Continue reading… »

In my view, setting achievable goals does not seem like a good concept. Following are five of the several different reasons due to which setting achievable goals can be bad.

1. You limit yourself before you start.

   People who think of what they cannot do in their entire life usually look for smaller things they can do to feel better. If you want to simply feel better by faking levels of accomplishments by limiting your boundaries, go ahead. If you think your life should improve or you want to keep on improving the satisfaction of your life, you have to increase some thing, like effort or your targets or even your thinking, in order to expect or get more. Since you set goals usually to achieve something, setting limited goals means you want to achieve something that is easy and limited. Even the simple concept of thinking more about thoughts themselves or something helps.

2. You avoid obstacles.

   Have you ever come across the saying “Look for challenges.” Well, people who look for challenges in life simply because they want to face challenges worry me because such people are very weak: they usually simply want to prove to themselves or others that they are better. How about achieving something through a challenge? I am not sure if “The Challenge Facer” is a goal some people are out to achieve: maybe they are. Similarly, people who keep avoiding obstacles and living a life without obstacles usually end up not doing much.

   Focus on what you want. If there are challenges along the path of what you want, then facing those challenges is more logical, reasonable and ethical than simply going around saying “I’m a challenging person. I look for challenges.” Of course, once you are aiming for something, then you can look for challenges or try your best to avoid them. Now you should realize that your goal itself may be to face challenges in life for some reasons only known you². If such a goal exists, then sure, you can go ahead and look forward to such challenges in my view.

3. Life will not improve for you.

   How can life improve when you only set out to do things which are easily doable based on your existing life? If you want to change life, you have to do things differently to achieve a different result than what you are experiencing at the moment. How can a goal, which requires no change in the essential elements or views in your life, result in your life changing due to that goal?

4. Achievable goals are an excuse to simply have goals.

   Usually, it seems, many achievable goals exist simply because one wants to feel better by having any goal in their mind. Thus, you make plans on what to do in a year simply because making such a plan makes you feel that you are doing something good³. Sure, such a feeling is important also, but you can try to convert those feelings into other things also to see if the new results help you even more.

5. Stereotypical tradition of setting goals will continue.

   This reason usually happens because we see many others around us planning their upcoming year or analyzing their previous years to see what goals they can achieve or have achieved. If you set out to do something about your goal planning simply because people around you set their yearly goals, you may be simply making goal plans in order to fit into the society. You already know where I stand when it comes to doing things simply because the society does and loves them, right?⁴

Set goals regardless of their achievable status

Now you should realize that the very idea, of setting up goals that are easy to achieve or are simply achievable since the beginning, being bad also means that any goals you set are theoretically achievable. Thus, when you set goals, do not think about their achievable status or their achievable future. Think of the process and the actual goal. The more dreamy the goal, the more important it probably should or may be for you, even if that dreamy important goal is one of the dozens of other goals in your mind.

As time passes, you will realize that some goals are being achieved, some goals are failing miserably, while other goals have surpassed your expectations, have slowed down, or something else. That is normal, and that is how life is utilized to achieve something.

What do you think?

Please let me know what you think about the idea of simply having goals instead of achievable goals, or if you have any questions or comments or anything to share, like your own goals from the past or why you had them. Please let me know if the above thought or theory can be a universal law, or if there are exceptions where the above listed traits or other traits of achievable goals can do more good than this thought of mine, or if the idea above can be modified to be more accommodating.

When we have goals, we can work on achieving them. If we fail, we will learn and that feeling and experience becomes part of us, enabling us to hopefully try new and different ways of achieving other goals in the future. Say no to setting goals that are easily achievable on purpose. Focus on setting goals based on what you want your goals to be.

Thank you for reading.

« Show less..

Continue reading… »

The below Twitter messages exist just because Twitter exists, and just because one can Twitter, and because one cannot think of any other reason to Twitter, and just to increase Twitter followers³. It seems that the same mentality that has turned innocent blogs into money making professional-services-claiming-to-be-blogs and the non-blog arena into website-filled-with-keywords-and-tags-to-please-search-engines world has also flooded Twitter: people keep describing Twitter and similar services with as many complicated terms and terminologies as possible so that the end result will be more direct or indirect money somehow by making people think “Wow, this is useful because it is sophisticated. I’ma gonna use it! COOL!”

