I’ve been buying a lot of stuff lately. Most of them are electronic devices or their accessories. I usually do not feel bad about buying them, because I only buy them on sale. For a power supply that I got for $55, I got another one the following week because it was on sale, for $5 after rebate.
Prices keep dropping for electronic devices. Compact flash cards used to be so hot and expensive, now there is nobody selling used ones on eBay–even brand new ones are only a few bucks a piece. Really, who would buy anything with original prices now?
I did a little inventory for just the last three months of my purchasing. Quite astonishing indeed.
Is it just me or the way the companies do business has changed? When have we started buying everything at full or above full price, and only buy them at such high price because after rebate price is a “good deal”? We end up having all these things that we get for cheap (if we get the rebates) and nobody is willing to buy used ones. Just not long ago my friends are still talking about how there are all kinds of stuff being sold on eBay for ridiculously high prices, and now nobody is selling or buying used CF cards? Even 512mb ones!!
Something is wrong with people’s mentality in purchasing… I am fed up with filling up rebate paper and keeping track of 15 rebates at the same time. I think I still have $400 worth of rebates that I am waiting for. That means, I had spent more than twice as much as $400 on some junk that I would not be able to sell later!
I gotta stop buying things with rebates. It is killing me and my wallet.
But sometimes, I think I really do not have a choice. For example, the same brand of contact lens that I have been using for the past few years now introduces the rebate marketing scheme, too. I have to use contact lens, so I have to buy them at above full price, and get the rebates later.
It gotta stop.
Finally I am done with “Blink.” It is the first book that I finished this year. It�s one baby step towards my New Year�s Resolution of finishing 50 books. I do not know if I would be able to finish that many� I hope I don�t need to add up unfinished books as fractions towards the end.
All in all, I am glad that I am done with one book at last. Unfortunately, this book is less than satisfying for me.
I had my hope up when I first got the book, because of the nice cover design and reviews at the back. I hoped to learn something about myself from reading this book. However, I learned nothing but some fun stories. I could only take it on a very literal level, as a mere entertainment, rather than anything factual.
Yes we have rapid cognition, instincts, and ability to detect dangers around us. Yes we have unconscious working behind the scene that tell us things that we cannot even explain. Yet sometimes we make mistakes, too, because we let appearance fool us, or rely on “instincts” blindly and improperly. How can we avoid making those mistakes? The book doesn’t say…
I am a bit disappointed at this point. I hope the next book will be more interesting. Currently I have a few books in hand worth reading. A detective/mystery short story collection, a novel about a murder, another book on adaptive unconscious, or PHP� It becomes difficult to choose.
I am a chatterbox.
While looking back my life, I realized I have been talking too much in recent years. I used to be a quiet and agreeable listener. Then somehow someday it just all changed. I became a chatterbox. I couldn’t stop talking. Yet most of the time things I said do not even make sense to myself.
While being a chatterbox gained my popularity, I have lost some of the closest friendships. I became the person whom I hated the most in my life: people who wouldn’t listen. It’s not that I do not want to listen. But when I was busy talking, I forgot to slow down and allow other people to talk. I became an interrupter, the worst kind of friend I would want for myself.
“Make sure you talk less, and do more.” Once a friend said. I didn’t realize how serious my problem was.
It seems that the more I talk, the more confusing I get about myself, and more people I hurt by saying things without thinking. It’s bad. I need to learn to be more concise, direct to the point. I need to learn the art of silence.
I would want to be a listener again…
Who wants to my speaker now?
It takes a lot of understanding, patience, and compromise to stay in a relationship. Moreover, it takes a lot of faith.
Faith is something very vague. It’s intangible. Only you know it’s there or not; nobody else can tell for sure. You can lie to other people that you have faith in something, but you can’t fool yourself. When you always doubt about it, when you feel restless about the outcome, when you lack the confidence in yourself or the other person in the relationship… You know how it feels like.
I don’t know what to tell somebody how to have faith in themselves, or the other person, or their relationships; I cannot even do it myself.
To me, faith is a blind believe. When you choose to believe, you then have confidence in it, have faith in it, and will be able to trust it. But the question is, what exactly is the first step? You choose to believe and have faith first, or wait for proof first? It seems like the question of chicken and egg. I cannot solve it.
I don’t know if having faith in a relationship is the same as having faith in the other person. Somehow I cannot convince myself to have faith in me. I don’t think I can trust people very well. I don’t think I can trust myself in not hurting other people.
Yet by not having faith in me in the relationship, I am already hurting somebody, perhaps myself, too.
I had an intellectual conversation about life and cultural identity crisis with a friend yesterday. I suddenly realized how deep I could get. It’s an amazing discovery. I was like, wow, sometimes words and comments about serious stuff like that could just pop out of my mouth as if it is part of me. It feels surreal.
Then I remembered a conversation with one of my roommates that time. Her conclusion was that I was weirdly normal, meaning, normal in a weird basis. That was pretty deep, I thought. I still cannot quite comprehend that. I don’t think I am normally weird, meaning, weird in a normal basis. But at least I can interpret that description. Normal in a weird basis… I am still thinking about this description of me… Something not grammatically correct, it seems…
I start to think I am really stupid. But only smart people can realize that, and admit that. So in that sense I am smart?
I am no expert of philosophy. But this starts to haunt me.
It was pay day yesterday, first day of March. I had a paycut. It wasn’t too deep, but it hurt still. *sigh. It was bleeding…
Oh.. I got a papercut on my finger when I was opening my paycheck. Ya…
And the wound still hurts a bit after shower this morning, though I had band-aid on already. Then I realized the band-aid was on a wrong finger…
Life is always fun like this. coolio. =)
