Our Lady of Mount Carmel

Today is 16 July. It is the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.

On this day, many people remember Mother Mary, how our Lady gave St. Simon Stock the brown scapular and the more prominent Carmelite nuns such as St. Teresa of Avila and St. Therese of Lisieux.

I remember all of that, too, but there is something more I remember. 16 July has a special significance to me and my family. On the 16th of July back in the 1980's, Our Lady gave us the gift of extra years with Mother.

Doubting Thomas

Today is the feast day of St. Thomas the Apostle.

The priest repeated what has often been told about St. Thomas : the disbelief of Thomas has done more for our faith than the faith of the other ten disciples.

World Cup Fever

While the whole world is busy watching the FIFA World Cup currently being held in South Africa, we caught up with a different set of World Cup games.

Our World Cup match was held about fifteen years ago ... it was rugby, not football ... and had Matt Damon as the South African team captain.

Yup, you guessed it! We watched the DVD of the movie Invictus.

Good movie. Very interesting.

(Oh, unfortunately, the Australian team lost in the movie, too.)

Jogging Your Memory

Do you know what to do with this?

You use the quadratic equation, of course, so you can find the value of x.

At the moment I can't think of what else I would use the quadratic equation for. It doesn't really matter what I think; what is important is that GI knows what to do with it and how to use it.

(As you can probably tell, GI is studying these things now that he's in Year 11.)

I had to do a crash review of getting the first derivative the long way a couple of days ago

because GI would not immediately accept my short cut method where I would put the exponent down and subtract one from the original exponent.

Now, the quadratic equation and finding the first derivative are peanuts as compared to the various trigonometric equations. Gosh, I haven't used the special functions in a scientific calculator in a long time.

There were some vague memories of sine, cosine and tangent (and 1/2 and the square root of 3 over 2)

But I needed GI to remind me of the other equations needed for the proving portions in his worksheet when he asked me to help him.

I mean, really. I have yet to find a real life situation where I needed to know these.

and these ...

But I have to admit. I did love doing high school maths, especially if the answers were in the back of the book (even if only the odd numbered questions had answers). And helping GI out this weekend brought out the nerd in me.

Knit and Purl

It is officially winter. MyGirl and I are trying our hand at knitting. (It is always a good idea to learn something new, right?)

I borrowed a book from the library, then bought a couple of knitting needles and two balls of yarn. According to the book, since people will knit differently (different tension, etc.), it is advisable to knit a 5" x 5" piece first to see whether it is necessary to use a bigger (or smaller) needle for the desired knitted item. So we decided we would take it from there.

We embarked on our DIY knitting lessons last Saturday. We cast on our first stitches based on what we estimated would make 5 inches of knitting. By the time we finished our FIRST row, it was time to sleep.

We added a couple of rows to our work on Sunday. MyGirl got more knitting done than I did because I tried to squeeze a visit to the library, a trip to the grocery, making spaghetti sauce and Korean beef in between.

When I looked at MyGirl's masterpiece that evening and compared it to my one-of-a-kind linked up yarn pretending to be something knitted work, I realized that the book failed to mention that knitting is not WYSIWYG. What I saw on the book was definitely not what I got on my knitting needles.

I'm not giving up ... YET.

I do intend to get my 5" x 5" square out by hook or by crook.

If I don't learn how to knit (well) from the book, at the very least, I will have learned the various types of fibres from there. I found the below quite interesting. I am only vaguely familiar with plant fibres that eventually become cloth. I never really paid much attention to animal fibres. However when it comes to knitting, choosing the right type of fibre does matter to the finished product.

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Natural Animal Fibres

ALPACA --a very fine, soft yarn that comes from the animal of the same name. Alpacas are related to llamas.

ANGORA -- is made from the shorn fur of angora rabbits. It is very fine, lightweight, and has the ability to absorb considerable amounts of moisture before it feels wet.

CAMEL HAIR -- has a wonderful sheen. It does not accept dye so is often mixed with other fibres.

CASHMERE -- is combed from the backs of cashmere goats. This silky, soft fibre is very expensive but also extremely warm.

MOHAIR -- a hairy yarn obtained from angora goats. The yarn from very young goats is known as kid mohair. Mohair accepts dyes readily.

SILK -- this luxurious fibre is taken from the cocoons of silk worms. A very comfortable wear fibre, it keeps you warm when the weather is cool and cool when the weather is warm.

WOOL -- although wool is often used as a generic term for knitting yarn, it applies more specifically to the fleece of sheep. It accepts dyes easily and is particularly warm and durable. Lamb's wool is obtained from the very first shearing of an animal and is particularly soft. Shetland wool is a coarser wool taken from the back of Shetland sheep. It is mainly use to create country tweed yarns.

Natural plant fibres

COTTON -- is an easy care, cool to wear yarn but it lacks the elasticity of wool.

