Growing Down

Not a thing in this world you could compare

To the dreams of a child without a care

An imagination so free untouched by life

Full of wonder and magic while free of strife

Dark Wizards battle for the rule of the land

While Heroes charge forth with their weapons in hand

Great battles are fought in the field of dreams

The victorious voice lost in joyous screams

To see the world through the eyes of a child

With an imagination that is free to run wild

Growing up is a path we will all pursue

But can we grow back down to a mind so true?

The Kindness Of Strangers

I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.
Tennessee Williams - 'A Streetcar named Desire

I thought I would share something with you, about the kindness of strangers.  I lived in London for a few years, a city which for many epitomises rudeness and ignorance, cold hearted and uncaring.  I would vehemently defend Londoners for having lived there and known those who live there too I have always posed that the reason Londoners don't speak to people that much is because the city is so full of tourists and so full of people from so many cultures they just don't know who will share their language and interests.  For this reason my theory states that Money is the Language of London.  You can see it in the many stores the markets and even in the streets, some conversations are dull, like buying a drink and some are colourful like a customer haggling with a market trader.

Londoners are not cold hearted I would pedal this belief as strongly as I could and in their defence I have a story to share.  For you see a Londoner may not be the one to speak first, but with the majority if you stop them and ask them a question or ask for help most will endeavour to help you out.  There are the cases however that are most warm and touching in a city portrayed as being so cold.  Two of these incidents I witnessed both in Gay Clubs in London.  One was in Astoria and one was in Scala.  The story of both is more or less the same.  A young man seemingly heartbroken or distraught disappears into a stairwell and with his emotions overwhelming him he drops his head into his hands and cries.  In Astoria, this happened in the middle of the Dance floor with hundreds of people around him a few came and sat on the dance floor with him and spoke to him.  I don't know what they said I couldn't hear for the music.  In Popstarz at Scala I did hear well, the two guys were most certainly strangers.  The second sat with him, I was with my friends at the time trying to call someone from the quiet of the stairwell, there was no answer but I was distracted by the events above so I didn't really care.

This world would be a far better place if we all shared this mentality.  In studying Psychology lately I have read of a few things, the most disturbing being the case of Kitty Genovese which if you have not read I will save the horror and highlight the simple fact it portrays - The "Bystander effect" is the action or lack of action a crowd of people will collectively exhibit as the response of expectation.  In Kitty's case this ended horribly as the crowd in this case being her neighbours didn't act.  Of 38 people who witnessed her murder and death not one called the police.  This wasn't out of callousness but rather out of the response that "someone else will" and in many ways that mentality leads to one simple truth - you are safer within a small number of people as opposed to a large crowd.  You will be more likely to be helped.

What all this has to do with me and you is simple: we are all susceptible to the Bystander Effect but you can chose to be exempt.  You can choose to be kind, you can choose to be the one that breaks the silence and above all else you can choose to be the one to help.

To echo the quote at the beginning of this post, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers and in this last week or so I have really needed people to talk to, and in that time 4 people I have not spoken to in years came back into my life, all through random paths.  I can't help but smile at this and be grateful to whatever higher power guided them to me.  I do not believe in coincidences.  Everything happens for a reason, as random as chaotic as those coincideces may be:

Perfect Order is Perfect Chaos and Perfect Chaos is Perfect Order

Meyers Briggs Personality Types

The Meyers Briggs Type Indicator determines your personality type by asking a series of questions.  Your result will be a four letter acronym that sums up your personality:

I / E - Introverted or Extroverted
S / N - Sensing or Intuition
F / T - Feeling or Thinking
J / P - Judgement or Perception

My result was INFP - I am Introverted, I rely on iNtuition, I rely on my Feelings and I base my actions on my Perceptions not on my judgement.

Jung describes my personality type as:

"Questor". High capacity for caring.
Emotional face to the world. High sense of
honour derived from internal values

Which if you actually knew me you would probably agree with entirely.

