Light Bulb

I bragged about my carefree way of living in my last blog. This is a guilty pleasure, I admit.

Confession time. For years, I have not the foggiest idea of what my shirt size or shoe size is. I wrote my birthday wrongly throughout my teens. After all these years, I have been mixing up the hot water tap and cold water tap until I ended up burning my hands with boiling water - each time.

Not that I love Mr. Perfect less, but that I like Mr. Bump more.

So let me go further. I had not bothered to change the light bulbs in my bathroom until the last bulb was gone two weeks ago. When my wife asked me to change the light bulb in the dark (and being a little disappointed, I confess), I kept forgetting until another week later.

Then, the light went on, beaming like a halo around my slobbish head.

Who Cares

It takes years before we became aware of what we did have, instead of obsessing about what we didn't. Better still, we'd have better life by not caring at all.

Our team was introduced a cutting-edge machine that is supposed to measure our body composition yesterday.

It goes like this: A current passes through your body and, within a matter of two minutes, the device will tell you much more information than the number of inches around the waist. Enter the details like your age, body weight and body height. Voilà! Amount of fat, lean tissue and water content inside your body will be quickly displayed on the screen, based upon the technique bioimpedance, whatever that meant. Don't feel bad. The worst is coming; the next screen will tell you how many extra pounds of body fat you're carrying.

Not surprisingly, I was being asked to be the guinea pig in order to test the accuracy of that device. "Is there a problem, KM, for you to try the measurement?"

"Not at all," I assured my boss. And, of course, I am not the type of guy who would care. I don't care a whit what I have, to say nothing of what I don't have. The trouble is, I said to myself, I don't even know my body weight and body height, which are supposed to be entered into the device for computation purpose.

I ended up making up the numbers of my body weight and body height. Who cares? And then, who knows?

Slumdog

Who would have thought that the Oscar goes to the Indian film Slumdog Millionaire this year? And yet Slumdog shines.

As most audience realized, the film is based on a novel written by Indian diplomat Vikas Swarup. I'm not making a judgment about the writing of a diplomat – far from it – but rather noting the undiplomatic manner Jamal Malik answered the interrogation. Picture Jamal at the police station answering the accusation of cheating in order to win two million rupees - by a former street child with little education.

After watching the Slumdog, I went home and had a dream. To help you set the scene in my dream, I should tell you that I didn't take part in "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." That wasn't a dream of millionaire. I simply found myself dumbfounded in a meeting, with beads of perspiration glistering over my forehead - similar to the street child Jamal.

I was asked to give thoughts on the courageous move proposed by the Prime Minister. I waited. Should I heave a pail of cold water on the suggestion, I surmised, I will get myself into trouble. Call it a stupid move, and I'll get as sure as hell a two-ton chunk of marble dropped on my head.

"I'm not sure that our team will be totally comfortable with the change," I replied at the end of my dream.

The meaning of I'm not sure, obviously, is the opposite of what is to be taken literally. I am quite sure that we're not totally comfortable. This is akin to the situation when we're being challenged on a proposed cut in medical expenditure. "We're not cutting a thing," we should answer. "We're reducing the rate of increase." As taught by William Safire, this should be followed by a laboured explanation how the net amount being spent is more, but less than it would have been if the current rate of increase were allowed to run amok.

You gotta ask, Isn't this a lie?

This isn't, I should make plain, a lie. Come to think of it, we're simply economical with the truth.