LINEN -- was one of the first fibres used by humans in making fabric. It makes a strong, stiff yarn, however it is usually blended with other fibres to soften it.



RAMIE -- is very similar in appearance and handling properties to linen. Like linen, it is usually combined with other fibres when making a knitting yarn.

RAYON -- is spun from cellulose and readily accepts dyes. It is not very resilient and so can easily stretch out of shape.

Roundabouts

Roundabouts aka rotundas.

Back in the home country, traffic was always a challenge, if not a nightmare. Where three lanes were built, four lanes of vehicles could be found. There were such animals as rotundas however they were found in trickles and were generally of huge circumferences intersecting major roads. There would normally be a monument or a park inside the rotunda. We have the Welcome Rotunda and the Quezon Memorial Circle. It seemed that the presence of the rotunda was for the landmark rather than to aid the flow of traffic.

Here is Australia, one of the more common road features would be the roundabout or the rotary; in lay (Filipino) man's terms, a small rotunda. Roundabouts are found all over various intersections enabling traffic to flow orderly and smoothly without the need for stop lights. No, there are no statues or monuments within the rotunda, just a slightly raised circle to mark the area not intended for cars.

It is a very good idea, really. And as long as the drivers obey the traffic rules and regulations, there should be no problem.

Upon approaching a roundabout, the rule of thumb is that anyone inside the roundabout has first priority. Everybody travels in a clockwise manner and one should only enter the roundabout if there is no approaching vehicle from the right. (Remember that Australians drive on the left side of the road in right hand drive vehicles. So incoming traffic would normally come from the right.)

As long as everyone is aware of these rules and conventions , people give way to other vehicles and traffic flows smoothly. It is always clear which car has priority over the other.

Now it seems oh so simple in the roads of Australia but I honestly cannot imagine this working in Manila.

I think about the Quezon Memorial Circle where they have adopted the one-way flow of traffic. They removed the middle lanes and let everyone go in a counter-clockwise direction. If you happened to be coming out from Visayas Avenue and wanted to go to UP, you would have to go all the way around through North Avenue, Quezon Avenue, East Avenue, Kalayaan until you hit Philcoa. Perhaps the sheer size of the Circle and the volume of cars passing through Quezon Memorial are enough reasons for chaos to reign. It seems too far-fetched to compare the roundabouts here to the rotundas in the Philippines.

I can't recall if all the streets intersecting Quezon Memorial have stop lights to regulate the entry and exit of vehicles. I am sure there were lights at the major roads - Quezon Ave., East Ave., University Ave., Visayas Ave., but the minor roads seem to have been free for all. Here, even in biggish roundabouts, where they have plants in the middle, there are no stop lights and the roundabout rule applies. It is quite possible that you would wait a couple of minutes before your turn to enter the roundabout came but you can be certain that once you were in, you had priority.

I have come to love roundabouts. Roundabouts allow you to go wherever your want to go. You can go "straight", turn left, turn right, or as we have done several times because we had taken a wrong turn, you can go back where you came from.

They say that people often reach crossroads in their lives. I think I like roundabouts better. They are a tad friendlier and they give you the option to turn your life around. Of course, one has to remember to make a choice because staying in the roundabout will not get you anywhere.

Colonel Sanders

As compared to Betty Crocker in the previous post, Colonel Harland David Sanders is a real person. Colonel Sanders should be an inspiration to people young and old. At age 40 he started serving his chicken and at the age of 65 he started franchising Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants. (Gosh, I wonder what I will be able to achieve in the coming years.)

Needless to say, I love KFC and I am thankful to Colonel Sanders for coming up with his pressure frying technique and mixing up those 11 herbs and spices. Anybody who really knows me knows that I love gravy (lots and lots of gravy!). Too bad they don't have free gravy refills out here. You have to PAY for extra gravy. Heck, they don't even give you a fork for your chicken here. The most you will get is a spoon for your mashed potatoes. I suppose one could use that if one decided to go for the extra gravy.

I have included some of KFC's history from the KFC Australia website just for reference.

KFC History - Colonel Sanders

Colonel Harland Sanders, founder of the original Kentucky Fried Chicken, was born on September 9, 1890. When he was six, his father died and his mother was forced to go to work while young Sanders took care of his three year old brother and baby sister. This meant he had to do much of the family cooking. By the time he was seven, Harland Sanders was a master of a range of regional dishes.

After a series of jobs, in the mid 1930s at the age of forty, Colonel Sanders bought a service station, motel and cafe at Corbin, a town in Kentucky about 25 miles from the Tennessee border.

He began serving meals to travellers on the dining table in the living quarters of his service station because he did not have a restaurant.

It is here that Sanders began experimenting with different seasonings to flavour his chicken which travellers loved and for which he soon became famous.

He then moved across the street to a motel and restaurant, which seated 142 people. During the next nine years he developed his secret recipe of 11 herbs and spices and the basic cooking technique which is still used today.

