Reading books

In the waiting room of the Labtest Browns Bay waiting for my name to be called up to collect some blood sample for my health checkup, I saw a mother with her son, a toddler waiting, too. Each of them held a book in their hands reading quietly. The toddler seems to be very sociable that he stared at me with a trace of smile on his face. I smiled back. Having sensed my friendliness, he wobbled toward me pointing at a picture in his book to show me, seemed like trying to tell me what it was. I was amazed by his being very interested in books and his sociability. His mother smiled and looked at him. I asked the mother "your baby is very fond of reading, how have you trained him to be a book lover?" She said "I read books for him before he goes to the bed." "Ah! that's why." I extolled.

I'm not a good reader and that is why I admire people who enjoys reading. This reminds me of the summer vocation of my first year of senior high high school. one of the homeworks assigned to us for the summer vocation was reading a book titled "dream in the red mansion" and writing a short conversation about what you have learned from reading that book. I remembered that Chinese classical fiction we were asked to read was more than 400 pages. The story was about a heavily pampered only son of that family and his cousin, Lin Dai-yu. It is one of the most favorite books among Chinese reads. I tried to read them all, but because I was not so interested in reading that I had only finished about one third of that book. When that summer vocation was coming to an end, we were supposed to return to school to get ourselves prepared for the resumption of school before the official start of the new semister. I asked some of my classmates about how well had they done the assignment of reading that classical fiction, and a couple of them excitedly told me they loved it, and not just the that, they read two or even three times of it. At that moment, I admired them very much and felt ashamed for my reading capability.

There is another type of reader who cannot live without something to read. Once I was engaged in a chat with a group of my colleagues talking on the subject of reading. One of my colleagues said that her husband was a strong reader. Her husband has to have something to read. When he is not busy with anything then he is always in search of something to read. If the community newspaper is the only thing he can get at that time, he reads it without skipping any single word. And he does even read every one of the advertisements in the classified pages. it will be very cool for me to be like him.

I admired book lovers. I know there are lots of profound book readers. They are able to be completely absorbed in the reading for hours or even a non-stop whole day. Some of them can finish reading of a heavy book in a few minutes with perfect comprehension. My web search for the fastest reader tells me the Howard Berg is the fastest reader in the Guinness Book of World Records. His reading speed is 25000 words per minute. Comparing to mine, the number of words he can finish in a minute will take me two days at least. How can he do that, and why can't I?

People who love reading are usually quiet, calm and confident. Their school performances are unexceptionally outstanding. A family friend came to visit us with their two daughters of year 4 and 6 in the primary school. Both of them disappeared soon after greetings. I found them sitting on the floor side by side with my old Reader's Digest in each of their hands reading by the book shelf, totally absorbed in the books. When I switched our conversation to the topic about their children's strong reading capacity, I was told both of the two girls were of the top students in the school.

I have silenced my flute

Early in August 2011, while browsing eBay one day, I had this idea of searching for any flute or even its parts because my flute sounded pretty airy which according to my google search was a problem of leaking pads.

I was amazed and surprised that after a few keystrokes in eBay's search box, a very long list of brand-new or used flutes is shown on the monitor of my notebook. Among them are a couple of sellers selling the velt pads at a price unbelievably cheap at about $15 including postage for a set of 16 velts. I immediately ordered one set thinking that with this money spent I would get perfect sound quality from my flute, what a good investment this action would be..

About two weeks later, the new pads arrived, and I was very excited because I anticipated a perfect flow of notes will be coming out of the flute replaced with the new pads. So I hurriedly opened the packaging; counted the number of pads received and then set out to proceed with my flute repading quest.

I have a great passion in DIY, and I am proud of having a magnificent records of fixing a lot of household items with only the most basic set of tools, and sometimes the spare parts I used in the repair are improvised. With all of the memories about my successfully repaired, household appliances, I had not any hesitation in buying a set of pads, because I was deeply immersed in the extraordinary pride from the marvelous historical records I have achieved.

While I was waiting for the arrival of the flute pads, I spend quite a lot of time browsing through the Internet for tips and the information relating to the repads of the leaking flute. With this helpful information, I found it was not difficult to disassemble all the key pads. Before long, the table was full of parts, tools and the old key pads.

After about three hours, all of the old pads were replaced by the new ones, and the parts were reassembled into a flute. By the time I was going to make test of the sound, I was nervous and was excited but never had I thought that the flute was already dead. I was shocked, completely shocked, for as soon as I blew the first mouthful of air into the mouth piece and heard nothing coming out of the flute, that was a shock mixed with some confusion. "How it is possible to be like this?" Except the B key, any other keys were totally gone.

The first thing on the next day I did was searching on the Internet about the experience I had yesterday night. Amazingly found a lot of other DIYers also had this kind of silly acts, some of them ended up sending their flutes to the hands of the professional flute technician for a rescue, costing them a fortune lot of money.

I had no choice but to take the action of repairing it by learning how others did from the website.

