I hope that you enjoy reading another post of the Friday Loose Bloggers’ Consortium when eleven of us post on the same topic chosen by one of us. Today’s topic has been chosen by Magpie11.
Please do visit Ashok, Conrad, Grannymar, Magpie11, Maria, Gaelikaa, Helen, Judy, Anu and Ginger to see ten other views on the same topic. Some of these bloggers may be preoccupied with vacations, examinations, family problems and/or romance, so be a little indulgent in case they do not post or post late.
The first wacky (or is it whacky?) is this, an amphibious bicycle.
You can also read the BBC article about this wacky idea and person to know why I call it a whacky idea.
The next whacky idea is this one.
This is a lassi maker. Lassi is a drink made by churning yogurt.Traditionally the churning was done by hand using a gadget like this.
In the Punjab, Lassi is extremely popular and till a few years ago, in restaurants where the demand is high, the process of churning the yogurt was done by an electric churner, which itself was a whacky idea. It was simply the same gadget shown above electrified with a motor at the rear and the contraption hanging down from the ceiling, The much admired electrified churner has now been replaced by ordinary washing machines to do the churning. I do not have a photograph but I am advised that a washing machine in miniature form for this specific purpose has already hit the market in the Northern parts of India.
The third whacky idea and person is a personal story.
We were driving down to Hyderabad when one of the front shock absorbers got off the mounting and made an infernal racket. The top end had made the holding hole larger and the holding nut was slipping through the hole. We drove on till we came to a small wayside town primarily catering to the nearby farms and found a mechanic sleeping under a thatch roof. We woke him up and when he saw what the problem was, he informed us that he would fix it in a jiffy, He simply took a smaller size nut and force turned it on the shaft to make the shaft narrower. He then put two metal washers on top and the bottom of the hole to make the hole smaller and reinserted the shock absorber and fixed it in place with a smaller nut along with a holding nut. I had that vehicle for five years after the event and nothing further needed to be done to that shock absorber ever till I had the car. For all his pains and the two new nuts that he put in, the mechanic took Rs,50/=, just a little over a dollar in current exchange rate. Before we could all get back into the car and drive away, he quietly went back to sleep in his little shack.