Sander's fame grew. Governor Ruby Laffoon made him a Kentucky Colonel in 1935 in recognition of his contributions to the state's cuisine. And in 1939, his establishment was first listed in Duncan Hines' "Adventures in Good Eating".

A new interstate highway carried traffic past the town, which soon had a devastating affect on his business.
He sold up and travelled the United States by car, cooking chicken for restaurant owners and their employees. If the reaction was favourable Sanders entered into a handshake agreement on a deal which stipulated a payment to him of a nickel for each chicken the restaurant sold.

By 1964, from that humble beginning, Colonel Harland Sanders had 600 franchise outlets for his chicken across the United States and Canada.

Later that year Colonel Sanders sold his interest in the United States operations for $2 million.
The 65-year-old gentleman had started a worldwide empire using his $105 social security cheque.
Sadly, Colonel Harland Sanders passed away on December 16th, 1980 aged 90.

KFC now stretches world wide with more than 9,000 stores in 86 countries serving the Colonel's Original Recipe.

Betty Crocker

Betty Crocker is not a real person. She is a brand character similar to Ronald McDonald.

According to wikipedia, this name was first developed in 1921 by the Washburn Crosby Company which later merged with several milling companies to form General Mills. The name Betty was chosen for the cheery, all-American name while Crocker came from the Washburn Crosby company director William Crocker.

Marjorie Husted was a home economist and businesswoman who helped develop this character. At the onset, Betty Crocker provided personalized responses to consumer product questions. The daytime radio broadcast Betty Crocker Cooking School of the Air debuted in 1924. Ms. Husted provided the voice and scripts for that show for two decades. A portrait of Betty Crocker first appeared in 1936. In 1949, actress Adelaide Hawley Cumming became Betty Crocker, appearing on TV until 1964.

Over the years, the image of Betty Crocker has changed. The current image of Betty Crocker, according to the corporation, is actually a combination of 75 real-life women of diverse backgrounds and ages thought by the company to represent the true Betty Crocker. These portraits were always painted, with no real person ever having posed as a model, and they never showed the character from the shoulders down.

Meditation

Encounter with meditation #1. I caught an episode of the TV series Medium the other week that had the father-in-law of Allison DuBois paying her a visit and telling her that his son should go see a doctor. They showed a flashback of the father having a heart attack (and dying). Allison's husband Joe eventually goes to see a doctor who recommends that he does some meditation to help lower his blood pressure. Joe was skeptical about the whole meditation thing but decides to try it anyway. He takes his meditation guidebook and looks for a spot outside his office to meditate during his lunch break. While he was there, someone else arrives. It is the owner of the company Joe works for and the chosen spot just happens to be where his boss does HIS meditation during breaks. This unexpected meeting brings Joe to the attention of his big boss who later pays him a visit, shares his experience about the benefit of meditation, and invites Joe to an upcoming after office event. At the end of the episode, the father pays Allison another visit and admits that nothing is wrong with Joe but that it was his way of helping out his son.

Encounter with meditation #2. When I go to the library, I make a bee-line for light reading in the romance section. Having read most of the Nicholas Sparks and Cecelia Ahern books available in the library, I venture out and borrow books by other authors in the nearby bookshelves. Sometimes, if we arrive towards the end of the day, the returned books waiting to be shelved are stacked in the trolley and parked along the aisle. On two consecutive visits to the library, I found books written by the Dalai Lama on the trolley. I borrowed both of them.

The first one I read was How to See Yourself As You Really Are, while the second one (the one I have been reading on the bus to work), co-written by Laurens van den Muyzenberg is The Leader's Way. Both books mention meditation. The first book mentioned breathing three times through your left nostril, then three times through your right nostril, then three times through both nostrils. The second book has the co-write giving a layman's description of the same thing on pages 62 to 63.

Van den Muyzenberg writes:

Visualization exercises involve some more advanced control over the mind. This type of meditation asks you to imagine yourself changing into something else, and its purpose for non-Buddhists is to calm the mind. Here is just one example of how to go about it.

Imagine that you have three channels in your body. The central channels is a transparent tube about the width of your little finger, running straight down the center of your body from the crown of your head to the base of your spine. The right and the left channels are also transparent tubes but are narrower than the central channel. They run from your nostrils up to the crown of your head, where they curve down like an umbrella handle to run along the central channel, parallel with the spine to slightly below your navel, where they join the central channel.

Having visualized these three channels, first breathe in through your left nostril, imagining that the air is flowing into the crown of your head and continuing down the left channel to the left of your navel, where it switches to the right channel. Here, you breathe out through that channel, passing the crown of the head and flowing out past the right nostril. Repeat this three times. Next, do the same exercise starting with the air coming in through the right nostril and going out through the left nostril. Do this three times. Lastly, breathe in through both nostrils together, bringing the air past the crown and down through the right and left channels to the point where they join the central channel. When the air reaches the central channel, tighten your inner pelvis and hold your breath. As soon as you no longer feel comfortable, exhale naturally through your nostrils, but visualize that, instead of air going out, it dissolves inside the central channel. Do this three times.

