ARTICLE OF INTEREST

Petai

2010-07-14T07:49:00.000-07:00

ADVICE FROM UKM MEDICAL DOCTOR

Little did you know ...... after reading THIS, you'll NEVER look at petai in the same way again!

Petai contains three natural sugars -sucrose, fructose and glucose. Combined with fiber, petai gives an instant, sustained and substantial boost of energy. Research has proved that just two servings of petai provide enough energy for a strenuous 90-minute wor kout. No wonder petai is the number one fruit with the world's leading athletes. But energy isn't the only way petai can help us keep fit. It can also help overcome or prevent a substantial number of illnesses and conditions, making it a must to add to our daily diet.

Depression:
According to a recent survey undertaken by MIND among people suffering from depression, many felt much better after eating petai. This is because petai contain tryptophan, a type of protein that the body converts into serotonin, known to make you relax, improve your mood and generally make you feel happier.

PMS(premenstrual syndrome):
Forget the pills - eat petai. The vitamin B6 it contains regulates blood glucose levels, which can affect your mood.

Anaemia:
High in iron, petai can stimulate the production of haemoglobin in the blood and so helps in cases of anaemia.

Blood Pressure:
This unique tropical fruit is extremely high in potassium yet low in salt, making it perfect to beat blood pressure. So much so, the US Food and Drug Administration has just allowed the petai industry to make official claims for the fruit's ability to reduce the risk of blood pressure and stroke.

Brain Power :
200 students at a Twickenham (Middlesex) school were helped through their exams this year by eating petai at breakfast, break, and lunch in a bid to boost their brain power. Research has shown that the potassium-packed fruit can assist learning by making pupils more alert. Understand that bananas contain lot of potassium too so eat more banana. Just look at those monkeys, they are really active, alert, smart and cunny too!!

Constipation
High in fiber, including petai in the diet can help restore normal bowel action, helping to overcome the problem without resorting to laxatives.

Hangovers: One of the quickest ways of curing a hangover is to make a petai milkshake, sweetened with honey. The petai calms the stomach and, with the help of the honey, builds up depleted blood sugar levels, while the milk soothes and re-hydrates your system.

Heartburn: Petai has a natural antacid effect in the body, so if you suffer from heartburn, try eating petai for soothing relief.

Morning Sickness : Snacking on petai between meals helps to keep blood sugar levels up and avoid morning sickness.

Mosquito bites : Before reaching for the insect bite cream, try rubbing the affected area with the inside of the petai skin. Many people find it amazingly successful at reducing swelling and irritation.

Nerves: Petai is high in B vitamins that help calm the nervous system.

Overweight: Studies at the Institute of Psychology in Austria found pressure at work leads to gorging on comfort food like chocolate and crisps. Looking at 5,000 hospital patients, researchers found the most obese were more likely to be in high-pressure jobs. The report
concluded that, to avoid panic-induced food cravings, we need to control our blood sugar levels by snacking on high carbohydrate foods every two hours to keep levels steady.

Ulcers: Petai is used as the dietary food against intestinal disorders because of its soft texture and smoothness. It is the only raw fruit that can be eaten without distress in over-chronicler cases. It also neutralizes over-acidity and reduces irritation by coating the lining of the stomach.

Temperature control : Many other cultures see petai as a 'cooling' fruit that can lower both the physical and emotional temperature of expectant mothers. In Holland, for example, pregnant women eat petai to ensure their baby is born with a cool temperature.

Seasonal Affecti ve Disorder (SAD) : Petai can help SAD sufferers because they contain the natural mood enhancer, tryptophan.

Smoking: Petai can also help people trying to give up smoking. The B6, B12 they contain, as well as the potassium and magnesium found in them, help the body recover from the effects of nicotine withdrawal.

Stress: Potassium is a vital mineral, which helps normalize the heartbeat, sends oxygen to the brain and regulates your body's water balance. When we are stressed, our metabolic rate rises, thereby reducing our potassium levels. These can be rebalanced with the help of a high-potassium petai snack.

Strokes: According to research in 'The New Engla nd Journal of Medicine, ' eating petai as part of a regular diet can cut the risk of death by strokes by as much as 40%'.

Warts: Those keen on natural alternatives swear that if you want to kill off a wart, take a piece of petai and place it on the wart. Carefully hold the petai in place with a plaster or surgical tape!

So, as you can see, petai really is a natural remedy for many ills. When you compare it to an apple, it has four times the protein, twice the carbohydrates, three times the phosphorus, five times the vitamin A and iron, and twice the other vitamins and minerals.. It is also rich in potassium and is one of the best value foods around. So maybe its time to change that well-known phrase so that we say, 'A Petai a day keeps the doctor away'.

Catch People Doing Things Right

2010-07-12T07:38:00.000-07:00

Do you know one of the best ways to motivate other people and get them involved? Here's a clue... It's not always as simple as quoting a passage from a motivational book or threatening to fire someone, or screaming at the top of your lungs about how incompetent they are.

It tends to be one of those things that positively impacts the person reading it at the time. Not necessarily the person you want to motivate or inspire. Particularly if they're not the type person who reads or listens to it themselves.

The downsize of threatening to fire someone can have several implications. Sure you might get the immediate spur in productivity you were looking for, but in the long run you could end up losing much more then you gain. For example, it can create a sense of disloyalty and distrust in people.

