Just in the Nick of Time

I took these pictures last week because I was impressed at how the pink and the red flower just burst out in wonderful colours.  The beauty of spring, I thought.

I tried getting a close shot but somehow the colours don't really show.

You can somewhat see it here.

In this shot you can see it a bit better.

I was in for a shock yesterday morning when I found that all the flowers had shrivelled up.  The temperature had risen considerably over the past week and these flowers must have also felt the heat. 

It is true -- everything has its season, everything has its time.

Lost: St. Anthony's Treasury

We tidied up the house last 08 September since GI was having some friends over to celebrate his 19th  birthday.  Inevitably, I ended up losing some things because they were moved from their usual location.  Ironically, among the things that I lost was my St. Anthony's Treasury.

I knew exactly where it was before we cleared the things.  I knew that I had set it aside precisely because I didn't want to lose it.  What I didn't count on was that I would forget where I had put it.

I searched high and low after the party.  I went through all the rooms.   I went through all the bags in our room where we had stashed away most of the things.

The prayer book itself is pretty old.  It belonged to one of my first cousins as it has her name in crayons with her grade, section and school -- R3-- PREP A -- SSM.  I like this prayer book a lot because aside from the prayers themselves, there are some snippets of background on the the prayers.  For instance, the Beads of the Seven Joys of Our Lady is composed of seven decades.  There is a paragraph which indicates that two additional Hail Marys are to be prayed, to complete the number 72 in honour of the 72 years Our Lady lived on earth.

I can't remember anymore what the cover looks like because I housed it in a zipped leather case I had purchased during one of my trips to Hong Kong many years back.   Sister Deer would recognise it because she has a similar coloured leather case but mine is about 3" x 5"" whereas hers is probably 8 1/2" x 11".

I had been searching for over two weeks.  Where could it be?  Would I be able to find a replacement? 

On my way home today, I read Father's FaceBook post which said, "Two of my children will in the air next 24 hours. J, KL to London / Atlanta. Mindy n family U.S. to Ireland" 

That got me thinking ... maybe Mindy could find me a copy.  I recalled that the book itself was published somewhere in Europe.  Ireland, perhaps?  

Let me check Google ... eBay ... Amazon ...

I went online when I got home and there was something that looked promising in eBay.com.uk with five days to go.     Am sure if this was the right book, London Eye would have a friend that had an account in eBay.  There were no bids, ergo no competition. I sent off a query.

I googled some more.  I found one in eBay.com (U.S.) that looked like it was the right one.  YES!  YES!   I found it.  This is the one.  Click!  Click!   Alas, bidding had ended YESTERDAY.  

:(

NNNNOOOO!!!!!

"St. Anthony," I pleaded.  "I need your help.  Please help me find my prayer book."  

St. Anthony must have heard my prayers because after I searched our room. I went to RD's room then decided to go to MyGirl's room. After about a minute of looking, I FOUND IT!

There it was safely tucked away inside a plastic bag with some of my things.

In the many times I had gone into MyGirl's room in search of the book, it had not occurred to me to open the bag on the top of her desk.  Even though this is the FIRST thing you would see when you enter her room,  I had assumed it contained her things therefore I had always left it alone.  

Tonight, however, after having missed the eBay bidding by a day, I decided I was not going to leave any stone unturned (any bag unopened).

Lo and behold, St. Anthony saves the day again.  

Thank you, St. Anthony!    I knew I could count on you.

Now it is time to pray.

Need a Tablet?

What kind of tablet does this kid need?

I am certain that not everybody will understand why I had to stop and take a photo of this advertisement on the window of the newly opened Samsung store near our office. I can only assume that there were no Filipinos on the staff of their advertising company. Of all the three letters of the alphabet, Samsung chose L-B-M for their Galaxy Tab 2.

This Time Last Year

Entrance was FREE and I missed it!  Of course this was a year ago and a continent away.

Fortunately, I got to see some pictures from Our Awesome Planet  here and here.

Better yet, check out this site.

Wish I had been there ... I could have taken pictures which I could post here.

House Colours

Yesterday, when MyGirl and I went out for a walk, she mentioned that the small yellow flowers on the sidewalk were wattles. 

"Oh, is that it's called?  Dad and I saw a lot of those on our walk last 15 August."  I said.

She reminded me that wattle (yellow) was one of the sports houses/teams in their school.  There are four houses which have their assigned colours based on different  flowers. MyGirl belongs  to banksia (green).  The other two houses are waratah (red) and blue gum (blue).

All these flowers are unfamiliar to me.  

She proceeded to show me each of the flowers in the internet.  She informed me that the waratah was the flower in  the New South Wales Government logo.  Another "oh is that what it's called" moment.

No, we didn't see any waratah on our trail walk nor any blue gum trees.  However, it is entirely possible that we saw a member of the banksia family.

Is all this house talk reminding you of the Hogwarts  House Colours :

Red and Gold for Gryffindor

 (courage, bravery, nerve and chivalry)

 

Yellow and Black for Hufflepuff 

(hard work, patience, justice and loyalty)

Blue and Bronze for Ravenclaw

(intelligence, creativity, learning and wit)

Green and Silver for Slytherin

(ambition, cunning, leadership and resourcefulness)

Go Green and Gold!

The London 2012 Olymics brought out the National colours of Australia.

See what we got on sale the other day as an offshoot of the Olympics.

P.S.  This blogpost is dedicated to Slash-M, who thinks that the best "flavour" of M&M's are green.

First Day of Spring

Good bye, Winter.  Hello, Spring.

It is the first day of September.  It is the first day of Spring.  

It is also First Saturday.  

On First Saturdays, I like to go off and catch early mass.   

I walked past these flowers only to double back to take a snap shot.

This song was in my head...  Ballad for Kay by Acoustic Alchemy.

Perhaps my thought waves were strong this morning because when MacGyver tried to install an application on my phone when I got home, this was the first song on the playlist.