Essential reading for dating and romance

Sat, 3 Jan 2015
2 min read
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(PHOTO CREDIT: Laremy Lee)
(PHOTO CREDIT: Laremy Lee)

A friend recently revealed to me that she was in love-limbo – that is, deciding between staying put with her partner or moving on to graze on greener pastures.

To help with her decision, I promised I’d share nuggets of knowledge on dating and romance that I’ve found over the years – an essential reading list, as it were.

I realised, after pasting all the links from the Lare-pository of Wisdom (hurhur) into an e-mail message, that it was actually worth a blog post.

So congratulations, everyone! You get to benefit from the spillover effect/positive externalities of an attempt to make good on a promise – or collateral damage, as it may turn out to be.

  1. Choosing a partner (before you start dating):
  2. Building a good relationship (dating and marriage):
  3. Building a great marriage:

The section on “How to build a great marriage” is pretty skimpy, for obvious reasons (I haven’t reached that stage yet, although the plan is to get there soon).

Nevertheless, feel free to leave a comment with a link to your favourite article, if anyone has stuff they’d like to add.

Reinventing the office line

Sun, 7 Sep 2014
2 min read
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These office items and gadgets, some of which were on the cutting edge in 1988, now all fit on a smartphone. Well, except for the coffee. Photo by Buck Ennis.
These office items and gadgets, some of which were on the cutting edge in 1988, now all fit on a smartphone. Well, except for the coffee. Photo by Buck Ennis.

So you know how I like to predict how and why technology should change to cleave to our modern ways of living, right?

Hence, for my next trick, I’m going to ask: Technological powers-that-be, when are we going to turn our office numbers into work numbers for the mobile?

And mind you, I’m not talking about call forwarding.

I’m referring to an actual office line that can be combined with our present personal mobile phone line – but which we can choose to switch off when we’re out of the office.

Think about it. To create a clear divide between the professional and the personal, we have:

  • Personal e-mail addresses and office e-mail addresses; and
  • Personal phone lines and office phone lines.

Before the advent of mobile data technology, office tools were often fixed, and we had to enter the office to use those specific tools.

Now, we can do almost everything on the go; we can make personal calls on our mobile phones, and check our personal and office e-mail on the same device.

So at which point did companies say: “Hey! We’re gonna stop developing technology for office phone lines because there is no need to.”?

Because of this – lapse? change of focus? – we now have work-based communication taking place on our personal lines.

Some examples: Whatsapp office group chat messages, or text messages and voice calls from clients.

It’d be nice to have the option of setting “away from office” auto-replies on our work phone lines when on leave or after leaving the office, so we can draw a distinction between work and leisure.

Therefore, I’m calling this right here, right now, Lare-style: There’s a portion of the technology that’s lagging behind everything else when it comes to the modern office telephone line.

Technological powers-that-be, please do something about it. You’ll more than reap the rewards when everyone starts adopting this service.

Redacted

Fri, 29 Aug 2014
2 min read
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[redacted]! #[redacted] #[redacted] #[redacted] #[redacted] #[redacted] #[redacted] DISCLAIMER: This post is intended to be social commentary on [redacted] in any form, by satirically responding to the news of [redacted] that is trending now. It does not condone [redacted] in any form, and it does not condone the practice of [redacted]. If you propagate this post - that is, you quote from it, link to it, repost it or share it with others in any form - please take responsibility for whatever happens if you propagate the post out of context, or if you mismatch the audience and the content.
[redacted]! #[redacted] #[redacted] #[redacted] #[redacted] #[redacted] #[redacted] DISCLAIMER: This post is intended to be social commentary on [redacted] in any form, by satirically responding to the news of [redacted] that is trending now. It does not condone [redacted] in any form, and it does not condone the practice of [redacted]. If you propagate this post – that is, you quote from it, link to it, repost it or share it with others in any form – please take responsibility for whatever happens if you propagate the post out of context, or if you mismatch the audience and the content.
So! I was reading the news yesterday when I came across a story I found absolutely hilarious.

It was a very serious story, but I found the concept it discussed absolutely hilarious, and I made it a point to tell my friends about it.

But because they are stupid – just kidding; they’re not and I love them a lot – no one got it. Which happens quite often, so I was, like, whatever.

But this morning, I suddenly woke up and the visual image of the concept appeared in my mind, and I was like: YES!

So I immediately grabbed my phone, fired up Phoster, and designed a little graphic, which I promptly Whatsapped to my friends.

The reaction: “Hahahaha.” “This is hilarious.” “Where did you get that from?”

But when I proposed to post it online, with a disclaimer, the reaction I received instead:

It’s troublesome to enforce how people share content. It’ll just be taken out of context and someone will report you for sedition. Then you can forget about being NMP.

No. Too sensitive to post.

I disagree with making it public. There will surely be people who will take it the wrong way. If it goes public, there will be people who will over-react. Sharing it with friends is fine.

So I decided to post what you see above instead. You can like it on Instagram too:

BONUS: Responses to this graphic:

Yeah, this is much better. You’ll still be reported, but it’ll be for being dumb.

Haha! But what is the point of posting it if everything is censored?

I know right.