88 - Being too slow

It's Chinese New Year this week and I have the whole week off school. My friends and I went out for dinner and drinks after school yesterday and had a good time celebrating the fact that school's out. The restaurant-café we went to was a pretty cool place to eat. They had Monopoly and Jenga and a Foosball table, cards, board games, an Xbox, a Wii, comic books and manga, magazines, anything you would ever want to do to pass the time when waiting for food, or to entertain yourselves while you eat. They have several of those sorts of businesses here in Hong Kong and they're quite fun to dine at.

I was playing a game of Chinese checkers with my friends and a game that would normally take ten minutes amongst four people took much longer, or, at least, felt much longer. They weren't paying attention to the game, they were taking a long time to think, much longer than necessary since there were three other people who had to take turns, too. Thinking ahead about your next move would benefit everybody and save each player's time. The monotony was so intense I had to step out of the place to breathe and calm down. I hate it when another person takes forever to make their move in games, and I hate it when it's because they aren't really focusing on it.

Being slow isn't good. I hate it when someone slow gets in my way while I'm walking on the street. People who type slow on the computer for work, when chatting, people who take forever to reply to e-mails, texts, Facebook messages or invitations to an event, people who run slowly in a basketball game, people who read slowly in language classes, people who talk endlessly at meals and take forever to eat, people who have to try on fifty different clothes at a store when shopping, cab drivers that take their sweet time transporting you, restaurants that take ages to serve you food, buses or trains that take forever to arrive at the station, movies that don't start at the specified time printed on the ticket, cashier ladies that need time to count the change, teachers that go off on tangents, speak monotonously and take a long time to present material, all get on my nerves so much.

There are some individuals that even preach relaxedness, and say that walking slowly allows you to enjoy life more, to absorb the environment around you, to appreciate the trees and the fresh air and the sounds of birds in the morning time. They say that talking slowly in heated debates help get the point across clearer, they prevent us from losing our tempers, they can enunciate words properly, and we can admire how calm their words are. They say they would rather have the job done right than have the job done quickly. They say being in a rush is too stressful, that there's too much pressure.

I prefer fast to slow. It's more efficient, and people can always learn how to get the job done right and quickly. I'm constantly annoyed at how slow some people can be. I don't know how they get anything done, because there's just so much to do out there that's just... waiting to be done.

That's just it: slowness makes people wait. I tell you, you can do everything quickly if you just get used to being proficient in life. Just because I'm not sitting at a dining table and, instead, running around on the streets doesn't mean I can't have breakfast every morning before school. People can enunciate quickly and properly if they work at it, people can train themselves to be fast thinkers. Controlling the temper is another issue. And no, it's not stressful. What's stressful is when you're pressed for time at work, at school, in life, and if you handle stuff faster, you'll naturally become stress-free. Wouldn't you agree? I mean, how many times have you been stressed out by someone or yourself being slow? How many times has procrastination bitten you in the ass? We always prefer sooner to later. The early bird gets the worm, right?

Slow people, do you hate it too?