theCollectiveUs

While at the hairdresser’s, I picked up a magazine which had an article on the phenomenon termed as the Quarter-Life Crisis. It’s a state of mind that afflicts people in their twenties and is as its name suggests quite similar to the mid-life crisis. In the article, some young girls from 23 to 25, supposedly recovered sufferers, were interviewed. One talked about having gone through the ‘crisis’ after graduating from school and sinking into depression when she couldn’t find a job. She ‘recovered’ from the ‘crisis’ after landing a job. The other stories were in the same vein, talking about how they felt depressed and directionless after losing their jobs from the economic crisis.

These aren’t examples of quarter-life crisis; these are upsetting realities of life that you live through and will live through through the rest of your life. A quarter-life crisis has to involve the realisation that there’s more to life than a job; it has to involve a dilemma where you are uncertain of the paths to take in life and its consequences. It has to involve the realisation that beyond your twenties, you will be too old to pursue certain ideals that you have grown up believing in. It has to involve the realisation that in your twenties, you are already too old to pursue certain ideals you have grown up believing in.

On an related note, here’s a magazine scan from two years ago that I found REALLY funny that a friend dredged up recently.

Click on it for a larger version. We do get very strange articles around here.

Ridiculously stupid.

One of the biggest differences between riding a bike and a unicycle is that you jump off to bail on a uni but you put your foot down while grabbing the handlebar to remain in control on a bike.  Well this didn’t register on my muscle reflex.

THEY DON’T EVEN LOOK LIKE LEGS ANYMORE.

For the record, for those of you who still believe that uncycling is dangerous, I’ve got the worst, most permanent injuries from the few times I rode a stupid bicycle. I wasn’t even riding fast when this happened – in fact, I’ve managed to brake and slow my speed to just under 5kph when this happened. My rear wheel got trapped in a crevice that’s the same width so I ground to a stop. My first instinct was to jump off and the moment I launched, I had one of those Wile E. Coyote “Uh Oh” moments. The ankles hit the frame first (it’s bruised on both but the other one’s not showing up yet), then a knee rammed into the handlebar. Bike collapsed, I lost my balance and scraped both knees.

The bruise on my left knee measures 20cm long and looks like I’ve a rare strain of disease.

Now my rear wheel is crooked. Very incredulous chain of events. Last week, my deraileur came off and I ended up learning to fix it (and it’s now in better shape than before! Hurrah!) and now I’ve to get a spoke key to attempt to straighten my wheel. Most stupid.

I will post again on learning to ride a bike in a while.

I’m proud to announce that I think I got my mom addicted to videogames.

All those times I was told as a kid that videogames are bad and addictive, heeheehee.

Must watch.

This story from The New Paper made me smile. I’ve written before about the laughable standard of journalism in that paper but this one’s actually pretty ingenious albeit unintentional.

The story’s titled “Too many burdens on local students?” and laments the amount of time students spend on activities (like school for one). It’s hard to justify that students are spending too much time on school when the writers (yup, there’s two of them!), presumably educated, consider burden a countable noun.

I haven’t had coffee in a week before what’s now yesterday. The day before, I pretty much went on an impromptu fast for most of the day.

And then I had that one cup of coffee in the late morning.

And I’ve been eating consistently what I’d consider light snacks (note: my definition.)

APPARENTLY, I’m now so refreshed and awake at 3 in the morning I could probably go out and run cross-country.

Help.

Travel agencies have vacation photos plastered all over their walls and we walk in to purchase a trip to those places. Bridal shops have photos of couples plastered all over their walls. Why can’t we walk in to purchase a husband? Or wife. Or both if you’re into swinging.

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Why doesn’t anyone make bikinis that look like this -

There seems to be this recent phenomenon where people like to overuse “open-inverted commas” on every other “word” whether or not it “makes sense”.

I propose starting a movement where we correct random blog posts and repost them in the comments.

We need a Facebook group. Who’s with me?

While fixing a unicycle, I walked into the frame and sliced off a bit of my toe. There’s this 0.2cm thick chunk hanging from my toe. I think it’s mostly skin though but I didn’t want to examine it further so I pressed the bit back into the gaping hole and held it there with a plaster.

So anyway. We had this training session at work this week where one of the components was a personality test. I found it particularly interesting that the summary stated that I “may have difficulty relating to people she (I) see as over-concerned with health, safety and comfort issues. There’s also a point that states that I “should avoid china shops”.

It’s also worthy to note that today’s the first day in a WEEK that I can move my arm in circles, use a spanner, scratch my back with no pain and open a door without using both hands.

As I look to my ceiling right now, I notice there’s a piece of it missing after my dad fixed up new curtain rails. I think some things run in the family.

So wakeboarding today wasn’t much fun when it started to rain 10 minutes and three faceplants into the session. We learn that (by ‘we’ I mean ‘I’ but I like referring to myself in the plural form so it sounds like we’ve a general opinion going) wakeboarding is thus called because sea water in your nose really does wake you up.

Oh, and fresh scabs really do sting when in contact with sea water. Salt HAS antiseptic properties right?

But we learn, we learn.