The Only Thing In My Life That Isn't Hard Is My Abdomen

Life wasn't meant to be easy. It really wasn't. Well, not for most people. There are those people (who don't really exist, because you don't know any and you don't know anyone who knows any) who have charmed lives. The concept of a charmed life is just that, a concept. Like winning the lottery and paying off your mortgage are concepts.

If one seems to have a charmed life, they should be living in fear of the inevitable difficulty or tragedy which will uncharm their charmed life. It happens all the time in books and movies, which are reflections of real life. The princess lives a happy, care-free existence in the glittering palace. The attendants take care of her every need. Even the elephants in the nearby forest seem to trumpet in tune with each other. Birds, butterflies, sunshine and all that. Then, while she is taking tea on the north balcony, the monster sneaks up behind her and devours her alive. It's going to happen. No surprises there.

If its going well, fear the worst.

You are having the perfect day. Work is flowing smoothly and everything is falling into place. All your private phone calls have been for good things and you had very few work-related conversations. You got out of attending 3 meetings and the cafeteria even served your favorite dessert. Can't you see that you are heading inexorably towards a homeward-bound car crash? Isn't it obvious that something is going to go wrong? Why didn't you prevent the accident by giving yourself a paper-cut on the way out of the office? While uncomfortable, it is much less painful than rolling your car down an embankment. Face it, life wasn't meant to be easy.

Still don't believe me? Here's a real-life case in point. "I thought it was a dumb way to die", was Jeff Bezos' recollection of his could-have-been-last-thoughts when he was the passenger in a near-fatal helicopter crash. Money.cnn.com views the helicopter crash as a metaphor to Bezos' "charmed life" - oh yeah, "But then came the dot com crash" they write. If everything is going perfectly then expect that dot com crash because, baby, life wasn't meant to be easy.

Then you have it going the other way, too. You are down in the dumps and, suddenly, you make it big. Rags to Riches. According to a Forbes.com article in 2007, "Almost two-thirds of the world's 946 billionaires made their fortunes from scratch, relying on grit and determination, and not good genes" So most of the wealthiest people in the world started off poor and then made it into the big-time. Not so charmed before; plenty charmed after, but still doesn't qualify as a "charmed life"because of the first bit. Points earned only later in the game don't make a perfect score.

But my strongest argument that a "charmed life" is nothing more than a popularized quote from Shakespeare is that people are human. That means they die. So even if the person's entire life is going great and they make it to 100 years old with nothing but good luck, success and happiness under their belts, they will still inevitably die. "He was doing great until a sudden heart attack killed him dead in a stalled elevator between the 14th and 15th floors during an electrical outage when an errant cigarette-lighter delivery van collided with a petrol tanker, which rolled into the lobby of his building, setting it on fire." Just one small incident can ruin such a perfect record. How charmed can that be?

So if things seem to be difficult and if life seems to throw you punches that you have trouble avoiding or absorbing, then just remember that those troubles are a blessing in disguise. Imagine if you had a "charmed life", you would do nothing but live in agonizing fear until something bad happened, petrified of the inevitable upsetting of the apple cart. Who wants that? Which is why I'm not so worried when sometimes it seems that the only thing in my life that isn't hard is my abdomen.


This post in in response to a challenge to write about "the only thing in my life that isn't hard is my abdomen".

It's Good I'm Not A...

I'm scared of heights, so it's good I'm not a professional hang-glider. That knocks out one profession. Given that there are possibly hundreds and thousands of different professions, and variations thereof, I suppose it isn't really practical to decide your future career by process of elimination. There are other ways to choose the direction of your career.

I like straight lines, so it's good I don't design modern office buildings.

I guess the easiest way to decide what career you want to have is to create categories of professions and strike out the categories that don't suit your personality or abilities. This way you can eliminate entire blocks of careers. For example: outdoor jobs, indoor jobs, computer jobs, scientific jobs, jobs involving animals, community jobs, finance jobs and so on.

I faint at the sight of blood, so it's good I'm not a professional hit-man.

