The most wonderful ideas come out of the toilet bowl

It occurred to me that the ideas that I have that i find the most interesting, almost invariably comes when i'm doing something mundane. Such as studying for the A levels. Or pushing paperwork. Or, as the title of this entry suggests, sitting in the toilet. In fact, the existence of this blog itself might have to thank some common test. And it's probably during one of these zen-like sessions that I came up with the following observations that are often taken for granted, in our everyday lives and concluded that our lives simply don't make sense.

Have you ever wondered why they don't bother building a fence around HDB estates? It's cos we're poor, nothing much to steal. We pity the poor no-lifer who has to steal from HDB occupants. We might even give away some stuff to you, and then say hi to you when we meet again in the Toto queue!

Moving on, have you ever wondered why there's a fence around condominiums? Cos there's stuff to steal. Lounge chairs, gym equipment, table tennis tables, even pool tables. Or you could use detergent and wash clothes in the condo swimming pool, since nowadays water very expensive and wash clothes need a lot a lot of water.

So, why are the fences around landed properties usually so low?
Requires a bit more brainpower, but that's obviously because they have so much that they know you can't possibly take enough to to hurt them in any significant way. In other words, burglars, please help yourselves. Thinking for the burglar, I would think that it's very labour-intensive to keep carting furniture to the hideaway. The logistics involved (getaway lorry) would be much of a headache, which is rather unnecessary as we shall see. The 3G (3rd generation) burglar will scale the wall with a high-resolution handycam in hand. He proceeds to take videos of the occupants in sex positions at night. And if the shooting angle is wrong or some cock-up (wah punz) such that he needs a reshoot, he can just shout, "EH CB CAN DO IT PROPERLY OR NOT!", and siam for a while. The involved occupants may be startled and may go around looking for the burglar, but they won't find him la, if he knows how to camouflage properly. If he don't know means he chaokeng during ns. So after a futile search, the occupants (actually might as well call them pornstars) will go back to their room uneasily. But that's not the end of the story, cos according to an expert (lazy so i only find one)
http://www.counterpunch.org/block10292005.html, sex and fear seem to go hand in hand, so all the fear will make them do it again and the burglar can then climb out and do a reshoot. Then the burglar tries to sell the saucy video back to the participants. Some people call it blackmail. whatever. If the people buy it, it's a win-win situation, because otherwise, the burglar wouldn't get anything except police arrests if they post it online. Who else would want to see it anyway?

Another thing about modern society is how much we waste energy. I don't mean all of us should take on the big projects like Al Gore's movie that don't really help much, in fact i think it makes the matter worse. We should seek to understand why people today:

a) run on the treadmill, but drive for the shortest distances
and then complain that cars pollute the earth

b) Lift weights, but abhor manual labour
With such contribution to the world, it's no wonder the earth is in such a sorry state

This almost makes me want to invent foot-powered wheelchairs and solar-powered torchlights.

And here's something that boggles the mind: http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22556281-661,00.html

yl explains leverage

Nowadays with the financial crisis in full swing, talking about finance very in. Newspaper, newsweek all saying the same things. Like why part A of the economy sucks, why part B of the economy sucks, that's why everybody suck thumb. That is now la. Not so long ago, i read this column by a financial expert in newsweek say the drop in stock prices is just a 'short-term correction', cheemology for singing "if we hold on together, I know our dreams(of getting rich) will never die". Now become 'if we hold on to the stocks together, all of us will die together'. There's so many explanations for why the whole financial crisis happen, but i think those reporters just pangsai out something to make a living la, regardless of whether they actually know what's happening or not, unlike me cannot make any money writing. Actually, whether you understand the financial crisis or not also doesn't matter, because you also cannot do anything about it. Even the people who are doing something about it also don't understand it, so no point, end up just fight. But i just want to explain what is leverage for fun.

Leverage is simply borrowing, like how companies on Wall Street borrow to make money (and now lose money). But let me illustrate this with an example everyone can relate to, at the same time teach you all some survival skills.

Let's say you got no money. But you're hungry, so you go to Macdonald's. You look around, and you spy someone who has just bought an extra value meal. You think, where does that extra value go to? Must be for me la. So you approach that someone, and ask in your most charming way, can I have a few pieces of your fries? Smitten, the person says yes, albeit reluctantly. With that legitimate piece of consent, you turn into a food monster and grab half of the fries, and put it on another tray which you have koped earlier on. But you're not done yet. You also grab the fries container from the shocked someone's tray. Finally done with the food rape, you remember what your mama told you and say 'thank you'. (I believe investment bankers are polite people too) Now the proud owner of half a packet of fries, is it time to enjoy the fruits of someone else's labour? Not so fast. You have to be hungrier than that! Instead, you don't touch the half packet of fries and you head towards the cashier with it. You say in a polite voice, "Excuse me, I think the fries are overcooked." You eyeball the cashier and maintain a solemn face as he gives you his WTF expression. If you sense resistance, or some tension, you go for the jugular and say, "Yes, it's overcooked, would you like to try some of it?" At this point, in all probability, the cashier will give in and give you a whole new packet of freshly-ccoked fries. It's not his store after all. He's just a poor cashier forced to deal with hungry psychotic people. He'll give anything to make them go away. Now what you do next really depends on your level of greed. You could eat your fries, though thats too easy for you. Or you could divide your fries, kope another fries container from the dustbin or someone else and repeat the steps, thereby getting you 2 packets of freshly-cooked fries. And the process could go on. Then you can sell macdonald's french fries outside macdonald's for half the price! Or you can graduate to leveraging burgers instead of/and fries. Man the possibilities are endless!

(Based on a true story)