Lower Is Slower

Yes, I admit it, I have this fascination for clocks. 

As you may know, back in May 2018, I got a skeleton clock which I truly love.  However the fascination over the clock being able to ring out the hour gets rekindled every time I hear the bells at Town Hall go off.

The Town Hall clock has beautiful Westminster chimes.  They go off every quarter with a melody where the number of chime sets match the number of quarters that have passed and then the clock would strike out the time on the hour. 

Did I mention that I have a window seat on the 24th floor on a building diagonally across Town Hall?  So believe me, I hear it several times a day from Mondays to Fridays.  (Now I feel like one of Ivan Pavlov's dogs.)

Anyway, I checked out clocks online again.  Only the second hand clocks in MarketPlace and Gumtree seem to be within a reasonable price range.  I used the key words 'westminster chime,'  'chiming clock.', 'chime clock,' and 'cuckoo clock.'  After seeing what was popping up with these searches, I added 'mantle clock' to the searches.

At the onset, I was keen on finding one with the Westminster chime.  I had almost been able to get a mantle clock with Westminster chime for $30.  I even brought out the cash and added MacGyver to the conversation with the seller so he could pick it up for me.  However, the next morning, we saw that the ad was tagged as SOLD and the seller didn't reply to any of my messages from the night before.  MacGyver said I probably asked too many questions about the clock.  He said that when he advertises things for sale, he just wants the transaction over and done with.  He doesn't like to get hassled by too many questions form the buyer.  (Oops, that would be me asking about the product before making the commitment to purchase.)

My search continued. 

One Saturday morning, I saw a cuckoo clock get advertised for $50.  The ad had only been posted for 2 minutes and it looked like a real decent clock.  At the time, I was convinced I wanted a clock with Westminster chimes, and a cuckoo clock would not have that, so I did not respond to the ad.  However, after some thought, I figured that the cuckoo clock would provide me with the hourly ring I was looking for, and considering most of the mantle clocks with Westminter chimes being advertised cost more than $50 even if they were not working, perhaps this was the clock for me.   By the time I decided that I would settle for a clock that rang out the hour, the $50 cuckoo clock was no longer available.  (I guess it wasn't for me after all.)

I said to myself, if I am meant to find one, I will find one.

True enough, later in the day, I saw an ad in Gumtree for a mantel clock being sold for $20.  Keeps good time, the ad said, and it was not too far from our place.  I send out a text message keeping in mind MacGyver's "don't ask too many questions" tip.  I limited my message to asking where we could check out the clock and whether it chimes out the hour. I mentioned that if it chimes out the hour number, I would get the clock.  Fortunately, the seller responded promptly and by 4pm we were on our way to Lochinvar Parade.

The seller was working in the garage when we arrived.  They were renovating the place and he said the clock was inside the house. I followed him inside the house to see the clock.  The clock was right by the door.  He turned the minute hand to 12 and let me hear the clock strike.  He showed me the key and wound the clock.  The left keyhole is for the hourly chime, the right keyhole is for the time.  Always wind towards the face of the clock, he reminded me, and stop once it feels tight.  Do not overwind it.  He showed me the pendulum and gave me instructions on how to put it on.  He said it was best to remove the pendulum from the clock while in transit.  He mentioned that the pendulum speed would vary depending on the season and I would have to adjust the knob at the bottom as needed.  And then he gave me these words of wisdom, "Lower is slower".  (I like that.  It makes perfect sense and it is easy to remember.)

I asked him why he was selling such a thing of beauty and he said that his wife said he had too many clocks.  He pointed out the wall beside the door, then added that he had some more clocks inside the house.  I looked at wall and saw that he had two skeleton clocks similar to mine!   (Yes, indeed.  If he had more clocks inside the house in addition to the two skeleton clocks on the wall, he could certainly spare this mantel clock.  Lucky for me!) 

We brought the clock home and positioned it on the top shelf.  I installed the pendulum and tried to figure out how to get the chimes to synch with the time.  When the clock chimed nine times, I set the time to nine o'clock then waited until 9PM to restart the pendulum.  When the clock hit 10:00, it rang nine times.  (Huh?  Well that didn't work.)   I moved the hands around again, let the chimes go off several times, and based on my calculations, if I were to restart the pendulum at 12:00, I should be good to go.  I figured it would be easy enough to restart the clock at noon on Sunday.

It just so happened that I was still awake at midnight so I ran downstairs, restarted the pendulum, then went to sleep.

Tick-tock-tick-tock!

Much to my dismay, all throughout Sunday the chimes did not match the time.  In fact, MyGirl reported at 11:01 PM that she could have sworn she heard the clock ring 14 times! At midnight, she said she heard it ring 21 times!  (Could this clock be working on military time?  I thought I was mistaken when I thought I had counted 13 earlier that day but maybe I wasn't.)

On Monday morning, MyGirl sent us a video of the clock.  It rang six times when the clock face clearly showed 8:00.  (Yes, this clock was driving her crazy.)

Check out the exchange of text messages we had on Monday evening at 9:07 PM  

                  MyGirl:    clock rang 6 times

                  RD :         9:07 on the dot

                  me :         To keep everyone on their toes

                  GI :         "It's a feature not a bug"

When I got home, I adjusted the minute hand.  That much I could do.  I had yet to figure out how to get the chimes to call out the right number. 


I listened to the clock chime eight times at 11PM that evening.  The next morning, I heard it ring four times at 7:00, and five times at 8:00. So far so good, it was giving me the right time even and it was consistently ringing T-3.  (At least I could throw out the military time theory.)

