The Walk of Life

Copywriting is a much sought after topic on the Web. Every internet marketer will invariably have to learn something about this topic. To me copying Ancient Texts or Manuscripts requires even more attention for a missing 'letter' or 'word' can mean a totally different thing and cause years of hardships! :)

To illustrate the point I'll share an interesting story and also my way of apology for Missing in Action for a week! :)

A young monk arrives at the monastery. He is assigned to helping the other monks in copying the old canons and laws of the church by hand.

He notices, however, that all of the monks are copying from copies, not from the original manuscript. So, the new monk goes to the head abbot to question this, pointing out that if someone made even a small error in the first copy, it would never be picked up! In fact, that error would be continued in all of the subsequent copies.

The head monk, says, "We have been copying from the copies for centuries, but you make a good point, my son."

He goes down into the dark caves underneath the monastery where the original manuscripts are held as archives in a locked vault that hasn't been opened for hundreds of years. Hours go by and nobody sees the old abbot.

So, the young monk gets worried and goes down to look for him. He sees him banging his head against the wall and wailing,

"We missed the " R" ! , we missed the " R" !"

His forehead is all bloody and bruised and he is crying uncontrollably. The young monk asks the old abbot, "What's wrong, father?"

With A choking voice, the old abbot replies, "The word was...

"CELEB RATE !!"

There is such a place known as the Station of Life in Malaysia! It is located in Lahad Datu, Sabah which is East Malaysia and is a place where Christians spend 2 weeks to a month to get away from their usual busy schedule, lock themselves in, studying the Bible, prayer and fasting as well as commune with our Lord and for most find their directions in life.

Well I'm not talking about that SOL but more of pondering on the name for I see life is like an inner city train circuit that made many stops at various stations and one gets on and off. Of course you get back on the train to complete all your accorded tasks in life before you end your journey at the Home Station!

This week, we enter another station in our life with a double celebration! Firstly, celebrated my recent birthday with a group of new found friends from the blogosphere, as well as our youngest daughter's graduation! I am grateful and thankful to the Lord for arranging these friends during my 3 years as caregiver, often shut-up at home, they keep in touch weekly and we spend many nights together sharing and learning at my place, for my convenience! What sweet friends they are! Furthermore, I just get to know another friend from Hong Kong on FB and she sent rock a bunch of flowers on my birthday! Wow!

We both see rock's stroke as another station in life where every aspect of our life was totally changed in a twinkle of the eye so to say! How good is God to arrange new friends to accompany us through the last 3 years! Since we live so far from everyone, the Lord knowing our loneliness, our need for human contact, warmth, He arranged these kind souls to journey with us as our companions!

There is a Chinese saying that goes like this; 'when you are poor, no one notice you even in a busy market! but when you are rich, even if you live deep on a mountain, there will be relatives who come visiting.' I think it is so very true! the late Tansri Lim Goh Tong' is the example, he lived on top of a mountain call Genting and yet so many friends and relatives visit him there! So whether you are rich or poor, true friends never mind the distance! hehe!

Our group is significant in the sense that mostly are seniors with the exception of one or two who are in their early 30's while the oldest being me and others hovering round 50 and mid 50's! To have a group of seniors trying to learn and handle technology is hilarious!! I call the oldies the motley crew! ha!ha! but it was fun and we become such great buddies! We share, help and encourage one another and mind you, its not easy for seniors to grapple with fast changing technology on the internet! Before we fully understand how this thingy works something new comes along and repeat the whole cycle again! Whew!

The other significant part is that our responsibilities as a parent to the last of our children ended with dawn graduating on my birthday! What a coincidence! To us we finally enter real freedom in our early 60's. Well is not that now we do not care anymore but our duty to provide for them till they can start their own lives is now finito! Earn their own living so to say! Oh! we are not that hard and of course we will still be helping her until she gets herself a job!

What a timing in trying to get a job! Just like me, I started working life in a 'depression' too! Not as bad as this current one but at that time jobs were scarce! Anyway we trust our Lord to provide and lead in the current situation. so, we are waiting at the station of life for the next train to take us on our journey and hopefully no more stops until the Home Station!

Another post on Health Matters regarding Lemon Grass (locally known as Serai) use in treatment of Cancer. I guess this can be classified under Alternative Medicine.

It all began when researchers at Ben Gurion University (BGU) of the Negev discovered last year that the lemon aroma in herbs like lemon grass kills cancer cells in vitro, while leaving healthy cells unharmed.

