Have We Forgotten?

At 12:30pm sharp, the girls filed into the lift lobby and queued up for the lift. When the lift did arrive on our floor, its doors opened, only to reveal that it's already full to its capacity. Another lift came and went, full with people going out for lunch. The girls waited patiently. Such was the scene at my office shortly ago. It's amazing how these women would rather wait for the lift instead of walking down the staircase for only 2 floors. Elsewhere, I have seen people actually waiting patiently for the lift to travel just one floor. Staircases are fast becoming obsolete—they are only used during emergencies.

What is to become of the human race? They are becoming lazier and lazier to use their strength. Maybe they'd like to stay in bed all the time if they can help it. In general, young women these days refrain from doing any kind of physical exercises. Believe you me, they'd rather go on hunger marathons to control their weights. They'd pay substantial amount of hard-earned money for weight-losing "treatments"—no injections, no hunger, no exercises etc. The only thing that's required is a fat bank account.

This is what I have seen of Malaysian women in general. Between the age of 20 to 25, when the metabolism rate is still high, they can enjoy practically any kind of food they like without getting fat. They don't normally have time for physical exercises because they're busy building up their careers, having just left school.

Between the age of 26 to 30, their metabolism rate will slow down a bit. They will find that they can gain a bit of weight if they're not careful with their food intake. That's a bit of a concern of course, but not something which a bit of crash diets and a few aerobics classes can't remedy.

Between the age of 31 to 35, the metabolism rate slows down ever further. At this stage most women will find that they can gain weight by merely looking at food. And this is probably the most critical time of their lives when they will spend a big chunk of their incomes for slimming programmes. And so the diets which usually mean cutting down food to a tiny portion of the usual size; trying to do brisk walking or jogging 500 metres in the park. Electrically-operated machines which can shake off all the excess fats from the body. All these are necessary if only for the time being, because after getting married, of course there is no longer any need to watch the figure, if you know what I mean.

Well, I took the staircase down from the second floor. Walking fairly slowly, I reached the ground floor at more or less the same time as the girls taking the lift.

I said to them, "Can you imagine those people who're born without legs? They'd probably say to themselves that if only they had legs, they'd walk, run, jump and scale the highest mountain. They'd not use the lift and escalators. If possible at all, they'd not ride in the car as well. If only they had functional legs..."

Maybe we have all forgotten that we're born with limbs meant for many purposes—walking is just one of them. Trust me, folks, you won't die from walking down the staircase for only 2 floors. Be thankful that you have legs to walk with. They are many, many people in wheelchairs who'd give a lot to have legs like yours which you're so reluctant to use!