Walking contradiction

To do your job well, you have to practice what you preach. A priest who regularly sins (deliberately) would not be a very good priest. He would be a leader in his community and to show such disregard would not bode well for the community.

I read today that a British Nurse got her residency application declined by Immigration New Zealand because she was too fat even though we have a long-term skill shortage in the nursing department. She weighed 134kgs with a waist of 131cm. Her BMI score was 55.2, which puts her in the morbidly obese category.

I say, good on you Immigration NZ. There reasoning was that she would cost NZ tax payers $25,000 over 4 years for health care. 

I would rather think they denied her because she was a walking contradiction. How can she give health advice when  she herself is a walking cardiac arrest? She claims to be fit...but how can you be at 134kgs?

To put it into perspective, a huge prop in Rugby would be about 129kgs. Big props would average 120kgs. Linebackers in the NFL are also around 115kgs (250lbs). Now these guys make a living from being big, they exercise, they drink protein shakes, they go to the gym, they eat 5-6 times a day....these guys are fit. 

So don't tell me you are fit. You are not fit. You are the antithesis of fit.

Would you want a dumb teacher teaching your kid? What about an obese doctor telling your son to lose weight?

On a lighter note, here is a poem by 19th century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche

I hate to follow and I hate to lead.
Obey? Oh no! And govern? No indeed!
Only he who dreads himself inspires dread.
And only those inspiring dread can lead.
Even to lead myself is not my speed.
I love to lose myself for a good while,
Like animals in forests and the sea,
To sit and think on some abandoned isle,
And lure myself back home from far away,
Seducing myself to come back to me.

Delusions of Grandeur

Goals: Something that we set ourselves to achieve. They can be short term goals or they can be long term goals. Short term goals consists of things like, doing well in an exam, playing a good game of footy or remember to write a blog post every week. Long term goals (a.k.a dreams) can consist of, owning a Porsche, going on a round the world vacation or setting up a business. 

Goals are there for us to strive towards. It motivates us and gives us a little bit of meaning to our lives. 

But I wonder about delusions of grandeur. Sometimes we can daydream. Maybe you daydream about doing something heroic. A bus crashes and you help some injured people off. A kid on a rugby field collapses and you are the only one that can give CPR. You score the match winning try for your team. You giving your boss his short comings.

Most of these delusions will never happen to a lot of us, but it won't stop us from daydreaming or subconsciously thinking about it. 

So my question is, is it healthy to be having these daydreams? Essentially setting unachievable goals. In the former instances, they involve people getting hurt because you can' be that 'hero' without them getting hurt first. Would you rather be the hero or not have anyone hurt in the first place? Is it bad your thinking about people getting hurt?

On the other hand, these daydreams make you feel happy, even if it is only for that moment in time. So is there anything wrong with it? Your not hurting other people, it doesn't cost you anything tangible.

World famous in..........the Naki (Taranaki)

In March I got to go to an Iaido Seminar in New Plymouth. It was an awesome experience and will hopefully get to go to another one soon. 

Anyways, during the first day of the seminar there was a guy taking heaps of pictures of me. Not of anyone else....just me. Then I got interviewed for 'The Taranaki Daily' 

Here is the pic and I'll type out the article too......don't laugh too hard.

FENDING four enemies off with a flashing sword is hard work - even if it's all in your mind. Experts in the Japanese martial art of Iai-Do gathered at Woodleigh School in New Plymouth last weekend to showcase their craft. There were about a dozen Iai-Do fanatics putting their long swords into scabbards and donning black outfits at the school's hall as they performed their routines. The sport focuses on the teaching of forms and does not involve direct sparring. "It is like dance, except with a deadly influence," Chris Jones of the New Plymouth Iai-Do Association said. "It helps develop strong personality, strong mind, good character and strong moral fibre." Mr Jones said he had always been fascinated with Japanese culture and martial arts because it was such an interior challenge. "Your only opponent is yourself." Fellow enthusiast Enchante Chang, of Wellington, had only been in the sport for about a year. He said he enjoyed not worrying about other people. "You're just perfecting really fine moves. It's really subtle." But just because it was solitary, the sport should not be seen as easy. "If you're not sweating, you're not doing it right," he said.

Word of the Day #15: Sibilant

Short and sweet today (But double the pictures!)

Pronounced: si-bi-lant

Meaning: Hissing (words that end with s, cats, tables)

Example Sentence: His tone sounded sibilant.

Let me introduce to you my friend, PAIN!

Pain. The signal that our bodies send to us that we are in physical danger. Some pain is of no consequence, others become injuries while others more so. Sometimes we blackout because the pain is too much. That is again another one of the bodies defensive mechanism's. When pain is too much the body makes us blackout to prevent us from experiencing more pain.

Because of Rugby, every week I am having a few niggles. My first week I hyper-extended my right ring finger and this week I rammed my knee into someone else's knee. He was bigger. My knee was smaller...I think even you guys know enough about physics to know the result. 

So I've been icing up these past few days and feeling just a bit like an old bugger.

Here are some pain quotes that I have remembered.

"It's only pain, it'll go away."

"Pain reminds us that we're still alive."

"Pain is just the bodies reminder to us to stop being stupid."

Purgatory

When is time wasted? Some may argue that anything leisurely is time wasted. Using my blog as an example. It doesn't really serve any purpose. It isn't for charity. I don't get paid for it. It doesn't further my job prospects. What it does do is make me happy; that I get to vent/rant/debate. People reading this might enjoy it.

