Unconditional love is not all it's cracked up to be.

Because it relies on no external stimuli, unconditional love is also unpredictable love. It has no rationale for beginning and therefore needs no reason to end. Conditional love on the other hand, will by definition persist as long as the condition persists.

Someone who loves you for no reason other than who you are'' can also stop loving you for no reason at all. Whereas someone who loves you for something definite like your bling/booty will do so as long as you retain those qualities.

Unconditional love is widely regarded as the 'higher love' but its unfettered nature lends it an uncomfortable unpredictability. We have all had lovers who, loving us unconditionally one day, would feel justified in ditching us the next, having found no distinct qualities of ours to bind their infatuation to. We may even have loved and dumped unconditionally ourselves. God allegedly loves us unconditionally, but he occasionally - and without adequate warning - turns off the affection tap long enough to send along an earthquake, a bloodthirsty totalitarian regime, or a personal disaster despite our best efforts to appease him through prayer, piety, or human sacrifice.

With that in mind, a contractually-flavoured, conditional love may be more attractive, if only because we can be certain in how to maintain it.

Unconditional love does not imply eternal love.

"What has been done will be done ... there is nothing new under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 1:9)

The vocational world seems to have exploded into millions of possibilities. Simple occupations - plumber, builder, priest - are drowned out by the ocean of new choices.

Not so.

Even the most elongated job titles can be reduced to a single word of at most three syllables. Try this. It lends clarity and perspective.

Next time you find yourself awestruck by a 'regional account manager', remember that he or she is in truth a 'salesman'. And the 'maintenance technician' you belittle is following the line of 'stewards'.

So, what do you do?

They said it couldn't be done.

Actually, they didn't. 'They' could not imagine why I would want to:

1. Buy a old-style ball-foot bathtub. ($100 including delivery);
2. Put it on bricks in my garden (out of sight of the housemates);
3. Hook it up with a multitude of hose connectors to the (solar) hot water system;
4. Whack in a giant tube of polydrain to water my plants with the outflow.

The benefits are self-evident. Starry nights lying in my own personal hot spring (露天風呂) with a cool glass of alcoholic beverage to keep the toxins flowing as I steam my tension away.

Screw water restrictions. Ladies and gentlemen, I present "ウィーの湯" (pronounced 'Wee-no-yu').

Final thought: it fits two. Aww Yeeah.