Do your worst world!

The best way to look at an excruciating experience is to think of how it would sound when you tell others in retrospect as a "you-won't-believe-what-happened-to-me" story which is worth telling. The more horrific your experience, the better the story.

Marriage as an institution does it work?

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) found 45% of marriages will end in divorce before a couple's 50th anniversary. There is 31% chance that your marriage will end before your 10th year anniversary, and calculating divorces and deaths, only 10% of all couples will celebrate their 60th anniversary, not to say that there are many people getting married in the first place, since marriage rates are continuously dropping and keep hitting record lows.
Of course this is due to many things such as development of contraceptions, economic independence of women, changes in social norms including family norms, and also it may have to do with the fact that we are not meant to be monogamous in the first place and now its the era where people are not restricted to this myth.

This generates several schools of ideas, those who think why bother? and those who believe, do it anyhow and two is always better than one, do it but don't do it in the institution,,,,

but seriously are we going into the era of singles? (who are the majority already)
But then why is it that EVERYONE around me is already hooked up?

I guess one of the reasons that make people want to pair up is due to the fact that since everyone else is, you can't avoid it. Its like playing that game you used to play in grade school where someone shouts out a number and you must team up with others to form a group of that specific number. If you don't you are out of the game. Since I feel like I would like to be in the game, I think I have to team up, and this day and age, its still "two" that is being shouted, not one.. or three. Of course the beauty of it is that due to the ease of breakage of the relationships, even if you're out of the game this round, there is another round coming up, if you wait long enough. Then again, there is no guarantees there as well.

But maybe we should just all give up trying to find the person who you will spend "the rest of your life" with and accept the fact that this is just for the time being. All relationships being a long term fling of some sort, that will end eventually.

This should not be taken all too negatively. For this means that you don't have to worry about whether this person is perfect for you, if that person is "the person", and don't have to think that this will and or has to be the last decision you will ever make on relationships. Really choosing Mr./Ms. Good enough for now, will be the only choice you need to make, yes that and if you want to invest in that person for at least during that period of your life, and you rather be two with that person rather than one.

In the dutch news today

there are some very interesting headlines that I would like to share..

1. Sperm donors can take more active roles as fathers..
as the study by a researcher of family law at Tilburg University shows based on the cases where the donors asked some type of rights through courts based on their biological links.. he says the cases go through quicker as well

2. The Dutch feel happy
85% of dutch replied the glass is half full, not half empty (15%) and on average feel happy 5 days out of the week..75% feel lucky/good about their job,and 60% are happy about their outer appearance.

3. Women rather talk to their girlfriends than their partners
More than half (55%)of Dutch women rather talk to their girl friends than their partners and one out of three women speak to their girl friends more/longer than to their partners..

Mixing friends

Charlie Brooker on why you should not mix friends at your party...

"you have work friends, and college friends, and various groups of random friends you've picked up along the way ... and since they're all quite different, you behave differently with them. I might be a swearing lout with one friend and an urbane sophisticate with another. Mix them all together in the same room and it gives me an identity crisis: suddenly I don't know who I am any more, and I panic and smash chairs against the wall until everyone goes home."

Charlie Brooker

Slap me like the Fender Jazz Bass that I am

I love bass players
I have always loved bass players. I don’t know when it all started since I didn’t notice my fascination until I had a collection of boyfriends or crushes with one thing that connected them all, their ability to play bass.
I never fully understood why I fell for these men, but one reason would be that I myself love bass sounds and music with good bass lines.(This is why I love funk)
However, recently I figured another reason why I like them. I feel like I am a bass, and when I hear good bass lines I feel like it, may it be the music, the bass line or the bass player, is playing (with) me. This is related to the theory that all sounds/tones hit a certain part of your body, like drums are connected to the human heartbeats, and etc. And well in relation to this, I realized when you slide your finger on the lower E bass string, it hits right there at my G, if you catch my drift. So when I date these men, I date them in hopes of them being able to play me, my body just like they funk their bass.
Oh btw did I mention of all the bass techniques I love the slapping and popping technique?

Disadvantaged groups in the labour market and US presidency

Being a labour market researcher (yes, I've said it, I've revealed my identity yet again) I tend to use the approach or view that I use in my normal labour market analysis in other things as well. I ask people about their jobs and tenure, to examine their employability and how they fare accordingly etc. Well true, not all the time, but many times, more than others would do.