So once you have knocked out the categories of jobs you don't like, you can then focus on the careers that seem appropriate. Try to think of things you like doing and see what professions fit. While doing this, it is important to keep in mind that some hobbies don't translate so well into real paying jobs. For example, just because you beat the heck out of your opponent on your PC kick boxing game, it doesn't mean that you will be any good inside a ring. You have to be realistic.

I like my tongue moist, so it's good I'm not a philatelist.

Also, think of the special skills you might have that will come in handy in your chosen profession. For example, if you are good with numbers, an accounting or finance job might be interesting for you. If you get on well with animals, taming lions might be your cup of tea. Or not. It all depends on you, your personality, your skills and whether or not you have a death wish.

I have a memory like a sieve, so it's good I'm not a doctor.

So you really have to take into consideration all of the factors, make informed choices, research, ask questions, talk to people and decide carefully. Once you have done that you will finally realize that nothing you choose will be exactly what you want, you don't know yourself as well as you thought, circumstances are limiting and so you will probably end up wherever life takes you.

According to this article:

"The statistics show that workers between the ages of 18 and 38 change jobs an average of 10 times"

That doesn't necessarily mean that the 18 to 38 year olds change careers, they just change employers, but sometimes they change careers, too. So, you see, no matter how hard you try to plan, you are almost guaranteed not to get it right.

...and it's good I'm not a career counselor.

Low-Risk Strategies for Buying a Used Car

Someone challenged me to write about how to buy a used car. The simple answer to that is to find a car you are interested in, approach the seller, give him money and drive the car home. But that would be cheating my challenger.

The topic should really be “low-risk strategies for buying a used car”. Although that title sounds more like a management text-book than it does a blog post, I think it more accurately describes the essence of my challenger’s challenge.

So what are the low-risk strategies you can use when buying a used car? The answer is that there aren’t any. You just have to take your best shot. Sometimes you will be lucky and find a good car, and other times you will end up buying a vacuum cleaner that sucks your money right out of your pocket. But there are things that you can do to minimize the risk of buying a four-wheeled-dud.

The first thing to do is to really ask yourself if you want to buy a used car or not. The high risk of wasting thousands on a lemon might be enough to push you to buy a new car instead. But new-car salesmen are just as bad as used-car salesmen. Certainly, the car itself will probably go okay, but new-car dealers will relentlessly push the buyer into buying all the extras. This often leaves the buyer with less in the bank account but some nice, fancy gadgets in the car that won’t ever be used (passenger-side airbags? Feh!). So when you are weighing the pros and cons of buying a used car versus buying a new car, just figure that you are going to get royally worked over no matter what you do. It’s easier when you learn to accept that fact at face value.

Never buy a car from a friend. That is my next piece of advice. You may have ridden in the car many times, or you may even have driven it from time to time. Over the years your friend may have described to you his dealings with car mechanics. He may have spun adventurous tales of danger and excitement, like the time when his car broke down on a busy six-lane highway and he had to cross to the other side to get to a phone booth, but was attacked by an angry chicken. You may think you know this car. But you don’t. For in the deep recesses of your friend’s mind is the thought that one day he might sell the car to you. So, whether he realizes it or not, he won’t tell you the full story behind the breakdown (he didn’t get a flat tire, the rear axle sheared itself off the chassis). He may not do it consciously, but your friend is holding back. I would believe the part about the chicken, but a flat tire? Come on.

Know to ask the right questions and then doubt every answer you get. “Has this car ever been involved in an accident” is a great question. Assume that the answer is “yes”, but you are more likely to hear, “I was once driving south on a vacation with my family, when the car in front of us spun out of control. Thankfully this car has great brakes so I managed to stop on time. The driver of the other car was okay, but his car had to be towed to the next town. Luckily my car is very powerful, so I attached the tow-rope and hauled it 100 miles down the road, in the snow, barefoot”.

Another classic question is, “When was the car last serviced?” The true answer is probably that Cousin Angelo came down last weekend and helped to get the car going by repeatedly whacking the starter-motor with a monkey-wrench. However, the answer that you will probably get is, “I service the car regularly. Unfortunately the service log-book was destroyed when I drove my car at high-speed through the collapsing wall of a burning building to save a trapped fireman, a small child and her teddy bear. I managed to save them and the car emerged unscathed, but on the way out of the burning building the fireman flipped through the log book, commenting on how I only used authorized mechanics, when a huge bird of prey swooped down, grabbed the log book and then dropped it into the fiery depths of the second floor, never to be seen again”.