On page 65, the Dalia Lama describes the Padme Hum. I found this part interesting because we often see people chanting while doing meditation. I figure this is the Padme Hum which apparently has deeper meaning than just a repetition of words.

This mantra is also often recited as a dedication when someone has died. When my mother passed away,my brother and I and many others recited Om Mani Padme Hum more than a hundred thousand times.

The meaning of Om Mani Padme Hum is very inspiring. OM, pronounced as AUM or OHM, means body, speech, and mind. When we use the sound OM, it signifies that we would like to develop a pure body, speech, and mind, such as those of Buddha. Purity, here, refers to the absence of negative thoughts and emotions and of bad (unwholesome) actions. The remaining syllables indicate how to make this transition and use objects as symbols. MANI, meaning jewel, relates to Right Conduct, taking the right action inspired by an altruistic intention. PADME means lotus. A lotus is perfectly white even though it grows out of mud. It presents an image of your mind that is impure (stained with mud) and can become pure (white lotus flower), so relating to Right View. HUM means "indivisible"; that is, Right View and Right Conduct must be combined.

Breathing exercises helped me immensely when I was going through Lamaze. I don't think I am ready to go down the road of serious meditation just yet but I do believe that there is benefit in doing so.

The Taste Buds Say ...

The Taste Buds Say ... -- 22 January 2010

To add some variety to the left-over chicken, I decided to cook some of the frozen mixed vegetables for dinner. Nothing fancy, I just added some butter to the carrots, peas and corn. I know it is still a far cry from the 5 servings of vegetables one is supposed to have but it was a start.

As our meal was about to end, I requested that the veggies be consumed so that we wouldn't have to store it in the ref as left-overs for another meal. RD was happy to oblige.

GI commented, "I don't consider those as vegetables. They are side dishes."

He rattled off a litany of those he considered as vegetables. The list was comprised of mostly either green and leafy or "unpopular" vegetables including kangkong, ampalaya and okra.

I laughed, "So you mean peas, carrots and corn are not considered as vegetables?"

"No!" Ardi replied placing some vegetables on his spoon. "These taste good."

=== o 0 o ===

It is said that FRUITS are the parts of the plants that contain the seed while VEGETABLES are edible plants or parts of plants other than a sweet fruit or seed.

So the obvious fruits would include mangoes, apples, oranges, peaches, pears, grapes, strawberries, bananas, watermelons, cantaloupes, star apples, atis (sugar apple / sweetsop), guyabano (soursop), papaya, rambutan, guavas, langka (jackfruits), durian, santol, etc.

The obvious vegetables could be classified (according to Wikipedia) as

• flower buds -- broccoli, cauliflower
• seeds -- sweet corn, peas, beans
• leaves - kangkong, pechay, lettuce, spinach, cabbage, bok choy, Chinese cabbage (and all those other greens which the kids don't particularly like)
• leaf sheaths -- leeks
• stems of leaves -- celery
• stem shoots -- asparagus, bamboo shoots, ginger
• tubers -- potatoes, sweet potatoes
• whole plant sprouts -- mung beans
• roots -- carrots, beets, radishes,
• bulbs -- onion, garlic

(and more)

In between, meaning they are technically fruits but are not normally called such, would be those which have seeds but are not quite called fruits like tomatoes, cucumber, squash, zucchinis, pumpkins, capsicums (bell peppers), eggplants, okra, chili pepper.

=== o 0 o ===

In the final analysis, all of the above will go down the drain because as far as my boys are concerned, if they taste good, the probability of their being vegetables is close to nil. On the other hand, as far as MyGirl is concerned, she has a different way to tell if something is a fruit. Want to know what the basis is?

"Carrots are fruits because so-and-so brought carrots for fruit break."

So there.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves

A panda walks into the library. He eats a sandwich, then draws his bow and shoots two arrows.

"Why did you do that?" asks the librarian as the panda walks toward the exit.

The panda shows her a badly punctuated book. "I'm a panda," he says. "That's what it says we do."

The librarian looks at the page:

PANDA

Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.

I borrowed two books from the library, Eats, Shoots & Leaves (Why, Commas Really Do Make a Difference) and The Girl's Like Spaghetti (Why You Can't Manage Without Apostrophes!) by Lynne Truss. For each example, there are illustrations by Bonnie Timmons. I found these books terribly amusing.

For Eats, Shoots & Leaves, she had the following examples:

Slow, children crossing.

Slow children crossing.

Go, get him doctors!

Go get him, doctors!

Every day, Anthony turns, slides and swings.

Every day, Anthony turns slides and swings.

