Plunging Into The Grey

We all have horns hidden beneath our perfectly coiffed hair. Some are more apparent than others but they’re there nonetheless. It’s scary to think that, given the opportunity – or more appealingly, an opportunity at the ideal time; serendipity of sorts – we’re all capable of committing acts we would, under normal circumstances, be horrified even to consider.

I genuinely believe that unless you’ve been tempted and have, by the sheer power of will (not to mention a conscience more impenetrable than most), to walk the other way, one has little right to judge, condemn or proffer advice to anyone else. Say a man who’s up to his eyeballs in financial messes goes to an ATM machine and withdraws a paltry sum of fifty bucks – presumably to pay for his sickly child’s medication for the day. Instead of dispensing the amount he requested, the machine goes happily berserk and dispenses an amount to the tune of an extra zero. To a financially desperate man, five hundred bucks is nothing short of a miraculous godsend. But it’s not his money. Palming it would be tantamount to stealing. In a black and white context, this would most definitely be wrong. It would be so easy to condemn him for even considering the cash (“It’s a sin! You’ll be punished! It’s dishonest and you’ll never have a night’s peace.”) but place yourself in his situation and things become well … somewhat grey.

Yes, I admit that, being human, we have a tendency to paint everything grey. It’s a much prettier shade than say, black or white, which gives absolutely no room for the many wonderful shades, levels and degrees we try our darnedest to concoct.

Life, to a certain extent, can be black and white. This is right and this is wrong. Feeding the orphans is right; tripping the little old lady on her way to the restroom is wrong. Nursing the puppy back to health is right; forcing your way through the express counter when you have thirty-two items in your cart is wrong. But are things really as clear-cut as they seem? Do we invent shades of grey to justify what we know deep down is wrong? Or do these shades serve some therapeutic purpose (other than mollifying our guilt) that would’ve been impossible if our only choices were black and white?

Any given situation can be turned into a grey area when we bring in annoying little factors like pleasure or happiness, childhoods or personal backgrounds, our warped psyches or our damned desire of wanting to “live life to the full” (which, incidentally, almost always means getting out there and doing all the less-than-righteous things your parents warned you never to do). Like the single mother who would have to give up being in close proximity to her child for several years for the opportunity to pursue her dream … in another country. Many would be suitably alarmed that any self-sacrificing mother could even entertain the idea of “abandoning” her child. However, staying put in the white checked box may bring about consequences just as unpleasant: pent-up frustrations, bitterness, regret, a lifelong suffering of the “what if” syndrome (one of the most unpleasant things to which you can subject your mind). Both choices will bring about their own set of consequences – the real question sometimes isn’t what’s right or what’s wrong. The real question, I believe, can sometimes be: which set of consequences would I be able to live with?

When I look at the world around me, I am convinced that we were all bred out of a history of grey areas. The world simply cannot survive on just black and white choices. We’re a species of “yes or no, but…” And for this reason, I am beginning to see and appreciate the beauty of grey. And that’s precisely why I maintain that we all have horns under our hair. When we permit the existence of grey areas, we are, in all honesty, permitting a whole menagerie of other things – one of which is the justification of something that’s, in actual fact, wrong (when measured against stringent by-the-book guidelines, that is).

Take a middle-aged woman, for example, who has never had a relationship with a man, has never known a man (an archaic choice but an apt one nonetheless). Such a situation might be okay with say, somebody like Mother Teresa who has more important things to worry about in life than snagging a dude but it’s safe to conclude that the fictional middle-aged woman in this story is not Mother Teresa. Years of loneliness pass but just when she resigns herself to accepting the fact that the closest she’ll ever get to male companionship is Chucky the hamster, a man appears in her life.

Of course, this being a hypothetical scenario, this man isn’t her knight in shining armour who comes to her doorstep in a snazzy sports convertible, reads books by authors with unpronounceable names and shelters the homeless over the weekend. Instead, he's untrustworthy, lisps and has an unsavoury penchant for stonewashed denims. The plus points: he has a thick bush of hair … on his head.

The question our heroine now has to grapple with is, does she throw caution to the wind and grab this opportunity to have a wild, meaningless affair (and finally, know a man – in every sense of the word) and live to show the scratch marks of the cad who was once in her life? Or does she take the whole notion and flush it down the urinal? Again, both have their own set of consequences. Is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? Or more appropriately, is it better to have lusted and lost than never to have lusted at all?