Anyhow, it struck me recently that the US president candidate race that is going on these days is quite remarkable when examined in this sense.
Of course I know I am not the first person who has thought of this, but let's look at our main candidates. (and believe you me, I am not the most enthusiast in following this race as well.. so my knowledge of it is actually quite remote)

The republican party candidate, and hasn't he won already, Mr. John McCain. He is the representative of the older worker's group. which is one of the most disadvantaged groups in the labour market. being 71, his chances of employment in the labour market should be actually down to the 1 digit levels!(In the Netherlands only 5% of older workers of over 55 who were searching for jobs actually found a stable job the following year)

The second candidate, Hilary Clinton, is also from the weak groups of the labour market in two accounts. She, being a woman, is naturally a weak group in the labour market, and on top of that she is also 60 years old which means her chances in employment as an older + female worker are in the normal labour market studies very very low.

Lastly, Barack Obama. Okay he isn't a older worker, he is a male, in his prime, normally considered the most productive age and probably has the highest employability chances. However, due to his ethnicity he can be included in the migrant workers group, even if his mother is indeed white American.(I always wonder about that if black+white=black, is it that stronger colours always trump the lighter ones? such as asian+white=asian?) Also his name which is a of an arabic/muslim origin, regardless of the fact that he is in fact Christian, as many studies conducted in Europe can show you, his name alone will decrease his chances of getting a job, even if every other criteria is the same.

So there you have it folks the three major groups that are most disadvantageous in the labour market fighting for the top spot of the labour market, US presidency. Of course they only have 30% chance of getting the spot--- just statistically thinking it was a race between the three of them. Ofcourse it can be said that McCain has 50% while as Clinton and Obama has 25% since they have to win the democratic contest.. but then again.. this is all numbers.

Blog hits!

Yes, I know I feel bad. I have completely abandoned my blog in the past few months.
But for good reasons!- was busy with work, sick and well other things I would rather not mention. ...

Whichever the case, I know that most of the people who come to this blog, don't come in to see what I've been writing up on, but go to very specific entries(approximately 20~30 people come every day for these entries). Just for the rest of you, who do read up on what I've been writing up on recently to see, I've taken the popular entry list from the program I have here on the blog... you can see it as well if you press the number next to the blog that show how many hits this blog had... approximately 6600 or so I think...
Anyhow here is the list of 6 Feb 2008 with the most popular blog entries



As you see its the 3D Korean beauty entry that has the most hits.. this is due to people who want to search up photos of beautiful Korean women... also the one with titles such as "beautiful Asians" also have high hit rates.
The other hits were the entries with the words "penis" and "porn" in them.
You can imagine why these may be hits.
The rest are those which are more informative... such as ... asparagus makes your urine smell, how to get good skin, dating range and how to find housing etc.

Anyhow it actually makes me a bit sad even to think that the vast number of people who come, come for very specific entries...
I wonder if they search around for other entries or just leave after seeing that?

Doesn't really matter since this whole blog started off as something for my release of brain discharge which may or may not be suitable for others.
Anyhow, I am back. and YES once again I am using up my working hours to write on this blog, regardless of who reads it or who doesn't!

(Dutch )secretaries

Here in the Netherlands, being an office support staff is not a position where you serve others. No, on the contrary it is a position where you can order people around, since you have the information and the keys to office supplies.
I've written something similar about the dutch services before, but let me just add a bit more.
First of all, after having adjusted to the system here more since I've lived here for two years, I was able to "adapt" to their slow manner and impoliteness.
However, one thing I didn't know or forgot maybe was that you should never accuse them of not doing their job remotely wrong or bad. They will just make your life more miserable.

Ex) I have e-mailed our secretary who is in charge of faculty graduate issues to answer a very short list of questions which were needed for a meeting 2 weeks later. One week later, after no response I wrote back, nicely- i.e. please, if it isn't too much of a bother, many thanks in advance etc - to answer it back, and asked if she was alright. No answer and tomorrow being the meeting I went downstairs, to see she is chatting away with colleague.
I ask her if she got the e-mail and she says yes, and I ask her why she hasn't replied, she tells me it isn't her job to answer every single e-mail, and it wasn't something she could answer anyway. I told her it was two weeks ago and two e-mails and I asked her specifically if it wasn't her duty to forward it to someone else, which would've took 30 seconds. She goes, well I was sick and the sort, and I don't like you speaking to me like that. I ask her, well I have a meeting tomorrow with nothing. she starts to get really upset and trying to cry and kicks me out of the office. (in between that somewhere I asked her if it wasn't her job to facilitate the people at the graduate school - she answered "yeah, but no, but yeah, but no, but yeah...")

I feel like I am dealing with a small infant, who cries all the time and pisses you off but you have to be very gentle with, or else you will pay for it, i.e. getting nothing done- which I will not be surprised if this would be the case from now on.

