Thursday, June 30, 2011
Layman's 10 commandments
They are like the ten commandments to follow in life all the time.
1] Prayer is not a "spare wheel" that you pull out when in trouble, but it is a "steering wheel" that directs the right path throughout.
2] So a Car's WINDSHIELD is so large & the Rear view Mirror is so small? Because our PAST is not as important as our FUTURE. So, Look Ahead and Move on.
3] Friendship is like a BOOK. It takes few seconds to burn, but it takes years to write.
4] All things in life are temporary. If going well, enjoy it, they will not last forever. If going wrong, don't worry, they can't last long either.
5] Old Friends are Gold! New Friends are Diamond! If you get a Diamond, don't forget the Gold! Because to hold a Diamond, you always need a Base of Gold!
6] Often when we lose hope and think this is the end, GOD smiles from above and says, "Relax, sweetheart, it's just a bend, not the end!
7] When GOD solves your problems, you have faith in HIS abilities; when GOD doesn't solve your problems HE has faith in your abilities.
8] When you pray for others, God listens to you and blesses them, and sometimes, when you are safe and happy, remember that someone has prayed for you.
9] WORRYING does not take away tomorrow's TROUBLES, it takes away today's PEACE.
10) If you really enjoy this, please pass to others. It may brighten someone's day
Monday, May 2, 2011
$1.5 million paid for world’s most expensive dog
Genghis Khan had one, legend says. So did the Buddha.
And now, the prized red Tibetan mastiff, thought to be one of the world’s oldest and most venerable breeds, has another distinction: One of the massive, fluffy dogs has become the most expensive dog ever sold.
An 11-month old pup named Big Splash (“Hong Dong” in Chinese) recently sold in the Chinese city of Qingdao for 10 million yuan — about $1.5 million in U.S. dollars.
The 3-foot-tall, 180-pound dog is one of a breed that has been around since time immemorial. Tibetan mastiffs are said to have guarded nomad camps and monasteries, and are rarely seen outside of Tibet.
But even among that rarified class of canines, Big Splash stands alone.
Raised on a diet of beef, chicken, abalone and sea cucumber, “he is a perfect specimen,” his breeder, identified only as Mr. Lou, told the British newspaper. “He has excellent genes and will be a good breeding dog. When I started in this business, 10 years ago, I never thought we would see such a price.”
Lou declined to identify Big Splash’s new owner, other than to say that he is a multimillionaire who made his fortune in coal. And given the rising popularity of the breed, it may be that the owner can make some of his investment back by offering the dog’s services at stud. Some breeders are willing to pay as much as $100,000 to get a dipper out of Big Splash’s gene pool.
Big Splash takes the title of the World’s Most Expensive Dog away from another Tibetan mastiff, Yangtze River Number Two, who sold for 4 million yuan in 2009. In an example of what some say is the excess exhibited among China’s new rich, Yangtze River Number Two was chauffeured to its new owner in a motorcade that included 30 limousines.source
Glowing Pork, anyone?
Shanghai city resident purchased “blue glow pork”, both surprised and afraid.
Miss Chen the purchased a kilogram of pork from a wet market on Yang Gao North Road the day before yesterday. That night her family used a portion of that pork to make dumplings together. Afterward, she placed the leftover pork on a small table in the kitchen. At 11pm, Miss Chen got out of bed to use the toilet, and suddenly noticed a faint blue glow coming from the kitchen, and that the bright blue glow was coming from the pork itself!
Glowing pork
In order to be sure she wasn’t seeing things, Miss Chen woke up her family to look at this piece of strange meat together. The pork glowed in the dark but returned to “normal” in the morning. Both astonished and afraid, Miss Chen’s family did not dare to eat from this piece of pork again.
Yesterday afternoon, this reporter rushed to Miss Chen’s home and saw this piece of glowing pork. This reporter noticed that the remaining 500+ gram of pork was in the shape of a strip, with more lean meat than fat, and though it had already been purchased for over a day, there was no peculiar smell.
