Flirting With (Thoughts Of) Death

Thought about death this morning. No, I didn’t dash out the front door for a truckload of Panadol or arsenic or a Backstreet Boys CD (apparently, listening to it for 24 hours straight can and will kill you). I am NOT – I repeat – NOT suicidal. I’m merely contemplating the idea of death. The concept of it.

I was fumbling around for my car keys when I suddenly wondered what it would be like to just be … nothing. Of course, I didn’t think about the mundane stuff like how I would die, how long it would take and how it would feel (not very pleasant, I would imagine). I was simply wondering what it would feel like to just not be here anymore.

Then another thought crossed my mind: If I were dead / nothing / free from life, I wouldn’t be able to enjoy the freedom that I now have, would I? Especially since I have now become zilch. I would be free, yes, but I would be too dead to enjoy it. To be free and to be able to savour freedom, I would have to be alive. But to be alive is to not be free. Talk about a no-win situation.

People say death is the coward’s way out. I beg to differ. While running away from your problems may seem like an unforgivable act of cowardice, I think this refers to like, running away to another state or country or something. That’s a kinda dumb thing to do cos wherever you go, there you are. You can never truly run away from life. As long as you’re alive, that is.

But dying isn’t like running away to another country. You are moving from a state of being to, well … not being. From existing to … no longer existing. In this case, there’s nothing cowardly about it because the journey to death (some people like to call this suicide) is generally an unpleasant one. And to make the conscious decision to take this journey, despite it being fraught with pain, blood, gore and a slim chance that you might make it out (god forbid) alive and thus, wind up even more miserable than when you first started, I think that takes a lot guts – I don’t care what the shrinks say!

Guts play an even bigger role when you consider folks who decide to kill themselves even when they believe that there’s life after death. Which means suicide is wrong. Which means you’ll wind up in hell being licked by flames and having your eyeballs gouged out with a pitchfork and being subjected to all sorts of things that are very, very … painful. Which means that death is not exactly a way out of your problems. Rather, it is the beginning of a whole new set of problems that will, unlike your sordid life, last for eternity. Because you cannot kill yourself once you’re in the bowels of hell!!!

My Favourite Pompous Quote

There’s nothing I love more than a mean-spirited insult cloaked in the most pompous of languages, uttered by the most arrogant of men. And this, in my opinion, takes the cake.

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“… He writes the worst English I have ever encountered. It reminds me of wet sponges, tattered washing on the line, stale bean soup, college yells, dogs barking through endless nights; it is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it.
It drags itself out of the dark abyism of pish and crawls insanely up to the topmost pinnacle of tosh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash …”

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

That’s so beautiful it’s music to my ears. It was penned by American writer and satirist HL Mencken on President Warren G Harding’s inaugural address in 1921.

Too bad it wasn’t physically possible for him to live long enough to witness President Bush’s inaugural address. I bet he’d have something interesting to say about that!

My personal favourite part of the quote? The topmost pinnacle of tosh – hahaha, that cracks me up! Now if I can only find an occasion to use it.

Out Of Shape @ SHAPE Run 2009

You know how you joke about being the last one in the race? You joke about it cos you never really expect to be The Last One In The Race. Well, at SHAPE, I was The Last One In The Race. So maybe I should stop kidding about that.

Okay, I didn’t exactly come in last, but I was the last for the first few kms. Here’s what happened: we reach the complex to Madison Avenue’s ‘Don’t Call Me Baby’ and decide to do our customary loo visit. And guess what – no port-a-loo anywhere. So we have no choice but to join in the insanely lo-o-o-ong line.

By the time we are done, everyone is all lined up at the Starting line. But everyone is wearing the purple bib. One of the organizers sees our red bibs and tells us that the reds (the 11.5K) have already started running 15 minutes ago. What??!! Damn the non-portable loo!

So off we speed (and I use the word ‘speed’ loosely here) down the dark deserted road, leaving the bright lights and crowds behind. There is not a soul in sight, except for two photographers who snap our pics. Bugger. That’s the last thing I need – photographical evidence.

