Consider

This post definitely has nothing to do with the fact that I am frustrated with the constant delays in the Dutch public transport, and that I have had enough time to write an entire blog post while waiting for my train. I am joking of course; the trains are always cancelled so I don't have to wait for delays. It makes me think of teleportation though. I wonder why.

Even though I struggle with the lack of transport to my city, I am glad we have not invented teleportation just yet. I'm no scientist (which is ironic because I am a data scientist), so I have no interest in the how. I am pretty sure some drunk physicist with their lab coat who have fallen asleep by a desk full of books will wake up at 3am and scream "Eureka!" one day, then design a first prototype before the eviction notice due to repeating noise complaints reach him thanks to the slow bureaucracy in this country.

I am also not interested in the what, who, where, when or why. You know what, I'm not interested at all, let's talk about something else. This is my blog, I talk about whatever you want. What are you going to do? Sue me?

Why is everything funnier when you are drinking water? This question boggled my mind since high school. We had those water fountains that worked like sink while a button is pushed. Like this one but of course much more dystopian looking. Honestly, I want to play a game named Prison or School where you are given images and you have to tell whether it is from a school or a prison. I seem to observe a trend where we are approaching to the point you cannot predict better than random guess.

During the day, nothing was ever out of the ordinary. I studied at a boarding school for five years so I probably know every crack on the wall and every scratch on the ground already. (Let's ignore the implication that I have stared at walls and the floor long enough to memorize such patterns.) So it had to be something wildly different from the daily routine for me to feel any fascination or excitement.

And then, I had to drink water.

When someone went to the closest water fountain to drink water, it was kind of a tradition that people nearby started to imitate water sounds. And that was the funniest thing ever. It made it near impossible to drink from these fountains because my cheek muscles usually got too tense from smiling. The weirder part is that, the funniness completely disappeared as soon as I stopped drinking water... until I went back just to burst out laughing.

And why is that? Why is everything so much amusing when you are unable to laugh? Is drinking water a secret cue for everyone else to be funnier? Do we momentarily get high from that famous chemical named dihydrogen monoxide that can be commonly found in water? Or are our brains fully know that is the most inconvenient time to laugh so they pull a prank on us?

Who knows? I don't. Not enough time has passed to complete a full science degree since my latest mention that I'm no scientist; so to no one's surprise, I am still no scientist. Although, I am convinced that the phenomenon is due to us conditioning ourselves.

The last thing we want while drinking water is-- actually no. Correction: One of the last things we want while drinking water is to spill that water. You may be unfortunate and away from a sink, so spilling water entails embarrassing yourself in front of other people by getting everything wet. Or you may be by your computer and you can break your keyboard simply by spilling water on it. There may be high stakes for letting the water spill.

QUICK! DON'T THINK OF A BIRD! And suddenly, you can only think of a bird. That's exactly the issue. You know the stakes are high, so the only thing you concentrate on is: "Don't laugh." Then you do. Then everyone laughs. You don't.

Here is my counterargument to this totally scientifi-- can I call it scientific really? Is the word taken? Is this offensive to real scientists? Just to be safe then: Here is my counterargument to this totally serious argument: Dentists.

Sorry for the jumpscare there. I shouldn't have used the D-word so abruptly. But yes, the same type of conditioning self should be the case when one visits the, uh, professional sculpturer who happens to work inside a mouth. After all, there are metal hooks and tubes and fire and lasers and weird looking instruments inside your mouth. The professional have very little space to work in and they have to be super precise in their movement. One laugh could result in an irreversible mistake in which the tooth is treated.

To cheer the patient up, the professionals even crack some jokes. Yet we don't laugh. Then there is one reasonable conclusion from here: It's about the water. And not about the conditioning of self. I think the dentist was a very solid argument. Actually, no. That would be ice. The argument was very liquid.

So what to do with this information? I really don't know but my train has not arrived still. It has been such a long wait that I may be losing my sanity. Or maybe I am just thirsty as it is over thirty degrees outside. I have nothing else to do than watch the empty tracks. Sometimes a train passes by but they don't stop here. They keep giving me false hope, just to shatter them a few seconds later. Now that I think about it, teleportation does not sound too bad. Let's try again next week?