Short story

    One day a farmer shows up at the market. He was carrying some vegetables, a couple of chickens in a locked container, and a big clay pot filled with white milk. He set his stall in a seemingly peaceful corner and began to spread a cloth on the ground to put up his wares. After done so, he sat back and began to cry out towards the milling crowd.

    The wares that he was selling was decently priced and the vegetables look fresh, albeit looks quite weary from the travel and the warm weather. But they look better than some stalls located near. The milk was not sour and was sold for a price per cup. The chickens were the priciest of them all but not the most expensive in the market. The farmer makes full profit from all of this. He cried out more for the crowds to buy his wares.

    Then, a woman came with her husband trailing behind. The woman was decently dressed like a villager, came to the central city for the market. The husband was gloomy faced and looked weary from all the walking. The woman asked the farmer about the wares with a stern face. The farmer smiled and told her the prices. A shilling for a full basket of vegetables, a shilling and a half for a full chicken, slaughtered or not, and 3 pence for a cup of milk. The woman frowned and said that the vegetables were too steeply priced and walked off, with the husband behind.

    The farmer was confused at this. A whole basket of vegetables is a lot of vegetables. But maybe the woman was right. He looked at the wares and saw that some of them have begun to look not so very fresh. He decided to lower the price per basket to half a shilling, or 5 pence. He began to rearrange the vegetables so that the crowd would see the fresher ones above.

    After that, a man garbed in expensive clothes came to his stall. Behind him, a servant garbed in a black suit followed with his head bowed. The farmer thought that he was a merchant by the looks of him. The merchant leaned forward and inspected the chickens. He asked the price for one full chicken. The farmer said it was a shilling and a half for one. The merchant looked stunned at this and began to beckon to his servant. The servant folded out a piece of yellow paper and showed it to the merchant. He inspected it thoroughly with sharp eyes. Then he fished out a big purse and took out 6 shillings. The man said that he would buy 4 chickens. The farmer agreed on that and asked if he wanted them slaughtered. The merchant replied no and he wanted them fresh. The farmer agreed and gave the merchant the chickens in another container with 6 shillings in hand.

    When the merchant went off though, he could hear his loud whisper that the chickens were nice and healthy but to sell at one and a half shilling is either foolishness or the man knows not of trading for profits. The farmer was confused at this. He looked at the shillings and then at the chickens. The chickens clucked. He thought that the price was already steep but he guessed that the chickens were quite healthy. He fed them everyday and take good care of them. He pushed the shillings into his pocket and decided the next time someone asked, the chickens would be 2 shillings.

    Just after that thought, an old woman appeared. She was in rags and a pair of kids trailed behind her, looking just as dirty and ragged. The woman looked at the vegetables longingly and asked the farmer what was the price for them. The farmer took pity on them and said, it only costs 1 pence for half a basket. The woman frowned. Then she saw the big pot. She asked how much is the milk for a cup? The farmer said it was 3 pence for a cup. The beggar woman frowned again. Then one of the kids pulled onto her dirty sleeve and asked if they are going to eat anything today. The farmer fought back his tears and took up a basket, filled it with some of the fresh vegetables and handed it to the beggar woman. The woman was shocked and refused to take it because they had no money to pay for them. The farmer said it wasn't a purchase, it was a gift. The woman wiped away some tears in her eyes and took it with a thousand thank yous trailing behind.

    After the woman went away, the previous village woman came back. This time the farmer saw that the still gloomy husband was carrying a basket full of food and vegetables with some jars of milk. The village woman saw the beggar walked away with a basket full of fresh vegetables and demanded the farmer the price he sold her those food. The farmer said they were free and a gift to the old lady. The village woman turned red and demanded he should do the same to her because she was a hard woman too in a hard life! But when she saw only the wilted vegetables are left, she changed her mind and demanded a "gift" in the form of 5 cups of free milk. The farmer was shocked. The woman pushed him even more while her husband struggled to keep straight from the weight of the filled basket.