Wasted? Perhaps this one is 'eye of the beholder' example.

Using a better example is time spent at university. A lot of us (me included) spent a lot time at university doing nothing. Yes. nothing. Sure we got some goatskin document reading Bachelor of Something Useless. Sure it was at a  top 1% university in the world but really what I was doing and many other people were doing was wasting time.

I have a psychology degree. What did I learn? That I didn't want to be a psychologist. That I didn't like studying. I didn't like having no money. Essentially I was wasting my time. Why? Because at the moment I don't have much to do with psychology except for the every day kind. The one purpose my degree did was allow myself to enroll in a post graduate diploma in teaching, which takes one year (otherwise it takes 3 years). However, any degree would have been feasible. That means I could have done any degree, perhaps something that was more useful, something I would have enjoyed a lot more. 

Other people have done degrees and post graduate work in a certain field and have gone on to become a personal assistant. Done a diploma in teaching moved to another country and have not taught. 

Is this not time wasted? You can argue that every experience gives you some value. I can't disagree but how valuable is it? Was it worth 3+ years, stress, your money?

Yet without wasting our time, will we perceive time as such a valuable commodity?

Word of the Day #15: Friendship

A word we all know, but sometimes we take these things for granted because like all things we like are there at a moments notice.

I find things like friendship (and family) become more important as you grow older and if you have to live far away from them. Since my move, I have missed my friends and family a lot. 

You will get a lot of definitions of what friendship it and it has different meanings to different people, so is it really fair just to use the dictionary term?

Meaning: The state of being a friend; association as friends: To value a person's friendship

I really like this part from Wikipedia tho:

Value that is found in friendships is often the result of a friend demonstrating the following on a consistent basis:

• the tendency to desire what is best for the other,
• sympathy and empathy,
• honesty, perhaps in situations where it may be difficult for others to speak the truth, especially in terms of pointing out the perceived faults of one's counterpart,
• mutual understanding.

Friendship is definitely a give and take relationship. I is taking because you need certain things from you friends, like companionship, advice, help you move house. But when you do 'take' you should have in mind that your friend is being altruistic. As a friend you should know not to take too much

On the other side, when you are the giver, you should be altruistic and help as much as you can within limits and to not expect something back. As soon as you expect something back it is no longer friendship and becomes an arrangement or alliance. 

So here is my own definition of a friend and friendship. Yours could be the same or it could be different.

• A friend is someone you can rely on.
  
• A friend is someone you can trust.
  
• Friendship is something that is forged over a long period of time (not in a vacuum of time)
  
• Friendship is not bound by distance
• In time, hopefully you get a symbiotic relationship out of it

Breaking the Cycle

I think when you have done something for so long you forget what that something else is like. A co-worker (chef) I used to work with in a cafe once worked 27 days in a row because they couldn't find a 2nd chef at that time. He quoted "It's been so long you've forgotten what good feels like."

Finding a job has been tough. Not having much money has been tough. But the hardest thing is the waiting, the doing nothing, and the worst of them, the no replies from schools. 

So it is a good thing I am going back to Auckland for Easter. See some famaliar faces, have some fun and forget my woes. Then come back with hopefully a slightly different perspective and slightly more luck.

See you soon guyz!

The Dalai Lama is coming.....I think....

Just read that the Chinese government want New Zealand to not permit the Dalai Lama a visa into NZ. 

Apparently South Africa denied him a visa because they didn't want to harm relations with China.

Seriously...F you South Africa!!! So typical. Stop letting big brother push you around (God knows you've been through too many years of that). The Dalai Lama has no criminal record, does a lot of good for a lot of people around the world, and you won't allow this man to enter?

I am sure John Key will let him in, I will puke if he doesn't.

In a world where we want to promote peace and tolerance, China is among those that defy that. I am fine with China being communists because it can work well if the government does a good job for the people, but to go out of your way to stop people from Tibet travelling is ludicrous. 

I hope the Dalai Lama will come here. He will bring a lot of joy to people. 

Buddhism is a way of life, it isn't a religion.

Word of the Day #14: Tilt

The History of 'Tilt'

An interesting word and one that my friends and I use a lot.

To a lot of us, the word tilt has stemmed from poker. In poker terms it means to get angry/be annoyed. There are multiple ways to be "tilted" in poker notwithstanding: losing a hand on the river, folding to a big bluff.

But I asked myself the other day, where did poker players get this word from? The reason it has given me a bit of interest is because although the term is now used heavily around the word, it is still slang when referring to the word tilt as being angry. If you look up dictionary.com or a similar website you will get the usual meanings:

1) slope, incline

2) jousting

3) moving a camera up and down for photography

     The Earth is on tilt!

I have no scientific reasoning behind this but I am going to assume that the word tilt comes from Pinball.

In Pinball machines, there is a mechanism that stops players from cheating. If you move the machine too much or tilt it upwards, the game will freeze for that 'ball'. It will usually flash the word tilt on its screen. Now players who have played pinball enough should know this and won't do this anymore, but usually when 'tilt' comes up on the screen is when players get annoyed/angry at the machine (ball goes straight up and down the middle, misclicking, mis-timed shot etc) they will hit/push and will inevitably cause the 'tilt' mechanism to activate.

"Causing a Slam Tilt (by hitting or attacking the door to the coin vault or other *very* violent behaivour towards the machine) immediately ends the current game for you and anyone else currently playing and is hence considered very rude. " - Patrik Lundin

Surely the word tilt comes from a poker player(s) who played a lot of angry pinball.