Eulogy

I don't know who started eulogy or how it came about.

Most eulogies are so touching that they are usually also tear inducing, so much so that they can turn a funeral into a weepy ceremony.

I had read "Tuesdays with Morrie" by Mitch Albom and I quote the following :

When a colleague at Brandeis died suddenly of a heart attack, Morrie went to his funeral. He came home depressed.

"What a waste," he said. "All those people saying all those wonderful things, and Irv never got to hear any of it."

Morrie had a better idea. He made some calls. He chose a date. And on a cold Sunday afternoon, he was joined in his home by a small group of friends and family for a "living funeral." Each of them spoke and paid tribute to my old professor. Some cried. Some laughed. One woman read a poem:

"My dear and loving cousin ...

Your ageless heart

as you move through time, layer on layer,

tender sequoia ..."

Morrie cried and laughed with them. And all the heartfelt things we never get to say to those we love, Morrie said that day. His "living funeral" was a rousing success.

Only Morrie wasn't dead yet. In fact, the most unusual part of his life was about to unfold.

Morrie Schwartz had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Lou Gehrig's disease, a brutal, unforgiving illness of the neurological system. He was one tough guy who did not wallow in self-pity but stood up to his illness. He made no secret of his illness and even lived his life as normal as he could.

When my time comes, I don't think I want any eulogy unless it can be kept short and delivered in such a lively manner that it does not bring forth the tears. On the other hand, come to think of it, I have not done anything worth mentioning, neither have I achieved anything, which is just as well.

I'd rather go quietly, so don't "rain" on my parade.

Stress-filled world

I was chatting with a friend recently and she told me that she was looking forward to retirement as the stress level at work has gone up. She is in the civil service and the department had a new boss, unfortunately an over-ambitious one. From what she said, I gathered that this new boss comes with what I called a new boss attitude, typical of one trying to impress his superiors, trying to prove his worth, and doing his best to outshine others, at the expense of his subordinates' welfare.

The problem with mostly young (I assumed) new bosses nowadays is that, they come paper-qualified and did not rise through the ranks. Thus, they often fail to understand the difficulties and problems faced by people in the lower levels.

This particular new boss had plans to issue everyone with a laptop so that they will have information practically at their fingertips, literally via the laptops, as and when he asks for it, even outside office hours. So far, nobody has said anything for fear of breaking their rice bowl.

It is also difficult to go on leave, because when she is back, she had to stay back after office hours to clear the workload.

MOM has guidelines on the maximum no. of hours that an employee (usually junior) is allowed to cover in a week, but I am not too sure if it has rules that cover senior staff and those at management level.

With the advent of technology, computers, internet, emailing, and instant messaging, everything seems to move at breakneck pace. In the workplace, it also probably signaled the end of sanity and the beginning of chaos. People are complaining that it is so difficult to get the work done because emailing can be very disruptive. Imagine people who sent an email, followed up with a phone call minutes later expecting an answer. Everybody seemed to think their request is priority and that you are at their beck and call.

When I started working in late 1970s, it had already reached the telex age. Subsequently, the fax machine made its presence felt. Even then, we gave a reasonable length of time for a response, depending on the urgency, which was anything from a few hours to a few days.

Nowadays the response time has been reduced to mere minutes. Everyone seems to be chasing everyone else for responses, and getting all stressed up in between. It's bad enough with others chasing for urgent replies, but throw in an unreasonable and self-centred boss and you have my full sympathies.

If I am not mistaken, it was the Japanese that was always wanting urgent responses. No wonder they have job-related, stress-driven suicides.

With technology, there are huge pluses, but the minuses are not small either.

I admit that computers with its word-processing and spreadsheet capabilities made life much easier. I recalled the days of the manual typewriters. Imagine typing 8 copies of a long letter (with carbon paper in between the plain papers), and you hit the wrong key. You have to white-out the mistake on every single page, wait for it to dry before continuing. Now, anything is possible, cut and paste, copy, delete, insert, etc, your wish is the computer's command.

In those days, for those of us who took stenography, we lugged our portable typewriters to school. The generation now lugged their laptops everywhere.

A typical scenario of a kid doing homework now would be- computer on, music plugged into their ears, mobiles on the table. A closer check will reveal that other than their actual work, there is a tab each for facebook, msn instant messaging, emails, youtube. Observe a while, and you will notice the windows on the screen changing every so often, while tending to the mobiles too - their idea of multi-tasking. I only hope their marks will increase in multitude relative to their multi-tasking.

Baby-boomers of around my age are probably the 'privileged lot' to witness the technological evolution, of the typewriters and calculators into computers, of telephones into cordless phones and mobiles, among others. It is amazing how we managed to keep up and cope.