Then there's the question of what happens if the person you're threatening to fire beats you to it and quits on the spot? You say it wouldn't bother you, but is that really the case? Essentially you've created a whole other problem. Now you've got to rehire someone, spend time and money training them, etc. I think you see where I am going with this right?

So what's the solution you ask? Obviously you don't want folks running around unproductive and you want those around you to operate at peak performance.
Here's the suggestion... Catch those around you doing something good! Admittedly this might sound overly simple, but you have to realize it's in this very simplicity that makes it so effective. People love to be rewarded. Often we miss the point that people are motivated in different ways.

For some people it might be monetary rewards, perhaps it is something like being publicly recognized in a group of their peers, or shown appreciation in the company newsletter for a job well done. This simple idea stretches both into the world of business and one's personal life.

It makes no difference if you're talking about dealing with your family or a disgruntled employee the fact remains that people like to be appreciated. They may tell you otherwise, but it's one of life's inescapable truths. The more you look for ways to catch people doing things well, the less you're going to find yourself worrying about the other.

Now it's time to get out there and catch those around you doing something good. One word of caution, be genuine in your approach. If you do, the rest will take care of itself.

FAILURE LIST OF THE FAMOUS

2010-05-26T05:53:00.000-07:00

When you feel a little discouraged, just remember what these people accomplished when everyone else looked at them as failures. Believe in Yourself!

Einstein was 4 years old before he could speak.

Isaac Newton did poorly in grade school and was considered "unpromising."

When Thomas Edison was a youngster, his teacher told him he was too stupid to learn anything. He was counseled to go into a field where he might succeed by virtue of his pleasant personality.

F.W. Woolworth got a job in a dry goods store when he was 21, but his boss would not permit him to wait on customers because he "didn't have enough sense to close a sale."

Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team.

Bob Cousy, a legendary Boston Celtic basketball player, suffered the same fate, but he too is a Hall of Famer.

A newspaper editor fired Walt Disney because he "lacked imagination and had no original ideas."

Winston Churchill failed 6th grade and had to repeat it because he did not complete the tests that were required for promotion.

Babe Ruth struck out 1,300 times, a major league record.

A person may make mistakes, but is not a failure until he or she starts blaming someone else. We must believe in ourselves, and somewhere along the road of life we will meet someone who sees greatness in us and lets us know it.

Why Do We Forget Things?

2010-05-25T05:40:00.000-07:00

By Martha Weinman Lear

Before I forget, let me ask: Is your dinner-table talk as snappy as ours?

“Remember I asked you to remind me to call someone?” “Yes.” “Who was it?” “I forget.”

And: “What did I go to the kitchen for?” “How do I know?” “You asked me to get it.” “Get what?”

And: “I saw Whatsisname today.” “Who?” “You know. Whatsisname.” “Oh. Where?”

If this sounds familiar, and if you ever complain about your memory, join the crowd. There are millions of us out here, complaining more about remembering less. Memory specialists, of whom I have interviewed a slew, say that forgetfulness is the top health concern of baby boomers. And they’re not the only ones. “My memory is awful,” says my dental hygienist, Eve, 36, as she tenderly macerates my gums. “Does that mean I’m likelier to get demented?” I shake my head no. “Good,” she says, “because I sure worry.”

The Worried Well, therapists call them. They worry because they do not know that this type of memory loss is normal. Normal, friend. Universal. So universal that the phrase “it’s on the tip of my tongue” is used in more than 40 languages.

With normal aging, what we lose is not memory in general but a particular kind. We have many kinds. One is procedural memory, which is how-to-walk, how-to-eat, how-to-tie-a-shoe memory. It’s what Sinatra never thought about when he sang, Astaire never thought about when he danced, Tiger Woods doesn’t think about when he swings a golf club. (If he did, it might ruin his stroke.) It is memory we use unconsciously, and it is the strongest kind we have.

A second is semantic memory, which covers facts. What is a key? What are eyeglasses? What is a movie?

And a third is episodic memory, which covers experience. I’ve lost my keys. Where did I leave my glasses? Who was in that movie? This is the type that starts playing tag with us in the sweet fullness of time. Here’s why.

That 3-pound miracle tucked into your skull has 100 billion neurons zapping around wildly, sending each other the electrical and chemical signals that make memories. With time, the signals weaken. Brains shrink by about half a percent a year, starting around age 30—though usually we don’t notice any change for years. And here’s the rub. Episodic memory relies heavily on the front areas of the brain, the frontal lobes—the very areas that start shrinking first.

The loss isn’t that big, really. It feels big, because we perceive a huge difference between a brain buzzing along at full strength and one operating at, say, 95%. But it’s just a slowing down. That elusive name is probably not gone—it simply takes longer to pop up. Which raises a question everyone always asks: Is everything that ever went into my brain still there? Answer: Nobody knows. (How would you find out?)

Many researchers do believe it’s all there but in altered form. “The disc is full,” we say, and, “No room on my hard drive”—but the computer analogy is not really accurate. As Dr. Barry Gordon, a neurologist at Johns Hopkins points out, computer memory is exact; brain memory is fluid. Whenever you make or retrieve a memory, its pattern of signals is altered. Sort of like writing over writing. Which is why, as time passes, our memories are apt to change and deceive us.

We accept other changes in our bodies. We consider it natural that we won’t play tennis at 50 as we did at 20, but we cannot accept that our brains also may slow down. It’s simply too threatening.