Up to the time of writing this post, I had only get notes of B, B-, A, G+, G, F+, F, E, D+, back. I have almost lost all my confidence in getting this damn problem successfully fixed by myself now, but my passion of playing flute is still strong. I'm wondering what my next step should head for as for the moment, my flute can only play very simple tunes with an even worse airy sound quality.

This might be the silliest thing I had ever done in my life.

Learning Google Spreadsheet - Part 1

For some reason I have been fascinated by the amazement of how the spreadsheet can process complicated data since the end of October 2010.

It all began with Chenny's request for my assistance in sorting out a three-page name list which he scribbled notes all over the blank areas about the class time changes, students contact details and etc. the notes were so messy that even Chenny was not sure what some of the notes were about.

It was not a big task. Before long I had it finished by putting those notes in a Google spreadsheet. But by the time I was going to give it back to him, I was curious to know if he had any administration system in place to help him managing his music teaching job. All he showed to me was a timetable which sets the week days on the top row and a time with an increment of 30 minutes ran on the first column starting from 9 AM till 9:30 PM, and about 30 students names were scattering over the grid of the table. This table serves to tell him the class time of his student. Other than this timetable, is the three pages of a computer print which the music Center gives him for the purpose of contact with students. As time goes by these three-page prints became very messy, and Chenny was the only one who could get information out of them, but I believe even him would find it hard. I think that was why he asked me to retype it.

I vaguely know that database is the answer, but I aim at making it possible to access on the Internet so that Chenny can refer to his database through his iPhone when he is on the road. So I searched for the functions on the Web and landed at the webpages of Google docs.

I knew Google docs contains spreadsheet application, but I had only learned how to use the most basic formulas like addition, subsection, modification and division. After some searches, I found that the functions I had in mind had also been asked by many other Google docs users in the help forum, so I knew I was on the right direction of my adventure in the exploration of creating a working system for Chenny.

First of all, I created the main worksheet which I labeled it "Student". This is for Chenny to enter their contact details, class time, class day, fee to charge. Then the challenge came when I created the second worksheet labeled as "Time window".

In the "Time window", my idea was placing a formula in each of the cells that was able to grab the data in the column of class day and class time in the "Student" worksheet and to place the student's name in the corresponding cells in the "Time window" worksheet.

It took me about two weeks in reading many many relevant posts in Google's help forum and playing with the formula which I thought should work but always ended up with a return of "N/A", "ERROR", "REF" or anything but not what I wanted. Gradually my frustration was rising and my patience was running out, suddenly the right data turned up in the cell when I pressed "enter". That feeling was wonderful. It was like you had just won a big prize of Lotto.

For almost one whole month, most of my time day and night were spent in the exploration and
experiment of the formulas. Due to this sudden change in my everyday living style, I spent very little time on the Internet. Some of my friends noticed this change, e-mailed and asked me why I was suddenly so quiet on the Web.

Once I had sorted out the first working formula, it became easier to interpret the strange language used in the formula. Below are some of the formulas which I figured out after innumerable experiments:

=sort(filter('Lesson log'!A2:K,'Lesson log'!J2:J="y",'Lesson log'!I2:I<='Lesson log'!G2:G,'Lesson log'!A2:A>=(today()-14)),2,true,1,true)

=count(iferror(filter(Student!A2:A,Student!F2:F=E4,Student!G2:G<>""),"0"))

=iferror(iferror(filter(Student!A:A,Student!F:F=F1,Student!G:G=A15);filter(Student!A:A,Student!F:F=F1,Student!G:G=A14,Student!H:H=2)),"")

=index(filter(C1:C243,search(H34,B1:B243)),1)

By the end of November, I had accomplished a Google spreadsheet that was able to accommodate Chenny’s need for queries, information check, statistics of his earning. And he finds it helpful, and I feel I am still useful.

My adventure in making sourdough bread

It is hard to believe that somehow I could become fascinated by the craft of making sourdough bread starting from July 2010.

About three months of time has past since the day I started the adventure in the exploration of this ancient art. From the quality of the breakfast rolls that I made yesterday with my own formulated sourdough starter, I think I can now announce my success in taming the sourdough starter with which I make my breakfast buns.

The reason I refer to sourdough bread making as an "art" is because of the unpredictable nature of its most important ingredient, the sourdough starter, which the baker uses to rise the dough. There are so many factors to think about, to stick to, and to experiment with in order to cultivate the healthy yeast for making the best bread that can win your sincere praise and your highest satisfaction. It cannot be just jotted down on paper as a step-by-step instruction for you to follow through, instead, it can only tell you the principles, the ideas, the hypothesis that you must know when you work through the process of making bread using your homemade sourdough starter. And this is how the sourdough bread making captivated my heart.

