Tuesday, January 20, 2009

MAKING AN AQUARIUM AT HOME

The beauty inside your house can be enhance when you have an aquarium in the living room. Instead of buying a ready-made aquarium set sold in the pet shop, do it by yourself. All you need are the following:

Use ten gallon tank for easy mobility. You need air pump with tubing, air stones, box filters, under gravel and living plants. See to it that the aquarium can hold water to avoid crack to the surface. Use cover with working light. The air pump should have a steady and firm flow of water without any blockage. The heating devise is free from any rust. Be sure that the heater glass has no crack.

Run your aquarium without a fish inside. This will be your trial run. After a week, add fish you like, but keep the quantity to the minimum. Then add live plants for greater effect.

After you rinse out the tank with under gravel filter inside, start putting other ornament. Wash the gravel before putting it. It should be clean and free from any debris.

To hold down the plants inside, you need rocks and settle it into shelves near the back of the aquarium. Use live plants rather than plastic plants so that the aquarium have a natural look.

As the materials are inside (except fish) now the time for you to add water half-way at first. To avoid destroying your arrangement, use folded newspaper as your dish so that the water slowly transported inside the aquarium and fill it without moving the lay-out of the materials inside.

At first, the water will cloud, but it can clear within 1 or 2 days. If possible do not use chlorinated water. If not possible, use conditioner you can buy in pet shop and use it to neutralize the water from the chemicals.

If you think your aquarium still need additional adjustment regarding its arrangement, do it because the water is only half-way in the aquarium.

After the tank is fully filled, hook up airlines to filter and test the heating system. It will take 3 to 4 days checking the thermometer to let the thermostat to regulate the temperature to 78'F. This conditioning period will allow any impurities to reduce or disappear while the bacteria will now begin cycling the wastes.

Choose harmless gold fish or other kind of fish that are peaceful. Start it with only 4 or 5 fish for the first months. After your purchase, acclimatize them slowly because of different temperature by floating it in plastic container in the aquarium for 30 minutes maximum to avoid stress to the fish for sudden change of temperature.

At the end of the month, add more but don't overcrowd it. In your periodic cleaning, you need fish net, algae scrapers, gravel vacuum, test kit and fish food. You should have a daily feeding schedule. Make a regular schedule for testing the water quality for hardness and nitrates changing water and cleaning the aquarium.

Change water every 2 weeks to remove unwanted sediments. In feeding, dry flake foods are good. Use other kind of foods you can buy in pet shop.

HOW TO DETERMINE AN ORIGINAL ITEMS

Many items sold in the market today are not original when manufactured. Our trading market was full of fake items. If you don't know how to detect the real items, you'll become the next victim:

In buying flower vase for your living room, look at the texture around it. They have a beautiful design but look carefully if the design was not pasted to the flower base. The design of the original item was mixed to the vase itself.

In buying pottery, look for any fix in job, a crack that hidden in a sealant. Dip it in the water to see if there's any visible lines appearing. Pottery was made of clay and hardened by smoking method. If it smells smoke then its real.

In selecting your furniture, check the kind of wood they used. There are furniture that look like molave, one of the hardwood trees, but if you scrutinize it carefully you will see that it was made of soft wood but the price was of molave. One way of determining the hardness of the wood is by pressing it in your fingernails. Feel it if it is hard or not. Another section of the furniture that you have to look is the joint. Most of the furniture sold in the market had some patching to the surface to economize the usage of wood. They sealed it with wood cement to erase the visible line by retouching. With the use of sanding, the lines will disappear and look fresh and new. But visible later in how many months of use because the shellac and wood cement peeled off then by this time you will see the difference.

There were also a trick to sell a look-like original cellphone battery. The lettering indicated in the battery was different from the original. They used the logo of a quality brand so that consumer can be tricked believing it is original. You found it later when the battery was short-lived. It damaged easily because it was substandard. There were incidents that it exploded and leaking. The same thing happened in the cellphone housing made of ordinary plastic. The surface was rough and the letter marking was fading; the stroke of the label was different but the brand were the same.

These were only portion of the many tricks used in the trade. Using labels of high-quality brand but the durability, neatness, and design can be detected easily as fake.