    At that moment, the merchant from before came but his servant wasn't there. Instead, trailing behind him like a herd of sheep were several other better clothed men and women. They were other merchants as well and silk draped over some of their clothes. The merchant ignored the angry woman and stood before the farmer. He asked how much does he sell the chickens. This time, the farmer said it was 2 shillings per chicken. The merchant was taken a aback. He said to the farmer that the chickens were cheaper when he bought them. The farmer said that the chickens were healthy and fine so he decided to increase the price. The merchant fumed and turned towards his other colleagues. They was a heated discussion and then the merchant turned towards him again. He said if he decreases the price to 1 shilling, he will take all of the chickens at that moment. The other merchants agreed, nodding their heads behind him.

    Meanwhile, the woman was chucking her waist and demanded that she should be given those milk because of her hard life. The farmer said that she looked quite well considering she already has a lot of food. The woman said that the food was her provision for the entire week and it will be hard for the rest of the month. The merchant looked at the woman below his nose and snorted, mumbling about poor management and servant life. Luckily the woman was so angry she didn't hear it. The merchant demanded again about the chickens and this time said that if he doesn't decrease the price, he would not be allowed at the market anymore, with a smirk on his face. The farmer gulped down and said to the merchant that he won't be making any profit if that's the case.

    The merchant retaliated that he is a farmer. For a farmer to live, he doesn't need that much profit now does he? The farmer thought that yes, he didn't really need all that much money. All he had is a small little farmland and a healthy wife back home. Who needs more than that? But they could use a new barn, this old one looked like it would be torn off if there's a few strong gusts and they could use a proper feather bed. His back aches whenever he got up from his hay bed. And he knows that his wife doesn't really like it either. So, he said to the merchant that he can buy them at the normal price of 1 and a half shilling. The merchant thought about this and slightly turned towards his colleagues. They nodded a bit and the merchant smiled and said deal.

    So the merchant and his herd of little human sheep walked away happily with a couple of chickens. The farmer pushed 6 more shillings down his pocket and faced the angry woman. The woman demanded once more for free milk but this time she added that for making her wait, he would have to give the rest of the vegetables too! The farmer sighed and said that he would sell the milk for 1 pence a cup and the vegetables are free for her. After all, the vegetables looked bad now. The woman said the milk will have to be free as well or she would complain to the merchants guild and he would be kicked from the market. The farmer sighed and gave up. He took 5 cups of milk and gave it to her and the rest of the vegetables were quickly put on top of the over-encumbered basket. After that she stormed off without a word.

    In the end, the farmer turned towards the rest of the milk in the pot. There was only a quarter left and decided that it would serve for tonight's drink. He turned towards the cow, unhooked it and walked off towards his home. On the way back, he counted that he made 12 shillings today. If he had sold for the price he decided, his profit would be about 16 shillings. The profit today would be used for his home maintanence and if there's any left, he would buy some much-needed blankets, thin as they would come. He sighed and decided that the next time he wanted to give something for free, or bargain for something, he would have to be prepared that some would take advantage of it.

Moral of the story: You can't make everyone happy. If you do, you won't be.

My own website

This internship thingy isn't as I expected it to be.

But don't get me wrong, I am learning a lot and as far as experience go, I definitely get the feel of how a man with a wage work. I don't like one bit of it.

But a wage would say, especially to the womenfolk, "This man has an assured source of money, however it would turn out," and that generally would give her a sense of confidence in the man in that the man can actually float the family up even when they are down. Money would be there all the time. And if it's not, we'll just wait for the end of the month.

She would like that, of course anyone would like that. You go to your office, sit around, do you work or something and then at the end of the month, get a sum of money. Sometimes, you get lots of work, sometimes you're out of it but your company would always pay you at the end of the month. Sounds like a paradise, right?

Unfortunately, it would also mean all you do all weekdays is get up, go to work, get back home, sleep. Rinse and repeat. Hell. That sounds like hell. A lot of men who work like this, I don't know about them, but I don't like the sound of a grey office and do some kind of work all day long and nothing else. I want freedom. Hell, I want it the way it was. Writing my own stories, trying to figure out things, be creative within my own mind, typing my feelings into paper; I don't see any of this currently in the position that I am. It sucks.

