the japanese are such wonderful people given that they have introduced many interesting concepts of living to us boring Singaporeans. take for example, the Green Tea phenomenon. pokka green tea has been around for like eons. but it wasn't till like 2-3 years ago that it suddenly took off. pokka green tea attained street cred that could be compared to a bottle of Chivas. in fact, those poor unfortunate cheena souls started mixing their Chivas with pokka green tea (it tastes horrid). before you knew it, green tea was coaxed and forced into every single household and lifestyle product that you can imagine. green tea shampoos and body foam and bar soaps, green tea ice-cream, green tea therapeutic massages, green tea vitamins, green tea a-balling. i'm just waiting for Okamoto to produce them green tea condoms. the catechins prolly aid in the digestion of those proteins that you are so gonna milk out of it.

of course, along the lines of wonderful japanese lifestyle products comes SUDOKU. that irritating logic puzzle of trial-and-error-cum-elimination. i never liked Sudoku given that it involved numbers. anything above 1-9 gives me a numbers-induced form of vertigo accompanied with dizzy spells and a general sense of malaise. of course, that doesn't apply when it involves my ever-dwindling bank account. in this case, the amount of zeros behind the initial 1-9s are strongly encouraged. Sudoku brings back bad memories of the 'O' levels. i was never strong in mathematics.

Elementary Mathematics (or 'E' Maths as we Singaporeans call it; pronounced as 'E Max') was something that required plenty of practice. i remember having two tuition teachers. one of them was pretty famous in the group tuition circle. he was a part-time magician-cum-maths tutor, offering tuition in both subjects. it was actually fun because he constantly entertained us with card tricks and money-pulling from people's ears. he had endless supplies of coke and twisties that you paid for our of your own honesty. some of the fellow tuition mates i knew stole money from the cupboard where you were supposed to pay for them snacks. i was one of them too given that his tuition fees were extremely exorbitant. plus, he was really a bad tutor. teaching 18 students at one shot, split into three different groups and rooms. all fun, but i never really learned much.

the other tutor was balding, boring and yet, not that bad. his group tuitions were small. and he gave you focused attention. of course, he tried explaining algebra to me. but it's prolly as familiar as wearing an algae-filled bra. still, he forced me to practice constantly. doing endless sums and multiplications and finding out general square areas of unknown circular objects of varying distances. ten-year series and the like. i got a B4 in 'E' Maths thanks to this chap. plus i got to meet this very hot guy during the class who was a very quiet and shy librarian. we never got beyond making conversation in the LRT which we took back home together. till today, i wonder where he is now.

still, because of the boring foundation program lectures that i've been going through, i've resorted back to completing the daily Sudoku puzzles in the Today Newspaper. yes, as much as i hate to admit that i'm one of those 'grab-it-because-it's-free' newspaper readers, i still take it. only for the Sudoku and entertainment portions. and surprisingly i've actually completed my first ever Sudoku puzzle within the span of one hour. not that it involved any mathematics at all. just a lot of ruling out numbers within the 3x3 grids. i completed one yesterday. i completed another today. i'm looking forward to tomorrow's one which i bet is gonna be much more challenging. i'm kinda hooked actually.

don't be surprised if you see me outside 7-11 with a copy of Today, drinking my green tea and completing the day's Sudoku puzzle. if you need a more vivid image, i'm wearing a green tea condom beneath those smarty-and-yet-not-so-mathematically-inclined pants.

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