100 things to do before I die (Part 2)

11. Have a really good organic home garden, providing my family and I with a good share of our needs.
12. Go 10 years without having a cigarette
13. Get rid of my excess weight
14. Lead my children by example
15. Listen to another 1000 hours of Queen ballads :)
16. Master Photoshop
17. Give up driving taxis
18. Read Cold Mountain in one sitting in a quiet place
19. Marry my wife once more
20. Forgive my parents...

another way?

How can we enjoy life if we are contantly working, shopping, cleaning etc.. Where is the time to enjoy nature, our children, to just be? I'm deeply unsatisfied with the social structure on this planet. Working culture just perpetuates economic inequalities, and leaves most of us with very little spare time. We struggle to provide for our families, but "provision" is also about providing quality of life, not just money. I work like a dog, (which is actually a terribly inapt metaphor, because dogs do nothing but play, eat and sleep) better to say I work like an idiot, 45 hours a week for very little money and getting nowhere fast. But where do I want to go? I just want to find another way. I want time back. I want to be able to spend time in the garden, growing my own food. I want to be able to go for long walks by the river, play more with my children, have time to myself to write, have time to enjoy the company of my wife. Instead I, like nearly everybody else, sruggle to get the dishes washed, the shopping done and spend more than 5 minutes on something relaxing.

It's not a whinge. I know there is no magic answer. There are as many ways of living life as there are creatures on the planet. But I am dissafected. I am brooding today, frustrated by my inability to see another way.

100 things to do before I die (Part 1)

(inspired by Glamour Goddess )

in no particular order...

1. Go skydiving
2. Write a novel
3. Take a diploma degree in photography
4. Visit Great Britain
5. Make love to my wife at least 4000 more times :) Edited to say 'make that 3800' :)
6. Buy a decent sound system
7. Sing some songs in a karaoke bar
8. Grow a beard
9. Shave my head
10. Visit Malana (not 100% sure about this one. This is the village in the Himalaya where my oldest brother disappeared in 1995)

more later...

profundity vs banality

my mind is not empty, but I can't seem to drag anything out worth writing. I talk all day, but it's a different matter to put something in writing. Maybe it's my desire to have something profound to say. Profundity is no doubt overrated. Life is full of the banal, the boring, the perfectly ordinary (or is that the same as banal?). Chasing the profound seems like a quest doomed for failure.

Maybe my blog should be about the insignificant details of life. The fact that a butcher bird comes and shits on our balcony, along with a koala and lots of myna birds. Maybe I should write about the fact I need a haircut despite hardly even having any, or that I took a day off to allow my wife to attend a meeting with her doula educator, who then cancels the night before, leaving me $170 out of pocket. Maybe I should mention i had muesli for breakfast this morning, and took a walk down to the river. Maybe I should write a long article about my struggle with smoking...

Then again, maybe not. Maybe I should just shut up until I have something meaningful to say. Its' a quandry isn't it...

the arrogance of the rich

I picked up these wealthy people late last night. There were three couples going home. I drive a maxi-taxi, which is a Toyota Hi-Ace 3.0lt diesel 10 seater van. As I left the pick-up, I might have taken the first corner a little sharply. I heard one of the women in the back call out slow down, as it seemed she nearly slid off her seat. That she was drunk and didn't have her seat belt on had nothing to do with it of course. OK. I slowed down. I drove at 45-50kms an hour, being very careful going around corners. Two corners later the women slides off again. I heard a string of expletives in the back and realised suddenly that she was directing them at me.
"You're driving like a maniac. Are you on drugs or something?" was the first clear thing I heard. What?!! A maniac on drugs? I was furious. "Have you even got your seatbelt on?" I called. I was boiling up. I was a millimetre away from braking (very suddenly) and telling them to get out. If you don't have respect for a guy who works all night, taking drunk people home when the only alternative is a chilly 6km walk, you deserve to freeze. That the bitch obviously thinks taxi drivers are lowlife on drugs shows just how narrow minded some of the rich are.

I held my temper in check and drove them home. The bitch got out first, and I did notice her husband made an effort to look me in the eye and thank me. She of course didn't say anything and I totally ignored her. The four others in the car were then very polite for the rest of the trip, thanking me, but not, as I noticed, tipping me. Assholes.

Things like that put you off. It took me several fares for me to regain my normal good disposition. If there's one thing I hate it's people thinking they are better than someone else, when they clearly don't have a rat's anus of an idea who the other person is, instead just blindly judging someone by their occupation or appearance.

But I suppose that's the sort of society we get wen we value wealth higher than anything else, and correspondingly base our identities on our occupations (ie. ability to earn money).

ideology

Whatever happened to it in politics?

With elections coming up in Australia, Great Britain and USA, it seems they are all going to be reasonably close. The swinging voter is a person that I just don't understand.

In Australia, at least, we have two major parties. One is conservative. Very conservative. The other is, despite a decade of drifting to the middle in an attempt to win power, is left leaning. But all we hear about are policies, and how specific policies are going to win or lose the election. I don't get it. What ever happened to a belief in a political ideology? How can you vote for neo-conservatives one election and then vote for a left wing party the next? Surely, it is through the broad ideology of the parties that the best chance exists to separate them. Labor is a left wing party and the Liberals are definately not (liberal that is). Despite Labor drifting to the middle in economic policies, surely there are other things that matter more. The left wing in politics will always be more compassionate, always supporting the arts and the environment better than a right wing government. The right wing will always have the interests of the rich at heart.

I could never vote for a right wing government, because my political ideology is that of the left. That the next election will be decided in marginal seats by swinging voters leaves me bereft of understanding. I just don't get it.