It's 'Go-Go' not 'Cry-Cry'

I finished Catch-22 today, I remember the book turning morbid, horrifying and unenjoyable towards the end. And it does, but the ending itself I think summarises beautifully the principle. I would infact advocate replacing the bible with Catch-22 for the betterment of Society.
Here now I will say are three books that should be permanantly on school syllabus to help facilitate what may be called 'an education'

1. Catch-22
2. 1984
3. The Selfish Gene.

The only one I haven't read, is the selfish gene, but soon I feel I must. Today may be a new record for me, as I post three posts in one day, but I do so because tomorrow morning I go to a country where I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post on my blog at all. Should that be the case at least my sight will have this Kobe Bryant widget that will update in my absense.

But it is about Kobe Bryant and not about my thought, Kobe is however a pretty exciting player, edging closer and closer to Jordan with each successive performance.

Right now though I'm excited about 'Individualism' though, and it came about from trying to explain Ricardo Semler to Miki and flicking through Dawkin's 'the Selfish Gene' in the Takamatsu book store, in which Dawkins seems to lead towards how seemingly altuistic behaviour may actually on the whole be selfish when viewed from the perspective of genes.
All summed up by the phrase of Ricardo Semler I like 'What would you rather have? The tail of an elephant or all of an ant' to explain the counter intuitive logic, of instead of retaining all profits for yourself, to let the employees actually share in the profits and decide what to do with them. He also allows a lot of his employees to set their own wages and so forth.
The same underlying principle was explained to me by Brenton when I revealed my ignorance about dividends, to which he said you had to give investors dividends, paid out of company profits because otherwise they had no incentive to invest in the company. By giving away your profits to investors you raise capital in the company, enabling furthergrowth.
But I digress, Individualism seems to be the answer and builds on my inverted Golden Rule of 'Demand for yourself what you would do onto others' which in turn, is like Eleanore Roosevelt's 'No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.' which is one of my favorite succinct lines in history. And if a bunch of people consent to your superiority by consenting to their own inferiority, then I believe you are best off just consenting it right back at them, but be thankful for the complement.
So that is where my curiosity leads me next in terms of pursuits of the head, and in terms of pursuits of the head, Japan has been invaluable.
Yesterday I said goodbye to Misaki, and felt good, two people frustrated endlessly by our own caring and effection to eachother. As Damian pointed out, Love is not always a positive emotion.
Except that I am sure we will both gain by it.
After Misaki and I spent the best part of our remaining time together arguing ineffectually about why we don't want to be together, we ended up parked in a car on the Takamatsu warf, a dirty body of water possessed of its own beauty, much like how we met, in a bar on the waterfront of the Yarra, an filthy river I wouldn't swim in if you paid me.
And the big factor is how slight the chance that brought me so much pleasure and so much grief. Our meeting in the end was chance and almost not to be, and yet I find myself a long way from home, in a foreing country in a Town I never would have heard of if I didn't feel sorry for Miho turning 30 and thus extremely hungover from my own birthday party the night before, resolved to do Miho a favor and turned up to her party, where Miho negated her own applaudable efforts in pre-selling me to Misaki by introducing me to Misaki and then commenting on how kawaii she was, at which point I was overcome with fear that I might end up attracting some hello kitty into my life, that would fill every corner of it with cuteness.
But here I was, deeply upset to say bye to her. It was reassuringly awkward for the both of us, in one of those 70 goodbye hugs, neither of us, wanting a goodbye to be our last one.
But alas now I am sitting in a net-cafe, bored with Japan and eager to fly tomorrow to another country where by chance I have a 'brother' named Jerry, who by chance happened to be in my tutorial with my most hated teacher, who had failed me because my friends refused to let me join their group and I had adopted a proposal to let anyone join my group. I happened to be sitting next to a guy called Troy, and behind Jerry and his friend Felix.
Jerry and Felix begged the class openly to work with 'local students' and after turning around and joining our group, and nobody else wanting to work with the likes of Jerry or Felix, we ended up in a group with Jerry, Felix, Moggie and Andy.
And the next week Troy was gone, so I had four English as a Second Language speakers in a group, and me. And I did better in that subject than any others I have taken, and my grades kept improving as I finished my degree because I kept working with them.
And now from a chance meeting I have at least 2 rich backers from soon to be the most economically significant market in the world and 2 others of indeterminate wealth.
The moral of the story is, that people are tremendously good to know, and one should build one's network indiscriminately. Kindness and altruism really are the best policy.
One hand washes the other.
Japan has so many problems it is wonderful for someone like me to come here. I hold Misaki is wrong in equating enabling with helping, but am satisfied in my efforts to at least create a strong precedent for her relationships. I am sad I cannot keep her, but she seemed impressed with my idea to package and sell 'baby misakis' as a cute toy, so all is not lost.
I guess in the end, you get full value for all your efforts, you just may not know what form they will take.
I do wish though to say, I have lived in Japan for almost 3 months now and not had to touch my savings, which is achievement in itself. I couldn't have done it without the generosity of Chie and her family, whose grandma may have recieved her last hug from anybody from me, and possibly was why she cried when I left, that's seems to be the effect I have on Grandma's. Or the Taki's with whom were invaluable in their enthusiasm for debating the various aspects of the new things I learnt about Japan every day, even if looking into their mothers driblling mouth was offputting.
And Brenton who I realised is my most common subject matter in my artistic pursuit of drawing, most offen appearing with a cock in his mouth. He put me up in his flat sacrificing his personal space in an already cramped and claustrophobic Tokyo.
I appreciate you all, and Misaki, for sacrificing what time her boss left her to sleep so as to spend time with me. Those that have little can be most generous of all it seems. So thankyou Japan.
My desire to get out of here, seems matched by a desire to stay forever that I don't quite understand. Its been fun.