Yet another silly orange story

As implied in the previous entry, I have a bundle of small mandarin oranges at home. After dinner, Adrian and I took a few and started eating them in our own ways. Adrian peeled them the normal way with his fingers while I used a knife.

At one point, I held the knife in my fist and made some cutting gestures, as (badly) illustrated below.



“It would be interesting if I toss one of these oranges into the air and while they are falling I can cut them in two.”
At that moment I fleetingly recalled horror stories of the Japanese occupation of Malaya during the Second World War whereby soldiers throw babies into the air and bayonet them on their way down.

“Yea, come come come lets do it,” Adrian said. “I’ll throw it to you and you cut it.”

I rummaged in the box and found one that was going soft and on its way to decay. “This would do.”

“I’ll just throw once first and then you can see where it will go.”
“Ok.”
The first throw was too low.
“Higher.”

The next one was perfect, with lots of air time and nearly overhead. No need for further testing, I figured.

Take a half step forward, and raise the blade upwards and forward. The blade, advancing up and forward in a slanted fashion, caught the falling fruit.

At first, the knife was approaching the falling mandarin.
Then, the falling orange and the knife were already past each other, the fruit cut cleanly in two halves.



Back to work.