Someone has given me pieces of broken 3 X 3 Rubik’s cube keychain because I said that I wanted to take the pictures of the colourful pieces.  Now it is coming to the end of the Chinese calendar year, it is time to throw away unwanted things, before I throw them away, it is the time for me to shoot and blog about the poor colourful pieces.

Yes, it is a Chinese tradition to throw away unwanted things before a Chinese new year.  When I drove pass housing area recently, I can see that many Chinese houses have a lot more rubbish than usual outside their house waiting for the rubbish truck to come and collect them.  Most of the rubbish are boxes, some of them even throw away their old electrical appliances and sofa.  Sometimes it attracts some secondhand goods collector who thought themselves lucky because they found valuable / usable things, bring them home and make the goods belong to themselves.

[This photo was taken using my light box where a low-front-angle light plus a reflector were used.]

I believed that this keychain was bought from a discount store because of its poor quality.  If you want to enjoy playing Rubik’s cube, you should get a better quality Rubik’s cube.

I have bought a few cheap Rubik’s cube, they were either cannot be turned smoothly, or they break into pieces easily.  Until I bought my collection of high quality 3X3, 4X4 and 5X5 Rubik’s cube, I felt the actual differences.  From the manual, it even stated how to do the maintenance such as lubrication that need to be applied.

No wonder the world record Rubik’s cube solver can solve it in a few seconds.  :P  My fastest record is about 5 minutes to solve a 3X3 Rubik’s cube by looking at the formula.  I am still slow, and I can only remember the formula until the 2nd layer only.

This is the backbone of the Rubik’s cube.  I hope this won’t happen to my 3X3, 4X4, and 5X5 Rubik’s cube.  They are branded and not cheap.  Until now, I still haven’t solved my 4X4 and 5X5 Rubik’s cube.  I hope that I can make them return to their original state one day.

My students tend to use the verbs lend and borrow wrongly.  For example, they will say ‘Borrow me colour pencil’ or ‘Borrow me ruler’.  They are more keen on using borrow rather than lend.  Maybe because they are more familiar with the verb.  It is undeniable that environment can really affect a person because the more I hear them say, I nearly got confused myself too!

Therefore, I’ve decided to share this with you all and hope to get some feedback or comments from you.

Alright, check this out.  To ‘borrow’ or to ‘lend’?

Case 1
SiewPeng : I forgot to bring my sharpener today.  May I ___________ yours?
Colin : Yes, of course.

Case 2
SiewPeng: I forgot to bring my eraser today.  Could you ____________ me yours?
Colin : Sure, no problem.

Case 3
SiewPeng : Oh no!  I forgot to bring my pencil today!
Colin : Don’t worry.  I can ____________ you mine.

Have you got all the answers?

In Case 1, the correct answer is ‘borrow’.  The verb borrow is used when you want to take something that belongs to someone and sort of promised to return it to them at a later time.

In Case 2, the correct answer is ‘lend’.  The verb lend has to be used here because you are asking another person to give you something that belongs to them and will return it to them at a later time.

In Case 3, the correct answer is also ‘lend’.  This is because Colin has generously agreed to give SiewPeng one of his pencils and believed that she will return it to him at a later time.

There you go.

I hope that my humble sharing will be able to clear out some doubts.  I have written about ’send’ and ‘deliver’ too.  Please feel free to comment.  Have a good day!

My sister gave SiewPeng and I these turtles souvenir during her school holidays months ago.  She is coming back again for the celebration of this Chinese New Year.  However this time, we will be heading to a different direction on the day she comes back.  My sister will be heading to the south west, and SiewPeng and I will be heading to the south east.

Two days before the coming Chinese New Year, she will be back to Kuching, but SiewPeng and I will be travelling to another place (soon you will know about it).

Maybe I can meet my sister at least at the airport.  I need to confirm the date and time with her.  If it is on the same day, my brother only needs to go to the airport once (sending us and picking up my sister).

The bird was about to jump into the complicated world of electrical signal (digital / analog) of the telephone wires on a pole.  It was looking at the messy wiring and shook its head.  It sang a bird song and jumped a few steps left and right.

…

…

…  Finally the bird made a decision.

The bird jumped into the complicated world of electrical signals.  The telephone cables (most probably twisted pair cable)  may carry the voice signal, ADSL (internet connection) signal (which includes text, images, audio, video etc.), fax signal and other services provided.

Some of the signals are positive, some are negative, some bring good news, some bring bad news.

Will the birds know that it was actually standing above billion bits of information?

No, because birds did not get involved, nor it was interested about it as well.  It just wanted to stand high and see what is happening far away on the ground.  Look carefully, the bird was only approaching the messy cables, but did not stuck on the cables nor by the signal.  Only from my camera point of view it seems that it was stuck in the messy cable.

***  Sometimes, when something happen to us (either we know / don’t know about it), or we have no choice but to get closer into a situation, if we could manage to separate ourselves from the situation or move a step back, our points of view will be changed, and the effect on the situation might be changed as well.  The main point here is do not only stand on our points of view only, and we can see things wider.

If we are facing an obstacle, it is actually not an obstacle if we try hard to overcome it.  There will be one day in the future where the obstacle is not an obstacle anymore if we get into it from a different entry point.

Sometimes not to get involve is a good choice, but please take note that, we cannot put down our responsibility, we just do not let our emotion gets involved into the complication.

 The above is just something went into my mind when I saw the bird pictures.

Do you know that the orange skin leftovers can be useful.

First it became my model because of its odd shape.  Depend on how it was teared, it would have artistic shape.  The thin part of the skin is even semi-transparent, which is good for me to create the backlighting effect.

It can sit on the sofa.

It can lie on the sofa.

Do not under-estimate its artistic properties, it is rich in artistic texture.

I put it next to the windows, and can you see the little effect of backlighting?

It looked like a fat guy standing next to the windows looking outside.

With side-lighting, the texture of the inner part of an orange skin can be clearly seen.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Well,  besides the above, I did not throw it away at the end of the photography session.  Instead, I used it to make enzyme.

Making enzyme is getting popular, and I also gave it a try.  I only use orange skin to make the enzyme to prevent bad smell.  The orange skin contain high citric acid which prevent it from getting smelly during the fermentation process.

My purpose is to make enzyme for washing and as fertilizer for my plants.  Therefore, I use the cheapest ingredients.  I am not sure if I can use the normal white sugar because most of the information I read does not say that white sugar can be used, they use brown sugar or honey instead.  But why don’t I just give it a try!!!  I will harvest it on 9th April this year.

My way of doing it is very simple, 3 parts of orange skin, 1 part of white sugar, and 10 parts of water.  Leave some space in the bottle, keep everything clean during the whole process, shake and open the bottle every day to release the gas in the bottle.

Wish me success in making my first enzyme.  :)

If you know what happen if I use white sugar to make enzyme, please tell me.