Coffeeshop Talk

Today at the coffeeshop, I asked the auntie why she is glum and she retorted that she didn't strike 4D (lottery) and therefore there is no cause to smile. I asked if she had noticed if the people queuing up at 4D shops smile, but she didn't reply.

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It is common to see people looking glum in Singapore because they have not struck lottery. Compulsive gamblers become perpetually glum.

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I have two lady friends who have divorced their husband because of the latter's addiction to gambling. And these are educated men in respectable professions, one a teacher and the other a policeman, both fallen to the devil of greed.

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Recently, there is a rich man who lost 26 million dollars within 3 days in a casino in Singapore. It must have been a great pain and suffering for his family and him. It hurts me just thinking of it. More so in this case, as he is someone I know and went to the same kindergarten class in our early years.

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Gambling is a social ill. For one to win, many have to lose. Stay away from it.

High Spirits

When I came home a few days ago, a bottle of freshly harvested papaya wine exploded, splattering the wine and shattered glass all over the place. After cleaning them up, I opened the other bottles to release the pressure to avert another explosion and the first bottle popped like a high pressure jet splashing its contents all over my face, shooting up to the ceiling and messing the place all over again!

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Then as I thought the worst was over, a bottle slipped off the fridge and smashed itself into bits, as I was trying to make space there. What a mess!

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What went 'wrong' was that I had followed the recipe without understanding the reasons behind each step properly. Stirring the ferment every morning is to allow the resulting carbon dioxide to escape and not form pressure in the fluid. What I didn't understand was that besides tasting the fermenting wine, I should also be checking the effervescence in the fluid, to judge if they are ready to be bottled. And so, I had foolishly loaded the fluid together with the residual sugar waiting to convert to alcohol and carbon-dioxide that was to blow up its vessel.

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The second lesson I learned from the incident is that no matter what, I should not to be stressed up. If I had been more relaxed and mindful, I wouldn't have let the bottle slipped from the fridge and smashed up on the floor. If I had been cool about it, I could have even taken some pixs for this blog post before cleaning the mess up. It was quite a scene and would have made fascinating photographic material. :)

Side notes:

Brewing wine is fun! Witnessing, tasting and understanding the fermentation process first hand is fun!

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Like human beings, different types of fruits have different nature and therefore behaves differently though put through the same process. Some become explosive faster while others have gentler ways of dissipating pressure.

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In other words, be mindful and know what you are brewing everyday and remember to stay cool so that you can enjoy the fruits of your harvest. It applies not only to making wine!

Technology - The Straggling Bus and a Non-stop Express Train

Innovative proposals from China...
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No time is wasted. The bullet train is moving all the time.

If there are 30 stations between Beijing and Guangzhou, just stopping and accelerating again at each station

will waste both energy and time.A mere 5 min stop per station (elderly passengers cannot be hurried) will result in a total loss of 5 min x 30 stations or 2.5 hours of train journey time!

The Chinese are innovative enough to come up with a non-stopping train concept. When the train arrives at a station, it will not stop at all.

The passenger at a station embarked onto to a connector cabin way before the train even arrive at the station.

When the train arrives, it will not stop at all. It just slows down to pick up the connector cabin which will move with the train on the roof of the train.

While the train is still travelling away from the station, those passengers will board the train from the connector cabin mounted on the train's roof.

After fully unloading all its passengers, the cabin connector cabin will be moved to the back of the train so that the next batch of outgoing passengers who want to alight at the next station will board the connector cabin at the rear of the train roof.

When the train arrives at the next station, it simply drops the whole connector cabin at the station itself and leaves it behind at the station.

The outgoing passengers can take their own time to disembark at the station while the train had already left.

At the same time, the train will pick up the incoming embarking passengers on another connector cabin in the front part of the train's roof.

So the train will always drop one connector cabin at the rear of its roof and pick up a new connector cabin in the front part of the train's roof at each station.

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