WHATEVER CAN GO WRONG, WILL GO WRONG

WHEN I was in school, one of the common essay topics was “Describe a day when everything went wrong”. So the whiner in me would spin the tale of a very bad day, a horrendous one indeed where it was all doom and gloom. Then when I moved on to lecturing, I occasionally used this theme during the ice breaker sessions. It worked! Everyone was most happy to lament over the most upsetting day ever.

With that, I became acquainted with a number of axioms. Murphy’s law, Sod’s law, Yhprum’s law and Sally’s law — the most commonly used would be Murphy’s law.

Murphy’s law states that “things will go wrong in any given situation, if you give them a chance”, or more commonly, “whatever can go wrong, will go wrong”. Sod’s law goes one step further, “and usually at the worst time”.

Murphy's law started at Edwards Air Force Base in 1949 at North Base. It was named after Capt Edward A. Murphy, an engineer working on Air Force Project MX981, which was created to see how much sudden deceleration a person can stand in a crash. Sod’s law is known to have been derived, at least in part, from the colloquialism, an “unlucky sod”; a term for someone whom we feel sorry for because he had undergone some bad experiences.

Then we have Yhprum’s Law which is the opposite of Murphy's law (Yhprum = Murphy backwards). The simple formula of Yhprum’s law is: “Everything, that can work, will work.” Sally’s law on the other hand, is that particular moment when everything falls into place.

Laws aside, it is our response to situations that determines the mood for the day.

Take for example the day I had to do the laundry. I put all the soiled clothes into the laundry basket to put them into the washing machine downstairs. To avoid having to run upstairs again to collect the other necessary things, I decided to put the book, pen, reading glasses and mobile phone into the basket and carried the basket down with everything in it.

As I started the front loading warm wash, I heard a crunching sound but ignored it. The inevitable had happened.

I had thrown in the android together with the laundry into the wash. The Samsung was gurgling for help, very much like the scene where Stuart Little was screaming to his mother (portrayed by Geena Davis) when he was trapped in the washing machine.

“Put it in a tub of rice after removing as much water as possible from it,” my son advised. Apparently, rice absorbs the last few drops of residual moisture. It seems couscous, oatmeal and silica gel would work too, but I didn’t have those.

I found the rice but it felt damp. So I thought I’d warm it up in the oven. I must have overdone it because quite a number of rice grains turned brown at the bottom of the roasting pan.

So after the phone had been carefully submerged in the cool dry rice, I looked at whatever remainder rice I had and decided to separate the burnt rice grains from the unburnt ones.

I don’t know if anyone has ever done that, but it is a task that requires the patience of a saint. As a practising mother and wife, patience is something that I have learnt over the years.

Most people would have no qualms about throwing the rice out but visions of poor suffering famine-blighted chidren with swollen bellies in another part of the world prevented me from doing that. It took me three hours to separate the burnt rice grains from the unburnt ones. By then I had discovered an easy method to do that. The next obvious step would be to patent that technique.

In the past when I had a mishap, I would beat my chest and retreat in anger into a corner for days. So I was surprised at myself that there was no dark cloud over my head. For a moment I felt upset but recovered almost immediately. The phrase “Nobody died” puts everything into perspective and is most helpful when dealing with mishaps. Then I started to see the funny side of it and laughed instead — at the phone and at myself.

Many of those who have tried the rice trick swore by it on the Internet. But to actually think mine would work after such an ordeal is like witnessing the separating of the Red Sea. But I live in hope. Even if it does not survive the ordeal, I would love to think that it would probably win “The Cleanest Samsung Phone Award” of the year.

So now the only thing left for me to do is to write about it and wait.

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE NEW STRAITS TIMES MALAYSIA ON 1 JULY 2018 https://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnists/2018/07/386014/whatever-can-go-wrong-will-go-wrong