Have you ever met people who complains about how his BMW is not going pretty smooth lately when running at 150KM/H?

While you’re driving a 10 years old second hand Proton Saga?

The scenario isn’t exactly the same, but I have met people who loves to talk, complain, or if you want to put it nicely, share about their materialistic well-beings with people who have far worse scenarios than them.

It may seem like you’re sharing your stuffs with me to you, buddy, but in my ears it only sounds like you’re bragging.

It’s unlikely for rants to appear on this blog, but well I’ll make an exception this time. Take your brags to somewhere else for f**k’s sake, it’s pissing me off!

Image @Christian Yanchula on Flickr

You think that’s bad? It’s much better than what I have so f**k off!

Sometimes you just can’t stand people who complain so much about that one scratch on their iPhone or how she got that crack on her Louis Vuitton handbag, while you’re holding an ancient Nokia model or a bag you got from the market for RM10.

While you can try pretty hard to smile and acknowledge their pain or empathize with their problems, deep down you’re already cursing about this asshole that talks too much.

Let’s face it, money matters. It’s what drives the earth around. And while some people are born with a silver spoon stuck up in their mouth, many others have to work their ass away to afford even the smallest of luxury. Hell, some even struggle with the basic life commodity.

If you’re happen to be one of the lucky ones that are born with a silver spoon, congratulations. If you are that good that you can work to be one of the most successful and richest people around your age, congratulations. If you manage to get that shiny Alienware laptop or that Prada trenchcoat, congratulations to you too.

But don’t share or complain about it in front of people who are way far behind from your achievements, because in their ears it sounds more like bragging and boasting and blowing your own goddamn trumpet.

Dealing With Braggers

If you’re one of the less luckier ones who have met one of these holes (you know which hole I’m talking about), and you don’t want to be one of those hypocrites, there are a few ways to deal with them.

Smile and nod away. Just keep quiet but refuse to give your input on his problems (just because they are not yours). Eventually he will find you boring and stop talking about his stuffs.

Smile and say, “Hey, you have better stuffs than me, why are you still complaining?” Well that’s the truth, really. Most braggers will get the message and stop the sharing session already, but in case that still doesn’t work…

Tell him YOUR problems. Tell him how much you’ve spent on fixing that 12 years old car, how cheap you’ve gotten your bag from the night market, how cheap your laptop is with its lack of features, how bad your malfunctioning phone is with black and white screen.

That should do the trick. If they still have some conscience, they will stop talking about their problems and focus on yours instead. If they really just wanna brag, just walk away. You don’t need a hole like that to be your friend, do you?

Choose who to “share” with

If you really have a problematic BMW car or a scratched Louis Vuitton bag, choose who are you going to share your problem with. Most people who are much below your level in terms of materialistic sufficiency will find your words a sore, no matter how honestly you really want to share about your problems.

Find someone who is almost the same level or higher level than you. That means find someone who owns something of similar of what you have or even better, and ask them about their opinion. Finding someone who own something much worse or can’t afford it at all will get you branded as a bragger.

That includes your brother/sister and your best friends. You have no idea how much sourness that can be generated when you talk about money and luxury, no matter how close you are with them. You’re better off asking the advices of the more experts anyway, why make sad cases with your friends?

If you just simply wanna brag, well, you’re an asshole.

Have you met any braggers before?

A lot of them are doing it without noticing it, but some of them really are just bragging for the fun of it. Have you met any lately? How do you deal with them?

I don’t know about you, but there are so many people in our lives that it seems that we’ve seen them forever, we’ve known them forever, yet we don’t really know them.

This might sound confusing at first, but take a look around you, it may be that guard that keeps your house and office safe every day, that nasi lemak seller that you buy your breakfast from every day, the bus conductor that gives you your ticket, or even that guy or girl that sits at that corner of the train every day.

They’re like the closest strangers, ever.

Sounds romantic and fictional, but it happens. There are so many people around us that we see every day, you may notice the change of their hairstyle, the new shirt they’re wearing, the new bag she gotten, the new phone he had, yet we don’t know even know their name.

They are the closest strangers, ever.

Image @Daviddesign on Flickr

It’s so hard to say “hi”

A tweet from @Available had illustrated this pretty well,

“at the supermarket, i’m afraid to talk to the person next in-line, yet on twitter…HOW ARE YOU?!”

Yeah, why are we so afraid to talk to the stranger around us in real life, yet we’re so daring to say hi to just virtually anyone on the Net?