It is as if the fact “Bes eats because there is food” has become the universal law upon which Twittering for many people revolves around. They Twitter because there is Twitter. So I present to you 14 Twitter messages that should help you realize as to what the focus of the message is, and what the real focus should be. Keep in mind that the poster of such messages had no reason behind the message other than to Twitter it. You decide what you would want your focus and reasoning to be for each message if you had a chance.

1. In the bathroom.
2. Out of the bathroom. Realized I only went in there to Twitter that I was in the bathroom.
3. Throwing up while typing this. Food poisoning. Crap got some on the phone
4. She is confused as to why I am Twittering during this interview. Just ask me the questions.
5. This exam sucks and the moderator keeps looking as if I was cheating through my cell phone.
6. Waiting for the cash register to process this sale, holding the customer credit card in my other hand.
7. In police station. Handcuffed. Drunk-driving-over-rabbits-offense. Thank god they didn’t take phone away. I can twitter w/phone behind me.
8. I woke up.
9. Neighbors woke up.
10. With my boy friend. He doesn’t know he is my boy friend yet.
11. Wife woke up. $&^%
12. Following this stranger, a beautiful girl, for hours now. Hope she doesn’t notice; I’m only following to make sure she gets home safe.
13. I am Twittering because this is Twitter.
14. I am Twittering so Bes can talk about me.

There you go, my Twitter loving or Twitter hating or Twitter confused beings⁴. The above Twitter messages, and many other Twitter updates on similar notes have no purpose for them. Many people simply use Twitter to let everyone else know what they are doing, while others do it to gain attention through more Twitter followers or through the stereotype that the more you Twitter, the cooler you are.

Of course, the funniest thing is to see how many Twitter-obsessed people have no communication skills, no interest in making real friends, no interest in the well being of others, and no interest in how to focus on content instead of creating a hype through presentation.

Thank you for reading and not Twittering.

I will stop here please, so I can think of what to Twitter now. I hope I made you pause your Twitter for at least a few moments. Please let me know what you think, if you have any comments, or if you would like to see more of such messages or would like to share your own messages or ideas.

Thank you for reading. You can get back to your pro-Twitter or anti-Twitter activities now. I will go back to being confused and giggling nervously in my head⁵.

« Show less..

Continue reading… »

This series will take you through a maze of different kinds of relationship trends, aimed at people who are dating, engaged, seeing someone, married, sexually involved, interested, trying to learn more about dating or the myth called “a good relationship“, or something similar. Please realize that the tolerance level in different people regarding relationships is different, and thus some people may give up on a relationship the very moment they notice any of the trends listed in this series, while other let-me-keep-trying-hope-is-in-sight people like me, have in the past kept trying to fix things for a long, long time. You decide how much you can tolerate, and then take actions accordingly. Only let people, who know the whole story or most of the story of your relationship, advice you on whether or not you should end or change your relationship.

This guide focuses on both men and women, and is not limited to only a man-to-a-woman relationship. It includes man-to-a-man, woman-to-a-woman, and woman-to-a-man¹ relationships. The post also does not intend to take your side: you may very well be the very cause of the mentioned trends, and your significant other may be the victim. Hopefully if you are the cause, reading this series will help you realize how you may be doing certain things consciously or unconsciously that may be putting your significant other through mental or physical problems that they should not be put through.

What if I am a man and abused?

You are not alone if you are a man whose heart has been broken before². Relax. For stereotypical reasons, societies today expect females to be more emotional and males to be more “manly“, a term that describes the stereotypical things and traits associated with stereotypical males. Women are not the only victims of abuse, and many males do not report abuse or ask their friends about relationships because they feel ashamed. People might say “What kind of a man are you who feels sad about the relationship? Dump her/him and move on! Remember, you da maaaan!” Even last week I heard someone tell his friend: “What kind of a man are you? You can’t even control one chick, and you expect to be successful in life?” Such is the mentality we hold in life when it comes to the role of genders on our planet.

As a male, the first thing you have to realize is that while majority of the people and mentalities, including the ideas in this article that you are reading, may hint at women being more abused than men, acknowledging the problem in your relationship in your own mind and heart is a very good step to take. Who cares what others think? If you cannot tell others that you feel sad about a relationship, that is fine for now: not being able to admit in public or to others that you can have emotions is a problem that can be tackled later. For now, your focus is on the problem in the relationship. You may be stuck with an aggressive female or a stereotypical girl who is not happy when you act non-stereotypically. Apply everything in this series to yourself, even if you come across an example that mentions females instead of males.