As a consumer, keep watch. Buy only those products that you think branded as original and not imitation. The difference is visible to the eye if you scrutinize it carefully. Don't allow to be trick to a product that did not pass in the quality standard. You are only wasting your hard-earned money if you cannot even used it for a longer period. It hurts.

Monday, January 19, 2009

HOW TO HAVE AN EFFECTIVE ADVISE

We do experience a problem in seeking advise from friends or neighbors as we cannot decide on how to solve a certain situation.

Our neighbor told us what happened to him when he seek advise from one of his friends. He did not realized that such advise given to him brought more harm to him.

Relying too much to other people's advise is not a sure thing and risky. It is not advisable to give full confidence right away by relying this information. Give time to verify and check it over a hundred times weighing every side of it before committing a responsibility.

Sometimes, overconfidence leads to lost opportunities. That opportunities only knock once in a lifetime. Right decision should had been made.

Sometimes, listening to one's advise bring us bad luck. It is easy to give an advise but the effectiveness of such an advise is important either from your friend or close to you.

In coming into a conclusion by considering an advise should be carefully taken and given time to determine its value. If you are careless it may lead to painful consequences. This is the mistake some people experienced without knowing what will happen next.


The secret of giving an advise is not to give any to play safe. What you need is to guide him to his confusion in deciding the best option. Ask him but let himself decide. Whatever his decision will be at his own risk. All you have to do is to support him of his decision. Don't argue. Let him answer his own question and let him decide. Give some insight to enlighten him what to do but it should be his decision that will prevail. If he cannot give any, then don't try to advise him.

Giving advise is risky especially in deciding a delicate matter for a solution. If it fails your friend will be back at you going mad blaming you from head to foot. Don't let your friend dependent to you even how simple is the problem. Your help may backfire you. So be careful.

Although we understand the situation of your friend of his incapacity to decide his own. He was handicap in deciding. But there are problems that cannot be decided easily by other people. It is his problem, it should be his decision and its solution.

If he ask you for some advise, tell him honestly that you cannot decide the best for him. Don't assure him of anything because you are not experience enough in giving advise. Let him understand your situation. You can refer him to other person you know that is more experience in handling this problem. You can ask help from radio station having a program giving advice to people of their personal problem (probably an attorney) who are very good in deduction and knows what to do. He has the knowledge and expertise to make the decision to be effective. Maybe he can offer something than you cannot do.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

TRY TO WIN MANY FRIENDS

Winning friends improves your personality. Some of us are fond of being alone. Being shy was the problem of many of us.

You are more comfortable if you just sit there looking at them. You had limited friends, only those who are the one making friend with you in certain occasion. You just sit there expecting someone to approach you instead of making an effort to make friend with them.


We understand you being an introvert type of a man. It is your nature to be uncommunicative. But to be friendly improves your personality and your way of life. Having many friends have advantages:

-You will be feeling happy with them going together. This will serve as a self-improvement to you.

-Seek support from them if you have personal problem. They are ready to help you and lend a hand.

-You can learn many things from them about their life, experiences, sacrifices and adventures. This will be your learning tools to compare their life with yours. Share your ideas with them, you can learn more.

-A close friend will not leave you. He is there with you in your time of grief and happiness.

-It can save your life. He is ready to give his life to you and protect you.

-You will know the value of having a friend that treat you as brother.

-You know how to trust people as well as trusting yourself.

-It relieves your stress in life.

-It is your chance to look for someone you like and be a partner in life.

Start winning friends now. Don't be selective. A friendly person is ready to welcome you as long as you are willing to accept them as new friends. Know their feelings, exchange views, share with them their laughter or give them comfort in time of sorrow, then you will realize that you are not a total failure after all.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

PUTTING IT OFF UNTIL TOMORROW

Working is the reason why he keep on living. It become a necessity to give the children a better future. With his money he can build an ideal home, he can buy expensive clothes, go to the restaurant because he can afford. He can even buy a car for easy mobility. All this desires were fulfilled because he was working hard.

Working hard with ambition, determination can lead to success. Success made possible for all his wants and needs to be realized. It give him comfort and so much blessing.

There are some of us working for a living but not serious enough of what he is doing. He will work if he has the mood to work. If he feel lazy he put his work off to be accomplish completely on the next day. This kind of attitude on some of us make his way of living in a tightrope. Doing things half-done is wasting time supposed to be a productive one. He did not find ways to complete the task assigned to him today as he wanted to finish it tomorrow.

