Lost Property in Singapore: Ainan style.

Finding lost property is ever a difficult matter, especially if no-one knows what it is, and so is never likely to know to whom to hand it in.

Yesterday, Ainan lost something unusual on a bus. It was a container filled with silver nanoparticles which he had made. The question is: would anyone ever know what they had found, if they found it? It is extremely doubtful.

At least, we think he lost it on the bus. We went in search of his lost property, early yesterday evening, retracing his path from the bus-stop to our home. As a family, we walked, heads down, scanning left to right, seeking a very strange object. It was of aluminium foil, in a cup shape, containing silver nanoparticles trapped in a polymer. To the untrained eye it would, of course, look like a glistening mess in a cup. Despite the attention of ten eyes, trained together on the ground, we couldn't find it. At the bus-stop, I checked the bins, like some hungry vagrant. Onlookers must have thought I was a very odd expat indeed. (Expats have a reputation for being rich - and so it must have puzzled them why I was looking in the bins, so intently.)

It was nowhere to be seen. So we concluded that, somewhere in Singapore, sitting on a bus was a vessel filled with silver nanoparticles, just waiting for some incomprehending soul to find it, and throw it away.

I imagined trying to claim Ainan's lost property from the bus service. I envisaged myself calling up and saying: "I would like to report some lost silver nanoparticles." Just imagining it was enough to ensure that I didn't do it. It would be utterly pointless. Understanding "Hello" is about the limit of most customer service employees - so grasping exactly what it was I was seeking would be quite beyond my capacity to communicate.

So, perhaps this makes Ainan the first seven year old to lose his own vessel of silver nanoparticles. In the annals of lost property, this must be a matter of some distinction.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and eleven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and four months, and Tiarnan, twenty-one months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)