Scientists who understand the why of memory are not so easily threatened. I ask Dr. Richard E. Powers, chairman of the medical advisory board of the Alzheimer’s Foundation, if he has memory problems. “A group of doctors my age were laughing about the changes we observe,” he says. “At 25, we could read a scientific article once and absorb it. Now we have to read it several times. At 57, my ability to hold onto new information is not as good as it used to be—but we retain the capacity to store and use the information. It’s like flypaper that’s been lying a long time on the counter: It’s still got plenty of stick but not as much as it used to have.”

We actually may be wired to forget. Consider: If everything stuck to that mental flypaper, we would be in big trouble. We’d be overwhelmed by trivia. The longer we live, the more memories we stuff into our brains, and the harder it may become to locate any particular one. So those that we need least, the episodic memories, get stored in the attic first. After all, how important is it (how does it help you survive in the world) to remember the name of that restaurant you ate at last night? What is important to remember is what “eating” means and how to eat.

Think of our kind of memory loss as nature’s priority filing system—often irritating but practical and desirable in the great Darwinian scheme of survival. And normal—a lovable word. It comes with the territory of healthy longevity. And when you consider the alternatives, as they say, it’s the best deal in town.

Make Your Memory Better

1 ASSOCIATE NAMES. Link what you want to remember to what you already know. You meet a Jennifer: Picture her in your mind’s eye with other Jennifers—Aniston (above), Lopez. Visualize them together, which is what makes it work.

2 GET ORGANIZED. Dr. Margaret Sewell, director of the Memory Enhancement Program at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, suggests changing the way you organize your tasks. For example, no calls and no e-mail until the current job is done. “It’s amazing,” she says, “the difference people see as they cut down on nonessential multi-tasking.”

3 CONCENTRATE MORE. Tests show that in absorbing new facts, we are no less competent than 20-year-olds, just slower. “Concentrate a little harder and practice more,” says Dr. Sewell. “You want to learn Italian when you’re 90? OK! It will take you a little longer but, assuming there’s no pathology, you can do it!”

How To Make Better Decisions

2010-05-24T05:27:00.000-07:00

Dr. Stephen Kraus, President, Next Level Sciences, is one of the world's foremost success scientists. Author of many books and articles, Steve's insights on motivation and success are regularly quoted in the media, and his research is cited in major psychology textbooks. He's even been called a combination of Tony Robbins and Mr. Spock because of his scientific approach to the psychology of success. Steve has a Ph.D. in social psychology from Harvard University, and twice won Harvard's award for teaching excellence.

1. Don't weigh "extreme outcomes" too heavily in your decisions

We often exaggerate how likely "extreme outcomes" are because we frequently see vivid examples of them in the media. Extreme outcomes generate many news headlines, regardless of whether those outcomes are good (winning the lottery) or bad (a horrible death from dramatic causes like earthquakes, tornados, and terrorism). The more something is on the news, the more likely it seems. Winning the lottery seems more likely than it is because we see TV interviews with winners, but never with losers. Dying in a natural disaster or airplane crash seems more likely than it is because those events make headlines. Dying in a car crash or a swimming pool (falsely) seem much less likely than they are because they don't generate headlines.

Bottom-line: For making better decisions, don't assume that extreme outcomes are as likely as they first seem.
Example: Suppose you are considering whether or not to start a business. As you weigh the pros and cons, avoid placing too much psychological weight on extremely positive outcomes(your company goes public right away, making you an instant zillionaire) or extremely negative ones (you bankrupt yourself and create an Enron-like disaster). "Middle ground" options at both ends are much more likely.

2. Consider failure as well as success

For the most part, we think about success. We make plans for success. Our plans may not be great, and we may typically take insufficient action to get what we truly want, but for the most part, we are mentally focused on success. In fact, setting "approach" goals that focus on what we want to achieve is a key goal-setting principle – fortunately, as I review in my book, over 80% of goals are "approach" goals rather than "avoidance" goals.

This relatively single-minded focus on success has many psychological consequences – some good and some bad. Research has shown that just thinking about an outcome makes it seem more likely, because we then think about all the ways that it might happen. As a result, we plan for success, and typically make life decisions expecting success. Unfortunately, in life, failure is an all-too-common occurrence. Divorce is just as common as staying married. Losing weight is great, but it's much less common than trying-and-failing to lose weight. Living paycheck-to-paycheck and wrestling with credit card debt is more common than great wealth. The list goes on.

Bottom-line: For making better decisions, consider possible negative outcomes in addition to positive ones, even if they don't seem likely at first.
Example: Me. I'm a positive guy. Usually that works for me. But not always. When I recently launched a joint venture with a colleague, I knew I would work hard, and I expected success. But I didn't consider that my partner not work hard and quickly quit, wasting a great deal of my time. I assumed success, so I didn't see the early warning signs of failure. Had I considered that possible negative outcome from the start, I would have managed my time and that partnership much differently.

3. Get input from others

The "planning fallacy" is the tendency of people to vastly underestimate how long certain activities will take. Again, we expect success, we expect things to go well, and we expect things will come our way quickly and easily. But those around us are often better able to make judgments about how likely certain outcomes are, and how quickly/easily we can achieve them.
Bottom-line: For making better decisions, have a friend or family member review your assessment of how likely outcomes are, and how happy they would make you.