It's true that advanced technology gave us an edge, but it comes with a price, like loss of privacy, stress, etc.

Welcome to the crazy, stress-filled new-age world!

Kids (or parents) then, and now

Those of us who grew up in the kampung days before the HDB era can attest to the fact that kids then, and now are very different.

I was at a hawker centre recently when I overheard a conversation among some senior citizens about kids and parents then, and now. One of them was a retired teacher who is still doing relief teaching in schools.

He said, in those days, parents expected the teachers to discipline their kids as well. Teachers then were our educators as well as our disciplinarians, and our parents had the greatest respect for them.

Some teachers punished for the slightest offence, like forgetting to bring a book, etc. Misbehaving would warrant a more severe punishment. Punishments included scolding, being kept in during recess, writing lines, sent outside the classroom, standing on chairs or desks, and physical punishment like pinching, slapping and caning. We had a particular teacher, a male, who would reach for the boys' abdomen and pinched and twisted at the same time. Fortunately, he did not do that to the girls.

Kids of my age then would agree that, once we were punished by teachers, we would pray hard that our parents did not hear of it from snitching neighbours' kids or even siblings, otherwise we would receive a second round of punishment, usually a harsher one from our parents. It was unheard of to have our parents rushing to school to lodge a complaint or to confront our teachers.

Practically in any household, the cane ruled.

Our disciplinary committee not only consisted of the teachers, but also included our uncles, aunts and any adult in our neighbourhood who bothered to take it on himself to discipline an recalcitrant child.

While we did not have so much homework and stress as the kids now, we had to help with household chores, especially the elder sons and daughters of the family. Household chores of yesteryears were no mean feat especially for those living in the rural areas.

Ready-made and bought toys were a rarity, largely due to financial constraints and our parents thriftiness. Our toys were self-made and only limited by whatever materials available or our lack of creativity.

No game arcades and games were improvised by our stretched imaginative powers or copied from others. We played hard and worked hard.

Food - we ate whatever was placed on the table and the choices were really limited as there was no round the clock electricity supply and so no refrigerator for storing food.

Clothings and shoes were mostly hand-me-downs, and in fact, sometimes we would be happy enough to receive those.

Entertainment - no television and only battery-operated radio.

Luxury - none

Today, any harsh words from a teacher will put the teacher at risk of incurring the wrath of the parents. My daughter's Chinese language tuition teacher also teaches at a government aided school, which she transferred to in recent years. As a responsible and concerned teacher, she had always set high standards on her students' work by deducting marks for Chinese characters that were not written properly. For this, she was cautioned by the authorities of the school to be lenient and give the students a lot of leeway. Reason being that the students are the school's revenue tools, or something along that line, and the school could not afford antagonizing the parents.

Kids nowadays are defiant and rebellious, that every so often parents are left wondering where they had gone wrong. It is not uncommon to hear adults complaining that it is very difficult to handle today's children.

They are a materialistic lot too, handphone, ipod, branded goods galore, you name it, they have it, and sometimes spending money faster than their parents can earn it.

They are a pampered lot and don't help with household chores, and yet at times, expected to be served hand and foot.

Children of today are shaped by their parents and their environment, meaning other kids.

Before we blamed our own or others' kids, maybe we ought to look at ourselves as parents first. There could be children who were borned with mean genes but there were many more who were borned pure and innocent. So, how did a pure, innocent, sweet little cuddly baby transform into a little tyrant and sometimes a hooligan as an adult? What happened in between?

Clearly, our style of nurturing seemed to leave much to be desired. It is now necessary for most families to have dual income with both parents working, thus often leaving the kids in the care of the maid, who was usually a very poor stand-in for the parents. Parents, guilt-stricken about not spending enough time with the kids, generally tend to overlook their tantrums and over compensate with cash and material stuff, probably inculcating wrong values into the kids that they grew up to be so materialistic.

Of course, kids nowadays are exposed to much more resources and areas of influence than we were.

I recalled when we were kids, parents used to have a uniform level of discipline for kids. But I noticed a lot of parents now tend to indulge than discipline the kids.

Another contributing factor is our parents, who used to be strict with us when we were kids, but who have amazingly become super indulgent when it comes to our kids, probably because their limits for patience and tolerance have disappeared when they become free from the daily grinds.

There are parents who tried hard to instill discipline, responsibility and morality into their kids. Unfortunately, too, there are those who give in to their kids' every whim and fancy. When kids from different households come together, with their super absorbent mind and "monkey see monkey do" attitude, there is a tendency for them to adopt undesirable habits from one another.

A parent laughing at the child's undesirable antics is actually encouraging the child's bad behaviour. When we were young, such antics were not tolerated but rewarded with punishment instead.

