Still Exhausted

The past few weeks have been like a roller coaster,
with deals lost,
emerging new deals,
a ton of proposals,
a trip to Hong Kong.

My mind is exhausted,
and I'm trying to get through to November,
where hopefully things will die down,
and I'll be able to take a breather.

And with my being tired
and not having written anything in a while,
my conversational skills have once again deteriorated.
Goddammit.

It also looks like
I probably won't be able to get my license
in time for Korea in December,
let alone a motherfucking car.

And I haven't been able to work out
due to an old back injury which had probably been aggravated
due to my brilliant idea to trek to the summit of Victoria Peak (from the tram station, not the base, so calm your tits).

Time to power through and close a few deals before I tap out.

Well enough of that.

Tired

I'm so exhausted all the time nowadays.
Missed another gym session,
and had a minor argument with the wife,
so the entire night ended up being unproductive.

And the worst part?
I'll need to hit the gym tonight,
which she'll be upset about.

Goddammit.
There's just so little time for everything.
So little time.

And I still find myself
drifting over to Youtube,
and getting lost in stupid, motherfucking videos until it's time to head back home.

We have a strong chance now to establish
other businesses,
as backups in case something happens to my current role.

But I don't think she actually feels the urgency.
If I were to be let go for whatever reason today,
we'd be pretty much screwed.
And likely, so would her mom.
And possibly my parents further down the road.

I mean holy crap,
I only have around $140 in my savings account right now.
How that doesn't raise alarm bells for her,
I have no idea.

A question from Ragina during lunch
in the meeting room kind of jolted me.
What did I do for leisure?
The first thing that came to mind was...
trying to find ways to make more money.
And the occasional movie when I get the chance...
which is extremely rare.
And the wife doesn't want to watch with me anyway,
preferring her e-books.

Sounds lame,
but I do miss the early days
when we'd watch shows together
and talk about them afterwards.

We couldn't do that
when The Littlest Dictator first arrived, sure.
But we can do that now,
yet, she prefers those books.

Sometimes it feels like she's basically glued to her phone.
Hell, she even ignores my messages sometimes,
preferring to continue reading.

It's like I'm in a maze,
unable to find my way out,
with the Minotaur constantly looking for my ass.

Guess the only thing I can do now
is to restart working out,
and stick with the plan of saving $4K each month until January,
whilst trying out other things on the side to see what sticks.

Well enough of that.

Errors

Barely got any sleep the night before,
and the night before that.

In fact, I haven't been sleeping well for
some time now,
but these past two days have been
worse than usual.

It's definitely affecting me.
I'm looking at recent posts and
other stuff I've written
and can see basic grammatical errors
that annoy the hell out of me.

I mean goddammit,
there's probably a strong chance
there'll be a few in this post as well.

News these days tends to be more negative than usual (or maybe I wasn't paying attention),
and I'm trying to find other sources of income,
having read the headline about a guy who made around a million bucks
in a few years (or less, I don't know).

I can barely motivate myself
to finish a comic,
or complete a design,
let alone do actual work.

It's exhausting.

But I have to keep going.
Time's running out and I have to power through.

Well enough of that.

Love

I've got an important meeting

in four minutes, so this is going to be very short.

This is in fact, more important than any meeting I'll ever have.

I once asked malishka

about what love means to her.

And this adorable 4 year-old,

surprised me with:

"Love is when I play with you".

Concentration Camps

Concentration camps. They're concentration camps where children are being tortured. Some have died.

Here's a fun fact: Anne Frank died in a concentration camp, likely from disease.

Should've taken a page out of Australia's book and placed the camps in an offshore location. Out of sight, out of mind.

Now let's all pat ourselves on the back for being such good, freedom-loving, decent human beings.

https://www.democracynow.org/2019/6/24/somebody_is_going_to_die_lawyer

Everybody who defends, or deflects attention from these camps are vile, disgusting creatures cut from the same cloth as those who lynched innocent men, women, children.

They are not human,

and they cannot be reasoned with,

and must be beaten back with sticks and stones whenever they advance with their fangs out.

But we must be better than them,

and endure their repeated attempts.

We shouldn't be weak.

Every one of their charges needs to be

beaten back with full force.