Obviously, my friend is faster than me and along with the other girl, they both run ahead. I fall way behind. They look smaller and smaller and smaller and then, they vanish into thin air. After I finish choking on their dust, it hits me that I’m now really and truly alone. I begin to have visions of myself being picked up by the truck that kutips all the sampah after the event ends and everybody’s gone home. I wonder what that will feel like.

The road is dark and empty and long. I’m a bit scared, so I keep going at the speed of … a snail. I see and pass a few red bibs who look like they gave up just minutes after beginning. Then I hear footsteps behind and on come a stampede of purple bibs. Show-offs. I’m terribly intimidated. My red bib stands out like a scarlet letter of shame. I curse the organizers for making the red numbers so damn bright. Even the blind can see from 11.5 km away.

So on and on, the purple bibs zip past me. Crap. How in the world will I ever catch up with the rest of the reds? I’m so far behind!

Then comes the first water station … cups filled with water are all nicely laid out on the tables for us. I’m impressed at how orderly it is, but then again, I am trailing behind about two million people. Everybody else has passed the water station, no wonder there’s no chaos. I’m reminded once again that I’m stil one of The Last Ones In The Race.

On the other side of the road is a stream of runners going in the opposite direction. I don’t notice their bib colours cos I’m keeping my head bowed as if in prayer. I put my hands across my stomach. Hopefully, nobody will see the huge bright red numbers pinned to my shirt.

I’m still swimming in a swarm of purple bibs. I desperately want to be among my own kind but can’t see any red bibs. Left and right, front and back, purple purple purple. I’ve never felt so alone. I consider giving up and asking the ambulance driver for a ride back to the complex. I also consider running off the route but that will look stupid and I’ll be found out: “Eh Ah Moi, mana you pergi?”.

Somewhere along the fourth km, I spot some pink bibs. I wonder why they are pink, but they are B, so they must be 11.5K too! I instantly feel better and pick up my pace a little bit. Soon, I start to see more and more red bibs. Thank god! I’m not The Last One In The Race anymore! And I won’t have to hitch a ride back with the truck that kutip the sampah. You can’t imagine how happy I feel.

Putrajaya is really nice at night – everything’s all lit up, there are nice wide roads and huge imposing buildings sprouting up everywhere. It’s a little muggy though, even though it’s nighttime. Maybe it’s the haze. There are quite a lot of cars so we have to be careful not to get run over or something. Not my idea of a successful run if you, like, get killed by a car.

I pretty much half-run, half-walk the rest of the way. For some reason, I find this run tougher than the KL Marathon. Probably cos I’ve been seriously slacking for the past month. Lost quite a bit of steam. I make a mental note to stop slacking. 21K in November la, girl, you want to die is it? I have no idea how in heaven’s name I’m going to be able to do that one … but I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. Right now: 11.5K.

At the eighth km, I decide to take some pics for posterity. Already here with my camera, why waste the opp? So I take a few hasty, out-of-focus shots like this ….

… and this …

… and this.

I admit, I walk that last 1km. And not even all that briskly. By now, my calves are a little sore and I swear, I have a blister on my left toe. I might’ve mixed up my synthetic socks with my cotton socks again.

I finally saunter my way to the finish line and am awarded with a cert. There’s no clock anywhere but I think it must’ve been about 9.45pm or so by then. But seeing that there’s no official record, I’m going to say it is 9.30pm. No, make that 9.28pm. Yeah, I finish at 9.28pm.

This is me and my Cert of Achievement. I’m going to go home and write my name on it with an Artline pen and then, put it into a bag for protection.

I decide to toss out the 1901 coupon – the last thing I feel like doing at that moment is to gobble down a hot dog. Instead, we go get our goodie bags, mainly to compare it with StanChart’s (which was filled with nothing but lame crap). Not bad la. There’s stuff to eat, stuff to drink, stuff to wash your hair with, heal your joints with, wipe your sweat with and even have sex with. And they all come in a pretty little Barbie-like bowling bag. It is so … pink.

All in all, while the run didn’t start off well – I was alone and discouraged and way behind time and pretty much feeling like crap – it did end well. I now have a pink bag and a piece of paper. Yippy What is it about running that makes you feel like crap when you’re doing it but all nice and happy once it’s over?