4. Beware "happily-ever-after" thinking

Strange-but-true: people aren't always good at predicting what will make them happy. "Happily-ever-after" thinking is the belief that accomplishing goal X will lead to massive, lasting happiness. It's common, and almost always an illusion.

Bottom-line: Learn to understand the true sources of your happiness. More often than not, happiness comes from making progress toward valued goals. It may seem odd, but actually accomplishing goals often leads to a psychological let-down and a feeling of "Is that all?"
Example: Virtually everyone. From time to time, virtually everyone falls into the trap of thinking "My life would be perfect if only I _____" (fill in the blank: meet my soulmate, get rich, get that promotion, etc.). Instead, remember the truth in the old saying: "It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end." (Ursula LeGuin)

5. Get over the "fear of success"

I've always felt this notion was over-rated. People talk themselves into not taking action because "If I do, then one great thing after another will happen, and soon I'll be a great success, and I just can't handle that." Uh, right. First, these folks are greatly over-estimating how likely success is (and how easily it will come), as well as underestimating how happy it will make them. Does this "fear" hold some people back? Yes. Should it? No. They should get over it, take action, and recognize that the much more likely "moderate" successes they will experience will make them happier than being paralyzed by fear.

Breast Cancer: Truth or myth? Get to know the facts on breast cancer and beat it!

2010-02-26T18:11:00.000-08:00

Do you know? Breast cancer ...
can happen to women without a family history of it
can hit women as young as 30
can also be diagnosed in men!

And do you know? ...
Early detection raises rate of recovery
From age 30, you should start monthly Breast Self-Examination (BSE)
From age 40, you should go for yearly mammogram
From age 50, you should go for twice-yearly mammogram

Truth or Myth?
Myth : If I have large breasts, I’m more likely to get breast cancer.
Truth : There is no correlation between the size of breasts and the risk of breast cancer. The risk of breast cancer increases with age, especially in women aged 50 years and above.

Myth : Men do not get breast cancer.
Truth : Men can get breast cancer although the proportion of men diagnosed with breast cancer is relatively small as compared to other cancers.

Myth : Wearing a tight-fitting bra can cause breast cancer.
Truth : There is no scientific prove that wearing ill-fitting bras causes breast cancer.

Myth : I will not get breast cancer as I do not have a family history of the disease.
Truth : Although a family history of breast cancer (especially 1st degree relatives, e.g. mother, aunt) does increase your risk, many cases of breast cancer happens to women without family history.

Myth : I’m too young to get breast cancer.
Truth : Though women 50 years old and above are most at risk of getting breast cancer, there are also cases of women below that age diagnosed with the disease.

Myth : Oral contraceptive pills (birth control pills) can cause breast cancer.
Truth : Birth control pills do not cause breast cancer. The amount of estrogen and progesterone (hormones that are often associated with increased risk of breast cancer over time) found in oral contraceptive pills are too small to pose a noteworthy risk.

Myth : All breast lumps are cancerous.
Truth : Not all breast lumps are cancerous. And not all cancerous breast lumps are painful.

Myth : Mammogram can cause excruciating pain.
Truth : Your breast would be compressed slightly during mammogram. The fat surrounding the milk glands and ducts will be flattened slightly during the compression. There may be a slight discomfort but not excruciating pain.

PREVENTION
Now you know the truth, what can you do to help yourself?

1. Detect changes in your breasts through regular checks and screenings:
Monthly
Breast Self Examination (BSE) Mammogram
30 – 39 years
YES -
40 – 49 years YES
YES, Once a year
50 years & above YES
YES, Once every 2 years

A breast self-exam can't prevent breast cancer, but it may help you to better understand the normal changes that your breasts undergo and identify any unusual signs and symptoms.

2. Exercise most days of the week. Aim for at least 30 minutes of exercise on most days of the week.

3. Limit postmenopausal hormone therapy. Combination hormone therapy may increase the risk of breast cancer. Talk with your doctor about the benefits and risks of hormone therapy. Some women experience bothersome signs and symptoms during menopause and, for these women, the increased risk of breast cancer may be acceptable in order to relieve menopause signs and symptoms. To reduce the risk of breast cancer, use the lowest dose of hormone therapy possible for the shortest amount of time.

4. Maintain a healthy weight. If your current weight is healthy, work to maintain that weight. If you need to lose weight, ask your doctor about healthy strategies to accomplish this. Reduce the number of calories you eat each day and slowly increase the amount of exercise. Aim to lose weight slowly — about 1 or 2 pounds a week.

Sources: Workplace Health Digest October- December 2009 & Mayo Clinic.com

Buzz ...new social network from Google.

2010-02-22T09:04:00.000-08:00

Google takes on Facebook and Twitter with network site

Google's Vic Gundotra shows off Buzz on a mobile phone
Google has taken the wraps off its latest social network known as Buzz.
The service - integrated directly with its e-mail service Gmail - allows users to post status updates, share content and read and comment on friends' posts.
The site pitches Google directly against rival networks such as Facebook, which has amassed nearly 400 million users since its launch in 2004.

Buzz will try to capitalise on the number of regular Gmail users, which is currently around 170 million people. BBC News technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones said that the launch appeared to be a "major land grab by Google for the social networking space". "They've launched Buzz with plenty of interesting new features, particularly for mobile users, but the real question is whether there's enough to entice social networkers away from sites like Facebook and Twitter," he said.