Jung also states that INFP personality types comprise 4.4% of the overall population - so I'm relatively rare.  What's your personality type?  Do you agree with the result and what % of the population share your type?

Take your free Meyers Briggs Personality Test here:
http://similarminds.com/jung.html

Love on the Line

This post is split in two sections, the first is yet another short story, the second is the reality - the true story on which it was based.

The Fiction:  Love on the Line

Hasan Patel was born and raised in Dhaka in Bengal, India.  He worked in a call centre for a British telecoms company handling account enquiries.  He was relatively lucky to have a job that was comfortable for he knew people who had far worse jobs than he. the money was crap but he made a living that was all that mattered to him.  The call centre had a practice, that no employee used their real names, instead they had to have 'Anglicised' names or names that did anything but imply they were foreign to their customers.  Hasan got to pick his name and he chose the name Peter Bridges.  He quite liked the name and quite liked the idea of Britain as a whole.  He wanted to travel to London and see the sights, yet he would probably never be able to afford it.

He handled many calls, some were happy customers making silly enquiries of little importance but occasionally they got a 'screamer' - a customer that require you turn down the volume on the headset lest you go deaf for the tirade of abuse you were about to receive.  He'd heard it all before of course and didn't take much notice.  It doesn't take long working in a call centre before you realise that the call means a lot more to the customer than it does to you.  All you care about are your key performance indicators, the number of calls you get through having satisfied the customer.

On one particular day Hasan had a call from a young woman from London, who had recently been travelling around Ireland and had been charged roaming costs to her contract.  She was livid for the charges, she didn't think Ireland was 'foreign' and didn't justify the extortionate amounts it cost to phone home while she was there - she was only to happy to let Hasan become aware of this fact, and one might have thought everyone within a five mile radius would have heard her too.  Her name was Jenny and she had a set of lungs on her that could make any Italian Opera singer quiver.  Needless to say for the first half of the call Hasan's volume control was at near-mute listening only for when she would stop to draw breath.

After some time he managed to calm her down and agreed to reduce her bill but not to write off the costs entirely.  She eventually conceded after a long drawn out tirade of yet more abuse.  When she was calm yet again she told him it wasn't his fault but didn't but didn't apologise for the abuse.  They spoke a while longer and she took a liking to his voice and asked him where he was exactly, he lied and told her he was in the UK, he didn't know if she believed him or not but either way, she asked him for his number but he refused stating company policy forbid exchanging personal details - which it did, despite this she decided she didn't want to leave it like that so she gave him her email address.  He could not write it down but it was easily remembered.

A few hours later while on lunch break he sat staring at the computer screen in contemplation, he hesitated but then gave in.  He set up an email account in the UK with his name Peter Bridges and sent her an email.  He didn't expect it to go any further.  Over the coming weeks they shared many things by email and eventually he told her the truth about where he was and how he lived.  She didn't reply for a few days but eventually he checked his email in hope one day to find a single email in his inbox, it was from her.  They continued talking, yet more weeks passed and as things came to a head she asked if he would mind if she came to Dhaka to visit him, knowing he would not be able to go to the UK to visit her.

They spent two weeks together in Dhaka, his days spent at work his nights with her and weekends together.  His feelings for her grew stronger.  She flew back to the UK and they stayed in touch, sharing emails, talking over the internet as he visit internet cafés in his spare time.  She came back to Dhaka once again to visit him and since he had let her come and go once before without sharing how he really felt he let her know his true feelings.  She was not surprised and she felt the same.  Over the next few months a lot of things passed but in the end Jenny paid for flights for Hasan to come to London, he applied for a visa and he stayed with her.  He found a job, in a call centre in the UK.  You might think that is odd but it was all he knew, he was certainly experienced and he knew exactly how to handle people.  The money was a bonus too, he was paid ten times his weekly wage in Dhaka per hour for the same work and he was in London the city he had longed to visit and most importantly he was with Jenny, the girl he loved.  They got married, he gained a wife and in the process citizenship to the UK - he would never again have to leave the girl he loved and he would never have to leave him.


