aWishaWeek #6 – Go beyond the sixth degree

First off, if you see the parental warning before the clip starts playing, it only implies that a few f-bombs will be dropped during the song.  Don’t get your knickers in a twist, P!nk drops more F-bombs in the first verse of some of her songs than these guys do on their whole album!  And we love her.

My latest wish for them little ones running around in our house is about relationships that doesn’t work out.  The Script has done an excellent job in portraying those feelings EVERY human have gone through when a relationship goes sour. 

Newsflash #15 – I created more…

Old is always fifteen years from now.

Bill Cosby 

Yes my dear followers and other readers who randomly stumble on my posts, there are two brand spanking new pages up on my blog.  The one will list the movies I selectively write reviews about and the other page is my weekly feature aWishaWeek.

It took me six months to figure out how to group these posts together.  Unfortunately not all of us have completed the evolution from monkeys, some only lost the tail…

I’ll get there.

aWishaWeek # 5 – Drop the LOL

This week it’s short and sweet.

My wish this week in my on-going series of things I would like my kids to remember/have/achieve as human beings, is that they lose the ability to use any acronym ever created by cyber space and social networks.  I wish that every weirdly conceived combination of letters are suddenly wiped from their memory so that my children are forced to use the skill that is spelling and writing.

And moreover so that their father can actually understand what they are trying to tell me in their text messages.

When you want to communicate effectively it implies that you will have to put some effort and thought into the message you want to convey and doing it properly shows some respect for the person on the receiving end of the message, don’t you think?

And by the way, TGIF.

For my other wishes pop over here.

aWishaWeek #4 – Be yourself cause no-one can do it better.

Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.

Amazing words from a very strange little perfectionist called Dr Seuss.  Why do I say strange?  Well, I am convinced he was on crack or some other hard drugs for most of his life.

But please calm down, those with that awful frown, for your stones and sticks might hurt me, but closing this tab will cause me to pee… from my eyes, so just consider this:

He created characters the likes of a Lorax, Who’s, a Grinch and a frigging Cat in a Hat?  Most people who lived through the seventies would confess seeing the same oddities when they were higher than the Empire state.  They just didn’t have the vision of writing stories about them.  Most probably because when these creatures left their houses again they were stuck in front of a fridge for seven hours fighting the munchies.

Ok maybe I’m being too cynical, there has never been any proof of drugs, although there was this one incident in college with gin and nine friends…  Mankind also discovered recently that drugs can go undetected for six, seven, even ten years. (Wow the work-out this morning really made my arm strong today…)

I am forcing myself away from this topic…

My next wish in an on-going series of aWishaWeek… blah blah blah.  In order not to bore my regular readers, their might be someone out there reading this with question marks in their eyes or what I like to call a WTF-expression, just read the background to this weekly series here.

I wish that the two of you remain forever true to yourself.  I wish that you embrace every single thing that makes you the uniquely wonderful creatures that you are.  There might be flaws; like crooked teeth, (that we are busy solving by paying for a new beach house in the Bahamas of our local orthodontist), and the load voices, (which comes in very handy in a busy mall, almost like a tracker unit for dad).

But the bottom line is that you were created perfectly, having every characteristic you would need in order to find your perfect place in the sun, to discover your destined position in society.  Being different is being alive, because being the same as everyone else is just PLAIN BORING.  Be who you want to be, not what people expect you to be.

I wish that you accept all your own talents and all your shortcomings and be able to retain the perfect blend of uniqueness that mom and I see in you every day.  That perfect blend of humanity that makes you the most wonderful children any parent could ever ask for.  To the Blue Genie out there, make sure that my boy and my girl retain their love of life, their keen sense of wonder and have just enough confidence to be themselves, standing out from all the rest.  (But not too much confidence…)

They say no-one is perfect, but it also has to be said that you are the only person who can be you and the only one who can do it perfectly.

Till next week, and by the way I LOVE Dr Seuss, and he never used drugs, unless weed was considered a drug in the fifties, then I give up.

aWishaWeek #3: Your own happy pill

Someone once said “Happiness depends upon ourselves.”  OK, it wasn’t just anyone it came out of the mouth of Aristotle who was this famous Greek philosopher in ancient times. (And if you really bored you can read his life story as per Wikipedia here.)

Bottom line he was clever.  A modern day Stephen Hawkins, but not in the reality theory kind of way, in a life skills sortaway. For a very old guy, living in ancient times, he was on to something, which brings me to my third wish that you should carry with you to adulthood.  My wish is that you have the fundamental understanding that the only person that can make you happy in life is… You.