This reporter, through multiple tests in the dark and light, truly did see the pork emit a faint blue light, that apart from the pig’s skin, the entire piece of pork was suffused with blue light, and a faint blue glow could also be seen on fingers that had handled the pork. This reporter afterward intentionally washed this piece of pork with water and again checked in a dark place, but the pork still emitted a blue glow, only just slightly more faint.
The glowing phenomenon may be caused by bacteria
This reporter got a hold of two food experts on the phone. Regarding this, the experts response was that they have never seen pork emitting light, that it may have been caused by bacteria, that the pork needs to be tested, and further observation, research, and analysis is required before anything can be confirmed.
Changsha “blue glow pork” is caused by glowing bacterium
Last year in February, Changsha city residents one after another discovered that the pork they had purchased from supermarkets emitted a blue glow at night. After this phenomenon was reported by the media, the Changsha Food Safety Commission mobilized the efforts of the business, livestock, industry and commerce, health, and other departments and at the same time invited experts and professors to participate in the investigation. Through scientific bacteria cultivation separation, experts discovered “blue glow pork” was caused by secondary bacterial contamination.
Food experts say it is safe to eat
Shanghai Health Supervision Department food experts say the pork that has been contaminated by phosphorescent bacteria is still safe to consume after cooking and heating.
Group hysteria after watching ghost movie
A group of movie-goers went hysterical after watching a ghost film in Indonesia.
They were screaming and shouting, and some even crying while rolling on the ground at the car park of Trade Mall in Bogor last week.
According to witnesses, the incident first started on 13 youths, and eventually those around them were also affected.
Security personnel were immediately called to help but failed.
Fifteen minutes later, a man who had just finished his prayers arrived at the car park.
He touched on the heads of those went hysterical, and amazingly, the group calmed down.
The youths said had just finished watching ghost film 13 Cara Memanggil Setan (13 Ways to Summon the Demons) at the mall.
Source: Agencies
Best Time To Drink Water
Drinking water at certain time maximizes its effectiveness on the body:
2 glasses of water after waking up - helps activate internal organs
1 glass of water 30 minutes before a meal - helps digestion
1 glass of water before taking a bath - helps lower blood pressure
1 glass of water before going to bed - avoids stroke or heart attack
Why Chinese Women Don't Get Breast Cancer
WHY WOMEN IN CHINA DO NOT GET BREAST CANCER
By Prof. Jane Plant, PhD, CBE
I had no alternative but to die or to try to find a cure for myself. I am a scientist - surely there was a rational explanation for this cruel illness that affects one in 12 women in the UK ?
I had suffered the loss of one breast, and undergone radiotherapy. I was now receiving painful chemotherapy, and had been seen by some of the country's most eminent specialists. But, deep down, I felt certain I was facing death. I had a loving husband, a beautiful home and two young children to care for. I desperately wanted to live.
Fortunately, this desire drove me to unearth the facts, some of which were known only to a handful of scientists at the time.
Anyone who has come into contact with breast cancer will know that certain risk factors - such as increasing age, early onset of womanhood, late onset of menopause and a family history of breast cancer - are completely out of our control. But there are many risk factors, which we can control easily.
These "controllable" risk factors readily translate into simple changes that we can all make in our day-to-day lives to help prevent or treat breast cancer. My message is that even advanced breast cancer can be overcome because I have done it.
The first clue to understanding what was promoting my breast cancer came when my husband Peter, who was also a scientist, arrived back from working in China while I was being plugged in for a chemotherapy session.
He had brought with him cards and letters, as well as some amazing herbal suppositories, sent by my friends and science colleagues in China .
The suppositories were sent to me as a cure for breast cancer. Despite the awfulness of the situation, we both had a good belly laugh, and I remember saying that this was the treatment for breast cancer in China , then it was little wonder that Chinese women avoided getting the disease.
Those words echoed in my mind.
Why didn't Chinese women in China get breast cancer?
I had collaborated once with Chinese colleagues on a study of links between soil chemistry and disease, and I remembered some of the statistics.
