Blue Hyacinth

Saw these beautiful blue hyacinths at the local grocer and decided to get some for my garden. One of them finally flowered. Some of the buds fell off while I was planting it. It would have looked much better otherwise.






Join

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

Teachers on strike

Saw a number of kids on the street today and was wondering about it. Later learnt that the teachers are on strike. The one -day strike was called by the National Union of teachers to protest against low wages. A number of working parents are fuming mad as they have to take off from work to look after their kids. I wonder what would happen to the kids whose parents are unable to get the day off.

I don't know why but I suddenly felt like listening to one of my old favourite songs - that we used to sing in school.



Pink Floyd - Another Brick in the Wall

Dinner at My China, Coventry

Last Sunday evening both my wife and I were feeling too lazy to cook and we decided to eat out instead. We went to our favourite Chinese restaurant - my China at Priroy Place, Coventry City Centre.

This was our second visit to the establishment. Charles Lim the friendly proprietor is originally from Malaysia (the World seems like a small place).

They have such a extensive list of food on their menu , it's quite hard to choose. We finally decided upon Crispy Vegetarian Spring Rolls (starters), Malaysian Style Fried Ho Fun, Egg Noodles and Vegetarian 'Ma Po' Tofu with rice. As usual we had Chinese Tea to go along with the food.

Here are some pics. Sorry they aren't that clear as they were taken using my Skypephone and the light was quite dim inside.


Egg Noodles


Malaysian Style Fried Ho Fun


Vegetarian 'Ma Po' Tofu


Rahil trying out chop sticks for the first time and somehow she managed.

Our son refused to get off the stroller and slept through the whole dinner. He only woke up when we got home.

The food was great and reasonably priced. Would definitely be going there again.

The cabbage that survived

Some of you might recall my post "Cabbage and caterpillars" that I posted last year showing pics of my cabbage plant infested with caterpillars.

You might be surprised to learn that the cabbage plant is still standing. It survived the caterpillars



the winter


and is now even taller than my son.


A true survivor.


Join

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

Night in Nottingham

Spent a night yesterday at the Travelodge in Nottingham city centre. My wife is attending a course at the University of Nottingham and I decided to tag along with the kids. However, I had to come back today morning as I was presenting a paper at the Spring Doctoral Conference here at the University of Wariwck.

I had wanted to try out the 3 USB dongle over there but was so tired out when we finally got there, that I didn't get the chance to test it out. Just chatted with my wife over Skype and the sound quality was OK though the connection did drop once.

Will find out what she thinks about the 3 USB dongle when she comes back tomorrow.


A view of the street from the our room.

Playing with bubbles

Recently bought a bubble machine. The mechanism is quite simple, you fill up the tank with the bubble mix and a fan at the back blows air through of bubble wands turning round. It produces hundreds of bubbles per minute and kids love it.









Definitely beats blowing bubbles yourself.

Where a million dollars does not mean anything

I was reading about the really sad affairs in Zimbabwe in an article on the BBC site and I recall an old National Geographic magazine that I once read. That issue was full of optimism about the country that had just gained independence and had taken on the new name of Zimbabwe (1980) and it's great leader, Robert Mugabe.



Now the country seems to have gone down the drain like so many other African countries. It's amazing that a cup of tea and two glasses of water can cost 204 million Zimbabwe dollars.

One guy can do this to a country.

Read the article: Mugabe's stranglehold on Zimbabwe

3 Dongle dangled

Take a look at what came via the post yesterday.

I am a satisfied 3 Skypephone user and had been thinking about signing up for their mobile broadband service after reading about it. Just imagine my delight when I was offered the opportunity to try it out for FREE for 3 months with absolutely no data restrictions.

The free gifts that came with the "dongle" was completely unexpected. I don't mind - I love free stuff.

Anyway, the dongle is actually a Huawei E169G USB Modem and looks like a bit like a normal USB flash drive.





Before using it, you have to take out the USIM card holder and insert the USIM card. Stick the dongle into one of your laptop's USB ports.



The modem software installs automatically. Once installed, all I have to do is click "Connect" on the pop-up screen and I am done - mobile broadband Internet access.

Over the next three months, I will be testing out the modem from various locations in the UK. Look out for more reviews and technical details on my tech blog Adamok dot net.

Thanks to Sam and the other guys at 3mobilebuzz for giving me the opportunity to try out the modem and of course, the other freebies.

April snow in Coventry

Woke up this morning to find our backyard completely white. It had snowed during the night. It's crazy. It's supposed to be end of Spring by now but that's the UK - you can't predict the weather.

TalkTalk broadband not so bad after all

Just a few posts back I ranted about TalkTalk being the worst broadband provider in the UK. Well, I might be wrong after all.

Last Sunday, at our friend's house in Birmingham, the topic of broadband speeds suddenly came up. My friend is on Virgin broadband. On checking the speed, we found out that their speeds were slightly lower than ours. However, I should point out that their promised maximum speed was only "up to 4 Mb" unlike our "Up to 8 Meg download speeds".

Have any of you guys been able to get up to at least 50% or more of the download speeds promised by your broadband provider?

Flying penguins

A BBC team has found a unique species of penguins.

unlike any penguin...

These penguins can fly and they migrate to warmer climes in winter.

Check out the Penguins video on the BBC site.

BTW, today is April 1st.