My first step in the adventure was googling this topic in the website. I'm grateful to the contributors who share their experience and knowledge about the sourdough bread making on the Internet, that just by a flick of the fingers, I got all the relevant information. I learned that some sourdough enthusiasts cultivating yeast by soaking raisins in water, some from boiled potato water, some from apple or other fruits, and various other ideas of all sorts of stuff. I adopted the method of raising my yeast in flour batter after I had tried one with raisins.

My wife advocates healthy food, so I use wholemeal flour in the whole process of making bread, although I personally like using white flour because it can make the bread texture more fluffy and softer. But we should not pursue the pleasure for our taste buds only, Health issue should be taken into account seriously too, so I satisfied her by using hundred percent wholemeal flour plus approximately 5% of gluten flour, which one of the posts in the web says will compensate the fluffiness and the softness of the bread when you use only wholemeal flour.

We had been using the commercially formulated dry yeast available in super market for five dollars per bottle of 150 g. This kind of yeast is recommended to be used up within six months otherwise you will see a sharp decrease or even zero of its leavening strength. But since I started experimenting on sourdough starter from mid July of 2010, we have completely stopped using the commercial dry yeast.

Every 2 to 3 days I will make breakfast bread once for the family. During the first few weeks, the bread I made was too tense in texture because it only raised the dough slightly even though I left it in a warm space to rise for as long as 10 hours or more. I pondered on the cause of this problem and I came up with the following conclusions:

• The ratio of sourdough starter and the flour is too far off the right one.
• The concentration of the yeast raised in the flour batter is far less than the required level.

Gradually I adjusted here and there in the process of growing the sourdough starter and it is now settled at this protocol:

1. The birth of first sourdough starter:
1. make a flour batter by mixing 1/2 cup wholemeal flour, 1 tsp commercial dry yeast and 100ml water. Keep in a transparent container and mark where the mixture is up to on the container. Leave it with lid loosely closed on the top of the container enabling the preferment process to go on in room temperature for about two hours, or when you see a layer of foam forming on the surface of the batter. This is the first generation of sourdough starter.
2. Thereafter, you need to feed the starter with 1/2 cup wholemeal flour and 100ml water. Stir the whole lot till the flour is wet, then leave it with lid slightly open in room temperature for a maximum of 4 hours or before you feel the yeast is beginning to become hungry again. It is time to put the lid tightly on and keep it in the fridge to sleep. If you don’t put the sourdough starter to sleep at this point of time, the yeast will begin to turn sourer and sourer and end up with a pail of rotten stuff and no longer edible, I believe.
2. Preparing to make a dough:
1. Take the sourdough starter in sleeping out of the fridge. I call this “wake up” and leave it in room temperature. You can imagine the yeasts are yearning and begining to work again.
2. Add 1 cup wholemeal flour and 200ml of water, stir the mixture till the flour is thoroughly wet. Then leave it on the working bench with lid lightly closed for about 2 hours depending on the temperature of that day, or when you see a layer of foam emerged on the surface.
3. Pour the batter into the mixing bowl till the remaining in the container falls down to the mark. This is the start point of another new cycle of the whole process. Refer to point 1.a.
4. Now the ingredients of the batter in the mixing bowl are 300ml water and 1.5 cups flour if you trace back the records. For making the softest buns of 16 pieces of the size of 5cm in diameter and 4cm in height, I add 3 cups flour, one tsp salt, 150ml water and 2 tbsp olive oil. Mix and knead till it becomes a dough and leave it in a proper space to rise. This takes about two hours depending on the temperature.
3. Shape the bread:
1. It is your turn now to exercise your inventive and creative capability in the art of bread making.

Another visit to Mitre 10

I had been thinking of wrapping up the hot water pipes of my home so as to retain the heat for a longer time. To do this project, I have to go to Mitre 10 to buy the insulation material which is 2 m long, although not heavy, it is quite a hassle travelling by bus. So this project had been left in my "wish list" ever since until....

One morning on 17/07/2010 when my wife was away in Taiwan to see her mother, and my daughter, Tessie, came back home to look after me. I told her about my wish of doing the hot water pipe insulation project, and she happily promised to go with me by her car to buy the material.

So I had yet another visit to Mitre10 on 17/07/2010. This time, Tessie was my private driver. It was a beautiful sunny day, and was a weekend, so at the time as early as 10:30 AM in the morning, Mitre 10 was already packed with shoppers. As Tessie had to go to office to do some overtime extras after helping me with the shopping, so I had to do a quick buy and go. Instead of browsing from aisle to aisle, I spotted a guy in a red T-shirt with a big "ask me" printed on the back, so I approached him. He is lanky, tall and quite old, I estimate he must be older than 70, and his face seems to be ready to give you a cheeky smile at any time when his eyes are in contact with yours.

"Hi, Mr. Ask Me" I greeted him with my humor, and without any confused facial expression, obviously he knew I was calling them. "Good morning sir, what can I help you?" I gave him the note which wrote the product code and its description.

Seemingly he is a new staff, as it took him a while to figure out where should he guide me to. And when he had finally got the idea of where the product should be, he looked relieved and quite proud of himself. "Follow me sir, I take you down there." He said to me.

