Irrational.

Irrationality is a peculiar word.

You can attach the word 'irrational' to so many contrasting and different verbs and nouns.

Allow me to canvas two such pairings that have recently affected me.

Let's start with this one: 'irrational actions'. 

I have a friend. She's broken up with her boyfriend a number of times. It may have been twice. It may have been three times. I'm not even sure what you, I or she would count as breaking up anymore.

All I know is that they keep getting back together.

(As an aside, he's a bit of a mega-jerk. Not that that really concerns me at all. I never see him, and nor do I want to. Ever. And he'd probably best not see me. If you know what I mean).

While I too repeat mistakes, often with full knowledge that it will not all end well, it just seems a bit dumb to keep going back to the guy if you have to do it SEVERAL TIMES right? Something must be fundamentally flawed if you have to break up and make up that many times.

And something, or somethings, are fundamentally flawed. I just don't have the heart to tell her. I'm sure she would know, if she opened her eyes and stopped kidding herself. But you know, love makes us blind, and all that.

So that's 'irrational actions' covered so far.

That leads me seamlessly on to my next 'irrational' pairing. 'Irrational annoyance'.

I experience this a lot. I'm by no means a genius, but often this annoyance stems from fools. I just don't suffer fools very well. You know, people that don't make sense, or are just generally bad people, irk me quite easily.

Which, I think, is not so irrational.

Irrational annoyance would be me despising the overuse of the phrase 'like a boss/baws/bors'.

Picture of man sitting on a motorbike. "Like a baws!!!!111!!!"

Picture of girl with face paint. "Like a baws!!!!!111!"

Status update of a guy at a hotel. "Like a baws!!!!111!!"

Someone walking their dog. "Like a baws!!!!111!!"

Far out. Overused, inappropriate, thus, not funny or amusing.

Or 'swag'. I'm not even going to go into that one, because pretty much everybody already has.

Back to my story. Well, all of this is my story. Or at least, my re-telling/telling of it. But back to the story that we were halfway through.

When said friend related her story about her nth breakup with same boyfriend, I listened. Literally, for hours. Literally listened too, because I have no idea what to say to someone in that situation, especially over the phone. "There there"? "He was a jerk anyway, you'll get over it. You did with the other four boyfriends"? "Let's go smash his face in"?

She clearly still liked him at that point, so obviously the "Let's go smash his face in" or "He was a jerk anyway" doesn't really work.

It works even less when they eventually get back together. Which is what happened.

So thank goodness I didn't go bashing her (momentarily) ex-boyfriend, verbally or otherwise. My father taught me well, at least with this trick. He always says to me (because, for some reason, I always get calls about people having problems with their supposed better halves):

Son, don't go bad-mouthing their (what could very well turn out to be temporary) ex-boyfriend/ex-girlfriend. If (and most likely when) they get back together, your name will get bandied about, and in no nice way either.*

*Obviously in Cantonese. With a bit of embellishment by me. But the general gist is the same. 

Anyway, I'm annoyed by the whole business. I can think of a few reasons why, none of which may be correct.

1. Time was wasted. It wasn't a ball of fun either. I don't mind people calling me. In fact, I often welcome it. But it just seems so dumb, for some reason, when I get called for, not exactly advice, but opinion I guess you would call it, and then it just kind of all gets ignored.

2. She knows that there's something fundamentally wrong with this whole saga. That's why she wouldn't tell me they'd gotten back together before I kind of prompted it. This also annoys me because I also like good news. Sometimes (or often) more so than bad news. If you can call this good news. It is for her anyway. Why in such a rush to tell me about supposed doom and gloom, and so tardy to tell me about what's supposed to be good news? Do I seem like a person that thrives on pessimism and sadness? If I do seem like that, for the record, I'm not. I like good news. And good stuff in general.

3. As canvassed above, her (now current, as of this moment, as far as I know) boyfriend is a bit of a mega-jerk. What's more, she left a perfectly nice guy that I got along with a few boyfriends ago because of a reason that I don't find to be a reason at all.