Whether it is a girl or a guy that broke your heart or hurt you deeply, and you are still in a relationship with that person, be sure to think only of the relationship and not your gender when it comes to thinking about the question “Should I even be worried about this, or should I just ignore it and try to be more macho?” The day you start realizing how to look at issues without putting gender into the question will be the day you can start realizing why things are happening. Forget what the society expects from you if you think something is harmful for you and harmful for someone else who is innocent: if in your lifetime you can tell your family even once that their decisions or thoughts may go against what you wish, why is it hard for you to let someone as distant as the society know that you wish to live your life based on what you think is right, and not what the society thinks is right for you? This same society is what bound females into the current male-dominated society. Do not allow the society to keep you tied to the same macho-position in this male-dominated world. Even if in the end you want to be a macho, be sure to make that decision based on your own thinking, without any influence from the society.

Please keep in mind that I am slowly working my way towards discussing such things in more detail also: I am starting from one side and working my way up to help both you and myself understand the situation from some principle, and then branching into other areas based on some form of thinking, logic and reasons based on what I consider is ethical or at least better and the right thing. Also remember one of the important rules: you may hate what the other person does or you may even hate the other person, but do not hate the other gender because of what a single person or a group of people does to you.

3 relationship trends that slowly kill the abused heart

Today we will start with 3 things happening in a relationship that should make you realize that ending or changing the relationship may be the answer to such a trend. We will start today from the trends that revolve around simpler physical and mental torture, to more definite tortures related solely to mental and physical attributes in the next parts of the series. Today we cover the trends of you doing all the work in a relationship, to you not being appreciated for what you do in a relationship, to the other person not doing much or anything for you in a relationship. So please sit down, relax, take a deep breath, hold on to those “will-fall-in-real-love-one-day” or “I-am-always-right-since-I-am-the-man/woman” thoughts in your heart, and start reading below.

1. You do all the work to keep the relationship running.

   This one is very simple to grasp, as the title says it all, yet very difficult to be realized. You, in the relationship, do most of the things to keep yourself and the other person happy in life. This point usually affects females, since we still live in a male-dominated world³. Basically, you are responsible for everything important and critical in the relationship. If you do something wrong, the relationship suffers. If the other person does something wrong, the relationship does not suffer.

   Taking the example of a female in a relationship, like a girlfriend or a wife: if she has to cook, take care of children, clean the house, manage things around the house for the male, manage and handle the money, while the husband only brings in money or does things that are good for his own self and does not love the female⁴, chances are that the relationship is one sided and the female is not an equal in the relationship. Such relationships can be seen in majority of the world, where the popular term, house wife, has come into play billions of times in different houses around the world. One partner does all the work and is always left behind or separate, while the other one does no work and is always ahead and in a better position and control.

   The sad thing is, many of such wives are happy with their situation and prefer to be in a household where the man controls their destinies⁵ and the man dictates the major decisions in life, while the major actions are performed by the female. How can you tell someone who knows what is happening and is satisfied with it, to change their life? It is hard, very very hard. You can force them to change or get out, but then you would be imposing your opinion onto their life, which would be the same thing their husbands or significant others do. If a person is happy with abuse or with being led forward by someone else, how can you easily change their life for the sole reason of making it happier? The solution can be either to let such people be happy in their lives, or to make such people go through a lot of interaction with others to be able to slowly create an idea of the depths and extents of other ideas and opinions; I will not go into that, as that can be the topic of another post.

   If you are in a relationship where you do everything and the other person, regardless of their gender, reaps all the benefits, try to figure out why you are in the relationship. Are you in it because you want to do all the work? Are you in it because you like to be told what to do? Are you in it because you are desperate to be with anyone and you do not want to be single? Are you in it because you love the other person so much that you are willing to let them dictate your life? Are you in it because you love the other person for being in control and you feel weak? You decide the answers to the above question, and then decide if you want to end such a relationship.

