I started the long weekend with a flu. Tonight, I managed to get past all the symptoms except for this annoying cough.
I used to be able to chase away viruses from my system in a matter of hours. Now, it takes days. Still grateful that it's ending.
I go into the final day of the long weekend with a lot of things still unfinished. There is still time, of course, and tomorrow is a new day.
One day, if I ever make enough money to fund my escape velocity, I'll quit everything and write stuff all day long. I'll also do some charity work.
Most young kids nowadays have no appreciation whatsoever for hard work or even the plight of those who are less fortunate. Whenever I talk about this, I sound like an old man. However, seeing as how my immune system is not as robust as it was, I guess I am old.
My parents came from the Silent Generation. The kids nowadays, they were raised by Baby Boomers - possibly the worst generation that has created so much destruction on this earth. I'm the Lord of Destruction - I should know.
Things don't come easy. They never did. Think about bread. The process that got us to bread is a long journey. Humans had to identify wheat from tall grass and reeds, harvest it, pulverise it into flour, mix water, yeast, salt, sugar, learn the leavening process, and then bake it at temperatures over 220 degrees or some shit.
Nowadays, you can just buy cheap bread without a second thought. It's easy, right?
You want to watch anything, just a few keystrokes through PirateBay, via some Google thingy and not even the Malaysian Government can stop anyone from getting any content for free, anytime, anywhere.
I love convenience, but without a sense of history of what it took to get us anywhere, there can be no proper appreciation of what went into it.
George Washington Carver battled racism and ignorance so he could promote peanut butter, so you could buy Goober whatever and slather it on your bread. HN Ridley went everywhere with rubber seeds in his pants so that your boyfriend/husband could fuck a prostitute with a condom on and avoid giving you the clap.
Alexander Flemming and Dr Florey brought us the penicillin - maybe the world's first wide-spectrum anitibiotics? I forget. I am old.
And whenever I face daunting tasks anywhere, I always think about corn. Planting corn is fucking hard work. I tried it for a few weeks and I swore, on my own grave, never to fucking plant corn ever fucking again.
I hauled ONE - ONE - bag of cement (that's 50kg, by the way) from a truck and swore I will never haul cement for a living. The thing is poisonous. And it's fucking heavy!
I've never told these young kids how to behave. Nope. Nobody ever told me how to live my life and if they did, I never listened to them. Because they're all wrong.
But whatever. These writings have become the rants of an old man, sinking in a world that has become even more shallow than it was when I started breathing.
Everyone's in a hurry everywhere. There is no waiting around. There is no growing things slowly, methodically, carefully. Everything starts with a bang, and ends with a sputter.
It's all fast food and bullshit, from where I'm sitting. Instant gratification, instant noodles, McSuccess.
Well, I can't really complain without being a hypocrite. Throughout my career, I cultivated speed.
Oh well. Fuck you, next generation. All the problems, all the mistakes we old people have done, it's up to you to solve them. Why the fuck should I care? I'm just going to swallow this bena-expectorant and get some instant sleep. McDreamy!