I believed in the old adage of "spare the rod and spoil the child" and all my kids have felt the sting of the cane wielded by their mother. Still, my kids have tested my patience and stretched my tolerance. I am grateful that though, for now, they are not exactly angels, they do have some qualities that I can't fault with. My mum used to say that if you don't bend the bamboo plant while it is still young, you will never be able to bend it when it grows old.

So, are our kids still at fault or are we failing miserably as parents?

Gracious Singaporean

I was queuing at the counter of the NTUC supermart earlier and met a very gracious Singaporean.

A young man, probably in his 30s or so, was making payment. An NTUC staff member was with him when I caught part of the conversation and heard the customer said, "give it to the auntie". Straightaway, he turned to me and asked if I had the NTUC card. I fished out my LinkPoints card and showed it to him and he said, that's the one.

He asked the cashier to credit the points from his purchases to my card. His total purchases came to nearly S$1400. NTUC awards 2 points for every dollar spent, which meant that my card was credited with nearly 3000 points. The cashier said that 3000 points will qualify me for a S$20 NTUC voucher. Thank you very much! A pity I didn't ask for his name. Well, this is one of those times where I don't mind being called an 'auntie'.

When asked, he confirmed that the purchases were for charity and the items (mostly staples like rice, etc) were meant for a Buddhist temple in Simpang Bedok. Later, I learnt from the cashier that this customer comes regularly to make similar huge purchases.

NTUC currently also has a promotion on, where 1 point is given for every S$20 spent. These points are printed after the receipt and they can then be exchanged for stainless steel cookware. This customer did not want them too and asked the cashier to give them to 'this auntie' too. However, the cashier was quick to tell him that 'if you don't want them, then we want them', and promptly stashed all the slips away.

I admired him not only for his philanthropic act, but also his quiet demeanor while he carried out his transaction.

Rules are rules

I had gone to the CPF office with the necessary documents for the GST offset package cheque, and got their 'okay' before going to the bank to encash the cheque (my brother's).

At the bank, I handed the documents to the cashier, who then disappeared with the documents behind a door, presumably to check with the manager.

She reappeared twice, once to ask where my brother was located at the present, and secondly to ask about the relationship between the payee (my brother) and myself.

Finally, the branch service manager appeared. He told me that he cannot allow the cheque to be encashed because there is no documentary proof that we are siblings, even though my brother had duly completed the official LOA that he had printed from the CPF Board's website, provided a copy of his passport and I had produced my IC. The manager claimed that there had been complaints from payees who accused the bank of allowing cheques to be encashed without their permission, which meant that the bank was liable and could have done so without ensuring that all required documents are in order.

I had assured him that I had been given the 'okay' by CPF; that I have an account with the bank; and that as they would be keeping a copy of my IC, they could easily refer to me should there be any dispute. He claimed that in the case of a dispute, the CPF would go after the bank, but the bank would not be allowed to come to me. I don't understand the logic - if I acknowledge receipt of the cash, and should there be a dispute, shouldn't I be held accountable?

Then, I offered to call my brother on my mobile and let the manager talk to him and get him to verify himself by asking him to furnish his passport details. Again, no way.

I told him I had conformed to the CPF's guidelines on their website, but he said the bank had their own rules to follow before the release of the cash otherwise they would be held accountable. The money belonged to the CPF and it is in their account with the bank. The bank is just their agent, so why should they have their own set of guidelines? Can't see the logic here, too.

The manager insisted that I go back to CPF to get the release letter from them, and he volunteered to accompany me. The amount wasn't even substantial, it was not mine and I hated to be doing all the legwork unnecessarily. The manager was adamant and I had no choice.

At the CPF office, the staff referred to their website, pointed out the guidelines to the manager and concurred that as I had the necessary documents, no release letter was needed and the bank was obliged to release the cash to me. He couldn't argue his way out and before we left the office, the manager asked the staff for his name. The CPF staff told me to go back and see him if the bank again refused to release the cash.

Then, we went trooping back to the bank. Fortunately, it was within walking distance.

At the bank, the manager tried to rationalise his actions, and said he would be writing to the CPF Board. I think, be my guest.

In his absence, I asked the cashier if the manager is new. She said he is not newly promoted, but just transferred to this particular branch not long ago.

I can understand that the bank has to exercise caution before the release of funds. But I think it was excessively cautious of him to ask for additional documents which were not required, and when all conditions had been met. By insisting that the CPF provide a release letter, he showed a lack of confidence and unwillingness in accepting responsibility.

Visual evidence of the power of prayer, gratitude and appreciation

Dr. Masaru Emoto, a visionary researcher from Japan received certification from the Open International University as a Doctor of Alternative Medicine. Subsequently he was introduced to the concept of micro cluster water in the US and Magnetic Resonance Analysis technology. The quest thus began to discover the mystery of water.

