Guilty Pleasures

Before you jump to conclusions and think I'm going to share some juicy secrets about me, hold your horses, this is serious business 😜 Today I'm going to show you what I do while thinking about big things in life.

There are times when one needs to think about serious things, maybe find a solution to a problem, or just shut everything out and be with their thoughts. Some go to the pub and drink, others play video games, while others go to a walk. We are different and deal with things differently, I don't think there are two people acting the same way in the same situation, even if they are relatives or long time partners. This is human nature and this is why I don't like to write advice posts.

Over the years one has the time and the occasion to work out what works best for them. Sometimes what you do can help you make a better decision.

I used to play games, which was fun but addictive too and eye killer as well. It's easy to lose track of time, so it wasn't the best solution.

Rubik's Cube

So this is my guilty pleasure now. One of them, to be precise 😂. This is the Rubik's cube, developed by the Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Ernő Rubik.

Originally called the Magic Cube, the puzzle was licensed by Rubik to be sold by Ideal Toy Corp in 1980 via businessman Tibor Laczi and Seven Towns founder Tom Kremer. The cube was released internationally in 1980 and became one of the most recognized icons in popular culture. It won the 1980 German Game of the Year special award for Best Puzzle. As of January 2009, 350 million cubes had been sold worldwide, making it the world's bestselling puzzle game and bestselling toy.

On the original classic Rubik's Cube, each of the six faces was covered by nine stickers, each of one of six solid colours: white, red, blue, orange, green, and yellow. Some later versions of the cube have been updated to use coloured plastic panels instead, which prevents peeling and fading. Since 1988, the arrangement of colours has been standardised with white opposite yellow, blue opposite green, and orange opposite red, and the red, white, and blue arranged clockwise in that order. On early cubes, the position of the colours varied from cube to cube. An internal pivot mechanism enables each face to turn independently, thus mixing up the colours. For the puzzle to be solved, each face must be returned to have only one colour. Similar puzzles have now been produced with various numbers of sides, dimensions, and stickers, not all of them by Rubik. source

We had this cube when we were kids and played with it a lot, till the plastic was so worn that the cube fell apart with each move. I don't know what's happened to the cubes, most likely they ended up in the garbage as were useless.

This year (don't ask me how) I remembered how fun this cube was and decided to get one. As the quoted Wikipedia test says, you can buy it worldwide, but those are not like the original and because I didn't want some cheap Chinese plastic 💩, I asked someone who made a trip to Hungary in July to buy me one.

This is a preowned piece, second had bought at the flea market, but it's the original series. I have no idea how much it was as it was a gift, but I'm glad I have one from the original series.

Back in the day this cube was a huge thing, there were championships organized, the fastest to complete the task won. I'm not sure what the world record is, but according to this article it's 2.78 seconds, which is absolutely INSANE! According to the same article, the cube has 43,252,003,274,489,856,856,000 possible combinations.

There are tutorials, formulas online, videos about how to solve it, but I haven't given up yet on the idea of trying to solve it myself.What's the fun is learning how to solve it?

This cube reminds me of the technical drawing classes we had in high school. For me it was a lot of fun and I had very good grades, but we had to learn it wasn't for everyone. We had classmates, who were part of the elite, with the highest grades at everything, except technical drawing. So for now, it's still a challenge for me, it makes me focused, but in the same time it allows me to think of the problems I have to solve. It's the perfect mind game.

Coloring

Yes, no matter how stupid or childish this looks, it is a coloring book for adults and you'll see it's not as easy as you think.

Coloring for adults has been a trending recreational activity for years, maybe it still is. There are different coloring books, one more expensive than the other. I only have this one, which wasn't cheap, but for me it worth it. It's called The Secret Garden and I love it.

There are a lot of cool drawings of different difficulty. The best thing is there are pages, where it gives you the opportunity to draw what you want. Here, you can draw birds on the scarecrow. On other pages you can draw flowers and other things to complete the drawing.

The first impression may be that this is very easy, but you need a certain level of precision if you don't want to look like a first grader or a kindergarten kid. You need to stay inside the lines, plus see the whole picture, to be able to select the perfect colors.

For me this is not just a coloring book, it's more like a guide, a tutorial about doodling. I love doodles but again, who on earth has time for everything? So I thought while I'm coloring, I could also print some of the patterns in my memory, to be able to help me later, when I will attempt to draw something half decent.

With this occasion I had to realize I have some pencils, that are not suitable for my needs. I must have bought them at the beginning. If you want something decent, you have to choose good quality. What you see in my had is the best I could find.

This is also water-soluble, so I can use it as aquarelle colored pencil.

It's nice to zoom out, quit looking at charts, log off the usual devices we're addicted to and do something that is relaxing and helps to solve some problems.

So what's your guilty pleasure?

If you're a newbie, you may want to check out these guides: