Hello! I haven’t posted for quite a while, but I want to share these stories/poems with you:
1. Bitter-gourd Whimsical Poem
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How it came about
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There once was a scientist,
Who wanted to make food last longer.
For years and years,
He decided to ponder and wonder,
For the perfect solution, which he found at last.
“Aha!” he cried.
“I got it!
First yoghurt must be fried,
For about two minutes,
Completed with a lime,
No more than four minutes
So, keep track of the time,
If you hate a catastrophe!
After the mixture is complete,
Add calcium and any growth potion…
Your food supply is now concrete!”
The scientist was so excited,
That he grabbed the nearest vegetable,
Which was a bitter gourd!
Even if it is edible,
As everyone knows,
It is not delectable!
Without thinking twice,
He poured the mixture in!
Bubble, bubble, bubble…
The bitter gourd grew a twin!
Soon, the bitter gourd population multiplied…
And became unbearable!
The scientist was drowned,
In his own creation… that was incomparable!
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The Problem
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Bitter gourd, bitter gourd, everywhere.
Bitter gourd, bitter gourd, on your hair!
Bitter gourd, bitter gourd, every meal.
Bitter gourd, bitter gourd, that’s all you will feel!
How did this amazing creation lead to so much trouble?
How? I wonder…
No one can stand bitter gourd meals!
I wished bitter gourds would not last longer!
Even porridge every day would be better!
Can you imagine?
Bitter gourd chicken, bitter gourd egg.
Bitter gourd ice cream, bitter gourd tangerine!
Bitter gourd everything… Wow! That is disgusting!
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The Solution
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Soon the ministers were mad,
And the president could not bear,
Hence, they spent hours searching,
For the perfect solution to declare.
Luckily on the very last line of the final book they searched,
Stated a gardener,
Who could make the bitter gourds disappear!
They contacted their lifesaver,
Agreeing on five thousand and ninety,
The gardener acted and immediately rushed to the country.
Finally, light was seen,
When the gardener sang a melody.
All the bitter gourds exploded into particles,
Which flew into the sea.
The country free of bitter gourds,
Thanked the gardener with their money.
Now, if you ever want to invent something,
Do not try it on bitter gourds!
As you will end up in suffering!
2. Departures “Eye” Witness
Everyone knows,
The eyes are the windows to the soul.
I am an eye,
Witnessing your coming and going as a whole.
I see your cousins depart,
For trips of different measures.
Some go for education,
Others for leisure.
I see tears rolling,
I see faces smiling,
I know that it is not long,
Before it is your turn too.
For everyone witnesses departures,
Whether it is intentional,
Or if it is not,
It will always be emotional.
Through the years of witnessing,
All the different farewells,
It is finally our turn.
Far away we propel,
To experience new education.
Away from home,
Away we go.
Away we roam,
We shall meet again.
You picked up your luggage,
Your parents called,
“Don’t forget your baggage!”
You laughed and waved,
Taking your first departure.
Soon we arrived,
At your new abode.
Studying for years,
There, your innocence erodes.
Years after your departure,
You and your family soon converged.
But before you could act,
A different departure emerged.
Your great grandfather,
Departed without a cue.
Everyone was crying,
Including you.
But you need to stay strong,
For your future and you.
After leading a joyful life,
It is now your turn to depart.
Nothing lasts forever,
But we will never be apart…
Fret not,
Departures are not scary,
You will be remembered,
For now, and all eternity…
3. The Messengers – Mosquitoes
Mike, a teenager with golden-brown locks, slumped down onto the sofa. His eyes were glued to the television screen. Not even the swarm of mosquitoes around him distracted him as he listened intently to the evening news report, “Lately, there has been an unprecedented number of dengue cases in Suli-Hale Village. Villagers are advised…”
Suddenly, the television screen flickered. An image of a cartoon character who wore a laboratory coat and had curly snow-white hair popped up.
Mike turned around fumed when he saw the culprit that changed the channel was his younger sister, Gwen. Mike was flustered that his sister changed the channel without informing him. Despite being only two years apart, their interests could not be more different.
“Are you watching ‘Hambleton’s Great Discoveries’ again?” teased Mike. “Why don’t you help me to kill these mosquitos instead? They’re killing me!”
Gwen shushed him and kept her eyes fixated on her favourite cartoon.
“…Reports suggest that dengue is spread by mosquitos! However, OUR mosquitos spread good values instead!” announced Professor Hambleton.