So there you have it. Irrational. We all are, to a certain extent, and at certain moments. I can think of at least roughly five irrational things that I've done this week. I just don't like it very much when I'm on the receiving end of irrationality. Not sure if that's rational or irrational, and at this stage, I don't very much care.

Word of the Day: Irrational

London 2012 Closing Ceremony.

Or as I like to call it, the Greatest Gig That Ever Was, And Ever Will Be.

Yeah, almost as catchy as the Olympic Anthem.

As I was saying, best gig ever.

At which other gig would you get most-of-Oasis, most-of-Queen, The Spice Girls, Taio Cruz, Jessie J, The Who, David Bowie, George Michael, Take That, One Direction, Beatles songs, Russell Brand singing a Beatles song, and more besides?

None other, that's right.

I don't even like half those guys that I just listed, but other people might. And thus, it adds to a cumulative awesome. If you know what I mean.

And yes, they only had three-quarters of Oasis. They were only missing THEIR BEST QUARTER. And yes, Liam's voice is incredibly nasally now. But whatever. They sang Wonderwall, and if I'm not very much mistaken, it got the biggest cheer/singalong of the night bar Spice Girls. Or at least, the biggest singalong. Such a stadium song.

Obviously, the spectacle wasn't as OMG amazeballs at the Opening Ceremony, but whatever. I'm in it for the music, man.

Seriously. I actually watched 0 minutes of sporting activities.

But Opening and Closing Ceremonies, I'm there. Especially if they're British.

Brazil 2016 should also be a riot. I don't know what it is about samba music, but it makes me want to move.

So goodbye London. I liked you. You have a certain charm about you that I can't quite attribute to one particular feature about you. I'm gonna be deep and say it's your soul and personality that I'm attracted to.

Back to news from Andrewland.

As usual, nothing overly exciting to report. Just finished off my major essay for the Holocaust unit that I went to Europe for. Yes, there was work involved for that.

Also, I'm kind of starting to make a mini-breakthrough with my thesis. Don't tell anyone, but I think how breakthroughy I get with my thesis, and work in general, may be positively correlated with me actually working on it/talking to people that know more stuff about it about it (yeah, repeated words no typo!)

PS. What's with people calling it the 'Closing Ceremonies'? I noticed it with the Opening Ceremony as well. They were trending on Twitter and all as well. It drives me mad. It's almost as annoying as 'Daylight savings'. Urgh.

There are many things that I would like to say to you, but I don't know how.

Word of the Day: Andrewland

The Poltergeist

There's a couple of irrational peeves that I want to talk about today (in chronological observation order).

1. A Southern Cross graphic. It's just not cool. Anywhere. Unless you're a flag. I thought tattoos of them were pretty bad. Then, while shovelling mulch today, I heard/observed a male 'person' driving a fully sick Commodore with a frigging massive Southern Cross on the back.

Yeah, we get it. You're proud that you're white, and you want to let the entire world know that you only ever associate with white people. Well done.

This isn't quite an irrational annoyance. There's quite a sound reason behind it, really. It goes something like: people who have Southern Cross motifs somewhere on their person (or, in this particular case, vehicle) are generally the same people who run around whining 'We grew here, you flew here' to anyone who isn't white (meaning, of course, that they're not born here), as if this gave them some inviolable right to treat you as a sub-standard human being.

Anyway, I generalise. So I guess I'm as bad as these people. I'm sure some of them are lovely people. Or maybe even most of them.  

2. People that try to be funny, but get it hopelessly wrong, because what they're saying is factually incorrect. As in, they think what they're saying is true, and not intentionally saying untruths.

For example, someone on Facebook today was being all witty and stuff, going on to state that a song sounded like 'Empire State of Mind' by Alicia Keyes.

There's just so many things wrong with that statement, I'm not even going to spend time on it. Mostly because I don't want to spend the next hour writing this up.

I don't know why it riles me. I mean, we all make mistakes. Me more so than others. But yeah, there you go. Irrational.