After we left Grandma, Mummy and I skipped about in the park.

After we left, Grandma, Mummy and I skipped about in the park.

Becky teased the boy with the fluffy duck.

Becky teased the boy, with the fluffy duck.

No cats, thank you.

No cats thank you.

Becky walked on, her head a little higher than usual.

Becky walked on her head, a little higher than usual.

Look at the huge hot dog!

Look at the huge, hot dog!

The kids, who got ice cream, were very happy.

The kids who got ice cream were very happy.

The student, said the teacher, is crazy.

The student said the teacher is crazy.

No pushing, please.

No pushing please.

I've finally decided to cheer up, everybody!

I've finally decided to cheer up everybody!

What is this called, honey?

What is this called honey?

These were the ones in The Girl's Like Spaghetti:

The giant kids' playground.

The giant kid's playground.

Students' refuse to go in the bin.

Students refuse to go in the bin.

The dogs like my dad.

The dog's like my dad.

Ladies' lounge.

Ladies lounge.

Violets for display only.

Violet's for display only.

See the boys bat.

See the boy's bat.

See the boys' bat.

We're here to help you.

Were here to help you.

Those smelly things are my brother's.

Those smelly things are my brothers.

Jack's played here.

Jacks played here.

The tiny cat's home.

The tiny cats' home.

The shop sells boys' and girls' clothing.

The shop sells boys and girls' clothing.

Look, it's behind.

Look, its behind.

The apostrophe's like a flying comma.

The apostrophes like a flying comma.

I wonder when Twenty-Odd Ducks will show up in the library.

Toe-may-toe Toe-mah-toe

Sister-in-law Mumoffive works at Borders bookstore now. Recently, she told us that someone came up and asked her if they had "Dee-Jon" available. She sought clarification on the request. "Dijon, as in mustard?" she asked. "No, Dear John, as in letter," the person replied.

I am still getting used to the difference in the way things are pronounced here in Australia. I am assuming the Philippines has its own set of phonetic rules and has managed to create its distinct way of speaking English. (When we had gone to pick up some items from a FreeCycler, one of the homeowners asked if I was Filipino. I asked how he could tell. He said it was from the way I spoke. I must have the 'Filipino English' accent, whatever that is.)

In general, words ending in -er are not pronounced with the R sound and end up sounding like they end with an A. In fact there is a huge shopping centre chain here called SupaCenta. Many other R's are left unspoken if they are found at the end of the word like our, far, factor, motor, more and more. In fact even if they are not at the end of a word, they may be unheard -- warm, tarnish, etc.

The silent R's are not lost, mind you. They end up in places where we don't normally use them. For instance, they would say 'idear' instead of idea. Don't ask me why. I just call it like I hear it.

Just so it is clear, although it is toe-may-toe toe-mah-toe, it is not poe-tay-toe poe-tah-toe. So far, aside from tomato (having a short 'a') here, the other words I've heard pronounced differently are fillet and often (where the 't' is not silent), zebra (with a short 'e'), the letters Z (as 'zed' versus 'zee') and H (as 'heych' versus 'eych'). Did you know that scones are pronounced with a soft O in spite the E at the end and apricots are pronounced with a hard A? (I didn't know that until MyGirl corrected me.)

There is a certain twang in their accent which makes the pronunciation different. It sounds nice and it just takes getting used to.

In general, I believe we can get away with the spoken English, pronouncing words differently and all. However when it comes to written English, most especially for the kids, it would be a whole different ballgame. We would have to learn how words are spelled here and be more conscious.

Australians have somehow figured out how to make their essays longer by adding letters to some of their words. Most common are the words ending in -or become -our such as colour, humour, flavour, neighbour, labour. But there are other words like jewelry back in the home country gets extra embellishment here to become jewellery; it is more than just aluminum, it is aluminium. Perhaps they want more things to be vogue here because we have dialogue, analogue and catalogue. Through all these added letters, I can't quite figure out why it is enrollment in Manila but enrolment here.

Sometimes it is a matter of swapping the positions of letters. This is true for many words ending in -er. These are spelled with -re instead. They have centre, litre, lustre, spectre, theatre, calibre, fibre, sabre, sombre, etc.

Other times it is a matter of replacing letters. Z's become S's while S's become C's. Words ending in -yze become -yse or those ending in -ize become -ise; words ending in -se become -ce. So here if you commit an offence, you better have your driver's licence or else there goes your defence. (I have yet to figure out whether they adopt the same rule for advise whereby advise is the verb and advice is the noun.) People organise, recognise, patronise, realise and analyse here. Their cars have tyres, not tires. I wonder if I will morph from Mom to Mum in the coming years.

I know that I will get accustomed to these peculiarities. Since England, HongKong and Ireland seem to be using the same dictionaries as Australia, perhaps LondonEye, Sister Deer and Mindy can send other related tips and oddities we should watch out for.

