BidPax?

While you would think wow $13 for an iPod Touch 32G or $15 for an Xbox is cheap, think again.

Each bid allows you to raise the price by 1c, while the bid itself costs $0.6-$1 depends on how many bids are you buying in bulk (buying 500 bids for $300 gives $0.6 per bid). Let's just say everyone is buying the largest bulk and hence every bid costs $0.6, a $13 iPod Touch would cost all bidders 1300 bids, i.e. $780, look, the final price $13 is nothing comparing to the bidding cost. How much does that iPod Touch cost? $399 delivered on the official Apple store. Same calculation, you could see bidders paid $900 bidding cost for the Xbox.

So how much did the winning bidder actually paid? Only one bidder in this bid is not possible because nobody is competing you might get the goods for 1c that's $0.61 for the whole thing. So start from two bidders, the case is still easy, $780/2 = $390 for each bidder, meaning that the winning bidder paid $403($390+$13) for the $399 iPod (surprise surprise) while the losing bidder paid $390 and get nothing! In the case of more bidders the bidding cost for each person cannot be calculated for exact but if one bidder is intending to outbid anybody whenever a new bid is placed, he pays half of the bidding cost, which in the iPod case is $390.

I would love to be a seller on BidPax but I think the company is the only seller here cos they obviously make a lot of money out of those who didn't do the math prior :P

Vegetarian Hypocrisy

I have noticed that increasing population of this world is going vegetarian. Reasons?

Animal cruely. As if there wasn't cruelty practiced on plants! Potatoes, tomatoes and many others are skinned and cut into pieces. Leeks in eternal torture whenever the leaves grow to a certain level is cut and they have to grow it again. Basil and parsley planted in pots in the kitchen are nipped off their best leaves whenever needed. Cabbages and cucumbers are left immersed in salty, sour and stinky solutions until totally rotten before eaten. The only difference is that you (consumers) are often the ones who practise such cruelty towards their vegetarian food. That plants do not express their feelings like a dying cattle or lamb with their eyes in those stunning pictures does not mean they do not have feelings.

Health. Nutritionally speaking, a vegetarian diet hardly supports the well being of human. A simple example is omega-3 fatty acids, which are not made within the body and are responsible for modulating inflammation and other allergic reactions are mostly sourced from fish, vegetarian wise they are only found in tiny amounts in nuts. Omega-6 fatty acids, on the other hand, although also essential, are responsible for enhancement of such allergic reactions. Omega-6 fatty acids are the ones that are available abundantly in plants. A shifting to a vegetarian lifestyle is a huge interruption to the balance of intake of omega-3:omega-6, suggested ratio 1:3-4, is currently 1:30-50 in the developed world. This could also be one of the causes of people getting increasingly allergic to increasing number of materials in these countries.

Obesity. Well at first I found it interesting that vegetarian people in Australia are still way overweight, but when I found out their only non-alcoholic drink is sodas I don't wonder anymore.

I am not suggesting a better way here, I don't see one. This is a cruel world, if you are not able to be cruel to any other species, you die. Going vegetarian does not mean you are any less cruel, you are just hypocrite plus you are risking your own well-being.

Future

I'm graduating. Sounds cool? What about the things after that? Find a job, if I'm not lucky enough, continue my study for an honours project, and if I'm not lucky enough even for that, keep finding a job until the next year honours open application... In whichever case, I'll have to get a new visa to stay in Australia.

I don't actually know where to from here. I don't see a future ahead of me yet, I am not even sure if I would be graduating this sem (well 70% sure I could but anything could happen). A job is even more blur. I haven't started applying for many of them yet, well there are vintage jobs available in Mildura which I have applied but even if I get an offer it's only a vintage. The chance of staying after the vintage is quite slim. On to honours, I don't know if my results are good enough among the applicants, they weren't very good to me at all... I hope I could talk the professors into having me, but then if I got a job somehow I'll have to defer that offer, which doesn't seem quite good... Anyway, I'll try to apply for both and see what happens. Wish things turns out OK...

And for now, I should only concentrate on my upcoming exams in these few weeks left as a student, probably ever.