The Reiki has landed

Having recently gotten to know someone who is a ‘Reiki doctor’, I felt I needed to look into this practice to see what it was all about.

What is Reiki? After a quick Wiki I managed to gain some fundamental understanding of this form of healing. Spiritual healing to be precise, and if you asked me to define ‘spiritual healing’ in reiki lingo I would fail hopelessly. There is no scientific evidence to support the existence and manipulative healing effects of human ‘ki’. Ki is simply described by those familiar with it as ‘mysterious atmosphere’, ‘spiritual energy’ or ‘life force’. After reading those definitions the scientist in me screamed “ARRRGH! Hippies!!!” After hearing about so many reiki success stories the scientist in me shrugged and said “placebo effect…the dumbasses”.

I read further and came to the conclusion that reiki would theoretically work… it’s basically a method of getting your mind to communicate with your body. Too often in modern society do humans push themselves to the limit, their minds always want to achieve more but their bodies simply can’t cope with these ambitious targets and start degenerating as a consequence. In simple English “Stress can and will kill you”.

My relatively uneducated opinion is that when and if reiki does work, it’s because it manages to get high strung and generally stressed out folk to unwind. Simply telling these people to “chill out and stop stressing” won’t work because they have zilch intention of actually listening to you. Now, bring in a reiki doctor to lay them down on a comfy table and wave hands over them for 90 minutes whilst placing colourful “energy charged” crystals/rocks onto their head, chest, genetalia… add a bucket load of frowning, thinking and intense concentration and something DOES happen. The patient will start to BELIEVE. Once this is achieved the reiki doctor has basically done their job. A change in mindset is often all that is needed to overcome the toughest of obstacles.

Reiki hand positions...

hmmm...

I have no doubt that many people will disagree with my views (…most of them reiki practitioners and their patients). But they have to realise that I’m not slating the reiki business. Quite the opposite in fact, reiki is genius! If you could get someone to overcome their weaknesses and illness without actually doing anything or prescribing any drugs (abandoning he usual expenses, side effects and such) then by all means do so.

Queue analogy:

It’s like watching a good movie, nobody was thinking about how 90% of the battle sequences in The Lord of the Rings were computer generated images while they were watching (if you were, Congratulations! You are officially the biggest party pooper on the planet). If something is done convincingly enough, our minds perceive it to be real (even if for a short while… (Why is Frodo Baggins wearing shades and killing people in Sin City!!! The Ring! He MUST have… Oh… wait… nevermind…)).

Needless to say, when my acquaintance offered to do a quick reiki session on me I thought “Hmmm, what the hell, let’s see what comes of this” before placing my outstretched palm under hers. She frowned and thought for a little while. I really was expecting something profound after seeing those facial expressions… “Your Ki is unhappy, you need to bath under the waterfall of a clear mountain stream…” or “Your midi-chlorian count is low, you need to eat less junk food”. Heck even an uncertain “It’s difficult to say, your spiritual energy is blocking me out…” statement would have done the job.

Nope…

The reply I got surprised even me:

“Hmmm…” she said after a short while “You are not constipated”

(silence)

That’s it!!! Not Constipated!!! I could have told her that! She looked into to my Ki! Invaded my personal mysterious atmosphere! And all she could comment on was the passage of excrement through my anus!

Then I laughed… and brought my first ever reiki session to an abrupt end…

Just leave Zakumi ALONE!

This is a tale about Zakumi the leoperd. He is an official mascot for the largest tournament on the planet. Even I, a person that would rather watch a Mama Mia weekend marathon over saying the dreaded ‘C’ word, think the little guy is C- c- cu____ …(urg!) cute…



It just makes me sick seeing how soulless companies exploit cheap and under age labour forces by making them work under appalling conditions (or so I’ve heard) for something like R20 a day to manufacture Zakumi dolls (which Fifa will sell for R360 each)! Even the local heroes in charge of COSATU have called for the South African public to boycott the c-cute little mascot saying that these should be manufactured in SA so that we locals can benefit from the money. Cosatu even go so far as to say that they WILL NOT allow these dolls to be sold in South Africa and should manufacturing contracts not be awarded to SA companies “We will stop any FIFA or World Cup related event in this City (Cape Town)”.