2. You are rarely appreciated.

   Ever seen a teenager gangster wannabe with low pants, long shirts, and no skill to earn money on his own? You will usually hear such a guy say “I don’t give a damn what others think fool!” Let me tell you something. Such gangster show-off wannabe’s are the most attention-wanting species in your neighborhood, and they care a lot about what others think. That is why they dress in such a manner, rarely apologize, rarely act considerate, and rarely show a human side that does not try to portray itself as being superior to others. Try it yourself: keep looking at such gangsters and they will get irritated, nervous, intimidated and they will end up saying “What the hell you looking at?” So much for them not caring “what others think fool!”

   In a relationship, you should be the opposite of a gangster child. Whether you are a guy or a girl, your relationship is affected greatly by many questions, including the question of whether or not you want the other person to think positively about you and appreciate you. While majority of the females are used to hearing “You look so beautiful” from guys⁶, real people who want real relationships can slowly realize whether or not they are being sincerely appreciated by their significant others. The same way you get bored and even annoyed hearing “Wow you are such a good person” from people who never help you when you need help but they say such things when they need your help, why would you accept a relationship where you are rarely appreciated sincerely?

   A relationship does not only exist to allow two people to avoid suicide⁷, but to live lives together and to sincerely let the other person know that their actions and thoughts are helping the other person, among a few other things. Such appreciation should come naturally and not at times when you are stuck in a situation or when you feel that appreciating the other person will get that person off your back. Still, many relationships exist where one person, usually the female, is rarely appreciated. This happens when there is an assumed mentality that the female is expected to do something.

   Have you ever noticed that stereotypical guys start appreciating more when they are aroused? Have you ever noticed that stereotypical girls start appreciating more when they need attention? All of such appreciation is stereotypical. Where is the real, sincere appreciation that comes even when the appreciation-giver does not need anything in return? When couples have fights, they start appreciating in order to show they should be forgiven. Have you ever seen someone in a relationship appreciate things after everything is over, and after the relationship ends? Of course not. We do not see such appreciation after a relationship ends, because then there is no more sex, money, attention or support. The only time when appreciation could be the most sincere is the time we start ignoring appreciation on purpose. And we wonder why majority of the couples in Northern and Southern Americas end up splitting even after 40+ years of marriage or being together.

   Why should you thank a person who breaks your window while drunk and then fixes it the next day when you catch him? Why should you thank your roommate for turning off the lights at night while you sleep? Why should you thank your neighbor for keeping the volume down at night when you sleep? Why should you thank your boss for paying you, when you do hard work that deserves money as a reward? Why should you thank a cop for not giving you a ticket when he/she does not even stop you? Why should you thank the credit card company for taking your money for the monthly bills? Why should you thank your wife for having children and going through pain that you as a man will rarely go through, when she is having children in a relationship that are not only for herself but for you also? Why should you thank your husband for earning money when he himself agreed to such an arrangement and you agreed to such an agreement also by marrying him?

   If you can realize any difference in the validity in each and every one of the above questions and the related concept of appreciation, you probably have the ability to realize when and why to appreciate someone. The choice is yours whether or not you want to appreciate. The choice and decision is also yours whether or not you wish to be in a relationship where the other person takes for granted what you do for yourself, for the relationships and for the other person.

3. You are not given any significant focus.

   There is a difference between appreciation and focus. Appreciation usually happens when the other person is reacting to your actions, letting you know somehow that he/she is very happy or satisfied and grateful that you are doing something that the other person likes, including the very act of staying in a relationship. Giving focus, on the other hand, can be viewed as the original action. If someone is appreciating you because you cared for them while they were sick, it is usually because you focused part of your life on that sick person. Thus, appreciation is the reaction if you wish to look at it from that view, and focus is the action. You focus on something, and get appreciated in return. We talked about appreciation in the above point. Let us now put our minds on the concept of having your significant other do things for you as part of their focus in life: them doing things without you asking for such things or without you doing things first.

   A lot of relationships have people that give majority of the focus in their life to things outside of the relationship. Again, usually, the victim of such a trend is the female. While many girls and ladies are all right with having money and not caring what their significant others do, majority of the guys end up not caring much about their significant others other than thinking that they are properties that are to be handled. This mentality results in husbands and many boyfriends not focusing on the essential parts of the female’s lives, like things they care about, things that affect their thinking and their mentality. Basically, these are the things that should affect any ethical being, and stereotypical people who constitute the majority fail to notice such ethical views of thinking.