Rival Yahoo already offers a service that allows people to see updates from sites such as Twitter and Flickr from inside their Yahoo Mail page. Local chatterThe new features are built directly into Google's free e-mail service Gmail. Users can post private or public status updates - known as a buzz - and share content from other sites such as Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and Picassa.
Facebook has nearly 400 million users

The messages - highlighted with a Buzz symbol - are incorporated directly into a person's Gmail inbox. Private updates are automatically added to a user's profile page, whilst public updates will also be available to search engines.

The site also incorporates elements of Twitter, such as the ability to "follow" people that share updates, and features that appear in Facebook such as the ability to "like" content. Buzz will also recommend content from people that it thinks you may like to see and incorporate it directly into a user's content stream.

Google Buzz product manager Todd Jackson described it as "an entirely new world in Gmail" during a press event at Google headquarters in Mountain View. The firm has also integrated it with its mapping service and mobile platforms.

For example, it has launched a mobile application for phones running its operating system Android. Status updates sent from phones will record the location of the sender and add it to the message. Other users can then search public messages from their phone. "You can see what people in your neighbourhood are saying," said Google's Vic Gundotra. Public updates will also be added to Google Places, a directory of businesses that include reviews of restaurants and theatres, for example. The firm has also built the technology into the mobile versions of its maps.

It is not the first time Google has tried to launch a social network.

In 2004, it released Orkut. However, while it has become big in countries such as Brazil and India, it has been overshadowed by sites such as Facebook elsewhere.

The firm also recently launched Google Wave, a tool that mixes e-mail, with instant messaging and the ability for several people to collaborate on documents in real time.

Facebook is currently the most popular social network worldwide. Last week it rolled out a new site layout and design for parts of the service to make it easier to search messages and chat.

Hazards: A Warning on Mixing Herbs and Medicine

2010-02-20T08:57:00.000-08:00

By RONI CARYN RABIN
Published: February 8, 2010

Researchers are warning that popular herbs and supplements, including St. John’s wort and even garlic and ginger, do not mix well with common heart drugs and can also be dangerous for patients taking statins, blood thinners and blood pressure medications.

St. John’s wort raises blood pressure and heart rate, and garlic and ginger increase the risk of bleeding in patients on blood thinners, the researchers said. Even grapefruit juice can be risky, increasing the effects of calcium-channel blockers and statins, they said.

"This is not new research, but there is a trend toward more and more use of these compounds, and patients often don’t discuss with their doctors the compounds they are using on their own," said Dr. Arshad Jahangir, senior author of a paper being published in Tuesday’s issue of The Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

The paper includes a list of more than two dozen herbal products that patients should approach with caution, as well as a list of common drug-herb interactions. Among the products listed are ginkgo biloba, ginseng and echinacea, as well as some surprises like soy milk and green tea — both of which can decrease the effectiveness of warfarin — and even aloe vera and licorice.

Doctors need to be more assertive and ask patients about the herbs and supplements they take, and patients need to disclose that information to their providers, Dr. Jahangir said.
For those who take garlic supplements in the belief that it will improve their heart health, he said, "they are very surprised to hear that they may be taking something that could potentially increase the risks of bleeding."

What could you live without?

2010-02-16T08:51:00.000-08:00

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: January 23, 2010

It all began with a stop at a red light.

Kevin Salwen, a writer and entrepreneur in Atlanta, was driving his 14-year-old daughter, Hannah, back from a sleepover in 2006. While waiting at a traffic light, they saw a black Mercedes coupe on one side and a homeless man begging for food on the other.
"Dad, if that man had a less nice car, that man there could have a meal," Hannah protested. The light changed and they drove on, but Hannah was too young to be reasonable. She pestered her parents about inequity, insisting that she wanted to do something.

"What do you want to do?" her mom responded. "Sell our house?"

Warning! Never suggest a grand gesture to an idealistic teenager. Hannah seized upon the idea of selling the luxurious family home and donating half the proceeds to charity, while using the other half to buy a more modest replacement home.

Eventually, that’s what the family did. The project — crazy, impetuous and utterly inspiring — is chronicled in a book by father and daughter scheduled to be published next month: "The Power of Half." It’s a book that, frankly, I’d be nervous about leaving around where my own teenage kids might find it. An impressionable child reads this, and the next thing you know your whole family is out on the street.

At a time of enormous needs in Haiti and elsewhere, when so many Americans are trying to help Haitians by sending everything from text messages to shoes, the Salwens offer an example of a family that came together to make a difference — for themselves as much as the people they were trying to help. In a column a week ago, I described neurological evidence from brain scans that altruism lights up parts of the brain normally associated with more primal gratifications such as food and sex. The Salwens’ experience confirms the selfish pleasures of selflessness.

Mr. Salwen and his wife, Joan, had always assumed that their kids would be better off in a bigger house. But after they downsized, there was much less space to retreat to, so the family members spent more time around each other. A smaller house unexpectedly turned out to be a more family-friendly house.

"We essentially traded stuff for togetherness and connectedness," Mr. Salwen told me, adding, "I can’t figure out why everybody wouldn’t want that deal."

One reason for that togetherness was the complex process of deciding how to spend the money. The Salwens researched causes and charities, finally settling on the Hunger Project, a New York City-based international development organization that has a good record of tackling global poverty.