Gardenia Is Evil

It hasn’t been an easy road for me to stop eating so much bread. I love bread. I can eat lots of it. Every day. Red bean bun. Cheese twist. Potato bread. Chocolate roll. Raisin bread. Kaya bun. *drool* So yes, giving up bread has been a struggle … and then, they (and by they, I mean Gardenia) come up with Gardenia Delicia Butterscotch.

It’s so sweet and buttery and soft and fluffy, and I know this is corny and as an editor, I should be above this but it was L-u-u-u-urve at First Bite. I died and went to butterscotch heaven. Which was why I finished the entire loaf in two days and declared that Gardenia is evil and then decided to blog about it. Okay. I swear. After this, no more Butterscotch. Yum yum.

Will The Real Writer Please Stand Up?

“Everyone’s a writer,” people grumble. And by people, I mean me. But that’s not a fair complaint. After all, I tend to think of myself as a writer too … somewhat. But really, what makes you a real writer? If it’s merely the ability to string a coherent sentence together, then I suppose yes, everyone’s a writer. That’s kind of like saying that Jessica Simpson’s an actor, isn’t it?

I’m going to bring my question closer to home: Am I a writer? Well, I’ve written … stuff. Tons of them. In fact, I started once I was old enough to grasp a pencil properly between my fingers (I wrote and illustrated a storybook entitled The Albino And The School Bus when I was about seven or eight – I kid you not) and I’d been writing almost every day since then. Some stuff have been published, others have not. Some I’m proud of, others I’d rather burn … and some, you’re reading right now (haha).

But what do you have to do to earn the right to be called a writer? Is a writer someone who’s published something? That would mean that the thousands of mentor-wannabes out there who’ve scribbled 24-page get-rich-quick Kiyosaki-type books would be considered writers too. That’s a horrifying thought. What about someone who’s published a novel? Or someone who’s published a crap novel?

Are you a writer only if you write well then? If so, who determines how well? A panel of judges who may or may not have published crap themselves? Are you a writer only when you’ve been recognised by some authority in literature? What about someone whose writing is a huge hit with the masses (most of whom are probably ignoramuses – no offense) but is slammed by every book reviewer?

Are you a writer if you write brochures and direct mailers for a living? Or are you a writer only if you can churn dozens and dozens of pages at a go? If that were so, advertising copywriters, who usually don’t write more than 3½ words a page, would be ruled out completely.

What about those whose writing endeavours extend only to the pages of their journals? After all, many people seem to think they qualify as writers simply because they keep a journal and “love” to write. Are you considered a writer when the only one who’s seen your stuff is … you?

I still don’t have the answer to my question. I’m now wondering why I brought this up in the first place. So, I am going to chicken out and unceremoniously plonk an untimely close to this post. It’s an anti-climax, I know, but on the plus side, I spare my brain cells the agony of having to choke up some profound conclusion and I get to keep my ‘writer’ label intact.

I Hate Going To The Dentist

I went to the dentist today. I’ve only ever been to the dentist twice – once when I fell down and whacked my jaw against the sink, tore up my lip and chipped my tooth; and another time to extract my top two wisdom teeth. So, as you can see, I only go to the dentist when something is wrong and something was definitely wrong now. For the record, I’ve always had perfect teeth – never had a cavity in my life – but my tooth had been hurting for a few days and I figured I better get it checked out. This was how it went:

I enter the room. “I think I have a toothache.”

Bright sparkly smile. “Let me check your teeth first okay?”

“Is this going to hurt?”

“What?”

“Checking my teeth.”

“Oh no, it won’t hurt at all!”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes yes, I’m sure.”

Dentist checks my teeth, all happy and cheery.  “Oh, looks like you have a hole in your tooth. The wisdom tooth right at the back … oooh.”

I feel faint. “Oh my god. What does that mean?”

“It means you need a filling!” Big smile. Happily rummages through all the torture instruments in the tray for what I presume will be a humongous chainsaw to hack my tooth out.

“I’ve never had a filling before,” I whimper.

“Yes, I can see that.” Big beam, brilliant white teeth shining in a row. “There’s always a first time for everything!”