Just then, Gwen’s eyes became as large as saucers as she turned around and squealed, “Wait a minute! Why don’t we invent mosquitos that transmit good values! Like what Hambleton did in the cartoon! That way, our village’s mosquito problem will be solved!”
Mike chuckled and tossed their baby brother’s milk bottle to her. “Baby Gwen, here’s your milk! So, Baby Gwen believes that the show’s true, huh?” he mocked sarcastically.
Gwen threw her hands up in desperation and reminded her brother of the adage, “When there is a will, there is a way”. However, her persistence fell on deaf ears as Mike laughed it off.
Gwen sighed and looked up “Project Wolbachia” on her smartphone, passing it to Mike. She tried to convince him again, “See for yourself. If male mosquitos can contain the Wolbachia bacterium, female mosquitos can be ‘modified’ to contain good values! Over time, all mosquitos won’t transmit disease! Instead, they can transmit good values… Think about that!”
Mike read the research article and realized her sister’s absurd idea was not so absurd after all. The siblings decided to seek their mother’s advice.
Their mother was a world-renowned biologist and she had transformed their basement into a state-of-the-art laboratory. Gwen always looked up to her and hoped that she too could become a scientist one day.
When the siblings arrived at the lab, their mother just finished an experiment. Gwen asked her about the feasibility of creating mosquitoes that spread good values.
Their mother said it would not be easy to create such mosquitoes but gave them some tips on how to achieve this as she had done some research in this area last year.
Gwen was elated. She jumped in joy and gave Mike a high-five.
“What are we going to do?” asked Mike as he looked around.
“You’re going to catch live mosquitos with this trap,” as Gwen handed an odd-looking black trap with an opening on top to Mike. The trap is their mother’s invention that won her the coveted Insects World Award. While Mike was out trapping mosquitoes, Gwen busied herself concocting a potion as instructed by the article and their mother.
The trap was indeed highly effective as it only took an hour for Mike to capture more than a hundred mosquitoes from their nearby park. Gwen dropped a few drops of the potion into the water at the bottom of a transparent container.
Gwen instructed Mike to release the captured mosquitoes into the transparent container and closed its lid. “We just need to wait for these mosquitoes to lay eggs into my special water mixture!” Gwen said satisfactorily.
Later that week, Gwen noticed mosquito larvae in the water! Gwen rubbed her eyes to make sure she was not dreaming and quickly informed Mike.
“Finally! What do we do now?” Mike asked as he rushed to the lab.
Getting inspiration from her favourite cartoon, Gwen suggested, “Talk to them about values?”
“WHAT? I wouldn’t join you if it’s like that!” Mike blurted.
“That’s how they did it in the cartoon,” Gwen replied calmly.
“Gwen, listen to me. THIS is reality. We don’t live in a cartoon. Now, you must have better ideas…” Mike pulled his sister away from the cage and stared into her large brown eyes.
“No. Unless you’ve a better idea,” Gwen simply replied before returning to the cage.
Mike tensed up. His sister was right. He did not have any better ideas. Thus, every single day, Mike and Gwen would enter the lab and start ‘educating’ the mosquito larvae.
They talked to the mosquitoes all week, such as, “Perseverance means to never give up and…”
Lo and behold! The larvae became pupae, which in turn became adults!
Gwen asked Mike to allow their “pet” mosquitoes to bite him. Mike backed away and shook his head vehemently.
Before her brother got too far away, Gwen released a mosquito near Mike. Mike saw the mosquito and tried to swap at it instinctively but missed. The mosquito was too fast and it disappeared behind him. Suddenly, Mike felt a tiny prick behind his neck. “I’ve been bitten! What did you….” Mike screamed at the top of his lungs.
Surprisingly, Mike calmed down the next moment and thanked Gwen, “Thank you, Gwen. You did good and I believe you have succeeded!”
Gwen stared at him in disbelief. He was no longer the grumpy brother she knew, which meant her experiment worked!
Mike was convinced his change in attitude got to do with the mosquito bite. “Time to release the mosquitos!”
Mike and Gwen brought the container to their garden and released the mosquitoes. The siblings grinned as they have achieved something that could benefit mankind.
Thereafter, they managed to convince their mother’s biotech company to breed more “values spreading” mosquitoes. After a few months, no one in their hometown needed to worry about dengue as all the mosquitoes spread good values. All thanks to Gwen and Mike’s life-changing discovery!
