Happy New Year. Exclamation mark. All entries of mine till March will begin with that phrase…unless the editor cuts them out. But why would any good person remove cordial greetings? Even overly-beaten ones? And since you are here now, when is it wise to stop the “Happy New Year” greeting? So say you are a taxi conductor, and since it is a New Year and you burnt tyres that night and made merry all night long but you still managed to tell every passenger “Happy New Year” before you took Shs500 more than you ought to, what time in the year do you stop saying the phrase?
In this edition of exploration of man, earth, animal and everything in-between, we continue to look at more things you shouldn’t carry into this year. Nothing explicit, no need to cover the page and look around furtively to make sure no one’s reading over your shoulder.
Eating in the ATM
This is for you who take five years in the ATM as the queue builds up outside. It is my firm belief, backed by statistics from an agency I’m making up as I type this at finger-breaking speed, everyone who takes more than five minutes in an ATM has pulled a mat out of their handbag (see how using the research from that agency we h have sneakily zeroed in on the sex of the person who takes five years in the ATM? Let us keep profiling them. Read on reader, read on!) and is having a picnic right there amidst the small receipts we look at twice, frown and throw at the bin…always missing. Do the picnic thing somewhere else this year.
Forwarding whatsapp spam
Whatsapp is this tool that has replaced SMS for everyone who was liberated from a low-end phone. Every so often, someone you never really speak to sends you a Whatsapp message saying the world is ending and that you need to forward that particular message to all your contacts lest you risk being attacked by a park of bears as you walk out of a taxi on Bombo Road. Since you don’t want to appear on NTV news unless it is for winning a Nobel Peace Prize, you will forward the message yourself. Don’t be that person this year. Don’t forward spam.