The Spirit of the Marathon

Is Your Gas Tank On The Left Or Right?

When I had a replacement car for my accident weeks ago, I drove into the gas station parking on the wrong side of the pump, this happen to me when I brought my car few years back. In fact, it happens to many drivers, especially when they are new to the car. So hoe do one know which side is our gas tank? One of the ways is to actually wind down your windows and stick your head out to check, but that can be dangerous on the road.

And this is what I found.



When you look at your gas gauge on your dashboard, you will see a small icon of a gas pump right below the gauge. The handle of the gas pump will either be on the left or right side of the pump. When your tank is on the left, the handle will be on the left, and when your tank is on the right, the handle will be on the right.

Interesting right?

Blog Rating

I submitted my blog for rating, and got this.

Timber Flooring? Think Again...

The subject on destruction of rain forest is an old story that most would have heard of long ago, most reports would mentioned the seriousness of the issue and the impact it will have on our earth, but not many say anything on the other byproduct from the forest harvesting, slavery.



This blog touches not only these two issues, it also include facts on the importance of preserving the rainforest, benefits the rainforest provides for the human race and others, these is a whole lot of enriching reads.



Some of the facts we should know about the rainforest,

The Amazon Rainforest has been described as the "Lungs of our Planet" because it provides the essential environmental world service of continuously recycling carbon dioxide into oxygen. More than 20 percent of the world oxygen is produced in the Amazon Rainforest.

More than half of the world's estimated 10 million species of plants, animals and insects live in the tropical rainforests. One-fifth of the world's fresh water is in the Amazon Basin.

At least 80% of the developed world's diet originated in the tropical rainforest. Its bountiful gifts to the world include fruits like avocados, coconuts, figs, oranges, lemons, grapefruit, bananas, guavas, pineapples, mangos and tomatoes; vegetables including corn, potatoes, rice, winter squash and yams; spices like black pepper, cayenne, chocolate, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, sugar cane, tumeric, coffee and vanilla and nuts including Brazil nuts and cashews.

Currently, 121 prescription drugs currently sold worldwide come from plant-derived sources. And while 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients, less than 1% of these tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists.

The U.S. National Cancer Institute has identified 3000 plants that are active against cancer cells. 70% of these plants are found in the rainforest. Twenty-five percent of the active ingredients in today's cancer-fighting drugs come from organisms found only in the rainforest.

The blog also include these links on child slavery in Burma for harvesting teak, and slavery in Brazil here and here on cherry wood harvesting.

New Kids On The BLOG

I have decided what I want to do to my blog. I wanted to split up the personal entries from the other articles. For the time being, I have created one other BLOG to house my personal entries, and I’m going to take some time to organize the site and make it more children and family friendly. Oh, and I decided to use blogger over wordpress.

The fact that on presentation, workpress does offer more choice of templates and seems less complicated to use, but that’s also where the problem lies, the simplicity of the blogging tool is achieve by exercising more control on the usable widgets, there are no place I could insert some interesting HTML widgets that I used here. By the way, I am only referring to the free blogging services, I believe the paid service would offer more but I am not prepare for that yet.

One more thing, I am also cutting down the frequency of my entry partially due to my work commitment. And I hope that through blogging, I will continue to improve the content and context of my entries.

Revamping My Blog

I have not been posting for the last few days, I was feeling terrible, and lost. I realize that my blog is not very focus, and needed some sorting out. So I decided to revamp this blog. I will be creating another blog to house my personal collection and leave this one to serve general posts. But due to the fact that my project is in moving into a new stage where my scope covers, it is going to take a while to complete the transfer, I only hope my time management skill would start working.

Call From Supreme Court Of Singapore

I got this email today about some people been disturbed by a voice recorded message, spoken in mandarin, claiming that they're calling from the Supreme Court of Singapore.

This is a FRAUD and the police have already started investigating.

Advisory

It has come to the attention of the Supreme Court that members of the
public have received calls from individuals falsely claiming to be staff of
the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has lodged a police report on these
calls. The matter is currently under investigation by the police.

Members of the public who do not have pending cases in the Supreme Court
are advised to exercise caution when they receive telephone calls from
individuals identifying themselves as staff of the Supreme Court, directing
them to attend court or requesting for transfer of monies. Members of the
public should also note that any request for payment of monies to third
parties in respect of court proceedings should be made only if supported by
an official court order. Staff of the Supreme Court do not request for
payment of monies verbally over the telephone.

In case of doubt, members of the public should always verify the source of
the call with the Supreme Court at (1800) 338 1034.

A CHILDREN’s Garden In Botanic

I was very tired yesterday. I did not get enough sleep the night before, and what welcomes at my work site me was intense task to be rushed. I intended to write about my Sunday trip to Jacob Ballas Children’s Garden with my kids, but my memory had failed me, that was why I am only writing it today. I learn about the garden only about a week back, and since my wife have a weekend assignment (road show), the trip would keep them occupied for the weekend and also give them a break before they settle down for their preparation of year-end examination.



As I was not familiar with this area, I parked at the car park near the Singapore Botanic Garden visitor center. Following the maps and the road signs, we walk about 20 minute to the garden within the park vicinity.



The greenery is something children cannot appreciate, while I enjoy my slow walk toward the garden, my kids would hassle me about the long walk and keep asking me, “我们到了吗?” So along the way I would talk to them about the plants, and took photos for them to kill their boredom.




The place is quite well planned for the children visitors. There is a controlled entrance which is guarded, the guard is meant to ensure that children in the garden are accompanied by adult since the entry is free. There are children’s toilets and drinking points, and the canteen is right outside the garden with little chairs and tables.






The garden is separated into many stations like water-play area, cave, suspension bridge, tree house, maze, etc. With its size and the variety of play area, it could easily keep the children busy for at least half a day, especially the water-play area. As I did not prepare extra clothing for the children, plus the weather was very sunny, we left the place after only 2 hours. Now, things got tough for me and the children, they were too exhausted to take the walk back to my car but there are not alternative, so the daddy (that’s me) has to lure, encourage, push and pull them along.



This is a picture of my youngest daughter learning how to drink from the water point on her own.



On the way back, we pass by the big pond where we had an encounter with the black swan.



When we reach the visitor center at last, we took a rest before we goes off. And we manage to spot and snap a picture of a squirrel hanging around our rest area.