New Friends and Old, Reunions and the Social Stuff

Recently I have made a lot of new friends and acquaintances which is thoroughly unlike me.  I don't generally do social, and am mostly happy with the status quo.  It is a strange thing to me though that many of my new friends feel like old friends and many of my old friends seem like strangers to me now.

Confused I am!

It is kind of funny actually that this week I have been twice asked (on consecutive days by unrelated people) if I was going to go to my 25th high school reunion.  I went to my tenth under protest and at my twentieth I walked out about 40 minutes into it because it was an atrocious display of mature people trying to act like they were in high school again.  One of the people that asked was keen to go (he has not been to a reunion yet) and the other felt like me (she saw the antics of the one before).  I was not overly fond of my high school years but most of my old friends fall into this category (high school friends) and I struggle to understand the appeal.

Where as with the new friends that I have made it feels cool just to hang around and talk.  My old friends purport that they are "too busy" or make a mountain out of a molehill of another task just so they don't have to do anything.  Newer friends all have similar tastes and interests to me.  Computer games, board games, Doctor Who, RPG's Monty Python, Music.  Whatever it is we actually connect on these levels and I am finding myself much more drawn to these people now.  It is also these people that notice when I am feeling low and offer a positive comment or a friendly ear whereas others simply live in their own world and ignore these other issues.

I really do feel at times that I am socially inept.  I have limitations and I know it.  I do not do well in large gatherings of people.  I struggle to know what responses are needed when and where but when I am with people that I connect with it all becomes a lot more easier.  I have even been to several "parties" recently and not made too much of an idiot out of myself!

I know I am rambling here.  I am not exactly sure what my point is, or even if there is a point.  All I know is this stuff has been playing on my mind.  I am normally a pretty private guy but I (obviously from this blog) have been wanting to share more recently and I feel I would be more comfortable doing that with my newer friends as I already know what the responses would be from my older friends.  Anyhow, that is the view from my window today!

Back in the heart of Uni

I am now on week 4 of my university semester.  I am struggling and I admit it.  I am actually getting the feeling that it is the study that is bringing me down these days.

I have been doing a one year course part time so i can be qualified at what I already do for a living.  Yup, that is right, I need to get a piece of paper so I can continue to do the job I have more than capably been doing for the past four years.

I get annoyed and then depressed when I do these courses that are in essence teaching me to suck eggs.  Why am I annoyed at them?  Well it has a lot to do with narcissism and I am not talking about my own.  First semester, and now this one, I have been told that I MUST purchase the text to the course so I organise this.  The text also happens to be written by the lecturer so no favouritism there and I have not even opened the book.  Passed the course.  Never looked at it.  How does this happen?

And then there is the pure idiocy of what they are trying to teach me.  They literally teach me 40 escalating ways to express your concern at behaviour.  number 1, ignore it.  Number two, look at them and let them know you have noticed the inappropriate behaviour and then look away.  And the dribble goes on.

I just need to vent.  I am sorry but this effort in creating red tape is actually working to drive me away from my current job (if you have not guessed, I am a teacher) than encouraging me to work harder.  I understand the intent but with the quality of the course I seriously wonder at why they need me to get it.  I have done harder in house vocational courses than this uni degree.

Rant over.  I apologise.  It is just the view from my window is looking particularly bleak today.

Sliding Doors

I am not much of a romantic comedy type of guy.  I prefer horror and action for the main stable of my movie watching but there are two movies I make an exception for.  One of those is because it speaks to me in a major way and the other, just because I find it hell funny.  The hell funny one is Notting Hill and most of this is largely due to Spike (Rhys Iffans).  The one that speaks to me is Sliding Doors.

My favorite rom-com (Image from imdb.com) 

Now, if you have not seen Sliding Doors this post is likely to go over the top of you so I will attempt a synopsis in a few short sentences.  The movie follows the relationship meltdown of Gwyneth Paltrow's character with her cheating boyfriend.  In the movie though it shows two stories in parallel, one where she catches the cheating early and separates very early in the piece and the other where (due to a sliding door on a train) she arrives late and misses catching him in the act.  In other words this movie is really a movie about alternate realities based on choice and chance.

