Tinker, Tailor

This couple from China knows something about being enterprising.

I talked about how to tell if a girl is interested in you” (do read it first before reading the rest of this post).

After listing down the signs to tell if a girl is interested, all the advice I gave was:

If you encounter any of these signs, there’s a good chance that she might like you. Be careful not to blow your chances. And good luck.

You probably need a little more than luck not to blow your chances - women are sensitive creatures, so if you don’t play your cards carefully, even if she’s interested in you initially, you might lose her interest soon enough. So I admit that I was being rather irresponsible by not providing proper advice.

To make up for that…

What to do if a girl is interested in you (how to increase or sustain a girl’s interest in you):

1. Acknowledge her presence. A grunt is usually sufficient.

2. When she speaks to you, turn down the volume. Better still, remove one of the earphones from your ear.

3. Take off your sunglasses as well.

4. And don’t stare at the ass of the other girl walking by for too long. Or your own reflection off the glass or mirror.

5. And yawn less, and not too loudly.

6. Say something. Monosyllabic replies are economical and ideal, but a duo-syllabic word every now and then would show her that you’re willing to put in extra effort, which would greatly impress her. However, complete sentences are overkill - you’ll come across as trying too hard (which is true).

7. Ask for her name. She’ll be impressed that you think that she’s a person with a name.

8. Ask for her name. She’ll be impressed that you’re putting in effort to ask for her name again because you’ve forgotten it by now.

9. Visit her at the hospital. This assumes that her newborn is yours as well. She’ll appreciate it.

10. This last one is more complicated and takes a lot more effort than the others, so I’ve split it into sub-steps:

a. Find out the date when you first met her. You wouldn’t know the date yourself, so you’ll have to find out from her. Yes, this may require speaking to her.

b. Find out what flower she likes. Again, this might require speaking, including the use of multi-syllabic words like “flower”.

c. You guessed it - get some flowers (get can mean pluck or take from funeral wreaths), and give them to her on your 10th anniversary. Yes, 10th anniversaries are generally significant enough to warrant flowers.

Prepare to live happily ever after.

I remember seeing a post by someone about how to tell if a girl is NOT interested in you (sorry I’m too lazy to look for it).

I must say I can’t comment much due to my lack of experience in that area. It makes more sense for me to talk about things that I’m more experienced in…

Like how to tell if a girl is interested in you.

Now, before we jump ahead to the list, here’s a word of caution: While these signs are highly accurate from my experience, girls are complex creatures and there are always exceptions. So don’t blame me if you encounter one of these signs and it turns out that the girl isn’t really interested in you. Also, girls tend to be quite subtle, so you need to be pretty sensitive and aware, otherwise you might miss these signs completely. All the best, and here’s how you tell if a girl is interested in you:

1. She wants you to have her number. Her credit card number.

2. She’s about to sit on the free seat beside you, but accidentally sits on you instead. And stays there. And starts making this rocking motion.

3. The only time she doesn’t call is when she’s in the shower, or when she’s with you. (Or both.)

4. She frequently buys gifts for you. Mobile phones, digital cameras, laptops, etc. - you get the idea.

5. When she talks to you, she says things like “I love you” or “marry me” every few sentences. And she sounds sincere.

6. She’s supposed to give you a friendly peck on the cheek, but she misses completely, and gets your tongue instead.

7. Then she slides down to your neck. And chest. And abs. And… and…..

8. When she hugs you, the air in your lungs is squeezed out, and you can’t breathe.

9. You’ve given her a farewell hug and let go, but she’s still hugging you. You’re walking away, dragging her along.

10. She doesn’t want you to use a condom. She was mumbling something about “having a baby”.

If you encounter any of these signs, there’s a good chance that she might like you. Be careful not to blow your chances. And good luck.

One of the things I like about riding on public transport is that you get to see all kinds of interesting and weird stuff.

