Kid’s Meals and Alcohol

Posted on by kombahbao

I was at a restaurant the other day and noticed a boy at the next table having his dinner on a spaceship plate. He looked like he was having a meal that was out of this world – happily scooping the fried food, stuffing it into his mouth and smiling gleefully at his tired parents.

So how did kid’s menus come about?

Why does that boy get to enjoy while I had to have a boring meal?

Apparently, it’s thanks to alcohol, or rather the lack of it.

When Prohibition kicked in across the entire United States in the 1920s, restaurants saw their revenues dropping and had to look for ways to survive.

Kids tend not to dine out during that period so it was an untapped market that helped them tide over that dry spell. From what I read though, the food was bland and tasteless but at least the kids get to go out.

As I see the boy finish his sugar drink apple juice, I decided I’ll pick up a happy meal at the drive-thru on the way home.

There are 5 states of matter

Posted on by kombahbao

I only knew about three states of matter.

Solid, Liquid and Gas – These are what the good school teachers talk about.

Then came along Plasma. It is basically an ionised gas that is highly conductive and allows us to watch football on huge Plasma TVs.

I was told by a friend that these four can be ranked in terms of the amount of energy that they carry.

Solid -> Liquid -> Gas -> Plasma

What is the fifth?

It’s the Bose-Einstein condensate. You will only get it when you cool atoms to absolute zero, so you will see this fifth state of matter when you put all your exes’ cold hearts together.

So in summary:

  1. Solid
  2. Liquid
  3. Gas
  4. Plasma
  5. Bose-Einstein condensate

Not sure if this knowledge will really matter.

I struck Group 2 Toto

Posted on by kombahbao

I struck Toto Group 2 a couple of years back.

The payout was $47k-ish and though it was shared with a few people, each of us received quite a handsome payout.

Now, what are the odds of winning Toto Group 2?

It’s 1 in 2,330,636.

That is 0.00000043%.

Odds of getting murdered in Singapore in a given year?

It’s 1 in 256,100, or 0.0000039%

So in Singapore, you have a higher chance of getting murdered than striking Group 2 Toto.

Does that make it something to die for?

Anyway to summarise your chances of winning big from Toto:

Group 1: 0.000000072%

Group 2: 0.00000043%

Other prizes suck so I’ll omit them.

Watch out for murderers that next time you buy a Toto ticket.

sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toto_(gaming)#/media/File:Totoghimmoh.jpg

https://io9.gizmodo.com/whats-your-risk-of-being-murdered-find-out-with-a-game-1568088855

How deep is your love?

Posted on by kombahbao

How deep is your love was released by the Bee Gees in 1977, and covered by Take That in 1996. So the older kids will know the original song, and the younger ones will wonder why an old fart band covered the song released by a popular boyband.

The Bee Gees were originally named BGs, after the promoter Bill Gates (not the Microsoft nerd) and their driver Bill Goode. Coincidentally BG also stands for Barry Gibb (one of the singers, for the younger crowd out there).

These fine folks were actually forced to leave Singapore right after their performance because of their luscious long flowing hair. For some reason, the ol’ Singapore correlated guys with long hair and gangsters.

If you tick the following boxes,

  1. Guy?
  2. Long hair?
  3. The year 1972?

Then you’ll have some problems.

– edited as the 2nd part of this post was truncated.