I like this movie because I feel that this is how life works.  I am not sure that I subscribe to the infinite possibility theory where an alternate Universe is spawned every time a choice is made but I do feel that there are crucial moments in life that could have changed everything.  For example, my brother's death that I talk about here could have just as easily left him alive if he were in a slightly different position, or he could have been hit and not killed (in fact a Doctor said that it was 50-50 that he survived but had he survived he would have been a quadriplegic and possibly in a vegetative state).  In each of these scenario's my life would have been drastically different.

But it is not only the bad that I think about, I also am thankful for some of the sliding doors that have lead me to things that I enjoy in my life too.  Friends I have met through serendipitous means and the relationships I have had have all been wonderful things.  Just the fact that I am born and live in a Country like Australia is a complete joy when you look at the suffering that occurs in many other places of the world.

I am not a big believer in fate, and the Sliding Doors movie kind of makes a fated turn at the end which I am not overly fond of.  It is a true Hollywood ending in that regard.  But on the whole that movie represents my views on life as a path or a (my hated word) journey.  I am an atheist and the ideas presented by the Sliding Doors movie subscribes enough to the chaos of life and the randomness of paths that we take but also gives meaning to it.

I hope this gives you all a bit more insight to what the view from Knights' window looks like today!

Quality Focus

I am reminded time and again about a problem that spans nearly all industries these days every time I go to my local Kentucky Fried Chicken.  Both my daughters work there and of the take-away places available I quite like a KFC zinger burger every now and again.  Being a family of five means we have a reasonably lengthy order and because my wife and eldest daughter are a bit fussy with the contents of their meals there is some (minor) custom alterations.  Yet nearly every time we go (always through the drive through) they get the order wrong.

Do you know why this is the case?  Well, it is because with the drive through they have a measure which they want managers to achieve.  If they process cars in under a certain average time or something similar then they achieve an Obsessed ranking which is seen as good.  Speed is good in drive through and the number of complaint calls they get from people when they get home and find they don't have what they ordered does not play any part in it at all.  Screw the quality and go fast is what this says to the workers.  Throw it in the box and throw it out the window.

Now this is not a criticism of KFC's practice as it is standard business practice these days.  Every business wants to achieve time efficiency because it means less handling and less cost.  Time truly is money when it comes to product.  Also in the push to reduce cost the pursuit of quality has also been thrown out the window.  From the mid to late eighties we have been buying product that is reducing in quality but increasing in cost.

How long should a device or product last for?  Well, until a month or so after its warranty runs out.  A warranty is really the business saying to you that they are gambling it will last without defects to that point under regular use but not beyond that point.  They do not pluck these figures out of the air, they test for them.  I have a friend who has had 4 microwaves while I am still using the one my mother got when I was around 8.  That is right, I have a 32 year old microwave and it still goes strong.

Things are not made to last and this is a major problem.  It is not that we do not have the technology to make things last it is just that companies have decided that we would rather just upgrade than fix.  For example, I purchased a large TV and it broke after warranty ran out.  To buy the small part that needed fixing on the TV and have it fitted was going to cost more than the TV did initially.  I do not like living in this disposable way.  I would much rather have durable products and keep someone employed in repair work than buy something new!

Enough to drive me insane...

Then there are the companies that set a date for release and stick to it even if the product does not work.  I am going to talk about the computer game industry here because quite honestly they are bandits.  They release games that they know are not functioning correctly and we are meant to play the poor version until they can patch the problems that should not have been there to start with.  Patching has become a norm but I lived in the days when games came out and they worked like they were meant to.  Now companies just do not care one bit.  I really feel violated when I anticipate a game for a long time and then on release day you become incredibly deflated when the game is crap.  I teach game design to 16 and 17 year old kids and they think I am just grumpy.  "Wait until they patch it." I hear a lot in the classroom and they just take this for granted.

What ever happened to the motto "If a job is worth doing, it is worth doing well."  I think this has changed these days to "If a job is worth doing then the consumer will pay for the same job more than once."  Hang the quality?  Sorry, not the way that I work and it may be the reason that I have always held the principles of doing a good job once so it never needs doing again.  I am a strong believer in a quality job.  If you expect me to do a quick job or a quick fix I will not likely take the job.  I will only give 100% and I teach my students to do the same.

So, there we have it, moan over.  What can we do about it?  Probably nothing.  Why has it happened?  Pursuit of capitalism, so we the majority can fund the minority to become even richer while we struggle with the lessening of quality around us.  Such is the view from my window.