First Lesson of the New Year

Christmas often bring new toys and gifts for the children. The New Year gives them the opportunity to play with these things.

RD got a PAPER AIRPLANE 2010 calendar for Christmas. He placed the calendar on the bookshelf in the dining room and he has made one airplane so far. This led MyGirl to dig up the 365 Tiny Paper Airplanes we had included in one of our shipping boxes. GI received this several years back (it was a 2006 calendar) but had not folded up and made them into airplanes.

MyGirl worked on several planes one after the other. She would fold them up then let me see them. My question would always be the same, "Does it fly?"

After several folded planes and test flights, she came upon one which stumped her.

"What kind of airplane is this?" she said as she completed the plane. "It's called TWISTER."

Without even looking, I told her that it was something that would fly vertically and recommended she go upstairs and drop it down.

She was dubious but tried it nonetheless.

To her delight, the twister flew beautifully.

She immediately called her brother to check out her new plane. (He was busy playing with his DS and replied that they had made something like that in school last year.) MyGirl didn't care, she ran up and down the stairs and made the twister fall over and over again. She would call my attention before every flight so that I could see the plane fly.

There was a long break between two sets of flights and I assumed she was making a new plane. However, when she called me to look at the next two test flights, we were sorely disappointed. It was still her original twister but on both occasions, the twister failed to turn and simply plopped down as she let go.

"Ohhh," MyGirl sighed as the twister gave a dismal second performance.

I suggested that she re-fold the plane and try again.

"But I already glued it," she replied.

Eureka!

I explained to her that these airplanes are able to fly because the paper is light. Putting glue on the plane, I told her, weighed it down making it impossible for the plane to fly properly.

She immediately understood the consequences of her actions and decided to use one of the previously folded sheets to make a new twister. After a couple of minutes, she called out again to show me her new twister.

It few magnificently.

I am reminded of a story which (I believe) Sister Deer had once told me about how ducks constantly clean themselves to be free from dirt and mud. She said that they do this because if they are packed in muck they are unable to fly. Her point? In order to "fly" and reach heaven, we too should be clean and free from 'dirt.'

It is the start of the year -- the usual time for resolutions to be made. The New Year, just as each new day, gives as the opportunity to do the right thing. Besides, it never hurts to try to be better everyday.

Happy New Year, all. And Good Luck on all those New Year's resolutions.

Keeping eBay at Bay

I had my first close encounter with eBay last night.

I am in the lookout for a washing machine and was hoping to get a second hand one for a bargain. What better place to find bargains than at eBay, right?

At the onset, we were hoping to find one in a garage sale. Since it is spring cleaning time here, there are a lot of garage sales going on during weekends. At one garage sale we dropped by, we picked up an old microwave for $10 and we trying to haggle to get their washer for $40. The lady refused to give up her appliance for anything less than $50. We were lucky that she didn't because we found out that we were bidding for a DRYER and not a WASHER! (Ignorant newbies!)

So I am focusing my energies on eBay for the moment, until moving day comes when I would have to bite the bullet and acquire a new washing machine for hundreds of dollars.

Apparently, there is a science to winning in eBay. Of course it helps IMMENSELY if you are willing to place a fairly high bid on an item.

First you have to have an eBay account. Then you have to know what you are looking to buy. They have user friendly categories and sub-categories.

Plus there is an option to SORT the matches found.

For practical reasons, I always sort by DISTANCE : NEAREST FIRST.

Once the items which match your selected criteria are displayed, you can also see other details like current bid or the BUY IT NOW price, postage/payment options, time left and (if you're lucky) a picture of what is being sold. If you click on the item, usually there is some sort of description and history of the item being sold. The seller's username and the number of bids can also be found.

There is an option to WATCH THIS ITEM, where items you are interested in can be viewed in one of your tabs for quick reference.

Anyway, back to the science and back to the washing machine.

Anyone REALLY, really interested in an item would be logged into eBay and watching the TIME LEFT count down on the desired item. And that person would also be counting SECONDS, not just minutes, when placing a bid. The system allows a user to do AUTOMATIC BIDDING where one simply specifies the MAXIMUM BID one is willing to make on the item. The system will place an amount higher than the latest bid but not exceeding your maximum bid amount. For example, the latest bid was $1.00 and you put a maximum bid of $10.00, the system will queue a bid of $2.00 for you. If there is no bid higher than the maximum bid you posted, it is possible for you to win the bid at a price lower than your specified maximum bid amount. (In my example, you could get the item for $2 instead of your maximum bid price of $10.)

The secret is in clicking the CONFIRM button within the last few seconds of the bidding process so that hopefully no other bidder will have time to react and place a new bid higher than yours before the time runs out.

Earlier that day, my brother-in-law was logged on to place a bid for an orange shirt for my nephew. The current bid was $0.99 and the postage was about $7.50. Since their budget for the shirt was $25, he placed a $17.50 bid a minute 20 seconds before the 6pm closing bid time.

