Delete or Keep

Mxit, Facebook, MySpace, Bing, Gmail, Yahoo, MSN. The list goes on. There are so many ways of communicating in today’s world. One thing which is constant with all these modes of communication is that anyone that you communicate with is categorized at either a friend or as a contact- symbolizing that you are friends.

Look at your keyboard. Look to the right. Look at the key number 7, just under the Number lock key. Look three keys left. It should say delete. This is apparently the new F word when it comes to communication.

If someone annoys you or offends you, or if they have you as a friend or contact and they don’t talk to you, you can delete them. Yes Delete. They won’t even go into your recycle bin, they will just be gone forever.

People tend to be really offended by this. People, who are deleted, should stop and think. Why have I been deleted? Instead of getting on their high horse, they should think. “Wow I must have really annoyed this person, that they deleted me”

Take facebook for example, you have +- 500 friends and one person deletes you. You get all upset and hurt over that one person.
Like mxit for example. You have +- 50 contacts. You can’t possibly keep up will all 50 of them. So you tend to chat to only a select few. You delete the one who never talks to you. And one random day, that person decides to add you again and surprise, surprise, they question you till their teeth fall out as to why you deleted them.

It’s not like you’re best friends. But that person will milk you for all you have because you were insensitive and DELETED them. There are worse things that you could have done. You could have blocked them! Wow!! Never block someone. To them it’s like you’ve sent them into exile, along with the other mutes and perverted weirdo’s you blocked.

Is deleting the new way of telling people to bugger off out of your life? In a real life social situation, could you say “delete” to that annoying person at the bar, shop, gym? If you argue with a friend or boyfriend, can you look at them in the eye and say “delete”.

In the past, before all this digital communication, you told people off with your body language and with the tone of your voice or you spelt it out for them. Perhaps people are too used to be let off softly. In subtle ways. With new age communication, we just say yes or no. accept or decline, delete or keep. People are getting straight answers, no nonsense replies and the truth handed them on a gold plate. But no matter how tough they are, no matter how shiny their grills are they can’t handle the hard friend-rejecting truth.

I understand that no one likes to be rejected. But you can’t be expected to like everybody and you can’t expect everybody to like you. I think a communication service where you have all your rejected friends is in order. You could call it notfriends.com. Perhaps they will feel more accepted then. Imagine it, “you deleted me from friends.com” “Yes but I added and accepted you on notfriends.com” “oh okay, phew I almost thought we weren’t friends” (hugs)

How pathetic are we all that we can’t realize that it’s just a website, or it’s just a messaging service and that there is probably a reason for your dismissal.

Mountain, Mountain, burning bright. In the middle of the night.

On Wednesday the 18th of March 2009, at about 1am, Cape Townians who reside on Table Mountain’s foot, woke up with their houses full of smoke, and their gardens covered in ash, a strange burning sound and a massive fire which blazed across the table-like mountain right above their homes. Fortunately no houses were burnt. Only one death so far and a buck which was injured.

Fire fighters have been fighting these raging fires all summer long. All day and all night. Fire after fire. They come out and save us from the hot flames.

Fire fighters risking their lives everyday so save people that they don’t even know. Would you do that?

It’s like on that movie, The Guardian. At the end Bryan Adams sang that song that goes “Can you lay your life down, so a stranger can live?” Ask yourself that question. Could you? Would you be able to fight all elements hot and cold, strong and weak to help save a person? A fellow human being.

How inspiring is that song to you? Where do these people come from? I’m not just talking about fire fighters. I mean Police men and women, Ambulance paramedics, Life Guards, Coast Guards, Disaster Management Workers, and Mountain Rescuers. Everybody who is in a profession where they save lives. Is it adrenalin? Is it humbling? Why do they enjoy it? Is the reward of saving a life enough?

All I can say is that after much thought on the topic. I would like to thank everyone who is in the life saving industry. No matter which field you are in. From saving people, the earth, animals, children, even if you save something that no one talks or knows about.

