Life Outside PLT1

Musings: Opportunists Rule the World

Read Jawyei’s blog entry on opportunists at http://jawyei.blogspot.com/

Musings: Paying the bill

[This entry I am submitting to stuff.co.nz's Blog Idol 2. It only allowed 150 words which made it difficult for me but hopefully it do well]

While scanning forums, I came across a post that reminded me of the debate of chivalry on a date. It was about a girl’s recent date where the guy organised an expensive candlelit restaurant. The date went well until she offered out of courtesy to pay for half the bill. When he agreed he stopped being chivalrous. “A gentleman would never have let me pay and I only date gentlemen”. She argued that since he arranged everything he should have paid.

A flatmate a friend once had tried to convince me to join findsomebody.co.nz because she gets to meet different people and go on dates. My reply was, “it’s great for you because the guy pays for everything”. She immediately replied, “No, if the girl is half decent, she will pay her own way”.

Was it not chivalrous to pay for half or was she “not half decent”?

Musings: Luck vs Fate

Luck - noun - 3. a combination of circumstances, events, etc., operating by chance to bring good or ill to a person (source: dictionary.com)

Fate - noun - 1. something that unavoidably befalls a person (source: dictionary.com)

Both these words can be good or bad given the outcome or process (although fate it seems associate to the bad and destiny is used to reference the good). Whether you believe in these two words there is no mistake that you will have use them to describe something. In one off instances one would use luck to state the good or ill fortunes of someone but what if that instance happens to that person again and again? Would that person then just be incredibly lucky (good or bad luck) or it’s fated (or destined if it’s a good outcome/situation).
Continue reading Musings: Luck vs Fate…

I hate lying to charity workers

Let’s face it, everyone does it. Some charity drive is in full swing, crosses your path and you don’t have the heart to say “no” flat out; I guess it’s in our nature as humans to both suppress and embrace our inner douchebag.

I mean, it’s not like we all personally hate the idea of charities fulfilling their intended purposes but it’s really not by any stroke of bad luck that we go “sorry, I don’t have any change” or “i’m really busy right now but i’ll check out your website when I get home” or “i’ve just had my prostate and testicles removed and my doctor has discouraged me from reaching into my pant pockets so if you want me to donate you’ll have to help me carefully remove my pants and extract my wallet from them and then help me carefully put my pants back on”.
These are all pretty lame excuses but at the heart of it all we’re just trying to avoid having to say “look, I have nothing against your organisation but we as first-world borne citizens of the free world have been taught our entire lives, by people with vested interests in our success, to not be altruistic and to strive against all odds to hang on to what is ours.”

There’s no point hiding it anymore, so let’s take turns admiting it:
My name is Simon and i’m a douchebag.

Musings: North Korea

Whilst paruzing through the internetz I came across a discussion on North Korea at GP Forums that can be found here. In amongst the jib jab came a link to quite an interesting documentary.

http://www.vbs.tv/watch/the-vice-guide-to-travel/vice-guide-to-north-korea-1-of-3
http://www.vbs.tv/watch/the-vice-guide-to-travel/vice-guide-to-north-korea-2-of-3
http://www.vbs.tv/watch/the-vice-guide-to-travel/vice-guide-to-north-korea-3-of-3

A vbs.tv presenter, citing that “no one knows anything about North Korea”, ventures into North Korea and embarks on one of their ‘tours’ to see their sites and sounds. What’s interesting is the fact that you get to see what North Korea is like through a video camera. I’ve seen photos taken of people who have been on these ‘tours’ and read articles on them but never actually seen moving images of one of the most secret places in the world. It’s very well presented showing how entrenched the nation and just your joe average citizen is into Kim Jong Il’s behind. This got me thinking, how would you integrate North Korea to the rest of the world?
Continue reading Musings: North Korea…

Musings: What she’s really thinking

Towards the end of September http://xkcd.com posted this comic:

Steven K Wang commented on facebook and I quote: “ha, so unrealistic, his imagination seems to be more probable…oh wait, that actually depend on if he is good looking, damn.” And I thought to myself yeah that is quite unrealistic in the modern world so I thought I’d do a comic of my own to illustrate how in a situation like this, what she would be actually thinking…

I am come on, other guys would be way more interesting than thou no?

You took the words right out of my mouth

On a hot summer night, would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses?
Yes!
I bet you say that to all the boys

1: Find something that makes you laugh

2: Watch a video

3: Find a new project
http://www.flickr.com/groups/365days/

4: When all else fails, jump on IRC and make fun of people
21:23 < Lord_Riff_Raff> THEY’RE 17. Not 7
21:24 < DarkSentinel> Lord_Riff_Raff: sounding defensive there

Random stuff we see

Well in my travels around this world we see some random things. and i have pxted to prove it. The first one was kinda funny. they are like twice the size of normal.

Now this one is just crazy. this was on the motorway doing 100km. OMG

And yes the it is true im a LVl 15 orc, hunter now. i cant believe it either but dota was getting crap.

Thoughts of Lord_Riff_Raff’s post

I have become aware that a resent post on www.PLT1.com has stirred up a bit of feeling amongst those who hold a strong belief in the church. Now I can see why this might happen. So I wanted to respond to what was written.