There are no easy answers to this dilemma (heck, this is a pointless essay on grey areas, what did you expect?). But I do believe that sometimes, taking the moral high ground isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. Grey is what makes our lives interesting (it’s also what sends us to hell but that’s an entirely different story).

We’re all familiar with stories of folks who’ve shunned anything even remotely resembling something “bad”, choosing to live their lives in some self-righteous vacuum only to go insane and wind up dead in a smelly ditch, miles away from civilization. Their lives shortened by bitterness and suppression, these are the people who walk around with pinched faces, perpetual frowns and smelling like mothballs.

Grey areas allow us to do things that might wind up with a little fear, a little wistfulness, a little frustration. How in the world will we ever experience the wide range and depth of our emotions if all we allow ourselves into are black and white territories? How will we know guilt unless we lie to our mother about spending the night at Jackie’s when we really spent the night at Jack’s? How will we know stress unless we get pulled over by a cop at 3 in the morning for nearly careening into the neighbour’s dog? How will we know temptation unless we get off our butts and shed off the persona of a perennial do-gooder?

I’m aware that these are flimsy reasons for doing misguided things but perhaps perfection isn’t all that we make it out to be. Perhaps screwing up is a large part of what life is about. Your screw-ups make you who you are; more so than all your stellar, morally upright deeds.

The 12-page letter to my father

I stared down at a face so painfully familiar, yet so strange. Deeply etched with lines, it was a face that told of bitterness, loneliness and regret. It was the face of my father.

My perception of my father’s sickly appearance as he lay on the stark white bed could’ve been biased. After all, he’d left my family twenty years ago and I liked to think that he’d been nothing but rock-bottom miserable since then.

It was a week ago when I received news that my father was deathly ill. This bit I heard only because it wafted over my gossipy neighbour’s fence.

I hadn’t intended to do anything about it initially. After all, this was the man who’d abandoned us. A man who’d made me live with the thoughts "If daddy doesn’t want me, who will?" all my life. A complete stranger. Why did I care if he was sick?

I went about my usual business for the next week, ignoring what I’d just discovered till one day, it struck me. Being ill, he was probably of dying. I might never see him again. I might never get to tell him exactly what I thought of him. And he’d never see that despite his abandonment, I’d turned out pretty much in one piece and that I’ll never forgive him for what he’s done.

It was then when I decided to find out where my father was and to consider paying him a little visit. He was in my grandmother’s home. I balked at the thought of facing not only my father, but his family, all of whom I’ve not seen in years. There was a bitter taste in my mouth.

I had so many things to say that I decided to write him a letter. With my pen poised over a sheet of paper, the words tumbled out in a rush. I raced to catch up with my thoughts and wound up scribbling a letter twelve pages long. I stuffed it into an envelope and scrawled my father’s name on the front. No point in dressing up this letter.

Dumping the letter into my bag, I left to see him. On the way there, I decided to weigh the consequences of my actions. Best-case scenario: breeze in, waltz up to his room, see him looking pathetic and feeling a sudden burst of energy, successfully verbalise every single point of my letter. Worst-case scenario: get kicked out of the house, he could be dead, my car could break down. Either way, I could still make it home in time for dinner.

Upon reaching the house, I swiftly pulled my car into a shaded parking spot. Who knew how long this was going to take?

I marched to the front door and rang the bell. The door opened. It was my grandmother. She’d aged tremendously since I last saw her. Crowned with a halo of thinning grey hair, she’d lost quite a lot of weight from the looks of her clothes lifelessly hanging onto her once robust frame.

She didn’t recognize me. I pushed past her and went upstairs. She never used to like me anyway.

The house was empty. Looking around, I felt nothing but a cold sense of unfamiliarity, which was strange because this was the house I used to play in when I was a little girl.

I finally found my father. I peeked in and was taken aback by the shriveled-up figure lying limply on the bed as if death had already come. There was no movement, only shaky breaths to indicate that he was still hanging on. His eyes were closed.

I clutched my bag as my mind went into a tailspin. I had come here all prepared to attack, accuse and unearth the past. I wanted to finally have my say, to gain what little satisfaction I could after the years of bitterness. I wanted an opponent, not some sickly old man.

Staring at my father, I felt a strange mixture of disappointment and relief. Relief because despite my dramatic plan for revenge, deep down I was really scared.

