Use them or loose them: failure due to lack of usage

A mechanic friend of mine was telling me that he recently replaced a few customers' ABS solenoid and encourages me to give mine a workout once every 3 to 4 months. He said ABS solenoid can become completely stuck if it is not "used regularly." This is very similar to ELCB (earth leak circuit breaker), the electrical safety device that disconnects whenever it detects leakage current. It too need to be tested regularly just to prevent the mechanism from becoming stuck together.

That advice reminded me of my fountain pen collection and that I have not been rotating my pens! By rotating, I mean using the pens in my collection in rotation. Unfortunately, when I checked them after having kept them in their boxes for almost a year, some pens with this smooth rubber like surfaces have "melted!" They have gone soft and sticky! The good part of this is that these are the more commonly available pens. The sad part is that these are mainly gifts from friends with sentimental values.

A vacant parking slot in a busy area

I once worked for a local Malaysian company where one of our associated company has international trading as it core business. The MD of that company is a good friend and always had trading partners visiting him from all over the world. He had a visitor from Ghana at one time and as was often the case back then, I went to dinner with him and his guest that day. I was the designated driver for that occasion and as it is a very popular dinning area, we couldn't find any parking. However after some time we found a very nice shady parking bay under a huge tree and without hesitation I parked as quickly as I could.

Dinner was fantastic. Authentic Northern Indian cuisine. I was however horrified when i returned to my car to find it completely covered in birds dropping. My green car has virtually turns white in a few hours! It was a lot worst than the Subaru in the photo by ptpgrad below. Since that time, i always check the surrounding area where I park for bird's dropping and learned that there may be a reason why people do not take up something seemingly valuable.