New Toy: A Windmill Generator

I couldn't resist. I was in Toy Kingdom last night, shopping for a little birthday token for a little girl when I found, then debated with self for ten minutes in front of the shelves and eventually took home the little cutie on the left.

I remembered that I saw the same toy before in the office, brought by the father of the little birthday girl, but I didn't take much notice of it until I saw it on the shelves. There were two other Green Science toys on the shelf: a Dynamo Torch (a flashlight powered by hand) and a Soda Can Robobug (a moving robot made out of a soda can - can't remember if it's wind up or not). The instruction manual for the Windmill Generator also mentioned an Enviro Battery kit (which I so want) but it wasn't available in Toy Kingdom.




Here's the Windmill Generator, all set-up and working:

Isn't it fun?

Earth Hour 2008

Let's join the world and turn off our lights for one hour at 8pm 29 March 2008.

Free Rice: Play and Feed Hungry People

Check out Free Rice [http://www.freerice.com]. It's a vocabulary game where, for every word you get right, 10 grains of rice are donated to United Nations World Food Program.

The first time I played, I got up to level 45 with 600-something grains. The second time around, I could barely get up to level 41 after 2000 grains. It gets harder the longer you play.

I wonder if they actually COUNT each grain? There's no mention of it anywhere in the site. Considering their total donated grains for 11 November 2007 of 136,236,930 grains of rice, they must need a lot of manpower. Or they're excellent guesstimators. Heh.

Work Gloves: My New Addiction

[nakalimutan ko may draft pala ako nito]

Some women buy shoes compulsively. I buy work gloves on a whim, and it's a recent realization.

I went back to Ace Hardware to get a 2 inch duplex strainer replacement for the kitchen sink, after having been there just the day before for a 4 1/2 inch sink basket that didn't quite fit - okay, there was a gross miscalculation on somebody's part.

After tucking the boxed basket under an arm, I realized I just didn't want to touch with my BARE hands the icky-sticky-gross old drain that I would need to replace. It had brown guck smeared all over the tail pipe, not to mention the little creepy crawlies that are probably hiding in between the folds of the plastic/water tape that Mom used to patch up the pipe. It's another entire ecosystem within the house, different from the fridge ecosystem and the one in the bathroom. Sorry, Mum.

So I went to the gloves section to get a rubber one.

Now I have:
	in plain nice lime green
	two of these plain heavy cottons, now more grey than white
	and my very first one with one fingertip nibbled off by resident rodents

I want to ride this bicycle!

I want to ride this bike! A Giant City Storm bicycle, as seen from Treehugger. (Isn't it geeeoorgous?)

Wishing for Wordpress

I wish for Multiply to hook up with Wordpress the way it does with Blogger and Typepad et. al. My Wordpress blogs are much more updated than Blogger. Well, relatively anyway, considering that I am a word-miser.

Despite that fact that I would sooner sell off my books than write down whatever comes to mind, I still managed to force myself to get a new blog on Wordpress to track my black to green thumb progress. (No, it does not involve dyes.) Now if only someone would lend me a camera, so I can document my ungrown tomato plants.

Yes, I'm a bloody board passer.

Almost a month later, and angsty about it because of the added expense and hassle about being a bloody board passer and having to register for my license. Really, I'm not happy about it. I passed but so did 236 other people out of some 500 people who took the exam. Aaaand, I failed an entry exam for a government post that I was really excited about. Bugger.

So I'm doubly depressed and there's nothing anybody can do about it. So there. Phooey.

1

10

100

1 day after the fact

so i botched the countdown. just as i probably botched the exam. no, i won't make it to top 10... hell, if i do pass, i'm sure it'll be about 100 decimal places shy of failing altogether. but that's okay, i plan to be too drunk to notice if i failed or passed the exam.

cheers.
to all the bloody board passers.

33

33 and counting

so far, i've finished reading 210 sections out of 1020, of the official gazette, otherwise known as the revised manual for geodetic engineers. 810 more to go. i've done about 10 child's-play math problems, nothing of geodesy, cartography, theory and practice.

only 33 more days to go...

34

counting...

just counting... and i haven't cleaned out the fridge yet, but i seem to have acquired a taste for coffee and toast for breakfast since i started studying.

35

Freaking out

yes, i put a little reminder on the sidebar to add to my exam anxiety, and another HUGE one where i definitely won't miss it, just to piss me off. so i suppose i'll use this blog to mark the calendar, chart my study progress and track my anxiety attacks.

if i miss a day, it means either i'm working, studying or cleaning out the fridge.

last saturday...

i cleaned the kitchen oven. yes, i did, and after doing my laundry, washing dishes, cooking breakfast and lunch too. then the following day, i again cooked lunch, cleaned up my room a little, scrubbed the bathroom tiles a bit and cleaned the microwave. all this from a girl with no bedroom floor to speak of, just a carpet of used clothes, books, loose change and scrap paper.

so what got into me? the calendar got into me. it's less than 5 weeks til my board exam (AAAARRGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHh!) and i've yet to do some extensive studying. it was then that it hit me: i hate studying more than i hate cleaning. i was procrastinating by cleaning.

well, at least my procrastination methods are productive. and i did squeeze in 6 hours of studying after all the cleaning, right after receiving news that a friend just passed his board exams (congrats, tito japee!).

