Living within your means (part 2)....

My friend once asked me, "If you've conquered Mount Everest, would you want to conquer Mount Kinabalu?"

The answer would be no.

When it comes to guys and their possessions, there's one thing that's certain, and that is that men are always about the upgrades. We try to upgrade everything we have - our computers, our TVs, gaming platforms, cars, musical instruments, mp3 players, cameras, phones, girlfriends and much more. Somehow, it is imprinted in our brains that there's always a never ending thirst for getting something better. And thats basically the problem.... anything can be made better. What we don't have is what we should have.

Upgrades are dangerous. Before, way back then, we would fork up a little bit more money to buy delicious ayam goreng in school. Other kids would be eating their nasi lemaks the traditional way; bare boned with only sambal, ikan bilis, timun and one sixth of an egg. Some of us, *looking at myself* would add that little piece of chicken, increasing the price of that nasi lemak by 100 percent. Present day, if we include that same mentality to the way we are living right now, that means saying goodbye to home-cooking, so-long cheap make up, good riddens last seasons clothes, adios amigo to my PS2, and waves of goodbyes to what are really the necessities in life.

Well, continuing with the previous post, living within your means tells us to put a stop to these never-ending upgrades. And here's some of the things that I have done (baby step moves) to make myself adhere to this new philosophy :-

1) Do not buy branded things. Before, I would always shower using the Dove body soap. Now? I use Walgreens Sensitive Body Shower that has the exact same ingredients, except that it comes with an uglier bottle and with a two dollar cheaper price tag.

2) Tightening up on food. I'll buy a sandwitch from Subway (five-dollar-foot-long), cut it into half and eat only a half for a meal.

3) Put as many clothes into the washing machine as possible. A girl I knew back in my internship days told me to never stuff the washing machine with too many clothes as it might damage the machine. Well missy, I'm sorry. I'm in this for myself. If that washing machine breaks down then the apartment managers are just going to have to fix it so I can place more clothes in them next time and repeat the damaging cycle.

4) Contest parking tickets. I got a parking ticket recently. Instead of just paying it straight, I managed to write a formal letter to the department of revenue and state reasons on why I (maybe I'm the only one) believe that I shouldn't have to pay that ticket. It might be a total hopeless cause but it is definitely worth a try.

5) Preserving what I have. Every time after I shower I would make sure that the shower curtains are straightened up before I leave the bathroom. If I don't do this mildew might plague my beautiful yet free shower curtains. And if the shower curtains become ugly I'll have to end up buying new shower curtains.

Ok I'm starting to write about crap. Haha what did you guys expect? This blogs url is bigoobs.blogspot.com.

Later