The Construct

[R]ight now, you’ve got ability. But painful as it may be, ability don’t last. And your days are just about over. Now that’s a hard motherfuckin’ fact of life. But it’s a fact of life your ass is gonna hafta get realistic about. See this business is filled to the brim with unrealistic motherfuckers. Motherfuckers who thought their ass would age like wine. If you mean it turns to vinegar, it does. If you mean it gets better with age, it don’t. -Marsellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction

People just love to give unsolicited advice. They’re annoying as they are but one thing that I really don’t like with people who do so is how many of them lead with “Tingnan mo ako…” (better translated as “Compare yourself to my case…”). These people just don’t factor in what can be a fundamental disconnect between their situations and others’.

For example, this one acquaintance of mine asked me why I don’t put up a business of my own just like what he’s done. “Ako nga nakaya ko, ikaw pa,” he said. (“I was able to do it, you should too.”) Fact of the matter is he had help from his upper middle class family to put up the capital and the ground work. He should know he was talking to an orphan from a lower middle class family who never had assets or wealth to be inherited.

Or this other acquaintance who dispensed advice (to do this and to do that) without even hearing the real deal behind my situation. Not like she’d be able to relate anyway. Trust fund babies just can’t. People who haven’t tasted failures (note the plural) or faced desperation and adversity really don’t have much to offer in terms of “wisdom.”

Lifehacker tips work because they’re oriented to cater to a wide audience. You can’t be too surgical with a shotgun. Not because you’ve been able to catch a mouse with cheese, means that you’d be able to bait a cat with it. Even if mice and cats are both mammals. Context counts.

And as a know-it-all who has every tendency to be the type of person I hate, I’ve decided only to give personal advice to people who ask for them.

Here’s a pretty good article from 30 Sleeps on dealing with unsolicited advice.

That’s it folks. Just a few hours from now, 2010. And what a year this 2009 was. To sum it all up for me, it sucked. Had to go through quite a lot of curve balls for the past year.

But there’s no use in pining over how shitty it is. Not tonight. Shouldn’t greet the new year with all that negativity. Good thing in life, you never really strike out.

Every new year offers opportunities and possibilities. In an effort to be optimistic, I do think that there’s always one thing you can do to make things even just a tad better. No plan is ever bulletproof. The real 2009 lesson’s more of knowing how to improvise and wing it when need be.

I’ve had it with resolutions. Resolutions presuppose underlying faults and whatnot. Not that I’m saying I’m perfect but I’ve learned to deal with my character flaws anyway. It’s all about learning.

Cliche as it may sound but 2010 will be the start of the rest of my life. I got a loving girl, a few caring friends, and a bottle of apple juice. What’s there not to look forward to for 2010?

Help! Help! I'm being repressed!

People would consider doing “the same thing” every year during that long stretch of 100 Days before Christmas up until Epiphany (Three Kings to all other Catholics not institutionalized by Catholic private schools).

Sure, there’s the Filipino part to it. The parol. The dawn masses. The noche buena. A couple of things that I really don’t get is the fake plastic pine trees and mall Santas. Yeah, a pine tree in the tropics. (Are you suggesting pine trees migrate?) History and social conditioning tells me that there’s just something plain wrong with some old Caucasian guy with Southeast Asian kids sitting on his lap. (Racist!)

And there’s always the commercial aspect to it making more jaded people (like me) believe fervently. December’s peppered with all sorts of Christmas parties that it becomes obligatory for one to blow a substantial part of one’s income on gifts when there’s always a very low chance that the gift would really put a smile on that person’s mug.

We’ve even institutionalized it with the whole exchange gift/monito monita thing complete with a price cap. Never mind if we all have better uses for that money. Remember Sheldon Cooper’s remark on gift-giving. Might as well exchange X number of pesos every year. Set up a trust. Have it earn interest.

It’s quite nice to know that despite all of this blatant bullshit, some people still adhere to the whole spiritual aspect of Christmas. The spirit of unconditional giving and the value of the family.

Happy Christmas, everyone!

Life and business guru Francis Kong has this piece entitled Stuck on Stupid in the Philippine Star. Quite an insightful piece. Met Mr. Kong in a symposium once and you have to admire the simplicity of his words. Nothing fancy but they hit the semantic nail on the head almost every time.

Here are some outtakes from the piece that I find relevant:

Why do certain people go deeper into debt? Because they are stuck on stupid. They are not only acting their age, they are not acting their wage…! Buying things they don’t need with money they don’t have from people they don’t know to impress people they don’t like.

Why do certain people cannot get a steady job? Because they are stuck on stupid. Anywhere they go they feel like the world is against them. Poor people skills and the inability to respect authority. They are all wrapped up in themselves and they make a small package.

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