A Mystery

It has been almost 2 weeks since I last publish a story. Well I thought that many of you would be studying hard for your exams and have no time to log on. I hope everything went well.

I was fascinated with this story which appeared as news about a year ago. I have been thinking about it sometimes.

There were two unmarried sisters who lived by themsleves in a terrace house in Singapore and did not come out to mix with others or neighbours. Last year when the police was alerted , the police found a skeleton lying over a toilet bowl in the house. The house was messy and they found some gold jewellery and Malaysian money. The police was not able to say for sure the skeleton was which of the two sisters', Pearl's or Ruby's. The police could not find their relatives. They searched the records, at the Registration of Births and Deaths and hospitals but could not find any information on them. They even asked Interpol (International detectives) to help.

Finally they found that Pearl had left Singapore via the Woodlands check point in July 2004 and had not returned to Singapore since then. They also found that Ruby had last seen her doctor at the Institute of Mental Health in March 2002 as an outpatient. She was then 68 years old.

According to the law in Singapore the house and other properties will now belong to the closest surviving relatives. Their cousins have come forward to claim the remains of Ruby for burial. The cousins said that they lost contact with the two sisters for more than twenty years.

I have been thinking to myself what could have happened to the one who went to Malaysia. Is she still alive? How did Ruby die? Lying over a toilet bowl? A skeleton? May have died at the toilet bowl and then her flesh rotted leaving only the sekelton. It must have been lying there for a very long time for only the skeleton to be left. I wonder.... Any guesses from you? The police spent more that 8 months investigating but is still puzzled.

Girl trapped in a burning flat

The whole neighbourhood was asleep when at 2.20 am a flat at Circuit Road was on fire and one little girl of 6 was trapped inside and she was all alone as both her parents had gone out and had locked the door. There was smoke and fire. Fortunately her cries were heard and the neighbours rushed to the flat and tried to break into the flat to rescue her.

But the window metal louvres could not be broken. Mr Lim the neighbour thought of getting a hammer to break the lock and it worked!! When the door opened the poor frightened girl was carried away to safety. She only suffered slight burns and is in the hospital for a short while. This happened early this morning. You can see a picture of her and the burnt in today's Straits Time Page H6.

This could happened in any flat. Would you be able to find the key to unlock the door to escape if there is a fire in your house? When one panics, often one cannot think properly and may not be able to remember where the key is kept It is good to be prepared for any eventuality. What is the best way to remember where to find the door key? Hope you will share some of your ideas with us.

Nothing to waste

I learnt something new while watching a TV programme where an experienced trekker goes to places where many other adventurers have made mistakes and then have nearly died or have died (being lost in a jungle, forest or snow).

This time the trekker went to Scotland, a very cold place especially in Winter. The camera men followed him. He showed the viewer some survival tricks. He said that in a very difficult situation like feeling very cold or tired, he must think of the positive things like his family at home and all the nice things to keep his mind healthy. He also said that he had to keep his head warm in the extreme cold by cutting off part of his spare clothes to cover his head . Then he said that when he was anxious or stressed he tended to uninate more often. So he collected his own urine in a water bottle and then tuck it under his clothes so as not to waste the precious warmth. I never thought of that!! I have learnt something new.

Did he have another bottle for his drinking water after that? I don't think so because he had to travel light in order to move fast to find the help. Well, survival is more important than the idea of being so clean. Ask a National Service (NS) man he will tell you the same thing. Those of you who have relatives who have been to NS should encourage them to tell you their interesting stories.

Clever dogs

I watched Animal Planet the night before and I was amazed at what else dogs can do.



The police in a town in America suspected that one man had murdered his friend but because they could not find the body there was no evidence and he could not be charged. They felt that the body must have been buried somewhere in the man's farm but they found that almost the whole field had been dug up earlier by the suspect with an excavator. The police tried hard but could not find the body. Finally they decided to get the help of trained dogs. Three dogs were called in. All the three dogs behaved in the same way. They stopped under a clump of thick trees at a heap of earth. They sniffed the air continuously. The police had their excavator and began to dig. They dug about 2 metres deep and they found bags of rotten meat which was very very smelly. The dogs were still not excited. ( we were told that the dogs have been trained to respond only when they smell human bodies). But the dogs stayed at the spot and continued sniffing and scatching even after the rotten meat had been removed. The trainers felt that the police should dig deeper. When they dug about 10 feet deep( about 3 metres ) they discovered the body of the victim. The man was charged with murder and sentence to many years jail.

Without the help of the dogs the police would not have dug that deeply for the recovery of a body as the usual depth a body is buried is about 2 metres deep.



Here is another example of how amazing a dog can be. 2 aeroplanes collided in the air and in each plane was a pilot and a trainee pilot. Both planes crashed into the sea off America's coast. One plane and the 2 bodies were recovered but the other plane with its passengers were at the bottom of the deep sea and frogmen spent 8 days diving into the bottom to search for the missing plane. They finally gave up and a trained dog was used to try to locate the spot where the plane had sunk. Many people including the captain of the boat that took the dog and its trainer were sceptical. How could a dog find the bodies in the water especially salt water that was so deep?



The boat carrying the dog travelled in straight lines to cover the "big square" where the plane was suspected to be starting at one side of the "square"and slowly they hoped to cover the whole "square". When the boat passed a particular spot the dog was behaving oddly. It seemed to say that something was beneath in the water. The boat turned and moved from the other direction and each time it passed the same spot the dog behaved the same way. They got the spot charted on the map. This happened the third time too when they got to the spot from a different direction. Indeed they dived in and found the sunken plane!



How did the dog do it? Well, it seems that when the dead body in the sunken plane rot, it gives off some sort of gas and this gas rises to the surface of the water and the dog could smell the gas despite the strong wind , sea water smell etc.



Hope you like this story. I am sure those who have dogs will also have stories to tell - of their intelligence