Female drivers

Chances are, just by reading the title of this post, you are already expecting something interesting. Everyone has an opinion on female drivers, just like how everyone has an opinion on taxi drivers, bus drivers, or drunk drivers. The general consensus is, they are all road hazards.

Just this morning, I was sitting in the back seat of my dad's car, and we were in the multi-storey carpark of a shopping centre looking for a parking lot. As luck would have it, all the lots were full, so we were just driving up as high as we could to see if there were any lots available.

Just as we were turning the corner to the next level, a car suddenly backed out of the parking lot. It backed out rather abruptly, which meant that if we were just a little faster in rounding the corner, there might have been a collision.

My dad took one look at the driver and immediately went "Aiyah female driver, no wonder. Always creating problem."

I have to admit that I laughed, but a part of me was taken aback by how naturally those words came out. I guess it is true to some extent that when I drive on the roads and I see someone driving erratically, having trouble parking, or driving very slowly, it is almost always a female driver.

That would usually bring out statements like "You drive until like that, you think it's your grandfather's road ah?" This will usually be followed by some very aggressive tailgating, honking, or the obligatory I speed up and overtake just so I can glare at the public nuisance as I drive past. And somehow, most of the time, the person will be female.

In fairness, I think there are much fewer female drivers around, so when they make mistakes, we notice them a lot more. Another reason is, I think male drivers just want to believe that women cannot drive, so they feel a lot better about themselves. Guys have a really big problem with ego, which is normal. Guys with no ego issues do exist but they're just gay.

Cars are traditionally a masculine domain, and when guys realise that some women can actually drive, it makes them feel more than a little useless. And guys have this huge fear of feeling useless, because they actually are, but they are hoping that women never find out.

In the past, when women were traditionally masters of the house, it wasn't a problem. Now, women are entering the workplace and storming up the corporate ladder, while keeping their skills at managing the home. Where does that leave guys?

Well, if you're a guy, you know the answer. In front of the television, a can of beer in hand, slouched over the couch snoring with mouth wide open.

Guys don't give birth to children, and they don't do housework. In fact, guys are only useful for carrying heavy furniture and shopping bags, or killing cockroaches, and yet they get to carry on the family name. I think at some point in time women have found that unfair, but they don't have an ego big enough to go nitpick with guys over it.

Despite the evolution of women over millenia, they haven't figured out how to make themselves more adept in certain areas, which is a blessing for guys. Or maybe, they just don't want to. Killing cockroaches is still disgusting, and you really need both hands free to do shopping. I guess it is also still more fun to spend the husband's money. Since he's useless anyway and can't do his own shopping to save his life, you get to do it for him while fulfilling that insatiable urge to shop without the guilt trip.

According to the science journalism class I'm currently taking, some male scientists are finding ways to make sperm cells from stem cells. I'm perfectly okay with scientists trying to grow livers, hearts and other organs from stem cells. I think it's beneficial. But sperm cells? My immediate reaction was "Stop! Don't do it! The day you do that, guys will really become useless! You traitors, you are ensuring the eventual destruction of the male race!" But I realise such arguments are futile. Someday some feminist scientists will do it.

Now, when you hear guys pan the skills of female drivers, you must realise the huge amount of ego baggage that comes with it. And actually, it's not our fault that most of them do suck and clog up our roads anyway. Ego ego!

(this post is dedicated to my female friends who drive and cause their dads to pay higher insurance premiums)

Expired already can eat not?

I was trawling around for food in my fridge when I found some chocolates. Wondering why I'd never seen them before, I naturally picked them out of the fridge. Casually, I checked the expiry date and realised that the chocolates were actually 3 months on the wrong side of them.

Now, I know some people will just chuck such things into the rubbish bin, but here I was thinking that it was such a waste. I have no idea what compelled me to ask my parents whether expired chocolates were edible, but here were their responses.

Me: "Daddy, are expired chocolates edible?"
Dad: "Yeah, I eat them all the time. They go in here and nothing ever happens." He then rubbed his belly as though to emphasise that expired chocolates were really harmless. Okay, point taken.

This statement was shocking for two reasons. Firstly, I had no idea that my dad ate chocolates. Secondly, I had no idea he had been eating expired chocs from the fridge all this while. Like seriously, that is quite a disturbing thought for several reasons, some of them being that it made me look as though I'm such a bad son because I wasn't caring enough to buy him non-expired chocolates, or that I didn't clear the fridge of expired merchandise so he could find them. Whatever.

My mom even had a theory about it. She said that expired stuff was still edible up to 6 months after expiry. According to her expired stuff is only really expired if it tastes funny, the date on the packaging doesn't matter.

I'm like what kind of age are we living in already. Food is everywhere and here we are wondering if expired stuff can be eaten. It wasn't as though we were living in the Great Depression or something. To be fair I think most expiry dates actually indicate dates much earlier than when the food actually goes bad, to minimise food poisoning damages companies might have to pay in the event their food is bad and somebody is stupid enough to eat it.

In any case food doesn't spoil according to the expiry date. For food like milk, it doesn't go like "oh I'm supposed to expire today, okay I shall make myself sour and curdle into lumpy little bits." As for stuff that sits around longer, like cereal, I think you'd be pretty dumb to chuck it if it were one day past expiry because honestly, the extra 24 hours don't make a difference if its already been sitting around 6 months.

Unfortunately, that does not work for computers and other electronics under warranty. You can bet that if your laptop has a 3 year warranty, on the day that it ends, within the next week your hard disk will develop errors, your monitor will have dead pixels, and the colony of random critters that has been hiding in your keyboard feeding on crumbs (you know you eat at your laptop sometimes) will suddenly surface from your keys while you're typing. It's just the way electronics work. Up to the warranty, they are mostly fine. Immediately after, they f*ck you up mother bad so that you have to buy a new one.

I just ate a pack of expired chocolates. I'm still alive. Expired stuff is edible, but really, go buy yourself something that isn't.

Norwegian Recycling - How Six Songs Collide

I love how this one guy mashes together 6 songs to create a new interesting mix. If you think this is good, check out some of his other stuff under "Norwegian Recycling"