Continuing in this stream of awareness, Dr Emoto began to study the impact of altering water by various factors of vibration and consciousness. He studied water that had been altered by music - healing music, classical music, heavy metal music - and so forth.

And the crystalline pictures reveal how water responds to these influences ... into complex arrangements of crystalline beauty. This begins to reveal that water is alive - it is conscious and responds to applied force by a rearrangement of its inner crystalline properties.

Inspired by these revelations, he decided to study the impact of human consciousness on water and its crystalline order.

Through repeatable experiments Dr. Emoto demonstrated that human thoughts and emotions can alter the molecular structure of water. Now, for the first time, there is physical evidence that the power of our thoughts can change the world within and around us.

He found that water that had been consciously altered by the simple imprinting of a word of intent upon the water would change. Water that was imprinted by love, gratitude, and appreciation, responded by the development of complex beauty, and water that was mistreated by negative intentions became disordered and lost its magnificent patterning. In fact, it often took on grotesque forms of resonance.

Photo 1	Photo 2	Photo 3

He experimented first with water from a pure source in Japan. The picture revealed a beautiful crystalline form. (Photo 1) He then did the same thing with water from a nearby polluted river. The result was a muddy, smeared pattern with very little structure. (Photo 2) He then asked a priest from a temple to offer a prayer to the polluted water sample and repeated the experiment out of curiosity. To his surprise, another beautiful crystalline structure appeared. (Photo 3)

Photo 4	Photo 5	Photo 6

This experiment was repeated many times over with the same result. The researcher then exposed water samples to different types of music. Classical music always reflected beautiful patterns, (photo 4) whereas heavy metal or rock and roll created distorted, formless, smudged images, (photo 5) as if these types of music had destroyed the delicate equilibrium of the molecules.

He continued experimenting, this time by writing words on pieces of paper and taping them to a clear glass container to see if anything happened.

He tried using positive words like "Love" and "Thank you" (photo 6) and every time noticed a beautiful and delicate crystalline pattern. He tried "You Make Me Sick. I Will Kill You" (photo 7) and each time observed distorted, frightening, muddied patterns. He even experimented with names like "Gandhi" "Mother Teresa" (photo 8) and "Hitler" (photo 9) and the same kind of results occurred.

Photo 7	Photo 8	Photo 9

Photo 10

After much experimentation, Dr. Emoto discovered that the most powerful combination of thoughts in terms of capacity to transform was that of "Love and Gratitude." (Photo 10)

What makes this discovery so amazing is that we live on a planet covered by more water than landmass, and that the human body is largely composed of water. So if we have the power to change the structure of the medium we are made of by simply producing positive though patterns, we can restore not only our own health but that of everyone around us, and even the planet itself, with our every thought.

Think about what giving thanks and praying before a meal can do to your health. I used to believe that it was a good way to stop the mental business of the day and put myself into a more receptive space. Now I know that even the food I am about to eat will also be transformed.

Source : mercola.com / spiritofmaat.com

Dying in my place

About a week ago, someone told me that the spouse died in my place. This person's spouse died and that's why I am alive now. I got over my initial shock and tried to reason, but this person was adamant.

True, in Jan/Feb last year, I was very weak and was more dead than alive. My onco thought I was a goner and that was the impression given to my family members. The hospice staff who saw me probably also didn't expect me to pull through.

I supposed I was the only one who didn't think I was going to die, especially when I was finally not oxygen-dependent and managed to leave the onco ward by walking out instead of being carried out in a box.

But that was in Jan/Feb last year. This person's spouse died suddenly in July last year. By July, I was already done with chemo, and I was on the mend. So, how could that person have died in my place.

I don't know how this conclusion came about, but I think it's sheer stuff and nonsense.

If my time was up, and I have to die, so be it. I definitely don't wish for anybody, good or bad, to die in order that I can survive.

My religious master had told me that my time wasn't up yet. I was on ayurvedic medicine and I had faith in the ayurvedic master. I was also on another alternative medicine. There were so many people praying for my recovery. I am sure that none of them would have prayed for someone else to be sacrificed in my place. Surely, I am not that great a person to deserve this.

It sounded like a great sacrifice and a glorious one too, but, sorry to say, I definitely was not the beneficiary. I am just glad that that person did not die in Jan/Feb last year, otherwise I may have to live with the thought that I could have robbed a family of a member and that's why my life was spared. This is so irrational and utterly ridiculous.

Once in a lifetime

Some interesting fact - trust people to be so observant...

Email from EW :

On August 7, 2009
at 12 hr 34 minutes and 56 seconds on the 7th of August this year, the time and date will be

12:34:56 07/08/09

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

This will never happen in your life again!!