Monday, March 14, 2005
: Current Affairs
It has been my dream since I was a small child to be trapped in a vicious cycle. At age 3, I started to eat vast quantities of food. This continued until I was 8 and my weight and consequent shape managed to severely impede my progress in the learning-how-to-tie-your-shoelace part of life. I was sad that I was so rotund, but the sadness made me hungry and I continued to eat. By the age of 11, I was well on my way to perfecting my first vicious cycle. Then I met Anthony Robbins. I was now happy to be fat and soon my vicious cycle came apart, nuts, bolts and all.
Eventually I lost all this excess weight, so I considered gambling. The whole lose-money-then-gamble-more-to-win-back-debts vicious cycle was terribly appealing, and dabbling in it for a few months made me realise that I am a born winner and there was nothing I could do about it. With wads of cash safely tucked into my coat pockets, I left the world of gambling and resigned myself to a life of failure.
Little did I expect that a vicious cycle would find me instead.
Rather, it had always been present in my life, as far back as I can remember. I had just never thought of it until a friend pointed out, during a discussion on mobile phones, that a battery would last longer if we kept the mobile on instead of turning it off and on repeatedly to conserve power. Starting the phone up uses up more power than the drain from keeping it on during a reasonable period of time, he said. Something occurred to me. I asked him if the same principle could be applied to household appliances; for instance, fans and lights. He nodded.
My mother used to come into my room and turn off the lights and fan when I had left it briefly to attend to something somewhere else in the house. At the same time, she would complain that I was wasting electricity and that the electricity bills for the past month had been far in excess of her expectations. And when I went back to my room, I would turn on the lights and fan to resume whatever I was doing, thus wasting more electricity than if she had just left them on.
Now imagine her linkage between the electricity bill and the lights being on - she sees the lights and fan being on unnecessarily as the cause of the larger bill each month when in fact it is from the the constant turning off and on of these fixtures. So she will turn off the lights and fans whenever she can to 'save electricity' when in fact she is serving to continually increase our usage of it.
Diabolical! A vicious cycle! And I've been in it for years!
--
By the way, if you're a kid, use this line of reasoning against your parents and watch them squirm in the presence of your illuminating brilliance. After that, send me $20 in small bills as a token of your everlasting gratitude.
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Eventually I lost all this excess weight, so I considered gambling. The whole lose-money-then-gamble-more-to-win-back-debts vicious cycle was terribly appealing, and dabbling in it for a few months made me realise that I am a born winner and there was nothing I could do about it. With wads of cash safely tucked into my coat pockets, I left the world of gambling and resigned myself to a life of failure.
Little did I expect that a vicious cycle would find me instead.
Rather, it had always been present in my life, as far back as I can remember. I had just never thought of it until a friend pointed out, during a discussion on mobile phones, that a battery would last longer if we kept the mobile on instead of turning it off and on repeatedly to conserve power. Starting the phone up uses up more power than the drain from keeping it on during a reasonable period of time, he said. Something occurred to me. I asked him if the same principle could be applied to household appliances; for instance, fans and lights. He nodded.
My mother used to come into my room and turn off the lights and fan when I had left it briefly to attend to something somewhere else in the house. At the same time, she would complain that I was wasting electricity and that the electricity bills for the past month had been far in excess of her expectations. And when I went back to my room, I would turn on the lights and fan to resume whatever I was doing, thus wasting more electricity than if she had just left them on.
Now imagine her linkage between the electricity bill and the lights being on - she sees the lights and fan being on unnecessarily as the cause of the larger bill each month when in fact it is from the the constant turning off and on of these fixtures. So she will turn off the lights and fans whenever she can to 'save electricity' when in fact she is serving to continually increase our usage of it.
Diabolical! A vicious cycle! And I've been in it for years!
--
By the way, if you're a kid, use this line of reasoning against your parents and watch them squirm in the presence of your illuminating brilliance. After that, send me $20 in small bills as a token of your everlasting gratitude.
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