Mercury Rising

For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, and all the proud, yes, all who do wickedly will be stubble and the day which is coming shall burn them up. ~Malachi 4:1, 3

The shower after the long period of dry season was indeed a much welcome respite. As predictable as the years before, after suffering the prolong dry spell, the government urged the people to save water, or else, water ration would have to be imposed. Yet, water consumption was at a eyebrow-raising level – you can safely bet that Penangites, after hearing the news, bathed five times a day and washed their cars three times a week lest the dams really ran dry. However grim the situation might have been, Penangites were nonchalant as ever. Heck, for some reason, God loves us! No sooner than the news ran out did it rain. Hallelujah!

Some time in the last week, Mr T, my ever-rambling teacher cracked a joke on the subject. “We are not the only ones suffering from the dry spell. Certain people from our neighbouring countires prayed day and night, but there was not a drop of rain falling from the heavens; Penangites kept on with their lives without even bothering of burdening their minds with the problem, but the shower of blessings came without prayers at the most dire hour,” he jested.

Okay, I can’t agree more with that, but we may have jumped to conclusions a little too early. The rains brought relief but only a temporary one. It is now hot, hot, hot as ever! It’s a calamity! A disaster! The end is nigh! Do I need to say more?

I wouldn’t as much as bat an eyelid if the thermometer bursts faster than you can yell, “I’m burning alive!”. I am totally soaked with sweat like a wet rat as I sit in front of the terminal typing away my lamentations. (Have to be careful not to go near the wire or I’ll shock myself to death with my dripping sweat!)

You can either blame this suffering on man’s sin or the exhaust from cars and factories, but the world is burning like hell all because of our own doings. Now, I certainly don’t have to brief you through the causes of global warming, do I? The breach in the ozone layer… Weird gases emitted from cafeterias… Green house gases: the foul smelling one from your intestines, just to quote an example… And perhaps, man’s sin(?!)… Yada yada yada…

It is so obvious that the planet is gradually burning into a hellish ball of inferno. Yet – horror of all horrors – there are still debates over the impact of global warming! Some observers are questioning whether temperatures have actually been rising at all! Bah! These people either live in refrigerators or have numb receptors.

I am sure you have heard of Michael Crichton’s “The State of Fear”, which is still in my “to read” list. When I first read the book review, my eyebrows raised so high that they were in danger of disappearing into the hair – Mike must have been out of his mind when he chose to write that book! I guess he hasn’t very well got through the trauma of running for his life from a T-Rex in Jurassic Park…

If you think that the global warming leads to rising sea levels, drop in the yield of crops, increased libido, La Nina and El Nino – the Christmas Child, think again. The effects are, in reality, even more far- reaching, either we realise them or not – it is driving people mad, quite literally. Let me quote you some examples.

To begin with, Malaysians had a good laugh over a couple of unusual proposals presented in the Dewan Rakyat last week. A backbencher – apparently not in the right frame of his mind – proposed that in order to combat drug abuse in the country, the Government could “supply drugs to addicts free of charge and have all the addicts placed on an island”. Hmm… Drug traffickers would then have to switch to selling pirated CDs then…

As if unwilling to lose out in the jester performance, another backbencher suggested the “public beheading of addicts and traffickers… showing it over the television. (Gasp! Those extremist ideas of terrorists sure are spreading like fire under the rising temperature!) These witty MPs can definitely make a living getting a job in the courtyard as jesters if they decided to quit politics one day!

Well, the weird news is indeed head-scratching. I guess the hot weather must have melted some of the wirings in the brain, or perhaps have dried up the grey matter. As such, the ball of tissues in between the two ears doesn’t seem to work too well.

Now, switch the scene from those jokers to – the toilets of my school.

Last week when I went for a small business transaction in the loo, an unfamiliar gush of air greeted me as I entered. Then, I looked up and saw (take a deep breath) – a fan! Yes, a fan as in “an electrical device with three rotating blades to cool or circulate currents of air”. What was it that led to this insanity, it searches me.

I can only imagine brother John who is squatting over the toilet for half an hour, (apparently suffering from constipation,) finally decides that he has sweated enough in this hot weather and complains to the school about the “poor air ventilation” in the loos. Then, Mr S, the HM who might be also having the same problem, and is therefore understanding of John’s misery, gives the incredulous proposal the green light. Wow, next time, dear John may be requesting for a television set to keep boredom (and frustration) at bay while he waits for the transaction to be done!

So you see, global warming does indeed result in a multitude of headaches never before imagined, either directly or indirectly. Come to think of it, freak accidents may as well have to do with this phenomenon. I have just read of a report about a man in London getting injured by a sausage!

Even at this very moment, I have reasons to believe that the heat is taking its toll on my mind as well. My things are disappearing – only to appear elsewhere! Take, for example, the graph which was supposed to be handed in this morning. I remembered very well that I left it at my desk but it was no where to be found later. Imagine my helpless and hapless look: the gruelling forty minutes spent over the tedious work that taxed the myopic eyes of mine greatly!

Of course, you don’t suppose that I believed the paper just sublimed into thin air, do you? My crumbling faculty simply does not imply that I have totally lost cognizant of reality. So, high and low I searched, only to discover it among the files which were to be handed in to Miss T. Hallelujah, once again!

This phenomenon may not be registered as something strange especially among the multitude without the scientific mind. However, I am more than willing to condescend to that intelligence level in my (most probably futile) endeavour to link this incident to the laws of thermodynamics.

The second law of thermodynamics gives a definition of a property called entropy, which is closely related with the temperature of a system. It so happens that nature “prefers” chaos and disorder: the entropy of an isolated system can never decrease. So, in this hot weather, chaos reigns – it becomes more difficult to pinpoint the exact location of an individual particle. But it seems that this anomaly has extended from the microscopic scale to the macroscopi scale, as in the case of the “disappearance” of my graph.

The heat is more than unbearable by itself so don’t burden your feeble mind too much if you do not get what I mean…

Oops, I think I’d better not proceed. The heat is turning me into the priggish Professor Challenger with his irritable (and irritating) behaviour! No eggs, no profanities, no one-finger salutes, please. I’m simply not myself today. My apologies.

By the way, I am saving money for an escapade to Arctic Alaska. I just can’t stand the heat over here. Please donate generously to my “Kryptos Off To Alaska Fund”. All cheques, money orders and cash are accepted.

If you’ll excuse me, I’m going off for my nap in the refrigerator now.

And oh yeah! Just to remind you to drink lots of water. You don’t want to get constipation, do you?