I tried to fight the waves of pity and sadness that threatened to wash over me. After all he’d done, I was going to feel sorry for him? When had he ever felt sorry for me?

I decided to leave then. I could feel the slight rustle of my letter in my bag when I moved but I ignored it.

Just then, I heard sounds of young children scrambling up the staircase punctuated by a female voice. Suddenly, a woman’s face appeared at the doorway. Looking at me indifferently, she entered the room with three young children. Holding the hand of the youngest, she approached the bed where my father lay as the two older boys stood uncertainly by the door.

I couldn’t help noticing the boys’ uncanny resemblance to my own brother. I stared at them curiously. It never struck me that these children were my half-siblings - at least not until the woman mentioned the word ‘daddy’.

These were the people my father had left us for. He was their daddy, no longer mine.

I left then. It was an incredibly long drive home. The road never seemed to end and I was comforted when I finally reached my house.

I took out my angry, twelve-page letter and tore it into pieces. Why had I written it in the first place? Did I want him to read it and spend his dying days regretting what he’s done? An apology so I could laugh right in his face? Did I want him to say that he did care a little even though he never showed it, that he did think about me once in a while. Or did I want my letter to cause so much grief that his death would be speeded up?

After examining the situation, I saw that there was no point. The justice I’d hoped to obtain had been dashed the moment I saw him in that bed. He had his own demons to battle.

Despite all my arguments, there was one thought that refused to budge from my mind. What I’d really wanted to say was that despite all that had happened, he was still my father and a small part of me still cared. And it was funny because this was the one part I didn’t include in my letter.

Mayo in my hair and nowhere to go

I stood in the center of my kitchen staring into the plastic bowl I’d just filled with mayonnaise. Tonight, I was going to slather this bowl of beige, greasy slime all over my head. It was hardly a thought that filled me with anticipation.

In fact, a wild mixture of feelings surged through me - dread, disgust and disbelief. The strong mayo smell didn’t help matters either. Heck, I didn’t even like the taste of mayo!

But I promised myself I’d do this and do it I will. I grabbed dollops of mayo and gingerly smoothed it over my dry hair. I held my breath, wondering who on God’s green earth actually had the time to dream up such a ridiculous home treatment for hair conditioning?

I pictured this guy in his kitchen fixing himself a tuna mayo sandwich. He’s scooping up the mayo when his wife reminds him to buy some conditioner from the store. He groans. "But there’s soccer on TV," he says. Then, he looks at the jar of mayo and comes up with a brilliant idea - why not give her the mayo? It’s got butter and eggs and stuff, all the things you need to oil up the hair. Plus, it’s natural too.

That was probably how this mayo treatment came about. Interesting story but I still didn’t see how this could possibly work.

I finished applying the grimy substance all over my hair and ran over to the kitchen shelf to grab a roll of plastic wrap. According to the book, I was supposed to wrap my head up in it.

It was difficult. I must have plastered three to four hastily ripped off pieces in order to cover my entire head (some might point out that it was because I had an extraordinarily large head).

With the plastic loosely in place, I filled a tub with hot water and immersed a cotton towel in it. I then wrapped the towel over the plastic. Cringing, I looked at myself in the mirror - my T-shirt was soaked with greasy water and my head all bundled up. I looked like a lobotomy patient. I was sure I’d never looked stupider (several people might disagree with me at this point). I was glad no one else was home. Thank goodness for social life.

The instructions said to leave the concoction on for 20 minutes. Good. I was in no hurry to unwrap the layers. Who knew what lurked underneath?

I tried watching Baywatch - it was the episode where all the girls pranced around in skimpy swimsuits, pretending to rescue drowning people - but I couldn’t stop wondering what was going on in my towel-wrapped head. Was my scalp going to start itching? Would my hair transform into a sickly yellow hue? Would I break out in rashes? Or worse, what if all my hair fell out?

Sick with worry, I waited in agony for the clock to strike 7:30. It finally did. I lunged for the bathroom, armed with a truckload of shampoos and store-bought conditioners. I was all ready to get that smelly gunk out of my hair.

When I finally stepped out of the shower, I breathed a sigh of relief - my hair was intact, it wasn’t yellow and my head hadn’t exploded. Phew.

I fingered my hair curiously. Nothing happened. It was the same as it had always been. It wasn’t destroyed but it certainly didn’t feel "as smooth as if your hair were threads of pure silk", as claimed in the book.

