We have got our Rubik’s Cube collection during our KL trip weeks ago. They are the 5X5, 4X4, 3X3 and 2X2. I had been looking for them quite some time and finally we found them.

Their prices are not cheap, but their quality is very good. I can turn them in all direction quickly and smoothly.

I can arrange them in any way, Which tower do they look like? I took their photo before I shuffle them, as you can see their colours are still in solved order.  I feel relunctant to shuffle them actually, but I want to try to solve them, I need to shuffle them as random as possible.

They came with their own stands.

First, we thought that the 2X2 must be easier than the 3X3, and we had underexpected its solution, finally we still need formulars to solve the 2X2.  I haven’t memorise the 2X2 formula, therefore I think the 3X3 is easier for me.

I can solved the 3X3 Rubik’s cube now with the some formulas. Previously I have solved it with computer software. :p

The 3X3 Rubik’s Cube can be solved layer by layer, I can solve the first 2 layer without having the formula, but for the third layer, I used the following formulars.

3A1. F U R U’ R’ F’
3A2. F R U R’ U’ F’

3B1. L U’ R’ U L’ U’ R U2

3C1. R’ U’ R U’ R’ U2 R U2
3C2. R U R’ U R U2 R’ U2

3D1. (Down) R2 U F B’ R2 F’ B U R2
3D2. (Up) R2 U’ F B’ R2 F’ B U’ R2

I learned the fomulars from here and it works.  I wonder when can my 4X4 and 5X5 can transform to their original state.  May be it won’t for the next hundred years.  :p

It was about 10pm in the night. The sky was dark and the city was given the visibilities by the street light, neon light, billboards light and the lights from passing by vehicles. On our way back to the hotel from Bukit Bintang Monorail station, we saw a crowd of people on the wide footpath beside the street looking at something. It was at the junction of Jalan Bukit Bintang to Lot 10 and Sungei Wang.

When we moved nearer, we saw two people blowing a large long wooden / bamboo pipe musical instrument. We were curious why they were blowing to a piece of stone. They caught our attention and kept us to continue watching their performance.  After a while then, we moved our sight to the other performers, each of them played different types of musical instrument.

I used slow shutter speed to take this picture, and the movements of the drummer’s hands were exactly recorded in the photo. He moved his hand to hit the drum really fast.

I wonder why my camera has made the night became the day. If the photos are not in a warmer colour tone, I would not be able to tell that it was taken in the night. I have no choice that I need to switch to the highest ISO setting on my camera and the largest aperture to enable me to take these photos. The shutter speeds required were still very tough and challenging. Out of 10 photos, 3 of them were shaken and blurred and all of them are noisy got noises.

What? How can a picture be noisy? Yes, there are two types of noise from the picture. First, it means the dots on picture which was created digitally because of low light which reduced the quality of the photos. Second, although the photos do not produce sound, but have you heard of “a picture is worth a thousand words“. :p From these pictures, I can imagine the sound of different musical instrument.

This wooden musical instrument produced sound like a frog. I have seen a different version but similar things that produce the frog sound. I will show you in the future.

This musical instrument carried by this young lady was quite common right? What does it called? Can you tell me?

The drummer put the drum between their legs.

We were not sure when it the last route for Monorail and Putra LRT, we need to take 2 trains to go back to our hotel. Therefore we did not wait until they have finished their performance, and we proceeded to the monorail station. I have missed the opportunities to learn where they come from, what the musical instruments are called, and other questions which were still in my mind. If you know about the answer, please tell me.

The other reasons we left were because my camera has ran out of power and the memory card was full , and I wished to go back to the hotel to clear the memory card. I have learned some lessons again, I will bring extra set of battery and I am considering buying another memory card.

Actually we watched the performance for about 5 minutes only. In between, they had taken a short break and some people put some money into their container.

They made me think of the bush dance in Australia that I miss a lot. I wish I can watch these types of performance again.

The word “happiness” is purposely spelt wrongly, first reason because the movie emphasis on the topic of happiness and second, in the story, Chris Gardner (starring by Will Smith) sent his son to a day care where he found there was a word “happyness” spelt wrongly on the wall.  He complained to a Chinese guy but that guy did not know what Chris said.

This is a true story and Chris Gardner is now a multi millionaire.  His son in the film is the real son of Will Smith.

I have never come across this film, never knew about Chris Gardner until our last journey from Ipoh back to Kuching where we watched it on an express bus from Ipoh to LCCT.  Thanks to the bus driver that introduced us a good film.  Unlike what I normally do, I might have snapped and awaked, snapped and awaked again and again most of the time in the 3.5 hours journey, this time, I stucked my eyes on the TV… …  Last night I watched this movie again on DVD even it was very late in the midnight at 2am.  I wanted to learn again carefully what happiness is and how to pursuit it.

My heart was touched by Chris Gardner.  No matter how difficult his life was, he never gave up.  He put even more effort to pursuit his “happiness”.  He needed to sell 2 bone scanners monthly to different doctors in order to cover his monthly expenses, but he had not even sold one for quite some time…

Here comes a few scenes that inspired me on how to pursuit happiness:-

1. He told his son, “Don’t ever let somebody tell you you can’t do something. You got a dream, you gotta protect it. People can’t do something themselves, they wanna tell you you can’t do it. If you want something go get it.”

2. He attended an internship program where he received no salary for the first six month.  He need to be selected out of the 19 other candidates to get the job as a stock broker.  He put more effort than the others.  He need to make lots of calls in a day, and he said that without hanging up the phone but just use fingers to quickly cut the line between calls can save 8 minutes a day.

3. While he needed to read a thick book for the exam, he also needed to take care of his son alone (his wife left him) and he brought his son with him every evening rushing to queue up for a public shelter while he was broke.  There was a time he was behind the queue and failed to get the public shelter.  There was a time too where he and his son stay overnight in a train station washroom, and he locked the washroom.  He dropped his tear.

4. He was always running from one place to the other place in the film.

After struggling for months, he finally got his job and here comes the end of an almost 2-hours movie. 

I felt that I am luckier.  You can gain back your confidence after you watch this film.  He was broke, homeless and have to take care of his son, and he can overcome all the problems.  What else can’t you do?  What else can’t I achieve?

I suddenly thought of a blogger called homelessGuy, he did not update his blog for quite some time, I wonder how his life is now.  This guy was also homeless and stayed in his car for months.  Now do you think that you are lucky?  Go and get what you want and pursuit your happiness.

We need to protect our dreams.