Alright, this is not really Sparta, but seeing that this is the 300th post, it was just too tempting to not title this post as thus. [ed: chuckles at geekiness]
So, the 300th post. The 300th rant/prose that I've written ever since I've started this blog to talk about stuff back in 2006. Gosh, so much has changed, yet nothing much has changed. I mean, look at the year now. It is 2008, only about 2 years from that first post here. And the looks of the blog has changed from the sombre and rather hard to read green-on-black layout to the slightly cleaner version that you see today.
Oh, I still rant alright. Just read the last few posts and you'll agree with me on that one. But the one thing that I think that is most interesting at this point is the start of the lack of the rather emotive pieces that I was writing earlier in my life. I mean, the writing still has some semblence of emotion, but they are not as intensive nor miserable as before.
Age has a strange way of putting things into perspective, I guess. I look around me, and see folks doing their stuff, and for once, just this once in my life, I felt as though I actually belonged. Belonged to where one might ask, to which my reply is "it doesn't really matter". Loyalties are useful concepts, but one cannot always be loyal all the time if in the end, all that one is getting back from all that loyalty is a whole shit-load of unmentionables and complete and utter ostracisation of the community. That said, I am not advocating that we should all act in complete self-interest and not display any concepts of loyalty to our country or our organisations—on the contrary, I am advocating that loyalty, like everything else, ought to be earned. If one doesn't treat others well, it is hard to reason why those said others will swear allegiance/loyalty to one.
Alright, so I sound a little bitter. Maybe I am; maybe I'm not. At this stage, it doesn't matter. In fact, the world doesn't really care if one is bitter or not. The world operates on at least two planes, one of which is the personal plane, and the other is the social plane. At the social level, people are often impersonal, and work mainly in the interest of generating more profits, and the things that people say and do are often done under the guise of "duty", and demonstrating a rather impassionate outlook, and then claiming that it was "nothing personal but business". That means that some folks might be great to hang out with as friends (personal plane), but one might not really want to end up working with them (social plane) because the misguided concept of duty makes these nice individuals cold-blooded.
And it is because of that, this makes extremists and fundamentalists such a dangerous force. The folks who make up this demographic of the world didn't all start off being that way—many of them are really personable folks, nice people whom you probably won't mind having tea with. Yet, under the guise of duty, these same folks become the irrational people that the world condemns. Why is this so? How did this ever happen?
——
Honestly, I was really about to launch myself into a rather long rant about the relative cold-bloodedness of people when they are "doing business" as opposed to just being themselves, but I thought the better of it. On a completely different note, I'm going to get my bone conduction headphones on Monday (I hope). No, it is not as scary as it sounds; basically what it does is that it will use the bones in the skull to conduct the sound directly to the middle ear, completely bypassing the pinna and the entire middle ear. The main advantage of this is to allow clear audio sounds to be heard while still maintaining the ability to listen to environmental sounds. Compare this with the earbuds and noise-cancelling headphones, where they block out the ambient noise to provide the better quality sounds. While I like the fact that I can listen to the music clearer with the earbuds and noise-cancelling headphones, the fact that they block out ambient noise means that it is highly dangerous to use them while commuting, which is really what most of us use our portable music players for.
Apart from that, because the bone conducting headphones transmit through the bone, there is no need to stick anything into the ear, which means that it is probably more comfortable for long periods of use as compared to normal headphones/earphones. This is of course a plus in a rather hot and humid place.
So with great anticipation, I'm awaiting for my package to arrive through the mail. Meanwhile, have a good Easter weekend, and happy 300th post.
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