My Way

A song which has been my inspiration My Way contains great lessons for the discerning listener and also some important aspects of life .I particularly like " For what is a man what has he got ,if not himself then he has not ,to say the things he wants to say and not the words of one who kneels..."So inspiring and good to model our lives after.A man must have certain beliefs and principles in life.Without these he is nothing and just a shell of a man.Watch a Korean movie where there was a plot to overthrow the king and to do this they tried to bribe the Commander of the army with all sorts of things,wealth,fame and recognition.But the Commander said "I was appointed to serve my King and Country and I would give my life to do this. Sometimes we tend to waver in our beliefs because of promises of incentives and there are people who would go out of the way to gain favours by doing just anything.Can you imagine a person who would give up his identity just to get into the good books of the powers to be? We Chinese believe in identity and would not give it up for anything .The Emperors had their costumes,the ministers ,the officials all wore different types of clothes in accordance with their rank and status and they would under no circumstances shed this.I watched with disgust some politicians of a different party shed their identity and don on the clothes of the ruling party just to appease the masters.This reflects absolute lack of principles and self respect and dignity.Compare this with those people who have given up their lives for the sake of what they believed in and you will be able to understand that there are people who would stoop so low that its unbelievable that they are our representatives. " You can take away everything but you cant take away my dignity " how true.You lose that and you lose everything.My Way says you must walk tall and fight for what you believe in come what may.How often we hear people say things which they do not mean.Politicians are some of the most common culprits.A shrewd politician would analyse his audience and say what they want to hear .This is how they make use of their psychological knowledge to win over the masses but I wonder in the process of doing this do they really believe in what they are saying. "Regrets .I had a few "...In every one's life there are things which we regret not having done or not done.It is important while you are still able to ,to do the things you want to do so so that " when you face the final curtains" you can say you have done what you want to do and without regrets.Life is unpredictable so we have live life to its full while we can.How often we hear " I should have done this....why didn't I do this?....too late the final curtain has dropped and we ,for sure are not given a second chance to live our lives. I am really fond of this song because of its deep meaning and its a good guide to living our lives as it comes.Listen to this song and lsiten carefully to the lyrics and you will know why so many are inspired by "My Way".

Life's changes

I cannot help but reflect on the situation today and how life changes.It seems like not to long ago that we were bringing up our 4 girls,seeing them through school ,university and finally settling down with the spouses of their choice and making their way to find their own lives.From children to mothers that is a big change and we are fortunate that we have lived to this stage to see this happening.Lucky also that our children need not have to worry about us as we are both very independent and thank God still fit and healthy.We may take this for granted but if your parents are sickly and if have to look after them it is a big strain on you.We are happy that we can spare our children this. We look with a little bit of amusement how our own children bring up their children and see how anxious they are about their own kids.I'm quite sure that our grandchildren will be spoilt and how they turn out later in life will actually depend on the extent of the spoiling.Children today, even from the time of our own children are so protected and have the benefits of parental love as compared with our time .We learned to be independent from a young age and we ate whatever came our way and there were no side effects.Today's children if given the wrong food would end up with coughs and what nots.We swam in the rivers, played in the rain ,ate sambal belachan and were none the worse off.I cant imagine if I were to put my grandchildren to play in the rain.Probably their mothers (my children ) would think I'm crazy. I can see my own little girl doting over her son.Carrying him for hours (even when he is asleep) is a pleasurable chore>I do it for a while and feel the strain because the baby is not light.But to the doting mother this is nothing.Man goes through a cycle,birth ,adulthood ,parenthood and I cant imagine if the children turn out to be unfilial.We are lucky our children care for us and need not have to go through this kind of heartache but one cannot help wonder if after all they have to go through parents have to face the problem of ungrateful and unfilial children.Probably this will depend on the kind of up bringing and the values which are taught to the children from young.That is why no one can take the place of parents in the growing up process and we really pity the parents who have to entrust their children to nannies because of their career commitments.even leaving their children with the grand parents is so painful ,what about nannies? We are happy our children are going through this without too much of a hassle.We are happy that they can grow up to be parents in their own right and what is more important we are still around to lend a helping hand when needed.As grandparents we have the chance to do with our grandchildren what we perhaps could not have done with our own children as we are better off financially ,psychologically and mentally than we were.We have no careers to worry about,no headaches about putting the children through school and university and the need to balance a career with family.Its their turn now...Today if any of the grandchildren needs anything we dont even give a second thought but when we were young we had to really think and very often faced a choice of wanting to give what the children wanted as against what we could afford to give. That is why our grandchildren would be spoilt not only by the parents but by us too.The cycle of life is really something but then it is not everybody who can go through this cycle and those who do have much to be thankful for.To go through childhood, adulthood,parenthood brings a lot of precious experiences some painful but the rest mainly joyous !

A hectic week

My nephew from New Zealand tied the knot in Penang and KL .There was a dinner in Penang on Wed 30th May and poor us had to drive up on the morning of that day and stayed a nite before returning to KL on the 31st.The drive in the hot sun was tough especially for the driver.I was not allowed to drive so had to sit down quietly and allow the lady driver to do her stuff. A cultural shock awaited us when we checked into our accommodation .It was a kind of apartment block and looked really budget .To make matters worse the rooms faced a huge graveyard and was in an older part of the town.We had no choice but to make the best use of it. The next day a long hot drive to Ipoh where we had chance to eat all the Ipoh goodies before leaving for Kl.My eldest girl and family came back on Friday and it was shopping and eating all the way.Sat. nite was the dinner by the groom's side at a Chinese restaurant in a golf club.It was a gastronomical disaster for I have never tasted such bad food for a wedding dinner but being guests we just ate what was edible and kept quiet .Fact remains that we went home quite hungry. I have learnt something which I always believed in that is if you want to do something do it well and if you want to be calculative about money dont do it.If you do something with the money factor as the main criteria you might as well forget about doing it.Of course if you have limited funds and you do a budget event its understandable but if money is not a constrain and you make it into one then something is not right.Somebody said correctly "Money is only money when you use it ". By the time Girl left for Spore we were all stoned and last night surprisingly by 9 pm everyone was in bed suffering from the after effects of the hectic week !