The confessions of a clueless mind

A few months ago, I came upon an interesting business model. In many ways, this was making money out of nothing. Yes, it is related to faith. I have this fascination for spirituality and religion, and during one of my explorations, I chanced upon a Buddhist monastery within the central business district of Singapore. For fear of inviting the wrath of certain people with vested interests, I will not reveal any further details about the whereabouts of this place. Now here is the interesting business model. The monastery makes money out of match-making and wedding ceremonies. What is so unique about that, you may ask. Well, it is unique since the match-making and wedding services are offered, not to young men and women, but to spirits of dead ancestors! According to ancient Chinese/ Buddhist beliefs, there is a clear hierarchy in the spirit world, and one of the key determinants of where a particular ancestor lies in the hierarchy is his or her marital status. It is believed that, in the ...

This past weekend I happened to log on to my Gtalk from my personal laptop at home. Mind you this is a rare privilege granted to me by my wife, who seems to think that marriage gives her complete ownership of my assets and vice versa. That explains why she is always seen with the laptop, while I toy around with the dishes. Coming back to the original context, as soon as I logged on to Gtalk, my sister-in-law (co-sister, if you are in India, and subscribe to immaculate Indian English) pinged me and quickly typed in a few standard pleasantries. Knowing how challenged she is when it comes to typing at high speeds, I am sure she must have a ready list of pleasantries that she copies and pastes when she wants to make polite conversation with people who don’t really matter. And despite having married her sister, I still qualify for the “people who don’t really matter”. So after a couple of standard exchanges for the sake of formality, she ordered me to pass a message to my wife to come onlin...