But really. What I want doesn't always mean what the people around me needs. It's always something else, something completely different that they need. They need money for food to feed mouths, they need money to buy things that they need and I don't disagree with them but writing stories is like trying to hit a jackpot. It's either your book sell or it would just turn out to be lump of shit. Either way, yes, if some people would buy your book from a bookstore or somewhere, you'll get a percentage of it and that's your wage. Sometimes it would be just a couple of hundreds, sometimes thousands but authors who have made it to the top gets millions just by typing words. Albeit, organized words but that really sounds like my kind of job.

It all comes down to money. Designing websites, networking, hammering down on a piece of metal, writing stories; these jobs are equally hard work. It's just that some people would actually like to do some of these jobs. And that's when the magic happens.

Anyways, this is just a test to see how blogspot handles posts. My assignment goes about something like a portal kind of thing that displays news, and other functions. While I only have the basic understanding and practical knowledge of web programming, I am learning a lot. It's fun when you figure something out and it works in the end. Kind of like writing a story. You figure out how to do it and how it would look and if you run into a problem, you think of ideas on how to get around it, patch that hole up. When you finally get it, you get this sense of satisfaction.

I don't see any of that in this paperwork thing. It's all just stress all around.

If anyone of you

Says that education is not important and test results are useles,

Think again, man.

How do you measure the worth of 2000 individuals without taking 2000 hours in your life? Even if given 1 hour for each student in a school, you cannot know a person's true worth by interviewing him for that period of time.

So they come up with standardized syllabus and skills for you to learn. And when the time comes, those syllabus and skills are tested on a piece of paper that are then marked according to what the syllabus has told.

Some of you are saying, "It's all memorization and not a single piece of critical thinking is needed!" Well, I say if you do say that, you have to accept that there IS a test out there that are all critical thinking and if you do not pass even that, you would say, "It's all critical thinking and not a single piece of WHAT I LEARNT IN SCHOOL IS NEEDED!"

Sorry to say to you guys, but schools are important. They keep us in line of what is needed for the foundation of the world, i.e. Knowledge.

Some of you would say you wouldn't use Pythagoras' theory ever in real life, but some of us build buildings that require that exact theory and we are the ones who make homes for you guys.

Next time, when you say what you learnt in school isn't real life, look to your smart phones, your homes, the plane that you're about to board, the inhaler that you use, the computer that you type on, the straw that you used to drink. These things are made by people who went to school and gotten the same knowledge that you are now learning or have learnt.

Respect knowledge.

100 posts GET and I missed it.

So, this is the 102nd post ever on this blog.

The 100th post was the Atlantica.

Woo! Yeah! This would be so cool and memorable if anyone ever read this!

I love you, Rabbia! Besides, you're the only one who read these things anyway...

I love you so much...

Dare I say that I didn't think this blog would hold until now....

And dare I say, from the first post there is, I can even see where I started from. And here I am. Doesn't feel like that much change but nevertheless

100 posts reached! Yay!

