Set Your Money On Fire: 3 Great Ideas

1) On the way home yesterday I stopped at a Caltex to buy some water, and lo and behold, there it is. VOSS bottled water, sparkling and still, imported from Norway, for the bargain basement price of R25.00. Not for 1 litre, for a small bottle. Comparable local products cost R6.00. Now let me ask you, do we need to import water all the way from Norway just to get 'pure' water?

I'm also an advocate of not drinking bottled water, but we face a bit of conundrum. The water at home tastes a bit funny; when I did the shoot with Roxanne, she and her mom both took a single sip and then asked for juice instead. Now I'm less inclined to drink it too. I mean...there are rumors now of radioactive contamination, sewage leaking into our water system, and of course, recently in Bloem they found dead bodies floating in a large water tank. That's enough to wean people off tap water for a long time.

It's de rigeur in countries like Britain and Korea to not drink water straight from the taps. In Korea even bathing in the stuff really dries out the skin. The water in Korea is said to be contaminated with heavy metals. They also discourage boiling veggies with tap water. So what other option is there except buying big barrels of water. There are filter systems of course, but millions of bachelors like me are going to take a while to adopt these new behaviours. Here's more background on why drinking bottled water is dumb, and we need to graduate fast to a more efficient (but clean and healthy) system to hydrate ourselves at home.

Drink Bottled Water, Help Wreck the Planet

2). Buy a house in Bantry Bay for R25 000 000. Seeff is advertising a property right now. Here's what you get for R25 000 000: A sea view. It's a summary, obviously I'm not going into details like automatic garage doors and other gob smacking luxuries. The point is, you can find a habitat for a fraction of that price and live happily ever after. Are bricks and mortar and a balcony over looking sparkling water worth 50 Mercedes Benz motor cars? Some inner city apartments in Jeppe Street Johannesburg are going for less than R300 000 today. If you really want a beautiful sea view, and you're far more 'on the beach' than you can even hope to be at Bantry Bay (and even there the sea is cold), you can buy an island or a cottage in the Philippines for less than a brightly colored cave in Jeppe Street, and enjoy unsurpassed peace and tranquility from here to eternity.

3) Head swivelling styling like Chrysler's HEMI may have made sense (still not a lot though) once upon a time, for about half an hour when a small flock of pretty girls emerged out of a nightclub as you drove by on a random Saturday night...by mid morning the latest Merc had been unveiled, and that was the car to watch: the Mercedes SLR McLaren.

Expect to fork out R3.5 million ($450 000). The SLR has a supercharged 5.5 (5439cc) litre dry sumped 90 degree V8. It produces 466.8 kW at 6500rpm (626 hp) and 780 N·m (575 ft·lbf) torque at 3250 - 5000 rpm. That's a little bit like being an attractive eleven year old girl with the most beautiful breasts in the world. It's nice to have that power but in a sick kind of way - you can't use it and even if you could, you shouldn't be using it.
For a list of the world's most expensive cars, go here.

So if you had the cash, you could by this car, or you could buy 12 apartments in JeppeStreet (maybe a quarter of the whole building).
Alternatively you could buy a small second-hand Yaris - a brilliant, wonderful car to drive, and with your change you could resurrect Zimbabwe's economy.

How to Meet More Women

Be the mayor of your own life

Whenever I do a dating boot camp, guys are always amazed that I seem to
know everybody. The first time one attendee, Yakub, did a boot camp with me, he kept marveling at this. He started calling me "The Mayor of New York City."

It arises from the fact that everywhere I went, I knew somebody. I knew men. I knew women. I knew kids. I knew dogs. I knew shopkeepers. I knew everybody. By knowing all these people everywhere I went, I got to know more people.

The number one mistake that men make when they go out and try to meet women...
The number one mistake that men make when they go out and try to meet women... is that they go out and try to meet women. Think about that statement for a second.

You call your friend on a Saturday afternoon to go out and meet women. So what do you do? You go to a coffee shop, you stare at a good-looking woman, you try to remember the perfect opener... and you ignore everybody else in the place. Does this sound familiar? I used to do the same thing. It's the reason why you do not meet women.
Become mayor of your own life

By David Wygant

More.

NVDL: It is quite counter-intuitive. In the gym this morning I noticed a few really attractive ladies, and then realised (again) that it is sort've an unspoken rule. You should ignore an attractive woman, but if you must, glance over once.
Any more attention and that must mean you have too much time on your hands and hence, are a pathetic male minion, a clone of the human male letch. Also, if you are too busy to pay attention to an attractive woman, it must mean you are well on your way to some worthy goal (aka accumulating moolah). Thus money becomes a decisive distinguishing trait. Your money's attention is always welcome, even if your's isn't. Makes sense eh...

Happiness Is...

Curiously enough, The Times.co.za has just posted a story on the same topic. They say:
Money, not marriage, makes us happy. Indeed, even on the modest poll of this blog, about as many people rated money as important as friends (I crooked - I voted for 'friends' twice).

Relationships

But there's another way to look at these figures. The answer is that our relationships - with a partner, with family and friends - are what make us happy, or ought to. Of course if the framework of those relationships is skewed, or insane, it's going to strain what joy those relationships might have offered. And in the world we've consented to, this is the case.

Appearances Can Be Deceptive

We worship and adore Britney, and Paris Hilton, and yet we also mock and ridicule them. Why, because we love them for their looks and success. And because of this shallow measure, we're just as quick to turn our backs on them. And so we're judged by the same worldly measures: what do we look like (our clothes, our cars, our appearance). How successful are we (what's the paycheck, what's the level of fame, fortune and /or celebrity).

Virtual Means 'Not Real'

The way the world ought to work, is that we develop and encourage real, loving and loyal relationships, commitments to one another. That we have enough integrity, patience, forgiveness and temperance not to burn bridges at a moments notice, not to discard human beings as though they were merely closing a webpage on a monitor, not insulting them unnecessarily online. An avatar, the person on the other end of your cellphone, also happens to be a human being, who gets up in the morning, has breakfast and goes out into the world.

2 out of 3

While a proportion have 'correctly' identified 'friends' - relationships - as the genuine resource of human happiness, the majority are looking elsewhere. On this poll, 11 are on the right track, with 19 - almost double this figure, leading lives of quiet desperation. So if this poll is a metaphor for the world, two thirds of all people are misguided, lost and ultimately depressed and miserable. It may appear to be an over-exaggeration - and perhaps it is. But think about the state of the planet. There's a sense that too many people just don't care about so many important things. And don't we wish that they did?

Worldwide happiness (see above) is represented by dark red, misery by yellow. Most of the world, two thirds perhaps, appears to be not so happy.

Happiness Is...

For me, happiness is achieving something, performing, being healthy, being at one's best, the whole package -but part and parcel of that package is sharing this self actualising process, sharing the journey with special people. People who can be supportive and helpful, critical when it's deserved, motivating, intimate, kind and accomodating. People close to you are those with whom you will share your best days with. If you have any doubt that our relationships are the seat of happiness, here is a great way to test that theory. Imagine the end of your life. Imagine your death, and your funeral. What would you want by the end of your life? Sex and money and gizmos are only a means to an end. To the extent that we invest ourselves in THINGS and FEELINGS, we really impoverish ourselves. We really fill our emptiness with grains of desert sand.

What makes us happy is our sense of being connected to one another, and the universe. That's the lush green oasis. That's a choice you can make Now. Once you've made it, stay in the Now, and give the wonderful and important gift that is your life, to others. The rewards of giving always flow back to you, bringing you an abundance of joy, and a meaning and purpose to who you are, and why you are here.