"How dirty is your money?"

amongst the many random pieces of news my mother hurled my way as i walked in through the door a few minutes ago was this one on dirty Chinese currency.

apparently, "most consumers don't know their wallets and purses may be teeming with bacteria" and (get ready for this..) "One Chinese banknote tested was carrying 178,000 different types of bacteria and had 9,500 organisms from the e-coli family"!!

:O how disgusting can that be??

this being the case, one additional piece of item i definitely need to add to my travel packing checklist next time i go to China will be a box of disposable gloves!!

.. or maybe we should just go to North Korea, where, according to the report, "strangely enough, banknotes from the secretive and impoverished communist state of North Korea were almost bacteria-free".

the other pieces of news my mother told me were:

- Arnie gets elected

- Semon Liu declares bankrupt (so Andrea de Cruz might not get her money after all..)

- her friend Auntie Ah Lan not turning up this morning for their regular morning swimming session with the "unacceptable" excuse that her freckles were getting worse.. (durrh..??)

my mum is amazing in the slick way she peppers her "news broadcasting" with her nagging .. for example, "wah, that Hollywood man.. the one who plays the robot? he.. eh, are you having dinner at home? huh? how come not again? where are you going? .. ya, that man.. you know? that one lah! ya, he got elected.... eh, who are you going out with? don't come back so late, hor??"

durrh....