Giving thanks,

 

Another chapter closed, abruptly and unexpectedly. Soon, beginning will come.

I am so blessed for all the people that I have met and accompanied me in this journey. As I wait in anticipation for what’s to come, I am learning to come up for air. I am excited for meeting the people yet to come into my life. I am grateful for the experiences.

 

 

If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world.

(This is not my poem!)

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

Hanging mirror before and after

Super simple DIY with decorative duct tape; it does wonders tho.

decorative duct tape

lateral thinking of tic tac

I love tic tac even after I finish them

Here is a very simple DIY: consume and recycle
You can also use the container to store pins, tiny hair elastic bands, tooth picks…etc

Fancy up the mundane

Here is another no-brainer DIY in simple step 1. 2. 3
Often, it is the easiest change that makes the big impact.

STEP1: find a simple object.
STEP2: decorative duct tape.
STEP3: Voila.

Frame up the ordinary

Someone once told me that good clothes open all doors. Same goes for a simple thermostat. I was thinking of changing it to a fancier digital one and going all techno but I have been carrying a portable heater with me instead of heating up the entire space.

I had some wall decals lying around so I dressed up the plain old thermostat. By putting a decorative frame around, It is ordinary no more.

frame up the orodinary

distress stool before and after

I have in possession of ODDVAR stools I got from yard sale years ago. The pair of them has lived through reinvention after reinvention. They were light green, reformed to light beige then stain to dark reddish brown. Now, they are being sprayed orange in a distress look.

Here is what you need:
1. stool, or it could be a tray
2. tape (i used frog tape)
3. sprays (I used rust oleum spray paint in glossy real orange and smoke gray)
Time Spent: 24 hours including drying time.

After stool are dried over night, I used sand paper to create the distress look (sandpaper grit 100). It is purely a personal choice plus, the weather was too cold so my paint job was not perfect. I sanded away all the imperfection. Great disguise.