It’s only the drivers who yield to pedestrians who deserve a quickened step across the lane. I take my time, sometimes even walk slower, for the drivers who have no regard for the pedestrians.

Only patient people deserve patience in return.

On a day-to-day basis at work I have to deal with a multitude of contacts from all sorts of businesses, such as printing companies, media companies, survey/research companies, phone/internet providers, magazines, tech support departments, marketing companies, and tons of other random operations either trying to get my business or required by me for a product/service. At the beginning of every phone call, every single person I deal with asks me how I’m doing. It’s become a challenge not to shout into the receiver, “YOU DON’T KNOW ME. DO YOU REALLY CARE? I’M A LITTLE WORRIED CAUSE IT BURNS WHEN I PEE! DID YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW THAT?!!”, every time I hear the cookie-cutter question. The worst is when I have to call someone several times in a day to follow up on something, and I’m greeted with the same question every time, as if my company might have been built on a fault line that somehow separated between 10:00 and 10:15.

I know that asking is a polite thing to do, and it’s polite of me to ask in return, but it’s extremely difficult for me to say things that I don’t really mean. I generally only ask my friends how they’re doing, and I certainly only tell my friends how I’m actually doing.

I suppose it’s all just a hazard of the job. One day, for one of the less friendly, more aggressive, rudely patronizing, dreadfully unimportant calls (such as one I got the other day from a company selling solutions for high search engine rankings), I’ll go on about some make-believe problem I’m having. It’ll be interesting to see how long they can stay on the line, how much the business worth to them.

Sometimes I ask questions that others consider to be stupid. That’s usually because I don’t make any assumptions, and the last thing that I want to do is offend or annoy someone. For example, I may ask to use the bathroom if I’m a guest at someone’s house. Some people give me a look as if I’ve just asked them to take a dump on my chest, then they give me a slow, exaggerated “yeeeees” in a tone that makes the answer seem like it should be an extremely obvious thing. To them, the point is obvious; I’m a friend, and of course I can use the facilities. It’s something that they feel I shouldn’t have to ask. But I have no idea whether or not someone is uncomfortable about me using a certain bathroom cause it’s dirty (which has happened in the past), or whether one of the bathrooms is out of order (something I’d rather avoid before I find out too late), or even if they’re trying to cross-breed bankeys by confining bats and monkeys in an ensuite and hoping they mate (which I assume will never happen). Usually, just going for the bathroom is not a chance I’m willing to take, as with many other things. I’d rather ask first, because there’s the chance that I may make a step out of place (and in cases like these, it’s better to not step than to backtrack). But when people start treating me like I’m stupid for asking these questions, sometimes I feel like just saying, “fuck it”, and not worrying about the consequences.

I don’t enjoy watching the Olympics. The coverage we get (exclusively from the CBC), is shoddy. There’s no pre-planned time schedule for matches or events, so I never know what’s going to be on when I have time to watch. There was also absolutely no coverage of table tennis, which has already ended, most of the medals going to China. Why is this? I suspect because Canada basically had no chance of placing in the top three, so why would the CBC want to show them? Well, more likely not even in the top five. Even Google gave table tennis props with one of their daily banners, and with 28 Olympic sports but only 16 days, 12 of those sports aren’t going to have banners.

There are also so many politics involved, with disqualifications, doping, judging, etc., that everything just seems tainted. There’s also all the frustrating media coverage in the mix, such as Perdita Felicien’s hurdle dissapointment splattered on the front page of most papers while Ann Muenzer’s golden achievement gets a sports section blurb. And with sports that don’t need to be in the Olympics (why have synchronized diving AND diving AND synchronized swimming?), there’s not much to keep my interest.

I finally have some time to catch up on my blogroll. The hiatus has given me a fresh perspective on the blogs that I read, and I’m starting to understand why I actually read them in the first place. Most authors are just plain interesting, and their blogs offer a glimpse into the lives of people with distinct personalities. The most interesting ones are by intelligent people with lifestyles I’ve never been through. However, there’s a fair share of authors whose lives are so sad that they’re amusing, and their blogs are so pathetic that they’re humorous. These are the people who write because they think they’re important, and fill their entries with the most trite, sequacious crap.

And it’s made me wonder, especially after having reached an average of 200 daily visits last month, which of the two types this blog fits into for other people when they read.