The Salwens pledged $800,000 to sponsor health, microfinancing, food and other programs for about 40 villages in Ghana. They traveled to Ghana with a Hunger Project executive, John Coonrod, who is an inspiration in his own right. Over the years, he and his wife donated so much back from their modest aid-worker salaries that they were among the top Hunger Project donors in New York.

The Salwens’ initiative hasn’t gone entirely smoothly. Hannah promptly won over her parents, but her younger brother, Joe, was (reassuringly) a red-blooded American boy to whom it wasn’t intuitively obvious that life would improve by moving into a smaller house and giving money to poor people. Outvoted and outmaneuvered, Joe gamely went along.
The Salwens also are troubled that some people are reacting negatively to their project, seeing them as sanctimonious showoffs. Or that people are protesting giving to Ghana when there are so many needy Americans.

Still, they have inspired some converts. The people who sold the Salwens their new home were so impressed that they committed $100,000 to the project. And one of Hannah’s closest friends, Blaise, pledged half of her baby-sitting savings to an environmental charity.

In writing the book, the Salwens say, the aim wasn’t actually to get people to sell their houses. They realize that few people are quite that nutty. Rather, the aim was to encourage people to step off the treadmill of accumulation, to define themselves by what they give as well as by what they possess.

"No one expects anyone to sell a house," said Hannah, now a high school junior who hopes to become a nurse. "That’s kind of a ridiculous thing to do. For us, the house was just something we could live without. It was too big for us. Everyone has too much of something, whether it’s time, talent or treasure. Everyone does have their own half, you just have to find it."
A

s for Kevin Salwen, he’s delighted by what has unfolded since that encounter at the red light.
"This is the most self-interested thing we have ever done," he said. "I’m thrilled that we can help others. I’m blown away by how much it has helped us."

MARRIAGE

2010-02-14T07:51:00.000-08:00

When I got home that night as my wife served dinner, I held her hand and said, I've got something to tell you. She sat down and ate quietly. Again I observed the hurt in her eyes.

Suddenly I didn't know how to open my mouth. But I had to let her know what I was thinking. I want a divorce.. I raised the topic calmly.

She didn't seem to be annoyed by my words, instead she asked me softly, why?
I avoided her question. This made her angry. She threw away the chopsticks and shouted at me, you are not a man! That night, we didn't talk to each other. She was weeping. I knew she wanted to find out what had happened to our marriage. But I could hardly give her a satisfactory answer; she had lost my heart to Dew. I didn't love her anymore. I just pitied her!

With a deep sense of guilt, I drafted a divorce agreement which stated that she could own our house, our car, and 30% stake of my company.

She glanced at it and then tore it into pieces. The woman who had spent ten years of her life with me had become a stranger. I felt sorry for her wasted time, resources and energy but I could not take back what I had said for I loved Dew so dearly. Finally she cried loudly in front of me, which was what I had expected to see. To me her cry was actually a kind of release. The idea of divorce which had obsessed me for several weeks seemed to be firmer and clearer now.

The next day, I came back home very late and found her writing something at the table. I didn't have supper but went straight to sleep and fell asleep very fast because I was tired after an eventful day with Dew.

When I woke up, she was still there at the table writing. I just did not care so I turned over and was asleep again.

In the morning she presented her divorce conditions: she didn't want anything from me, but needed a month's notice before the divorce.
She requested that in that one month we both struggle to live as normal a life as possible. Her reasons were simple: our son had his exams in a month's time and she didn't want to disrupt him with our broken marriage.

This was agreeable to me. But she had something more, she asked me to recall how I had carried her into out bridal room on our wedding day.

She requested that everyday for the month's duration I carry her out of our bedroom to the front door ever morning. I thought she was going crazy. Just to make our last days together bearable I accepted her odd request.

I told Dew about my wife's divorce conditions... She laughed loudly and thought it was absurd. No matter what tricks she applies, she has to face the divorce, she said scornfully..

My wife and I hadn't had any body contact since my divorce intention was explicitly expressed. So when I carried her out on the first day, we both appeared clumsy. Our son clapped behind us, daddy is holding mummy in his arms. His words brought me a sense of pain. From the bedroom to the sitting room, then to the door, I walked over ten meters with her in my arms. She closed her eyes and said softly; don't tell our son about the divorce. I nodded, feeling somewhat upset. I put her down outside the door. She went to wait for the bus to work. I drove alone to the office.

On the second day, both of us acted much more easily. She leaned on my chest. I could smell the fragrance of her blouse. I realized that I hadn't looked at this woman carefully for a long time.. I realized she was not young any more. There were fine wrinkles on her face, her hair was graying! Our marriage had taken its toll on her. For a minute I wondered what I had done to her.

On the fourth day, when I lifted her up, I felt a sense of intimacy returning. This was the woman who had given ten years of her life to me.

On the fifth and sixth day, I realized that our sense of intimacy was growing again. I didn't tell Dew about this. It became easier to carry her as the month slipped by. Perhaps the everyday workout made me stronger.

She was choosing what to wear one morning. She tried on quite a few dresses but could not find a suitable one. Then she sighed, all my dresses have grown bigger. I suddenly realized that she had grown so thin, that was the reason why I could carry her more easily.

Suddenly it hit me... she had buried so much pain and bitterness in her heart. Subconsciously I reached out and touched her head.