   Think about your relationship as a bond: why are you with the other person when you cannot focus on the important things in their life without them doing something first? You focus on the other person but the other person does not return or give any focus. You do not have to lie from time to time simply to make the other person feel happy: I always told my ex I hated going shopping, yet I went, I complained, I walked around and also sincerely offered honest suggestions about different things. I slowly got used to it and never lied that I had no problems with it. Now here is the funny thing: slowly, when I went shopping for my own clothes, I realized that I had started taking longer times shopping for my own self also, and my ex had started developing an appetite for shopping faster than me. We had basically switched places. When I realized this, I started being more considerate on my own, and my ex realized this too.

   For guys, it is not that they have other focuses of attention other than shopping. That is a myth. Usually, when guys view girls as sexual objects⁸, they end up not respecting a lot of things the girls do. The guys themselves end up faking a lot of things like enjoying shopping or talking about random things or even cooking. This is similar to the extra love you see coming from guys around Valentine’s Day, with guys trying to shower the girl with random gifts as if buying dog food for the dog. And of course, guys expect a lot of intimacy in return since they are doing so much for the girl as part of the original focus⁹. It is very funny for me to see that the very humane and nice things that everyone should do on a normal basis, like showing emotions or doing nice things without expecting something in return, are considered to be weird. It is also funny that doing things sincerely we may not like, but that our significant other may like, while also being honest in our efforts to help the other person, are considered too soft by majority of the people, and usually attributed to being a quality of the sensitive females. And we say we do not live in a male dominated society.

   If your significant other usually lies about showing interest in your life or your significant other does things in order to get something in return like money or sex, your significant other is not doing things that focus on you. People have their own lives, agreed, but relationships are about both maintaining individualism and a shared life at the same time. I have rarely heard of guys who cook something for their girl friends and do not seek something in return. Stereotypical guys will want intimacy or some favor in return. How about cooking something and simply wanting to hear “Food tasted good” in return and nothing else? Maybe I cooked really bad food most of the time, so I longed to hear only “Hmm, wow tastes good, nice job! Next time try adding more salt and that will fix the taste completely“, so I always have tried to focus on fewer or no rewards in relationships other than the mental ones.

Initiating the change to eliminate the above trends

In many situations and areas, you cannot simply end a relationship because of situations like having a child or because of being in a marriage where it is not easy for a female or a male to take a break from an abusive or uncaring relationship unless the other person asks for it first. In such cases, start looking for outside consultation and legal help, but also maintain a very quiet atmosphere¹⁰. See what your options are, how you can try to improve things, how you can try to make the other person realize that they can act differently in some areas of the relationship to make things easier and happier for you.

Remember one thing: anyone who tells you “Never try to change or ask someone in a relationship to change for you: accept people 100% for what they are” are fools and not your friends; such people are those who do not change anything in the world and wish to be dictated around because they are too weak to realize something may be wrong in different things in the universe. Sure, love a person for what he/she already is, but also let them know what to do in order for the relationship to click. Relationship does not happen because you look for a compatible person: relationship happens because you look for a person who is willing to be compatible with you.

Till next time

There you go, my relationship-advice-mastering of a reader. The above 3 points, from personal experience and from observation of other people’s relationships, will hopefully tell you more about the ways some relationships are fatal. Many people expect others to do all the work or majority of the work in a relationship, which will be bad for you, regardless of whether you are the person expecting the work or the person doing the work. Many people also do not realize the efforts their significant others make in order to please them, and instead treat most of the things as being expected, or with a mild and fake show of appreciation. Lastly for this article, and not least for this series, there are many people who never try to take any initiative to do things for you to show any kind of appreciation for anything on a sincere and honest level.

The above trends and situations can let you know whether or not something is happening in the relationship, due to the other person in the relationship, which may make you unhappy being in that relationship. Instead of telling your significant other this very moment “Yo! I read this thing that Bes wrote, and I finally realized that you don’t appreciate me! I’m outta here loser! You can’t control my life!“, you should actually think as to what makes you unhappy or unsatisfied and talk to your significant other about it. If that does not change things or if you have already talked about it, you decide what you would like to do. Remember, in the end, it may always be the hardest for you since you are the one enduring or ending the relationship.

