The great truths of life, assembled in a convenient list
By Nury Vittachi
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Help! I’m having an aphorism attack!
Does this happen to everyone, or just me?
I went from one side of the city to the other for a meeting yesterday.
My bus was stuck in a jam and a Great Truism struck me: “The amount of traffic on the road is inversely proportional to how desperately you need to get somewhere.”
When I finally reached my destination, I found I was the only one on time, although everyone else worked much closer to the meeting place. Another one struck me: “The nearest person arrives latest at the meeting.”
The other day I was at the Venetian, a casino in Macau which I was told was the biggest building in Asia. It was massive. I soon detected another law of the universe: “Wherever you want to go in the Venetian, it’s as far as possible from where you are, no matter where you are.”
These days, one encounters loads of these, so here are 20 Aphorisms of Modern Life.
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1. Any horizontal surface left long enough will grow a pile of paper.
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2. If you are in a bad mood, all inanimate objects acquire the ability to move just enough to get in your way.
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3. Cheques you write hide in the banking system until there is not enough money in your account, and then present themselves with a loud “Ta-da!”
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4. The average person now has more remote controls in his house than there are objects to be remotely controlled.
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5. If your product is behind schedule, the more manpower you add, the later it gets.
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6. If you drop some coins on the floor, the tiny worthless ones will stay at your feet, while the valuable ones will roll miles away and settle under a Coke machine.
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7. At banks or immigration counters, the other queue moves faster.
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8. When a broken appliance is demonstrated for the repairman, it will work perfectly.
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9. After you dismantle and reassemble any item, there will be one extra bit left on the desk.
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10. The cost of the hairdo is directly related to the strength of the wind outside.
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11. Any piece of wire or cable cut to length will be too short.
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12. All deals which are too simple to need a formal contract will immediately turn into legal battles.
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13. Those who know the least will always know it the loudest.
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14. If you say the words “Well, it can’t get any worse”, fate takes it as a challenge.
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15. The only thing worse than losing a highly competitive tender is winning one.
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16. Replace something you’ve lost, and you’ll find the original.
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17. Washing machines will only ever eat one of each pair of socks.
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18. Any spoon placed in the sink will position itself to produce the biggest possible fountain when you turn the tap on.
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19. Funny lists produced by columnists always have one item which is just there for padding.
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20. Or sometimes two.
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Anyway, if anyone else has some truisms to add to this list, do send them to me. Readers of this website are surely smarter than most people, so I expect some gems. After all, one of the scariest rules of modern life is this one: “Common sense is surprisingly uncommon.”