Our son came in at the moment and said, Dad, it's time to carry mum out. To him, seeing his father carrying his mother out had become an essential part of his life. My wife gestured to our son to come closer and hugged him tightly. I turned my face away because I was afraid I might change my mind at this last minute. I then held her in my arms, walking from the bedroom, through the sitting room, to the hallway. Her hand surrounded my neck softly and naturally. I held her body tightly; it was just like our wedding day.

But her much lighter weight made me sad. On the last day, when I held her in my arms I could hardly move a step. Our son had gone to school. I held her tightly and said, I hadn't noticed that our life lacked intimacy.

I drove to office.... jumped out of the car swiftly without locking the door. I was afraid any delay would make me change my mind... I walked upstairs. Dew opened the door and I said to her, Sorry, Dew, I do not want the divorce anymore.

She looked at me, astonished, and then touched my forehead. Do you have a fever? She said. I moved her hand off my head. Sorry, Dew, I said, I won't divorce. My marriage life was boring probably because she and I didn't value the details of our lives, not because we didn't love each other any more. Now I realize that since I carried her into my home on our wedding day I am supposed to hold her until death do us apart.

Dew seemed to suddenly wake up. She gave me a loud slap and then slammed the door and burst into tears. I walked downstairs and drove away.

At the floral shop on the way, I ordered a bouquet of flowers for my wife. The salesgirl asked me what to write on the card. I smiled and wrote, I'll carry you out every morning until death do us apart.

That evening I arrived home, flowers in my hands, a smile on my face, I run up stairs, only to find my wife in the bed - dead.

The small details of your lives are what really matter in a relationship. It is not the mansion, the car, property, the money in the bank, blah..blah..blah. These create an environment conducive for happiness but cannot give happiness in themselves. So find time to be your spouse's friend and do those little things for each other that build intimacy. Do have a real happy marriage!

A Brother Like That

2010-02-12T07:47:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine named Paul received an automobile from his brother as a Christmas present. On Christmas Eve when Paul came out of his office, a street urchin was walking around the shiny new car, admiring it. "Is this your car, Mister?" he asked.

Paul nodded. "My brother gave it to me for Christmas." The boy was astounded. "You mean your brother gave it to you and it didn't cost you nothing? Boy, I wish..." He hesitated.

Of course Paul knew what he was going to wish for. He was going to wish he had a brother like that. But what the lad said jarred Paul all the way down to his heels.

"I wish," the boy went on, "that I could be a brother like that."

Paul looked at the boy in astonishment, then impulsively he added, "Would you like to take a ride in my automobile?"

"Oh yes, I'd love that."

After a short ride, the boy turned and with his eyes aglow, said, "Mister, would you mind driving in front of my house?"

Paul smiled a little. He thought he knew what the lad wanted. He wanted to show his neighbors that he could ride home in a big automobile. But Paul was wrong again. "Will you stop where those two steps are?" the boy asked.

He ran up the steps. Then in a little while Paul heard him coming back, but he was not coming fast. He was carrying his little crippled brother. He sat him down on the bottom step, then sort of squeezed up against him and pointed to the car.

"There she is, Buddy, just like I told you upstairs. His brother gave it to him for Christmas and it didn't cost him a cent. And some day I'm gonna give you one just like it... then you can see for yourself all the pretty things in the Christmas windows that I've been trying to tell you about."

Paul got out and lifted the lad to the front seat of his car. The shining-eyed older brother climbed in beside him and the three of them began a memorable holiday ride.

That Christmas Eve, Paul learned what Jesus meant when he had said, "It is more blessed to give..."

~ Dan Clark ~

The Mousetrap Story‏

2010-02-10T07:49:00.000-08:00

This is excellent...

A mouse looked through the crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife open a package.

What food might this contain?" The mouse wondered - he was devastated to discover it was a mousetrap.

Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse proclaimed the warning : There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!

"The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said, "Mr.Mouse, I can tell this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me. I cannot be bothered by it.

"The mouse turned to the pig and told him, "There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!"

The pig sympathized, but said, I am so very sorry, Mr.Mouse, but there is nothing I can do about it but pray. Be assured you are in my prayers."

The mouse turned to the cow and said "There is a mousetrap in the ho use!There is a mousetrap in the house!"

The cow said, "Wow, Mr. Mouse. I'm sorry for you, but it's no skin off my nose."

So, the mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected, to face the farmer's mousetrap alone.

That very night a sound was heard throughout the house -- like the sound of a mousetrap catching its prey.

The farmer's wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see it was a venomous snake whose tail the trap had caught.

The snake bit the farmer's wife. The farmer rushed her to the hospital , and she returned home with a fever.

Everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh chicken soup, so the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup's main ingredient.

But his wife's sickness continued, so friends and neighbors came to sit with her around the clock. To feed them, the farmer butchered the pig. The farmer's wife did not get well; she died.

So many people came for her funeral, the farmer had the cow slaughtered to provide enough meat for all of them.

The mouse looked upon it all from his crack in the wall with great sadness.

So, the next time you hear someone is facing a problem and think it doesn't concern you, remember -- when one of us is threatened, we are all at risk.

We are all involved in this journey called life. We must keep an eye out for one another and make an extra effort to encourage one another.

