Rubenerd

Often I find when I'm confronted with a situation that is not of my own making and that has the potential to negatively affect me in some way, I start developing a blog post in my mind to discuss the experience in order to exact some time delayed literary revenge of sheer genius. When I realise I'm neither a genius nor capable of literary masterpieces that could adequately used in revenge situations I decide against forming such posts and they never get submitted. Against my better judgement, I am eschewing such precautions for the duration of this evening, and apparently using pompous language.

Given I lived in Singapore most of my life and therefore never found the need to get a drivers licence I am not qualified to discuss the first and second points on Monnie's Things that have annoyed me this week blog posting on her Vanilla Silence blog of doom, but the last two I felt I must share and relay my thoughts given I've found myself faced with the exact same situations myself on countless occasions of countlessness. I'm pretty sure that isn't a word.

I'm still not entirely convinced the likes of ZombieSkitles and Monnie aren't in fact sophisticated Turing Machines, but for the sake of the argument: tell us Monnie, what has annoyed you this week?

- People who continually stop walking in front of me in the shopping centre… Yesterday was a good one, they stopped right in the doorway of the shop I was about to enter, so not only did I almost walk into them, I couldn’t get in. Also, when you ask people like this to move, they glare at you. Be considerate people, you’re not the only ones at the shopping centre.

Yes! Thank you! As an addendum to this, I'm similarly irritated when I'm in a hurry and a slow walking group of friends are taking up the entire footpath in front of me without any room to scoot past. A part of me is jealous that they have friends they can walk along with in the first place, but mostly I'm just irritated that I'm stuck behind a few lumbering people when I have class in five minutes and the coffee I drank an hour ago was decaf. Please move out of the way people, this is public space!

- People who think they know everything about something and are completely incorrect. I know I shouldn’t fight with these people as it is akin to high school when everyone thought I’d said something and I didn’t. There’s no changing these peoples minds, they have it firmly lodged in their heads that I am incorrect and no amount of discussion will remove this thought. No one wants to admit you’re wrong about something, ever. EVER. It means admitting defeat, and no one wants to do that. SUCK IT UP AND DO IT. ADMIT YOU’RE WRONG AND SAY YOU’RE SORRY. IT’S EASIER THAN FIGHTING CONSTANTLY. Also, this behaviour still continues, and while we label it “high school behaviour” it is actually how people behave and act in the real world. It’s not high school or childish, it’s how people are. It’s sad.

When I was 14 years old and my mum had been diagnosed with cancer (again), I took the day off school to visit her in the oncology ward. While I was away, the PE teacher informed all the people in my class that he thought I was lying about her condition because he saw her a month previously and she had hair. You see, people who have chemotherapy lose their hair… and apparently there's no such thing as wigs.

Unfortunately there will always be people in life who think they know more than everyone else, and when they're confronted with contradictory evidence they'll still stubbornly refuse to admit it and instead attack your character.

People have this weird idea that admitting when you're wrong is a sign of weakness. Far from it, I think if you can admit you're at fault and save face you're far more resilient and strong than the people who cover their ears with their hands and should la la not listening! I could talk about high school people types, politicians, religious folk… I'll leave it at that!

- People who title their blog posts as "Things that have annoyed me" when clearly they’re discussing "People that have annoyed me"

I would consider that more of a mild irritation than an outright annoyance personally, but fair enough.

- People who like cupcakes, quotation fabricators, people who are intolerant of other people’s cultures, The Dutch, and those who get childish thrills by using police tape to cordon off streets and pretend a crime syndicate is being busted to the detriment of neighbourhood land values.

Not so sure. Cupcakes are awesome, and those other things sounded kinda funny.