Have you ever wondered “why the traffic lights on my side of the road, red and the lights on the other 2 sides with no cars at all, green? Jam over here, wei.”

How about the time when the transit authority had to shut down all trains due to some technical problem. You only found out after schlepping down to the station and you wonder why the transit authority couldn’t find some way to tell commuters ahead of time. So many electronic billboards around the city. Can’t they interrupt the commercial messages to deliver a public service announcement?

Whatever you have come across in your daily lives, I’m sure you have wondered if there could be a better, easier or smarter way to do things. I  wondered why Brazilian wax can’t be painless. The answer could be laughing gas but lugging a tank around isn’t my idea of fun. Well, what about a laughing gas inhaler?

If I spend more time thinking and let my imagination go wild my laughing gas inhaler might actually have real commercial and medical use. Imagine how much more control flight attendants will have if they could administer this gaseous substance to hysterical passengers in a crashing plane. It would also give real meaning to die laughing. It could be a morphine substitute to convalescing patients or a temporary relief for the stressed out Japanese businessmen prone to leaping off tall buildings. It might even be a standard issue to all postal workers.

We also have real problems. Ones that affect all life on earth. Climate change, depletion of our natural resources, food shortage, access to clean water, epic-scale disasters, pandemics etc. There are many questions and many possibilities.

In a recent blogger event hosted by IBM, we were asked this exact question “what pains you and what do you think could be done to make things better?” IBM challenges us to start thinking because this is the start towards a smarter planet and a smarter Malaysia. Resist the urge to complain.. oh alright, go ahead and release the steam first. Need a laughing gas inhaler?

For more info or if you have an idea, big or small, IBM wants to hear it and if they can do anything about it, they will. Let’s build a smarter planet, start here. They are on Facebook and Twitter too.

And by the way, laughter is proven not to be the best medicine in a recent article from Discovery News. Read it from the Discovery News app which is available for free from the App Store. Loads of interesting stuff. Discovery channel videos can also be found on YouTube. Way to go Discovery!