le craic’s Friday Eyedrops

Writing by aj@lecraic on Friday, 20 of June , 2008 at 6:24 am

It must be 10 years ago that I went and had my fortune told. I just wanted to satisfy my belief that fortune telling is all a load of nonsense. And so it was one Bank Holiday weekend that I stepped up into Madam Boswell’s totally ordinary looking caravan to see what was in store for me. I was disappointed that there was no crystal ball. In fact, there was nothing to add to the sense of occasion I believed should accompany a visit to a fortune teller. To try and recall the details of what she told me ten years later is a task and a half for a man who will, quite often, make up a lunch and then leave the house sans sandwich.

What I can tell you is two specific things she told me from reading my palm. She said I worked in computers and that I had an accident. She was right on both counts. There were some vague references to dead relatives and other non specifics as well. When I left the caravan I thought “wow, she was amazing – so accurate”. It didn’t take me long to figure out that what she had told me was stuff that could apply to anyone. Telling me I worked in computers could easily have applied to a lot of guys my age at the time. Everyone has had an accident at some point. It might not have been serious, but just think for a second and I’ll bet you come up with something, even it was stubbing your toe this morning!

So why on earth am I recalling this “brush with the paranormal”. Well would you believe, it has a little something to do with a book I’m reading called Quirkology. Yep, I’m back to that book again, it’s becoming a bit of a hoary old chestnut at this stage.

There’s a bit in the book about personality tests and an experiment which shows that fortune telling and astrology just pick out general, non-specific pieces of information that could apply to anyone. Rather than make this post too long, I’ve put the personality test results on a separate page. When you read it, just imagine you did the test, had the results analysed and were presented with this description. How well does it describe you? Click here for the description of your personality.

This is lovely and floaty and wonderful.

A TV programme that I like very much is Dragon’s Den. If you’ve not seen it, the premise is very simple. Entrepreneurs pitch their business idea to a panel of multi-millionaire business people. If the dragons like the idea, the entrepreneur gets a nice wad of cash to take their business to the next level. It has had some really great ideas down through the years, and even more crazy ones.

One success story from the last series (or maybe the one before, I’m not sure) was Levi Roots who started off his pitch to the dragons by singing a song “Reggae Reggae sauce”. They liked the idea of his home made recipe for barbeque sauce and gave him an investment £50,000 for 40% of his company.

The product has gone on to sell very successfully in the big supermarkets in the UK and now Levi has a book out. It has 80 simple recipes with a Caribbean flavour. Selling well on Amazon at the moment and available locally in Eason.

A really great success story.

Isn’t it marvellous what computers can do? This is what I hear from customers when they watch me do some Photoshop related task that is second nature to me. It usually passes over my head but sometimes I say back “Well, it’s not the computer that does it – it’s the person in the driving seat”. “Ah yeah, well still though the computer is amazing” is sometimes the reply.

That’s the problem with allowing people look over your shoulder while you work on something. I try not to let that happen, precisely for the reason that when someone sees me do it and I make it look easy, they see no value in the work I’ve done.

It’s a bit like the golfer Gary Player who managed to to get himself out of a really tricky sand trap. Not only did he excute the perfect shot out of the sand trap, he landed the ball about half a metre from the hole.

Someone in the crowd heckled him after the shot saying, “Hey Gary, that was a really lucky shot.”

Gary stopped and turned to the heckler and said : “I guess you’re right. But you know, it’s a funny thing. The more I practice the better I become, and the better I become, the luckier I get.”

Looks like you might be a new visitor to le craic. If you like what you see here and fancy some daily diversions delivered to your favourite feed reader, why not click to join Club le craic. Go raibh maith agat! Thanks a thousand!

Category: friday eye drops

• Add this post to
• Del.icio.us -
• Meneame -
• Digg