(Sound of palm slapping forehead)
BUS LANES should be cancelled because bus-users slow down the journeys of car owners, a motoring group complained.
“Car owners… get exhausted sitting in their cars due to traffic jams,” BB Sharan, head of a pro-car group in Delhi, told the BBC last week.
Poor little car owners! Sitting behind your chauffeur sighing can be really tiring.
Another thing! Saving time is not important for non-rich people! “How does it matter if a peon reaches office five minute before time?” Mr Sharan thundered.
I wouldn’t like to be the peon who makes his tea. No, scrub that, I WOULD like be the guy who makes his tea. An opportunity for creative cocktail-mixing.
Talking of annoying bosses, a zoo manager in China found a way to make his peacock fan out his magnificent tail feathers for cash, I heard last week.
Staff at Beijing Wildlife Zoo at Daixing collect a special fee from visitors and usher them into a space in front of a curiously static peacock.
A button is pressed and the famous peacock tail rises behind the bird. Cameras are banned, because staff photographers take pictures and sell them to you for vast sums.
Park executive Liu Xin Cheng told the Chinese press that he did not think putting an artificial electro-mechanical tail on a real peacock’s butt was cruel.
I can think of few more pleasant ways to pass the time than devising suitable punishments for this gentleman, all involving uncomfortable apparatus applied to tender rear parts. Another opportunity for creativity.
***
ASTRONOMERS DISCOVERED a planet made of diamond, a science journal reported last week. I already saw this. It’s on the third finger of Jennifer Aniston’s left hand, isn’t it?
***
AMAZED scientists found a 500-million-year-old insect with a complex brain, top science journal Nature reported this month. This shows insects were once smart, but their brains shrank to tiny little dots, like those of amoebas, ultra-nationalist politicians and One Direction fans.
I have enough trouble trying to outfox bugs as they are: imagine the horror of BRAINY ones. “This is your mosquito speaking. You cannot see me but I am secreted in your bedroom and plan to torment you all night. Mwa ha ha ha ha.”
***
A SEAFOOD WORKER fell into a giant steamer and was cooked to death, police in California reported last week. Poor guy. Mind you, had this happened to a food worker in Shanghai, where hundreds of thousands of crabs are steamed alive every week, I would have no sympathy.
***
DID YOU READ about that German guy who went out for a few drinks and afterwards couldn’t find his car? The Bavarian man, 31, went home in a taxi. The next day he went back and STILL couldn’t find his car. Well, last week, he finally found it—TWO YEARS after he had lost it.
I know a guy who had a few beers in Frankfurt and lost his hotel. He eventually flew back to Asia and told his wife that his suitcase of dirty laundry had been stolen.
Ancient legends talk of “the waters of Lethe”, a potion that wipes out memories.
I think it’s Heineken.