We past by another red T-shirt man on the way to the aisle where my product might be in, that guy stopped and said to him, "hey! I hope you are not playing around again." "Hey? I'm not playing around, I'm helping this gentleman to find his product. And I have a name, my name is 'ask me', look! It is printed on my back." he fought back. I knew they were teasing each other.

When we got to the section where he thought my product should be in, I already spot the product sitting on the second level from the ground, but before I walked to get them, he asked me to wait where I was and he was going to find the product for me. But I saw him stood in the middle of the aisle, his eyes scanned up and down and left to right through each shelf, his face was full of uncertainty as a small child got lost in downtown.

I said to him, "look! it is there". "Oh! You know what they look like?", instantly he was relieved and happily followed me to that shelf. He carefully checked the product description on my note against the sticky label on the product. "Ah ha! This is exactly the product you want." He helped me to get three pieces from the shelf. I thanked him, and he happily wished me a good day and walked away to serve another customer.

At the checkout point, I put my hand into the pocket to get some money for the payment, but Tessie stopped me, she insisted to pay for the family. The feeling of seeing children demonstrating their ability and willingness of support is very nice and indescribable.

Outside of the Mitre 10 building, by the entrance was a sausage sizzle stand. Four Westlake Boys high school students were cooking sausage for raising fund for traveling to South Africa. I had not had enjoyed a sausage sizzle for long time, and my last visit of Mitre 10 in April failed me in buying one due to lack of coins, so I asked Tessie to buy two.

It was yummy in the mouth; it was warm in the heart.

My Hands-free Telephone

I call this telephone set hands-free because when I am engaged in a telephone conversation, I don't have to hold the handset and attach it to my ear and mouth throughout the duration, instead, I put on the headset and talk on and on with my hands free for other things like taking notes at the same time.

I know a genuine hands-free device should be something like this.

The first time I saw a real hands-free device in use was from Robbie, my ex-colleague, who is an enthusiast of high technology product. One day in 2005 when we were in a cruise of visiting students, I saw there was a light blue object attaching to his right ear. I asked him what that was for? And he said it was called Bluetooth hands-free phone. He demonstrated for me how that device worked. The device sent the music from the stereo audio of the car into his earpiece with the wireless technology. And when the device detected an incoming call, it switched from music to the call automatically. And when the conversation finished, it came back to music at Robbie's will.

The memory of the encounter with a real hands-free device that time inspired me of making my version of hands-free device when my PD began to affect me with a phone conversation about a half year ago. What happened was when I was engaged in a chat over the phone for longer than 10 minutes or if the content of the conversation was serious, then my hand that held the handset tended to shake and thus the tip of the handset would be taping on my cheek or the temporal area around my ear repeatedly like a woodpecker does to a tree, and that is very annoying and uncomfortable, but it is also uncontrollable.

So I thought to myself if I could convert one of those discarded old telephone sets out in the corner of our garage into one that has two sockets -- one for my earphone plug and the other for my microphone plug. Then when I am engaged in a conversation over the phone, the "woodpecker symptom" will not trouble me again.

When this idea was matured in late May, I started gathering up materials and tools. I had a headset that was no longer in use, so this saved me a lot of time and energy in making one from scratches. I have soldering set and the tin core; I have a voltmeter for checking if the connection is good; I have a set of electronic tools and power drill, and I am pretty sure this project should be a piece of cake and could be expected to be finished the next day.

Then I found I needed to go to Jaycar to buy two mono audio sockets of 3.5 mm. So I made a journey to Jaycar by walk and that was a great struggle. And then I found I had to extend the two pairs of cables to the two desired areas in the phone set where there were enough rooms to accommodate the two audio sockets.

The cables were so fine that peeling their skins on the two ends for soldering was very challenging. I finally found a way to get this job done -- burned the tip of the cable using a candlelight and nipped the softened skin of the cable immediately when it was moved away from the flame.

Then I found I had to do the soldering within a very small space without making the soldering stick contact with the neighboring cable or circuit and get them damaged. That was the most challenging part of this project.

On and on, I could see some progress every day, and I realized that it was not a case as simple as a piece of cake to me and I accepted the reality. A couple of times, I thought I had done all the soldering and assembled the whole thing up, only to discover that it could not work. apparently I had damaged the soldered points, or I had connected the extended cable to the wrong point of the socket. So the process of unpacking, disconnecting, line checking, were all done over again with fingers crossed hoping this time would be a successful one. Unfortunately it was not until the fourth repeat that I could finally see it functioning as was expected.