So buying a car is a tricky sort of a business, new or used. If I were you, I’d just take the bus.

How to Open a Coconut

I was surfing the web and came across a very informative site called www.howtoopencoconuts.com. It shouldn't surprise me that such a site exists, but I found it amusing that there is an entire website dedicated to showing you how to open a coconut.

The way this website advises you to open the coconut is by delicately tapping holes in the end of the coconut and then draining the liquid (coconut water). Once the coconut water has been extracted, gently wrap the coconut in a towel and then sledge the thing with a hammer until pulverized. You may wish to bare your teeth, yell and think of something that makes you angry. I call that a bonus.

The funny thing about this method is that at the top of the website are the following words, "but we humans can't just sit around and let monkeys show us up, right?" - yeah, right. Monkeys can crack open a coconut with their bare hands, a banana peel and a pebble, but we use rusty nails and hammers. Sure, we are much smarter than them.

This got me thinking about the most efficient method for opening coconuts.

I went to About.com, which is a great resource for advice on almost anything. They suggest that after draining the coconut of its juices (by using a corkscrew to poke it in the eyes), you whack the coconut with the blunt edge of a knife. If that doesn't work, bake the coconut in the oven for 15 minutes and then whack it with the blunt edge of a knife. I think they like whacking things with blunt edges of knives.

WikiHow suggests that you hold the coconut in the palm of your hand and have a go at it with the blunt edge of a machete. "Hey, can you hold this coconut for a minute while I go crazy over it with a machete? Don't worry, I'm only using the blunt edge". Ah, no. Live-Food.com shows you a video in which the person demonstrating how to open the coconut wields a meat cleaver the size of Greenland and then tells you not to cut your fingers off. Thanks for the advice.

Jeremy and Michael, whose coconut-opening video is featured on lonelyplanettv.com, demonstrate their somewhat unique method. According to these two outdoorsey types, all you need is a swiss-army-knife, a coconut, a car jack and a heavy off-road vehicle. Simply puncture the eyes of the coconut with the swiss-army-knife and prop the coconut between the car jack and the underside of the heaviest part of the car. Pump the jack until the coconut explodes under the pressure.

So there you have it. If you are planning on getting yourself stranded on a deserted tropical island, all you need to take with you is a hammer, a nail, a towel, an oven, a corkscrew, a large, meat cleaver, a swiss-army-knife, a car jack and a heavy 4x4. I don't know about you, but to me it seems easier just to bring along a monkey.

Center of Attention

Why is it that some people seek to be the center of attention? There are some situations where being the focus is expected (as the bride at your wedding, for example) and there are times when one should stay out of the limelight (for instance, when you are being investigated for fraud).

As a kid, the best way to seek attention was to either win an award or throw a tantrum. Both tactics worked for me. As an adult, I have noticed that it becomes more and more difficult to be the center of attention. Winning awards is harder to do and throwing tantrums is not nearly as effective as I would have hoped, so I have discovered.

In my opinion, the more successful attention seekers in a social scene are those with a really good sense of humor. Witty people tend to attract others. Everyone likes a good laugh, especially if the person telling the joke or the story tells it well. On the other hand, it is a bit dangerous because you can lose your audience just as easily as you got them. A few bad jokes, botched punch-lines, mistimings or even a heckler or two can be devastating to your reputation. Remember, you don’t want to be a stand-up-comic. You want to be a people magnet.

Below you will find hints and tips that I compiled to assist those who would like to try to use humor to become the center of attention. Keep in mind that there are no free steak knives and no guarantees…

Firstly, you have to make sure that you have a good balance between how much you speak and how much someone else in the crowd speaks. You don’t want some guy telling a long and involved story about an accounting problem he solved, “…and then I realized that I’d put the wrong amount in the debit column! Can you believe it?!" Hilarious. You will lose your admirers in less than a second. On the other hand, you need to create the illusion of a conversation. People need to feel wanted.

When and how much to laugh is also a tricky thing. On one hand, you want to encourage people to gather around you. Laughing is a great pull-in for passers by. But laughing too much at your own jokes can make you look foolish. Especially if they can tell that you are faking it. Practice faking being genuine. It helps a lot.