3. Dodgily-designed websites. You know, government websites, school intranets. Those types. The ones that make you bang your head against the table. It just makes you think, don't you guys get paid to design these websites? Did you try using the website before making it available to all and sundry? Why are they so bad?

So, ok, you kind of expect these to be bad, because they have a virtual monopoly in their respective fields.

But Comsec? Seriously? You make a bazillion dollars. Per minute. Surely you could have trialled the website beforehand.

I'm sure there are more. But I think that'll do for now.

Word of the Day: Peeve

I wonder if lemons conduct electricity

When life gives me lemons...I play semi-nonsensical Oasis songs.

Today wasn't actually all that bad. Actually, it would've been positively good but for a few things that kind of tainted its goodness. That's the nature of things I guess. Only takes a little bit of badness to do a lot of damage to the goodness. 

Lots of people today just seemed to be in Annoy Andrew mode. Some people couldn't help it, I guess. You could say it's their default setting. In chronological order:

1. The student group politics/propaganda/whatever they are. Technically not just today, but whatever. They are absolutely the worst. Everywhere I go, I just get mobbed. Finally voted for them today. Irene had a genuinely brilliant idea to go vote and get 'I voted' stickers. It gave me an unprecedented amount of immunity. Some idiots still pestered me, but I showed them a thing or two. These guys are intrinsically annoying as anything.
2. The guys in my International Studies tute that kept saying nukular. As in nuclear. It was so bad, it even sort of infected my tutor. For these people, default setting. 
3. I think that's about it really.

And I realise how complainy my posts have been lately, so just to show you I'm not such a complainy person, good things did happen today. 

1. Irene bought me a mocha for about the 535083920th time. Made me unreasonably happy. I gotta get her a coffee or something one of these days. 
2. Got ambushed by James Cheng. Was pretty funny. Mainly because it was the worst ambush ever.
3. Sort-of-accidentally ran into Banh at the Campus Centre flogging tickets and got free Skittles. Most of the joy was from accidentally-sort-of running into him, but Skittles are good too. 

That's about it really. So most of the badness was really all in one of the annoying events. The other two were quite trivial, and one of them was actually semi-amusing. I'll let you sort out which. Until next time, go find your very own electric girlfriend. 

Word of the Day: Badness 

Rantom

Sorry, back again, sooner than expected. But I really needed to semi-rant.

Okay, so there's been a few situations in this past month-ish, which have made me realise something. It's not the fact that I hate asking people to give me money that they owe me. It's the fact that I hate sounding like a nag.

I think that's why it annoys me quite a bit when people don't reply to messages and such. Not that the people specifically necessarily annoy me, more the fact that I don't know whether the messages have gotten through or whatnot. And if I ask again, and they have gotten it, I'll sound like a nag. And I hate that.

Call me sexist, or whatever, but the majority of times it's girls.

This is an interesting case study right here. The stereotype of girls of our generation are that they're always glued to their phones. But so many of them seem never to have one in their near proximity, let alone glued to them.

But yeah, there's usually a plausible reason for these things. I just can't work out why, coincidentally, it always seems to be girls.

On a random note, I also feel used at times, but that's another story for another day. Perhaps maybe even not then, provided I'm feeling cheerful enough for the rest of the foreseeable future. Highly unlikely, but these things do happen.

It's also really distracting, and doesn't help me focus in the slightest.

So the exam today. Not too bad. Could've been better, but I think I escaped lightly, given that I studied for approximately half a day for it. So really, it could've been worse.

Horse racing to look forward to tomorrow. Apparently the smart money is So You Think, but yeah. Horse racing. It's a bit random. Kind of like the stuff I rant about.

Word of the Day: Semi

One rainy day

Maybe it's 007. Maybe it's the rain. It may even be because it's Thursday, or because it's just me. I think it's just me. Because, quite frankly, I cannot believe that out of the fifteen people I asked, no-one wanted to, or could, go and see Bond. And now I'm really put out and bored. And annoyed. I have no idea why I'm so annoyed. Probably because I'm in shock at my own sheer unluckiness/me-ness.