So many people go through life with goals of attaining happiness and they search for it aimlessly in oddities like money, relationships, work, travelling and possessions.  Like trying to find an Oscar winning performance in any Adam Sandler movie, it’s just never gonna happen.   It might look like the right recipe on paper but once mixed, baked and shoved in the oven the cake will turn out be a turd.  People who embark on a journey to find happiness will never find success unless they are happy first.  A conundrum?  Maybe.

To be happy is a state of mind, a by-product of life you might say.  It’s a result of being in an awesome place, and not in a who wants to be a millionaire kind of way, but in a being human kind of way.  Several quotes exist expressing the notion that happiness is the result of being in a place where you want to be, finding that specific space where the shape and sentiment of your situation fits like a glove.

So that is my third wish for the two of you, that life will create the doors to your happiness and that you may have the wisdom to open them at the right time.  Here’s wishing that you will find your glove in life, your perfect spot where the sun shines expressively birght so you can grow into the happiest flowers known to man.

aWishaWeek #2: Working for free

It’s my second wish in my new series of aWishAweek where I bestow random things on my kids that will hopefully make them a better version of me themselves once they reach adulthood.

First of all it has to be said that when my son finds the topic of this blog, he would probably end up with serious heart palpitations.  I am convinced he will have me committed, but here’s hoping that he continue reading.  It’s not as bad as it sounds.

My second wish is that both of you will end up in a career that you enjoy so much that you would be prepared to do it for free.  Doesn’t matter what.  If the fundamentals of joy, satisfaction and gratification exist in your chosen career  the fact that you’ll earn a salary will be a bonus.  I wish you find a job that makes you whistle every morning when you get ready to start your day.  It must challenge, stimulate and provide proof that we can all really make the world a better place.  It should bring meaning to every single day.

And when you have your retirement function, I hope that you may sound like an Oscar winner, when you thank the world and its wife, then admit that you would have done this for free, cause you loved it so much.

To put pictures to my words.  You need to find a job that puts a smile on your face and a sparkle in your eye.  Like this lady…

Ok, maybe with better hair…

For the flip side would be this picture, which is actually the last photo taken for my access card.  (I was force to redo it twice.)

I looked like this until I met your Mother.

Why is this wish so important?  Well. Your job will be something you will end up doing for the REST OF YOUR LIFE.  And you’ll have to work, or marry rich, to end up balancing mortgage, cars, fuel, food, school fees, clothes and vacations.  You know all those wondrous things we adults deal with every day.  Those things that make me skip and giggle,  once I finish the bottle of red wine.

Just note that it might not be a good decision to sit in an interview and inform your prospective employer of the fact that you are willing to work without compensation.  This will imply minimum wage and you’ll be tied to a table and screwed so hard…. Wait this is a child friendly post.  Almost like Nike: Just DON’T do it.

Bottom line:  Dad wishes that you end up in a career that will light the flame of passion and keep it burning for ever and ever, or at least until you retire.

So my pride and joy, see you both next week for wish #3.

(Wish #1 can be found here)

All images courtesy of www.freedigitalphotos.net

aWishaWeek #1 – Beneath your beautiful

This song is the inspiration for my first wish.  The message piped out by the amazing voices of Labyrinth and Emile Sande is that some people built walls to protect themselves.  People wear masks to hide their true identity from others.  People act in a certain way, using it as a cover up for the hurt or pain or insecurity they might have dwelling within.

Newsflash #12 – aWishaWeek

A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.

Robert Frost

We all know by now that I have the greatest kids in the world.  Seriously.  It’s no joke.  They are.  Mostly due to the influence of their Mother.  I’m the fun dad…

The original intention of my blog, a few months ago, was to create stories/lessons for my kids to read one day when they’re really bored.   I have come to realise that the blog morphed into something bigger than that original idea.  Now it consist of photo’s, short stories, rants, and just about anything, a real fruit salad of things oozing from my mind.

So I decided to start with my own feature aWishaWeek, where I will jot down something I wish for my kids every week.  Things that they can shove in their backpack on the road to adulthood and then hopefully some big blue Genie escapes from a lamp one day and grant me my wish/es.  If not, maybe the seed will fall on fertile soil and it will sprout into wondrous trees bearing luscious fruit.  But you know kids…

Wait, my kids are perfect.