Hold a drink. A glass in your hand is a great tool for helping you to limit your arm movements so you don’t look like a monkey on drugs when you tell your stories. It is also useful for when you pause for special effect. Whether to look contemplatively into your glass, to take a long slurp or a short sip is a matter of judgment. It all depends on the effect you want to create. Whatever you do, make sure the glass is only one-third full – and don’t gesticulate wildly or you will spill the contents on one of your audience.

Eye contact. This is very important. Nobody likes a person who tells jokes while looking at their shoes unless, of course, you are an actuary. On the other hand, don’t hold anyone’s gaze for too long. You will lose the rest of your audience. Make a point of looking at everyone in your audience, except for the person about whom you are telling the joke. That would be a bad idea.

Be cool. Wear clothes that make you look sophisticated yet comfortable. Half-sitting on a stool while half-leaning at the bar is a perfect pose. You seem cool and relaxed, especially with a drink in one hand. Think James Bond, but funnier.

If people start to leave, and you are down to five people, excuse yourself and walk right up to another group of people. Fake knowing someone in the new crowd, if you must. You don’t want to be left surrounded by only a small group of people and you want to be seen to know others, too. If you are in the unfortunate situation where you are left with only one person and that person leaves, definitely do not shout across the room, “Hey, did I ever tell you the one about the…” It is doubtful that the person will turn around and say, “Oh, no, you didn’t! Please, you must tell it to me now!” You will instantly destroy the reputation you worked hard to build up.

If you have a bad night, don’t despair. As they say in showbiz: “no publicity is bad publicity” Take that any way you want.

Welcome to the New You

Identity Theft is a crime that claims more and more victims every day. Personality aside, your details are a large part of who you are - your family status, your health, address, telephone numbers, income and so on. The age of technology, where your personal information is stored electronically, has given rise to this new phenomenon. If someone can tap into that database, they have the ability to virtually become you (in many senses of the term). This is only possible because the security of the information is at the fickle mercy of technology, organizational policy, budgets and the expertise of the database administrator.

Identity Theft sounds like a bad thing. But it aint necessarily so. Here’s why:

I figure that the medical condition that troubles the majority of people today (whether they know it or not) is depression. Everybody has gripes, complaints and dissatisfaction. I’m not talking about complaints about lousy service at the local grocery store; I’m talking about complaints that have a marked effect on your life: career issues, parenting problems, essential household appliances breaking down at the wrong time of your financial cycle etc. These areas of discontent lead to various levels of depression, depending on your personality.

My proof for this is as follows. It seems to me that one of the biggest growth industries in the last twenty years is “therapy”. In the good old days people used to learn to deal with their problems on their own. We used to be strong, tough, resilient. People used to work it out (or, alternatively, go to a public place to take out their frustrations with a semi-automatic, but that’s not my point). My point is that “therapy” (the art of being paid for listening to other people moan about life) has become a popular method of getting out of dealing with your problems the old-fashioned way: by thinking.

So I figure that I’ll do you all a favor and give you some advice that will save you hundreds of dollars a month on therapy: if you don’t like who you are, become someone else.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, becoming someone else (in my unscientific opinion) is today’s second-fastest growing industry. All those people who can’t afford therapy have decided that it is better to simply leave their old self behind and become someone else.

Let’s put it another way. Someone mentioned recently that people no longer repair their broken printers. It is usually cheaper to just buy a new one. Let’s apply the same logic to people. If you feel all broken down and that you can’t go on just find a better alternative and discard the old you.

I know (hope) that I’ll get lots of comments from therapists who will say that each person is an individual personality with something to offer the world and that they are worth saving. Translate that: each client is an individual billable account with weekly appointments that are worth, at least, $100 per hour.

Listen to me, people, save your money!

I’m not advocating theft. I certainly wouldn’t suggest that you break the law. I’m simply offering a cheaper and more fun way of dealing with your problems. Don’t bother reinventing yourself because there is probably a better person out there who you can be, instead. Hey, anybody want to swap?

