The Art of Bending the truth

I have always been defensive about lying! The art of lying may I put it has always fascinated me. When I was in primary schoool, we had this lesson called 'Good citizens' or something along those lines. It came with a textbook that taught us moral values and what not in order to be a good Samaritan. The particular time when my teacher talked about Lying; she told us kids that we should not, must not lie under any circumstances. And I kinda recall telling her that if does not bring harm to the self or others then lying can't be a awful thing after all! I no longer remember her reaction but I can be sure she was not expecting that from a 9 year old.

Oh well, this idea of lying and weather it is ethical or not came about again when I realised my classmate cannot lie. Or more like she used to lie and for the god knows how many years; she has made a firm promise of not lying to anyone for anything. Like today she decided to tell the professor that she was not gonna attend the class because she wants to study for the exam and obviouslt the professor did not allow! Ok this not a major thing but it kinda made me wonder again if lying is such a bad thing after all.

Maybe it has something to do with the guity conscience part. You know how people go "the guilt is killing me cos I lied to A or B". Then again, that would depend on the severity of the situation, won't it?

Then are some who prefer to hear the truth, react to it violently then believe a lie! I mean what's the point of tempory happiness if sadness is the truth? Well, least you had the chance of experincing the joy even for a while. ;) You know its like, you lie to encourage someone's enthusiasm for something. For instance, you wouldn't wanna tell an aspiring artist his drawing looks like shit! That can shatter a person's spirit! Or tell a young child that her parent is no longer around. Whats the point of doing that? The child deserves the happiness in the world regardless of the parents being present or not. And he can learn the truth later in life or just don't learn it at all. What about marital affairs?? AH..thats when lying turns ugly...Ouch!...
On that note, this post would be the last thing the victim would wanna read! A post promoting the art of lying!

Maybe lying and liars are created due to perspectives! You know, how one may seem that the truth is just temporarily hidden, not exactly lying and stuff.

I think lying is an art :) Come on, individuals improvising on the truth, being creative; coming with something thats totally not the truth..hehe..well unless things are exaggerated and blown out of proportion; Lying works wonders if done right ;)

Being a Singaporean

Being a Singapore citizen, has its perks! One of the privileges would be to travel to most countries without a visa! (For a short term stay of course!) And I have just realised Korea is one of them! YAY!!

Then again, Russia is not on the list! :( The tourist has to deal with countless number of formalities; that travelling to Russia seems like a hassle!

Oh well, least I have Korea to visit..hehe...

PS: Whats up with this recent swine flu outbreak?? Reminds me of SARS!! 中国也有吗? :s

'Dancing' with the devil

Here I stand, helpless and left for dead

Close your eyes, so many days go by
Easy to find what's wrong
Harder to find what's right

I believe in you
I can show you that I can see right through
All your empty lies, I won't stay long
In this world so wrong

Say goodbye,
As we dance with the devil tonight
Don't you dare look at him in the eye
As we dance with the devil tonight

Trembling, crawling across my skin
Feeding your cold, dead eyes
Stealing the life of mine

I believe in you
I can show you that I can see right through
All your empty lies, I won't last long
In this world so wrong

Say goodbye,
As we dance with the devil tonight
Don't you dare look at him in the eye
As we dance with the devil tonight

Hold on
Hold on

-Breaking Benjamin - Dance with the Devil -

My Ecstasy

Thanx to it, I am still surviving. Chocolates in general makes me FEEL WAY BETTER! I finished a whole bag of these Dove Chocs after all that emo-ing.

To Quote Liyana;

"Armed with just chocolates we were ready to take on the world..."

LOL..Love you woman ;)

My Iron Lady...

Death is a bent in life that I still have to get accustomed to. Especially the death of others.
The world doesn't seem to be coming to an end..where together with others I'd perish as well.

But I have to say these 'sudden disappearances' are superb reality checks.

If I go to sleep now and never to wake up, guess that wouldn't bother me much cos I'd be dead to have any further realisation. But what if my granny goes to sleep and never did wake up?

She didn't!
She was so eager, she didn't even say goodbye!

Since 2007, the line of absence of dear ones in Usha's life began...

And for some reason every year someone had to say farewell...Their role in my life had somewhat came to an end..and they had to leave...

Only once did I ever saw it coming..did I knew before hand that they were going to leave...so it was not hard to overcome their absence..It always felt they were there...though not physically..

