Teamwork

I often buy items that need assembling and will assemble them myself. For bigger items, I seek the help of my spouse. This is one activity that both of us enjoy doing together. As it requires us to work as a team, it brings us closer to each other. So far, we have assembled many items such as cupboards, tables, sofa beds, chairs, kitchen cabinets and trolleys.

Once we had a very difficult time trying to fix two cabinets with doors to a free-standing kitchen console according to the step-by-step instructions given in the guide but we did not give up. In the end, we had to rearrange the steps to get the job done.

So if you have run out of things to do with your spouse, why not try assembling some items together?

A recent small item that I assembled on my own

Done!

Trees

I like the look of the trees below and would like to plant some near my house but I do not know the name of these trees. Any idea what trees they are?

Neat row of short trees

This is how the leaves look like

A call

I was out when I received a phone call from my "empty" house. Something or someone has triggered the alarm system so I rushed home only to find that everything looks to be in order so did the system malfunction?

Before I installed the system, many people told me that there would be many false alarms and that it is not really useful but just because I do not want to wake up in the middle of the night to find an intruder standing over me, I decided to go ahead with the installation. I prefer to be awakened by a false alarm in the wee hours than to wake up groggily staring into a stranger's face but I can't say the same for my neighbours.

While there are many types of home security system out there, it is not easy to design a configuration and settings that will inform the owner of exactly what triggered the system if different types of sensors (contact sensors, shock sensors, motion sensors) are grouped together in one zone. Even a 10-zone system does not provide me with the granularity that I desired but due to a budget constraint, I settled for it. So now there is no way for me to tell what triggered the system.

So is a home alarm/security system a necessity nowadays? Or is it just there to provide home owners with a false sense of security? What do you all think?