The disease was virtually non-existent throughout the whole country. Only one in 10,000 women in China will die from it, compared to that terrible figure of one in 12 in Britain and the even grimmer average of one in 10 across most Western countries.
It is not just a matter of China being a more rural country, with less urban pollution. In highly urbanized Hong Kong , the rate rises to 34 women in every 10,000 but still puts the West to shame.
The Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have similar rates. And remember, both cities were attacked withnuclear weapons, so in addition to the usual pollution-related cancers, one would also expect to find some radiation-related cases, too.
The conclusion we can draw from these statistics strikes you with some force. If a Western woman were to move to industrialized, irradiated Hiroshima , she would slash her risk of contracting breast cancer by half. Obviously this is absurd.
It seemed obvious to me that some lifestyle factor not related to pollution, urbanization or the environment is seriously increasing the Western woman's chance of contracting breast cancer.
I then discovered that whatever causes the huge differences in breast cancer rates between oriental and Western countries, it isn't genetic.
Scientific research showed that when Chinese or Japanese people move to the West, within one or two generations their rates of breast cancer approach those of their host community.
The same thing happens when oriental people adopt a completely Western lifestyle in Hong Kong . In fact, the slang name for breast cancer in China translates as 'Rich Woman's Disease'. This is because, in China , only the better off can afford to eat what is termed ' Hong Kong food'.
The Chinese describe all Western food, including everything from ice cream and chocolate bars to spaghetti and feta cheese, as "Hong Kong food", because of its availability in the former British colony and its scarcity, in the past, in mainland China .
So it made perfect sense to me that whatever was causing my breast cancer and the shockingly high incidence in this country generally, it was almost certainly something to do with our better-off, middle-class, Western lifestyle.
There is an important point for men here, too. I have observed in my research that much of the data about prostate cancer leads to similar conclusions.
According to figures from the World Health Organization, the number of men contracting prostate cancer in rural China is negligible, only 0.5 men in every 100,000.
In England, Scotland and Wales , however, this figure is 70 times higher. Like breast cancer, it is a middle-class disease that primarily attacks the wealthier and higher socio-economic groups, those that can afford to eat rich foods.
I remember saying to my husband, "Come on Peter, you have just come back from China . What is it about the Chinese way of life that is so different?"
Why don't they get breast cancer?'
We decided to utilize our joint scientific backgrounds and approach it logically.
We examined scientific data that pointed us in the general direction of fats in diets.
Researchers had discovered in the 1980s that only l4% of calories in the average Chinese diet were from fat, compared to almost 36% in the West.
But the diet I had been living on for years before I contracted breast cancer was very low in fat and high in fibre.
Besides, I knew as a scientist that fat intake in adults has not been shown to increase risk for breast cancer in most investigations that have followed large groups of women for up to a dozen years.
Then one day something rather special happened. Peter and I have worked together so closely over the years that I am not sure which one of us first said:
"The Chinese don't eat dairy produce!"
It is hard to explain to a non-scientist the sudden mental and emotional 'buzz' you get when you know you have had an important insight. It's as if you have had a lot of pieces of a jigsaw in your mind, and suddenly, in a few seconds, they all fall into place and the whole picture is clear.
Suddenly I recalled how many Chinese people were physically unable to tolerate milk, how the Chinese people I had worked with had always said that milk was only for babies, and how one of my close friends, who is of Chinese origin, always politely turned down the cheese course at dinner parties.
I knew of no Chinese people who lived a traditional Chinese life who ever used cow or other dairy food to feed their babies. The tradition was to use a wet nurse but never, ever, dairy products.
Culturally, the Chinese find our Western preoccupation with milk and milk products very strange. I remember entertaining a large delegation of Chinese scientists shortly after the ending of the Cultural Revolution in the 1980s.
On advice from the Foreign Office, we had asked the caterer to provide a pudding that contained a lot of ice cream. After inquiring what the pudding consisted of, all of the Chinese, including their interpreter, politely but firmly refused to eat it, and they could not be persuaded to change their minds.