Seeing me absorbed in the project so deeply my wife suggested many times that she would be happy to buy me a genuine hands-free phone. She could not understand what the self-satisfaction, self-fulfillment and the lot of fun that I had had throughout the process of converting a discarded old telephone set into a model that enables me to be free from the woodpecker symptom in a telephone conversation.:-)

The scary machine gun

Machine gun is a very powerful, very dreadful, very scary weapon in battlefield. Yet, when I am invited to chat online, the first sentence I send back in the conversation is usually "a second please, let me get my machine gun..." and my friend on the other side knows what it is; and I can imagine he is warming up himself in front of the computer rubbing his two hands vigorously, staring into the monitor at the chat dialogue box, awaiting to confront with the challenge from my machine gun.

It is my dictation software -- a computer program which turns your speech into text when you speak into a microphone. Once you have trained this program well, it will recognize your voice, take your dictation and type the text out accurately. It is very helpful to people with difficulty in typing. because its speed is three times faster than the average typist, so I nicknamed it "the scary machine gun".

To tell you the story of the machine gun, its background should start from my early teens period .

Starting from late 1960s, children of my generation found that they began to have some pocket money from their parents due that Taiwan economy was taking off. Gradually we were able to expand our after school activities, from just doing extra school study in the classroom or playing basketball in the sport field which are of money saving in nature, to the money spending ones such as having a yummy snack at the canteen or going to the theater to watch a movie which is the most popular option among the school children.

I was a movie lover too during my second and third years in the junior high school. The admission was as little as two bucks, about ten cents of New Zealand dollar today. Most of the movies were from America, so we had learned quite a lot of American cultures through watching movies. Besides all those cowboy stories, the ones that I had the most profound memories were "sayonara", "travelling the world in 80 days". And I don't know why, every time when the movies played the part of which an office clerk was typing really fast following the dictation from his boss, I naturally endow him with lots of admiration. I think that was how I was later motivated to learn typing skill and became the fastest typist in my class in the college.

I believe that I would rather be that wealthy boss giving the dictation, than being that secretary typing his tail off, when I was absorbed in the episode of the movie. However, after I had grown up and entered the work force, I was neither a boss nor a secretary but only a guy pretty capable of typing with high competence in both speed and accuracy in the company.

Whether it is pre-destined or just from my own choice, that in my 15 working years in Taiwan before 1991, all the jobs I were in, required me to be working with typewriter to more or less a degree. I hope you don't say it was just a coincidence. After all I was just a young guy living in a non-English speaking country, am not I?

In 1992, I immigrated to New Zealand. After two years of acclimation in the new land, I could not but yielded my aspiration of starting a business to the harsh reality and chose to work for a stationery wholesaler. My main role there was "office assistant", and here the coincidence fell upon me again, I was required by the job to type various kind of document almost everyday more or less.

Perhaps because of the vivid memory about the episode of people sitting by the typewriter in the office typing mindfully and rapidly like a hen pecking grains from the ground, every time when I type, that mind picture always flashed through my mind, and made my typing more enjoyable to me, and feeling like I was the smart and confident typist in the movie. So I have been enjoying typing since I had acquired the skill at the age of 20.

In year 2005, I was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. The main symptoms of this disease are rigidity, tremor and the slowness in movement. Gradually many tasks that normal people can do easily are becoming more and more difficult for me, and typing is one of them. By early 2010, the symptoms were worsening to this stage where I needed assistance from tools, for instance, brushing teeth, I needed an electric brush to do the business. My typing ability was crippled even under medication, and was generally very slow. Sometimes during the tail part of the medication period, especially early in the morning, the hands were just like being frozen and suspended above the keyboard trembling and could not do a single thing.

In an e-mail sent to Robbie in January 2010, I mentioned about why I was writing him far less e-mails then before, and what had caused the problem -- my Parkinson's disease.

He immediately sent me an e-mail briefly asking me to Google "naturally speaking" for more details about the dictation software he would recommend me to adopt to tackle my typing difficulties.

Naturally speaking? I've never heard of this before. And from the Google search, I realized that "Dragon naturally speaking" was what Robbie meant to say, and was the brand name of a widely used dictation software. With this program installed in the computer, the user speaks into a microphone and the computer turns the signals from the wave into text on the screen. That was indeed something I needed and was affordable to me, only $179 for the standard version.

After a few days contemplation in making up my mind, I decided to buy through Trademe hoping the price offered there would be more affordable. It turned out to be true, you could start your bid from $99, or got it straight away by paying a "buy now" price of $129. I chose the latter.

It was February 12 of 2010, I was half way in my morning practice when the parcel was delivered to my doorstep. Without any delay I unpacked it, read the installation instructions, and began the process of installation followed by some training which required me to read aloud some text document about 15 minutes long into the microphone to make the software recogniz the way I speak. Within about one hour, all these were done.

it was time to actually try it out. I was excited and nervous, just like a small boy was nervously practicing riding his new bike, not sure what might turn up.

I started with the most used phrases -- "how are you?"... "haven't seen you for long time." How amazing it was, my words were turned into text on the screen almost instantly after I finished the phrases. I extolled the the inventor smart; I thanked Robbie's shrewd recommendation; I said to myself that I had got a loyal typing assistant virtually.

