Life, Laughter and Everything Else

It was the size a tad less than the tip of your forefinger, of a proud uniform orangish brown colour from its abdomen to its antenna. With those antenna, long, wavy and thrashing the air like a whiplash, it was an eye catching creature, scurrying across the damp, coarse surface of the thin plank of wood a hands reach away from me. And for some reason, right in front of me, it turned and stopped. It now faced me, like a bull about to charge at its bull fighter. The combination of that angry orange and the incessant probing of the long antenna, akin to a swordsman intimidating his opponent with an artful movement of his sword before a fight, intimidated me. I grew nervous. "I think its going to jump at you", my friend laughed. And it suddenly jumped at me. Like an almost knee jerk reaction, my natural instincts assumed control of my panic stricken mind. First task, spot the devil. My eyes scanned the fading orange expanse of my life jacket. Nope, not there. Next, my expos...

I write this after my sisters' graduation ceremony, a rather ostentatious ceremony considering that the graduation from my own college took place on the last day school and the ceremony was not very different from the usual school assembly. But times have changed, practices have changed and people have changed.  Around me are all the proud parents of the graduates of this elite institution. When you look at some of them, it is difficult to say to whom this event assumes more significance, to them or their children who are graduating. There are some who are there simply there to fulfil their customary duty as parents but unless I am wrong, most are here because this event signifies not just a milestone in the lives of their children, but in their very own lives. As t he principal kicks off the ceremony, listing the names of the elites of the elites and boasting the numerous academic accolades of the students. Names such as Harvard, Cambridge, DSTA, A ...

Just last week, when I was about to use the urinal in the male restroom at Paragon (Shopping Centre), I noticed a pretty cool contraption placed inside the urinal. It was a dartboard, about 15 centimetres in diameter and exactly like the one professional dartboard players use. And every urinal had one, which meant that it was placed there with an intention. An intention that had something to do with the male psychology. The concept behind it was simply. When males saw the dartboard, they tried to aim right at it. It was a kind of natural male instinct. To hit the target, right in the middle and the longer the 'stream' of rounds kept hitting it, the greater was the user satisfaction. As for the shopping centre management, it meant that the liquid waste ended up where it was suppose to and not out of the firing range. Though, on a personal note, I would like to remind the management that cleaner toilets should not mean less cleaning. Because just today, in the middle of ...

I have always thought that the story of the hare and the tortoise was a very misunderstood tale. Think about it. A hare and a tortoise decides to race. The faster hare bounds off, sees that the tortoise is far behind and decides to knock off for a while. The tortoise catches up, overtakes and crosses the finish line. And next thing you know, generations of humans laud the tortoise's achievement and writes it into their folklores and storybooks for their children. Furthermore, parents and teachers ceaselessly drill impressionable young minds with the message that, Slow and steady wins the race. Though, if you think about it at a much deeper level, the tortoise did not win because it was slow and steady. It won because the hare was fast but stupid. All the way in front and still far from the finish line, he decides to take a break. The only person whom I knew to have done something like that was my cousin when she was a 8 year old and took part in a race in her school. Halfway...

I happen to be taking a business module, in which teams are given a specific business case study to analyse and answer a set of questions, which they have to present the following week. To be honest, the presentations converged on mental dullness, as multiple teams answered the same question about the same case study. The lecturer, to make the proceedings more interesting, then told the teams that even if they were given questions to answer, they could choose to completely ignore them, come up with their own set of questions and answer their own questions. Sounds like a delicious prospect doesn't it? Like you walking into the exam hall and there is a blank A4 size paper in front of you with one instruction, 1. Read the passage. Come up with a question. Answer it. (20 marks) Though ironically, nobody took the bait. Instead, week after week, they stuck to the same given questions with the oh-so-typical answers and the lecturer was left scratching his head (which perhaps exp...

Just a few days ago, I was at the dinner table with my mother, having a chat about, well, pretty much this and that. Expectedly, she started to drift off and complaining about people, about events off the past, about old wounds that still scarred her. It was not the first time I was hearing this and to be honest, I was getting a bit tired of hearing the same old stories of resentment and who wronged who. Me being me, attempted to put an end to all this. So I started my own lecture, about forgiveness, about forgetting events of the past, of not bothering so much with the business of others, to make her change. To which she replied, rather bluntly, "You sitting there, with your meditation and talks of peace and forgiveness. Once you grow up, start your own family, go out to work, you are going to meet quite a few people, who are not going be so nice to you. After you deal with them, you try your peace and forgiveness then. And if you can do it, good for you." Must say ...

Recently, an old colleague of my father paid us a visit. After he left, my father revealed to me an interesting story about his friend's father, who had been a Hindu priest. Being a man whose life was devoted to his duty to god and family, he led a life of simplicity and discipline. When he died, his own son remarked, "The old man wasted his life. No drinking, no pleasures, no money." When I look at my own life, the goals I set for myself, they are rather grand. Find my passion, travel and perhaps work overseas, live a life unobstructed by the burden and responsibilities of family, be a free bird. Though it is ironic that the generation just before me lived by an entirely different set of goals. They were brought up with the mindset of starting a family and working hard to provide the best quality of life possible for the family. Getting married, having children, working, looking after their old parents were all a duty, not a choice. Job satisfaction did not matter as ...