Like this girl who stood right in front of me on the MRT. I noticed a tag tied to her bag

Power: Career/Studies Charm

I was looking around at the other parts of the bag, wondering if I would see another tag that says something like this:

Power: Love/Sex Charm

Apparently she didn’t need help in that department, even though I didn’t find her attractive.

Anyway, on another occasion on the MRT, I noticed a guy standing near me, trying to make a fashion statement?

I was at the Singapore Art Museum when I saw this piece:

The label on the side read:

Tang Da Wu
b. 1943, Singapore

Australian Legend

1992

Graphite on paper
111.5 x 81 cm

Anyway, this must be the key to why the Malay/Indonesian word “buaya” (crocodile) is also used to refer to a lecherous man.

I’ve often wondered what it’s like to be blind.

I used to do this every now and then for fun: when I’m walking along a quiet and relatively safe path, I would look ahead to the next obstacle, estimate its distance from me in terms of number of steps, then close my eyes and walk for slightly less than those number of steps.

For example, there might be a kerb at the end of the walkway I’m on, and it looks like it’s about 30 steps ahead. I’d then close my eyes, and try to walk for around 25 steps in my normal stride, before opening my eyes again.

Try it yourself - and let me know if, in your first attempt, you don’t open your eyes by the time you reach your 20th step, and your stride doesn’t decrease. (But don’t blame me if you kill yourself.)

I don’t really know why I did all that. I think I started doing it to see how good I was at estimating distances. And perhaps the cheap thrill that came along with it became addictive.

Walking with the same stride after step 15 with your eyes closed brings about a different sensation - you don’t know if your direction is slightly off, you don’t know if you might walk off the pavement, you don’t know if you might step into the drain, you don’t know if you might kiss the tree - you become full of you-don’t-knows, and you don’t know what you don’t know.

Then you finally open your eyes.

The relief.

Or the annoyance on finding that you were on the right track and you that didn’t have to open your eyes prematurely.

Anyway, I was reading this quote from psychologist Zoltan Torey, who became blind when he was a student:

But what is new of course is just the way in which I am able to combine things in my brain without the interference of vision. Normally when people want to think they close their eyes because the flood of visual impressions that comes at you is a distraction. I have the privilege of not having to cope with that, of thinking without…I’m a sort of ‘thinkaholic’, if I might use this expression. This is the way I did my research work about psychology and the consciousness. Not being troubled with vision itself, it was possible for me to imagine complex internal systems, and so I have this marvellous opportunity to run an internal show like a movie director.

After reading this, I think I want to be blind. Maybe one day a week. That would be so cool.

What do you do when you’ve only started work a short while ago, and your work desk is already in a mess, and your boss walks by your desk every morning?

And what do you do when your boss dumps a book on one of the piles on your desk, a book that talks about mess?

You read it of course.

It helps that the book’s title is A Perfect Mess. The subtitle is even more compelling: “The Hidden Benefits of Disorder–How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-the-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place.”

As the subtitle suggests, this book explains why some messiness is actually beneficial and even more productive than a neat and highly-organised system.

Like a (moderately) messy desk being more efficient than a very neat one - something which I’ve known for a while. It’s always comforting to have someone else agree with you on something so radical.

Besides efficiency, messy desks can inspire serendipitous ideas and breakthroughs, when things are connected together by chance, just because they happen to be placed close together.

The book also covers other areas where some mess can be beneficial, including work - work planning. Everyone knows that long-term planning is useless. What most people don’t realise is that it can be harmful as well. No wonder the company I work for doesn’t have a real long-term plan, but it’s doing well. No wonder the boss passed me the book…

Whatever it is, this is an eye-opening book, whether you’re a messy Bessie or a neat Nazi. If you’re the messy type (like me), you won’t be ashamed of your mess again after reading this.

P.S. I find some of the cases in the book a little stretched, probably because of the pro-mess bias of the authors. But not enough to harm the book.