I’m now sitting in my bedroom, desperately feeling my hair and waiting for some trace of softness to emerge. When I felt nothing, I grabbed a pen and a paper and settled down to write a letter to the author of the book ‘Wonderful Ways To Transform Your Hair With Things Around Your Kitchen & Garden’, telling her exactly what I thought of her book. I also told her what I would do with her book once I finished my letter (I was going to build a bonfire, stick a marshmallow stick through it and roast it to ashes).

Today, I learned three things: never put products that are meant to be used as salad dressing on your head, never believe everything you read, and never ever run out of shampoo!

Have cake will bake

I am no whizz in the kitchen. There, I said it. As much as I’d love to be able to whip up a fancy gourmet dish, the truth is I can’t even successfully boil an egg without consulting my mother.

Unlike little girls whose loving mothers encouraged them to help out in the kitchen, my mother would rather roll down a hill with a ladle drilled into her forehead than let me anywhere near her immaculate kitchen.

My mother’s great fear of me killing myself in the attempt to cook anything remotely resembling food has resulted in my staying in a hostel with a cafeteria when I studied abroad. We were served three meals a day - exactly like those prison camp movies except we didn’t wear uniforms or shave our heads. But my mother’s goal was accomplished. I never touched a stove the entire year I was overseas.

But being a person of equal determination, the fact that I was completely void of cooking skills didn’t stop from whipping stuff up for my friends as little gifts. I baked cakes and cookies for birthdays, special celebrations and as going-away presents. It never occurred to me that I could have bought them useful gifts like socks or packets of cereal. Stuff that wouldn’t kill them. But as always, these things never occur to me.

Once, I got together with Gwen, a friend of mine to bake my specialty chocolate-almond cake for Jackie, who was leaving for the UK. Gwen knew nothing about baking, so I told her not to worry and assured her that I knew what I was doing. She calmed down. For a while anyway.

Later, she freaked out when the cake emerged from the oven - it was all crusty and dry and sooty and black. I tried convincing her that that was how it was supposed to look but I guess she’d been exposed to many chocolate-almond cakes in bakeries because she insisted that they looked nothing like the cake we baked.

To salvage it, I cut the crusty cake up into long slices, wrapped each one in a silver wrapper and I tied them up with red velvet ribbons. By then, Gwen had stopped whining and was looking at me with a strange expression on her face. Hey, they don’t call me creative for nothing.

The cake slices looked gorgeous. "Jackie will be bowled over!" I told Gwen. She refused to have her name put on the card.

We presented the cake slices to Jackie at the airport and as she waved good-bye, she promised to eat them on the plane. I received an email thanking me for the "yummy cake" several days later. It’s been many months since she’s left and she’s still alive and passing all her exams excellently. I’m glad to see that my cake has contributed to her doing so well in a foreign country.

My boyfriend’s birthday came soon after. I wanted to give him something that could never be bought in a store, so I decided to bake him a cake. And we all know that cakes like mine can never be bought in any store - just in those that want to go out of business.

This time, I wanted to bake a white chocolate cake. I bought almond strips, chocolate chunkies and a big bottle of Hershey syrup to add a dash of personality to my cake. I was going to decorate it and make it look exactly like the cakes sitting in the bakery displays.

Baking this particular cake was surprisingly easy and it popped right out of the oven in 30 minutes. There was only one problem: the cake was crudely cracked in the centre, bearing a great resemblance to an erupted volcano.

That cake destroyed every ounce of my self-esteem. I was devastated. My mother was especially worried because she knew that if my cake remained in the throes of ugliness, she might be stuck with baking me another one. This fear drove her to call my aunt who happened to be a baking instructor. Over the phone, my mother animatedly described the condition of my cake - hideous, shaped like a cone with an exploded top. She listened intently as my aunt explained that it was impossible to salvage any form of my cake’s aesthetic value at this point.

I refused to give up and brushed off my mother’s feeble attempts to console me. Taking my cue from past cake-baking ventures, I covered my cake in a transparent plastic wrapper and added a huge bow to mask the unsightly crack. I then wrapped up the packs of chocolate chunkies, almond strips and Hershey syrup bottle in festive wrappers and ribbons as accompanying gifts.

