| Inventor: The Calendar | |
July 17, 2015
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| A man in his mid-thirties came to the inventor's office and started to tell of his concerns: He was a skillful business man, so he said. The other day his girlfriend came to his apartment and was very shocked that his apartment was so messy. Soon she broke up with him. He was very shocked and came here. He said that he was too busy to clean up the rooms because he was a very busy business man. The inventor stared at him and the guy added, "Maybe it is an excuse. I have no sense of cleaning up rooms." The inventor asked him if he had some photos of his rooms, and the guy showed some pictures from his smartphone. In the picture of his living room, there were three trash cans overflowing with trash; magazines piled up on the floor; unfolded clothes were laying on the arm of the armchair; on the table, there were newspapers, books, and some bottles of whisky; on the TV rack, there were piles of
The guy saw that the inventor was speechless about the mess, and said, "I heard that robots recently became efficient. I want a robot to clean up my room." The inventor wanted to respond, "Are you really a skillful business man?" but told him instead that that type of robot was as expensive as a luxurious house, and he would think about inventing something at a reasonable price, and to come back again one week later. One week later, he came back to the inventor's office. The inventor showed him a gadget that he had invented. He looked suspicious. It looked just like a calendar, although it was rather thick. With a smirk, he said, "I hope you don't want me to simply mark garbage days on the calendar and throw trash away suitably." The inventor looked uneasy but started to explain how to use this machine. The next day was Saturday. In the morning, at his apartment, he put the calendar-shaped machine on the wall of the living room. And then attached small remote-controlled cameras on the wall of each room except the bathroom. He switched on the machine. The machine consisted of an upper picture area and under that, a date section. Soon, the date part was changed into this month's calendar. On some dates, there were marks and words of baggage, trash (decompose), cans, plastic bottles, glass bottles, other un-decomposables, and regular garbage collection dates of this city. The picture area of the calendar showed the living room that he was in. He pushed the 'Goal' button under the picture. Surprisingly, from the picture his body disappeared, and then, a messy table became tidy, piled magazines disappeared, a magazine rack appeared, and some of the magazines were put in it. After some other changing, the room became like a hotel room. Then, in the space under the picture, some sentences appeared, they read: [Living Room] Furniture & Appliances: xxxxxxxxxx Goods: xxxxxxxxxx Room area: xxx Goods / Capacity: 178% When he touched the other rooms' button, the picture of 'Present / Goal Room' and a list of goods appeared. After that, the machine started to calculate what would be the best way to clean up. After a while, recommendations appeared on one of the screens. Trophies: Except a couple of the ones you like the most, throw them away after taking pictures (back and front) of them. Books: You could check out the following books at the library. So, you should throw them away or sell them to a used-book store. (books names) If you donate your books to a library, you can check out all the books that you donated. Clothes & Shoes: If you haven't worn the item once in a couple of years, sell them to used-shops. etc. He started to clean up the rooms according to the instructions of the machine. He worked until midnight. The next early morning, on Sunday, he started to clean up. After a while, he went shopping to buy some boxes to store some small goods suitably as the machine recommended. After that, he packed up the books and magazines, and then took them to some used-book stores. Until midnight, he worked. On Monday morning, he threw away the decomposed garbage in the public garbage site. And then he put metals, plastics, glass, and other items into the storage shed outside of his apartment he was allocated. At night, after work, when he opened the door of his apartment, he was amazed. It didn't looked like his apartment. He put a small red miniature car that he bought on the way home on the top shelf of the shoes rack where there used to be a pile of receipts. He was sitting on the sofa and drinking whisky, looking over the room many times. When he looked at a picture on the machine, now it reflected the present room, he realized a sentence on the picture, it read 'Good Job.' After a week, after work, he stopped by the inventor's office. He reported about his good results, and asked, "By the way, this office has become cleaner than before, right?" The inventor shyly nodded, pointing by his chin to something on the wall: a calendar-shaped machine. |
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*decompose :If a dead person, animal, or plant decomposes, it dacays and is gradually destroyed (C)
*shed :a small building used to store things such as tools (C)
*allocate :to give sometime, money, space, etc to be used for a particular purpose (C)