Some people are behind in promotion as the productivity go down. His good performance before is now history. Keep postponing the completion of a certain task will only add up clogging the table with unfinished project.

A person who are industrious will not wait to delay an assigned job for tomorrow. He will double his time working even exceeding his regular hours because of his desire to finish what he started so that another set of work can be done the next day. His timetable allow him to divide his time effectively. He is resourceful to upgrade his working capacity to the maximum producing better result and good performance.

Having this kind of inconvenience can make life miserable, it can damage the fragile relationship, careers become stagnant, achievements is limited, determination is lacking. Losing trust and faith of his capacity to deliver and his dedication to his work hang in a balance. Continuing lack of effort become a a bad habit. His working attitude will reflect to his personality as a person and can affect his integrity to response to the call of duty. Further, it stifles his personal and professional fulfillment.

For those who desired to reach the goal and find success in career, it is now time for you to be more ambitious. Show a better performance and improve your potential, and above all, work hard. This is your gateway to be a better person.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

THE PROBLEM WITH GROWING-UP


In some families, there was always disagreement between parents and teenagers. It is very painful seeing a child turned into a disrespectful teenager. When parents talked about right thing, the teenager do the wrong thing. There's always the opposite. Why? Teenager don't like to be interfered with his own life. He wanted to decide what is best for him. The teenager failed to realized that he put his life into a risky position where his decision will always fail.

There was a distant relationship among them. Teenager don't believe parents are always right. What he decided was right also. He disobeys his parents because he wanted to create his own identity without interference from them: whether he is right or wrong.

Teenager has that feeling of uncertainty and doubt about himself but he used rebellion as the reason to tell his parents that he is responsible to his own life.

Some parents tolerated this kind of behavior because they don't want to lengthen their disagreement that might lead to another serious confrontation. They can't discipline their teenager who is hard-headed, rebellious and disrespectful. If they insist, teenager will resort to running away and be at the mercy of another rebellious group. It is the deepest fear of the parents to see their son totally separated from their direction and guidance. Then suddenly their beloved son became the menace of the society for delinquency.

This scene is common to some of the families today. Teenagers are doing things that is different from the expectation of their parents. Allowing dependence will result to resentment. So parents are allowing their teenage son to make his own choice. It seemed the son is testing his parent's patience by resisting any rules.

For those parents who don't have a problematic children yet, they must guide their child closely. Train them for self-respect. Set limit but with values.



Friday, January 9, 2009

CAN YOU HELP CHILD BOREDOM?

I have known a child in our place who always sickly and get tired sitting in the bench looking around just staring there, his mind wandering somewhere. He will not talk to anybody of his age. He always alone. When someone ask him, seldom he talk and just nod.

His parents were both working. The demand of their job cause inability to communicate with their child. Their older daughter was the one taking care of him. The scenario of this child is only one among the many children similar to what happened to the child I had just mentioned. His behavior has relation to the way parents raised him as a child. A child is always craving attention from their parents in the early years of his life. This is the most critical period for child development where utmost attention is needed.

The attention he seek is seldom given by his parents because they do not understand the way to deal with their child's feeling and expectation. This inattentiveness in the part of the parents can affect child's behavior developing in his mind the ill-feeling about the way they are treating him.

A child is very observant and meticulous. If his parents cannot see him, he became irritable believing that his parents did not love him. This is a very delicate behavior that parents should look and see. If parents continue to ignore child's small craving for attention it may lead to a problem later. This negative feeling will develop into a full blown misbehavior that parents can not allow.

What is lacking in this situation is communication. If parents and a child are communicative to each other, there will be harmony and better atmosphere at home where the child and his parents are talking and sharing laughter in their moment of joy and wonderful togetherness. It is not the reason for parents to make an excuse about their job. They have a lot of time to do this after work.
Child's relationship to his parents will depend on how parents are rearing their child. Good direction is involved here, to a relationship that if not handled with great care can lead to a problem later on.

During the time when parents are at home, why not let a child participate in their daily chores. Why not assign to him a certain task that he can do and become his everyday routine. This is helpful to him to develop a sense of responsibility to remove his boredom and be more productive. This will serve as his training and at the same time sharing a moment for both of them to develop a closer relationship and better understanding beneficial to the child.