Tattered dreams, Old clarity

    "Do this anymore and you're asking for hell," the man in black said with a threatening voice, his face hidden by the car window, slightly lowered down only to uncover his spectacled eyes. The eyes behind those glasses were old and worn but they are still full of vitality and a keen sense of instincts has flared more than anyone in them. They left scars that cannot be seen by the eyes alone.
    "That's exactly what I'm doing, old man. I'm looking for Hell. He hasn't been answering these days, so I come knocking up on his door, just telling him I'm still alive," a voice beneath the blanket of rain came from the alley opposite the car.  Through the hammering of the rain, the voice still hold its volume and a sinister grin appears with the sentences, a mirth that hasn't been unleashed but held on so tightly, the air vibrates. "Why don't you go up to that big old place and wait for me. I'll be your undertaker soon enough. Old. Man."
    The eyes in the car stared long and hard in the blank space where the voice originated from. He looked on as if waiting for the inevatable to occur but the happenings are far from his days. The eyes took on a menacing glare, a lion ready to pounce on his prey without any mercy. But this prey, it had something special. His preys are always helpless and by the time they realize he has his teeth around their throats, they begged for life and refused to die. But a prey is a prey, one way or the other. The teeth do not unclench when blood clench his thirst.
    The rain fell down on the tin roofs, the sounds enveloped anything but anyone who walked by can feel the tingly sensation in the air. Two mighty beings are on their edge, their swords ready to be sheathed in seconds and the fight enveloped soon will tell who will be the conquer of the other. Neither side wants to be defeated and both seem ready to die to fight for his cause. The subjugation of the other.
    "Last warning. You do that one more time and I'll-"
    "Kill me? You know it doesn't work that way, old man."
    "Do you mind if an old man wants to finish his sentences once in a while?"
    "Of course. I'd give you an apology but I'm all out of it, since you're the one who took them all anyways."
    "Stay down. And maybe this whole place will give you another chance to live."
    The window rolled up and two lights punctured through the veil of rain. An engine roared and the car disappeared down the road. There was no numbered plate, and the model was absolutely non-existent. That car was wrought from the it's rightful owners and it stayed there like an old pair of socks. Anybody who saw it would shy away, making way for it, knowing who the owner is and the power he holds. But that power will be taken over, one way or the other. This day or the next.
    The sinister smile in the alley turned into a grimace of tightly coiled whip, readied to the fullest extent to be released. It leaves a good enough bad vibe to the whole place that anyone would avoid it. In the dark, a tattered and worned rag of clothes started to move. It tried to stand but it's thin legs tripped and the face end feel down in a heap. An arm appeared, pushing the body up. It trembles, trying to push against it's own weight. It managed to get to its knees when the body suddenly hunched up and heaved. The remains of food in it's belly was gone in an instant. It pushed more with it's frail legs, trying it's hardest to stand it's tallest, to stand ready.
    "I'll be damned if something like you or this place takes me over. I'd go to hell and come back with souvenirs to give out to you guys first," it said with a shaking voice. It wiped his mouth with an already dirty rag, as the rain poured down it's face. A black eye peered through the filthy long hair. The area around it was swollen. The colour of the eye was deep brown, and bags of unslept nights weighed it down. There was fire in it, a fire that has burned as long as it has breathed on this earth. It wasn't large but it was fierce enough to burn whoever gets too close to douse it out. Even the world would feel it's wrath one day.
    It smiled, remembering one fine night when the same old man came up to it, in a corner. After certain events, it would be the most ironic in this scene. The same old man who had threatened him far worse than death, had used to comfort him. A filthy piece of rag and a bundle of loose muscles was what the old man tried to give life to. He succeeded but what came forth from the womb was not what the old man intended to be. He came to it's ears and said those words that left a permanent scar on it's tired and still beating heart.
    "One day, Hell does not come up to you. It will be too scared of you to get close. When that happens, you're the one who will chase it down. One day, you will look for Hell."
    It's shoulders shook while pieces of laughter got up to his throat, trying to escape. The sheer craziness seeped out of those eyes and the whole scene stared at it, either with pity or outright repulse. It clutched its face, trying to stop the insanity and hold down his minds to it's roots. The shoulders heaved once but this time, nothing came out. There was nothing to get out anymore. Only emptiness and a burning feeling, making crisps of the mind that it's feeding on, remain. The rags and clothes tried to stand upright, but even in that endeavor it failed. Suddenly, that burning feeling gave off a familiar smell. A keen and lofty smell that filled it's nose. It knew how to be angry.
    "You haven't seen the last of me," it whispered to the world. "Hell belongs to me."
    With that, the rain poured even harder than before. The tattered piece of rags and clothes disappeared behind the curtain. Walking with a defeated aura, but looking forward for another fight. It would not give up, even when the world batter him down. It would stand, and look forward.