4. The Unexpected Journey
Looking around, I sighed. I was lost, again. Tall trees and flowers grew everywhere. The blades of grass formed a carpet that rubbed against my bare feet. “Time to do some navigation,” I groaned as I laid down my trusty laptop on the ground. When I typed a quick string of words, memories of the terrible incident came flooding back…
“Loi Sunn Meir! What have you done! The whole house is full of flowers growing from the floor!” cried Mother, who always seemed to over-react at the smallest things.
I shrugged and shouted back in reply, “I’m just coding, Mum!”
“You know you are not supposed to code! If your father or anyone finds out, you will be in deep trouble. You’re magically conjuring flowers all over the place!” Mother screamed, her words a harsh rebuke filled with intense disapproval.
“What is wrong? I just found the code to make things on the computer turn into reality,” I replied, confused, “Why does no one understand how amazing this is?”
“Sunn Meir, I told you many times that no one in this world is allowed to code, except the rulers and state scientists. Villagers like us can only farm. That’s our fate,” Mother replied as patiently as she could. Before I could react, Mother reached over and switched off my laptop abruptly.
“No!” I screamed. My Mother’s action caught me by surprise as she never switched off my laptop in this manner before. I was stumped for a second. “Why can’t we change our fate?” I asked, exasperated, after recovering from my initial shock.
“Because you’re in trouble,” a deep, baritone voice interrupted us.
I spun around and saw my furious Father entering the study room. “Dad?” I called out sheepishly, hoping desperately that he would not reprimand me, but I knew that was not possible.
“OUT! NOW! You know the rules! WE COULD LOSE OUR HOUSE BECAUSE OF YOU!” Father roared as he marched me out of the room and slammed the door behind me.
“Alright,” I muttered. “I will seek a better future myself.”
That night, I sneaked into the study room and packed my laptop into my brown leather backpack, which contained some clothes and other daily essentials. I swung my backpack over my shoulders and slipped out of the window of our single-storey house. “Free at last!” I thought as I sprinted through the fields to the woods…
Stuck in the woods with nowhere to go, as I stared at my shadow out of boredom, an idea hit me. I could write code to conjure a training centre and workers. The training centre could teach anyone, including villagers, how to code!
Excited with the idea, I took my laptop from my backpack, switched it on and quickly typed some code to conjure workers. Seven men and women appeared out of thin air as I completed my code. Once four workers came to life, I started coding a training centre. Soon after, an amazing building came to life before my eyes. My workers and I went in and began our separate duties.
Several days passed, but no one applied for my coding course despite our best marketing efforts. Not only that, I was also fined by the government for “illegal” coding activities! “Is it over?” I thought, “It can’t be… there must be better solutions than to give up all my work…”
Just as I was deliberating whether to close down my training centre, one of the workers tapped me on my shoulder and showed me a galactic map. Freya, who was my most diligent worker, pointed to a planet in the middle of the map.
“Earth?” I was flabbergasted. “You want us to go to Earth?”
Freya nodded enthusiastically.
“Are you kidding? Earth is 7.8 billion kilometres away! How can we even get to Earth?” I asked, astounded by the bold suggestion.
Freya handed me the model of an odd-looking spaceship. I looked at her in the eyes and asked “Are you sure we can reach Earth if we build this?”
Freya nodded enthusiastically. I took the model spaceship from her and examined it carefully.
Moments later, I looked up and declared, “Let’s start this new project! I should be able to build this using my code.”
Freya clapped joyfully and pointed to my laptop, indicating that I should start immediately.
For weeks, we stayed in the factory, busy coding and testing different spaceship prototypes. It was not easy as there was so much detail. We wanted to give up several times, but we persevered because we managed to think of ways to solve the bugs in our spaceship with some help from an online underground coding community.
“THE-EARTH ROCK-ET ONE”, I announced as I stood proudly on the platform in front of us. Our two months of hard work finally paid off. News about the invention quickly spread. Soon, everyone – including my parents and even the government – came to watch THE-EARTH ROCK-ET take off! Once we were ready for take-off, I wrote code to “return” my workers to my laptop so that I could transport them easily.
After that, I conjured a spacesuit and a shiny helmet from my code. I put them on with the help of my parents. My parents gave me a teary farewell, as they knew I might not return as I told them earlier that I would stay on Earth to spread my coding knowledge. They were not happy with my decision, but they relented after much persuasion and believed my mission would be for the greater good.
The countdown for take-off began soon after I entered the spaceship. Who would have thought a meek little girl could create such a spaceship? Even though the ending was not what I had expected, but it changed the government’s policy about coding and inspired others to follow their dreams. I look forward to landing on Earth 134 days later.
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That’s it!
Yes, we have come to the end! Thanks for reading! You give me lots of support and motivation!