Quality - not Quantity

Quality, not Quantity
I was looking for information on using CSS instead of tables (as one does) and for some reason came across the Death Test which I know you will take for just for a laugh. According to my test results, I am going to die at 80 ( and got this rather naff icon).
I could be wrong but I guess that most people think that they are going to live to a similar age. Until the beginning of this year, I used to think that living until an old age was important. But what I learnt was that the duration of being alive is not important. What is important is the "quality" of ones life. An example: if you could have one of the following two for free, which would you choose?
1. A bowl of the worlds finest purest caviar.
2. Five Tons of the worlds finest caviar infested with maggots mixed in poodle poop with a sprinkle of dried baboon saliva.

I watched an extremely moving documentary about a girl who had a particular condition (cant remember the name) where her body aged 13 times faster than a "normal" human being. There are said to be only 8 or so known people on this planet with this condition. A person with the condition normally dies at the age of 13. She just had her 14th birthday and she knew that she was going to die any day. She said that she was prepared to die and that she had lead a great life up until now - it was all about her experiences, the friends she was able to meet and generally being happy. Living a longer life was not important.

We watch the news and see people dying left right and center - people being stabbed, run over or just plain dying in everyday accidents. I also think that many of us think "well that's not going to happen to me", and most probably most people who we see dying are amongst those who thought the same thing.
I was talking to my estate agent at the time we purchased our house - I asked him how I should go about writing my will - he looked at me as if I started to grow horns and said that people don't usually write their will until they are about 60. I was thinking to myself "apart from being a lair, this estate agent is an idiot too - bafoon."
This may seem the obvious but the thing is, none of us have been given a guarantee that we are going to live until we are golden. One could live in the "safest" part of the world, be healthy and still die from whatever.

Meaning
There is not a single day that goes by without me thinking about what I should be doing to get to my destination and I have been like this for the past few years. Being like this has enabled me to improve my quality of life and generally do anything that I have wanted to do based on my current monetary situation.
Thinking about the meaning of life is important because it helps you to discover your destination - without a destination, we would just be driving around in circles - occasionally going beyond that circle.

Worms exist to be eaten by Birds, Birds exist to be eaten by Cats and Humans exist to eat Cats - well only if you are in to that kind of thing. But you know what I mean. I have obviously simplified this idea (because Worms are actually Earth Warriors who protect the stratosphere from evil Space Spiders) but there is nothing around to eat Humans (not yet anyway). There must be a reason as to why humans exist - apart from polluting, destroying and in general being greedy (perfect description of a politician there).
I decided after many years of thinking that there *is* no reason as to why we are here and that we have to make the reason/the meaning ourselves.
I came to the conclusion that my meaning in life was to make our (her indoors and me) lives as pleasant and comfortable as possible - at the same time live how we want to live, buy what we want to buy, go where we want to go and eat what we want to eat.

Money Matters
Many people say that money cant buy happiness - but in our case, we think it can. No matter how you slice it - money is a fact of life. Maybe it should not be that way but the sad truth is that it is.
I came to Japan with two suitcases and with about 500 quid in the bank - 5 years on, my total income is about 15 times more that it was before we came and now own a chunk of land in Tokyo and most importantly - I am able to purchase Gundams and gadgets without being beaten up by the wife (well only sometimes). I account my mid term success to being constantly focused on my destination. Being in a state of focus is something that any of us can acheive but may be difficult without a destination or realizing what ones purpose in life is.
As for whether I will live to see my destination - that's another matter but at least I will die with piece of mind knowing that I tried to get there.
My wife was reading this as I was writing up this post and said people may think that I am bragging. Indeed - there is actually nothing to brag about - there are a ton of people who are doing much better than I am who earn in a blink of an eye what I earn in a year. All I want to do is to share my thoughts and hope that my thoughts serve as food for some of you.

So what are the takeaways for this post? Well for me its...
1. Make as much money as I can while I am alive so that I can...
2. Do what I want to do while I am alive.
3. Buy what I want to buy while I am alive because....
4. I could die tomorrow - don't know how much time I have remaining but use time well and enjoy it while I still have some left. Which is why its important for me to....
5. Gain as much skills and knowledge as possible - especially skills and knowledge which contribute to generating money.
6. Stay Focused. Losing focus means that I get lazy, forget about my destination and end up thinking that I have all the time in the world and "work on it tomorrow."
Above: One of my goals is to have one of these - I am not sure which one to get but I like the propeller bi-wing type. But I also want my own runway too. Nobody is going to give one to me for free and I probably wont get far by stealing one. Stealing a runway would be tough too.

I used to be a stand-in and was a member of Richard Starnowski studios back in the UK. We were filming a documentary about fireworks in the countryside. T'was a beautiful evening. During the middle of a break, the owner of the land that we were filming on flew his propelled plane at a low speed and altitude around us - it was an amazing site that I would remember to this day. I felt something ignite inside of me. There was a sense of exhilaration and a feeling that I could take on the world. It left me with a giddy tingling feeling that this poor student was going to make it somehow.
If dannychoo.com goes down for more than a month - it means that I have died and did not get to my destination or buy one of these planes - if I don't die before then however - watch this space for pics of my new toy :-)