Look before you leap

Today is a special day. It is the first time I am able to put up a post in this blog on a day that comes once in every four years. February 29, 2012.

We all know what a leap year is... but why does it have 366 days instead of the 365 that we get from a normal year? Nowadays, it is very easy to get an answer to this question... just google. But back when I was in primary school, I remember looking for the answer in a thick book in the school library.

It was 1972 and I was in Standard 4. My teacher told me that the month of February in that year has 29 days. When I asked why, she told me to look for the answer in a book that explains about our solar system. I remember looking at an illustration in the book showing the Earth with an imaginary line circling the Sun. The caption below the picture says that the time it takes for Earth to do one complete revolution around the Sun is 365 and 1/4 days. This then equals one year. But then, it would be impractical to have a quarter day at the end of each year... just imagine that there would be a December 32nd that lasts for only 6 hours, from midnight to 6am, and that New Year's Day (1st January) would then start at 6am. Everything would be out of sync.

It was Julius Ceasar who first introduced the concept of leap days when he invented his Julian calendar at around 45 BCE. It was not terribly accurate and was later improved by a new calendar created by Pope Gregory XIII around 1,500 years later. The Gregorian calendar now forms the basis of time tracking and measurement for most of the modern world today. But why do we need to add that extra day every four years? It is because of the seasons. If we don't add the extra day, we lose about 6 hours every year and winter in the northern hemisphere would start to move forward. The recoupment of that 6 hours each year for 4 years ensures that the seasons happen at roughly the same time every year.

While refreshing my knowledge on this subject earlier today, I found out that the Earth's orbit is not exactly 365 and a quarter days. It is approximately 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds... and I say approximately because this duration can vary slightly depending on the relative position and influence of other planets. This means that even adding a day after every four years is not really that perfect if we look at the big picture. But the effect may only be significant in 8,000 years time. That's way ahead in the future for us to worry about... let the people living at that time solve it themselves.

Two weddings and a sunset

It was a packed day today. The first wedding was at Rengit in Batu Pahat while the second one was at Muar. After the second wedding, I headed out to Masjid Sultan Ibrahim by the south bank of Sungai Muar. I had hoped to catch some good sunset pics at Tanjung Emas near the river mouth but unfortunately the clouds were dark and overcast.

1st wedding : Bride is my colleague named Zurainah

Proof of attendance at 2nd wedding : gift boxes and a telur pindang

Masjid Sultan Ibrahim, Muar

Muar's second mosque, across the river

Dark clouds indicating heavy rains on the way

You never knew it had a name

"Sometimes it is," she said.
I nodded. Watched the rapid blinking of her eyes, shiny with unspilled tears. Watched the moisture that had pooled in the little valley above her top lip. What was that indentation called? I always forgot. But God, didn't it feel nice the way her fingertips were grazing the veins on the back of my hand?

The above passage comes from a novel that I just finished reading last night. It is the latest book written by Wally Lamb and is titled `The Hour I First Believed'. I bought the book at Popular Book Store's fair a few months back and it has taken me this long to finish reading it. At two and a half inches thick, it is one of the thickest novels I have held in my hands. And it has a great story. Pure human drama that spans a few generations from the 1800's to the modern day. But this post is not a book review... I may do that a bit later, if I do manage to digest and summarize the multiple-layered stories into a few lines.

A very good read but only for those with patience

Let's go back to the passage above, specifically to the part about the groove in the middle of our upper lip right below the nose. I am sure the author knows what it is called but he wrote it as a question, perhaps to prod his readers to actually find out for themselves.

The moment I read the sentence, I became agitated with myself... because just a few weeks before, I had read an amusing website link shared by a friend that shows a list of `25 everyday things you never knew had names', and that groove on the upper lip was one of the 25... but I could not remember. Feeling a bit peeved at my poor memory, I put down the book, fired up my laptop and went online to search for the link.

Philtrum... that's what it is called. So now you know...

Don't book a judge by his cover

Firstly... make sure you have read the title right. No, I did not type it wrongly.

I came across a comic strip in The Sunday Times of Singapore yesterday which gave me a chuckle. The strip is called Get Fuzzy by Darby Conley, and it was about a certain fable that makes a twist of a well-known English proverb. I did a search and found that the strip is also available online. Click on the image below for a larger view :

Source from -> gocomics.com

While googling for the comic strip, I came across a limerick which touches on the same subject but at a different angle :

An old British justice named Glover
Once murdered his wife and her lover.
A clue was then found:
His wig on the ground!
But you can't book a judge by his cover.

Heheheh... This lovely pun came from Mr Graham Lester, whose website has other funny poems.

If you find the above two pieces amusing, then you might be interested to know that there is another cheeky version that deals with `don't cover a judge by his book'. But we'll leave that story for another day...

Filthy rich

The well-known phrase `filthy rich' must have been originally used by the not-so-rich people to describe the overwhelmingly rich ones who gained their wealth by unfair or improper means. Nowadays, the negative connotation of the phrase is somewhat muted and labelling some people as filthy rich simply means that they are exceedingly wealthy, no insult intended. I wouldn't mind if someone calls me as such... except that I do not qualify.

A few days ago, the Malaysian Business magazine reported that Robert Kuok is still the country's richest man. The staff of that magazine have been doing complex calculations over a number of years and comes out with an annual list of Malaysia billionaires, based on their reported holdings in listed companies. Kuok is said to be worth RM45.7 billion. The richest bumiputera is Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary, who comes in at no. 5 with RM9.53 billion.

Wow.... billions, huh? Let's just try put that into perspective, shall we?

Let us just look at RM1 billion... that's a One with nine Zeros behind it. Assume for simplicity's sake, that I have worked 50 years of my life to get that RM1B. On average that works out to RM20 million a year or RM1.67 million a month... and we are not talking about gross salary here. At present, I'm taking home less than 0.5% of that monthly figure. In other words, those billionaires are waaaaaay out of my league! Can dream only meh....

But if we don't dream, we'd never achieve reality, right? Yeah, that's what I thought. There was this one time I was listening to this particular guy talking about how to become rich. He was asking his audience if we knew anyone in particular who wakes up every morning and have thousands of ringgit coming his way without doing anything? Of course we didn't. It's Robert Kuok, he said. And do we want to be rich like him? Of course we do. So let's join this new amazing business programme that would help us realize our dreams, he pitched. Many others have participated and made it big, so what are we waiting for?

It was a multi-level marketing recruitment seminar and I was duped. Yeah... don't be surprised, I did try MLM once. I guess the dream of hitting my quick million had dulled my senses. I quickly learned that sales is not my skill at all. I doubt any of those guys in the annual billionaire list got rich from being involved in direct-selling. *Sigh* Enough of the dreaming... and back to the grind.