They won the bid and got the shirt for $0.99!!! (Essentially, they paid a total of $8.50 for the brand new shirt. A real bargain.)

Last night, we logged on using my account to place a $70 bid on a Fisher Paykel washing machine that was about 4 years old. My heart was pounding. I was hoping that we'd get the washing machine and get this whole thing over with. The second hand of the clock seemed to move slower than usual. We had synchronized the wall clock to the eBay clock. We were hoping to get the bid in at the last 20 seconds.

My brother-in-law entered $70.50 (just in case there was a $70 bid and we were tied at that price) and waited until about 15 seconds before hitting the CONFIRM BID.

We waited for a while until we saw the message flash saying that we had LOST the bid. Upon closer scrutiny of the details, we discovered that someone had entered a bid ten seconds after we had, a mere 4 seconds before the closing bid time. Surely the bid was higher than ours because the washing machine was sold for $71.50. If we had not come in and entered a bid, that washing machine would have been sold for $34.00. Now THAT would have been a real bargain.

Notice the AUTOMATIC BIDS. I was up there at $34. If the eventual winner hadn't entered a bid, I could have been the lucky one. (Oh well ... I guess I just have to try, try again.)

The Key is in the Board

Mother enrolled us in typing classes one summer at the Set Center. This was way back in the days when manual typewriters were still being used for school and computers were found in offices and not in every other room in one's home.

At that time, making several copies meant using carbon paper thus the origination of the terms cc: [carbon copy] and bcc: [blind carbon copy]. Almost everything one typed was in black since the most common typewriter ribbon was black. If you wanted your original copy to have two colors, you had to look for the two-colored black-and-white ribbon and that was it. There was no palette of colors available, just black or red.

Cut and paste literally meant cut and paste, and this required scissors and glue. Corrections often involved starting over because there was no such thing as UNDO although there was correction tape and correction fluid available to help you along.

Yes, it was a time when 'check spelling' involved reading each and every word instead of clicking on these words (CHECK SPELLING) and waiting for erroneously spelled words to be underlined or highlighted. If you needed to confirm the correct spelling of a word, you had to get a dictionary from the bookshelf.

There were calculation involved in getting words centered on a page. One had to get the difference between the number of characters the paper could contain and the number of characters one needed to center, divide this by two then place these number of spaces before typing.

Many of the manual activities were automated by the electric typewriter. Some electric typewriters allowed you to type the words in, hit a back space key and make corrections. The RETURN or ENTER key was the equivalent of the manual typewriter's CARRIAGE RETURN and was used when you were ready to see the words typed out on your paper. The more advanced electric typewriters did the centering and even justification. One of the innovations of the electric typewriter involved the change from the typebars with individual letters to the typeball, then much later to the daisy wheel mechanism. Seriously, the typeball was no fun at all because as a child, pretending to type at lightspeed per minute and getting the typebars all tangled up was half the fun of playing with a manual typewriter. It was even a challenge of how many keys one could get all stuck up in one go. The daisy wheel, on the other hand, was a welcome change that provided alternatives in terms of fonts and sizes. Well, no manual typewriter could give you that. And you know how there are days when you just want your paper to look a tad different.

Today, in this age of computers, changing fonts and sizes are as easy as blinking. Even electric typewriters have found their way to the dark side of the closets, the deep corners of storage areas, or worse, the recycling bin or the trash pile. Surely computers have made life simpler for many people. But I do believe that learning how to touch type is still a good skill to have.

It is interesting to see how manufacturers are able alter the shape and size of the keyboard to match the size of their product. I sometimes feel like Goldilocks when I see the keyboards around this house.

This one is too small ....

(Father gave this one to MyGirl before we left. She loves it. I find the keyboard too tiny!)

This one is too BIG ...

(This keyboard belongs to my godson. He's in Kindergarten. He lent us his workstation for a while so we have a desktop to use. Isn't he the sweetest thing? When I used this keyboard one morning, I felt Jack in the Beanstalk using the Giant's PC.)

Ahhh ... this one is just right ...

(This belongs to GI. Check out his set-up. It has to be comfortable because he spends a heck of a lot of time here.)

Or is it? (His keyboard is a nightmare for non-touchtypists.)

GI, where is the N? Oh, there it is.

Tessellation

Do you know what a TESSELLATION is?

A tessellation is a collection of plane figures that fills the plane with no overlaps or no gaps. It is also known as tiling.

In all my bleep-bleep years, I never knew the word existed. I knew that these tiling patterns could be found here and yonder. I have always been fascinated with them. But what I didn't know that there was a word and a science that came with it.

It was MyGirl that led me to this word as she was doing her Year 3 Math workbook problems. (Apparently, I am NOT smarter than a third-grader!)

