Still remember the water plum flower (also known as “Shui3Mei2″, Wrightia religiosa or water jasmine) that I told you previously? The plant produces seeds recently in our garden. If I am not mistaken, this is the second time I see the water plum seeds, it seldom produces seeds.

I have forgotten how it looked like during the first time because it was one or two decade ago. I cannot even remember when was it. But I have waited it for years. My blur memory about water plum seeds made me unsure that whether this plant got seed or not, until few days ago I discovered this inverted horn-shaped rows of seeds.

Multi-layer-petal Shui Mei.

Single-layer-petal Shui Mei.

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Forgetting and Remembering

Sometimes after we sensed something (through our eyes, ears, nose etc), the memories stay for our whole life and it get faded. But once we see it again, we can remember it quickly and our feeling on it will come again. Otherwise, I would not have waited for years to prove that this flower got seeds. No body ask me to wait, but I believe my internal memory (the eighth sense) make me to have a wish to see the seeds again.

For those of you who do not know about this flower, or never see this type of plant, you may ask what is so big deal about these seeds? For me, it is special because I have gone through the process of digging my memories, and given myself an answer. This is the most important part for me.

Believe me or not? Forgetting about something is more difficult than remembering. We learned our languages, we learned to ride bicycle, we learned to swim, and we also learned to drive, but we will not be able to forget it until the end of our lifes. Therefore, if you want to forget something, for example the person you hate, the things that you do not like, what you need to do is do not remember it or burn it into your brain. Remove it from brain is more difficult than storing it into the brain. We are not able to format our memory like what we did to a computer harddisk drive. Our memory is like a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM, once burned, it will be permanently there, unless accident happen such as scratches and the CD-ROM or DVD-ROM develop bad sectors.

There are two methods to forget the things you do not want to remember, first never remember it at the very begining. Second, if it is very unfortunately that you have already remembered it, what you need to do is do not think about it at all. Just like if you have a CD or DVD that you don’t like, you won’t put it in your computer or DVD player. Everytime it comes to your mind, you have the right to chase it away then you can think about some other things.

Do not remember something that you want to forget later. It’s hard, but we should try.

Do you enjoy Italian food?  We like pizza and we will usually order the Vegi Lover at Pizza Hut if we go there and we’ll ask them not to put onions in it.  Besides pizza, we have tried macroni before.  Well, not the way the Italians cook it though.  It was fried and it wasn’t so bad after all.

So, it was a sudden thought one afternoon plus I have always wanted to try something new so I decided to fried pasta with some mix vegetables.  And…ta-da… What you see above is the outcome of it.  But I think I still need to work on the flavour of the pasta a little bit.

First, I fried the chips and the vegetarian nuggets.  The nuggets are made of soy and they are delicious.  So, why kill if you want to eat nuggets. :p Meanwhile, I boiled the pasta.  Then, I fried the mix vege with some chilli sauce.  After that, the pasta was ready to be fried together.  That’s it.  Simple, isn’t it? If you happen to try to cook it, please let us know about your experience.

I have a 160GB harddisk drive now. Although I always install new huge harddrive for others (160/250/320GB), I never used it myself because I was still using 40GB for my notebook. This is the first time I have a 160GB harddisk drive for my notebook. It is 4 times bigger than my previous harddisk capacity.

Since last week, when I switched on my notebook, it kept on restarting and I couldn’t used it until I got my new huge harddrive and reinstall everything 2 days ago. I planned to get a new harddrive and did not bother to do anything on the old harddrive, first reason is I planned to reinstall the OS and program on new harddisk, and I do not want to waste time repairing the old system files. Second reason is because that old harddrive is almost full, and I needed to do a lot of backup before I can reformat and reinstall everything. Third reason is because the old harddrive have made some clicking sound, I was lucky enough to retrive all the data. I did not dare to access the harddisc too frequently in case the data get corrupted.

Haha … Let me show you the capacity clearer.

I suddenly have no idea how should I use such a big space. I am not going to download movies because I do not have time to watch it, the downloading speed is faster then my watching speed. I also do not like to put unnecessary files on harddisk because it will mess up my files. Hmm… The only thing that I think of now is photo. Yes, I have a lot of photos. I will reload them from DVD/CD to the new harddisk. The rest of the space I will use it to store backups of my important data.

If you are familiar with computer parts, I am sure that you know that there are 2 type of harddisk, PATA (IDE) and SATA. Now SATA is taking over the place of PATA harddisk drive, SATA price is lower, and the speed is faster. Who want the PATA anymore? I want it. I need it. Because my poor old notebook is still using the PATA. I cannot find the converter. When I first searched for 2.5 inch notebook PATA (IDE) HDD 2 weeks ago, my suppliers told me that either no stock or the price was too high. I am afraid that it is the end of my notebook life. I kept on searching. Only recently they have stock coming in. I know that PATA is not going to extinct so fast but soon, and their price keep on increasing, unlike the new SATA harddisk.

Here I made a comparison:-

SATA - Faster transfer rate, Price keep on dropping, 1TG or more available.

PATA - Slower transger rate, Price keep on increasing, smaller capacity available.

If you have an old computer, I suggest that you think carefully how long you still want to stick to it or prepare to get a new computer. If you still want to use it for years, you may need to get ready the parts now just in case you cannot find the parts anymore, or the price of the parts become expensive.

RAM is a good example. New faster DDR2-Dimm 2GB costs around RM100, but the old slower PC133-SDRAM 512MB costs about RM 200. The capacity is 4 times less and slower, but the price is double. But those who still use the old computer need it. So another suggestion, if you have budget, it’s better to get new system instead of upgrading old type of system.

This is my old 40GB notebook harddisk drive. I wanted to show you my new 160GB harddisk, but I cannot wait to used it and I installed it into my notebook right after I brought it home. :p I am not going to say bye bye to this harddisk yet, I connect it using an external USB connector. Haha… it funtions as a 40GB flash disk. I have a big flash disk now.

Another tips for you if you plan to buy computer. Never buy a secondhand old computers which cost hundreds. They are not upgradeable, or their parts may be expensive. The old computers usually have no warranty too. If you can double or tripple your budget, you actually get 8 times, 10 times bigger capacity, faster or more benefit. Some new part now is offering life time warranty.

When I talk about IT, I can have a lot of thing to share with you, but I have to stop it here. This blog is talking about nature, but I do not think it is out of topic, because computers have merged into our life and we may not be able to deny that it is not part of the nature. :p