Random Facts

Knowledge may be the best despite being random. Feast and remember for I have violent spasms to throw scraps of tidbits like these without documenting them in a somewhat respectful way.


In the time to it takes to read this sentence, 50000 cells in your body will die and be replaced.
An average snail moves at a rate of 58cm per hour.
Vintage port takes 40 years to reach maturity.
Around 4 billion litres of petroleum is consumed around the world each day.
On average, there are 8 peas in a pod.
Rice is the main food consumed for half the people worldwide…
The low rumbling of distant thunder is called ‘brontide’.
The fastest sneeze was recorded at 166.7km/hour
Barbie got her first car in 1962.
About a third of all Americans flush the toilet while they are still sitting on it.
Research indicates that mosquitoes are attracted to people who have recently eaten bananas.
Every person has a unique tongue print.
Licorice can raise your blood pressure.
The sound of E.T. walking was made by someone squishing their hands in jelly.
Sigmund Freud had a morbid fear of ferns.
American airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by omitting one olive from each salad served in first class.
Months that begin on a Sunday will always have a ‘Friday the 13th’.
Because of the rotation of the earth, an object can be thrown further if it was thrown west.
Cats can hear ultrasound.
Winston Churchill was born in ladies room during a dance.
Swedish people drink more coffee than any other race in the world.
Almonds are a member of the peach family.
All of the clocks in the move ‘Pulp Fiction’ are stuck on 4.20
There are more chickens than people in the world.
There are more plastic flamingoes than real ones in America.
A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.
The average person left hand does most of the typing.
It takes about 20 seconds for a red blood cell to circle the whole body.
The average person falls asleep in 7 minutes.
The microwave was invented when a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.
Hair grows the slowest at night.
The skeleton of a 70kg body weighs about 13 kg.
If you have ozostomia, you are suffering from halitosis or bad breathe.
A woman arthritic pain will also always disappear when she becomes pregnant.
An anteater is about 6 feet long but its mouth is only an inch wide.
The more money a person makes, the less likely he is to buy lottery.
There is more than 25,000km of neon tubing in the signs on the Strip and downtown Las Vegas.
The human brain is 85% water.
Swans are the only birds with penises.
The average human body contains enough potassium to fire a toy cannon.
The youngest pope was 11 years old.
The liquid inside young coconuts can be used as a substitute for blood plasma.
From the age of 30, humans begin to shrink.

Till the Other Place

After a season of aching jaws and disturbed sleep, it is nice to fully enter sleep and stay there for 12 consecutive hours. I liken it to a Holy Retreat during Easter week in the Himalayas. As if I know what it feels like. All that I know of the Himalayas are courtesy of the Discovery Channel and here I am saying blatant things like that! Gosh, the audacity.

Although I am no longer dog-tired and on the brink of entering a second realm that comprises of the living deads, I still remember clearly those days when I come home, prostrated both in my mind and in my room. And all I seek is solace in the ancient words of Merton, hoping that through his knowledge, I may derive some potent understanding of the crisis I am in. Perhaps it was fated, but I found the exact words for what I need.

There is a certain kind of humility in hell which is one of the worst
things in hell, and which is infinitely far from the humility of the saints,
which is peace, The false humility of hell is an unending, burning shame at the
inescapable stigma of our sins. The sins of the damned are felt by them as
gestures of intolerable insults from which they cannot escape, Nessus shirts that
burn them up for ever and which they can never throw off.

The anguish of this self-knowledge is inescapable even on earth, as long as
there is any self-love left in us: because it is pride that feels the burning of
that shame. Only when all pride, all self-love has been consumed in our souls by
the love of God, are we delivered from the thing which is the subject of those
torments, It is only when we have lost all love of our selves for our own sakes
that our past sins cease to give us any cause for suffering or for the anguish
of shame.

For the saints, when they remember their sins, do not remember the sins but
the mercy of God, and therefore even past evil is turned by them into a present
cause of joy and serves to glorify God.

It is the proud that have to be burned and devoured by the horrible
humility of hell...But as long as we are in this life, even that burning anguish
can be turned into a grace, and should be a cause of joy.

Extract from Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain, Pg 323

And after Merton, I am reminded of Murakami's Kafka on the Shore and am partially relieved... For I realise that it is not only I who seeks this humbling silence that I crave. That it is not an uncorrectable intrinsic flaw that dictates the plague of confusion and undeniable sorrow that I feel. Where I am is just another place; a waiting room of sorts till I find the grace that settles my touchy heart.

Welcome to Honours

I have many words to pen. Many points to note; lest I forget tomorrow. It is not quiet in my mind, but neither is it a marketplace of violent thoughts and surreal emotions. How does one begin to return to a better place?

I want. To jump with unbridled joy, but my leaden legs refuse to move.

My Favourite Picture

In looking through the pictures taken in our long courtship, this is still the one I like the best... An accurate portrayal of who we are and what we are like...

This Place

These few weeks have been a sort of revelation of sorts. Transits between jumbles of tangled thoughts and zoned-out silence, I realised, have placed me on a well-sought after pedestal titled acceptance, obedience and patience.

I have to admit, it was not my desire to end up here. In fact, now that I stand here at this higher place looking down, I cannot recall the details of the journey here. One would naturally think that the long and trecherous journey would be at the front of the sufferers' mind as oppose to the destination. How so different, how so different.

Everything I have come to realise in these recent times have revolved around the notion of death. We all know what death is; a natural end to all things living. But what define the things living? And what happens when one is fearful of other things, things that we think are worst than mortal death?

And so my answer lies in patience and obedience and acceptance. After all, everything here living or dead, imaginary or real, transient or permanent, current or past are all but just a prelude to death.

And like I say, all things end sometime.