“Is this going to hurt?”

“The filling?”

“Yes. Is the filling going to hurt?”

“Oh no, it won’t really hurt that much.”

I jump out of my skin. “What do you mean not that much???”

“It won’t really hurt. If you’re worried you can’t take it, I can give you a jab.”

“Is that going to hurt?”

“The jab?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, there may be a little pain when the needle goes in.”

“What?! Okay okay, no jab no jab.”

“Just let me know if you can’t take the pain okay?”

“Okay.” I clench my fists, preparing for the worst.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

The Dentist passes me a mirror. “Look into the mirror. I’ll show you the cavity.”

“I don’t want to see it.”

“Just take a look. It’s good that you understand what I’ll be doing.”

“Um, no thanks. I don’t need to know anything.”

The Dentist holds up my hands, my fingers are clenched around the edges of the little square mirror like the gnarled fingers of a corpse.

“Look there, now see … there’s the cavity. You see it?”

I nod. “Uh huh, I see it.” I don’t see anything.

“So what I’m going to do is … blah blah blah blah blah …”

I don’t hear a word she’s saying. Oh my god, I think. I’m going to get a filling. I’m going to pass out.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

And then it starts. I know why people hate the dentist. It’s those horrible instruments. All steel and tubes. All skinny and long and sharp. And they make the most horrific sounds. I swear, if producers of a horror movie got no budget for sound effects, just go to the dentist and record the sounds of those things la. Sure scare the living shit out of people one.

So the Dentist starts explaining to me step-by-step what is being done. I try to listen but all I can hear are the Sounds. The drilling. First of all, why would they call it drilling? Drilling is what you do to a concrete wall and they’re doing that to your tooth??!! Good lord almighty. And the sound is this bloodcurdling whir … whir whir whir-r-r-r-r-r … then the Dentist takes a giant ice pick or something and starts brutally scraping inside the hole. The sound is worse than fingernails on a chalkboard … scrape scrape scrape …. and scra-a-a-a-a-pe some more. Then the Dentist takes a chainsaw and forces it into my mouth. Then the whirring sawing motion again. Then the scary water spraying. Instead of a nice slushing sound of liquid, it’s that ghastly whirring again.

What’s with these dental instrument manufacturers? Can’t they invent things that don’t look and sound like death?? Hello Kitty makes all kinds of crap; why can’t they make dental instruments? All pink, fuzzy, smelling like strawberry and sounding like tinker-bell music. Why not, I ask you?? Why not??!! And then, we are done. “And that’s it!” chortles the Dentist. “We’re done. See! That wasn’t so bad now, was it?”

I agree. If I disagree, she might give me another filling.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

I never ever want to go through this again. I ask the Dentist for advice. “Should I buy a mechanical toothbrush?”

“You mean an electric toothbrush?”

“Yes yes, an electric toothbrush. Should I buy one?”

“You can if you want but not entirely necessary la. A regular soft-bristled brush is good enough. Just be thorough.”

“What about those mouthwashes? The ones they advertise in the paper?”

“No la. Actually, those don’t really help.”

“Really???” Damn those advertising copywriters.

“Really.”

“I want to whiten my teeth. Should I whiten my teeth?”

“But you have such nice teeth already. Why would you want to do that?”

“I want them to be whiter.”

“Already so pretty, no need la.” (The Dentist really said that. I’m not bluffing.)

“I asked another dentist before and he also said he didn’t think I needed to do it. He said I shouldn’t tamper with perfection.” (Okay okay, so he didn’t say ‘perfection’ but he did say pretty – why don’t you people believe me??)

“See. Even other dentists say you don’t need it. Of course, it’s really up to you, but it’s not something I feel you need to do.”

“But I want wor.”

“Well, think about it and let me know then.”

“Will it hurt?”

“The teeth whitening?”

“Yeah.”

“No la. You just have to open your mouth wide and keep them open for a really long time.”

“Okay.”

High Heels: To Wear Or Not To Wear?

