Poor Handkerchief
2nd Shelf, Any Cupboard
Every house
Earth
EX7 1NCT

12 August 2010

Dear P. Handkerchief,

It is with regret that I am forced to inform you that owing to more convenient alternatives and changing priorities, your position has been rendered redundant.

As you are aware, your position was the number 1 choice in the following areas:

- Cleaner #1: the ubiquitous paper tissue has replaced you with its simplicity, ease of use and convenience of dumping the used product into the nearest dustbin (or street, depending on which part of the world we are talking about). You will agree with me that this is better than carrying you around in our pockets and handbags, all wet and soggy, until you are washed again. The public do not seem to mind the additional impact on trees being cut down to make these tissues.

- Portable air conditioner #1: until the early part of the naughties, you were used in hot areas as an impromptu fan to cool your owners. A dab here and a dab there would help clear out beads of sweat for more refreshing sweat to come out and cool the skin. This has been replaced by air conditioned environments (cars, buses and buildings) and again by paper tissues. The public seem to prefer wiping sweat with a tissue rather than you, I suppose, due to the fact that with a fresh tissue, one is confident that the only dampness in the tissue is their sweat and not other bodily fluids you might have accumulated in your fabric.

- Romantic #1: gone are the days when the ultimate act of chivalry a man could do was to hand you over to a woman in distress, a woman in tears or to revive a swooning woman. The days of chivalry are gone. Some woman see obtaining services of a man out of chivalry as slightly lower than begging and frown on it. Men are now confused about which women to be chivalrous about and which ones to be just men.

- Simplicity #1: in the years past, a man's pocket would hold a wallet, some loose change, house-cum-car keys and you. A woman would have the odd make-up items, comb, mirror, powder, 3 blue pens, 3 black pens, 2 pencils, a calculator, change of clothes, spare shoes, house-cum-car keys, the kitchen sink and 3 of you. Now, in addition to all these, both sexes have to carry, in addition to all of the above, at least one mobile phone, a tablet computer and sometimes a laptop. With the additional weight and space required, I'm afraid you were seen to be least indispensable.

As I have had to painfully point out above, all of your key market areas have been lost to newer and more convenient rivals. I am, therefore, left with no choice but to let you go.

Your service to mankind will be dearly missed. If, in the future, the trend is reversed, I look forward to hiring you again.

I wish you all the best in your retirement in a dusty corner of the cupboard.

Yours sincerely,

Man and Woman
Partners

Mankind LLP

Scrub scrub...

I like guidance. It provides one with a much needed sense of direction. Good guidance channels our energy, moving us out of headless chicken mode to a measured, planned and systematic mode.

Timely guidance is even better, it's a light house on a dark and lonely night at sea, the one sign-board 50 meters before an extremely complicated junction that nudges you onto the right path. It's not only humans who guide other humans, animals do it too, I've seen hundreds of hours of programming on Discovery Channel in which a bear or cheetah or lion teaches it's young on the art of hunting, killing and generally on how to not be hungry.

I have always benefited from guidance, both timely and otherwise. My family and friends have all guided me and protected me against many of the pitfalls of adulthood. I've even received guidance on how to identify good and not so good guidance. In fact, among the things I relished the most in my move to the UK was the amount of guidance given to me by my new employers on the different tools and facilities available. There was a good amount of overload, but it helped immensely, especially after my harrowing experience at Dubai where I was given a laptop and asked to come back with the deliverable!

Why am I waxing eloquent on guidance, one may ask. Well, Mr. One, here's why. A recurring theme of this blog has been to point out places where the developed nations' attitude to advice and guidance has been overdone, prime examples being the hot coffee advisory, 'station floors are slippery when wet' announcement on the Tube when it starts drizzling (which is all the time here!), 'ladies and gentlemen, in this hot and inclement weather, it is advisable to carry a bottle of water with you at all times' when its warm enough to touch 15 degrees. You get the drift. Recently, however, I saw some guidance which rendered all this as valid. What I saw rocked my foundations and made me doubt the very faith in my survival as a human being.

It was a normal day, routine to the point of being boring. I was going about my business like I always do. While going about my business, I wanted to do some business, so I paid a visit to the gents. Job done, all smooth so far. I popped around to the wash-basin to wash my hands and admire my dashing good looks and I saw this:

I do not remember anyone telling me HOW to wash my hands since 4th grade and I felt terribly insulted even at that tender age that my father thought I should be taught how to do such a basic thing. Dad, being dad, would simply ignore me and drone on about the importance of cleaning between the nails and scrubbing behind my palms.

As always, a few things immediately came tumbling into my head.