All in all, I have no clue what they do- seriously- but whatever it is, it ain't to facilitate people's work.
Maybe it is hiding valuable information in which none of us other workers are not capable of handling. Then again, this reminds me alot like the secretary - Carol- from Dilbert. so maybe it's a secretary thing not specifically a Dutch secretary thing- having said this my experience with Scottish/English/German/Korean secretaries are to the contrary.

Fuck... is it the end of the year already???

Is it me or is the time just flying by?
I mean I've heard it already, how when you are a little child because you haven't lived that many days up to that point, a day relatively seems long, where as when you are my age, - of a certain age, because you are comparing it to a longer phase of life, it just seem much shorter.

1 day for a 5 year old = 1/1825 of his life
where as 1 day for a 30 year old is 6 times faster..
which means 1 hour feels like 10 minutes. a week feels like a day, and birthdays just come like every second month or something!

And seriously, this is becoming ridiculous!
I am getting to the point where before I get used to writing down a year, 2007 for example, it passes, and I have to get used to writing down a new year!

I can't imagine what life will be when I am sixty... it will be twice as fast as now, which means, it will be literally, after I eat breakfast it will be dinner time, and well celebrating birthdays will feel a bit redundant.

Anyhow, for me, after the speed of life increase to a point where I can't control, I have started to keep my expectations of what I can do in a given day abit low. I mean like I feel like to wake up take a shower brush teeth take a dump and have three meals, get back in bed seems like an achievement on its own given the short time we have to do all of this! I mean if I manage to do anything on top of this, like floss for example, that day has been productive. No, I don't feel like I am a lazy person, who dilly dally all day. On the contrary, I am swift and agile- well I thought to be like that but these days, I don't know.

Looking around a bit on this idea of time and age, I realized that it isn't a new thing at all.(of course)
Well we have first of all, the all so famous relativity of time by Mr One Stone.... Einstein.
In his theory of General Relativity and more specifically Gravitational time dilation it is said that time pass at different rates in regions of different gravitational potential. Which means that we as adults being further away from earth than younglings, we feel that time passes much faster. (no just kidding) it is actually about if you were to be in a space ship which travels in the speed of light, what you perceive as a day will be like a year to the person left on earth because you are in that ultra super fast ship- and a different gravitational potential(here is a simple easy to understand description of this). So in these terms, when we are kids we are in space ships, which for them a minute feels like a hour for us. This is why kids move crazy fast and for us seem restless, since their lives are speed up 5 times more than what it is for us. But don't worry they all end up coming back to earth times eventually.

The psychological perception of time and its relativity to age has also been tested and proved by a group of researchers[this paper]. Through survey/experimental studies, they prove that the perception of the speed of time does indeed increase as you grow older. Also in addition to this, time to be speeding up as the Earth we live in gets older as well. In other words, we as in the people who live in current times, feel that time is much faster than people felt in the past.

Of course the validity of this argument and its methods are fully up to yous. But I would imagine you will not disagree with me on the point that time is flying by .. and well what do you know, there goes another five minutes of your life.

WIFI like air should be free

As the use of internet becomes a necessity of life and our reliance on it increases, I believe that people should have the right to free internet access when ever and where ever they are, just as our right for clean water or clean air. It should be a public good, provided by the state as our main basic items for life. It should be free I would say, and well for the technicalities I haven't figured it out yet.

There has been some movement towards this, found in many university where you have free wireless access throughout the university campus, but also now in cities and countries.
It has been anounced that the city of Luxembourg - which is the capital of Luxembourg will provide free wireless internet throughout its land free of charge for its 75 thousand citizens and 125 thousand commuters by the end of 2008. They have projected that this project would cost approximately six million euros.
(see this article for more detail)
The city of Leiden also has an open wireless network since 2002 and many cities are now trying to plan such projects.

Whichever the case, this shows us the trend towards making internet like air.. a necessity for all.

A way to fight low fertility issues

As a sociologist dealing with policy issues, labour markets and the sort- haha! my identity has finally been revealed!! - since the beginning of my studies - which was god knows when - dealt with the issue of low fertility rates across all industrialized countries, and the governments' strategies in tackling this problem.

One thing that has not been done, which was an idea I was toying with was the opposite of the child allowance- which is ran in most countries either through tax reduction for parents with children, or through flat rate benefits given out - we can tax the singles, or slash the singles - which is actually the same thing, flip side of the coin.

In the companies we can always discriminate against singles... as shown in the Dilbert comic below.



Ofcourse I am not serious about this, I mean like I would be the first in line to be discriminated against here, but it is an idea....

surreal life needs a surreal experience

I know I am not the only one.
I know you, especially you who are over 30 or are leaning close to it, and have lived in several different places throughout your life time have had the same experience as I did, and still do.
Maybe you, all of you, we feel the same.

