August 30, 2004

w473rm3|0n 5h0pp1n6!!

Should write something about Merdeka, but then everyone's probably gonna do it, so I'll just not go with the flow. To non-geeks, the title says Watermelon Shopping, but I thought it would be fun to type in numbers and symbols for a change to try and understand the way Bnet-ers think. This account is completely fictatious, of course.


Languishing at home for two months on my chair can have a weird, debilitating effect on me. My muscles atrophy, my vocabulary deteriorates, green mould like the stuff on sloths start to grow on my skin, all semblance of common sense deserts me, and my IQ deflates to that of a gnat. In a fit to reverse this, I decided to go shopping for household items, like cooking oil and toilet paper. Don't ask me why I picked household items, I told you common sense was MIA, didn't I?

After I had my shopping done in a delightfully air-conditioned supermarket, I was pushing the trolley to the cashier when I passed a vat of watermelons: green, fresh, bigger than a bowling ball and best of all, cheap, at 20 sens a kg. The weather has been unbearably hot these past few days, and the notion of cold crunchy watermelons was calling out to me like a siren. I picked up the one sitting on top of its watermelon buddies, and, staggering under the weight, dropped it onto my trolley. Right on top of the toilet rolls and, luckily, not the eggs. Whew.

Just as I was about to continue on my merry way to the cashier, I suddenly noticed that everyone in or near the Fruit and Vegetables section was looking at me. Maybe 'looking' is not the correct word to convey what happened during my time in the produce section. The shoppers were glaring at me a tad hostilely, like I've just rammed my trolley full-speed into the egg shelf, like I've just mixed the red beans with the green beans and cackled maniacally, like I've just outraged the modesty of the guy in the cute uniform who weighs the fruits.

I began to feel hot, and shifted uneasily under their stares, racking my brains to see what I'd done wrong, when it suddenly dawned on me. I had picked up a watermelon and put in my cart without holding it to my ear and knocking on it first! I had commited the Cardinal Sin of Watermelon Shopping. Shame-faced, I quietly slunk away to the cashier and paid for my goods, feeling the burning gaze of the other shoppers stabbing my back, my inexperience clearly alienating me from the superior breed of Regular Shoppers.

Suffice to say, no more trips to the outside world for me. I've decided to stay at home quietly for the rest of my break, silently nursing my fragile esteem. It seems like I can't even make a decent shopping trip. I can still hear the guffaws of my brother after narrating this upsetting experience to him.

Anyway, the whole point of this is to bring up a question that I believe plagues every water-melon shopper on the face of this planet. Heck, I don't care if it doesn't, it plagues me. Why do people absolutely have to hold a watermelon to their ears, and knock on it to hear the sound before proclaiming it satisfactory and putting it into their trolleys? What do they expect to hear, apart from the plunk sound? Do different watermelons make different plunk sounds? If so, how do I tell a good plunk sound from a bad plunk sound? Unless someone answers my questions, I'm never going watermelon shopping again. Ever.

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