SINGAPORE SHORT STORIES

Received some emails about a sotry on Lizards and Morals, here the story goes: This is a true story that happened in Japan . In order to renovate the house, someone in Japan breaks open the wall. Japanese houses normally have a hollow space between the wooden walls. When tearing down the walls, he found that there was a lizard stuck there because a nail from outside hammered into one of its feet. He sees this, feels pity, and at the same time curious, as when he checked the nail, it was nailed 10 years ago when the house was first built.. !What happened? The lizard has survived in such position for 10 years!!!!!!!!!! In a dark wall partition for 10 years without moving, it is impossible and mind-boggling. Then he wondered how this lizard survived for 10 years! Without moving a single step--since its foot was nailed! So he stopped his work and observed the lizard, what it has been doing, and what and how it has been eating. Later, not knowing from where it came appears another lizard, w...

WARNING: PLEASE USE THIS TACTIC AS LAST RESORT AS IT MIGHT SOUR FUTURE RELATIONSHIPS Person A: You are stupid! You: So you think everything that I am thinking of, in my mind, is useless? Person A: YES! You: Good, I am thinking of you! Alternative scenario: Person A: You are stupid! You: So you think everything that I am thinking of, in my mind, is useless? Person A: Not really You: Then why you call me stupid when you think what I am thinking of, in my mind, is not useless, you are even stupidier in this sense! The dialogue may end here, or continues further as below: Person A: Okay, you are stupid, whatever in you think in your mind is useless, like rubbish You: Good, I am thinking of you!

I have just completed the above-titled book. To sum it all, man are often plagued by suffering. To the Buddha, the suffering arises from man’s delusion, thus there is no really any source of suffering for it is just the delusion that man is suffering from that causes him to suffer. Therein lies the route to end suffering via enlightenment.

Today is Chinese New Year’s eve; our company has a mini ‘makan’ celebration before it closed at noon when all employees go back for a long long weekend and celebrations. It is common for each of us colleagues to greet one another, exchanging handshakes at such occasion. Obviously I could not afford to shake hands with each of the colleagues present in this crowd of 25. If everyone is to shake hands with one another, say for our crowd of 25 and each handshake takes 5 seconds, it would need a total of 25 minutes for all colleagues to shake hands with one another! Actually this phenomenon is commonly known as the ‘handshake problem’ and one can read about it in the internet. I can give a simple mathematical explanation here: Assuming that there are n people and each person is to shake hands with one another. Visualise this n number of people standing in a row, the 1st person stands out facing opposite the remaining members and shakes hand with the remaining (n-1) members and leaves the ro...