At the time we were all delighted and ate extra portions!
Milk, I discovered, is one of the most common causes of food allergies .
Over 70% of the world's population are unable to digest the milk sugar, lactose, which has led nutritionists to believe that this is the normal condition for adults, not some sort of deficiency. Perhaps nature is trying to tell us that we are eating the wrong food.
Before I had breast cancer for the first time, I had eaten a lot of dairy produce, such as skimmed milk, low-fat cheese and yogurt. I had used it as my main source of protein. I also ate cheap but lean minced beef, which I now realized was probably often ground-up dairy cow.
In order to cope with the chemotherapy I received for my fifth case of cancer, I had been eating organic yogurts as a way of helping my digestive tract to recover and repopulate my gut with 'good' bacteria.
Recently, I discovered that way back in 1989 yogurt had been implicated in ovarian cancer. Dr Daniel Cramer of Harvard University studied hundreds of women with ovarian cancer, and had them record in detail what they normally ate. Wish I'd been made aware of his findings when he had first discovered them.
Following Peter's and my insight into the Chinese diet, I decided to give up not just yogurt but all dairy produce immediately. Cheese, butter, milk and yogurt and anything else that contained dairy produce - it went down the sink or in the rubbish.
It is surprising how many products, including commercial soups, biscuits and cakes, contain some form of dairy produce. Even many proprietary brands of margarine marketed as soya, sunflower or olive oil spreads can contain dairy produce
.
I therefore became an avid reader of the small print on food labels.
Up to this point, I had been steadfastly measuring the progress of my fifth cancerous lump with callipers and plotting the results. Despite all the encouraging comments and positive feedback from my doctors and nurses, my own precise observations told me the bitter truth.
My first chemotherapy sessions had produced no effect - the lump was still the same size.
Then I eliminated dairy products. Within days, the lump started to shrink
About two weeks after my second chemotherapy session and one week after giving up dairy produce, the lump in my neck started to itch. Then it began to soften and to reduce in size. The line on the graph, which had shown no change, was now pointing downwards as the tumour got smaller and smaller.
And, very significantly, I noted that instead of declining exponentially (a graceful curve) as cancer is meant to do, the tumour's decrease in size was plotted on a straight line heading off the bottom of the graph, indicating a cure, not suppression (or remission) of the tumour.
One Saturday afternoon after about six weeks of excluding all dairy produce from my diet, I practised an hour of meditation then felt for what was left of the lump. I couldn't find it. Yet I was very experienced at detecting cancerous lumps - I had discovered all five cancers on my own. I went downstairs and asked my husband to feel my neck. He could not find any trace of the lump either.
On the following Thursday I was due to be seen by my cancer specialist a Charing Cross Hospital in London . He examined me thoroughly, especially my neck where the tumour had been. He was initially bemused and then delighted as he said, "I cannot find it." None of my doctors, it appeared, had expected someone with my type and stage of cancer (which had clearly spread to the lymph system) to survive, let alone be so hale and hearty.
My specialist was as overjoyed as I was. When I first discussed my ideas with him he was understandably sceptical. But I understand that he now uses maps showing cancer mortality in China in his lectures, and recommends a non-dairy diet to his cancer patients.
I now believe that the link between dairy produce and breast cancer is similar to the link between smoking and lung cancer.
I believe that identifying the link between breast cancer and dairy produce, and then developing a diet specifically targeted at maintaining the health of my breast and hormone system, cured me.
It was difficult for me, as it may be for you, to accept that a substance as 'natural' as milk might have such ominous health implications. But I am a living proof that it works and, starting from tomorrow, I shall reveal the secrets of my revolutionary action plan.
Extracted from Your Life in Your Hands, by Professor Jane Plan
Sunday, January 2, 2011
A Letter to all sons
Following is a letter to his son from a renowned Hong Kong TV broadcaster cum Child Psychologist.
