Appreciattion

Experience with friends and family members tells me that those who cannot appreciate what they have can never be happy with what they get.

From that premise I deduce that those who cannot be happy with what they get cannot appreciate. Maybe a stupid deduction but to me it's a truism. Or is it just a tautology?



Working on my own fallible self and my kids as a test case, I used to have an old bicycle (with one brake and no speed gears) which was my most precious means of transporation. I cycled ten miles to school and even undertook a journey to Singapore with two other bicycle-lover friends. My uncle whom I visitted in Singapore scolded me for putting him to shame - not being able to afford the cost of a round trip by bus or railway to the island. He wanted to send us all home by train at his expense but we scooted away by night on our trusty leg-orerated machine.



When on becoming wealthy enough to afford a 3-speed bicycle I bought one way back in the 1970s, I treated the bike like a Ferrari or a Lambourgeni. But in the 1990s I bought my son a 16-speed racing bike. He was happy for a few weeks then threw it away for he wanted a mountain bike - a carbon fibre machine with 24 speed and costs >RM4000. God! My bike cost less then RM200 and I thought it was extrvagant and frivolous. Now, the machine lies in pieces in the storeroom, taken apart for repair but never put together again. My daughter on the other hand was given a Nokia 95 handphone. She cast it aside a few weeks later for a Dopod...I don't know what...

Talking about relatives,....no, I'd better not, lest it looks like a grouse. No, not even about friends. Only self-criticism is acceptable and decent. I was given a little Notebook computer by my wife. I could not appreciate it because it had a very limeted capacity or memory - just one megabyte. I was given another with a 2MB memory. Now I've been give one with a 2GB
capacity and....I think I'd appreciate one which is small, cute and very light, which can be a video camera, a music box, a communication equipment and ...hell if I know what I really want!

But I love an old camera which shot many brilliant photos of me as a handsome young man. No modern camera can produce that kind of shots anymore. You bet!