Good Morning Shoppers...

You can imagine what would happen if the following announcement came over the tannoy in the Spring shopping mall: "Good Morning shoppers! Would the car owner of QXX 9XXX please return to your burning vehicle immediately"!

I for one would suffer an immediate shed collapse in sheer and utter shock that something actually INTERESTING was being announced in those faux American, oh so nice and sisterly tones. Never mind my obvious pity and horror that some poor unfortunate so and so had to return to the Premier Car Park to watch helplessly as his HondaBastard VX9 roared away gloriously in flames with a nice healthy black plume of smoke hurrying off briskly into the wide blue yonder!

I might be moved by human feelings to go up to him, and say how sorry I am to see his pride and joy in such a conflagrous state. I might offer him advice about how important it is not to leave your cigarette lighter switched on in the blistering heat of the Sarawak late morning.

Because people do things like that you know! It says so on the Internet!!

Almost every day, I get these postings in my email box, many of which are forwarded on to me faithfully by my dear wife. They come in various categories, many of which are related to health and how to avoid cancer by taking carrots or drinking water and egg yolk mixed with a dash of pepper corns.

The ones I am focusing on here are those scary posts which are by way of an urgent warning to anyone who basically wakes up in the morning and does anything. They usually start with big bold letters in many colours and there is usually a hint or two that the writers do not have English as their native language.

One of them I read the other day warned of the mortal perils of starting your car up in the morning without opening the windows to let out the carcinogenic spores that rise up from your car seats. Another one revealed to us that according to scientists in China (!) drinking milk and eating meat causes cancer and that we should all remove these items from our diets or die horribly. Another one was a kind of security warning about what happens in some third world countries to travellers who forget to have their passport stamped when going through immigration.

Now don't get me wrong, folks. Some of these postings do have some good advice, even though they seem to resemble urban myths in terms of their possible truth value. But I can't help thinking that the creators of some of these posts really do think that we are stoopid. I mean, surely EVERYbody knows that it is a bad idea to start your car in the morning without opening the windows, right? Even in a tropical country where dengue mosquitoes are hovering near your car just waiting to slide through the open car window and kill you...

Oh and one more thing. I get really peed off by redundancy in human communication. When the Spring shoppers announcement says 'would the car owner of...' I can't help reaching for my pills, grating my teeth and wondering whether the announcement is also aimed at motorbikes and trucks and any other vehicle apart from cars. Why can't you just say 'would the owner of...' and get rid of the redundant 'car' because it's understood. At least by me..

Has that burning car gone out yet?