Special dreams I had in March 2012

This post is really for storing a good memorial I had in a dream, but readers are welcomed to read it if they want. So it happened that I was watching the X-Files series through most of the year. I had bought the series at the beginning of the 2011 academic year and watched them over the months before catching up to season six.

So some of the episodes focused on Fox Mulder and his break ins into the American military's secret facilities where they stored aliens remainments. There in the dream, you're playing a game much like the classic Goldeneye and entering a large military facility.

Except as the dream progresses, it's no longer a game. I'm being chased own the stairs by a group of American military personnel determined to stop me from sizing the alien remainments and I fend them off like in the James Bond game/movie.

But it's an intense battle with me at the bottom of the stairs and so many soldiers at the top.

The most interesting part is exiting the facility and still or not being chased, don't remember, while chasing a flying saucer taking off, ready to go at light speed or maybe faster. I throw a tracking device onto the saucers hull and it hits the target precisely just as the saucer is rising into the sky, leaving the military facility, leaving Earth.

Second dream:
Another dream I had that evening/night was me flying on a Swissair flight to Abu Dhabi. The aircraft was an Airbus 310-200. But I was with mother, sister. On the flight was an adorable little girl who came to my seat but kept hiding behind the curtains and smiling. Angel.

Upon landing in Abu Dhabi, I decided to purchase a 1:200 scale model of the Swissair A310-200 as a memorial to my good flight and that adorable child. Also after arriving in Abu Dhabi I could actually feel the blazing heat only to wake up and realize I'm in my hot and fully sealed bedroom on a March day in North America.

Such satisfying dreams especially the second one.

Is hunting that cruel of a sport?

Back in 1999 in Pakistan when I was in grade 6 we had morning assemblies in the junior school branch of the school that I attended.

Each assembly included a few announcements and things to share either by the principle or by the students. It could be anything such as the coming of Star Wars Episode 1 and it's making to anything else of interest. And so it was one morning when the principle invited a volunteer to share something on stage, a girl game up showing a picture of her father kneeling down with a deer he shot with his rifle.

She displayed the photo and explained it was her father who killed a deer. The principle then asked for questions and comments. A student that I was indirectly acquainted with raised his hand and came to the stage and asked what's so good about killing a deer?

I can't remember what happened after that but at that time I felt in agreement with him. Now when I look back I realize we have been brought up to think that way. Human society throughout the world condemns the sport of hunting and dismisses it as "cruelty."

We are taught to hate the sport of hunting and guns in general. Children are taught to "love animals" and condemn the act of taking their life. Hypocrisy and self-contradictions at their best.

Why is the sport of fishing not condemned the same way? Even when it is more cruel and inhumane to catch a fish with a hook in it's mouth and pull it our the water while it suffocates to death whith the hook is still in it's mouth in most cases.

The image below speaks for itself:


Compare this to a simple gun shot when hitting it's precise target kills the animal almost instantly. And even when it doesn't die instantly, it's still faster than fish dying after being caught.

What about animals who are cut up everyday to be put on our dinner plates? Are they not animals who once had feelings of fear and pain too? Why is it that society has not condemned the act of slaughtering animals, an even more cruel inhumane act than hunting with guns?

Even people who catch fish for fun and return them back alive don't realize they have caused a living fish a painful injury from the hook that it had in it's mouth.

Society makes no notice of this and advertises the act of hunting as "cruelty" but not the same for fishing or farmed animals. Why? Even when they are far more cruel and inhumane.

In some countries, hunting is restricted and animals with visible off-springs are not to be shot by law in order for the dependent off-springs to survive. Why is the same rule not applied in the case of fishing? It's not that I don't oppose this rule. I support it, but why is not the same rule applied to animals farmed for meat slaughter?

Do people think that large fish and animals caught and killed are always not with any off-spring? Why do we not show them the same sympathy as animals killed for eating? Do those cows who's beef we eat always not come without calves?

This cartoon clip from the Disney production Bambi shows our selective mindset when it comes to killing animals for food and how we export it to the media:


As the above video shows, we humans have a twisted sense of morality that we seriously need to reexamine. How come we don't make cartoons of mother/father fish and cows being caught or slaughtered by humans?