In our shipping boxes, I have a book with the works of M.S. Escher. Apparently many of his works are considered tessellations. I think he is an awesome artist. (I will eventually figure out what it is about Escher I would like to write.)

There are regular tessellations. There are three rules in making regular tessellations,

Rule #1 : The tessellation must tile a surface with no overlapping or gaps.

Rule #2 : The tiles must be regular polygons and all the same.

Rule #3 : Each vertex must look the same.

a tessellation of triangles
a tessellation of squares
a tessellation of hexagons

Pretty!

There are also semi-regular tessellations. These are made by using two or more different regular polygons. The rules are still the same. Every vertex must have the same configuration.

To name a semi-regular tessellation, go around one vertex and count the number of sides of the polygon that form that vertex. Don't forget to start with the smallest numbers coming first.

3, 6, 3, 6

3, 3, 3, 3, 6

3, 3, 3, 4, 4

3, 3, 4, 3, 4

More samples of semi-regular tessellations.

Simply amazing.

(It is possible that my simple brain loves these shapes because there is rhythm, regularity, and consistency in the patterns. When I go out with my camera, I think I will capture some tessellations and post them.)

Norman Black

This article was taken from the PSBank InfoChannel. Norman Black, coach of the Ateneo Blue Eagles was invited to give a speech to the officers of the Bank during one of our Financial Reviews. He was accompanied by his mother.

Last January 28, a different kind of energy permeated the PSBank Hall.

The audience, composed of branch and area heads, department and unit heads, and senior officers, were 100% engaged, enlightened and entranced by a man who shared his wisdom, knowledge and personal experiences to kick off the first Financial Review of the year with a bang.

This man of great credibility and confidence was none other than Mr.Norman Black, former PBA player and coach and now PBA analyst and head coach of the renowned Ateneo Blue Eagles that won the UAAP season 71 crown through sheer hard work, discipline and motivation. As guest speaker and “honorary head coach” of PSBank for an hour, Coach Norman shared very important and useful tips to inject our own 2009 season with enthusiasm and team spirit.

A regular kid from Baltimore, Maryland, USA who didn’t start growing to his towering height until after he turned 14 years old, he said that he had to work hard to get to where he is now.

“I wasn’t as talented as my sister who got straight As or my basketball teammates in high school and college. I set goals and worked hard to achieve them. I studied well and came to basketball practice an hour and a half earlier than everybody else so I could run 15 rounds around the court and shoot 300 times to improve my game. By the time my other teammates arrived 10 or 15 minutes before the allotted time, I already felt more confident thinking I’m now an hour and a half better than them,” he said.

Indeed, Coach Norman always gave his 100%, allowing him to go on from success to success. He became an NBA player for the Detroit Pistons before taking his talents and work ethic to PBA. His most unforgettable stint was as playing coach of San Miguel Beer in 1989 where they scored a rare grand slam, the 3rd in PBA history. He then went on to become fulltime coach of other PBA teams and of the Philippine Team to the 1994 Hiroshima Asian Games before finally setting his sights on the college circuit.

He advised PSBankers to always prepare and be in a position to be #1. “Do things (you have to do to improve) when people aren’t watching. Do your homework. This makes the difference. You must put in the much-needed hard work that develops you into a better player,” he said.

He also encouraged the team to bring enthusiasm to the job. “Say to yourself, I want to be with my team everyday. Enjoy. Work hard,” he shared. He also advised them to set short and long-term goals that are realistic, to always stay organized, and to not put things off.

Here are Coach Norman’s tips to achieve PSBank’s goals this year and beyond:

· Build self-esteem.

· Set demanding goals.

· Always be positive.

· Establish good habits.

· Develop the art of communication.

· Thrive on pressure.

· Learn from adversity.

· Survive success.

Finally, he told them this secret: “A good leader motivates his team to succeed. You can’t succeed by yourself. You need people around you.”

Indeed, the PSBank team went home with a lighter heart and a fired-up spirit after that event. May that old Black magic be here to stay in PSBank.

Some of the things I noted down, which were not included in the article were his insight and his stories. He mentioned that one has to have determination to succeed in spite adversities. He admonished that one has to bring a sense of enthusiasm to the task at hand. He admitted that when they scout for basketball talents, they look at the (a) athletic ability, (b) skill level and (c) attitude. He reiterated that it was important the person feels good about himself and that he have good work ethics.

There is no substitute for hard work, he said. He relayed how he would practice over and above the required hours. This way, when it was time to play, he had shot more hoops and ran more laps than any of the other players. On communication, he said that it is not just about talking, it is also about listening. He insisted that problems should be confronted immediately. As his talk drew to an end, his "survive success" portion reminded us not to stand still. He advised to keep striving to learn more.

A leader, he said, is someone who can motivate others to succeed.

So far, Ateneo is doing great in the UAAP. With a coach like Norman Black, it is not too difficult to understand why.