jaywalker_1982

If you’re one of those freaks who have accomplished very rare statistical feats like being hit by lightning twice, you can safely stand alone in the middle of a golf course, under a thunderstorm, with a lightning rod on your head for any length of time ‘cause it’s statistically impossible for you to get hit by another one … but (circumstance has a sense of humor and there are just people that it loves playing pranks on. Just when I thought it had beaten me down so hard that there was no way it could hit me with anything else, I got hit with the kind of wallop that makes you wonder about your place in the universe.

The first major hit was when I bought a defective camcorder. I brought it to a repair shop the technician said the defect was minor and could be repaired for a not so small sum of 1400.

The second major hit was when I went back to the repair shop the day after, finding out that the defect was not so minor afterall (the CCD had to be replaced with a new one) which would set me back a few thousand pesos more.

The third major hit was when I bought another defective camcorder just 2 days after.

The Freakish 1 billion volt direct hit was when I lost my phone yesterday. Nevermind the phone it wasn’t exactly top of the line. The contacts there was what I’d pay the full price of the phone for. I tried calling the phone just when I realized that I had lost it. A guy answered. I asked him where he was and where he found the phone. It seemed like I caught him in the process of thinking whether he should return it or not.  He seemed a bit confused when he said ”SM monumento”. I scratched my head for a moment ‘cause I had never heard of an SM monumento. Just when I was about to tell him that I was gonna give him a healthy reward if he returned my phone, the call got cut

Aside from the business contacts, there are also the people who bought items from me whom I’ve given warranties to. There’s the lawyer who’s barely 3 days into his 1 month warranty and already it’s invalid since he has no way of contacting me. There’s that woman who still has a couple days left in her warranty plus she was also considering buying some more digital cameras. I met those people outside of any of the trading sites where I advertise so they have no way of contacting me. If anything happens they’re gonna think I’m a scammer. …I know where the lawyer sometimes hangs out though. I’m just gonna have to frequent the place.

My  “pila” system in which I offer new cameras to people who lined up for the cameras that I’ve already sold has been totally messed up. I’m back to square one. There was a lot of business lost with that phone not to mention personal contacts that I may never be able to retrieve

What gets me really nervous though is the guy who just ordered a camera from me since he’s already sent the payment and the item won’t be arriving until Monday. I’ve sent him a message through email but what if he freaks out after sending me SMS after SMS that I don’t reply to and then gives me negative feedback in ebay before even checking his email. That would be disastrous since, although I’m already well established in other trading sites, I’m just starting to build a reputation in ebay.

I’m gonna check later if there’s an ominous birthmark on one of my butt cheeks. All of these happened in almost consecutive days. There can be no other explanation other than a congenitally acquired predisposition to bad luck. My life seems to be a series of very bad accidents. If a meteor drops on top our house in the next few days I won’t be too surprised

Currently listening to: Pantera
Currently watching: 2046

jaywalker_1982

You pride yourself as not being the mushy type …and no one will read musings of the sort in this blog (I’ll probably delete this in a few days) but even the hardest of men deserve a day of basking under the sun with their soft underbellies exposed as long as it’s not too often

 You’re criteria are quite different from those of other guys your age.

the people who pass those criteria come few and far between (in fact you can count rhem with your fingers in one hand) but they linger in your mind for quite some time

My father often reminds me that I shouldn’t let my inventory grow too large. I’m seriously thinking about writing a defense paper now (complete with graphs and tables) because what he’s recommending (1 or 2 cameras at a time) just doesn’t make sense. When you buy more than just one or two cameras, you’re not only increasing your selling rate by targeting different markets at any one point in time, you’re also buying competition plus you also get good discounts if you buy more than one item at a time from a single seller.

If certain items threaten my sales, I buy them out and then I sell them again at a higher price. If you’d search one of the sites I advertise in, almost half of the camcorders sold there the last month were mine. 

There is only one particular competitor that I don’t mind losing sales to. In fact I find myself diverting some potential customers to this competitor. I think I’m getting weak :)

As I said I have no plans of making this my primary source of income in the future. I’m still trying to figure out what step I’m going to take next. I had an inspiring conversation through SMS with someone a couple of nights ago and the gears in my head are turning again. I want to experiment with stuff and I’m seriously considering buying and selling used cars again.  

