Fidelity Fiduciary Bank

Yesterday was a rather interesting day. My mum, goodness knows why, decided to up and take us all to the bank.

I knew I was likely to be bored, so I brought a book along, which I read on the journey there, and found out about slime moulds. Slime moulds are really rather interesting creatures, although their name sounds decidedly boring and borderline disgusting (Their genus sounds even more repulsive - Dictyostelium). During the happiest part of their life cycle, slime moulds exist as unicellular amoebas (ring a bell?), feasting on bacteria and other microbes, in some dank corner of your nearest park. But when the weather starts to dry out and food is scarce, these little critters start converging on central locations, joining in streams that look like webs of slime. When all are present and accounted for, they assume their positions to form something of a garden slug. This slug-thing creeps about until it finds a place it likes, then settles down to change form again. It sends up a thin stalk into the air and more cells crawl up to form a ball. As the weather turns even drier, the ball cracks open and spores are released. Said in a Discovery Channel voice: And thus their life cycle is continued.

When we arrived, we were escorted to a small room decorated Oriental style and given tea and coffee (sounds so Mafia-ish, doesn't it?). While I struggled to identify whether the music playing was Japanese or Chinese or a fusion, and whether it was the guzheng or pipa or neither, my parents talked bank stuff. After a while, my dad got bored and started to draw on his serviette. This caught my attention so I decided to nosy in. My dad was drawing a Moebius strip, which, as I found out, can be easily made by taking a thin strip of paper and twisting it once, then attaching the two ends together to form a ring. The cool thing about this string is that if you cut it along the middle line, it doesn't become two same-size but thinner rings, but becomes one bigger and thinner ring. Soon we started to tear up the napkins to try this out. I was in the process of making my fifth or sixth when the bank person attending to us left the room and my mum started talking to my dad about investments.

I quote: "You mustn't be bought in by all this sales talk, dear. At the end of the day, an apple is still an apple. No matter what you say or do, it is still an apple. Just because she says [insert some banking jargon here - something about interest rates], doesn't mean anything. No matter what she says that apple will never become a pear."

And, in response to my laughter: "It's true! You can call it a Granny-Smith or a New Zealand, but at the end of the day, an apple is still an apple! And make sure you clean up that mess you made with the tissues!"