Oh! Gravity

Felines and Phones

28 April 2005

On Friday night, I found myself in the Enmorish parts of town, in front of the Cat Protection Society of NSW building. As they say, 'Every cat deserves a responsible home'. Whilst enjoying the inimitable Cat Protection experience, I randomly noticed a rather large crowd of friends and acquaintances lining up accross the road, in front of the Enmore Theatre. Not only did they greet me with expressions of joy, but they also had a ticket they had purchased for me. What a glorious set of coincidences (coinkidink?). Guess who was playing the Enmore? None other than the Cat Empire. Irony++

The show was a case of the Empire strikes back - I had only been mildly interested in some of their recordings, but had heard that they were much better live. 'Much better live' is an understatement, to say the least - it was one of the best live shows that I have ever seen.
Not only is it truly a group effort, with each of the 9+ musicians being great at their craft; they also know how to throw a party vibe together. The way they can turn a 3 minute radio hit into an 11 minute fusion of jazz, funk, soul, hip-hop, rap and pop makes for a great night out. If you can get along to see them, do!

In other news, my blatant greed has been uncovered this week!!
Recently I've been thinking about how greedy I am and, really, how our whole society is. Our economy works because people want more than they currently have. If suddenly everyone were content with what they have (or only what they need), my guess is that the range of goods and services being pedalled by merchants would reduce to the necessities - food, housing, clothing. And even then, those industries would be shrunk and shrivelled compared to their currently fattened counterparts.

My Dad enjoys reading books about economic markets for fun - woo!! (maybe that's where all that nerdiness comes from?). I remember speaking to him about one book in particular, that followed the economic development of China from communism to communist-regulated capitalism.

The country used to be in a state of straight communism - where everyone who works gives their produce to the state for it to be distributed according to need. The problem was, the produce was not meeting the required quotas to fill everyone's stomach. Economists argued that workers needed to be given incentive to work harder, that they needed to benefit directly from the amount of work they put in. So the government allowed workers to keep any excess food they produced. Almost overnight, the quotas were met. I don't know if you can call that outright greed, but it certainly says something about humans and contentment.

Now, you may be wondering, why on earth am I ranting on about economic development of China blah blah blah... Well, it all has to do with everyone's favourite online bargain hunt - ebay!

Yesterday I was bidding for a second hand PDA/phone that Joe alerted me to. Bidding was going fine (read: I was the highest bidder) until about 10 minutes before the end of the auction - that's when my internet connection died.
I switched to another, much slower, connection by which stage there were only moments to go. Being my first time on ebay, I wasn't savvy enough to be ready to throw in a higher bid at the last minute. Someone bid $20 above me with 30 seconds left. I frantically tried to place a higher bid.... but my connection was too slow. I was pipped at the post.

So what? Everyone gets outbid now and then, right? The only problem was, I got angry at the esteemed gentleman who outbid me - I wanted to write to him and offer a range of expletives for him to digest. I was shocked by how much I cared for such a small thing. Am I too attached to 'things' rather than people? I think so. Am I content with what I have? No, but I'm learning.


What about you....?

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