So what happened to you on V's day?

Despite its blatant commercialism (especially in the US - the home of capitalism and marketing), for a good proportion of people V's day is still an occasion to share with special others. People receive gifts - Flowers, Chocolates, cards, etc. - from other people.

So what did I receive on V day? A cold, from god-knows-who-or-where. That was a few days ago... still sniffling. It's passed from the sniffling stage to the sore throat stage to the dollops of yellow/green phlegm stage to the nonstop sneezing and runny nose stage, so given my usual history of colds, it should be over within the next three days.

This semester I'm doing less classes... supposedly to have more time for research, but apparently I'm spending that extra time sleeping and playing way too much DDR. On DDR Extreme, I have one more 9 footer left to AA (Curse you, Burning Heat), and I'm not sure if I want to go and practice the 10 footers (other than Sakura and Bag), since there's a long way to go for them (since I haven't even passed all of them yet!).

On simplicity

If you come right down to it, there are very few human needs that are really very essential. Love perhaps, companionship, beauty, religion and job enjoyment for that extra joi d'vrie.

Clothes, restaurants, etc have artificially created demand among consumers - it's no coincidence that Google makes billions a year from ad revenue. Half the economy is probably spent convincing us to purchase the other half. To quote, "we work in jobs we don't want to buy shit we don't need."

Now and then I feel the urge to simplify life to the bare essentials. Instant messaging, telephony, etc the illusion of instant contactivity becomes an unbearable burden. Even blogging.

Well, perhaps not blogging. There is still the fundamental human need to communicate, and the need to be understood.