Life's best lesson

Life can be utter sh*t at times, with nothing happening, nothing going right, and nothing to reach for.
The easiest and certainly the worst way of dealing with this is to go down with the ship, falling into the deepest and darkest corridors of your mind.

Those of you who read this junk -sorry, blog - are probably familiar with my musings on that king of games (and game of kings), cricket. Cricket is a lovely sport, if only that you can draw so many analogies from it. K, here's my story:

It was a 40-over away game on an unmatted wicket - low bounce, making batting extremely tough. Our side is in, and a slow start begins to take a devastating turn: wickets tumbled left and right, till we end up 80-8 by 25 overs~slim pickins for any side. Miraculously, our 9th wicket stand lasts for the rest of the innings, and our total is 136. Respectable, yet not completely defendable.
A paltry lunch brings us to the field, with the aim of scuttling down the other side as quickly as we could. They too started slowly, but a massive 6 from the massive left-hand opener lands the ball in a canal, irretrievable. Thereafter, the batsmen opened up their shoulders - their total becomes 104-1 in around 24 overs. 33 runs to win, 8 wickets in hand (they were one batsmen short), and 15 overs left. We were surely doomed to a harsh rebuke in the dressing room.
But then, as that same opener told us he was going to go ballistic, he got out. Then another wicket fell. Then another. The next half-a-dozen overs saw maidens and wicket-maidens. On 131-8, with 6 runs and 1 wicket left, our captain took a brilliant catch to complete a remarkable turnaround.

The moral, ladies and gentlemen, was best put by Yogi Berra: it ain't over till it's over. However improbable the task you have at hand, as long as it can happen, there's no saying that it won't.

Virginia Tech University

33 dead. About as many injured. 1 gunman, 2 intermittent attacks.

Too familiar.

It takes just one student - one lonely, depressed, irrational person - to end so much life. Lives that could have changed the world one day, lives that were setting up the stage for those changes.

Why?

We should really know why by now. The apathy of society and the weight of modern life have put a strain on the human condition - place a gun within reach of a person, and you have a disaster on your hands.

Help is nearly always there for people who feel so down and angry at the world that they feel like destroying it. The concern needed to get a person to get help, and the desire to accept help, isn't always.

There is no way to ever completely stop these incidents. But the frequency of such events is alarming. The tools for such a killing may have to be kept away; people may just have to listen more; the world might just have to slow down.

Please, never again.

F1 for help

Take a look at this article: Wired News: The World? Your Oyster? Why Not?
It's something that I have to wonder about - we have all this damn information floating around "a series of tubes" and yet it seems to have achieved far less than what it potentially could.

What could it do? We should be able to know more about everything than we do now. The knowledge of all people, including Americans, should have vastly increased as a result. From this new knowledge, people should be more able to solve long-term problems such as poverty.

Are we solving poverty? Perhaps. However, either the media's focus on it is increasing or Africa appears to growing poorer and poorer. Does more knowledge mean more solutions? Or just more **** to wade through? Who knows. But something more should be happening as a result of the internet - it does have that power.

Love

How do you tell a girl you like her?

Lenses

Got contact lenses last Saturday!
These are brilliant - feel like an entirely different person. Well, not entirely, but you know, I feel able to do things that I normally couldn't, due to the fragile nature of glasses.
Some would say that the contacts' labourious and tedious cleaning process would be a major drawback, but I don't think so. It is a careful, delicate ritual that I perform at dawn and after sunset, one that makes me feel like a master surgeon or technician, and allows me to practice staying as calm as I can.

Eyes

Having worn glasses since the tender age of 8, I thought it would be time to get contacts. So I went to an opticians today. I knew my eyesight was bad, but I didn't know it was this bad. I have myopia, and the glasses I wear have around strength -4 or so. But as I had my eyes tested, I was told I could see 30% of what I should be seeing. It ain't funny at all. For years, I've slowly been getting eyes that seem to weaken in their focusing ability. Just one more step downward I guess.

Is anyone listening?

Life is never as simple as it seems.
I'm one of those people who's always unsure of themselves. Whatever situation I'm in, I'm usually testing myself to see if I can respond in some predefined universally perfect manner to some stimulus. I know for the most part that this is ridiculous, that one's actions should always be something natural and sound based on the reasoning at the time and your own instinct. But I still do it, though more covertly.
Why? Why do these things have to be? Why can't I trust myself?
Life is never as simple as it seems.