Needless to say, my boyfriend was incredibly impressed and finished my cake in two days, saying it tasted great. I couldn’t tell if he meant it though. Was the packaging so beautiful that it managed to somehow mask the atrocity of the cake? Or did the enormous amount of effort I put into the presentation make him feel sorry for me? Either way, I labeled my cake a critical success.

It was then that I decided to put an end to all baking experiments. It was simply too much work for too little gratification. But for what it’s worth, I do consider my attempts successful because if there’s one thing I learned, it’s never to underestimate the power of appearance.

I think I’ll take up packaging instead.

My battle with Murphy

I knew it. I knew it would happen although, I was hoping that my expecting disaster would somehow sway Murphy’s Law. By predicting it first, I was hoping to throw the entire universe out of balance, rendering the dreaded law of "If anything can go wrong, it will" redundant.

But Murphy’s Law did it again. I had just enrolled in a dance class - my first form of exercise since they invented the remote control - and was wondering what to wear when it struck me: I had this pair of cotton pants that would be simply perfect. They were light, airy, stretchable and created the illusion of very thin thighs. And the best part was, it has been in my closet, unused, since I purchased it a year ago. Brand new pants for a brand new me.

I should have known better. My pants were no longer in my closet. My mother patiently reminded me that I had stuffed them into a bag marked ‘YUCKS’ several months ago and had asked her to toss it out for me. I was devastated.

Eventually, my devastation gave way to amazement and almost a sense of awe. This Edward A. Murphy Jr. guy was a sharp one. It was as if he knew I would be looking for that pair of cotton pants a year later and had somehow convinced me to throw it out.

"If anything can go wrong, it will."

Edward A. Murphy Jr. had figured out our entire existence in one short statement. He had done more for us than any other scientist or politician. He had given us something to blame for our daily disasters.

In all honesty, how many of us can claim that we are able to locate our car keys every time without any trouble while madly rushing for the door? What about our sunglasses and important things like our ‘dancer’ pants?

"Mom, my sunglasses are missing! It’s Murphy’s Law at work again!"

"It’s more likely your You-Never-Put-Things-Back-In-Their-Place Law. Leave Murphy out of this."

It never ceases to amaze me how accurate Murphy’s Law is. For instance, it is uncanny that the telephone seems to ring only when you are either a) in the bathroom, b) in the bathroom or c) in the bathroom. You can be lazing on the couch watching ‘Whose Line’ for thirteen hours and the phone will refuse to ring until you get up for your Diet Coke refill. And it will not ring again - at least not until your bladder kicks up a fuss.

Murphy’s Law is in its element when it comes to queues. You are queuing up to pay for your miserly can of beans. Is it your imagination or is your line moving slower than a snail bouncing uphill on its head? "Look at that other line," you think. "Customers just shooting off like rockets." You spy a counter with only one customer and stealthily, you slip over to her line only to discover that she has enough food in her cart to feed the entire continent of Europe for a week.

If that little supermarket story runs chills of recognition up your spine, you should know that Murphy’s Law in traffic is even deadlier. Victims find themselves swerving in and out of lanes in feeble attempts to land in the mystical ‘fast’ lane, unwilling to accept that whichever lane you are not in will inevitably move faster than the one you are in. Murphy outwits us once again.

Now off the roads and into the shopping malls. For most women, this is both a pleasurable and tortuous experience. Tortuous because this is where the Law is the cruelest, reveling itself in female grief. You purchase a gorgeous dress only to find it on the 80% discount rack two weeks later. You finally find the perfect pair of shoes just to have your heart smashed with the most painful words a woman can hear: "Sorry miss, no size."

And this brings us back to my latest brush with Murphy’s Law - the ‘dancer’ pants incident. I have decided to toe the line. I am through living the defeated life, powerless in the hands of Murphy Jr. So I take every precaution I can to beat it: I place my car keys in the key cabinet, put my sunglasses on my bureau and resist bathroom breaks altogether. I keep to my lane during rush hour, queue obediently at the supermarket checkout counter, purchase clothing only during sales and have resorted to squeezing my feet into a pair of size 5 instead.

I am happy to report that Murphy’s Law has eased up on me somewhat. However, I now seem to have several other matters to attend to: my car refuses to start, the lens of my sunglasses has popped off and I seem to have developed a bladder problem. In traffic, the car in front of me breaks down, the woman before me at the supermarket queue gets her credit card stuck in the machine, a ban is declared on sales and I have a serious case of foot cramp.

