In Psychology we learnt about operant conditioning.
That is,
to employ the use of rewards and punishment to teach/ alter behavior.

Allow me to clarify with a simple example.

Desired behavior: Healthy lifestyle, regular exercise.

Punishment:
Being told by your very own blood brother on a bright and sunny day,
when ur mood is super good,
especially after a satisfying sun-tanning trip to Sentosa that

"Chey(sister in dialect), I don't know why hoh, but you looked like a brown gorilla today eh"

Reward:
Being told by your hair dresser tt u looked like u lost weight
and tt ur lookin better these days.

So apparently,
operant conditioning works.
After having suffered under the hands,
or shd I say TROTTERS of my brother,
I resumed my routine evening jogs.

For awhile I liked running in the late evenings,
around my estate,
and just take in the quiet surroundings
shrouded in the romantic orange of the street lamps.

Unfortunately,
the pleasure was short-lived.
Since I-don't-know-when,
there's been this irritating Maris boy who's hell bent on challenging me.

Of cos I couldn't out-run him.
&^*^%^%#^&%*&^

And I am not happy about it, by the way.

So I gave up and retreated to my neighbourhood park,
the mini one which is populated with lao-kok-koks,

where I am easily the best runner around.
:)

But then again,
the lao-kok-koks are lovely.

Two evenings ago,
one actually smiled at me while I was doing my warming down.
She walked over and we began to chat.

So,
following in zee's footsteps,
Professor fairyinagoldfishbowl is going to share with everyone
a "medical knowledge" that the old lady shared with me.

She's from China,
and immigrated to our green city a few decades back.
We were just chatting for awhile,
until a toad leapt by.

We both looked at it.
"frog..."I exclaimed in mandarin.
"It's a toad," she smiled, "see? the skin is a dull brown, and it's rough"
I walked closer to the creature and studied it.

"In my hometown, whenever anyone is down with a persistent fever, you'll see their close kin busy flipping every stone in the garden, especially so after a downpour."

"Why? You mean there's a belief that finding a toad after the rain will cure a fever?"

"No. We'll catch the toad, only toads, not frogs, and then put it on the sick's stomach, and cover it with a glass container. Let it jump around in there until it dies of suffocation"

I figured I must've looked super shocked.

"You honestly believe it will work?"

"It always works. They always recover the next day."

Isn't that amazing?

You know,
everyone shd take some time out to talk with the older folks sometimes.
You'll be surprised by their stories.

Now I'm looking forward to running in the park.
And I'm thankful for the theory of operant conditioning.

Rewards and Punishments work.