When I began to try on some phrases of higher level, the nightmare started to emerge. For example, I said "I built a storage shelf", it cranked out "I be you Ward and storage shelf". Then I gave command "correct 'be you ward'", then it popped out a list of choices, but none of them was "built". And to my deepest frustration, when I tried to repeat the command, it erased all the right words of the whole paragraph and made me start over again from nothing.

The frustration grew up to a point which nearly made me pick up the phone to ask them for a refund and totally give up the hope of reaping the benefit from this software.

It began to show its cooperation by typing out more accurate words on the fourth day of its arrival, and that higher accuracy grew steadily every day but very slowly and was still far from my satisfaction. I had been very patient in dealing with this semi-auto machine gun until two months after its purchase when Nuance released an update for this software.

I did not put any hope on this update because I almost had enough with its semi-auto nature. However I just underwent the download and installation of that update. After the process was done; and after I had injected about 30 minutes of training into the freshly updated version, I tried it by writing an e-mail. Alas! The improvement was dramatic -- the accuracy soared to a level totally beyond my expectation. And since then, I happily nicknamed it "the machine gun".

With this weapon at hand, I replied almost every single e-mail, even those only carrying a forwarding and without a message, with not just a couple of sentences, but with three or four paragraphs of message. At the beginning, all the forwarding senders politely replied saying that they welcomed my e-mails generated by the dictation software. By and by, I found that some of the forwarding senders shunned away. apparently my sudden change into being a talkative e-mail writer had scared many of them away. So I re-nicknamed my dictation software as "the scary machine gun".

That's the story of how the originally brand named as "Dragon naturally speaking" was nicknamed as "the scary machine gun" by me.

A Day Out to Takapuna Library

It was May 16 of 2010, a Sunday and happened to be a beautiful and brilliant sunny day.

Sunday has been spared for my day out if the weather promising. Where do I normally spend it? Beach, bush, the roadside café? Nah... Library is my favorite option, and on this beautiful day, the one in Takapuna is the best.

It is the best library I had ever been to, not because of its beauty of the building, or its huge stock of books, but because of its friendly librarians and its location in the town-- beach at its East side within a short walking distance and the business center of the town on the other. You can look out to the beautiful ocean view from the first floor while you are reading.

It was a clear day yesterday, so I left home early to go to Takapuna library. I had a three hour stay in the library enjoying my late acquired hobby of reading. While the book that I am reading now is to be finished soon, so I went to the shelf to fetch the book "to kill a Mocking bird" which the computer said was available in the library. But when I followed the call number to its location, the book could not be found at or around where it should be. This book was recommended to me by our family friend, Michelle, who is a very spiritual type of person from England in early 1990s. So far she already recommended me three books all are very enjoyable to me.

So I approached the librarian on the desk for assistance. I said to her that I could not find a book which the computer said was available in this library. She asked me what was the title. I told her the title and was wondering how she could help as the book was indeed disappearing from its place and I only wanted to report my discovery about this fact to her so that she can update the status of that book in the database. Amazingly she smiled at me and said "it was a very popular book, now follow me please." and led me to another section of the shelves as if she already knew that the book of that call number was not there but she knew that another book of exactly the same title could be found somewhere she was leading me to.

Without much effort spent in her search, she grabbed a book from the cart, and it was exactly the book I was after. I was very amazed by her ability of remembering all the details of a book. Then I turned to her to give my gratitude that was when I noticed that she wore a very thick glasses. I thought she might have read the whole lot of books in the library. I smiled at her saying: "you have a marvelous memory", before I was turning to leave. She asked me to wait a second, and took another book that was a lot thinner than the one I already got from the shelf. She flipped through the pages while telling me it was of the same title in the form of playwright. I thanked her saying "no, thank you, I'm happy with this one and it will keep me going for three weeks." That was her second round of demonstrating her art of book management.

Having got the book, I walked to the first floor, took a seat facing toward the big window which I could look out to the picturesque ocean view. Before I had mentally and physically settled in my seat, I connected my mobile device with a free Internet connection provided by the library, and sent e-mails to my friends, and the text messages to my families of my latest updates. within a few minutes, my mobile device beeped to the incoming messages of their updates in return. How amazing the IT technology is.

Then my mind steeped into the world in the reading. With the printed language being picked up from the page of the book by the eyes and interpreted by the brain, the ideas or thoughts of the author are being screened, assorted, investigated, compared with, commented, agreed with, disagreed with, and etc. of processes by our brain. Wouldn't it be far more amazing then our mobile device? I don't believe that in the near future a super computer equivalent to human intelligence will ever be created.

It was time for lunch. I walked down through the staircases and walked out of the library into the courtyard right in front of the building. I opened my back pack and took out my lunch which my wife has prepared for me that morning. It was water boiled dumplings. After I had consumed three or four pieces of them, I thought why did I not snap a self portrait? So I took out my mobile device and created this profound picture.