1. Keep your eyes up.
2. Suck in your stomach and butt so your weight doesn’t shift backwards.
3. Imagine there’s an orange between your thighs.
4. Imagine you’re wearing heels higher than the ones you have on.
5. Think confidence. Think glamour. Think red carpet.
6. And run like a Hollywood princess.

And that’s how you run in high heels? Good advice for all the Carrie Bradshaw wannabes and participants of those crazy High Heel Marathons.

I thought High Heel Marathons were nuts and then, I saw pics of Italian policewomen who wear high heels on the job.

I also thought the Italian govt was nuts and then, I read about Christian Louboutin’s creation: mainstream fashion’s first pair of 8-inch stilettos.

Now, let me first state that I personally love high heels. Can’t help it. Like I’ve confessed before, I’m a product of today’s society. I wear heels five days a week and I love the way they make me look and feel (or rather, the way I’ve been manipulated into believing how I should look and feel) … as much as I adore them, however, I’m not addicted. There are limits to my heel-wearing – for instance, I’d never wear them out on a five-hour shopping stint or anything. I’m all for fashion but hey, I’m not a fan of pain.

High heels have been linked to a form of masochism. They’re likened to torture devices such as so-tight-you-can’t-breathe corsets used back then as ways to subjugate women … kinda like the hundreds worn by this crazy woman, Cathie Jung, to achieve her freakishly tiny 15-inch waist …

… I know: yuck. Just like the corset, high heels torture and impair women. The argument is, anything that deforms your figure, cripples your movement or harms your health is a form of masochism. And high heels – I must admit – fit all three. Wear them long enough and you just may suffer from incontinence, stress fractures, back and hip problems, broken ankles, pain in the jaw, neck and head, menstrual dysfunction and fertility problems (!!!).

My initial reaction was a big scoff … until I read about women going under the knife for the perfect feet (read: high heel-friendly). They’re sawing off their toes to shorten them, snipping off the last few toes to create that desirable ‘cascading’ toes effect, draining the fat from the ankles, injecting Botox into the balls of the feet for more cushioning so they can wear heels for longer periods of time, subjecting the lower calves to lipo so that the calves are slim enough to fit into sexy knee-high heeled boots, shaving down the ankle bones and narrowing the feet so they can fit into European-style shoes like Manolos. I hope you’re horrified right now cos I sure was when I first found out about this!!

Even in today’s world where people are reconstructing their entire faces and bodies, there’s just something so horribly extreme about feet surgery. Just like Chinese women who smashed their bones to “reshape” their feet so they could fit into the tiny three-inch Golden Lotus shoes back in the 900s …

… women today smash up their feet so they can wear Manolos and Louboutins (today’s Golden Lotuses) for longer periods of time and look good doing it.

Esh, can you blame them when you see Hollywood princesses wearing blue-soled YSLs with a 1.5 inch platform and 5.5 inch heel? That’s a whopping 7 inches already. That woman needs a crutch.

I feel physical pain just thinking about the extent women will go to in order to teeter and totter in those 8-inch heels. And we think we’ve achieved equality???

The more things change, the more they stay the same. No matter how far we’ve come, the fact is undeniable: most of us are still slaves to beauty. Or at least, what certain people tell us beauty should be, a large number of whom are men who will happily design 8-inch heels they themselves will never have the misfortune of wearing.

4 Tricks Your Brain Plays On You

I’ve finished Dan Gilbert’s Stumbling On Happiness (as you can tell from my previous post). The book – despite its title – isn’t as much to do with happiness per se as it is to do with the way our mind works and how it enables (or deludes) or disables us from achieving happiness (or the happiness we think we want). Confused? Don’t be. It’s fascinating stuff. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about my brain, it’s this: it’s wily and can’t be trusted.TRICK #1:  What you see is NOT what you get

Life isn’t WYSIWYG; it is WYSINWYG. What you see is not what you get. It isn’t about our eyes transmitting an image of say, two people talking by the watercooler, into our brains. Rather, it’s a complex psychological process that combines what we see with what we already think, feel, know, want and believe. The combination of all these things constructs our perception of reality. So, instead of two people just yapping by the watercooler, it’s two people who dislike you gossiping about your latest fiasco by the watercooler. You feel lousy cos you “saw” the same thing “happen” last week. You feel marginalized, like somebody’s idea of a joke. Everybody hates me, you think. I’m gonna go jump in the lake. Talk about room for misinterpretation.

