The Procrastination Killer

This post is recyculation from here: http://www.problogs.com/Post7.htm It says on the blog that it has only been read 39 times at the time of writing, so perhaps it needs a little more coverage. Maybe the counter is broken.

"Today I will do everything that should be done, when it should be done, and as it should be done. I will perform the most difficult task first because this will destroy the habit of procrastination, and develop the habit of action in it's place!"

To spare you clicking the link he, she or it says:

The following was taken from the book "The Laws of Success" by Napoleon Hill. If you repeat this phrase 12 times a day, out loud, each morning it will sink in. I swear that your mind will turn back to this statement when you are not using your time wisely and haunt you!

So there you go if you want to be successful. But is the most difficult task always the most important? Or least fun? I am still struggling with a to-do list and diary. Maybe using these two things should be top of my list. Good luck with it! Oh, and do click the link to see if the count goes up any.

How clean is your anus right now?

OK, it is not a question I would like to ask you, and probably not one you'd like to be asked either. For the majority of us, I guess, since our parents stopped helping us sit on the toilet, what we do behind the locked door has been shared with no-one else, and our techniques are very personal. It has long become something we don't think about but just do. The first time you travel to an Asian country, perhaps with the exception of Thailand (excuse the website, but the article is to the point), you'll see that there are other ways to do these basic things.

Using toilet paper to clean yourself down there makes about as much hygienic sense as cleaning yourself with a towel and imagining you're rubbing off the dirt. We've got a very unhygienic way of cleaning a place of our body that we would like to be very clean. Worth reading this interview with Rose George: http://www.salon.com/books/int/2008/10/16/big_necessity/

So that has got the cleanliness thing out of the way. Then there is the ridiculous amount of toilet paper use:

The tenderness of the delicate American buttock is causing more environmental devastation than the country's love of gas-guzzling cars, fast food or McMansions, according to green campaigners. At fault, they say, is the US public's insistence on extra-soft, quilted and multi-ply products when they use the bathroom. See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb/26/toilet-roll-america

I don't have any data on the size of the average American butt. None of this really applies to me. Since being in Nepal I am, more or less, a washer again. Fresh as a daisy, that's me. What do other people think about this? As mentioned in the first line, I am not going to ask you. But there is a small window on this very personal world in the comments below this article. A lot of people just don't want to get what the article is saying. Where does this abhorrence of shit and shitting come from? http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/04/stop-using-toilet-paper One thing I am curious about: how much toilet paper do women use compared to men? Is there any data on this? Update: for those curious about washing, see: http://www.bathroomsprayers.com/ - thanks to David for his self-promoting comment below.

Violinist in the Metro

I am just sitting in a cafe (The Factory) in Kathmandu using their free internet. Someone, wearing a trilby hat, is experimenting with his violin over the incompatible music coming through the sound system. Think partial cats mating or dog's paw being stood on, partial concert violinist warm up. He is pretty good but just inconsistent. And in the wrong place.

Anyhow, my friend sent me this this morning. Very interesting story. I can relate to it, though not because of the guy fiddling in the corner. I realise I hardly walk anywhere, I bike. And if I'm not biking, I am running. And if I am not either of the above, I am doing something, going somewhere. I don't fart around enough by half - and I don't even have a proper job. According to Kurt Vonnegut, that's all we're here to do.

I am in Kathmandu. Stinky as it is, it is the perfect place to fart around. Tomorrow I will begin on a professional level.

Anyhow (again), read on and reflect:

A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning.

He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule. A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk. A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work. The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on. In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32.

When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition. No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars. Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats average $100. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of an [sic] social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context? One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be: If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?

My additional thoughts would only be that so many people do things because they are "fashionable" that they forget to look at things with their own eyes, listen with their own ears, and appreciate anything with their own hearts. Source: WashingtonPost.com

I don't know who added the italics, maybe my friend. It also reminds me of something a student from some far northern part of Norway once taught me. We had risen early to go to Masada overlooking the dead sea. Basically his idea was to take a photo with your brain: line up your camera (head); close your eyes for around 60 seconds - the longer the better; open them for a few seconds only; close again, for a short while while your eyes write the image to your soft disk. I tried it once in Morocco, it works pretty well. When I think of Morocco, I think first of that image. So, next time your batteries go flat...

We need to talk about toilets

I got published! After a long time writing this thing, and then quite a bit of heavy editing, I appeared in print.

Sometimes when you stop and think for a moment, the things we do can seem a little strange. For example flushing the toilet. It is a wonderful system: clean, hygienic, and effortless – the greatest accomplishment for public health of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But, then, I’m shitting and/or peeing into 10 litres of fresh drinking water, thus immediately turning it into toxic waste, adding a few chemicals like bleach or toilet freshener, cooking oil poured down kitchen sinks and unused medicines washed down hospital sinks. It’s then pumped through an underground sewer network, joined by heavy metal-containing runoff water from roads and industrial areas. And not to forget the 159 toilet rolls per household per year – that’s about 270,000 trees flushed away every day worldwide according to the WWF. And then we try to get all the stuff that went into the water, out again – at great expense – the water was needed only for transporting our waste from A to B. Can this really be the best way to deal with our daily excretions?

Download the article in PDF form here: http://www.hedgeapple.nl/downloads/046-048_DieMaskeArticle.pdf See the Die Maske website for more information about the project: http://www.diemaske.at/ - click the little union jack for the Union Jackish language.

Me in plural

Well this is a bit weird, but we're just practising for taking pictures at Everest basecamp - subject to anybody wanting to have their picture taken that is. There we need to somehow capture the physical change that spending time on the mountain brings. It is a before and after shot - but we'd like to bring them together in one frame. Will be a challenge!