An Idle Day On a Summer Weekend

Here in the land of the long white cloud, New Zealand, it's summer. In my town we've had several gorgeous balmy summer days, so I've spent some of it outside ... under that yellow bright ball thingy. One hour under the sun and I'm sunburned. I went with my dad and brother on their usual trip to the swimming pool. I didn't go with them into the swim centre, but instead spent some time wandering around the mall next door to get some odds and ends. Ended up buying a new pair of sandals, some modeler's clay and wire. Odd collection of items. Then it happened. I walked by a booth that was set up strategically in the middle of the hall. "Excuse me, sir, could you spare a minute?" It was a someone trawling for people to commit money to some cause or other. Somehow I managed to buck up the courage this time and shrug them off and run off on my way. Normally though it's not in my nature to be so abrupt and I tend to unwillingly lend them my ear and get sucked in and get all nervous and find ways to get away as quickly as I can. Don't get me wrong: I approve of a lot of these "save the children in (fill in third world country of choice)" campaigns, but I do not approve of the guilt mongering that goes on with these campaigners who try to talk you into committing a donation. Also I don't know how legitimate these folks are despite all the official sounding logos they've got stamped all over their gear. In this mad world today there are so many people out for a quick buck that they'll do anything. It's hard not to get paranoid over any form of cash committals. In my mind a donation is something (or some service) that you'll give willingly - you don't have to have a minimum or set up a long term payment plan. Now I feel bad talking about them. Then there are folks trying to get you to sign up for things, usually credit cards like American Express (or insert credit card of your choice). Sometime I double back and see if I can find a longer way around them, or wait until they're busy trying to get the attention of others (diligently trying to get away) and walk by quickly. Avoiding eye contact. Then there are the cold callers that drop by the house. I think these are worse as you become a captive audience - which is compounded by my amiable nature that lets them suck me in. That just makes it harder to get away. It's just not in me to slam the door on them. I do have to commend the Jehova's witnesses though, as they are fairly diligent. Somehow they managed to track me from when I was living in Malaysia all the way to New Zealand. I'm not religious - I'm not even an atheist. I just don't want others trying to get me to do things I don't want to - and feeling uneasy all the time. Rant off. I later spent the day at my local library. I thought I'd use their new fan dangled book lookup system to find some books I was after. I'm rather interested in Windows MFC programming and am particularly interested in learning DirectX. I have a computer game brewing in my head - I need to get the necessary tools to build it. After half an hour later, I gave up. Are they too specialized a topic that I can't even find them in the library? I guess I'll have to take the plunge and buy the reference manuals off an on-line shop like Amazon.com. Technical manuals are expensive to be buying on a whim! After that I had lunch with my dad and brother by the sea. Lunch consisted of a few tiny chicken wing nibbles and some (un-chilled) Lipton(TM) Peach flavoured Ice Tea. The peach tea is to tea like what bottled water is to ordinary water - but was it oh-so-refreshing and hit the spot! Also had an apple custard strudel for dessert. It only had a hint of apple on the ends, and it was completely empty on the inside. Everyone else had the same thing too, and they were all empty. We'll never buy that again at the bakery. This is where I got sunburned. At least I wore a hat! Later that night, I tore open the modeling clay, used wire and super glue to create a frame and somehow made a start at creating a small sculpture of a perky young lady that exists only in my head, (who, for some odd reason, has an unimaginable wealth of knowledge on the topic of tea, but not much else). I thought "why not add sculpting to my endless number of hobbies?". It could be handy in any number of ways - plus it would be neat see one the many characters I'd created in 3d. The results were not pretty - or rather it's too early to tell my efforts can be finalized. After many attempts at trying to get the basic shape down (and failing miserably - the clay didn't want to stay on the wire frame - probably didn't let it set long enough), I discovered that it was midnight. Off to bed and that was that. It's good days like this that you can look forward to.