The world around us

Everyone knows that the world is facing climate change, and that the environment is rapidly changing for the worse as a result of Man’s activities, and that we are very near to if not at/over the tipping point. Several factors have been blamed.

But one of the most baffling, and recently gained much public attention, factors, is the methane gas produced by cattle farts. I shall pause a moment to let you digest that sentence. Yes ladies and gentlemen, while we are enjoying our steaks and chops, the cattle is having the last laugh – yup, eat me if you want, but my flatulence will slowly kill you anyway. Over the life of cattle, from birth to death, it would have released a significant enough amount of methane into the atmosphere. That’s just something really odd, to ponder over. Those cute harmless, white, furry animals playing king of the hill just beyond the stiles, who look so nice dotting the countryside on rural drives, yup, they are slowly strangling us. And who said eating cows is cruel because they do nothing to harm the human race? We have to redefine ‘nothing’. These guys are the real poker masters and assassins, for while we fawn over their cuteness and make furry soft toys in their likeness, they can look us in the eye, while chewing cud, knowing that they are secretly planting poison in the air that will kill us.

It gets personally worrying & irritating when my job prospects and livelihood are affected by factors that were not at all attributed to anything I did. Due to escalating costs of living here, unstable politics, and safety issues, I have been seriously considering taking advantage of my PR and moving back to Australia, and am just awaiting the timing. However, recent unemployment reports, wages snapshots and economic assessments in Australia are not so rosy either. Australians are abandoning home ownership dreams, and the previously already hefty price of homes has increased again and looks set to continue. The petrol prices are inevitably rising everywhere, with the bad news that it is also rising in Sydney, and in Malaysia would also raise eventually hence the Government has to remove the subsidies anyway. Demand for managers in engineering and IT are declining in all Australian states, except for WA and Queensland, which are very resource based, as opposed to corporate. Jobs overall ARE increasing; it’s just that the right sectors aren’t particularly growing. I guess at this time everywhere in the world is shaky now, and we might be jumping from the pot into the frying pan. I guess if one is stable and secure in where they currently are, they better wait it out for a bit.

Assume there is a lottery prize to be won. There will DEFINITELY be MORE than 1000 people vying for 1 prize money over the course of the week. That makes the odds of claiming first prize roughly 0.1%. And that’s a very optimistic calculation, obviously. And loads of people gamble for that 0.1%. Assuming that the odds are now raised to 6.5%! Suddenly, the chance of winning the top prize in the lottery has jumped by 6500%! Hence if I now told you that there is a venture that has a 6.5% chance of making you a billionaire, would you jump at it? Well, 6.5% of the world’s billionaires were school drop outs. That means most of you reading this article right now would never be in their class, as I am pretty sure we are all tertiary educated. At that point in their lives, all they had was passion, courage and a certain amount of idealism. At one point in our lives I am sure we all encountered the same thing. What stopped us? Pragmatism? Insufficient confidence in ourselves? This has really got me thinking hard. Is it too late then? [A post for another day.]

Proof that increasingly, we are pairing up with the wrong people. Partner hopping is on the rise, and the oft floated suggestion that cohabitation earlier results in more successful marriages later is being turned on its head. Personally, partner hopping is something I don’t quite like. It suggests sexual experience, promiscuity, a bigger number of ex partners to possibly be compared to, an inability to settle down, some other deep seated issues which resulted in break ups previously, and a higher propensity of the same thing recurring. People getting together without being mature enough about relationships, people misreading signals for love, and people being too self centred, and people wanting love and relationships more than they are ready for it, these are some of the myriad causes of this phenomenon. On a side note but related, we should be having babies earlier if we can afford it.

This is just bizarre. Boys arrested for attempted necrophilia. That is rampant enough in morgues, especially to young female victims. What is really disgusting about this is that the female accident victim, all of 20 years old, was buried a week before. What if she had started decomposing? Which brings me to another point: can one catch diseases, e.g. STDs and AIDS, from having sex with corpses?

A Toyota engineer has collapsed and died. This is yet another case, and highlights the working culture in Japan: long hours and high stress + high living costs. No wonder so many Japanese are going mad. This is just more proof that one can really work oneself to death. Toyota has a famed manufacturing system, the Toyota Production System, which is the envy of all manufacturing establishments and held in high regards. Perhaps they should now start focussing on employee welfare, instead of merely on quality, cost, productivity etc. It just makes me feel really bad and reconsider when buying a Toyota car, when I think that each dollar I pay will have a certain % going to the families of engineers who died on the job.

OK, enough for the day.