Aahhh…the sweet smell of victory.

Now, to contend with another one of Murphy’s Laws: every solution breeds new problems. But first things first, will you excuse me while I nurse my feet?

... And he mumbled "Goodbye"

"Just some little business I have to take care of," he’d told me. Little did I know that this little "business" had long flowing hair and wore a minidress the size of a postage stamp. What a goddamned fool I was. What a naïve, gullible, stupid fool.

Nailed to the floor, I watched my boyfriend chatting intimately with a girl I didn’t know. Passers-by wouldn’t have noticed but I could tell from his furtive glances that he wasn’t completely at ease. Suddenly, his eyes landed on me. I froze. He quickly turned away as though he never noticed me.

Something awoke inside me just then. Fury rushed through my veins. Lying and cheating were already more than I was prepared to handle, but a blatant dismissal as if I were nothing more than a pest in his slicked back hair? That, I would never accept.

He never looked up again, but concentrated hard on stirring his cup of coffee. I hoped his coffee would burn his throat, rendering him incapable of speech for the rest of his life. I walked out of the café and got into my car. I wanted to go home.

I drove home in silence. After the initial bouts of inner rage I’d felt when I first spotted him, I now felt nothing. The anger simmered. There were no tears, just a quiet sense of numbness.

I’d always known that all men were bastards. I guess I’ve just been proven right. I wondered if I was actually glad that I was right? After all, wasn’t infidelity supposed to hurt like hell?

With thoughts swimming in my head, I pulled into my driveway. I’d just stepped into the house when the phone rang. I ignored it for a while before deciding to pick it up. It could be someone important. It wasn’t. It was him.

His words tumbled out in a rush. Lies, apologies, lies, apologies. I hung up on him, went into my room and began throwing all his stuff into a box. I lugged the box downstairs and shoved it outside by the gate. His car came by just as I gave the box one vicious kick. He came out of the car and launched right into how sorry he was and how he’d never meant to hurt me and how she meant absolutely nothing to him.

"Go to hell," I said. I went back into the house and shut the door. I ran upstairs and peeked out through the curtains. I saw him pick up the box and make his way to the car. He took out his cell phone and started dialing. My phone rang. I ignored it this time.

After several tries, he drove off leaving a cloud of dust behind. "Good riddance," I muttered. I was glad he was gone. I was glad I’d never have to see him ever again. I hoped he’d rot in the deepest level of hell. I hoped that slut girl he was with today would bloat up to 300kg, have a sudden sprout of acne all over her delicate little face, grow a moustache and get a chronic case of oily scalp. I hoped he’d bloat up to 300kg, lose all his hair and get an incurable rash all over his left buttock. I hoped they’d get married, have a dozen really hideous children and become regulars on the Freak Show Circus. I hoped they’d wind up watching Lassie reruns every day for the rest of their sorry lives.

Feeling drained, I made myself a light snack of ice cream, nachos and hamburgers, and plonked out in front of the TV for the rest of the day. I finished every single bite and watched at least five really bad low-budget movies. I’d never felt more liberated in my life. This was how life was meant to be - doing whatever you wanted, not bogged down by some whiny, over-possessive boyfriend.

The phone rang later that evening. Its incessant ringing drove me up the wall, so I plucked out a pair of scissors and hacked the wire. The ringing stopped. The house fell silent. Sitting down on the floor with the chopped up wire in one hand and the pair of scissors in the other, I stared at my dead phone. I was truly alone.

I cried then. There was nothing good about being proven right. I wasn’t glad about being liberated, or having freedom to be by myself. I didn’t feel like a new person. All I felt were sharp stabs of loneliness and betrayal. My whole world was shattered.

I spent the night on my living room floor and woke up the next morning with aches all over. I decided to call in sick that day.

I shut all the windows and doors so he’d assume that no one was home. In case he came by to grovel again. Just in case.

He never did.

I tried to ignore the pain in my stomach. I hated him now. I hated him with every inch of my being. Why didn’t he at least try a little harder? I’d never forgive him but it would’ve appeased me a little to think that he was sorry enough to at least try. That he cared enough.

Obviously, I overestimated him.

The hurt began to go away. It took a while but as time went by, it got easier not to think about him. Day by day, it got easier to forget what he looked like. Little by little, his image started to fade.

It didn’t take as long as I’d expected to get over him. I guess it’s a lot easier to get over someone who’s not worth your time, than it is to get over someone who actually is.