I replied to GI's latest text to agree that it was a feature, not a bug. I wrote, "This is the olden version of a world clock. The face shows Sydney time but it chimes Manila time."   (I quickly got an "Okay, Mother" for that lame story.)


I knew it was only a matter of time before I got this clock to work properly. I was committed to this clock.  I had promised its former owner that would take good care of it.


On (Ash) Wednesday, I ended up going home early (well, earlier than usual) because I wasn't feeling well.  I adjusted the hour hand and hoped for the best.  Am happy to report that  by the time MacGyver came home, the clock was ticking away and chiming the right time.


(Addendum and disclaimer : The day after I finalized the draft of this post, my new clock decided to stop at 1AM.  When I attempted to get it up and running again, it opted to provide us with random number of chimes at different times of the day.  Yes, it even rang 15 times a couple of times.  We'll see how it goes.  I'm not giving up on this clock just yet.)

Kamehameha!

I spotted a tourist with this bag the other day at the city.

I didn't think Dragon Ball was still popular with the youth of today.

It certainly was popular with my boys

(especially the big one).

Super Size Me

I chanced up on these new toys at Target this weekend.

It was a HUGE Barrel of Monkeys and a tiny Bop It!

They also had other XL toys.

Back home, we still have our regular sized toys 

(plus a mini Barrel I almost forgot we had).

What will they think of next?

One More Creation

I showed RD the draft of my latest blog post which had his snake cube creations.  He gave it the stamp of approval so I hit PUBLISH.   However he felt that I had missed something.  I told him that I published all the pictures I had taken.  

"There is something missing."   That is what I would have heard if I could read minds.

True enough, in a couple of minutes, he came over with a creation he had shown me the night before while we were watching the Australian Open game between Federer and Nadal.   This particular one was a two-piece creation which started off with two identical pieces which could be connected by simply flipping over a part of one of the toys.

Here are the two pieces ...

They are identical. 

This is what it looks like on the other side.

Flip the end of one of the toys

And connect the two pieces together.

   

This is what the final product looks like. 

AWESOME!

Go Retro!

Do you remember this toy?

It's called the Rubik's Snake Puzzle.

We had brought two of these from back home.  They were in the one of the plastic crates that held the children's toys.  When I was looking for things to donate last year, I rediscovered them and deemed only one of them to be in decent condition for donating (the other one had too many missing pieces).  I donated the good one and set the other one aside. 

When RD saw the other one, he picked up the toy and started playing with it.  He pulled out the rest of the coloured pieces and was left with the bare toy. Over the next couple of days, he could be seen twisting and turning the toy while he was in front of his PC. 

Eventually his creativity was limited by the fact that he only had one toy.  He asked if we had a second one.  Sadly, I had to tell him that I had donated the other one.  

I didn't think much of it because I figured it was just one of those toy phases and that in a couple of days the toy would be gathering dust again.

However as the weeks passed, I kept seeing the toy in his hands.   I decided having two toys to play with would greatly improve the fun factor for RD.  I checked eBay and asked MacGyver to complete the purchase.  If we were lucky, the toy would come in time for his birthday.

The package did not come until the New Year but it was surely worth the wait.  We asked RD to open up the package and when he was what was inside, his face just lit up.

Here are some of his two-piece creations.

These two are made using two identical shapes that can "volt in."

(1)

(2)

This heart-like wonder has one piece fitting into the other.

Little Pookie

MyGirl's bedtime companion is Little Pookie, a pink plushie pig (from one of her uncles or aunties) based on one of Sandra Boynton's characters. She absolutely LOVES this stuffed pig. She refused to put this pig in the shipping boxes and her luggage, so she hand-carried it with her on the plane.

The unthinkable happened last week, Little Pookie got a little pukey. Yes, MyGirl vomited in bed and LP was among the casualties. The bedsheet and the blanket were easy enough to handle, but LP was a different story altogether. The cleaning instructions on LP indicated surface washing only so that is what I tried. However, my initial surface washing didn't quite do the trick. I figured I would put LP in the washing machine on a sunny day.

As the days wore on, MyGirl started missing her bedtime buddy. She urged me to get LP clean again so that they could be reunited. When the weather report predicted "mostly sunny" we decided to give cleaning LP another shot.

We were going to do a load of towels and figured this would be the best batch for LP to join. I tossed LP into the washing machine with the towels but before hitting the START button, I announced that I was not sure what would happen to her toy (considering the cleaning instructions and all). I asked MyGirl if she wanted me to give surface washing one more try. I think I scared her with my statement because she sheepishly asked that we pull her toy out of the washing machine. We retrieved poor LP from the sea of towels and spared it the wash cycles.

MyGirl stood behind me as I filled up a basin with some water then added liquid detergent. As I was about to start washing LP, she shrank back and said, "I don't want to watch." (Seriously, she sounded as if I was going to torture her pig.)

Anyway, I hung up LP on the laundry lines after I washed it and hoped for the best.

That evening, when I got home from work, we checked Little Pookie out.

See for yourself whether I did a good job or not.

This is how I found MyGirl's bed when I went to her room one evening.

MyGirl quickly jumped into bed with LP to join the shot.

More Puzzles

In the course of our sorting through old toys, I found this particular puzzle from ages ago. I recall having been able to solve both sides of the puzzle purely by luck. In other words, I have not yet discovered the logic to this puzzle.

When I found the puzzle, it was fixed. I moved the pieces around a bit and the whole thing got messed up. Fortunately, RD took an interest in the puzzle and was able to fix it up (also by chance).

With a little more flipping and turning, RD was able to fix the other side as well.

Eventually, MyGirl was likewise able to get the puzzle done.

And though all of us are clueless as to HOW to really solve this puzzle, it is still a fun toy to play with.