Thank you for reading

Next time, I will talk about relationships that have certain trends related to sex, money and your gender. Please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or ideas on how some of the above things or trends may be different from what you observe. Also, please let me know via e-mail or through the comments if you wish to find out my views on certain trends that you may have noticed. I have about 13 trends planned out so far: I will be more than satisfied and grateful if I can find more trends that may be hurting people in relationships. Maybe I will come across a trend that has affected me in the past, or I may learn of a new trend that I had not previously thought about or experienced. Also, please let me know if you wish to see this series in a little bit different format that may help you read and understand the series better and in a more organized manner. If you noticed a recurring trend in the above 3 points, here it is again as a summary: one person simply enjoys the relationship due to the efforts of someone else doing all the work and giving all the appreciation and focus.

Till then, thank you for reading, relax, and be happy that you are going to hopefully realize more things about relationships from this series, things you may have thought are too small or important to be analyzed. Figure out what problems you are facing in your relationship and why, bring them up to the attention of the person who is causing such problems, and then decide what you would like to do.

Thank you for reading.

« Show less..

Continue reading… »

The following 7 things should be avoided if you are a newcomer to my car and my life. Of course, if you are a friend, I will let you know how such things may be affecting the car, me, my driving habit, or Mars.

1. Opening the car windows without asking

   In some parts of the world, the temperature of the atmosphere inside the car may not change much, regardless of whether or not the car windows are open. In California and many other states, opening the car window can seriously alter the temperature. If it is freezing outside and I have the air conditioner at full or even medium heat, you coming into the car and opening the window immediately will cause the whole project of turning on the heater in my poor car for a long time to heat things up to fail. Similarly, in the scorching heat, opening the car door or the window without thinking first will let out all the cold air, and will take another 5-10 minutes to be recreated at its previous state. If you are wearing a big coat or only a t-shirt, ask and let me know so I can prepare myself too, or maybe I can offer you my extra jacket or somehow stop the car so you can take off your extra jacket.

   One person used to get in my car with his thick jacket and then open the window immediately while the heater was running at fast speed. I would tell him I was freezing and that I can turn down the heater or even turn it off, and he would start telling me that he was feeling hot, and if there was a way to turn up the cold air in the car somehow. He would say all of this while he kept the car window open and kept his thick jacket on. By the time he would close the window, the entire car would be freezing. When it comes to me, just assume there is a reason for everything. If in doubt, ask and think. Getting into a warm car wearing a thick jacket while in the cold weather outside means you may have to endure about a minute or two of the change in temperature and adjustment while you get used to the inside weather. Taking off your jacket instead of making the other person uncomfortable is a very good alternative, and if you cannot take off the jacket easily while sitting down, ask me to stop somewhere or to watch out while you sway your hands all around the place in an effort to take off your own jacket.

2. Spitting out of a moving car

   Spitting out of a car is not only rude for many people, it is also illegal in many areas. And guess who usually gets a ticket or gets into trouble? The driver of the car. If you have to spit for any reason, come up with some alternative or tell me to pull to the side.

   Long time ago a friend of mine was driving and I was a passenger in his car. He tried on a mouth wash while driving, and forgot that he had to spit out the mouth wash after about 30 seconds since the mouth wash would start burning really bad after that. Well, we were on the freeway and he was in pain after about 2 minutes of trying to hold the mouth wash. I laughed, I giggled, and I told him to simply spit it out in some lane where there were no cars since he was in pain. There were no side shoulders that he could not pull over on. He kept the acid in his mouth for about 15 minutes, probably to the point that the pain had turned into something else and he was starting to act weird. He was smiling too, but was in pain at the same time. When the first exit came, he took it and spat the mouthwash out. I asked him if he was ok. He said yes, and said that it would have been mean or bad to spit the acid out in case the “spit” hit some other car.

   Now compare that to a passenger I had in my car who was eating some fast food. He accidentally ate some small dust particle or hair or something, and could feel it on his tongue. He started hissing and spitting with a bit closed mouth, as if to try to get rid of whatever was in his mouth that did not belong there. And he did that while in the car. I had drops of spit all over my dashboard and the gearbox. He did not apologize, he did not care, he did not even joke about it. It was all normal to him. It was normal to me too, but normal as being normally bad.

