Street Smart

A Chinese man walks into a bank in New York City and asked for the loan officer. He tells the loan officer that he is going to China on business for two weeks and needs to borrow $5,000.

The bank officer tells him that the bank will need some form of security for the loan, so the Chinese man hands over the keys to a new Ferrari parked on the street in front of the bank. He produces the title and everything checks out.
The loan officer agrees to accept the car as collateral for the loan. The bank's president and it's officers all enjoy a good laugh at the Chinese for using a $280,000 Ferrari as collateral against a $5,000 loan.

An employee of the bank then drives the Ferrari into the bank's underground garage and parks it there.Two weeks later, the Chinese returns, repays the $5,000 plus the interest, which comes to $18,41.

The loan officer says, 'Sir, we are very happy to have had your business, and this transaction has worked out very nicely, but we are a little puzzled. While you were away, we checked you out and found that you are a multi-millionaire. What puzzles us is why you would bother to borrow $5,000? from us in New York City.' 

The Chinese replies: 'Where can I park my car for two weeks for only $18,41 and expect it to be there safely when I return?'
Never laugh at a Chinese!

Tags:bankloan,Ferrari

• Current Mood: amused

I Am Not Stupid, Just Sick ...

Technology changes everything, irrevocably altering just about every aspect of our lives, reshuffling our priorities and directions of thoughts and actions. It offers possibilities towards aims and goals we never dreamed viable or achievable. Naturally possibilities remain possibilities, unless and until we apply ourselves making the means work, to benefit from the treasure grove of almost unlimited possibilities.That's where I fall short.

There are two areas in which I am as thick as two planks of wood, totally helpless, hopeless and, put into one single word, dumb!! Orientation and technology. One of the reasons I gave up driving was because I never know east from the west - well unless the sun is shining and I am on an open road. If I parked my car in a street but had to walk to my destination in another street, it would be practically an ordeal for me afterwards to know where to find my car again. When I enter a department store that has more than one entrance, after visiting a few counters inside the store, I would be at a total loss to find my out however many times I have visited the same store. In any city centre, I get lost on a daily basis, even in my dreams!

With technology, of any kind, I am equally useless. I made a huge effort to learn how to use the computer, having resisted just about forever even to try it out. Only through desperation as I realized that if I didn't, I would never hear from any friends again as nobody wrote letters any more. It wasn't too much of a challenge to learn how to handle email, even found it rather simple to my surprise and relief. I got my first ever Blog account on Yahoo 360 in November 2006, stared at the empty page for about 20 minutes and left it, for 6 months!! It was not until April 2007 before I tentatively posted about 2 lines on the page for the first time.

It didn't take me too long to get quick comfortable with writing & posting Blogs, but everything else is still almost scary for me. So the few times when there was trouble with the computer itself or with the connection, or any kind of muddle I got into, I would just get panicky!

The amazing thing is, I am normally a quick learner in most things, especially those academically related; and I consider myself fairly intelligent, being able to think and reason logically most of the time. Yet when I read a tech manual, when I face CSS codes, my brain seems to immediately and hermetically shut off. No amount of willingness, patience or self coaxing, not even with promises to treat myself to yet another pair of gorgeous high heels, or a sumptuous meal in my favourite restaurant, could give me enough incentive to tackle the problem. No idea how to!! All I am able to do is, PANIC, little ones, medium size ones and gigantic ones being the only variation.

So, Why Oh Why am I such an illiterate in technology? I am beginning to think, or choose to think, it's a disease. Not my fault, I am just sick sometimes.

Yep, that's what it is, and I am sticking to it.

Tags:technology,orientation,disease

• Current Mood: accomplished

First The Chicken, Or The Egg?

Finally, the century old question or dilemma of whether the chicken or the egg came first had been cleared up a few years ago it would seem, according to 'The Times', one of the most prestigious London newspapers. It was published that to solve this riddle once and for all, they had united a genetic specialist, a philosopher, and a aviarist - fowl farmer, to dig deep into this long standing puzzle. The conclusion was that the egg first before chicken.

The matter is anything but trivial, identifying the fond debates especially amongst the wise and learned, on abstruse topics, that clarify little or nothing, but those who take part in the debate displays enormous ingenuity, patience and subtlety. The subject to establish what comes first has remained alive and popular, defying time, in all languages, and constantly quoted in day to day usage, as synonymous to question or doubt impossible to clear up. Such perception is not new; it's one of those little questions that drag on since time immemorial, and manage to remain of great interest to most. Like whether the glass is half full, or half empty?

Apparently, it started way back in the middle of the 5th century of our era, a Latin writer Marcrobio, a representative of those who strived hard to conserve the roots of ancient Romanism and all it signified, at that time threatened by Christians and salvages, wished to transmit through a book such a vision to the world by uniting philosophy and science of nature. The book told of banquets attended by like minded society gentlemen, although of varied characters, debating on diverse subjects.

One of the diners, tired of the filigree mentality of the Greeks, asked in an ironic tone and without dissimulating impertinence, what came first: the chicken or the egg? The nominated judicator, taking the matter seriously, made everyone see the graveness of the theme raised, and elaborated that in the beginning it was the egg because nature began rudimentarily, and only very slowly and gradually to begin perfecting itself. The egg then contained no form of an animal. With time it began to develop, very much like the many stages of the revolution of the human race.

Now things are not as simple as that. As all living beings come from a single semen, there must have existed someone who produced it. In that case, one should reasonably conclude with the preexistence of a chicken. So the judicatory spokesman must choose and, according to his option, demonstrated his intelligence and culture.

All is now clear. Or is it??

Tags:chicken,egg,revolution

• Current Mood: awake