This time I am shocked...!!! She cheated me..She chose this 'vacation' over me...

She decided to leave...more so her soul has departed..whatever that is laying there is not my granny anymore..

Whatever remains are memories...

Goodbye Ammamma, My Iron Lady
Hope your journey proves you well.

PS: I HATE IT WHEN PEOPLE SAY "WELL HER TIME CAME AND SHE HAD TO GO! WELL LEAST SHE LIVED HER LIFE!" WHAT KINDA REMARK IS THAT? JUST BECAUSE SOMEONE IS OLD, IT DOESNT MATTER IF THEY DIE?! AND JUST BECAUSE ONE DIED YOUNG DOESN'T MEAN HE DIDN'T GET A CHANCE TO LIVE HIS LIFE! Please people don't ever give such remarks! Even if the one who passed on was an elderly, she was related to someone in a special way :)

Dear Chachu

I am really hoping you won't have to leave us yet.
I mean, come on; are you really not gonna stay till I graduate?

Won't you wanna make another trip to Singapore?
Please don't leave yet.

Don't give a s*** about what 'others' might hold against you.
They are what many would describe as hypocrites!

Give another shot at life will you?
Please...

Love U.

Dolphins to the rescue

A Whole group of dolphins out of nowhere, suddenly appeared; blocking the Somali Pirate Ships that were attempting to attack the Chinese merchant ships. Unable to move ahead ( Thanx to the dolphins) the suspected pirate ships had to turn away.

Now how cool is that??

Anna Quidlen at a Graduatuon ceremony

The following is a speech by author Anna Quindlen, a Pulitzer Prize winner; at the graduation ceremony of an American University where she was awarded an Honourary Phd.

I'm a novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is all I know. Don't Ever confuse the two, your life and your work. You will walk out of here this afternoon with only one thing that no one else has. There will be hundreds of people out there with your same degree: there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk, or your life on a bus, or in a car, or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank accounts but also your soul.

People don't talk about the soul very much anymore. It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume is cold comfort on a winter's night, or when you're sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you've received your test results and they're not so good.

Here is my resume: I am a good mother to three children. I have tried never to let my work stand in the way of being a good parent. I no longer consider myself the centre of the universe. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh. I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make marriage vows mean what they say. I am a good friend to my friends and they to me. Without them, there would be nothing to say to you today, because I would be a cardboard cut out. But I call them on the phone, and I meet them for lunch. I would be rotten, at best mediocre at my job if those other things were not true.

You cannot be really first rate at your work if your work is all yo u are. So here's what I wanted to tell you today: Get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger pay cheque, the larger house. Do you think you'd care so very much about those things if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon, or found a lump in your breast?

Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze at the seaside, a life in which you stop and watch how a red-tailed hawk circles over the water, or the way a baby scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a sweet with her thumb and first finger.

Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work. Pick up the phone. Send an email. Write a letter. Get a life in which you are generous. And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted. Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around. Take money you would have spent on beer and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother or sister. All of you want to do well. But if you do not do good too, then doing well will never be enough.

It is so easy to waste our lives, our days, our hours, and our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the color of our kids' eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again. It is so easy to exist instead of to live.

I learned to live many years ago. I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get. I learned to look at all the good in the world and try to give some of it back because I believed in it, completely and utterly. And I tried to do that, in part, by telling others what I had learned. By telling them this:

Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear. Read in the back yard with the sun on your face. Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness, because if you do, you will live it with joy and passion as it ought to be lived

The Drive...

Sometimes, I feel the fear of uncertainty stinging clear
And I can't help but ask myself how much I let the fear
Take the wheel and steer
It's driven me before
And it seems to have a vague, haunting mass appeal
But lately I'm beginning to find that I
Should be the one behind the wheel

Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there
With open arms and open eyes yeah

Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there
I'll be there

So if I decide to waiver my chance to be one of the hive
Will I choose water over wine and hold my own and drive?
It's driven me before
And it seems to be the way that everyone else gets around
But lately I'm beginning to find that
When I drive myself my light is found

Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there
With open arms and open eyes yeah

Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there
I'll be there

Would you choose water over wine
Hold the wheel and drive

Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there
With open arms and open eyes yeah

Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there
I'll be there

- Incubus - Drive -

I am a student

I am a student in the school of life, taking a practical course on happiness. People and circumstances provide me with the opportunities for learning.

