Where am I?

Sorry people. Long time no post. Life as I know is “happening” to me. I have started living the busy life of a working professional. Going to office everyday by 8:00 AM, and coming home only after everyone has left for the day. To keep myself busy at home (and while travelling) have bought a few gizmos which keep me occupied for the rest of the time I have on hand. Have become highly disorganized and that is reflected on my infrequent posts now. It always takes me time to get on top of things so hold on till I post my next post :) !!

Its funny how we consider ourselves settled when we become a part of the bigger system. The one which makes us countless drones commuting mindlessly to our place of work and back everyday. Waiting for that elusive Friday night, to do something fun, which inevitably is catching up with friends for dinner or movies. Life just goes on and on and on.

My only source of entertainment these days is the gourmet food that I consume for lunch everyday. My ultra-efficient digestive system, meanwhile, is efficiently pulling out all the fat and storing it around my body for safekeeping. I miss my good old days of clumsily roller skating and mindlessly watching The Big Bang Theory!

Mugged

So I live in one of the safest cities in the world. So safe that you can walk alone in the city in the middle of the night and there is a high probability that you will return home safe and sound without being bitten by a dog, robbed by a thug, shot by a sociopath or sold to a terrorist training camp. Living in such a place naturally makes you less aware of your surroundings. So, you go out one fine morning for a leisurely stroll in the park and get mugged … by a monkey. Not only does it remind you that low crime doesn’t mean no crime but it also hurts your rather fragile male ego.

I kept mum about this incident for a while but I finally thought I let you (my dear readers) know. So it started off as a lazy Saturday afternoon with nothing much to do than surf (on the internet). A friend of mine and I decided to do some activity and we figured that the MacRitchie reservoir was the closest to go. Now anybody who has ever been to a state park anywhere in the world knows that it is not good to feed wild animals the junk food that we have grown up on (not only is it unhealthy but also it is really bad for their survival instincts). Singapore makes it doubly sure that you do not feed animals by making it an offense with a hefty fine attached to it.

We wore our trekking shoes, geared ourselves up and decided on the 11 km route that we planned to take. Now, being in the rainforest, its always good to keep ourselves hydrated. So I bought a bottle of an isotonic drink to keep me company. Barely 10 steps into our walk we saw a monkey on our path. Now, monkeys never deter me. If I see a lion, may be I would twitch a bit (girls please take note ;) !!). So we continued our walk oblivious of its existence, till it jumped right in front of me and snarled. My dear friend had the presence of mind to run away (yeah he sprints really fast!) and in no time he was a distant spec on the horizon.

Looking at the monkey’s size and my apparent beastly appearance, I decided to be a man and fight back. So I naturally snarled back and growled (effect of seeing “The incredible Hulk” I bet). Not only did that annoy the monkey but it also made it take a rather aggressive stand (which looked like he was about to jump on me and bite my face off). I looked around for a second, salvaged all my pride and started to run. It was the first day I realized that given enough face-threatening snarls from a monkey, I can run like a chicken about to be captured. It also made me realize that I run so slow that any monkey can yawn and still catch up with me in no time. While I was running (with a rather old monkey walking leisurely behind me), I realized that the only thing on me that the monkey would be vaguely interested in, was my bottle of drink. So I yelled to my friend (who by now was standing at a distance and watching all the fun) to catch the bottle as I tried to throw it at him. However my clumsy throw was expertly intercepted by the monkey (a-la Neo from Matrix in bullet-time) and he victoriously walked to the side of the trail with his just-robbed bottle of drink.

Moral of the story? You don’t look as fierce as you think you do. You are not to feed wild animals, but they don’t really know that you are not supposed to. And finally read every signboard that you see in a State park. On my way back, I read this signboard.

 

Aim to fly!

Whoever has been to the Men’s restroom in Changi Airport must have noticed the fly printed at the bottom of the urinal. Its an interesting artifact to miss considering that while you are peeing there is not much you can see or think about. Anyways, just in case you indeed missed, I tried to take sneaky pictures of the fly after I had done my duty.

 

Now I have been googling about the “fly in the loo in Changi Airport” for a long time but never really chanced upon any article suggesting its existence. Till very recently I figured that the fly is meant for men to aim at. A very comprehensive research of men’s peeing habits revealed that men are not particular good at peeing into a bowl. Without focus we tend to pee all over the place.

If you have been to the Changi airport toilets you must have realized that they are cleaner than your own toilet at home. This level of cleanliness can only be achieved if men are trained to aim straight into the bowl. But if they put up a board saying “Please pee carefully” we would dismiss it to be just another example of Singapore’s kiasu tendency. So by printing the fly at the bottom of the urinal, the airport is indeed trying to keep you busy by making you subconsciously aim at the fly. So you end up watering the fly and in the process, you actually aim for it. Wow. What a brilliant idea. Research shows that the fly helps reduce human spillage by 85%. Its time we start drawing flies in urinals all around the world :) !!