Dinos again...

Has anyone ever thought about what colours these dinos were? The answer is extremely simple: Yes. I'm pretty sure someone else asked this question before, whether the T-rex was bluish-brown or greenish-pink. As far as I know not a single black and white photo remained containing dinos. I think all the ones what were taken was damaged by the freezing temperature during the ice age. And by digging out some old bones, will give you not even a hint about the colour of their owner's skin.

I assume if there were any photos left, they would have looked just as good as the ones below. Some artists decided to add some colours to old historical photos. I think they look quite amazing as they are filled with life again.

Historic pictures in colour: Albert Einstein, Summer 1939 Nassau Point, Long Island, NY

Here is the original article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2401926/Iconic-images-Library-Congress-brought-life-group-artists-historians.html

School at Down Under...

How is the school in Australia? I have no clue because I went to school in Hungary, therefore I have no idea whether it is better or worse than in Hungary. It is always a good topic to start a fist fight about the low or high level of education in Australia among my Hungarian friends. We always have a debate about  how much more we learnt in Hungary. When this comes up as a conversation we always say that "Google is my friend, and I always hated to learn how much was the annual yield of bauxite in Poland in 1980.

But this is not what I want to tell you. My son who is 5 and half year old, and goes to pre-school, saw a dino at the front of his books and said: "Daddy, that is a Brachiosaurus". "Great" I said, I've never heard about it in my past 38 years. So I told him that he has to teach me the names of the dinos they learn about at school this term.

After school, just like a good puppy, he came to me and said, that it is dino time. So I took my computer and said "Google is my friend, then I showed him this image.
He named all of them, except the Ichtyosaurus and Saber-toothed Tiger with perfect pronunciation. Even though I've never told them or never showed them any dinos before. He couldn't read their names because he hardly can read and the fonts are quite small as you can see. They started this topic in school only 6-8 weeks ago. I have no idea how the teachers teach them, whether they queue them up in front of their whiteboard and make them tell the name of the dinos until they collapse and beg for mercy or just simply tell them once. Either way, it is a big achievement. I know kids are into dinos at this age, but I would rather name them all T-rex or Bruno or Alex if I were 6.

I don't think my kids are exceptionally smart but I can see they've learnt something. If the only thing they can name in year five is some old dusty bones, I'll come back and write an other post about the education system. Until then, thanks for reading.

Holiday like a King

Imagine a 14 storey building, around 300 meters long, floating on the ocean full of 2000 people, pushing down the earth with 70000 tons (Which is equivalent to around 70000 cars). How long is a car, around 5m? Let's say you put all those cars in front of each other and you will get a 350 km long queue of cars. Impressive, isn't it. What is more interesting is that this 70000 ton which is emerges around 25 meters above the water only sinks 8 meters into the water. 

So I was fortunate (it is a bit mystified - It rather happened by working my ass off for years) to spend 7 days with the family on a cruise on Pacific Ocean. I've never even seen a ship so huge before only on TV, so when I arrived at the port I couldn't believe my eyes, that the 14 storey high building in front of me is actually the ship. It is massive. It is ginormous. Getting onto it is the same as boarding an airplane, with security checks, custom officers, baggage check-in and walking through long corridors.

The ship has heaps of facilities, bar, shops, restaurants, gym, pool, theatre, lots of deck chairs and the best thing, childcare. I was looking forward to leave my 3 kids in this facility and enjoy at least a few hours of uninterrupted quality time with my wife when we could have a cocktail, maybe a decent meal, or have a nap on one of those nice deck chairs. We really needed a break after 3 years constant babysitting.

With the kids, we preferred the buffet style eating, which gave us plenty of options to choose from and to please the kids. It was a bit of an adventure to take the two 3 years olds and the little 1 year old to the restaurant, hold their hands while try to balance 2 trays each with 3 plates and around 20 types of food on it including the dessert. The staff was really helpful and that was good.

Second day we shoved the kids into the childcare centre and they were really excited about the playground and the lots of toys. Until we told them we need to go for a while, but we will be back shortly. They said they needed to go as well and started to put their shoes on. Okay, okay. Let's spend a bit more time together in the playground and by the time they will get into the heat of the games, won't notice our departure. They did, and put the toys back neatly and started to put their shoes on.
We tried it in the next 2 days then we gave up.

Seven days past very quickly. We were up at 5:30am, we tried to entertain the kids with some books and toys while we were half asleep. So it was around 6:15 by the time we hit the restaurant. After the breakfast we walked around the ship and got back to the cabin by 8:30 Those days when we stayed on the ship, first 2 days and the last 2 days, we walked around the ship, watched the never ending entertainment, ate, then watched some show, then ate, then tried the swimming pool then ate then had a short nap then ate then watched a show, then dinner then sleep. Watching a show really meant that we walked in with 3 kids, they sat down, they enjoyed themselves, then after around 7 to 11 minutes they lost interest and started to crawl around. So we were collecting the kids under the chairs, make sure they don’t get addicted to bubble gums found under the chairs. So after 5 minutes crawling on all fours in front of the seats and apologizing to almost half of the audience, who were smiling and tagged the kids as cute, we left the theater and we had look for some other entertainment for the kids. We took them to the lifts, to the front, to the back, to the top deck, to the pool, to the nightclub (strictly during the day when it was quiet and it looked like a normal restaurant with beautiful view to the front.) However the view was almost the same in every direction, water and water and more water. It was a full day exercise, it was more like a boot-camp with Fleurs-de-Lis, so we were so tired at the end of the day, that we fall asleep earlier than the kids.