The Reality:  When Sally met Duncan

If you are my friend on facebook you may have seen this story before, when it actually happened: [names are changed for anonymity of course]

A friend of mine knows a girl who shall we say is a little eccentric, but in all is a typical Norn Iron girl, up for a laugh and give anything a go.  Despite her good nature she has a mean streak too and woe betide anyone who in her eyes should be taking "liberties" or putting her in any position where she feels used for she won't be long in letting you know how she really feels and she's quick to throw a punch - yes I assure you girls can throw a punch and you certainly wouldn't want to be on the end of hers.  One day her phone bill came in, being on contract there is always the risk that it could be higher than you expect and on this occasion it was.  She was livid and as she called the company all the "robbing bastards" of the day she got on the phone to them and got put through to a call centre in Liverpool.

She was put through to a guy named Duncan and after berating the poor boy on the phone for near half an hour she finally let him speak and in his discretion he managed to get her bill cut in half.  That should have been the end of the call but it wasn't she kept talking, because she liked the sound of his voice.  So she said it was nothing personal, he said it was all the same to him he would feel the same, the phone call went on and ended with the two exchanging their numbers.  Yea you read that right she got the number of a guy in a call centre she didn't know anything about other than the fact that she liked his voice.

They text, called and over the next few months they developed a liking for each other, eventually she booked flights to Liverpool to visit him, and he did the same to visit her, a few trips back and forth and she eventually moved to Liverpool to be with him.  They are now married they live together and I think she was pregnant last time I heard, the baby would be born by now I reckon.  So yea, if you think the story of the guy and girl who met through a call centre is unbelievable, it's actually true so go figure - truth is sometimes stranger than fiction.

Wear Sunscreen

Something Random:

Lyrics:

Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of '97.
Wear sunscreen.
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it.
The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience...
I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh never mind; you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded.
But trust me, in 20 years you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked...
You're not as fat as you Imagine.

Don't worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum.
The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind.
The kind that blind side you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing everyday that scares you.

Sing.

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts, don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don't waste your time on jealousy;
Sometimes you're ahead,
Sometimes You're behind.
The race is long, and in the end, it's only with yourself.

Remember the compliments you receive, forget the insults;
If you Succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your
Life.
The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don't.

Get plenty of calcium.

Be kind to your knees, you'll miss them when they're gone.
Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't, maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't, maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary.
Whatever you do, don't Congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either.
Your choices are half chance, so are everybody else's.
Enjoy your body, Use it every way you can... Don't be afraid of it, or what other people Think of it,
It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own...

Dance... even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room.

Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.

Do NOT read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly.

Brother and sister together we'll make it through
Someday your spirit will take you and guide you there
I know you've been hurting, but I've been waiting to be there
For you.
And I'll be there, just tell me now, whenever I can.

Get to know your parents, you never know when they'll be gone for good.

Be nice to your siblings;
They are the best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but for the precious few you should hold on.
Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard;
Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.

Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths, prices will rise, politicians will Philander, you too will get old, and when you do you'll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don't expect anyone else to support you.
Maybe you have a trust fund, Maybe you have a wealthy spouse; but you never know when either one might run out.

Don't mess too much with your hair, or by the time you're 40, it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen...

(Brother and sister together we'll make it through
Someday your spirit will take you and guide you there
I know you've been hurting, but I've been waiting to be there
For you. And I'll be there, just tell me now, whenever I can.
Everybody's free.)

Halloween Movies

Halloween is fast approaching and in the spirit or lack of as the case may be I thought I'd share something that has been playing on my mind - Halloween Movies.

They suck.  There has not been a good one in years.  In my youth Wes Craven was a God but even now the Scream franchise has been bled dry - quite apt given the amount of blood he used in those movies.  Gone still are the movies that as a child scared the shit out of ya, nightmare on elm street and Freddy Krueger are irreplaceable.  Even so on the lighter side of things even the parody / spoof movies have dried up.  The Scary Movie franchise has been bled dry too - although to be fair when you create a sub-genre like that it can't exactly persist if the genre as a whole is failing.

