Yesterday, on the bus to my cousin's house, I saw two cockroach nymphs climb up to the window ledge directly in front of me. One disappeared into a small gap, but the other one stayed motionless, its feelers quivering.

So my thought processes went something like this: "It's a bloody cockroach nymph. I should crush it. The bus is terribly unhygenic, gross. But if I crush it now, I'll have to hold on to that piece of tissue until the bus journey ends. So I should kill it when I am nearer. But what if it disappears into the gap while I wait? Then one more cockroach would go free in this world. To kill or not to kill. I can't stand the way the feelers quiver. I should kill. Then I will have a disgusting piece of litter to hold on to. No, I will crush it later. If it escapes before I approach the bus stop then it's fated not to die."

Two stops away from my destination, the cockroach crawls into the gap. So I thought, smart cockroach. You're not fated to die today, what a pity.

When I was just approaching my stop, the cockroach climbs out again. Obviously it was a stupid cockroach fated to die, so I squished it carefully with my last piece of tissue and folded it to make sure it was completely flattened.

I heard two very interesting ideas recently. The first is the Adidas intelligent shoes, launching this month. Apparently, if you happen to be bored one day, you can hook the shoes up to the computer and play minesweeper. I cannot begin to describe the sheer brilliance of this. Firstly the manufacturer knew that not all games are a hit in the market, and effectively eliminated this risk by producing the exact same game that most PCs had. Secondly, they understood that most people would find it extremely inconvenient to take off their shoes on the road, because they would be left with nothing on their feet, so they solved this by limiting its usage to a place where you would not need the shoes. Lastly they managed to deduce that with the long hours spent at computers these days, consumers would wish for an alternative way to play minesweeper, and what is better than a shoe that stays close to you all day?

(By the way, I'm not kidding--these intelligent shoes are really being launched. Though they have other functions like adjustable cushioning and suchlike.)

The second idea I heard came from my cousin, who was recounting an announcement made to her school a little while ago. After great discussion with the teachers and principals, the MOE is considering the implementation of a whole new policy which may change lives forever. However, there are those little details to take note of, and they're not too sure whether it should start with her batch. (At this point we would have built a grand picture of all the red tape and bureaucracy that must have taken place.) So the idea is to have a special leaving school certificate, which would include (other than the fact that you left this school) your 'O' and 'A' level results, your CCA record, and possibly your testimonial. But naturally, due to the amount of information present in this particular leaving school certificate, it would probably come up to about, oh, five pages or so. You can then hand this little stack all in one go to your future employers, thus saving you the trouble of papercliping your original transcripts together. This would greatly enhance efficiency.