...An ambitious software engineer finally decided to take a
vacation. He booked himself on a Caribbean cruise and
proceeded to have the time of his life. At least for a
while. A hurricane came up unexpectedly. The ship
went down and was lost instantly. The man found
himself swept up on the shores of an island with no
other people, no supplies, nothing. Only bananas and
coconuts. Used to four-star hotels, this guy had no idea
what to do.
So for the next four months he ate bananas, drank
coconut juice, longed for his old life, and fixed his gaze
on the sea, hoping to spot a rescue ship.
One day, as he was lying on the beach, he spotted
movement out of the corner of his eye. It was a rowboat,
and in it was the most gorgeous woman he had ever
seen. She rowed up to him. In disbelief, he asked her:
"Where did you come from, and how did you get here?"
"I rowed from the other side of the island," she said. "I
landed here when my cruise ship sank."
"Amazing," the software engineer said, "I didn't know
anyone else had survived. How many of you are there?
You were really lucky to have a rowboat wash up with
you."
"It's only me," she said, "and the rowboat didn't wash
up: nothing did."
He was confused, "Then how did you get the rowboat?"
"Oh, simple," replied the woman. "I made it out of raw
material that I found on the island. The oars were
whittled from gum-tree branches, I wove the bottom
from palm branches, and the sides and stern came from
a eucalyptus tree."
"But, but, that's impossible," stuttered the man.
"You had no tools or hardware - how did you manage?"
"Oh, that was no problem," the woman said. "On the
south side of the island, there is a very unusual strata of
exposed alluvial rock. I found that if I fired it to a certain
temperature, it melted into forgeable ductile iron. I used
that to make tools, and used the tools to make the
hardware. But enough of that. Where do you live?"
Sheepishly, the man confessed that he had been
sleeping on the beach the whole time. "Well, let's row
over to my place then," she said.
After a few minutes of rowing, she docked the boat at a
small wharf. As the man looked onto shore, he nearly
fell out of the boat. Before him was a stone walk leading
to an exquisite bungalow painted in blue and white.
While the woman tied up the rowboat with an expertly
woven hemp rope, the man could only stare ahead,
dumbstruck. As they walked into the house,
she said casually, "It's not much, but I call it home. Sit
down, please. Would you like to have a drink?"
"No, no, thank you," he said.
"I couldn't drink another drop of coconut juice."
"It's not coconut juice," the woman replied. "I have made
a still - How about a Pina Colada?"
Trying to hide his continued amazement, the software
engineer accepted, and they sat down on her couch to
talk.
After they had exchanged their stories, the woman
announced, "I'm going to slip into something more
comfortable. Would you like to have a shower and a
shave? There is a razor upstairs in the cabinet in the
bathroom."
No longer questioning anything, the man went into the
bathroom. There in the cabinet was a razor made from a
bone handle. Two shells honed to a hollow-ground edge
were fastened to its tip, inside a swivel mechanism.
"This woman is absolutely amazing," he mused. "What
next?"
When he returned, the woman greeted him wearing
nothing but vines strategically positioned-and smelling
faintly of gardenias. She beckoned for him to sit down
next to her.
"Tell me," she began, "We've both been out here for a
very long time. You've been lonely. There's something
I'm sure you really feel like doing right now, something
you've been longing to do for all of these months."
She stared into his eyes. He couldn't believe what he
was hearing - this was like all of his dreams coming
true in one day.
"You mean...," he replied, "I can check my e-mail from
here?"
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