Well done and thank you! For all you do.

The Devil finds work for Jeyes Fluid

I’m all for being clean and germ free. That’s why I decided to clean our kitchen bin. Not having any Demestos, I went for the next best thing in germ killing, Jeyes Fluid.
Being too lazy to go outside and clean it in the garden with the hosepipe. I decided to clean the bin in the bathroom bath. The light pink, almost white bath.

So there I was pouring almost sinful amounts of the black liquid onto the bin. Scrubbing it with a scrubber. Thinking, hmm, “this smell is very strong, but it’s probably killing all the germs. I scrubbed and scrubbed, watching this black liquid spit all over me, the tiles and the bath.

Eventually came rinse time. I put the water on super hot, to kill any escaping germs and used the shower nozzle. Splash went the water, and the black liquid flowed down the drainage hole. Suddenly I noticed that the black liquid wasn’t disappearing away from the sides of the bath. It just stayed there.

Oh holy sh*t! It’s stained the bath. I rinsed the bin and gave it an extra scrub and also to get the stains off the bin with sunlight liquid. And put it out to dry. I walked back into the bathroom and saw what would be Martha Stewart’s demise. I light pink, almost white bath tub, stained with black liquid.
Stains varied from small spots, to big ones, to straight lines, to big blotches. It could have been an artwork. An artwork of a mess.

I reached over, got the scrubber and sunlight liquid. Its taken me an hour and a half to scrub away the black stains. If you look closely you will see some spots.
Never again will I use Jayes fluid. There is no warning saying “this stains the shit out of anything!” or “don’t use if you’re bored” “I stain” “to be used in black dark rooms that never receive light” nothing.

Good grief. Today I’ve had idle handz and it came in a bottle of Jeyes fluid.

Parents

Everyone has parents. Maybe you’ve never seen them, or met them, but somewhere along the line everybody had parents. Even dolly the sheep.

My parents are in their 50’s and I have met both of them. I still live with them and I communicate with them daily. If I didn’t it would be weird, considering we all live together.

Both of my parents are Portuguese. My dad is the one with the heavy accent.
My parents are not extremely short like other Portuguese people. They have a bit of height on them.

My folks are very typical. If you visit, my mom will try feed you and my dad will try quench your thirst with any form of alcohol he can find in the house.

My dad will tell you about his days back when, and my mom well, she’ll tell you about her day and offer you a shot of something. With a side plate of chicken and vegetables.

My mom will probably play some Portuguese, Mexican or Spanish music and tell you all about the band.
My dad will talk much louder than the music and you are expected to understand everything he says.

If you really can’t understand them, I just suggest you understand the question, “would you like some more?” If you just smile and say yes, you will have a bottomless plate and cup. So I suggest you listen closely.

On an average day, I am summoned to the lounge at least twice because “Dis Teevee doesn’t want work!” Then I have to go inside and turn the volume off mute, or change the channel or something basic and not too technologically advanced.
My mom just calls me to switch it on. No too difficult. For me that is.

Its so strange how my mom cannot operate the TV, DVD and DSTV but she can copy CD’s, shrink DVD’s, sync her ipod, download music, do online banking and operate a washing machine.

I noticed one day that a friend of mine, whose dad is also of European decent, also has an accent and strangely also wears denim shorts, sandals and socks. Just like my dad. I wonder if it’s a foreign thing.

My dad wears clogs too. We are not Dutch; he just wears white ones which sound like high heels when he walks on tiles.
He also like to make things. And blow up things.

One day I came home from the shopping mall. And the house smelt of chemicals. I went to the bathroom and all over the floor were bits of cardboard.
When my dad returned home, he was speaking rather loud and whenever I asked him something, his answer was a loud “huh?!, Què?!”

Turns out my dad decided to blow up the empty Pringles Chips container using fire crackers. But he did it in the bathroom as not to scare the dogs. But the loud blast from the crackers echoed louder than what he expected. For about an hour or so after that, he was partially deaf in his left ear.