Life is surreal

More and more I feel like my life is screened in front of me, very closely whilst detached. I am a mere spectator without any power to intervene.

No, it does not mean that I am invisible and feel non-existent in this world, which may or may not really exist.
It means that life does not feel real, life lost its weight its tangible feeling.

Life becomes ever so precarious and frivolous while all things that were thought to be constant looses its grounds.
More and more I feel I need to test each and every rule and principle that was taught to me in my preparation for the role as a part of the mass army of proper citizens.

I can only relate to those who are crazy who have gave up on making sense of it all. They are the only people who are real while the others play a role. They are actually the only sane people in this insane circus of life. The others, who are trying hard to live the normal life are the real loonies of this universe.
Like wise, only experiences that are surreal seem real, while as the normal daily routines seem like mere pictures whizzed in front of my face.

I became more and more appreciative of surrealists art, acts and their thoughts and feel these are the people that I can truly relate to. Those that have had the same sensation.

.......
I know I started writing this for a specific reason to get to a point but forgot... as I always to with my absent mind. My life is so surreal that even my brain has left it.

blog blog and more blog

I've just realized now in this blog I have more than 100... 109 to be exact, blog entries. (actually there are 137 entries, its just that there are 28 entries that are written or some of the ideas have been written yet, I have not the chance to finish and publish them)
None of which have tags.
All of which have diverse topics unlike most other blogs, but mostly about sex and penises... no just joking, but however, the word penis, porn and sex do appear quite frequently-- do a search if you want to see.

I am thinking of tagging my entries to have this in a more organized manner. However, how do you tag blogs? What is the key word? Do you have a set list of words you can use, i.e. sex, penis, blog, beauty, Asia, etc.. but things you can't use, such as a, the, life, society, (two for being redundant and the other two for being too broad and abstract)??

Is there a guideline for tagging? Laws of tagging?
Wikipedia provides definition and examples of tagging here.

Anyways so how do one tag? can we only use nouns? how about verbs? how abstract can one be? what is the optimal number of tags per blog entry???

=================

Post script:..
I've just realized how diverse my blog entries are, and think many people may find it quite irritating, since it isn't focusing on one topic.
I feel like the entries should be divided into three blogs
1) sex, porn, penises and love
2) quotes thoughts and other brain activities
3) me, myself and my everyday life and other boring issues

ofcourse I will not do this. why you ask? because I am not even able to organize my life right now, let alone this blog. For now I will keep it the way it is... also its quite clear that there isn't and won't be any complaints on this matter anyhow

Charlie Brooker on breaking up with yourself

"I am single... Who am I supposed to slowly fall out of love with? I can't slowly poison my relationship with myself. Or can I?"

= Charlie Brooker, Guardian Nov. 5th, 2007.

long time no post

I haven't been able to post anything up for a long time.
Of course this was not due to the fact that I didn't have anything to say, not quite the opposite. I had several things to say, but little time to polish whatever that was in my head to make something worth while to read.
however, there have been several topics on which I wanted to write about
including
women and porn
me and my supervisor and the penis incident II
being insatiable
berlin
etc etc

The only problem is that I do feel like if I don't write them right when I think of such thoughts, they tend to disappear, I tend to forget them having a brain which has no capacity to add any more information inside itself.

anyhow the ones I can and will remember eventually just wait a bit they are coming.

happiness and brianlessness

There are lots of ways of being miserable, but there's only one way of being comfortable, and that is to stop running round after happiness. If you make up your mind not to be happy there's no reason why you shouldn't have a fairly good time.

Edith Wharton (1862 - 1937), The Last Asset, 1904

I think I've written about this topic several times,like this and this, but generally come to the same conclusions. Do not have any ambitions, be happy. Do not use brain, be happy.
Ofcourse the quote above is abit nihilistic it should be something like,

"enjoy what you have now and forget about how happy you would be only if this or that, then you will be surprised how happy you can be"

To do that we must detach ourselves from our synapses
on a similar note a quote from Ratbert

"My brain is empty, it feels great. Stress is just another word for knowledge!"

Then comes the inevitable question.
Do you choose to think or to be happy?
Can we do both?

I realized

That the more work I do, in front of the computer- the more work I need to do because of specific deadlines etc- the more I write on the blog.
Also I realized that most of these blog entries will not be read by anyone other than my two subscribers= hello there!= and myself.
like lost satellites in outer space. its existence is known only to those who put them up there.... and... internet god, google.

excitement of life is constant

Someone once said, "Only people who live boring lives can write good novels, where as people who live exciting lives, live it and not write about it".