Is it because that we’ve grown so accustomed to the notions that strangers may not be good people, so we would rather not take the risk and say hi at all? Instead, over the net you can say “hi” to anyone because they can never harm you, physically?

But then, isn’t that cold? Can you feel the chill now, the chillness of the urban life?

A word is all it takes to spark

If we’ve taken the first step to say “Hi”, we might have not been strangers anymore.

I remember that when I was young, I used to buy these noodles (Pan Mee) from this vendor almost every day. Eventually the aunties there grew to recognize me, and while we ceased to talk other than closing the deal, it felt warm inside that they actually know what I wanted even before I ordered.

Then one day, I said “Hi” when I arrived at the store. The auntie smiled back, and we sparked a conversation about my school, my studies, her work, her life. And what’s interesting is that she seemed to know so much about me, about how I grew up over the years, when I changed my school bag, when I got a new haircut.

We’ve seen each other every day, all it takes is just a plain “hi”, and we’ve grown to know each other a little bit better. Not so much of a stranger anymore, are we?

Customer relations, they say. Humanity, is what I call it.

Let’s not be Strangers, shall we?

Really, the world needs more warmth. It isn’t that difficult, really, just start with a smile in your face, and say “hi” to them. The person in the same lift with you, the janitor at the corridor, the canteen cashier, the uncle at the bus corner, the girl next class, the boy next department.

Who knows what might spark from the simple “hi”. But whatever it is, it’ll not be a bad thing, it rarely will. Ditch the newspapers or the goddamn news, the world has more good people than you think.

Hello, stranger. How are you today?

That’s a confession one of my friends made the other day, when he came over to ask me how to burn MP3s into a CD.

I was shocked. How can someone not know how Mona Lisa or to burn a CD at this time of age?

After my initial shock, I was even shocked by my own ignorance.

Initially he came over to ask me to help him burn some MP3s he gotten from his friend into a CD so he can listen to them in a car. A good selection of classic Kenny G, Celine Dion, Jim Brickman, Boyzone.

He asked me, “Can a laptop copy MP3s into a CD?”

“Yes of course! As long as your laptop has a CD burner and the right software.”

“Oh… what’s a burner?”

I was baffled and paused for like 15 seconds before I answered.

As I was burning the CD for him, I showed him the wonders of Facebook and the many funny and interesting videos shared there. He doesn’t have a Facebook account, because he doesn’t know what is it all about.

“Oh, I’ve always wanted to ask…”
“Yea?”
“Who’s that lady in that picture? I’ve always seen here at a lot of places.”

Monalisa

I froze for a second.

“You… don’t know who she is?”
“Uhh… no?”
“She’s Mona Lisa!”
“Who?”
“This the famous painting by Leonardo Da Vinci! Don’t you know who Da Vinci is?”

“Uhh… who?” He was smiling sheepishly as I raised my voice.

“Da Vinci! Didn’t you read the Da Vinci Code book as it was the craze for the past few years?”
“Uhh… I think I’ve seen the movie poster before.”

I spent the next 30 minutes explaining to him who is Da Vinci, what the Mona Lisa is all about, some trivia about the difference of comic, illustration and art, and how to burn a CD.

For a moment, I was really shocked. He’s the same age as me. The computer craze generation. How can there be anyone who doesn’t know how to burn a CD at my age?

Then my conscience hit me. He is the same age as me, but we led very different life. I grew up in the city, he grew up in the country. He came to the city to learn pastry after his high school graduation, as he said, the school was all punks and he has no real good memories from it. He worked in a pastry materials distribution warehouse as a product tester, and turned to direct selling for more income.

He knows everything about spirulina and his vitamins and his cooking wares. He knows how to do facial, how to keep your face and skin good, how to live a healthy living with good food habits and good supplement intake. He knows how to talk and how to sell. He doesn’t know what is Restaurant City or FarmVille. And no, he doesn’t know how to burn a CD. Nor Mona Lisa, because he never read about her. Or anything that involves reading. His language of communication is Chinese, and that’s about it.

That’s the world of my friend. His world Now, who am I to judge him?

We all have to bear in mind, we’re all part of the luckier ones in the world. There’s probably 3/5 of the world’s population that has never touched a mouse before.

Well, on the other hand, they may have lived with mice and see them running around every day, while we squeal and shriek when we see one like every few months.

When he left that day, he thanked me for telling him who is Mona Lisa and teaching him a lot of things with that happy-go-lucky classic smile of his. I smiled back, closed the door, and smacked my head.

I shouldn’t have raised my voice in surprise. Who am I to judge him?