What many people also don't release is that hunting and gathering was our main source of survival until about a hundred centuries ago when we discovered agriculture. Our discovery of agriculture allowed us to increase food production and grow our population to the unsustainable numbers that we are today.

Those unsustainable numbers gave way to industrialization and a planned killing of animals through farming which is far more inhumane than hunting ever was.

Hunting with spears and arrows in prehistoric times was indeed cruel as well but with the invention of guns, bullets hitting the animals on the surface much harder and faster allow them to die more easily than arrows and spears piercing their flesh and bones while they are still alive.

For those who think killing animals for meat is outright cruel and needs to be banned need to remind themselves how non-human carnivores survive. Even in maritime environments sharks must eat other fish to survive.

I also do not condone hunting without the use of guns. Those who hunt using painful traps and killing tools that rip the animal while they're still alive are also killing inhumanely.

I just seek to point out the fact that hunting is not as cruel as propagated. The use of agriculture has brought humans to where we are today. With massive food production came human overpopulation which created problematic and interlocked economic systems. Much of today's cruelty that the world suffers through which includes inhumanely farming animals and cutting them up for food. The video below explains it all:

Buy and sell online

If you like buying clothes, books, shoes, DVDs etc. Amazon is your best bet. Things are far cheaper and at many times even when they're brand new.

Your shopping shouldn't be limited to luxuries. Most of your college/university and other education textbooks will be several times cheaper on Amazon than buying from the college/university bookstore. I made the mistake of buying a textbook for my course which cost about $180 it was only the year after that I found it on Amazon for only 30 dollars.

I was also training to be a pilot but stopped my training temporarily because of university. But even for my flight training I found the same textbooks on Amazon for only a percentage of the cost.

Just go to the local Amazon or trading site online for your country or the one closest to your country. A tip for buyers is to order from a seller living in your country or closest to your country to save shipping costs.

Readers will find buying and trading online will save them hundreds, perhaps thousands of dollars. A personal recommendation from me as a regular buyer/seller on Amazon.

Sealed lobsters raise concern at local grocery store - Retail & services - The Monitor

A non-political issue that I too have strong feelings about:
Sealed lobsters raise concern at local grocery store - Retail & services - The Monitor

"Facebook parenting for troubled teen"

I planned on doing a separate long, detailed post on parent-off-spring responsibilities since I come from a troubled background myself and discuss the mistakes my parents made with me and vice versa. How I was a troubled kid with anti-social problems, but that won't be in this post.

This post is my response to the sentiments put forward by the parents in the above video. I just happened to be reading the paper today and found this story before looking it up online.

I'm mostly in favor of the father's points. I think his daughter needed to learn all the luxuries and income does not come without giving in return. And posting personal family matters online can have consequences which is why the father did the right thing by putting something of his online.

What goes around comes around. You slander somebody in front of so many people, you must face the consequences of it coming back at you.

What I did disagree with was him shooting up the laptop. Instead of shooting up an expensive piece of machinery and wasting resources, he should have publicly given it to someone who really needed it. He should have donated it to a school for poor children or something of that sort.

Additionally I think he should have also demonstrated to her how to do her chores on video to prove to her and the world how easy they are. This would have given his message the right meaning.

The father also was a bit too hard on his daughter. Just because he happened to leave his home, do two jobs, high school and collage (assuming he's not exaggerating or even making all this up) doesn't mean he should suddenly expect the same form his daughter, unless of course he plans on doing sending his daughter to live the same life he did at her age. I doubt most teenagers live the way he did. It's unfair for him to expect his daughter to suddenly be the same.

All he should have done was deprive her of her luxuries unless she earned them.

The shooting part might have been more dramatic and get more public attention to the video and the message in it, but it certainly gave a lot of supporters the wrong message.

What appears to be this trigger happy dad is what I mean:


The point wasn't to shoot up your daughter's favorite things, the point was to teach your kids a lesson depending on the situation. And in her situation I might have used a more basic approach by telling her that no chores means no luxuries.

