Million years old fossil wedding present from my long time German friend.

 

We were given this (see video) present from my good friend Heinz Strobel whom I have lost touch since the early 1990s. He is a lovely man who lived by himself in Balingen Germany very near to the Black Forest separating Germany and France. 

My wife and I went to visit him in 1993 during our honeymoon, and I will one day post those wonderful pictures of us, cycling and walking in the Black Forest. Heinz had a dark green Wolkswagen (people's car) and it came with a convertible roof so we had lots of fun posing with the car and Heinz.

He gave May and I this and I have always wondered what this was. I managed to find out only today, as Microsoft Bing decided to show this on their wallpaper these few days.

This, my readers and friends is an ammonite fossil, from the (drumroll) Jurassic Period.

They are an extinct group of marine mollusk animals closely related to modern day octopusses,squids and cuttlefish.

Their most distinctive features are the tightly coiled spiral shells divided into chambers (see the rings on the video), which often display intricate beautiful patterns or suture lines, where the chamber walls meet the outer shells.

These molluscs appeared around (drum roll) 400 million years ago and went extinct alongside the dinosaurs.

Cool information huh ?

Why perform Environmental Testing ? This video explains it in 3 minutes.

 

A video explaining the need for environmental testing and the most common types of environmental chambers manufactured for various industries all over the world.

In the next posts I will go more into the details of the 3 most important parameters of environmental chambers and what are the differences between the simulation of the environment and the stimulation nature of environment stress screening.

For more detail, please visit :

https://www.com.sg

E     : qrasales@qra.com.sg

         mark@qra.com.sg 

Environmental Testing services - ASTM F 1980 - 21 and ISO 11607 - 1

 

QRA International is the dedicated test service centre for all your testing needs. See the video above and visit our website for more details :

We will serve you and your interests speedily, applying our many years of industry experience to give you unparalleled satisfaction. Our clients range from local Singapore MNCs, to Asian clients all the way to Europe and Australia.

Email us at :

E :  mark@qra.com.sg

      qrasales@qra.com.sg

https ://www.qra.com.sg

My goal for the next 1 month - learn basic French to converse properly.

 

As I am resting at home from a surgery for a month, I have decided I need to re-aquaint myself with the smooth language of French. It sounds classy and there is the nasal twang to it which makes the language rather 'cool'. 

As I have learnt and relearnt the language over more than a decade, I need to find French native speakers to converse in else the language becomes redundant and its like something which I keep in the closet and never use.

I have finished the 'holiday French' of words and pledge to learn basic French to achieve a vocabulary of 500 and some proper grammar use by end of this year.

Having goals is wonderful.

The trick is to make it into a good habit.

Cue - Routine - Reward.

Cue (some French business associate is arriving in 1 month's time)

Routine - spend up to 1 hour practicing it at home and in the spare moments in office.

Reward - Once the language is learnt, I can travel to France, and most of Europe armed with 2 of the most recognised languages in the continent (Spanish being the third).

Carpe Diem 

Dunning Kreuger - A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

 

                       Here is a second post on Dunning Kreuger - the height of stupidity. 

The jist of intelligence or 'getting it' essentially is to admit that you don't know all there is to know about everything.

An intelligent person (logical and analytical thinking only) in the narrow sense of the word, accepts that he doesn't know everything. For example, the learning of a  new language will take a decently smart person anything from 2 weeks to 12 months (total immersion) and that is true for 98% of people.

For the not so smart amongst us, we just pick up a few phrases (without the grammar, fine tonality,declensions, sometimes gender specific nouns (like in German) and just 'wing it'. After a few months of trying, we think and say to ourselves, Yay I am so smart. So for a dumb person, he gets by with 50 words and 'goes with the flow'. This (if he is truly unaware) is 'holiday French - reserved for tourists and people who just visit the country of France for a few days.

When in the room with the native speakers (like say German), he will not be able to realise his inadequacies as the native speakers will most times accomodate him and make him feel 'accepted'. 

Is he then 'smart' ? The person needs to first understand the depth of language he / she wishes to attain. Secondly acknowledge that acquiring that level of speaking / writing (even more difficult) will not be easy and require a lof of time, effort and practice.

Once he gets the grasp of the language, he needs to practice, practice and practice. Immerse himself in the language day in day out

If he manages to pick up fast, go past the standard catch phrases tourists use and actually build sentences using basic grammar, then he is getting there and 'quite smart'. 

Many folks end up in the basic category and think they are some kind of genuises in their own mind.

Hence the knowledge they attain will only be very shallow and it is known as 'cheuffer' or 'reporter' knowledge - they know enough to entertain but are not domain experts.

Hence knowing a little knowledge and pretending to be an 'expert' the dumb person will be caught out - if he actually knows it or nor. Most likely he doesn't and it flies above his head.

Some heads of Government are  currently like that and it is a pretty embarrassing sight to watch.

3,000,000 views ! My humblest and deepest thanks to all

 

                                                         At Nami Island S. Korea. Dec 2010 

I am humbled, deeply grateful and appreciative for all the views my little blog has been having this 16 years since I started this writing adventure. If there is anything I am most grateful for, it is to my wonderful family, my wife and 2 sons who have helped me in this journey of growth and challenges as they coming along my way.

3,000,000 views is by no means a small number. I just hope and pray that the interest in this blog keeps up on this trajectory and I am trying new means to add interesting content to all that I post.

Carpe Diem. 

Chicken Dakalbi in Seoul

 

During our last family visit to Seoul, after our ski adventures at Daemyung resort, we had a couple of days and we had some fantastic meals. One such meal was this at Dakalbi street in Myeongdong area.

What is Dakalbi ? Well, it is a pan fried marinated diced chicken, with rice cakes, vegetables and the famous Korean chilli sauce Gochujang paste. There are lots of other condiments like soy sauce, garlic, ginger, some sugar and sesami oil. I think there were certain grades of the chilli sauce, and we chose the mildly spicy one.

The pan is huge, and they have various sizes, some for 1, 2 , 4 , 6 and 8. The server normally cooks the whole shebang in front of the guests, as in our case. 

The vegetables are : lettuce, some cabbage, capsicum, onion, spring onions and some perilla leaves. There are the usual side dishes like sweet radish, kimchi, and anchovies. 

The photo above shows my elder son Noel with my wife. 

After 5 days at the ski resort, eating from mess trays, and communicating with the wonderful YMCA staff, we were all ready to try authentic Korean food, and this post highlights what a fun meal it was for all of us. 

Since we were not too comfortable eating only rice cakes (tteok). the second serving was for frying with rice. Now, that went down pretty well :) 

                                                      With my younger son Andrew 

So if you are ever in Myeongdong Street, do make a beeline for Dakalbi Street and give this touristy dish a try. Its something for the winter to warm the cockles of a skiier' s heart.