At least we holidayed together, serving their every wish and needs and they enjoyed it, like a king. We enjoyed it too, especially the afternoon nap.

March 2011

How long should a pair of shoes last

I'm talking about semi decent work shoes, black, leather, with rubber sole, not the fancy dress shoes. They are not even the crappy cheap $29 ones! I know it depends how you wear them. Thanks. So, here is what I think. If I spend $150 dollars on a pair of shoes, I expect them to last for at least a year when I only wear them on weekdays and walk only to and from the train station , altogether 20 minutes a day. Is it too much? It certainly seems so.

After the sole got cracked of my old shoes I went to Myer and said to myself: I rather spend a bit more but then I will have quality shoes which will last longer. It's worth the extra money. After 5 months of wearing my fancy new more expensive shoes, I was really disappointed to see that the sole got loose from the top part ... So I took it back. The guy who I bought it from said that they can send it away to repair it. I said what? C'mon, you can't be serious... This company makes bigger profit each year than I can imagine, and yet you are about to send my shoe probably downstairs to Mister Minit on ground floor of the shopping centre to have it repaired instead of replacing it? They're not even 5 months old and I used it moderately. Sorry, said the guy, it is worn off, I can't replace it. 'Yes, it is worn off because I used to walk in them. ' 'And you should have looked after them better anyway ' , he said. Like what, pour some glue between the sole and the leather every week or what? Obviously I couldn't deal with this guy, so I tried to find someone else, of course no manager in store, and if I want to talk to her I have to come back another day. Yes, it is the 21st century and phones don't exist yet. Neither good customer service. So I left the shoe there, then went back home and wrote a letter to the store manager and explained my concern. No response for days, then I received back my shoes repaired which lasted for another 3 days. So took it back and found the manager who apologised and gave me my money back. So the company cleared itself but I still not convinced that more money gives you better quality.

So my next pair of shoes came from the little corner store. And it wasn't even $50 after some discount and it looked just as good as the expensive one. Also leather and everything. And guess what , the sole came off after 4 months. Maybe there is something wrong with the way I walk, yes that must be it. This time I didn't argue whether I used the shoe extensively, I just simply left it there. In 2 hours time I got an sms from the shop, shoes cannot be repaired please go back to the store for replacement. Great. That's what I call customer service. But the shoe model is discontinued, no similar model, only ugly ones , and thanks to the change of the season only boots are available and a few cheap looking work shoes, but of course no money back, only store credit ... So this time I ended up with a shoe for $100, and time starts now.

At the library

Today my workteam gathered at the library - instead of the office - to plan the next 6 months at work. The library offers nice meeting rooms for free and it has a good atmosphere to open your minds. Or so they say. Breakfast was included , thanks to the BigBoss,. Whohoo, free breakfast therefore I skipped the breakfast at home and I decided to pop in for a blood test, which I should have done 6 months ago .

I turned up at the library cafe early to wait for the rest of my team. Because I'm a big kid when it comes to needles, I still had my ugly cotton ball under a band-aid on my arm hiding under my jumper. I reckon those cotton balls are out of fashion because they always stick into the wound for 3 days and why don't they just use some good band-aids, I can't comprehend. Anyhow, they are still in use. So there I am, sitting at the corner of the cafeteria, trying to administer my daily multivitamin from my little alufoil sachet. My so called band-aid is forming a white cross so huge that even a Apache could land on my arm. Then suddenly I realised I looked exactly like the guy I've seen one day on the train who tried to hike high giving himself a shot and sipping some transparent fluid from the cup of a bottle. I expected the security guard to turn up next to me at any time with teasers and take me to the basement of the library, smash me into pulps then hand me over to the cops.

As no guard appeared, once everything settled down in my mind I took out my Kindle ereader and started to read. I like gadgets and I like my kindle.
Honestly, if you asked me 2 years ago how many books I have read since I can read, I would have said: eight. And this would include all the books we had to read during the vacations at school. The whole "loving and enjoying reading" started probably 2 years ago when my new colleague disappeared for lunch every day with a book in his arm and I started to get a bit jealous about it. He could be spending his lunch time in a totally different world, flying spaceships to worlds what I couldn't even imagine before, meet with creatures with incredible skills, etc. My wife in fact was reading all the time too, but for some reason I didn't catch it from her. So I got my first sci-fi book from this guy and I enjoyed it. Enjoyed it so much, I started to borrow my wife's books . I most probably was the last person on the face of the Earth to read the Da Vinci Code from Dan Brown... And I quite liked the experience. So, now I like reading and it is all good.

So, back to the library. That morning, I took out my kindle, then I came to the realisation that what I'm doing is not quite right, or is it? Library is like a sacred place, you have to be quiet, walk slowly, and not throwing books around, just take a book from the shelf and read it or take it home to read.

And here I am, reading on my gadget, which was similar to walking into a church and start listening to the Bible on my MP3 player...

Or maybe I'm just scared of places I don't attend too often and mystify them too much... I shall try the MP3 player experience in the church one day to see if it is just me or it has become perfectly okay to keep up with the technology...