I felt a pretty woman’s breasts yesterday – firm, bouncy and just about the right size.
Before your imagination starts going wild, no, I wasn’t making out with some newfound girlfriend; what happened was the young woman walked into me.
And I am not Joshua Robinson, so I didn’t enjoy it.
She was staring at her smartphone, busy texting as she walked, and she walked right into me.
Distracted, she was.
Distracted, I became.
Distracted too was Brian Cullinan, Pricewaterhouse Coopers’ US Board Chairman and a member of PwC’s Global Board. In addition to his firm board roles, he is the Managing Partner for PwC’s practice throughout Southern California, Arizona and Nevada.
Other than all those fancy titles, who the fuck is Brian Cullinan?
Well, he was the one who gave the wrong envelope to Warren Beatty, resulting in the actor wrongly announcing that La La Land (instead of Moonlight) was this year’s Best Movie at the Oscars.
Cullinan has since come under fire for tweeting just three minutes prior to handling over the envelope. He was told explicitly not to engage in social media use during the award presentation, but there he was, using Twitter.
Now he and a colleague who was with him have been banned from working at the Oscars.
Well, the retard should consider himself lucky.
A woman in China wasn’t so lucky.
She was out in one of the malls in Tianjin – Joy City Shopping Mall – when tragedy struck. Her two children, who were two and three years old, were with her.
Nothing joyous that day.
One child fell over the glass barrier, and distracted – as you can imagine – she lost grip of the second child and both kids plunged to their deaths four floors below.
Distraction won’t always kill but distraction distracts. Duh.
And it can be annoying as well.
While watching TV, and wanting to grab a quick glass of water from the kitchen, members of my wife’s family have the habit of standing up, slowly walking away from the TV while their eyes are still glued on the TV screen. More than once, they have walked into a pillar, a wall or someone else coming out of the kitchen with a bowl of hot soup.
And yes, it’s extremely annoying – and distracting – for the rest of us watching TV.
You stay married with someone for nearly 35 years and despite constant reminders, habits never change and you wonder if all the change management techniques on which you’ve built your entire career is all nothing but pure bullshit.
But of course, that’s the subject of another blog post another day. Can people change? That’s another post for another day indeed.
One of my sons – otherwise a very great kid in every other aspect – have the habit of dumping every cutlery he has already washed in the kitchen sink and then walking away; despite repeated reminders to transfer them to the drying rack, he continues to leave cleaned cutlery in the sink.
Can people change? Yup, that’s definitely another post for another day. (Yeah, I know, I’ve said it for the third time.) Could even be a dissertation for another PhD.
Lee Kuan Yew didn’t believe people can truly change, therefore, to invoke change in an organization, it was his view that you must first remove everyone currently in it, and start anew.
If this meant that every single person in an organization must be fired for the organization to move forward, then he would do it.
But one can’t fire one’s family right?
So I myself have to stay focused on managing my own expectations.
Staying focused is vital; allowing yourself to be distracted robs you of the full attention a particular task requires, often with undesirable results and dire consequences.
Once you’ve set your heart to accomplishing what needs to be done, garner all the tools and resources you need, put your heart and soul into it, and accomplish it, without allowing yourself to be distracted. You can then move on to other things in your life.
If your phone beeps while you are walking, let it beep and look at it only when you are situated comfortably at a safe spot before paying any attention to it.
If you are expecting an urgent reply while you are walking, step aside, stop walking, look at your phone, decide what to do next and move on.
Common sense isn’t it?
But like Voltaire said, common sense is not so common.
And for those retards at movies and concerts, your phones may be in silent mode, but blocks of bright lights in a darkened cinema or theater are also extremely distracting, so is your loud masticating of snacks, so please, please, don’t piss me off, k?