Once they've retreated back into their holes,

we must stop.

Violence is absolutely a requirement,

but not needless, senseless violence.

Only enough to stop what they're doing.

Let them fester in their pits,

if that's what they want.

Every attempt they make to

hurt others must be repelled.

And if any of them

choose to come over,

to try and learn,

and be compassionate,

find their lost dignity and decency,

then our doors must be open to them.

Regardless of what they've done.

Regardless.

So long as they are still breathing,

we must show them that decency must prevail.

Then there is another way.

We will be disappointed,

outraged,

betrayed.

This is a certainty.

But we must hold fast.

For we are better than these animals.

Well enough of that.

Happiness

It just hit me as I was washing dishes
on a lazy Sunday afternoon,
intermingling with thoughts of going back to Korea,
and the mild frustration with having to come back to Singapore and work.

Happiness is so fleeting.
And I'd read someone say (in an online comment!)
that people experience happiness,
and spend their lives chasing after
the chance to experience something similar or better.
Well something like that.

But the core of the message has stuck with me.

Happiness is fleeting.
You'll always have problems,
things to do,
bills to pay,
responsibilities.

Even with all the money
in the world,
there's no such thing as pure happiness all the time.

Whether it's games or sex or anything else you can think of.
It always ends.

And those who can't accept this,
are doomed to chase after phantoms.

Even if you aren't,
the entire process is a marathon.
I mean, I knew that.
I KNOW that.

But it's always good to remind yourself from time to time.

My OCD has been acting up again,
and I fear that it might influence the little one.

I've decided though,
to take it easy.

Can't pray 5 times a day?
Cut it down first.
Build up the tolerance like a muscle.

Otherwise it all come crumbling down,
and not only will I bring myself to the dirt,
I'll drag my family with me.
Not gonna happen.

Anyway,
looking forward to getting my license,
and driving a tiny-ass car in Korea!
Or maybe a decent-sized car.
Eh, we'll see.

Well enough of that.

On Antisemitism and Being Sleepy

So I wasn't planning on posting today,
but a client had requested that I pen
a recommendation for her on LinkedIn,
which I'm happy to do.

She's definitely a pleasure to work with,
and quite sharp. 

Problem is, I'm quite sleepy
and for the life of me,
can't figure out how
to get a paragraph in that
doesn't sound like it was written
by a spaced-out toddler who'd just finished her ice-cream.

So I tried reading the news.
Went to The Guardian,
and saw an opinion piece on
Germany's approach to antisemitism:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/29/the-guardian-view-on-german-responses-to-antisemitism-frankness-and-honesty

It was open for comments.
Yep.

As usual,
with anything even remotely related to Muslims,
you get a deluge of bigoted comments,
including for people who purportedly
are concerned about discrimination against Jews.

The same types of comments that
you'd get on any article involving Muslims and women.
Even if it were an article about the achievement of a woman
who happens to be Muslim.

Yea...
I get the feeling it's kind of like
a guy with swastika tattoos
who's beating on his wife
whilst shouting at the TV at how
those Muslims are supposedly treating women and other minorities.

They do not argue in good faith,
so there's no convincing them otherwise.

This is also why I get confused
when some people eschew violence
completely whilst protesting against
those who are happy to commit horrific violence upon them.

If your objective is to get them to stop it,
then in some cases violence is needed.
Not excessive violence.
But enough to make them stop.

But that's just my opinion.

So back to this article,
going through the comments,
it becomes clear that for most of these guys,
critical thinking is something only "liberal elites" do.

For example,
quite a few of them seem to equate "far right"
with... "Whites".
So they were complaining that
Muslim extremists were wrongly classified.

You could not make this up.
I hate to break it to you guys,
but far right Muslims are still... you know, far right.
You fucking idiots.

Oh, and we're forgetting
a little something, aren't we?

The German state also classify
criticism of Zionists and Israel as "antisemitic".
So if you were against the apartheid state and its policies,
you'd be labeled as a racist, an anti-Semite.
Which is ironic,
since Palestinian Arabs happen to be Semites as well.
But yeah.

I'm severely annoyed,
but it's being blunted by how sleepy I am.

Think I've managed to figure out how to get that paragraph done.
Will get to it now.

Well enough of that.