End of a chapter

After what seems like forever, my current engagement finally came to an end.
I had my share of ups, and downs, my fair share of doubt, time for frustration, but what’s more, I’ve seen more, experienced more. Of things, and of people.
Most importantly, I learnt.

Life is like topography, Hobbes. There are summits of happiness and success, flat stretches of boring routine, and valleys of frustration and failure.
Calvin & Hobbes

At the moment, I’m just looking forward to my next engagement.

\(^o^)/

Money Talks

Some comment that a friend made on my previous post suddenly rings a bell in my head…
which came as a surprise to me..for it was something very small..something that a friend asked me approx. 3 years ago..
On one fine day (I think), during a dinner session with 3 of my friends,Ken just suddenly blurted out:
” If you can only choose 1, would you choose happiness, or money?”

Me: Money
Suzen: Money
Ken: o_O…both of u so materialistic! I choose happiness
SP: Happiness
The obvious part of it is that the 2 person that chose money were both accounting students, while the other 2, were not

Anyway, here’s what me and Suzen had to say bout that:
Me: You may be happy, but happiness isn’t everything. By the end of it, you would need money to survive. And yes, material satisfaction gives ppl happiness. You get good food with money, which derives satisfaction and thus, happiness
Suzen: Yeaps yeaps! exactly! I derive happiness from games, so if I have no money, I can’t buy any games, I can’t go online, then I can’t be happy
Also, I love pizza. So, when I have money, I can buy pizza. So, my utility curve goes higher. So that makes me happy. But if I have no money, I can’t buy pizza, so my not as happy as I can be!
Me: Exactly! You can gain happiness thru money, but not the other way round, you see?
Suzen: So, it makes perfect sense that we choose money!
Me: Yeaps!
Ken & SP: o_O (wt….)

So, yes. Money talks…Being asked the same ques today, I would prolly still choose money.

This may seem a lil contradictory to my previous post, but this is what I think:
To a lot of extent, money can buy happiness.
But when all you have is money, where money is no longer a scarce resource to you, the value of it depreciates…in your eyes, at least.
That’s when money no longer talks, I guess?

Something so simple, yet so hard to achieve..

Are ppl born complicated?
Born greedy perhaps? Most people I know are never contented with what they have, with their current status.
We work and work and work, climbing the corporate ladder as soon as possible, try to catch up with the ever-so-materialistic society.
Some worked their entire life only to know that the monetary value of their money has been eaten up by inflation.
And yes, the interest rate effect. As the value of transaction goes up, it would result in excess demand for money, which would drive interest rate to go up. As a consequence, investments, expenditure, GDP and Income would all drop (Hope I got it right, last learnt this 4 years ago)
Opps, side-tracked..lets continue..So, they may be working all their life, but would still not be able to live the life they would like to.
I guess it wouldn’t be wrong to say Money makes the world go round. (But let’s not get into the Finance part of things, my finance sucks) In the society today, people judged you by what you wear, how you dress up. Sure the way you carry yourself counts,your personality counts, but first things first. You would need, at the very least, to be dressed up decent enough to have the person talk to you! Looks matter, and that’s the bitter truth.
But what’s worse? As much as money can buy, it can’t buy happiness. It can’t buy peace of mind.
We are all aware of those lil facts. But for most of us, we simply couldn’t be happy with what we have. Even if it means, by the end of the day, we may be all up there, but we may not be happy at all.

I saw an article one day, in the newspaper. She was what most ppl could only dream of becoming…she was young, she was all the way up there. Prada, late night partying, Gucci, a successful career..she had them all. Her peers envied her, for to them, she has achieved something that they are all still working very hard to achieve. She works in a corporate world, and that means she sees the sun only once a day, that’s on her way to work. She reached home late at night, sleep, and the routine starts all over again the next day. (Hmm..that sounds familiar)
One day, she just gave it all away, walked out of the life she had. Now, she has to take the LRT to work, eats in coffeeshops, wears Bata instead of Prada, but she claimed she’s happier. She has the time to enjoy the sun, time for her parents, time for decent rest, back home in time for a family dinner.
But really, how many would be able to do that?

Quite a few of us should be aware how a normal-average family are in many ways better off than those above-average. And no, I don’t mean in terms of materially, but rather, in terms of emotionally..
Yet, how many of us are willing to let go of everything we worked so hard to achieve?

p/s: Due to some random objection from some viewers (>.<)” , I would like to emphasize that the post is based solely from what I can observe, what I read, and what I saw. This may not be applicable to everyone…just things from my perspective

Opposites attract?

Recent study has shown that it’s not quite true..
While people who are very different from us may be fun to be with at first, the attraction dies down after a while..
At the end of the day, we are all actually looking for someone as similar as to ourselves as possible…
Because we understand ourselves, we communicate better with ppl that are of the same kind…
We are all looking for someone who walks the same pace…playing too much catch ups put a lot of strain to a relationship, and if one party stopped walking, while the other still move ahead, chances are, they would drift apart.

Quite a few have been asking me why am I still single these days (No idea why…maybe I attended a lil too many weddings)…
Perhaps I am still looking for the one that walks the same pace…Besides, when I have a good bunch of friends who understand me more than I understand myself, who sees me more highly than I see myself, who needs a relationship?

\(^o^)/