I think this will have to be in two parts as there is so much to respond to. This first post will be about the first half of Lord_Riff_Raff’s post. Then latter I will get on to the rest of what was said.

Now as most of you know I have done a bit of study in this area being that I’m in the last semester of my Degree at Bible College of New Zealand. So I think it might be safe to say that I can respond to it.

I have to say that most of the first half is well, right. You don’t have to talk to many Christians to find out that they could not really tell you the Theological difference between a Baptist and a Anglican church. The main reason why some one goes to a specific church is the feel of it. Weather it is friendly, if they feel welcomed, the worship style, and so on. I think the major thing that Lord_Riff_Raff has missed is that most people these days would not see them self’s as Anglican or Baptist they see them self’s as Christian.

But this dose not make it acceptable that people don’t actually understand what their church believes. I see membership to a church as vital. This is for a whole host of reasons. Being able to identify your self with a common group of people who can offer support and advice is one of the main roles of the church.

But why don’t people understand some fundamentals of their faith? Lord_Riff_Raff has used the example of adult and child baptism. Now this should at least cause some thought to be provoked. But as Lord_Riff_Raff pointed out it doesn’t for the most part. I think one of the problems is people are just to lazy to spend a bit of time reading and finding out these things. Gone are the days of 1st century Christianity where it took 3 years to become a member of the church and you would have to know all this backwards. But I also don’t think this would be the answer, or could it? I think we can look at the church leadership for some answers. As are they teaching us or talking to us about these important issues?

Now about that little pretty graph. I have to say that its kinda right. You would find the red sector in most church’s. But isn’t that what is meant to be in a church. If you had everyone with all the knowledge and belief then how would that make it a journey of Faith? It also would raise the question of growth in your church. The diverse nature of the church is what makes it so great. If you were all the same it would make it boring.

But yes from this point growth must occur. It can never say still. We should all ways be in discussion with each other to extend our understanding for what we hold so true to ourselves. This leads into the second half of Lord_Riff_Raff post. Which I will write on soon.

The Role of the Church and the Bible.

From Random Thoughts From a 21 Year Old

There are no pens

Random thoughts from 3am jotted down on a piece of paper sometime in the past few months.

Where do my pens go?

I honestly don’t know. At the start of each year I buy a box of bic pens since I have none left. Either there’s a small blackhole in my room or I should find hundreds of them behind my desk. I have a feeling though that it’s actually because the universe is designed specifically to annoy me.

Like my socks. Nearly all of my socks are black gold top socks, I bought like a dozen pairs or so a few years back, except for three old pairs. It still takes five attempts each morning to find a matching pair, as the worst case scenario kicks in each time. Then again, I suppose I could just wear a mismatching pair, it’s not like anyone goes around inspecting people’s ankles.

What annoys me more is that the universe is setup so that I can’t do what I want to. Which is solely fixated on the quest for knowledge. Originally I was considering living forever by extending my own life indefinitely. But it turns out there are some slight technical hitches with this plan. Name that much like Tetris you will lose eventually as you’ll stumble upon a set of circumstances that will result in your death, and secondly people tend to get shirty when you suggest manipulating your own genetic material.

So extending my own life posed difficulties. You could try turning to religion, most of which have some sort of after life presumably giving you spare time to learn everything. But then comes the most terrifying thought of them all. What if you did know? Rapidly I could see my entire world crumbling around me. What would you do next?

The next obvious task would be to try and find out something new, but what if there is only a finite number of things to know? Having proven all theorems, and entertained all trains of thought I can only imagine insanity would result due to the complete destruction of any purpose for the individual. Hence without even scraping the surface on this undertaking you have to stop to save yourself.

Then again it doesn’t matter. We don’t have infinite time to work with. You will die. Inevitable, and you will be forgotten. In the greater scheme of things it’s hopeless . Nobody escapes the absolute failure in that we all perish. The universe will not last forever. How then will you choose to use this short time you have? No point bearing grudges, the only things left to us are what we wish to experience isn’t it?

* * *

And now for things I experienced today. Because I know you’re sitting at work, and you have nothing interesting to do, so you’re slacking off reading this.

I found $25 in my wallet that wasn’t ear marked for anything. So I decided to use it for pizza. Rounded up Mathew, Mel and John and drove from Andie’s flat to Papakura to get pizza at the Sahara Tent. Because a lamb kebab on a pizza is in fact awesome. Also it sounds like a terribly bad start to a joke, ‘A youth pastor, a statistician, a mathematician and a computer scientist wander into a bar’. And then because I tricked people into coming by promising them Royal Crown Draft Cola we then drove off to the Countdown in Papakura.

Pxt courtesy of John, to prove it did happen. I swear there were more kids than adults in that place, the place was swarming with them. Anyway, we got two tubs of ice cream, a 4 pack of royal crown, a packet of ginger kisses and 2 litres of chocolate Primo and drove all the way back to Ellerslie to Andie’s flat. I immediately regret being the driver No booze for me, so I’ll die from heart failure rather than liver disease. Oh well, another day perhaps.

Edit: And this is the photo Jeremy didnt want you to see.

Jeremy: Hey I was saving that for another article

* * *

Random link of the day: Swimming at the edge of Victoria Falls

And if anyone knows where my pens go, seriously would you mind telling me…