Way to go Cosatu! Ransoming the slice of pie you have already been given to get the rest of the pie is pure genius. This “If I can’t have EVERYTHING I want NOTHING!” attitude is really going to pay off because the world knows that without South Africa the game of soccer would be DEAD and all happiness would be sucked out of everyone’s lives initiating a set of events that would bring about the apocalypse!



…the Dumbasses…



Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not condoning the way Fifa operates or Chinese ethics. I do, however, end up with the impression that the exploited Chinese work force has kind of been sidelined in all of this. These humans are being used (yet again!) to draw attention to a matter (in this case manufacturing contracts). After the whole affair gets milked by the media I noticed that the product off all the reasoning was not “How can we improve the quality of life of an exploited group of people” but instead “Money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money MONEY!!!! CASH, dong, $$$$ money money money money money money money money…”. That’s all they care about! That’s all they EVER cared about!!! “They have it, we WANT it, screw everybody and everything else”.



In other news, South Africa received a consignment of 30 000 Chinese made Zakumi dolls. The products were made so cheaply that buyers could not resist placing an order for 70 000 more!



Also, I have tickets for the world cup (3 tickets to be precise)! I don’t particularly like soccer… and I really didn’t put much effort into getting these tickets. Heck I’m not even sure which teams I will be watching! I can truly say that I DON’T deserve these tickets. Especially when I consider how many people I know that LOVE the sport and haven’t qualified for just ONE ticket. It goes to show how badly the whole event has been organized if undeserving people like me can get tickets and rub them in the faces of those who WANT tickets. I admit, this is a huge amount of fun (for me), but it’s plain unfair...



I could go all Indian and sell them off to someone else… but I’m going to be patriotic instead.

I’ll go to all my matches, I’ll shamelessly join the crowd when they cheer and boo even though I won’t know what’s going on. I’ll buy some big yellow Niknaks man glasses and construction helmets with “sharp sharp” and “peace” scribbled onto them with black marker. I’ll make the utter most of this opportunity because I know I’ll probably be too old or dead before I get another chance to attend a soccer world cup in my country.



Here’s to Bafana Bafana, I won’t mind if you totally arse up your matches and get knocked out in the first round 'cause if one team doesn’t deserve a win, Bloody hell it’s you lot… I’ll still support you till the end though.

Yet another milestone crumbles

Today I plumbed for the first time! So there I was, I had just flushed the toilet (a half flush for number ones…) and the cistern normally takes a few seconds to fill up again. I noticed that today the thing just carried on filling. So I jiggled it… the cistern handle, hoping that the plunger thingy had just got stuck open or something, before leaving. On my return there was the sound of the old cistern STILL filling up. Now I knew I had to get my hands dirty (not literally) or admit defeat and phone a plumber.

“Hah! What kind of a scientist can’t figure out and repair a simple flushing mechanism after all” I said to myself.

I rolled up my sleeves opened the cistern lid and peeked inside.

*sniff sniff* nope, not smelly… clean water, therefore no gloves needed. I noticed that when I flushed the floaty orange ball thingy didn’t go down. So I prodded it before it decided to simply fall off…metal bar and everything.

“Oh Shite!” I thought I would have to get a plumber now for sure. No wait, “What kind of a scientist can’t figure out and repair a simple flushing mechanism after all” I said to myself (again). I proceeded to try refit the old ball and bar to the toilet tap valve thingy.

Up

Down

Left

Right

Bit more force…

No luck

Call a plumber…?

NEVER!!!

So I decided to screw off the orange ball bit to be able to get more of an angle. I slotted the old bar right into place, screwed the ball back on and Bob’s your uncle she was working fine just fine. I even wanted to take a picture of this wonderful occasion “my first (successful) plumb” I wanted to entitle it. Then I thought, “Why would anyone want to see a photo of me with my hands in a toilet cistern, that’s just silly”. So instead I’m awarding myself a badge.