Be Happy...Live Long...

Shigeaki Hanohara; world's longest serving Doctor and Academician. His physical body is 97 years and 4 months old. However, his enthusiasm towards service and life is brimming with youthful vibrance. He has been rendering his service at St. Luke's International Hospital, Tokyo since 1941.

And this what he had to say on living a long and happy life :

Energy comes from feeling good, not from eating well or sleeping a lot. We all remember how as children, when we were having fun, we often forgot to eat or sleep. I believe that we can keep that attitude as adults, too. It's best not to tire the body with too many rules such as lunchtime and bedtime.

All people who live long regardless of nationality, race or gender share one thing in common: None are overweight. For breakfast I drink coffee, a glass of milk and some orange juice with a tablespoon of olive oil in it. Olive oil is great for the arteries and keeps my skin healthy. Lunch is milk and a few cookies, or nothing when I am too busy to eat. I never get hungry because I focus on my work.. Dinner is veggies, a bit of fish and rice, and, twice a week, 100 grams of lean meat..

Always plan ahead. My schedule book is already full until 2014, with lectures and my usual hospital work. In 2016 I'll have some fun, though: I plan to attend the Tokyo Olympics!

There is no need to ever retire, but if one must, it should be a lot later than 65.The current retirement age was set at 65 half a century ago, when the average life-expectancy in Japan was 68 years and only 125 Japanese were over 100 years old. Today, Japanese women live to be around 86 and men 80, and we have 36,000 centenarians in our country. In 20 years we will have about 50,000 people over the age of 100...

Share what you know. I give 150 lectures a year, some for 100 elementary-school children, others for 4,500 business people. I usually speak for 60 to 90 minutes, standing, to stay strong.

When a doctor recommends you take a test or have some surgery, ask whether, the doctor would suggest that his or her spouse or children go through such a prodcedure. Contrary to popular belief, doctor's can't cure everyone. So why cause unnecessary pain with surgery? I think music and animal therapy can help more than most doctors imagine.

To stay healthy, always take the stairs and carry your own stuff. I take two stairs at a time, to get my muscles moving.

My inspiration is Robert Browning's poem "Abt Vogler." My father used to read it to me. It encourages us to make big art, not small scribbles. It says to try to draw a circle so huge that there is no way we can finish it while we are alive. All we see is an arch; the rest is beyond our vision but it is there in the distance.

Pain is mysterious, and having fun is the best way to forget it. If a child has a toothache, and you start playing a game together, he or she immediately forgets the pain. Hospitals must cater to the basic need of patients: We all want to have fun. At St. Luke's we have music and animal therapies, and art classes.

Don't be crazy about amassing material things. Remember: You don't know when your umber is up, and you can't take it with you to the next place.

Hospitals must be designed and prepared for major disasters, and they must accept every patient who appears at their doors. We designed St.... Luke's so we can operate anywhere: in the basement, in the corridors, in the chapel. Most people thought I was crazy to prepare for a catastrophe, but on March 20, 1995, I was unfortunately proven right when members of the Aum Shinrikyu religious cult launched a terrorist attack in the Tokyosubway. We accepted 740 victims and in two hours figured out that it was sarin gas that had hit them. Sadly we lost one person, but we saved 739 lives.

Science alone can't cure or help people. Science lumps us all together, but illness is individual. Each person is unique, and diseases are connected to their hearts. To know the illness and help people, we need liberal and visual arts, not just medical ones.

Life is filled with incidents. On March 31, 1970, when I was 59 years old, I boarded the Yodogo, a flight from Tokyo to Fukuoka. It was a beautiful sunny morning, and as Mount Fuji came into sight, the plane was hijacked by the Japanese Communist League-Red Army Faction. I spent the next four days handcuffed to my seat in 40-degree heat. As a doctor, I looked at it all as an experiment and was amazed at how the body slowed down in a crisis.

Find a role model and aim to achieve even more than they could ever do. My father went to the United States in 1900 to study at DukeUniversity in North Carolina. He was a pioneer and one of my heroes. Later I found a few more life guides, and when I am stuck, I ask myself how they would deal with the problem.

Its wonderful to live long. Until one is 60 years old, it is easy to work for one's family and to achive one's goals. But in our later years, we should strive to contribute to society. Since the age of 65, I have worked as a volunteer. I still put in 18 hours seven days a week and love every minute of it.