After I had finished my lunch and done with my medication, I walked straight away into the library again and to where I was originally seated this morning. I thought while I was passing by the reception desk Takapuna library could be the most attractive place to me that it was able to pull me in right after the lunch.

Time passed by very quickly, unexpectedly people around me began to pack up and a minor commotion arose from here and there. Before long, the security guard walked through every corner of the library swaying a bell. I quickly took out my mobile device, and tapped the following text message "the bell tolls now, and I am going home."

And that put an end to my lovely day out.

The one morning in Mitre 10

Date was the 17th of April 2010 on which the story went.

The night before, Chenny reported a leaking tap to me. I had noticed this problem long time ago and had thought about getting it fixed, but I was lacking of confidence at that time, so I just left it with fingers crossed. But that night when Chenny told me the problem and I went to have a look, I knew I could not just get fingers crossed, I had to get it really fixed as soon as possible. Obviously Chenny tried to tighten up the knob too forceful and had completely collapsed the inner fitting of the knob. So now, not only the washer has to be replaced to stop the dripping, I will also have to find a substitute knob.

On the next morning, I had a quite high level of motivation to travel to Mitre 10 by bus because the weather was promising, cloudy and cool but no rain -- it is a kind of good weather for outdoor activity.

The bus dropped me off at King's Plant Garden Center. Then I continued the remaining 800 m to Mitre 10 by walk. My walk had developed into a funny pattern in the last three months due to the Parkinson's disease. The gait of my walk looks like I am in a hurry to reach the destination that I am sort of running but am in small steps. Muscles of the arms and legs are abnormally tense. And this rigidity consumes a lot of my energy, this is especially worse when I walk along the footpath next to a busy road. The rumbling noise from the traffic makes me nervous and this worsens my balance that I am afraid I may fall to the road. So I have to tell myself to slow down, to be relaxing, but the legs remains in its fast but small steps dashing forward. Walking on the footpath with all sorts of wandering thoughts flowing through my mind, finally the vast Mitre 10 building stood before me.

I felt excited when I walked through the parking lot and marched toward its entrance. The excitement increased steadily while I was a bit closer to it. I thought it is something to do with my DIY spirit which knows Mitre 10 is the home of DIY.

When I stepped into the area that the gate sensor reaches, the automatic sliding door swiftly opened for me. I walked into the building and saw aisles and aisles of product shelves before me. I thought that Aladin must be feeling the same when the genie stood before him when the cloud from the oil lamp faded away.

I got my shopping list out of my backpack. "seal tape, assorted sizes of washer, glue gun, PVC gutter glue, hand tools for repairing electronic device", four or five items totally, but as I walked through the aisles, I was wanting more other items than those in my shopping list. The new design of tools and hardwares on display were challenging my temptation. Obviously my DIY spirit was being childish and ambitious.

On the way to the plumbing section, I saw multi-purpose rope, then my thought went to those overgrown branches of the tall tree in my garden. I should have one of this rope for pulling the branches to be felled to the desired direction. I saw a big range of plastic rollers, then I thought of the sliding doors of our cupboard that needed a new set of rollers to ease the open and shut operation. Now I came to the hand tool section, the desire to buy items like --drill bits set, gutter cutter, plastic welder, plumber's clamp, vice, glue gun, mechanic's tool set, multi-function hand-tool and etc.

I ended up picking up an electronic tool-set priced at $14 and quickly walked away from that section so as to shake off the annoying temptation.

I finally came to the plumbing section, the main purpose of this trip. I searched for washer. If possible I'd like to have a single pack of assorted sizes. There are rows and rows of products displayed on the shelves. I wondered how many stockists will be required to manage hundreds of thousands products of the whole company. Soon I had found the items that might be required by the leaking tap.

If I was not in a hurry to go home to undergo the repair, I would like to spend more time to browse around in the building till they close for the day. Perhaps I should spoil myself by spending in Mitre 10 a whole day in the near future.

I paid for the purchase at the checkout point and walked out of the building unwillingly. Nearby the entrance was a sausage sizzle stool emitting the lovely sizzling onion smell. it was a cloudy day, a cool day, a day suitable to have sausage sizzle, so I thought and walked toward the sausage stand to buy one to please my DIY spirit. And that's concluded my day out in Mitre 10.

Ps. The repairing of the leaking tap went smoothly and was successfully done.

DIY - do it yourself

Do it yourself - DIY, has been part of my everyday living since we moved to New Zealand in 1992. Not only because I am passionate with it, but also because I need to. When your mere income is the sole support of the whole family, you can become a DIY man more easily.

So as I recount now about what projects or repairs I have done in the past 17 years, I feel great, pride and awesomeness in me.

Compared to other giant DIYers who are able to build their own garden shed; construct their own BBQ area; lift the car engine, fix it and put it back, my DIY projects are nothing, but the passion of doing it myself is the same considering I can only do it after work and have to spend time with my small children.

