Long-form

Long-form blog posts and editorials. Topics cover both personal and the world at large. 

These are beautiful times - 10 things I think

What have I got to be happy about?

Everything.

It's absolutely a choice, you know. Circumstances are what they are, the decision on how to react is entirely up to you. I can wake up everyday lamenting the day ahead, dragging with me the negatives of yesterday, or I can wake up, smile, and say to myself that today is going to be awesome. 

Barney Stinson has got it right: If I find myself being negative, I stop being negative, and be awesome instead. 

Perspective is what's important. There's always someone whose got it worse than you. Here's a rather dreadful thought: someone out there is planning something for tomorrow, but he/she will die before it happens. A bit morbid, perhaps, but that's how the laws of life work. Today, then, is all that really matters.

So whatever I need/want to do today, it's imperative I get it done now. You've got something to say? Say it, cause you might not have a chance later. Putting it off, or being scared into silence, cannot be an option. Most of the time, fear is there to inform you that what you're about to do is absolutely worth doing. 

I let go of the small things. Twice yesterday another motorist cut me off, almost to causing a collision. I braked. That was it; no horns, no gestures involving the middle digit. I simply continued trundling along, listening to music, and enjoying a rare sunny day in San Francisco, in a car I adore dearly. 

Getting riled up over ultimately insignificant events is an enormous disservice to yourself. 

10 THINGS I THINK

1. I feel like we've been experiencing lots of "Super Moons" lately, but it still doesn't distract from the sheer beauty of it. I'm lucky to have a window that faces east, so on Sunday evening I practically sat in the dark and admired the moon for a good hour as it climbed out of the horizon. 

2. If you utter the words "Damn, the weather is hot!" yet you're wearing a black t-shirt, I tend to not have much sympathies for you. I know dark colors are flattering if you haven't exactly got the right body type but wearing them in anything beyond 80 degrees weather is absolutely asinine.

3. Rumors has it that Luca Di Montezemolo, the long-time head honcho at Ferrari, will be stepping down from his duties to go do other stuff (he is Italian aristocracy, after all). While it's lamentable that Formula One will lose one of its most potent voices, I must motion that if LDM really does leave, Ferrari must change the name of the LaFerrari hyper-car - a moniker chosen by LDM himself, probably in a heavily drunken state - to something that doesn't suck.

4. Not once during this entire "Share a Coke" campaign has anyone actually shared one with me. To that end, I'm extremely saddened and slightly bitter. It's not too late, though: I'll gladly accept a Diet Coke any day of the week, as long as it's Sunday.

5. Guardians of the Galaxy is a fantastic movie. I'm not the most hardcore of Marvel Cinematic Universe nuts (Iron Man 2 was decidedly terrible) so I'm not just blindly stating this. For those of us pinning for a proper space western since the untimely demise of Firefly (tears), Guardians finally delivered. Here's to hoping for many movies to follow.  

6. It's not a secret: car enthusiasts love fast cars, and when given one, we drive them fast. Problem is, we don't exist in a vacuum: there's other motorists sharing the roads with us. The Jessi Lang story posted earlier last week is a stark reminder to be alert and careful when driving, because it can all be taken away from you so quickly. 

7. Thanks to Vladimir Putin and his power-tripping shenanigans, the European stock market was terrible last week. Compounded by the seemingly endless unrest in the Middle East, my International stock holdings completely wiped out any gains I had in the domestic stock market. Diversity is key in any investment portfolio but what Russia is doing to Europe is simply extraordinary. I'm having serious thoughts about shorting. 

8. America should not be going back into Iraq. Retrieve any citizens still living there abroad and leave the two warring sides to their own device. The U.S. should not be picking sides on what is really a religious civil war. Offer only what is necessary from a humanitarian perspective; if we want to fix countries we need to first fix our own. 

9. I don't see myself as the most ardent of grammar nazis but people not using the Oxford comma is proving to be quite irksome. 

10. Far more people I personally know are participating in The Giants Race than I had thought. Either running for health is very much en vogue these days, or the allure of a plastic bobble-head is simply too enticing to ignore. That and getting drunk with food and booze afterwards is always a very welcomed endgame. 

My favorite meme: first world problems

first_world_problems_meme.jpg

One of my favorite meme out of all the hilarious ones out there (“Success Baby” is another one) is the “First World Problems” meme. This meme is unique in that it serves a second function other than to induce great humor – it reminds people to be humble and grateful of their current situation.

I am very much blessed to be living in a first world country. Life and the standards of living in the United States is unimaginably better than a third world country (unimaginable, because I wouldn’t know what it is like to live in the third world). However, that first world lifestyle and environment breeds us to take for granted many things that we think are rightfully ours. When things go bad, we lament our problems even when viewed from a wider perspective, they can be seen as trivial at best.

Everybody has heard it: people bemoaning whatever conundrum they are facing, even though it can be as small as not receiving the correct order of coffee drink at the local Starbucks. I personally have a habit of getting incensed about the cost of gasoline, or the ticket prices to a San Francisco Giants game. We can all imagine the outrage if all cellular towers in the city just stopped working; there would be mass hysteria of complaints from people not being able to go online to check Facebook with their smartphones.

The “First World Problems” meme was created to poke fun at ourselves for complaining about things that would seem stupid and ridiculous to be on about in the eye of someone from a third world country. Oh, you’re mad because the cook at the diner made your steak medium rare instead of medium as you’ve had requested? A person in the third world obviously hasn’t got that luxury. You’re cable service is offline due to unforeseen circumstances for an hour? A person living in the third world hasn’t got cable! The meme automatically puts everything we complain about in perspective.

Nowadays when I find myself making comments about how terrible things are or make complaints about certain things, I mutter “first world problem” to myself so that I take a different point of view. Most of the time, I really shouldn’t be talking at all. It allows me to not give mind to the little issues in life that might otherwise irritate me. The phrase is a constant reminder of how lucky and fortunate I am everyday to be alive and well; with a roof over my head, and food to eat.