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The Enigma Diamond
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Found
- Hits: 784
Less a treasure "Found" than a Treasure "Made".
A 55 facet 555.55 Carat Diamond goes up for auction at Sotheby's Dubai, home of the world's silliest money.
Link: https://www.cnn.com/style/article/enigma-diamond-sothebys-auction-scn-scil-intl/index.html
Now, this is NFT's or Cryptocurrency made tangible - the stone itself, hardly rare, or beautiful, it's an example of manufactured demand - cut perfectly to an Arabic version of a "Lucky Number", it's purchase is entirely designed to grant the buyer "status" - a preposterous luxury purchase of absolutely no intrinsic value.
The Sum of all Self-Loathing
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 934
This job. It's built into it - a staff meal, consisting of a bit of salad, and a pasta of different shapes tossed in oil.
The contrast between what the staff are fed - and what the customers eat - is huge. It's an abyss, a gulf, a chasm, and the meal, it's a way of reinforcing it. This food, you wouldn't feed it to dogs, yet -
Well, it's war, really.
And the service - the maitre-d breathing down my neck the whole night, telling me I'm not keeping up, if I just offered water to a table and they declined, and he - on my heels, offers and they accept I'm at fault. Everything is my fault. I can't tell if he hates me - personally - or this is just the "break your will" portion of it. Every night I expect to be fired - and - really, apart from the immense financial inconvenience - I'd be grateful. I cannot recall a job I've hated as much as this, that so preoccupies me with the despair of having to go into work. Better, by a long shot - to work at a Denny's or Smitty's than here.
My section - 3 tables. 2 deuces, 1 four top. They're drinking - each of the deuces spend upwards of $1500. The four top - in excess of $4000. It's spending money for the sheer joy of spending money, there is no correlation with a real-world economy, no amount of "foody" justifies this - every course left partially unconsumed, the wine, the liquor goes.
This - I would once have considered $150, $200 a pretty good "date night", but here - well, that gets your coat checked. It's - quite literally - a full order of magnitude above anything I've experienced.
So you struggle on, night after night, hoping it either gets easier, or just ends. My preference - well, I know - the end would be a damned sight preferable - but - I need wheels and so I would prefer to drive onward, as I still apparently have a little too much baggage.
Canada's Housing Market
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Link of the day
- Hits: 910
Which I've known for any length of time, but - despite "knowing" the bubble merely gets bigger and bigger and one simply watches in disbelief.
Link: https://jacobinmag.com/2022/01/canada-housing-market-real-estate
Even if he's wrong, at least there's someone out there thinking a bit like me.
Another Point of View: https://betterdwelling.com/canadas-real-estate-bubble-is-so-big-even-the-mother-of-all-crashes-cant-fix-it/amp/
Soylent Green
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 727
And everything I eat here, everything within a 10 block radius of the hostel, the Subway, the Donair, Pizza, Tacos, Pub-grub, it's all the fucking same, taste, texture, Soylent Green, and I find myself staring down the countless rats that run down the alleys, big ones, juicy, is this the reason everything here is so bland, food flavored like the weather, is this what they're serving? Who knows, it wouldn't be a surprise, really, at this the end of days.
I've come to the conclusion I hate Vancouver. I don't know why, the weather, buildings, slums or wealth, there's no single thing I can put my finger on, only that I hate it. I try to imagine improving it - maybe if I found a permanent place to live here, or a job I enjoyed more, but even if I were independently wealthy, a gentleman of leisure, nothing would improve it. Nothing would make it better. And I don't know why that is.
So get to work, make the best of a bad situation, set the target on the end of May, I need a jeep, a great metal detector, $10,000 Fisher or Minelab, a pocket full of cash and an off-road map to the Yukon, this city has been it's own adventure of sorts, only one I rather haven't enjoyed and I need to find some new adventures more to my taste...
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