When we were kids how many times were we told to wash our hands?

And while we moaned that they were clean anyway we somehow never realised that those appendages that petted the dog, tickled the cat, made mud pies or wiped our noses remained the worst carrier of disease-causing germs.

Simultaneously however our parents went red with embarrassment whenever friends and relatives came home to visit and we refused to shake hands because we thought an aunt was gross or that an uncle squeezed too hard.

The female of the human species has always been deadlier than the male. Unhappily for the males though, their preconceived notion that women are weak, pliable and more emotional than intelligent gets them almost every time.

In many societies (especially in the southern hemisphere) young girls are raised to be polite with impeccable manners and constantly reminded by their maternal and paternal elders that they are the weaker sex.

Add to that the traditional idea that their success lies in finding the right husband and bearing him many sons, which gives the rest of the world the notion that these women make docile partners and the forced providers of unconditional love to their kith and kin.

As someone who firmly believes in the maxim "what goes around comes around", I’m a little (if not very) careful that I should not be a bad person.

No, I won’t say I’m as pure as driven snow, but at the same time I am terrified that people who perceive that they have been slighted or offended by me, come back to haunt me while I sleep.

Then comes along this old/new fad called Past Life Regression Therapy (PLRT). Some psychologists swear that visiting your previous lives under the care of a skilled therapist brings better understanding of why one behaves the way one behaves and helps one set it straight.

The debate on outsourcing has taken on a new angle.

The East-West divide on jobs, protectionism, quality of service, the damage to western economies and the boon for eastern ones has been discussed ad nauseam.

Now however, an eastern man (read Indian) comes along and promotes the outsourcing of western elderly to the east simply because taking care of old, frail parents is becoming a drain on already stretched purse strings.