Cats Playing Patty-cake, what they were saying...

When things go wrong

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,

When the road you're trudging seems all uphill,

When the funds are low and the debts are high,

And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,

When care is pressing you down a bit-

Rest if you must, but don't you quit.

Life is queer with its twists and turns,

As every one of us sometimes learns,

And many a fellow turns about

When he might have won had he stuck it out.

Don't give up though the pace seems slow -

You may succeed with another blow.

Often the goal is nearer than

It seems to a faint and faltering man;

Often the struggler has given up

When he might have captured the victor's cup;

And he learned too late when the night came down,

How close he was to the golden crown.

Success is failure turned inside out -

The silver tint in the clouds of doubt,

And you never can tell how close you are,

It might be near when it seems afar;

So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit -

It's when things seem worst that you must not quit.

Unknown

Magic Carpet Silver Swan

The installation of 8 fans, and a pretty red cloth set right in the middle. When the fans start blowing, the cloth whirls around gleefully and gracefully. Who would have thought of such a beautiful sight?



Then again. Listen to the tone of music, and observe the surroundings - all dark, save for a spotlight focusing on the silken ballerina. See through the beauty and this is what you get. This video; this dance shows more than just an alluring installation. It brings an underlying meaning that is otherwise easily negligible. It challenges you to see past the depthless surface. How often do you care to listen to a swan song and face your emotions.

The silver Swan, who living had no Note,

when Death approached, unlocked her silent throat.

Leaning her breast against the reedy shore,

thus sang her first and last, and sang no more:

"Farewell, all joys! O Death, come close mine eyes!

"More Geese than Swans now live, more Fools than Wise."

 -of the Orlando Gibbons madrigal (The Silver Swan)

And you think you heard it all

There was once a hat-salesman who passed by a forest on his way back a sales trip. The weather was very hot and he decided to take a nap under one of the trees, so he left his whole basket of hats by the side of the road. A few hours later, he was awakened by some sounds.

The next thing he realized was that all his hats were gone. Then he heard some monkeys on top of the tree and he looked up. To his surprise, the tree was full of monkeys.

They have taken all his hats!

The hat-seller sits down and tries to think of how he can get the hats down. He started to think and scratched his head.

The next moment, he realized that the monkeys were doing the same thing.

Next, he took off his own hat and fanned himself. The monkeys did exactly the same! An idea struck him - he took his hat and threw it on the ground. And the monkeys did the same too. So, he managed to get all his hats back.

Fifty years later, his grandson also became a hat-salesman and had heard this monkey story from his grandfather. One day, just like his grandfather, he passed by the same forest. Feeling very hot, he took a nap under the same tree and left the hats on the ground Again, when he woke up, he realized that all his hats were gone.

He looked up and found that the monkeys had taken all his hats. Remembering what his grandfather had told him, he started scratching his head and the monkeys followed. He took off his hat and fanned himself and again the monkeys followed. Now, very convinced of his grandfather's idea, he threw his hat on the ground... but to his surprise, the monkeys still held on to all the hats!

Then one monkey climbed down the tree, grabbed the hat on the ground, gave him a slap and said, "You think only you have a grandfather?!"

Brighten & Sparkle The Corner Where You Are

We cannot all be famous or be listed in "WHO'S WHO,"
But every person great or small has important work to do,

For seldom do we realize the importance of small deeds
Or to what degree of greatness unnoticed kindness leads

For it's not the big celebrity in a world of fame and praise,
But it's doing unpretentiously in undistinguished ways

The work assigned to us, unimportant as it seems,
That makes our task outstanding and brings reality to dreams

So do not sit and idly wish for wider, new dimensions
Where you can put in practice your many "GOOD INTENTIONS"

But at the spot you were placed begin at once to do
Little things to brighten up the lives surrounding you,

For if everybody brightened up the spot in which they're standing
By being more considerate and a little less demanding,

This dark old world would very soon eclipse the "Evening Star"
If everybody BRIGHTENED UP THE CORNER WHERE THEY ARE!

~ Helen Steiner Rice ~

Give a good guess why I post this

» July is named for this man, and there’s a good reason why The Hot Word Blog

Kaboom! June, named for Juno, a famously jealous Roman Goddess, was fun, but July has arrived like fireworks. But the new month is named for a mortal, albeit one who devised and ruled an empire.

Julius Caesar (as in kaiser and many other modern words) was a political and military genius who conquered Gaul (what is now part of Italy, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands), changed the structure of the gargantuan Roman government into a dictatorship, was assassinated in legendary fashion, and most importantly for our purposes, helped make the calendar what it is today.

Without delving into the minutiae of calendar history, Caesar is responsible for the year as we know it having 365 days, and for the existence of a leap year every four years. How did this Julian Calendar help things? To give you an idea, the old calendar had something called an intercalary month that was 27 days long, added between February and March, that occurred in haphazard intervals. And our contemporary calendar is still pretty much the same system that Caesar instituted more than 2000 years ago.

You’ve probably figured out by now that July was named in honor of Julius, and it seems like a worthy tribute. This is especially true when you consider the drab name of the month under the older calendar system: Quintilis, which just means “fifth” in Latin. (Sort of like naming a fluffy dog Fluffy.) When Julius Caesar died, Quintilis (which was his birth month) was replaced with July.

One of Julius Caesar’s most bizarre legacies is the C section. The Caesarian section is a now-ubiquitous birth procedure that involves “the delivery of a fetus by surgical incision through the abdominal wall and uterus.” The link between the procedure and Caesar is murky, with some stories claiming that an ancestor of Caesar’s had been delivered in this manner, some saying it was Julius Caesar himself born this way, and some saying that the procedure bore the name before Caesar existed and that he may in fact have been named for it.

Finally, in response to the comments that express concern the blog is celebrating a man who was a misogynist, a conqueror, and a tyrant, all of those charges are true. The aim here is not to celebrate but to elucidate. If we happen to use a happy tone in reference to Caesar’s calendar reforms, it’s because the idea of a 27-day month is horrible. But many of his actions were horrible, too.

Here's another clue:

The best thing ever to happen in Singapore

ROFL at Windy Miao. Miaoooo... And the Raincoat song? Seriously?

My first step: the baby grows up

"Money & Happiness (insert briefcase clip-art here) A guide to living the good life," reads the title of the book by Laura Rowley. Chapter 2 talks about values, namely "Identifying your values: Family, Community, Personality". Don't get me wrong - I have not finished reading the book yet. But this book is so powerful that one chapter is enough to get me thinking. A lot.

I have just started another chapter of my life and if I were to have an auto-biography, this chapter would no doubt be titled "Realising the importance of wealth and affluence and having my brain cracked when planning my life away and as each night-time comes, I only hope I can sleep well and not get disturbed by my overwhelming motivation to not fail again in life." Funny? No? Trying too hard?

Fine.

Anyway, I see the need to break out from my happy-go-lucky self to embrace a new focused, ambitious and persevering persona. I have an ultimate goal now, in fact, make that two. Although I'm still not quite sure how I can reach my goals, I will nonetheless learn - and this is why I picked up "Money & Happiness" and a few other books about money and finance.

In my next few posts, I will write more and all about my goals and as it goes along, I will also post what I've learnt and what has inspired me to succeed. You will slowly understand my burning desire to win in life and I only hope to rally everyone out there to join me in this path of personal growth. Let's make this a sharing point. Listen to what I've got to say and share with me your forms of inspiration and success stories. Feel free to comment and to "follow". Anything. Just be here.

We will even appreciate you reading just the first word.

What say you, my pretty sister?