I don’t know what kind of anti luck charm I swallowed the last few weeks but I’ve really had enough of it

I have two defective camcorders worth 20k combined. One camcorder is still in the shop waiting for parts. No one seems to be sure if it’s actually repairable.    I thought the other camcorder had already been fixed but I returned it to the repair shop this morning because the video occasionally gets garbled.

I have a P200 that for certain reasons I’m not sure if I still wanna sell. And even if I did I wouldn’t be able to sell it 1 peso higher than the price I bought it for

I failed so many quizzes the last few weeks that I’m not sure if I can pass even one subject this trimester (makes me wish that my professors were also entrepreneurs)

I said something to a person which that person misinterpreted and then that person got offended. I apologized to the best of my ability but A lot has already been said and now I feel really really bad about myself. I’d like to think of myself as a pretty resilient guy. I roll with the blows but if the blows come from someone you really respect and admire, it makes you feel really small

All the energy, pride and optimism sucked away….

I’m so demoralized that I don’t even have the energy to repost some of my items that have already expired. I just don’t want any extra stress at the moment I wanna temporarily take a break from this. I probably won’t be buying anything for a while

Currently feeling: demoralized

jaywalker_1982

There are questions that seem preprogrammed in the most zealous of believers’ brains whenever they’re confronted by one of us non-believers/heathens/infidels

1.)“You don’t believe in god? What keeps you from killing, raping and pillaging?” When they ask these sorts of questions, they seem so befuddled that you’d wonder if fear of afterlife punishment is the only thing keeping them from doing the aforementioned acts.

I say to those people if you have any doubts about the existence of god, remove them all from your head and remain a zealot forever ...doing "good" things for fear of afterlife punishment is not morality. It's just sucking up

The most evil people in history believed in a higher being in one form or another. (Hitler, the poster boy for eviiiil, was Catholic) Some of the most evil acts in history have been inspired by religion in one way or another. Meanwhile most atheists go about their daily peaceful lives in their labcoats or pondering about deep philosophical questions free from ideologies that are really just dependent on the continent that people are born on or the European power that colonized their countries

So the two questions above don’t actually connect. In fact it would make just as much sense for an atheist to ask “You’re a theist? What keeps you from raping, pillaging and killing?”

2.)“You don’t believe in God? Then you have no purpose in life?”

If you’ve lived your entire life for one purpose only and that is to make your chosen god as happy as you can, All your immediate and long term goals are centered on him then I guess it’s understandable to perceive someone who doesn’t have such a central figure in his or her life as wandering about aimlessly without a purpose

Likewise, if everyday of your entire life revolves around a concept that to atheists is not too far removed from the realm of bogeymen, tooth fairies etc, then some of them may think the same of you

We just don’t need illusory, magical beings to convince us that our lives have meaning. In fact I personally think that life becomes more meaningful if it ends permanently at the time of your death or if you owe it to chance alone and there is no “mover” orchestrating things. Of course “meaning” is a very subjective word and so opinions may vary

Atheists define their own purpose in life. Reasonable, smart theists also do. Zealots let blind faith control their lives and surrender all logic and critical thinking in the name of belief.

3.)“You don’t believe in god? Why do you hate him?”
First of all the two questions are incompatible. I cannot hate “him” nor even call him “him” if I do not believe that “he” is an actual sentient being that actually exists. I could hate the concept of “him” but I do not. I simply just lack the belief for it the same way that I lack the belief for Santa Claus, “tikbalangs” and “mananangals”. A lot of people claim that they became atheists because they feel their gods abandoned them. Those people are not actually atheists. they just temporarily hate their respective gods and will likely revert to becoming theists again after something really good happens to them

4.)“You don’t believe in God? You must think you know everything”
Though I can confidently say that I’m a little bit more knowledgeable than the average zealot, I do not claim to know everything. The difference between the zealot’s way of thinking and the atheist’s way of thinking though is that when the former is confronted with a question he can’t answer, he proclaims the question unanswerable and makes god the default answer. When the latter is confronted with a question he can’t answer, it just remains an unanswered question until an answer is found through less speculative and more scientific means –He will not go the easy route by saying “because god made it so” or “because god wills it so”

5.)“You’re an atheist?do you worship satan?”Webster defines Atheism as: “disbelief in the existence of God or any other deity” I would presume that “any other deity” covers satan …so no we don’t worship Satan nor do we believe in his existence. I occasionally listen to satanic metal music and love the color black though

Currently listening to: pantera, slayer