Handphones: right up there with oxygen

Handphones are the hottest things ever to hit planet earth since glow-in-the-dark underwear. Everyone is strutting around with their trusty handphones permanently attached to their palms, dialing fingers all ready for action. Perk up your ears and hear nothing but "You got my number? I don’t have yours. Give me your number. What? You don’t have a mobile? Why in heaven’s name? For goodness’ sake, go get one right now!".

I’m not here to argue whether these little ringing gadgets are a necessity or not - I wholeheartedly agree that they’re a crucial prop in the Survival 101 syllabus. I’m just here to say that handphones have affected us more than we will ever know. They have skewed our morality a little further down the ladder, permanently altered our ideas of what constitutes good taste, contributed to our increasing loss of privacy and have reduced us nothing more than numbers on a keypad.

Admittedly, we weren’t that far up the morality ladder to begin with but our obsession with handphones has knocked us down a few more rungs. Technology lets us explore new forms of deceit and we are now hip-deep in the newly registered sin of location-lying. It goes a little something like this:

Your handphone rings. It is your boss. "Where are you?"

"At a client’s place discussing the proposal." Nobody needs to know you were really at the karaoke bar singing your lungs out to Frank Sinatra’s ‘My Way’.

Location-lying is not all-bad. It can be very handy if you live in constant fear of your friends calling you up and discovering that your Friday nights are actually spent in front of the tube watching reruns of Mork & Mindy, and not being picked up by guys at the bar like you said.

"Hey, where are you?"

"I’m at this new club! Just stepped out to answer the phone because boy, these guys just won’t leave me alone!"

Thanks to handphones as well, we are rapidly declining in our ideas of what constitute good taste. These little gadgets with their seductive flashing lights have rendered us incapable of judging between what is tasteful and what is not.

Alexander Graham Bell would roll in his grave if he could hear what we now consider ‘ring tones’. From Shaggy’s ‘It Wasn’t Me’ to the Billy Joel’s ‘Up Town Girl’, the ‘Indiana Jones’ theme song to SClub7’s ‘Never Had A Dream Come True’, noise pollution has never had it so good. It is the height of bad taste when you are in the middle of a suspenseful movie and some guy’s handphone starts ringing the theme to ‘The A-Team’.

Some of the tunes are enough to make you cringe but we grind our teeth and bear it all in the name of technology and individuality.

There is also this other little thing called privacy that gets tossed halfway out the window once a mobile phone hops into the scene. Suddenly, everybody wants you. Everybody wants you to answer your phone, that is. There’s no excuse big enough to justify your failure to answer a call. "It’s ringing isn’t it? Well, answer it then!"

Shutting it off is never an option because then, you might really miss somebody important (the fact that the only people who ever call you are your mother and insurance agent fails to register at this point). Besides, a shut-off might cause you your reputation - you might become one of those people who never answer their mobile phones. "Oh, don’t bother calling him, he never answers his phone."

I guess handphones are a huge part of progress. However, just like the Internet has reduced people to email addresses, handphones have reduced us to nothing more than 10 digits stored in the directory. "I met this charming girl last night but I can’t seem to remember her name….was it 012 or 019?"

And to compound the problem, the speed-dial function on our mobile phones has made it so easy that some of us even have trouble remembering our office numbers. "I can’t remember the number right now but if you’ll give me a minute, I think it’s stored in my phone under the number 7."

But there is one thing handphones have done for our health: it lets us avoid talking to people whom we dislike, people who bore us and people who will give us extra work. An undesired name appears on the screen and with the push of a button, we wipe it out. For one satisfying moment, that person ceases to exist.

One might argue that this is relevant to the first point where we talk about our morality eroding - there’s no room for good old-fashioned lying anymore. "I’m sorry, but I can’t talk right now. I’m bathing the dog." Society has certainly progressed when we come to the point where technology allows us to forgo one of our most fundamental traits: lying.

At the risk of sounding like a lecturer, this brings us to the end of discussion. Handphones are lovely gadgets. Their impact is so great that the dents they have created in society are irreversible. But no one’s complaining because hey, we’re enjoying the ride while it’s still here. Who knows what wacky gadget will wade out of the invention pool next? And while we’re waiting, it’s safe to say that the handphone, one of the most life-altering gadgets every invented, is right up there with oxygen, Astro and the remote control.