Blurred vision

Don't attempt to adjust your monitor. No you don't need a new pair of eyeglasses either. The pictures of the "Blue passion" flower (Passiflora caerulea) in this entry are blurred.

I really like the framing of the picture above. Aside from the flower in the foreground, the plants in the background help portray an image of a lush garden. Its unfortunate that nothing is in focus.

The picture below would have been nice also if not for the bucket of water in the background, plus if the image is clearer.

This is an example of what I meant in my postscript on my earlier entry. In this case, the framing is excellent, but the focus is way off. On top of that, the images are quite dark too. They have no good camera in the farm so they have to make do with their cellphone's camera.

But with all good intentions, before the blooms fade, Mom took a snapshot of the flowers so they could show me the fruit of their hard work. And the images, no matter how dark or out of focus, are all clear in my mind.

Kidding aside

In my two older entries, "Kids stuff" and "New kids on the block", I wrote about the new additions to the farm, the hybrid kids (or 'upgrade' as the locals call it), offsprings of our native does and a purebred Anglo-Nubian buck. Missing in those entries are pictures of the baby goats.



Finally! After waiting for several weeks, I got hold of some pictures of our very first batch of upgraded/hybrid goat kids.

There are now six kids, four girls and two boys. Although brothers and sisters from different mothers, they all display distinct traits of their father, a bulky body and long, drooping ears.

The kids aren't weaned yet so their moms have to be around to feed, groom and change their diapers while their dad is busy flirting with the other ladies of the flock.

These pictures were taken using Mom's cellphone camera, so the image quality is not very good. But still, aren't they cute?

Red is green again

After missing the opportunity to take a picture of the "red" jade vine (read "Red is green" entry) when it flowered for the first time, a few weeks later the vine bloomed again.

The red jade's first flower buds.

At that time my brother was not available to travel to the farm to take pictures. Rather than lose the opportunity again, mom took pictures of the flowers using her cellphone's camera. The pictures sat on her cellphone for a couple of months since they had no way to extract the files from it. Finally last month, they were able to transfer the files from the cellphone to my brother's PC via bluetooth.

Granting that the image quality is not as good as those taken using a branded camera, they all turned out pretty much okay. Below are the pictures mother took of the flowers of the red jade vine.







After I saw these images, there is no doubt, this plant is one worth collecting and propagating.

Rise and shine!

Exactly a week ago from today, I received a text message from my mother. I was a bit alarmed when I saw that the time was just past 5:00AM where the text message originated. And I'm pretty certain my mom doesn't get out of bed that early.

Apparently, she received a notification message from the bank. And she wanted to know if I had something to do with it. Partly, yes since I did send money but the text message was definitely not my idea. Here's what it said:
DOE JOHN X. sent you remittance 9876543210 which has been credited to the account. You may now withdraw the funds. - TheBank.

She was awakened by the incoming message alert and was surprised receiving such a message because the bank didn't use to notify her whenever there's a fund transferred to her account.

We just concluded that this might be a new service implemented by the bank. Mind you, I really do appreciate this new service. It's quite nice because now they notify beneficiaries whenever they receive a remittance.

My only beef about this service is that the timing of their text message is simply bad. In my mother's case, it's like an unsolicited wake up call. Maybe they should fine-tune their system to take into consideration the current time where they're sending their courtesy messages.

My two cents' worth

Actually its at least 10 cents.

Ever since we began this little project, my calls to mom have become very frequent. Used to be, I call at most once a month just to hear a familiar voice, something I don't get even from frequent exchanges of text messages.

Now, apart from text messaging, I have been calling (or should I say harassing) them at least once a week. Just so I could get the latest and greatest (though not always) news from them.

That is why I was deeply delighted when my long distance carrier has lowered their per minute charge to 10 cents (from 17 cents) when calling a number on a certain cellphone carrier. Now that is cheaper still than calling a landline, which used to be the cheapest. Its a good thing that my mom, the person I call a lot, subscribes to that carrier while the rest in our family use the competitor's services.

I won't be mentioning the name of my long distance carrier nor the cellphone carriers and their per minute charges since that would be free advertisement for them. Isn't it? But if you want to know, I'll gladly share the info privately.

I know there are still cheaper ways to call international long distance. But if it requires dialing an 800, 888, 877 or 866 toll-free numbers plus account number... forget it. I won't torture my poor finger pressing those extra numbers when I can dial direct.

But if you know of a cheaper direct dial rate to a cellphone, please let me know. Every penny saved is a penny I could use to stretch my limited budget for the farm.