Unfortunately, WYSINWYG-ing is what adults do. We are idealists – we know that what we see isn’t necessarily what there is. We attach all sorts of significance to things and wind up stressing ourselves up. WYSIWYG-ing, on the other hand, is what kids do and kids are realists. They can’t make the distinction between things in the mind and things in the physical world, so what they see is what they believe. Thing is, realists quickly grow up to become idealists.TRICK #2:  A terminal case of presenteeism

Ever heard of presenteeism? Neither have I, until now. Presenteeism is when our present state (how we feel, think, what we believe, know, etc) influences our imagination of the future. We can’t imagine every single thing, so most of the details of our future are filled in by what we know around us right now. This happens unconsciously pretty much all the time, which means we wind up with lots of wrong predictions.

For instance, they never believed man could fly: “The aeroplane will never fly,” declared Lord Haldane, the British Minister of War in 1907. And the very famous one, “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home,” said Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corporation in 1977 (click here and here for more wrong predictions).

So if you feel crap today, it’s hard to imagine feeling happy tomorrow (although you probably will, unless you’re clinically depressed and suicidal but that’s a different story). And when you’ve eaten too much char kway teow today, you can’t imagine wanting to eat it again tomorrow but … you do! Another common example is the marathon – anyone who’s done it swears “never again” but come next year, they sign up again. Which is also why we can be wrong when predicting what will make us happy – we think we’ll be happy simply cos it’s what will make us happy today but when it happens a year later, it just might not.TRICK #3:  The great summariser

Our brain works like one of those movie synopsis generators – it was a great movie; it was a lousy movie. It remembers only the peaks, valleys and/or ends of a given event and these two generally influence how we think we feel about everything else that went on. This is fine if you’re watching a movie (“Transformers 2’s ending sucked, so the whole movie sucked”), but not so fine if you’re trying to remember stuff. We look back and misremember things as being better or worse than they really were … which would be fine if it were just a case of reminiscing but when we use these faulty memories as a basis for imagining our future, then it’s not so fine.

I was flipping through my old journals the other day and I read some entries about a particular episode which, at that time apparently, was utterly devastating. I was surprised at how surprised I was that it was devastating cos for the last few years, I’d always remembered it as a non-event. In fact, I’d always thought it was rather pleasant, all things considered – okay okay, it was a break-up.  I honestly don’t remember it being as traumatic as it was written in my journal. I guess that was also presenteeism there too – I feel fine about it now and my present feelings have influenced the memory of the past event and made it fine though the facts of the event weren’t so. I’m going to throw away that stupid journal.TRICK #4: Survival mode

We never really see the world as it is. You know what they say: if you saw things as they really are, you’d be depressed and won’t get out of bed. So our mind cleverly tricks us to keep us optimistic enough to keep going. Things like ‘kids are super’ – no they’re not. They’re cute la, but annoying as hell. Think of the sleepless nights, the poop, the diapers, the vomit, the sick days, the whingeing, the screaming, the episodes of public embarrassment, etc. But we need to delude ourselves into this belief so that we’ll keep having kids cos if we don’t, then there will be no people on earth after everyone dies off.

There are other beliefs too – for instance, we must have certain things to be happy. And those certain things are usually really expensive stuff we need to buy. It’s a belief perpetuated to keep us covetous and spending cos if nobody buys stuff, the economy will collapse and the world will be destroyed.

Or this belief that taking a break will be good for us – it’s perpetuated by the travel industry, I tell you! Go take a break, go on a holiday and come back feeling better than ever! Um, no lor. Go on a great holiday and come back feeling worse than ever when you gotta start work again. But it’s a belief we need so that people in the travel industry can keep their jobs. Duh.

A classic one: what doesn’t kill me will make me stronger or suffering will make me wiser – this keeps us going even when what we really want to do is go jump off a cliff. It’s a way our brains trick us so that we carry on with the horrible thing we’re doing and not quit prematurely (like you know, your job or something like that).