----------------
" i wish that my room had a floor
i don't care too much for a door
but this walking around
without touching the ground
is getting to be quite a bore."

-some limerick i read when i was younger, forgot the author

on pink blogs

Considering I've been on a pink craze since January of 2003, it's a miracle that I haven't changed my blog to this glorious pink template before now. Half my closet is pink, my school stuff are pink, everything I have is pink. It's only right that I have a pink blog.

belated happy new year!

and i also forgot to greet my blog a merry christmas too. i'm a regular scrooge.

here's to celebrating 2 years on blogspot with all of 7 entries. [insert cheeky grin] cheers!

on prayer rallies

i was in the shower earlier and was looking back on my days at an all-girls catholic school. what the connection between them was i don't know. my thoughts are always like that, uncorrelated.

i remembered the days when we students went on prayer rallies and noise barrages, fighting for the causes that our school supported. that was when i realized we were used! what did we, the young and the innocent, really know about social issues? we were young; we should have been more worried about our studies, our crushes and such. instead we spent hours under the sun protesting against Marcos being buried in the Libingan ng mga Bayani. the causes we then espoused weren't stuff we concieved and believed by ourselves. what if there was at least one of us who had the independence to think for herself and by her own reasoning actually believed that Marcos should be buried in the Libingan ng mga bayani? would she have been exempted from the rally? and this is assuming that we had the capability to form our own beliefs at such a young age. we were railroaded to thinking in the way that our teachers thought. argh.

so what was my point? or did i even have a point in this rambling? i don't know.

bits and pieces

i've only recently noticed. someone changed my comments to poseurs. am i an oblivious victim of a practical joke or what? anyway i like poseurs better. i can now count the number of people who are poseurs like me. should've thought of it myself :p

when was the last time you did something for the first time?

the question above was taken from an airline's tv ad. and on 02/04/03 i'll finally be able to answer the question: i'll be flying international and getting out of the country for the first time! woohoo! i'll be visiting my sister in LA, CA for the whole summer. so you'd better get ready, LA. ;p

disconnect

a friend attended some new age conference where she learned that for every evil thought/action (or its milder equivalent) you have, you get disconnected from the flow of good karma. i suppose that explains the bad luck that's been happening the past few months, internetwise, for being a nonpaying and unrepentant user. not only was i deprived of free internet, my modem also gave up on me. for a whole month i did nothing but play sims (who needs to study?). thank god, i have internet access again. i wonder what i did right?

deprived!

i haven't posted anything for while. why? BECAUSE I'VE BEEN DEPRIVED! horribly but justly deprived of my free and unlimited internet account.

really. i never knew how dependent i was on the free internet until my illegal account was cut off. *oh the pain!* i spend 10 hours a day on the net for heaven's sake. what would i do with the free time? study? blech. for days, i lounged around the house lethargic and morose because i couldn't bring myself to pay - legally - for internet access. but then the withdrawal symptoms were getting worse, so eventually i did bring out the cash. *OH THE PAIN!!*

wala lang. just a totally senseless rant on the ability of the world to actually produce karma.

do not mix butter and whipped cream....in the way i did

i am an amateur cook. hell, i'm less than an amateur; i am ignorant.

this morning i made pancakes. remembering the creamy butter usually served with pancakes in most restaurants, i attempted to recreate this by mixing butter with whipped cream. after beating the butter -its already creamy texture slipped by my notice-, i dropped in a dollop of cream that i whipped earlier. immediately, white liquid which, in hindsight, must have been part of the condensed (if that's the proper term) cream, started to slosh around the bowl spraying my shirt and the kitchen with white splotches. dammit.

my sister says my cooking can only be described as comedy. i suppose that implies i should have my show in foodnetwork with an appropriate name like Bad Eats by Rubybox. This remark was made after i told her a story of how i had mistaken dark fish sauce for soy sauce, making my giniling virtually uneatable. i ate every bite of that giniling with large helpings of rice and gulps of water.

now i wonder how long it would take me to be a passable cook. a year of nonstop cooking? 5 years? a decade? in the meantime, i guess i should be resigned to and grateful for the fact that only i will be forced to eat my dishes. it saves me from being sued.

--------------------------------------

yesterday, a friend texted me asking if i had been swallowed by my computer since they haven't seen me for quite a while. reflecting on the amount of time i spent in front of my computer, i thought: no wonder my culinary skills are terrible.

added:
i changed the title because now i know the secret!. my friend told me: whip the cream, then add the microwaved butter.