• I was in this large company, which prides itself in the quality of people it hires. There is apparently a rigorous recruitment process involving multiple rounds of vetting and filtering. People walking in through the doors of this company are considered, by any stretch of imagination to be half-wits at the very least. This being the case, does the company really think it's employees don't know how to wash their hands?
• I immediately looked around the stalls looking for similar instructions on how to use the rest of the toilet. Obviously, if the company thinks people don't know how to wash up after, they surely don't think employees are capable of using extremely complicated gadgets like toilet paper and flushes
• Since the spread of disease is a real threat, will the people who fail to wash their hands be reported and investigated? You know, just to ensure that they were just being silly and the failure to wash hands properly is not a malicious threat to the peace and harmony? In other words are they going to be investigated to rule out a dastardly Al Qaeda plan to inflict pain and suffering?
• The diagram itself looked pretty confusing to me. Assuming I am at the lower end of the spectrum in the target audience, how is this going to be implemented? If I need to be told how to wash my hands, I should probably have issues with understanding anything more complicated than the alphabet.

Needless to say, I was so taken aback and insulted at being patronized so blatantly that I washed my hand without referring to the diagram. Just as I finished, I looked up to smirk at the picture when I saw the part about 'estimated time taken to complete the procedure - 40-60 seconds'. I'd done it in around 30 seconds. I felt naughty. Perhaps there is a camera hidden behind the mirror that records the time taken by each person and anyone taking less than 60 seconds is reported. I suppose I would have to get used to watching my back for the rest of my life now...

Standing still

I've been having quite a commute for the past couple of months. 40 miles. Each way. Good news is that the Sun seems to have been fairly frightened by my threats to take legal action against it and its cronies, the British government and nature, so its been more regular in its daily duties. As an added bonus to appease my fury, its even thrown in a fair deal of warmth as part of the package. So riding has been enjoyable, but for the miserable network of inter-connected potholes that we in London call roads (more on the roads later).

A bulk of said commute is on the motorway/highway. This is where I usually have the most fun. As I buzz along happily at 65-70 mph, I have time to sit back, take in the scenery, observe the sights and sounds of life in the fast lane. From trucks laden with freight to cars laden with kids (I'm not quite decided on which type of cargo is more difficult to handle - goods or kids, but that's not my problem is it?), there is one thing in common. They're all in a tearing hurry, looking highly purposeful and generally giving me the impression they're trying to get to some place. But that's probably just me.

The readers of this blog are all astute folks and would have by now raised a very pertinent question. If I was hurtling along at a not so sedate pace of 70 mph, how is it that I'm able to see all these things? Do I have hidden super powers that I didn't have before? Has the power of a highly sharpened vision been hard coded into my DNA and is that surfacing now? None of the above. My only response to these questions would be to refer said astute readers to a good friend of mine Mr. A. Einstein. He was a popular lad, so I don't think he needs much of an introduction.

When normal folks like me have a theory, its promptly dismissed as rubbish, mallarky, bulls*it or variants thereof. But when A. Einstein proposes a theory, the world listens. In this instance, I am talking about the blokes theory on relativity@@.

It's like this: while I'm buzzing along at 70 mph, the rest of the world seems to be thundering along at 80-85 mph. That leaves me with a feeling of standing still in a fast moving world and that is what leads to profound thoughts such as the ones described above. Make no mistake, this relativity is a rather tricky customer. On more than one occasion, I've felt that I'm literally standing still. Had I been in a car as opposed to a bike, I would be forgiven for taking my seat belt off, opening the door and stepping out to catch a breath of air, only to realise I'm still moving at a rate of knots that is extremely unhealthy to skin, bones and internal organs.

Looking at all these folks race down the motorway makes me think about what the hurry is? Isn't the journey as important as the destination? Since when did getting to a place become such a chore? I've always enjoyed taking the long route home. Slowing down and taking in the scenery rejuvenates me and recharges me. I arrive feeling fresh and ready to take on the day between the time I park and reach the office, after that, all bets are off! There have been several times when I wanted to flag down a car or two and ask them where the fire is and why they're in such a hurry, but have controlled myself for fear of being run over, if not accidentally, on purpose.

In any case, the moment traffic slows to a crawl at one of London's infamous jams, it's me who is the subject of relativity, for I would be scurrying down the road much faster than any other vehicle!

@@ I am a poor student of commerce, so I have readers, God and A Einstein (not necessarily in that order) to kindly forgive me if I have gotten the theory of relativity all wrong.

I'm back! I suppose I've been conspicuous by my absence these past couple of months**. An explanation is in order.

I'd like to say that I've been at the International Space Station, due to which I was cut off from the internet, but I can't. It's now possible to Tweet from space, so blogging shouldn't be an exception either.

I'd like to say I've been deep underground cleaning up the mess that BP created in Florida, but then chances are I'd have been on every TV channel worth its salt, and I haven't been on any TV channel, worth its salt or not.

I'd like to say I've been upto a lot of different things, but no one would believe me, so I'd like to say I've been lazy, bereft of the will or ideas to blog and halleluiah! its a miracle, everyone believes me.

I am back and I will find that Will To Post (must be French, funny name that) and be more regular.



** P.S. I've gone out on a limb here by saying my absence has been noticed. This may be construed in a sense, as me saying I've been missed. So if anyone reading this is now thinking, "Hmm, that's funny I didn't notice that this guy's not been posting for a few months!" I have only one thing to say: "KA!!!" *with tongue stuck out in your general direction*