Get Fit In 6 Minutes A Week!

Okay, somebody give me a cord. I want to strangle a researcher. First, they say don’t eat eggs, high cholesterol. Then they say, can eat eggs. Then, they say every day must take vitamins. Then, they say taking vitamins may be bad for you if you exercise. Then, they say every day must exercise for at least 30 minutes and now they say …

… 6 minutes of exercise A WEEK is enough to get fit. What the …??!!!

According to the Wellness blog at NYT, some researchers in Japan – after completing another grueling study on the collagen-boosting properties of wasabi sandwiches, I’m sure – decided to dump a bunch of rats in a big pot of water. One group (let’s call them Rodents A) was made to paddle for six hours and the other group (let’s call them Rodents B) was made to paddle furiously for 20 seconds. To make things more interesting, the researchers piled weights on Rodents B (what savages – and by savages, I mean the researchers, not the rodents). Rodents B was then allowed to rest for 10 seconds and then, dunked back to swim intensely for another 20 seconds. This was repeated 14 times, totaling about 4 over minutes in time. Then all the rodents were scientifically poked and prodded, and researchers found that the molecular changes – whatever that means – were the same in both groups of rats.

So the conclusion was, and I quote, “Six minutes or so a week of hard exercise had proven to be as good as multiple hours of working out for achieving fitness.”

And then, the killer question: Could it be that most of us are spending more time than we need to trying to get fit? Apparently, more and more sports scientists are beginning to say, “Yup.”

Aiya, so what is it now? 90 minutes, 60 minutes, 30 minutes, 15 minutes, 6 minutes? A month, a week, a day? Morning time, afternoon time or evening time? Rats or rodents? Gerbils or hamsters? Come on, hurry up. I haven’t got all day, you know. I have to go drown myself in a pot in precisely six minutes.

We’re Malaysians And We Like ‘Em Ugly

As a country, we’re known for lots of things – great food, horrendous public toilets and idiot politicians who behave like extras in a B-grade soap opera – and last week, I added one more to the list. We don’t like good-looking people.

Case in point: Malaysian wives are up in arms, insisting on a ban on maids from China cos they’re too hot (the maids, not Malaysian wives). Their husbands will be all distracted and start bonking the maid in the broom closet at night. The Star reported last week that bringing in maids from China will make the “men happy and the women sad”. So, no way to Chinese maids. But Indonesian maids can – these ones we hire by the truckload cos they don’t figure as high up on the Hot Ladder as the ones from China.

Exhibit A: Maid from China. Wah!!! No wonder la Malaysian wives want to ban la. How to fight like this?

It’s really funny how preoccupied we are with looks, and I’m not talking about this in the context of the modeling industry where it’s all about looks. No. I’m talking jobs like maids and construction workers and civil servants.

In Malaysia, we only hire construction workers from Indonesia but not Bangladesh cos they are – just like the maids from China – too damn hot. Radzi what’s-his-name was quoted accusing Bangladeshi construction workers for causing “social problems” because they have “blue eyes and look like Hindi film actors”.

Exhibit B: Construction worker from Indonesia.

Exhibit C: Construction worker from Bangladesh. Oooh … is it just me or is it getting hot in here?

And it’s not just maids and construction workers, let’s not forget the civil servants in Kelantan who must be really fugly in order to be hired. PAS Spiritual Leader, Nik Aziz, declared the state won’t hire “pretty women” because they “will get married”. Um, last I checked, some pretty ugly women also have husbands leh. And to keep the ugly quotient as high as possible, the ugly women can’t wear lipstick (it’s too sexy – ban!) or perfume (it invites rape – ban!) or leather high heels (the sound of clicking heels is too damn hot – ban!).

Exhibit D: Ugly enough to work in Kelantan (the woman, not the orangutan).

Exhibit E: Too hot to work in Kelantan.

Three is the magic number, so it’s now official: hello, we’re Malaysians and we like ugly people. So if you look like a cross between a gargoyle and Chewbacca’s left butt cheek, we welcome you with open arms. Come take care of our children, come build our buildings, come sort the mail in a Kelantan post office. If you’re ugly enough, we might even grant you citizenship.