Twins

This year we have a bumper crop of twins in the centre. Some parents have actually asked me why we have so many twins?? I am not too sure why they think I have the answer to every stupid question on earth.

Actually till now I cannot figure out the biological question about twins. Although I have the best Biology teacher in the centre, I keep getting confused by the egg and the sperm. Is it two sperms and one egg or two eggs and one sperm? There are few millions of sperms swimming up the valley and there are two winners, thats what I know.

Ask any twin's parents and they will tell you the most commonly asked questions would be "Who is older?" and " How to tell them apart?" . I think they wish they could tag onto one of them that says "I came out first". Must be sick and tired of the same questions from the time they have given birth to the baby combo. And they always tell you to tell them apart, there is this tiny little mole somewhere in the forehead or chin of the younger or older twin. I have to squint and move so close to examine the mole that I end up drooling on their faces.

But it must really annoying to have another person looking exactly like you. It's like having a mobile mirror with you all the time. Sometimes I look at the mirror and I get scared by my own image. Imagine walking into a room and see yourself lying in bed reading a book. It's kindda freaky isn't it? And I know this particular pair of twins who enjoy dressing alike, maybe it's the mother's idea or clothes are always sold at a discount if you buy a pair of each everytime. The good thing about being twins is that you can always be assured of a job with the magicians. The bad thing is you can get beaten up for something which the other sperm did.

So if you have nothing to do, look at the photos and try and figure out who came out first. Get the right combination and guess correctly, I will appoint you as my official 4D plus Toto number picker.

The SMS

One of the better inventions of the century has to be the Short Message Service or the SMS. The low battery life of the mobile phone is a bad invention. I have this feeling that they have already found the answer to perpetual life battery but just would not disclose it, because they are afraid to put those people selling battery chargers out of business. Millions will lose their jobs if we stop using battery chargers.

I love the SMS. It is the most convenient way of communicating with another person without talking. No one else on the planet can do that ... except those who are in the extra-sensory power trade or the deaf and dumb. Sometimes I find it easier to SMS than to talk. It's like writing a mini letter to someone. You don't want to immediately hear how the other person respond, so it's easier to compose your thoughts, take your time, write and then wait for the reply. So if you are slow thinker type, the SMS is one way of curing stupidity. And you can prevent all the awkward pauses associated with talking live to another person. You run out of things to say, the other person is waiting but has also lost the momentum momentarily. This is the awkward pause. You feel the pressure building in your head, you got to say something, but you donno what to say! And then you start to say something totally unrelated and trivial like "So .... what you eating for tommorrow's breakfast?" The SMS gets rid of all awkward pauses.

You know there is a world record holder for the fastest SMSer in Singapore? I am not too sure why she does that but I tend to believe she is in a hurry. You have to be rushing for time in order to do things fast right? Otherwise what will be the point of typing that fast? If you want it that fast, just pick up the phone and call! I have to admit I cannot do it that fast, firstly age has something to do with it, secondly the buttons are so tiny and my fingers are too big.

But I know some students who are able to do it blind folded and with the phones in their little pocket. Sometimes they do it so fast that from the sound of it, they look like they are being electrocuted by the phone. But these are the same students who will complain there's always not enough time to finish exam papers!?? Maybe we should give them little key pads for typing the answers instead. I think they should include this skill in the syllabus for the driving tests as well. That way drivers can SMS without being a road hazard. Amazing set of skills and too bad you cannot make a living out of typing SMS messages.

Then there are some who after mastering the foundation of typing, choose to vary the text style to achieve a different kind of aesthetic quality in the arena of SMS. It's like life is not complicated enough. So you will find tHeSe kINd oF mESsaGes oN yOUr pHoNEs WHicH I tHInk DRiVe tHosE pEoPlE rEaDiNg nUts!!! This simple one sentence took me 5 minutes but those SMS commandoes do it everyday faster than my normal messages! I think these people should be doing something really worthwhile with this special skill, like maybe total up the atm machine total withdrawals manually for the day or work as a cashier in old supermarkets where they can type in the 20 digit product code instead of the prices. If they can work with tiny keys at lighting speed, a calculator should be child's play.

Sometimes I have problems ending conversations with the SMS. Like you are happily chatting with the other person but you have to go. If you stop replying, then you wonder whether the other person would think you are rude. Sometimes when I stop replying I feel guilty. Would I keep the other person in suspense? Is he expecting a reply? If I say 'I got to go', would he/she think I think he/she is boring or irritating and cannot wait to end the conversation? Sometimes I experience this feeling of rejection when I get the 'I got to go' thing. To solve this problem, I have come up with a few mutually agreed and understood codes with my friends to lessen the pain. For instance if I say in my SMS to a friend, " Is your father gay?", then it means I really have to attend to something else, its not that I don't want to talk to you but I really have to go. Whether the person replies 'Yes' or 'No' is immaterial, the SMS flow is ended cordially. So maybe you want try something like 'Is the cow coming home for dinner? Or 'My dog just pee on your door'. And they would all mean politely 'I have to go'.

The Rain

I was walking past a swimming complex yesterday when I saw a family of three kids with the dad walking on the pavement, towards the bus stop I think. They looked like they just had a swim 'cos all four sported semi-wet hair and two of the kids have doughnut swimming floats around them. I can usually tell whether you have swam in the public pool or not by looking at your chlorine infected eyes. I think these swimming pools' authorities or whatever pool inspectors need to put their faces into the water everyday to understand how much of that potential eyeball bleaching agent they are putting into the pool. I can understand the amount of pee they need to disguise in the pool, but sometimes I feel there are just too much chorine for comfort.

Anyway, as they were walking , it started to drizzle. Here's the interesting part. Almost instinctively and out of fatherly love, this man pull out a handkechief and put it over the youngest boy's head. Then for another, he took out a tissue and again spread it over the head, and for the third, he spread out his palm and like a jellyfish, covered the child's head. With the artificial helmets and a hand on top, they dashed towards the bus-stop like their heads just caught fire.

I am not too sure how much of the rain they have avoided but didn't they just came out of the swimming pool a while ago??? A pool by definition is full of water, where one can swim and float or float and not know how to swim or just do underwater stunts with one breath etc. You can dive, jump, somersault into the water and break your bones, nobody cares. But when you are in the pool, you are wet! And fully wet from hair to toe nail by H2O. The rain cannot be that different from the pool water right? ok, maybe one has more pee. If that's the case, the rain has to be better than the pool water. Then why do we spend so much effort to avoid the rain? I know there are many cultures who worship the rain and would dance for the rain. And if the rain is harmful for us, those swimming lifeguards, with nothing to do all day but suntan and look at chicks behind sunglasses, should pull out the giant canvas sheets and start covering the pool when it rains.

The reason why the umbrella was invented is so that most of our body are dry when it is suppose to. So you will never find people using the umbrella in the desert because there is usually no rain there. It is usually made of Nylon and not tissue paper, and if I am not wrong, it is bigger than the human palm when it is opened. It is also waterproof (has to be right?) and most of them are lightweight. So for those people who have a tendency to do like what that man did, I need to tell you it's totally pointless. Handkerchiefs are made of cloth and like tissue papers, they absorb moisture fast. As for the palm, your hands are still connected to the body when it rains, which means even if you managed to catch the rain away from your head, your hands would still be wet. I think you are better off holding a stopwatch and timing your dash to the bus stop. That way at least you accomplished something at the end of it.