My Theory on Gifts

Everyone knows that buying a gift for your spouse can be a dangerous undertaking. If you buy her jewelry then you have to make sure it is exactly the color and style she likes - otherwise it shows that you haven’t been paying attention. If you buy him any type of clothing, no matter what it is, he will think you are unimaginative.

A popular grumble is, “what do you give a person who already has everything?” This person already has so much stuff that he will not appreciate a gift which merely adds to his collection of material possessions. So the only option left is to buy him something that is not a material possession, like charity in his name, or maybe a consumable (bottle of wine, a cake, batteries for his MP3 player) or, say, an experience (theatre tickets, a meal at a fancy restaurant) and so on.

If you can’t find the right gift, you can always blame it on the manufacturing industry. Look, the fact is that we each have a birthday every year, but inventors and manufacturers can’t think of and produce enough new stuff each year to cover for all the birthdays. Try using this logic on the people you love. I’m sure that this compelling argument will win you friends.

Then there are gifts that you absolutely shouldn’t give:

Socks (unless you are the in-laws)
Anything that implies the other person is fat
Anything that will be useful for you only and not the recipient
Anything to do with plumbing
Any type of musical instrument (to a child)
A single one-way ticket to anywhere
It’s the thought that counts. True story: I once invited a friend over for a meal and he brought me the most unique gift. He said the following, “I bought a gift for you to thank you for inviting me for dinner, but I ate it. It’s the thought that counts, right?” I obviously should have made dinner earlier, like right after breakfast.

Gift-giving is a slippery slope. It turns out that the more you know a person, the harder it is to buy them the right type of gift. There are a few reasons for this:

1)You have already given this person a number of gifts over the years and you are running out of ideas;
2)The “flowers and chocolates” option will no longer suffice;
3)You need to maintain your reputation as a good gift-giver; or
4)You feel compelled to pay a minimum amount of money for the gift so you won’t look cheap.

So it stands to reason that the longer (and better) you know someone, the more likely you are to buy the wrong gift. Therefore, I propose that we set a new rule: if you know someone for more than, say, three years you do not have to give them a gift. I mean, better to spend the money on people you don’t know. It’s much harder to go wrong.

My Advice to US Presidential Candidate Hopefuls

The latest news reports out of Australia have Prime Minister elect, Kevin Rudd, appointing a former rock singer, Peter Garrett, as Environment Minister. This may not be a surprising move because Peter Garrett is not only known for his bald head and gangly dancing, but he is also known as a social activist. I suppose you could call him "new age". His very popular song about Aboriginal Land Rights (Beds Are Burning) is a case in point.

Now Peter Garrett is a Minister in the Federal Government.

I'm sure that Peter is delighted with his new-found power. Instead of getting out there and protesting, he can actually do something about the problems he has complained about through his music and the media.

Considering that Mr Garrett will manage Australia's slow push towards a more environmentally friendly society, he may have to change the name of his band from "Midnight Oil" to "Midnight Energy Efficient Renewable Resource". It doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

Enough about Peter Garrett. The truth is, he might actually do a good job. Once they reach positions of real responsibility, some celebrity politicians prove that they do have what it takes.

Governer Schwarzenegger is one example. I don't know much about US politics, but I really wanted him to lose the election so he could say, "I'll be back". But it turns out that he is doing a half-decent job. Either that or the respondents to the opinion polls are too scared to vote against "The Governator".

Jesse Ventura, former wrestling star, was less successful. Despite his election as Governor of Minnesota, his massive decline in popularity prompted him to decide not to run for re-election in 2002. At the time, Governor Ventura was involved in no less than 11 major controversies. Obviously "The Governing Body", as he was nicknamed, wasn't as scary as Arnie. Ventura now lives in Mexico.

So my advice to Hillary, Obama and Guiliani is that if you want to make it in politics, either become a tofu-eating, plant-loving vegetarian, or turn on the video camera and go beat someone up.

Popcorn

The art of popcorn-making is dying. I remember when my father passed on the secret of popcorn-making to me one night. We were standing by the stove and he was shaking the pot over the open oven flame.

Not too much oil.
Not too much heat.
Shake. Shake. Shake.
And the fourth secret, which I am not at liberty to disclose.