My Son,
I am writing this to you because of 3 reasons:
(1) Life is unpredictable, nobody knows how long he lives. Some words are better said early.
(2) I am your father, and if I don't tell you these, no one else will.
(3) What is written is my own personal bitter experiences that perhaps could save you a lot of unnecessary heartache.
Remember the following as you go through life:
1.對你不好的人,你不要太介意:在你一生中,沒有人有義務要對你好, 除了我和你媽媽。至於那些對你好的人,你除了要珍惜、感恩外,也請多防備一點,因為,每個人做每件事,總有一個原因,他對你 好,未必真的是因為喜歡你,請你必須搞清楚,而不必太快將對方看作真朋友
Do not bear grudge towards those who are not good to you. No one has the responsibility of treating you well, except your mother and I. To those who are good to you, you have to treasure it and be thankful, and ALSO you have to be cautious, because, everyone has a motive for every move. When a person is good to you, it does not mean he really likes you. You have to be careful, don't hastily regard him as a real friend.
2.沒有人是不可代替,沒有東西是必須擁有:看透了這一點,將來你身邊的人不 再要你,或許失去了世間上最愛的一切時,也應該明白,這並不是甚麼大不了的事
No one is indispensable, nothing in the world that you must possess. Once you understand this idea, it would be easier for you to go through life when people around you don't want you anymore, or when you lose what/who you love most.
3.生命是短暫的,今日你還在浪費著生命,明 日會發覺生命已遠離你了:因此,愈早珍惜生命,你享受生命的日子也愈多,與其盼望長壽,倒不如早點享受
Life is short. When you waste your life today, tomorrow you would find that life is leaving you. The earlier you treasure your life, the better you enjoy life.
4.世界上並沒有最愛這回事:愛情只是一種霎時的感覺,而這感 覺絕對會隨時日、心境而改變。如果你的所謂最愛離開你,請耐心地等候一下,讓時日慢慢沖洗,讓心靈慢慢沉澱,你的苦就會 慢慢淡化。不要過分憧憬愛情的美,不要過分誇大失戀的悲.
Love is but a transient feeling, and this feeling would fade with time and with one's mood. If your so called loved one leaves you, be patient, time will wash away your aches and sadness. Don't over exaggerate the beauty and sweetness of love, and don't over exaggerate the sadness of falling out of love.
5.雖然,很多有成就的人士都有没受過很多教育,但並不等如不用功讀書,就一定可以成功:你學到的知識,就是你擁有的武器!人,可以白手興家,但不可以手無 寸鐵,緊記!
A lot of successful people did not receive a good education, that does not mean that you can be successful by not studying hard! Whatever knowledge you gain is your weapon in life. One can go from rags to riches, but one has to start from some rags!
6.我不會要求你供養我下半輩子,同樣地我也不會供養你的下半輩 子,當你長大到可以獨立的時候,我的責任已經完結:以後,你要坐巴士還是Benz,吃魚翅還是粉絲,都要自己負責
I do not expect you to financially support me when I am old, either would I financially support your whole life. My responsibility as a supporter ends when you are grown up. After that, you decide whether you want to travel in a public transport or in your limousine, whether rich or poor.
7.你可以要求自己守信,但不能要求別人守信,你可以要求自己對人好,但不能期待人家對 你好:你怎樣對人,並不代表人家就會怎樣對你,如果看不透這一點,你只會徒添不必要的煩惱.
You honour your words, but don't expect others to be so. You can be good to people, but don't expect people to be good to you. If you don't understand this, you would end up with unnecessary troubles.
8.我買了十多二十年六合彩,還是一窮二白,連三獎也沒有中,這證明人要發 達,還是要努力工作才可以,世界上 並沒有免費午餐
I have bought lotteries for umpteen years, but I never strike any prize. That shows if you want to be rich, you have to work hard! There is no free lunch!
9.親人只有一 次的緣份,無論這輩子我和你會相處多久,也請好好珍惜共聚的時光,下輩子,無論愛與不愛,都不會再見.
Your Dad