Bad Pronunciation

I seemed to have countless stories with the McDonalds.

One day I went to the McDonalds to buy a chocolate sundae. Being a senior, I have the privilege of having a complementary drink together with any purchase in McDonalds. So I asked the girl at the counter for a "free fruit fizz". As happened a few times already, I was again mistaken as asking for a fillet-o-fish. I was then given a fillet-o-fish burger with my chocolate sundae. With a bit of difficulty, I explained to the girl what I asked was a fruit fizz drink and not a fillet-o-fish burger. The girl apologized, and gave me the fruit fizz drink. I then returned the fillet-o-fish burger to the girl. But the girl said since the burger had already been made, I might just as well take it. So I ended up having a few freebies as result of my bad pronunciation.

Sometimes, a bad thing really isn't too bad at all!

Lost or Stolen?

A few months ago, I lost my handbag in a shopping centre in Gordon. I went to the police station to report the loss. The police officer wrote down my details, and descriptions of all the contents in my handbag. Finally he asked, "Was the handbag lost or stolen?" I replied, "I just knew my handbag disappeared when I left the shopping centre. I had no idea whether it was stolen or not,"
I thought that was only a particular incidence. But that evening when I got home, I rang up the banks and credit card centres to report losses of my bank cards and credit cards, and requested to re-issue replacements. I provided details of where and when they were lost. To my surprise, everybody asked the same question, "Was it lost or stolen?"
My goodness. I wonder how people can answer such a question. The thief wouldn't leave a note to us to let us know if the thing was indeed stolen!

The Arrow's Dichotomy

The story of 'Achilles and the Tortoise' as mentioned in my blog on 2 August, 2010 is likened to the story of 'The Arrow's Dichotomy' in which it goes as follows:
For an arrow to be shot from one side of the room to the other, the arrow has first to travel one half of the room. When the arrow reaches one half of the room, it still has to travel one half of the remaining length (i.e. one quarter) of the room. When the arrow reaches that position, it still has to travel yet one half of the remaining length (i.e. one eighth) of the room, and so on and so forth. Thus, the total distance the arrow needs to travel in order to cross the room is an infinite series:

1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + ..............

Being an infinite series, there is no finite value for the sum. Rather, the limit of this sum is 1 meaning the more terms we add, the sum will get closer and closer to 1 but will never be 1 and cannot exceed 1. Hence, the total distance the arrow travels will never be equal to the length of the room. In other words, the arrow cannot get to the other side of the room.
If we replace the length of the room by some shorter length, say a metre, with similar arguments, we can say the arrow cannot get to the end of the metre. If we replace the metre by yet a shorter length, say an inch, with similar arguments, we can say the arrow cannot get to the end of an inch. If we go on with shorter and shorter length, we will come to the conclusion that the arrow cannot move at all. Finally we conclude motion is not possible, which obviously is a paradox.

Both 'Achilles and the Tortoise' and 'The Arrow's Dichotomy' are different representations of the Zeno's Paradox, and both stories concern about motion, position and time - i.e. physics. We shall discuss Zeno's Paradox from the physics perspective in some later blogs as time permits.

Body Arts

Click to enlarge