The research team was led by Dr. Rivka Ofir and Prof. Yakov Weinstein, incumbent of the Albert Katz Chair in Cell-Differentiation and Malignant Diseases, from the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at BGU.

Citral is the key component that gives the lemony aroma and taste in several herbal plants such as lemon grass (Cymbopogon citratus), melissa (Melissa officinalis) and verbena (Verbena officinalis.

Why does it work? Nobody knows for certain, but the BGU scientists have a theory.

"In each cell in our body, there is a genetic program which causes programmed cell death. When something goes wrong, the cells divide with no control and become cancer cells. In normal cells, when the cell discovers that the control system is not operating correctly - for example, when it recognizes that a cell contains faulty genetic material following cell division - it triggers cell death," explains Weinstein. "This research may explain the medical benefit of these herbs."

The success of their research led them to the conclusion that herbs containing citral may be consumed as a preventative measure against certain cancerous cells.

As they learned of the BGU findings in the press, many physicians in Israel began to believe that while the research certainly needed to be explored further, in the meantime it would be advisable for their patients, who were looking for any possible tool to fight their condition, to try to harness the cancer-destroying properties of citral.

According to Dr. Weinstein at Ben-Gurion University, he recommended to put the loose grass in hot water, and drink about eight glasses each day. Here is another local preparation method.

Take 3 stalks of lemon grass – use only the white part. Boil with 300cc water for about 1 hour. This recipe will give one glass of lemon grass drink for 1 person.

Lately there were more food products such as biscuits, chocolates sold locally, were found to contain high levels of Melamine. I actually wondered about why manufacturers add Melamine into the food process knowing the health risks involved! Have you ever wondered? Mind you it seems Melamine is not cheap so it does not make economical sense.

Well, I received a 'report' originating from China explaining the Melamine Mystery over the recent Contaminated Milk from the China fiasco. According to this report; Melamine is not added into the milk at all! What the manufacturers in China did was to add another toxic compound known as 'Urea' into the milk!!!

Why Urea? It seems that adding cheap fertilizer compound like Urea increases the Protein Content in the milk! The way to test Protein Content is to measure the Nitrogen content level which the Urea produces in sufficient quantities!

What happens is that fresh milk is kept at ultra high temperatures (UHT) and when sprayed out to produce milk powder; the urea undergoes a chemical change into Melamine! That's how the Melamine content was discovered in the milk powder!

Sounds logical to me but I guess chemistry people will understand the process better! So folks, that's what I found out from this 'China Report'! Can anyone check the truth in this story? If you do please leave a comment here for the benefit of all!

The 'report' also mentioned the following:-

Best quality milk is used to produce Yogurt, High Calcium Milk.

Low quality milk used to produce breakfast milk!

Milk that has turned bad or 'smelly' is used to make ice-cream and cheap milk powder!

The rise of health consciousness among the general population creates a huge demand for healthy food. People tend to buy organic stuff as well as go natural meaning no addition of artificial elements into the creation process of such food. Even the use of chemical fertilizers are frowned upon.

However, what is natural does not necessarily mean that it is good for our bodies or safe. My father was a case in point. He was a diabetic and an adherent to the Chinese Herbal Medication. I guess more of upbringing than anything else. I do believe in our traditional Chinese Medicines but in the same breath I have got to say that we must be careful.

When my father was admitted to the hospital with kidney failure, the doctors told me about the traditional medicine he was taking all these while contain high content of mercury and lead which eventually lead to kidney failure!

I believe what I really want to say, without running down traditional herbal treatments is that many times we just do not know the dangerous elements in such medication. While it does help to treat our illnesses but at the same time contain poisonous elements that cause other problems too!

Nowadays, many people buy online for their supply of natural or organic supplements from all sorts of online stores. Many of these are just like you and I promoting affiliate products which we trust or believe are good and harmless! It seems that many such websites are being shut-down by health authorities in UK, Canada and the US for selling products that contain dangerous elements!

For this reason alone, I will never go into selling Vitamins, Organic or Natural Supplements online simply because I personally do not know what is behind these products and there is no way for me to find out. I gather some of the dangerous elements and I list here for your own caution!

Ephedrine - cause lead poisoning, cause high BP, even heart attack or stroke.

Aristolochia - linked to kidney failure, containing steroids, arsenic and mercury.

Fenluramine - poisonous to the liver and cause heart irregularities.Other things such as Nutmegs, Fly Agaric Mushroom, San Pedro and Cacti

Salvia, all contain the hallucinogen

Mescaline which, in sufficient quantities can cause a range of psychiatric disturbances from anxiety to panic attacks to psychosis.