Thoughts

Recently I have 2 friends that have confided in me that they are feeling rather helpless and stressed up with life. The up and downs of life is taking its toll. I very much feel helpless over the problems they are facing and with the fact that there is nothing much I can help other than to offer a listening ear and the comfort of friendship. I guess my previous experience as a counsellor and the experience of life itself is not enough for me to give them the advice they very much needed. This has created some level of stress within me as I am too undergoing some stress from work and life itself. *sigh*

I really hope that I can cheer my friends up. Any suggestions?

Believe It Or Not...Continued...

1. No word in the English language rhymes with month.
2. Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.
3. On average, people fear spiders more than they do death.
4. One of the reasons marijuana is illegal today is because cotton growers in the '30s lobbied against hemp farmers, they saw it as competition.
5. Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.
6. Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.
7. Right-handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people do.
8. Shakespeare invented the word "assassination" and "bump."
9. Some lions mate over 50 times a day.
10. Starfish haven't got brains.
11. Stewardesses is the longest word typed with only the left hand.
12. The ant always falls over on its right side when intoxicated.
13. The average human eats eight spiders in their lifetime at night.
14. The catfish has over 27,000 taste buds.
15. The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth 2, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.
16. The electric chair was invented by a dentist.
17. The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to squirt blood 30 feet.
18. The male praying mantis cannot copulate while its head is attached to its body. The female initiates sex by ripping the male's head off.
19. The most common name in the world is Mohammed.
20. The name of all the continents end with the same letter that they start with.
21. The name Wendy was made up for the book "Peter Pan."
22. The Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia, has twice as many bathrooms as is necessary. When it was built in the 1940s, the state of Virginia still had segregation laws requiring separate toilet facilities for blacks and whites.
23. The sentence, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" uses every letter in the English language.
24. The shortest war in history was between Zanzibar and England in 1896. Zanzibar surrendered after 38 minutes.
25. The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.
26. The word "lethologica" describes the state of not being able to remember the word you want.
27. The word racecar and kayak are the same whether they are read left to right or right to left.
28. There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.
29. TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters on only one row of the keyboard.
30. Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
31. You are more likely to be killed by a Champagne cork than by a poisonous spider.
32. You can't kill yourself by holding your breath.
33. You share your birthday with at least nine million other people in the world.

Diving

Most of my Diving buddies are blogging away on their excitement over the reopening of the dive season. Reading their blogs on the upcoming dive trips and their newly bought equipments is great as I’m also extremely excited about it :p

The silky white sands, crystal clear waters, abundances of marine life, indescribable feeling of floating in the water, great sense of serenity, feeling the changes of underwater pressure and temperature, descending to the unknown not knowing what our next encounters are, the underwater macro life, colourful corals and many other inexpressible, indefinable feelings that are beyond words. Most important for me, my customers would not be able to reach me by my cell phones *Muahaha* A total cut-off from the busy and stressful world above the sea level.

It would take a diver or someone that has experienced the experience to understand the real pleasure of diving. This is also the reason why divers will always feel very much connected to each other and they will never run out of topics to talk about. Not to mention that we depend very much on each other deep down under. Horay... I'm going back to sea. Miss my 'friends' and buddies lots :)

"I can only think of one experience which might exceed the interest of a few hours spent under water, and that would be flying in the blue sky"

Thean Hou Temple

Sis Ivy will be leaving Malaysia this Thursday, hence 2 siao women decided to go around to snap some last minute pictures. Here are some funny ones.

Sis Ivy's Zodiac animal, the Rabbit



Us within the Dragon's body
We are supposed to share the same opening but Sis Ivy refused to move and allow me inside the mid-hole. We almost ended up fighting :p
Me on the Tiger. Gosh..it's not easy to climb up the body indeed, my rock climbing practices did help out a little. So climbing buddies, stop complaining bout my climbing habits k. Sis Ivy attempted but failed, hence resorted to putting her hand into the tiger's mouth instead (Below) . Muahaha














We thought, imitating the Rooster would be funny, and did our part. Sis Ivy somehow looks more like the pig. Muahaha







Sis Ivy and Myself with our respective favourite/ most loved Zodiac *wink wink*












I'll be missing her lots espcially won't be around to see her off. Muakz

Family Recipe

Last Saturday, my family did another round of Yong Tau Foo from my late Grandma's recipe. It wa tedious as we have to wake up early in the morning to get the ingredients from the market. Not the mention that we slept quite late the night before cos we were busy Yakking away, catching up on gossips. Wohoohhooo, finally this time I get to be the chef and mastered the recipe.