As far as I can remember, the list covers: leaking taps, burnt light bulbs, leaking toilet flush tank, washing machine blocked, broken gutter, TV antenna connection gone loose, interior wall painting, motorized window of the car stuck, tire gone flat, repairing children's toys, repairing lawn mower, making working bench, felling a tree, and the list goes on.

The one among the repaired list that brought me the most self-satisfaction is this Ryobi brand petrol powered edge trimmer.

A few years ago, I convinced my wife that we needed a petrol powered edge trimmer as our previous one, a Ryobi brand also, an electric model powered by a rechargeable battery was not powerful enough to do a good job. She nodded.

I went to the garden tool section of a big hardware shop. Dear me! The cheapest model of the petrol powered range was from 300 mark. The electric range was much cheaper, around 150 mark, but my friend commented it as wasting money. Ryobi was priced at the low end and its design looked smart to me, so I selected it, made payment and came home excitedly.

The next day was a weekend. I unpacked it, read the manual, filled the fuel tank with the right petrol mixture and walked to the garden anticipating an easy start-up and a good job done.

Unfortunately it didn't respond to the first pull. "Never mind, this is normal." I thought to myself. Second pull, no response. I made sure I primed the carburetor, and set the choke fully closed. Third pull, no. Fourth pull, no! I began to be anxious. Fifth, sixth, no, no. I began to pant, I began to feel frustration. It ended up with a frustrated day.

The next day I returned the machine to the dealer. The person on duty that day was a senior staff. He seemed quite experienced. Having heard of my complaint, he rolled up his sleeves and had a try himself. One, two, three, four, I could see sweat started wetting his face, oooops! the string would not retract after the last pull.

He agreed something was wrong with it and gave me a replacement of the same model. He tested on the new one. Within four or five pulls, the machine roared. That was normal. I thanked his assistance and went home.

What happened after the new one arrived home? Not an enjoyable trimming experience! It stopped before the whole round was completed, and could not be started again. The second and third time of using it were nightmare, too. And the fourth time was the last time I failed in getting it work and decided to give it up.

Why I didn't return it to the dealer for another replacement this time? Well, when I recalled how that technician sweated and panted in trying to get it started, I felt sorry for him. And I thought my DIY talent might sort it out myself one day.

Every time I mowed the lawn, my mind went to that trimmer. Now and then, I took it out to try my luck to revive it, and it remained no hope at all. So I had been dealing with the messy tall grass along the fence with my bare hands since then.

Once I chanced upon a garden tool dealer in a shopping centre. I told him my trimmer's problem. He said it was a very common problem to trimmers and suggested a service to it for 100 bucks. I was reluctant to accept his offer having had the start-up problem ingrained in my memory.

The other time, I passed by another garden equipment shop in Mairangi Bay. I asked the shop keeper if they repaired engine trimmer. He asked what brand was my machine. I gave the name. He smiled mysteriously and said "we only service those serviceable brands...".

One day, I had this idea of servicing this machine myself, DIY! I searched on the web for information about repairing trimmers and luckily landed on the page which carried this savoir video. This video gave me detailed knowledge about the trimmer, most of all it reminded me of my DIY spirit.

On the next day, I set out to remove the carburetor from the machine and dismantled the whole thing according to what I had learned from the video. Soon all the parts were laid out on the working bench. The main body of the carburetor is like a bee hive having many tiny holes on all sides of the cube. A rubber cap, a membrane made from plastic film, a diaphragm attached to the bottom of the unit. I imagined how the petrol was pumped into the cube by the dome shaped rubber cap, how it then flew to the bottom part in the small reservoir, and how the movement of the piston of the engine sucked the fuel through the tiny hole from which the liquid fuel turns into mass of droplets like mist and finally into the combustion chamber of the engine.

Wow! the design is really amazing. Any part in this small mechanism fails will simply make the user frustrated. My trimmer had only been used three or four times since purchased, so why it just could not be fired no matter how I hard I tried?

I bought a can of WD40, a solvent based cleaner spray, to cleanse all the tunnels in the cube till I was sure not any dirt blocking in the veins. Then, I assembled the unit and attached it back to the machine carefully after thorough study on this important mechanism.

I couldn't wait to go a test. I filled up the tank with petro, manually pour about 20cc of petro through the carb into the engine. And pulled. One pull, two pull, urmmmm. It roared beautifully. A big smile came up my face and my heart beats hiked. But it stopped after two or three seconds. I supposed the fuel I manually poured in had run out and the supply from the carb was not immediately followed.

I repeated the same process a few times and saw the same problem persistent.Then I guessed the ratio of fresh air and the petrol droplets could be too low and caused the stop. So I turned the choke lever to the middle setting which would reduce the fresh air flow by half the volume. Then, one pull, two pulls, third pull, Urmmm---, hurray! it worked continually. Dreading it might stop at any time, I used it to trim the edges of the whole garden and it still ran.

So this was how I revived my edge trimmer through DIY. And this one is ranked the top one of my most unforgettable DIY accomplishment.