I Know What You Did Last Summer, Valentine, Scream, Scary Movie, Nightmare on Elm Street, to name but a few.  In recent years the movie industry has not fed our appetite, year on year for almost 5 or 6 years each Halloween they released yet another Saw Movie - that franchise has really been overdone.  These movies miss the point of Halloween, these movies aren't meant to be gore and disgusting to watch, they are meant to be scary.

I want proper Halloween Movies again!  I want movies that are going to scare the shit out of you, not ones that are potentially gonna make you puke.

Or at the very least, bring back Movies that on some level play to our darker sense of humour, like the Child's Play Movies and the Chucky Movies - Bride of Chucky and Seed of Chucky.  Bride of Chucky starring the amazing Jennifer Tilly as Tiffany whose voice is the epitome of the saying "It's like hot honey dribbling down a gang plank"

Like, Lust and Love

I find myself quoting a guy I despise, well despise is a bit of a harsh word, I don't particularly despise him, I despise the circumstances through which we came to meet.  Truth be told I don't know that much about him through firsthand experience, all I know of him I have learned through others, and as age will often teach, the opinions of others, more often than not, will be warped.

Anyway this is beside the point.  When I first met him in person it was in London and we spoke of many things, but one thing in particular stuck with me for some time and that was his philosophy of the three L's.  Like, Lust and Love.  He said that everyone will meet three people in their life, three separate people.  One will be their first like, one their first lust and one their first love.  The ideal order being Like, Lust then Love although not necessarily in that order.

Your first like you may be any age and you may not fully understand it when it happens.  To like, does not imply any degree of attraction.  To like someone is to form a connection with them, a desire to be near them and to be their friend.  I experienced my first like when I was barely a teenager and in many ways I still like him, even though we don't speak any more.

Your first lust will be the first person you develop true sexual feelings of attraction for.  This may be someone in your life or it could be a celebrity or anyone really.  My first lust was a guy in my class.  That eventually ran its course though, as all lust it seems will run its course, either dying of its own accord or developing into something more.

Finally your first love is the first person you truly fall for.  On this final one I could write a book and I don't particularly feel like sharing my feelings on this matter right now as it would be a case of endless repetition. 

So we have our three L's.  As I said before and as He said too, they will be three separate people.  You may experience all three with people but in terms of who will hold the title of first, only one title of each can be held by any one person, reason being if you are with someone, only one of these desires should ultimately define your relationship.  You can lust after the one you love, but love trumps lust, they hold the title of love and so on.

So what is the point of all this?  Well the point is to ask yourself a few questions, namely for each of the above who was your first and most importantly can you tell the difference?

Some experience their first like, and mistake it for love or lust and pursue that person that leads to things like the 40 year old married guy with 2 kids who is a repressed homosexual because he mistook like for lust, only to finally experience his first lust which then causes his world to tumble down and that of all around him.

Then there is the person who experiences their first like, then they experience their first lust and mistake lust for love.  They pursue their lust and end up married, and several years down the line they are not happy and both know it was a mistake but refuse to admit it to one another or worse still [in my eyes] they have an open relationship as they hold on to that last bastion of pride that insists in their mind that they were not wrong that they really loved the other person and that they just need to have different sexual partners.

Then we have the ideal, the person who has experienced their first like, known what it is to like someone and be liked.  They have experienced their first lust, known what it is to lust after someone and be lust after themselves.  They have experienced their first love, and maybe they end up being with their first love, maybe they spend the rest of their lives together or maybe they end up with their second or their third or whatever.

The reality though is that all of the above is opinion it's not fact, it will make a lot of sense to some people and it will be complete bullshit to others.  Wherever you fall on your judgement of all that is written here I still ask of you the same questions, who was the first person you liked, the first you lust after and the first you loved?  Where they different people or did you only have one?  Most importantly, can you tell the difference?  Not just in hindsight but in the moment when you feel these feelings can you tell which is which?