nature, they have flaws. The growth structure of this diamond is flawless.”
• The cartel isn’t for ever
  With its near monopoly as a trader of rough stones, De Beers has been able to maintain and increase the prices of diamonds by regulating their supply.
  … Consumers believe diamonds are valuable largely because of decades of clever marketing by De Beers and its clients.
• Diamonds Aren’t Forever
  This one has nothing to do with De Beers et al… but still a good read.

This Friendster thing is unexpectedly fascinating. Although the concept is fairly simple and straightforward, once again the power of being the most well known is proven overwhelming.

For the past year, I refrained myself (and my wife’s) to get involved in any cyber networking activities, sort of one of our after-wedding “resolution”. So, recently, somehow spontaneous and unplanned, we decided to “officially” start to do anything, particularly the one we missed most and urged by friends: The Friendster. Now, I’m leading the race with 55 friends against 46 of hers, fully occupying the 25 slots of “waiting confirmation”.

Phew, at least (and last) I manage to blog.

Yep, my first post. Suffering as a pseudo-perfectionist, it took me:

• four months to read others’ blogs (a lot)
• a month to find the right blogging tool (WordPress)
• another couple of weeks hunting for page layout/theme (mine, derived from RioSoft’s)
• 2 more days to test locally (UniServer)

Now the search is over, I can blog peacefully.