3. Having the driver pick up unexpected extra passengers

   One of the worst things you can do to a driver giving you a ride is to tell them at the last minute that some of your other friends need a ride too. Whether those extra passengers live near or far is not the focus of this point: keeping the driver in the dark and then making them do extra things is the same as lying, hiding, manipulating or simply not caring. Ask the driver first, and have the extra passenger ask and thank the driver also for doing a favor to someone they are not that close to.

   I have had so many “Oh also go here, we have to pick up my girlfriend/boyfriend boss/friend homie/buddy etc“, it is very interesting. If I charged money for every extra passenger I have given a ride to, I could have made a lot of money that could have gone towards years of gas payments.

4. Not allowing the driver to make his/her own stops

   Not all drivers have to drive only to give you a ride. Some have to do their own things. If someone gives you a ride and they stop somewhere, do not get upset: you should tell the driver in advance uf you have to get somewhere by a certain time, and you should also realize that you may be late since it is someone else’s car.

   I once stopped at a gas station to buy some Kit Kat while giving someone a ride and when I got back, they looked all upset and kept hinting that they do not like making stops while going somewhere. If you have to get somewhere on time or if you have some requirements, you should keep in mind that I have some requirements too. Accommodate the driver into your plans, since apparently the driver has already accommodated you into their life and car by giving you a ride.

5. Giving instant directions

   If you have to tell the driver to make a right, tell them about it a minute or even 20 seconds before the “right” comes up. Telling the driver to make a right when the very intersection he/she has to make a right on is already intersecting the length of car itself, is usually not a good thing for many cars.

   I have people who even say “Right here, oh damn you missed the exit.” Yeah, I missed the exit, not you. Such instant-direction givers cannot even tell me to turn right on time, but they expect me to turn a multi-ton car instantly while other cars go parallel to mine. Tell me in advance or simply say “We have to make a right soon” so I can be ready for your instant orders.

6. Not pitching in for gas

   If you are getting a ride from someone, specially a new person, see if it is costing them a lot to give you a ride. Going on a long drive or going shorter distances regularly consumes gas, and gas is money. It does not matter whether or not gas is cheap: someone is giving you a ride and they are losing/spending money on top of it. See if you can chip in some money, or tell the driver that you do not have money to chip in so that driver can at least realize that you calculated their misery into the equation also.

   I have had people’s friends ask me for rides to faraway places, and on the way when I fill up the car at a gas station, they do not offer anything nor do they care about it. They simply wait in the car to make sure that I get back on the road again as soon as possible.

7. Not knowing the exact directions to where you are going

   Imagine getting in a car and telling someone to take you to a place that you do not know the location about. Unless it’s a major place or you know the nearest intersection, the driver will not know where you are going.

   I have had people get in the car and then tell me to head towards a city, and then when I get close and ask them where to go, they tell me “McDonald’s there, have to meet some people.” There are usually several McDonald’s in each city, so I have to do some searching and hunting while the passenger gets impatient over being late. It is a waste of time and a waste of energy for the driver. If you want a ride, know where you want to go or let the driver know well in advance, before the actual ride, that you do not know the exact directions.

   “I want to get to the Thai restaurant in Berkeley“, Berkeley being a city with dozens of Thai restaurants, is the same as wanting to go to a specific gas station or a restaurant in a city but not knowing the name, type of place of that gas station or restaurant. Have directions ready, or at least do some homework and have something for the driver to go on. If you let the driver know in advance that you want to go somewhere but do not know how to get there, the driver may be nice enough to do the homework for you.

There you go. The above 7 points, combined with Part 1 and Part 2, tell you about the 21 things to avoid or think about when getting a ride from someone you may not know, or me. The reason I said before that these points apply to those people who are not your friends is to show that since you are not someone’s friend, you have to consider these points that may upset, annoy or frustrate the driver or the drivers’ friends in the same car, and among other things, cause the driver to lose time and money. Friends can easily tell friends “What the heck! haha hmmm :p” and thus teach friends how some actions or things may result in more harm than good for the driver.

What is your opinion about this? Have you experience any of these points yourself, either expectedly or unexpectedly, either as a driver, a passenger, or the person doing any of the above things?

Thank you so much for reading. I enjoyed writing this series for you. Please let me know if you have any questions, suggestions, or if you think I can muster up more points and continue this series a bit more.

Thank you again.

« Show less..