Talk about idle hands!

He's just not that into you. A book for all women.

We’ve all heard their excuses. We’ve all heard their lies. And lets just face it, sometimes men are just not that into us. And come on ladies, sometimes we are also just not that into a guy. It works vice versa too you know.

This article will only make 100% sense to the readers who have read the book “He’s just not that into you” by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo. I read it in 48 hours. It is absolutely liberating and will enlighten us into what men really mean and also show the excuses we make for them when we are in denial.

When our hearts are broken for the first time we make an excuse for our heart breaker. “Its not me its him” “he’s not over his ex” “we had nothing in common” “he is focused on his career at the moment”. All these excuses we make for men leaving us. Lets just face it, when we are not really into a guy, we sometimes use these excuses as well. Truth is, that men would rather die than tell us how they really feel about us, and that they are just not that into us.
Men would rather die than tell us how they really feel..

We know that they are not really that into us but we accept their lies and excuses and move forward by those. But the thing here is that we get hurt every time. Which is not right, we should all read this book and learn the truth under the lies. We should accept them before we fall for men and get our hearts broken when they present us with their most convenient lie or excuse for not wanting to be with us. So that when you meet a man you will be able to judge whether or not he is into you and you can move on unaffected and with a full heart, ready for when you finally meet the man you really is into you. And has no excuses.

If you happy and you know it, shut the f*ck up!

Have you ever woken up one day and no matter how hard you tried? No matter what you did, you just couldn’t get out of bed. And the thought of getting out of bed just makes things worse.

Have you ever felt that the world was just too much and that life is pointless anyway, because you are really just the average person and you will never do anything significant in your life?

Have you ever just wish you hadn’t woken up?

I have.

The world just looks grey. A grey sky that lasts forever. Grey that burns your eyes and makes your heart feel as thought it’s filled with cement instead of blood.
Every breath you take feels like a big sigh and no matter how much air you try to fit into your lungs, they still never fill up completely.

Crying seems pointless. You cry and cry until your eyes burn and your eye sockets throb with pain. You cry so much that it’s not comforting anymore. It’s not that soothing, “everything will be okay” cry. It’s just an empty cry because all hope of a blue sky has disappeared.

Generally you are a positive person. But the positive pump in your brain has broken, and all positive thoughts have stopped being pumped into your brain, because after being so positive, nothing positive really happens. And all you feel is negativity.
Some people think that negativity is an attitude. But when you are so down, you can actually feel negativity. Negativity’s energy is so strong, its borderline dangerous.
It’s stronger than positive energy because it’s just easier to be negative and cynical.

Even your body doesn’t feel the same. You can feel that you are alive but you have a slight numbness to your body. Your body is numb to happiness and positivity. You are totally aware and can feel the sadness. But somewhere along the line, your body decided to increase your sad feelings. It’s like the negativity and sadness has moved from your mind to your body. God only knows how long it will take until it reaches your soul.

You think about that and then even question whether you have a soul. And if you do, what would it look like. Imagine your aura. What colour it would be right now. It probably wouldn’t even have a colour.

You find the dark crevice of your room the most comforting place. After all its where the monster inside you has developed. In your dreams, while you sleep and even while you think. This dark evil and destructive monster you call your mind. The one that controls rational thinking, loving, hating, logical thinking, thoughts, decisions, ideas, happiness and sadness.

The mind is a powerful thing. It can drive you to the edge of reason. It needs to be controlled and disciplined. I guess that’s why it’s kept in a hard shell called the skull. So that we cannot discipline it or hurt it when it hurts us.

Having a grey cloud hovering above you. Seeing only negative things. Remaining in the dark. Never moving toward the light.

It’s sometimes easier to just stay there. Other times someone or something pulls you out of it.

My hands are out; palms open wide, waiting for your grip to pull me out.