simple pleasures

london 8.24pm 5C it had been raining, the ground is damp. tuesday 2019

its been quite cold , at one time it even dropped hailstones, but it is light. it was light as late as 7.30pm which took the edge off the cold. somehow, the daylight makes it not feel as cold psychologically than if it were dark. so i am glad we changed the clocks.

even though we are in spring, it is not unusual to have a very cold april, it kinds of turn the seasons topsy turvy. it can even snow during this time, which i recall it did. cant remember what year it was though.

but this time of year,  one tries to enjoy small pleasures rather than big grand gestures of enjoyment. a small pleasure for me to enjoy is eating a croissant that i buy from lidl. its so delicious and is a real pleasure to eat. washed down with coffee. i enjoy the bus journey there too. it is a direct bus 88 from my flat so no need to change buses with all the waiting that will be involved.

i had borrowed kevin kwan’s 2nd book about rich asians, called ‘china rich girlfriend’ and read it to find out what really rich people do to make their lives supposedly much better than the ordinary people who are not so filthy rich.

but i could not finish it, it got a bit boring to read, with all the name dropping of designer stuff and supposedly wonderful stuff that they can order at a whim, and that is supposedly gives them pleasure. but it is obvious none of it gives them any pleasure, they buy it and then move on to another thing because the pleasure is fleeting.and what they buy dont really mean much to them as it is so easy to get for them. it costs a lot and most people wont be able to get it, but there is no long enjoyment of that feeling, that u can get something that no one else can get so easily. and then there is the human interactions that he describes and it is all quite petty and small minded and just like the vitriol that happens amongst poor people .

being rich does not make you immune to all these petty human feelings. so i still do not know what is so good about being filthy rich , what special enjoyment that only rich people can get because of their riches that the rest of us who are not rich can never experience. so far, at least as far as the pages i have read before i gave it up and returned the book to the library… i have not discovered it.

at least being poor, i can get to enjoy the intense pleasure i get from eating my croissant, and pleasure from being able to do my own shopping and delights when i bag a bargain, or enjoy my own cooking, and deciding what favourite food i can chose to make and eat.

there is a lot of pleasure in that, for me anyway. it is like making your own tea to your own satisfaction or what you fancy that moment, and getting a lot of pleasure out of it;  rather than have some servant make your tea for you and being served by them hand and foot. some might say that is the height of what wealth can buy you , someone else to do all the legwork, but to me, they take away the pleasure of just doing the ritual of it and enjoying it for its own sake. 

 

simple pleasures

london 8.58pm 10.7C dry now but raining practically all day. saturday 2018

it put a damper on the labour march this morning, which disrupted the bus services. they did a reverse route , normally they go from marble arch to parliament square . this march was in the opposite direction. it made me go into the tube when my bus was stopped at hyde park corner. it was no big deal for me, as i get free travel on the tubes as well as the buses. from the banners, it seems most of the marchers were RMT supporters. this is the rail union that has been in dispute over guards and doing rolling strikes that have really made life terrible for rail commuters.

there were no spectators lining the road watching on , or waving at them. most were tourists that just sat in coffee shops looking at the marchers going by, or walking along the road on the other side, getting to where they are going because they cannot take the buses, which were not running . in fact the roads were blocked so that even cars are not running.

on my way back, i discovered that the victoria line in central london is completely shut, because of a body on the line. so i decided to just walk to the virgin lounge and while the time away there as i can see the tail end of the march allready coming to view as i came out of green park and walking towards piccadilly. there was very clean roads after the marchers, because close on their heels was a platoon of cleaners with brooms, marching along at the tail end cleaning up as they go.

i quite enjoy the virgin lounge. it is a very simple pleasure and makes me realise that there are many of such pleasures in life if u are aware of them.

like for eg, shopping for food. people say they dont like grocery shopping, but they miss a simple pleasure. it is the anticipation of cooking a nice meal, and looking forwrd to eating it, that forms a part of the pleasure. those who dont knowhow to cook are depriving themselves of such a simple pleasure, that dont require a lot of skill, nor time, nor money and is enormously pleasureable for what little it costs.

i remember reading of a guy who gave up work and lived in a cruise ship for 20yrs, saying he dont have to worry about cooking or shopping for food, as that is all done for him in the ship; saying he can then give a lot more time to doing what he likes to do…. which seems to be basically doing nothing, except eat, sleep, look at the laptop a lot, haha. having everything done for him, like a rich man with lots of servants to do his every bidding is not really such a great life really. it can get damn boring. there is a lot of joy doing these so called mundane tasks yourself. you are living instead of having some one else doing the living for you. 

spending money is a simple pleasure in itself.

london 9.04am 15.2C sunny sunday 2017

i am unhappy not spending money

i think this is a very astute observation. i happened to come on it, in my wordpress reader, and other observations mentioned also strike to the heart of the matter of being thrifty and saving money.

yesterday i talked on simple pleasures, but if u think of it, spending money is a simple pleasure and a very powerful one as well. fortunately, the amount spent is not a strong factor … though it could be to some…it is highly possible that the pleasure in spending money is the huge amounts you spend, that might be the big factor in liking that pleasure…  but even then, small amounts can ride up to a huge outlay over time. some might even think if they dont spend money they are not living a good life. that they are missing out on something. that they are depriving themselves of life experience because they are not spending money.

in the end, the best advise to save money is dont buy anything… impossible to follow of course, so the more practical advise is spend less than you earn. and you can play it out over any time span that u like. a month, a year, 10yrs… as long as when u tote it up, u spend less than you earn. but important that u feel happy about it, otherwise it becomes too much like hell.

looking back on my life i realise i have been adjusting this spending as a pleasure by incorporating it to buying bargain foods. so my urge to spend is nicely fulfilled but i get double pleasure knowing i get really good value for what i buy and at much reduced prices, and also get the simple pleasure of enjoying eating what i bought. so win-win-win all round.

another way of saving money is to make it yourself. but i realise it does not work for me. for eg, i used to bake bread, but it still means u got to buy the ingredients, than the effort of making it and the cost of baking it in the oven using electricity/gas. unless you enjoy the making of it for its own sake, i find it is too much bother and does not save much… when the supermarkets reduce their bread to so little , 10p, 5p, for the commercial breads, and 25p for the instore baked ones.

and i find i dont want to eat so much bread anymore. its the same with cakes, i just find i dont want to eat them anymore… and at a stroke i get rid of the conundrum of whether to bake them or buy them. 

 

 

simple pleasures

london 8.56pm 15.5C dry night saturday 2017

i just got back from the tesco, went there to see if i can garner some bargain foods, but there was only  on sale lots of packs of vine tomatoes that are expired today but past their best, i could feel they were quite soft,  and when i opened them at home, i saw some were squishy. so i was glad i  bought 2 packs only. haha. they are only 15p per pack (of 8 small tomatoes usually £1. it is very overpriced at £1 really esp when it is only 230mg) anyway… they are excellent for making a tomato sauce.

but the highlight of this trip there was finding a bag of £10,10kg kohinoor basmati rice hidden deep in the recess of the shelf and had been missed by other bargain hunters. so i bought that. it must have been there all the time. you could say it was meant to be for me. haha. ah well, the little joys of life. haha. 

and the joys of life continues even to this simple thing … i fancied eating a fried egg, so i just cook one and have it with a slice of toast, with peanut butter and strawberry jam. a fried egg is so delicious. who couldhave thought a simple thing like that can be so nice.