We bought altogether 23 Bitter Gours, 8 Brinjals, lots of Lady Fingers, Taufoo and some red chilles.







The raw meat paste made of fish paste, pork, salty fish, fried shallots, onion leaves, salt and oyster sauce as seasoning.


My 2 cousin brother helping out to stuff the meat paste into the bitter gour.


Stuffed unfried tau foo, and bitter Gouard (Below)








Some of the ready food, there is another pot in the kitchen.

Ready to be eaten

It was a whole day's work from the early morning and guess it'll be quite sometime before I'll want to do this again. But anyway, there is no better feeling seeing your family members enjoying food we have prepared and it's all worth the effort. That is also why I enjoyed cooking so very much.

Global Warming

Carbon dioxide and other gases warm the surface of the planet naturally by trapping solar heat in the atmosphere. This is a good thing because it keeps our planet habitable. However, by burning fossil fuels such as coal, gas and oil and clearing forests we have dramatically increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere and temperatures are rising.

The vast majority of scientists agree that global warming is real, it’s already happening and that it is the result of our activities and not a natural occurrence.1 The evidence is overwhelming and undeniable.

We’re already seeing changes. Glaciers are melting, plants and animals are being forced from their habitat, and the number of severe storms and droughts is increasing.

If Global warming continues at this rate, we can expect the following to happen very soon…

• Deaths from global warming will double in just 25 years -- to 300,000 people a year.
• Global sea levels could rise by more than 20 feet with the loss of shelf ice in Greenland and Antarctica, devastating coastal areas worldwide.
• Heat waves will be more frequent and more intense.
• Droughts and wildfires will occur more often.
• The Arctic Ocean could be ice free in summer by 2050.
• More than a million species worldwide could be driven to extinction by 2050.

There is no doubt we can solve this problem. In fact, we have a moral obligation to do so. Small changes to your daily routine can add up to big differences in helping to stop global warming.

Crisis in Darfur, Sudan

The conflict in Darfur dates back to early 2003 when black Africans from Darfur rebelled against the country's Arab Muslim leadership demanding improved infrastructure in the region, proceeds from oil wealth and a power-sharing government. The Sudanese government retaliated by sending in government forces to quell the rebellion.

The government also reportedly organized and supplied the Janjaweed militia to combat the rebels.

The main rebel groups involved in the conflict are the Sudan Liberation Army/Movement, or SLA/M, and the Justice and Equality Movement, or JEM. Both groups have demanded equal representation in the government and an end to the economic disparity between black Africans and Arabs in Sudan.

The violence in the mostly arid desert region has driven millions of Darfur villagers from their homes. Most are in disease riddled refugee camps in Darfur while some have fled to crowded camps in neighboring Chad.

The U.S. Agency for International Development has characterized the crisis in Darfur as the "worst humanitarian crisis in the world today."
Few aid agencies have been able to penetrate the region because of the violence. Those that have gained access report alarming scenes of starvation, disease and mass killings.

An estimated 180,000 people have died and 2 million have been displaced in the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region of western Sudan where militias have targeted civilians in attacks the United Nations warns could rival the 1994 genocide in Rwanda in which more than 800,000 people died. "The people of Darfur are suffering a catastrophe -- terrible crimes have been committed against them," U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said.

The killings of mostly black African Muslims have been blamed on an Arab militia known as the Janjaweed. Like their victims, the Janjaweed are Muslim, but are accused of ethnic atrocities, including burning and destroying villages in parts of Darfur and of slaughtering men, women and children.

Human rights groups and refugees also accuse the militia of mass rape, characterizing the situation as ethnic cleansing and genocide.