The more and more I see people and their lives, I come to the conclusion that there are two main streams of lives, or people.
Those who have exciting jobs, important jobs which they define themselves with and spend most of their energy on, and those who have rather plain jobs or not too exciting jobs and have exciting after job lives.
These people do not define themselves through their jobs, no jobs are only a means to earn money. They define themselves through their hobbies- well for them the word hobby is not sufficient to describe it, more like second job/life.
These people are the semi-amateur musicians, dancers, sport athletes etc.
Their life consists of trying to finish their "day-job" as soon as possible, without straining themselves too much on it, and going to their "night=job" to really live, fulfil their dreams.

Very few gifted actually are able to do both. Also it is not like you are either one person or another, and you can change during your life course.
There is a balance in the world because of this. IF everyone wanted to strive to be their best in the day-jobs, then it would be too much competition, and visa versa.

Of course then there are people who do not do both... they probably have families and can be considered "professional-fathers/mothers or husbands/wives".who strive to be best at this.

whichever the case, life offers many outlets to put your effort and energy into, and even if one person doesn't put in to one thing, it is certain that there is something else they are doing...

So the excitement? well now to think about it, the efforts one puts in to "live life" is constant.. but people divide it into several ways- 1) work 2) after work leisure 3)family. if 1 is big then 2 or 3 becomes small, ...etc.

put it to equation...

Time/excitement(constant)100 = Xw(ork) + Xl(eisure activities) + Xf(amily) + α(time used to waste on internet, games and other stuff)

Xw = 100 - Xl - Xf - α

As Xl Xf increases Xw decrease. Of course there are people where α is the biggest of them all....or some people where α = Xw or α = Xl
The value of the Xs are different for all people...

Great Expectations.

Although this is one of those posting that does not enhance the world of any more information and is just one of my gibberish..
But anyhow, I've decided that I want to do several things before I turn 40... which is quite a long time away looking at this angle, but then again looking at the way the years pass by I think it wouldn't be too long as well.
Whichever the case
the list goes like this, not in specific ranking or order..

1. learn to speak 4 languages fluently- maybe a couple of more in an intermediate level.. I already am bilingual in Korean and English and speak Dutch more or less okay level, I just need to polish that and learn one more- thus achievable.

2. learn how to play the piano- jazz- enough to go to any bar and start playing a tune or start jamming with other musicians. - I know how to play a bit but if I learn more or less the jazz styles, I won't be able to play pro, but enough to just enjoy ...

3. buy a camera- proper one, start taking proper photos... not much effort needed with the exception of that I need to get more info on stuff..

4. join a dance company semi-pro for atleast a year.. probably salsa.. this takes one year. and that I have to postpone doing other things...

5. live in my sixth country...

Yeah yeah, and then there is find someone get married get a child etc... but well sometime I feel that is much harder to achieve than the list above...

---
one more addition.. learn how to play bass- funk style, lots of slapping and poping.

The posts

I know, the post these days look abit schizophrenic.
Its as if, as there are several many of which conflicting personalities that try to come out of the body of a schizo.. my blog is trying to perform several functions at once. None of which it is performing well I must say.
Whichever the case, I do sincerely apologize for this behavior.

I will try to go back to my semi social reflective sides of my blog and keep it more towards this angle.

You might ask, well is it that you have nothing more to say to the world? or is it that there hasn't been anything that made you think or analyze about? (also sorry for the "american" english, but well my spelling check is apparently turned on to this.)
have you no interesting thoughts on the world? you may ask.. and i would say, no actually I have. Its just that well.. couple of things.
One I have been moving around abit recently and havent really had the time to jot all these things down... other more urgent things that needed to be taken care of.
Secondly, well I am at the phase in life- which is called the Thirties... when you believe you really do not have nothing more to add to the world- well I can't speak for the whole population, but it does come with the age description- as George Orwell also wrote that- not in direct quotes = but that people in their thirties turn to more banal things in life, since they realize that their lives are as normal as your normal John Does.. and well, I agree completely. I mean you may be a world traveler who has had several love affairs with millitent dictators and artists all over the world, written best selling novels and had climbed mount everest, but at the end of the day, well you realize that there are quite a number of you out there, and well you ain't all that special.

Whichever the case, since I have thought of this, I had the feeling that whatever I write on the blog is merely some complaints I have that I couldn't take out in the real world, or just as some facet of my frustrations, which i couldn't take out on my therapist, since I can't find nor afford a decent one and or there aren't other facets I can resort to resolve my urge for expressions. I actually believe this is the case for many blogs we see scattered around the cyber world these days.

To be continued...