Happy 2005!

It's the first day of 2548 B.E. (that's 2005 C.E.). Sunshiny but cool (around 17 C) here in Bangkok.

A time to watch a surfeit of football, if you're in America. A time to reflect on the fragility of life, if you're in Southeast Asia. A time to make, or break, resolutions, anywhere at all. In the past I've made some pretty good resolutions. Resolutions that improved the quality of my life. Here are a few I feel safe in recommending:

Resolve to Greet the first person I meet each day with something like "Its a beautiful morning.", or "Its going to be a great day!" If you say this with conviction, its a definite possibility that it will be so. On the other hand, if you begin by saying something like "Today is really going to be hard.", or "Looks like bad weather today.", your day is absolutely certain to turn out as predicted. An odd sort of metaphysical effect. If you predict joy, you might be right. If you predict sorrow, you're certain to be right. Its as if you have a lot more negative power than positive power. Sort of like the situation with the current president. I've found doing this has improved my life greatly.

Resolve to stop having opinions about things I don't know anything about. This saved me huge amounts of time, both in not having to think up answers to questions I don't understand, and not having to defend my point of view in useless arguments. This is defintely the most effective and useful resolution I've ever made.

As you can readily see, I have long since lapsed in the application of both these resolutions.

Its a beautiful morning!
Have a happy new year.