But again, I'm no one to judge. These are my two cents on that whole video and drama. I'll cover more of my opinion on parent-off-spring relations and responsibilities in another post.

Don't sell heavy items on Amazon

If you are a seller on any of Amazon's branches, be careful of what you sell. Selling more heavy items like large books or DVD box sets could cost you a lot in shipping.

This is despite that Amazon giving you a rough estimate on how much the shipment will cost. I recently sold a six disc box set of Planet of the Apes on DVD and the shipping cost me over ten dollars of what the estimate of what Amazon gave.

I obviously tried to pursue it and when I managed to get a caller to contact me, he tried to justify the whole thing by claiming Amazon does not give the exact amount. I asked for an email or phone number to be able to pursue this. He ended up giving me an email that was not valid.

I couldn't bother pursuing the whole thing all over again. But it taught me a lesson not to sell anything large or heavy that will cost far more than the shipping price enlisted by Amazon. All sellers need to take this into consideration if they're planning on making their Amazon sales profitable.

Rude and dangerous people in customer service

People generally seem to know that customers can be rude and burdening to those who work in customer service. A lot of customers demand perfection and make excuses not to pay up. At other times instead of offering construction criticism, they resort to harassment.

I'm definitely not one of those people. My parents can be like that at times, but not me. I generally like to avoid arguments and fights. I also feel sympathetic towards such people who work hard for little pay.

But at the same time I don't like being picked on by people for no reason be it they are working class in the customer service or any individual. However, Canada or North America in general has no shortage of rude and hostile people including recent immigrants as I covered in this post.

While there may be no shortage of rude customers, there is no shortage of rude and dangerous people in customer service either. What do I mean by that?

I'm referring to people who can behave rudely or even violently without the slightest regard for the consequences they may face. Many have a strange impression that being put in a workplace somehow makes it theirs.

As an example I seriously hate the conduct of the public transport we have here in a city in Canada. Weather it is rudeness, inefficiency, arrogance and false authoritarianism, I just developed this hatred from nowhere.

What's more is they have all these warning signs on their buses, stations about legal consequences of threatening/assaulting a public transport employee and that it occurs on a daily basis. I don't advocate violence or anything of that sort, but I never sympathize with those who provoke it instead of those who were provoked into committing such acts.

Then about a year ago, I stumbled across a website with listed complaints by contributors and an entire forum. I had come across similar complaints in newspapers, but it did not compare to the experience I personally had.

Sure it was great to know I wasn't the only one who had these problems with the public transport, but some cases I read were quite extreme. One instance was of a bus driver listening to music and honking away through residential neighborhoods. At the end of the trip, a passenger pointed out to the driver there was no need to be honking the whole time and disturbing the passengers as well as residents.

The bus driver angrily replied "get of 'my' bus."
This is just a reflection of my experience with the rude waitress in the restaurant in the linked post when she told to get out of there following an argument we had.

Another case I read was of a girl who wasn't carrying a student card to validate her pass in which the bus driver abruptly snatched her card. She pleaded for him to return it but he laughed her off. When leaving the bus she cursed him by which he retaliated by shoving her hard.

To get to the point, these are the types of people who have jobs in customer service. Why do they behave like that?
They consist of people who have never finished or even been to school so they never learned how to respect others and authority in a social environment.

They have never faced consequences for actions that could get them into trouble with not only their employers but also the law. The examples mentioned earlier in this post prove my point.

While they have no regards for their social conduct or facing consequences to behave the way they do, people should start to wonder why so many incidents of threats and assaults occur against public transport employees.

As mentioned, I do not advocate violence or anything of that sort. However I do advocate punitive measures against such people. Because they did not learn to behave during childhood, it is important they learn it during adulthood. If you do come across a person in customer service who is senselessly rude or intimidating, never hesitate to lodge a formal complaint with their employees.

Standing up to such people is in your best interests because if you don't, you are likely to develop into an under confident, weak personality. It doesn't just stop at people in customer service, but with rude people in general. Once these people are taught a lesson that other people have feelings too, they will learn to control their behavior.

This post may have more added to it later on, but stops here for now.