I was never much good at making popcorn, despite that I know the fourth secret. The last time I tried to make popcorn from corn-kernels over an open flame, I wasted a bag of popcorn and about an hour and a half. There were times, though, that I got it right and the corn popped perfectly. I dubbed myself "The Popcorn King". I seem to have lost the knack and thus the popcorn throne. My shake-the-pot technique has been found wanting - and then there's the fourth thing, which I don't do very well. But I can't tell you what that is.

So now I do what the majority of the popcorn-eating population do. Either I buy it ready-made from a popcorn vendor, or I use the microwaveable stuff.

The popcorn-vendor popcorn is not bad. The machine spits out a decent popcorn, but then it is a risky business. You have to be careful from whom you buy - and I doubt they do the fourth thing, which as you know by now, I can't share. Trust me, I doubt they do it. At least not in public.

Microwaveable popcorn is certainly the easiest method. It is quick, reliable and tasty. The manufacturers have hit on the right blends of fatty oils, preservatives and salt. You can buy the salt reduced or salt free varieties, but then, what's the point? Believe it or not, there is actually an art to making microwaveable popcorn. Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say that it's an art. It's more of a skill.

You see, the popcorn manufacturers can't test every microwave on the market, so the instructions are very general, "...on the highest setting for between 2 and 4 minutes". In my microwave, four minutes is popcorn murder. Complete incineration. Now, I don't know about you, but to me it's much more fun creating black, inedible kernels while standing over a stove furiously shaking the pot and doing the fourth thing (which I can't reveal) than it is standing there watching the popcorn burn inside the microwave.

You really have to have the knack, even when using the microwave. It is certainly a matter of trial and error. You have to learn how your microwave behaves. You have to feel what it feels. See what it sees. Understand its psyche and get inside its mind. A microwave is like a person, each one is different. If you understand one, it doesn't mean that you understand them all. My microwave, for example, is schizophrenic. Sometimes two minutes is enough. Sometimes it needs up to three. Four minutes is completely out of the question and even three can be totally lethal.

So I stand by the microwave. Watching. Listening. Feeling. And when my instinct tells me that the popcorn is ready, despite the heavy popping sounds, I quickly flick it off. Too long and the popcorn is toast. Not long enough and I end up with more crunchy, teeth-killing kernels than I would like. The timing has to be perfect to get the right ratio of edible popcorn to unpopped kernels.

But even when the microwave gets it right, it's a real shame I can't do that fourth thing.

Living Your Life Vicarously Through Others

You are a parent who wants your kid to be a lawyer or a doctor, but they really want to be an accountant or an actuary. You are a coach pushing your team to be the best at their sport, but they just want to run around and get sweaty for fun.

That's because you are living your life vicariously through others.

I have no problem with that. In fact, I condone and encourage it. Just because you didn't make it in your dream profession or in your dream sport, it doesn't mean that you can't still live the glory. Just because you found yourself sitting behind a desk, day after day, shuffling papers or whatever, it doesn't mean that you can't feel the warm glow of the spotlight of victory on your shoulders, albeit through someone else.

In fact, living your life vicariously through someone else is the easiest way to become successful. All you have to do is pace the side of the pool and shout unintelligble instructions while your child swims lap after lap. They feel the pain, but their success is yours. You may have to obsess about your child's dance routines while she spins pirouette after pirouette. She may get dizzy, but her wins are your wins.

It takes far too much effort to put in all the blood, sweat and tears to become the best at something. Why work so hard when you can get someone to do it for you, but you still get to reap the benefits?

Some of you might think that I am trying to make my point by being sarcastic. You know, say the opposite of what I think and then make it too ludicrous to be true. But I'm not. I'm straight-faced serious. I sincerely belive that you can be all that you want to be, just by basking in someone else's glory.

Look, put it like this, living life vicariously through others is merely a form of outsourcing. If you need to get a project done but don't have enough time, outsource some of it to a consultant or expert, so you can get on with the other stuff. Living your life vicariously through others is no different. You don't have the time or resources to achieve your dreams, so get someone else to do it for you. Outsourcing is a legitimate method of attaining a goal that you cannot reach on your own. How can you argue with that?

So go on, don't hesitate! Sit down, have a cup of coffee and live your dreams.