EACH OF US IS A VITAL THREAD IN ANOTHER PERSON'S TAPESTRY;
OUR LIVES ARE WOVEN TOGETHER FOR A REASON.

I'd much rather die....‏

2010-02-08T07:36:00.001-08:00

Last night my wife and I were sitting in the living room, talking about life...
In-between, we talked about the idea of living or dying.
I said to her:'Dear, never let me live in a vegetative state,
totally dependent on machines and liquids from a bottle.
If you see me in that state I want you to disconnect all the contraptions that are keeping me alive,
I'd much rather die'.

Then my wife got up from the sofa with this real look of admiration towards me...
and proceeded to disconnect the TV, the Cable, the Dish, the DVD, the Computer, the Cell Phone,
the iPod, and the Xbox, and then went to the fridge and threw away all my beer!!
I ALMOST DIED!!!!

Lessons of Life

2009-12-23T04:00:00.000-08:00

The Turtles

A turtle family decided to go on a picnic. The turtles, being naturally slow about things, took seven years to prepare for their outing. Finally the turtle family left home looking for a suitable place. During the second year of their journey they found a place ideal for them at last!

For about six months they cleaned the area, unpacked the picnic basket, and completed the arrangements. Then they discovered they had forgotten the salt. A picnic without salt would be a disaster, they all agreed. After a lengthy discussion, the youngest turtle was chosen to retrieve the salt from home. Although he was the fastest of the slow moving turtles, the little turtle whined, cried, and wobbled in his shell. He agreed to go on one condition: that no one would eat until he returned. The family consented and the little turtle left.

Three years passed and the little turtle had not returned. Five years...six years... then on the seventh year of his absence, the oldest turtle could no longer contain his hunger. He announced that he was going to eat and begun to unwrap a sandwich.

At that point the little turtle suddenly popped out from behind a tree shouting, 'See! I knew you wouldn't wait. Now I am not going to go get the salt.'

[Some of us waste our time waiting for people to live up to our expectations. We are so concerned about what others are doing that we don't do anything ourselves.]

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The Frogs

A farmer came into town and asked the owner of a restaurant if he could use a million frog legs. The restaurant owner was shocked and asked the man where he could get so many frog legs! The farmer replied, 'There is a pond near my house that is full of frogs - millions of them. They all croak all night long and they are about to make me crazy!' So the restaurant owner and the farmer made an agreement that the farmer would deliver frogs to the restaurant, five hundred at a time for the next several weeks.

The first week, the farmer returned to the restaurant looking rather sheepish, with two scrawny little frogs. The restaurant owner said, 'Well... where are all the frogs?' The farmer said, 'I was mistaken. There were only these two frogs in the pond. But they sure were making a lot of noise!'

[Next time you hear somebody criticizing or making fun of you, remember, it's probably just a couple of noisy frogs. Also remember that problems always seem bigger in the dark. Have you ever laid in your bed at night worrying about things which seem almost overwhelming like a million frogs croaking? Chances are pretty good that when the morning comes, and you take a closer look, you'll wonder what all the fuss was about.]

************ ********* ********* ********* *****

The Pretty Lady

Once upon a time a big monk and a little monk were traveling together. They came to the bank of a river and found the bridge was damaged. They had to wade across the river. There was a pretty lady who was stuck at the damaged bridge and couldn't cross the river. The big monk offered to carry her across the river on his back. The lady accepted.

The little monk was shocked by the move of the big monk. 'How can big brother carry a lady when we are supposed to avoid all intimacy with females?' thought the little monk. But he kept quiet. The big monk carried the lady across the river and the small monk followed unhappily. When they crossed the river, the big monk let the lady down and they parted ways with her.

All along the way for several miles, the little monk was very unhappy with the act of the big monk. He was making up all kinds of acussations about big monk in his head. This got him madder and madder. But he still kept quiet. And the big monk had no inclination to explain his situation.

Finally, at a rest point many hours later, the little monk could not stand it any further, he burst out angrily at the big monk. 'How can you claim yourself a devout monk, when you seize the first opportunity to touch a female, especially when she is very pretty? All your teachings to me make you a big hypocrite '

The big monk looked surprised and said, 'I had put down the pretty lady at the river bank many hours ago, how come you are still carrying her along?'

[This very old Chinese Zen story reflects the thinking of many people today. We encounter many unpleasant things in our life, they irritate us and they make us angry. Sometimes, they cause us a lot of hurt, sometimes they cause us to be bitter or jealous. But like the little monk, we are not willing to let them go away. We keep on carrying the baggage of the 'pretty lady' with us. We let them keep on coming back to hurt us, make us angry, make us bitter and cause us a lot of agony. Why? Simply because we are not willing to put down or let go of the baggage of the 'pretty lady'. We should let go of the pretty lady immediately after crossing the river, that is after the unpleasant event is over. This will immediately remove all our agonies. There is no need to be further hurt by the unpleasant event after it is over.]

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

七种食物让女人皮肤白里透红

2009-10-15T08:57:00.000-07:00

第一天：猪脚汤

　　重点：增加肌肤的弹性

　　猪脚含有丰富胶质，每天持续摄取5000mg的胶原蛋白质可增加肌肤的弹性，减少细纹，让肌肤看起来更年轻。

　　第二天：弥猴桃色拉

　　重点：帮助肌肤排毒

　　水果含有丰富的维生素，多吃水果可以帮助肌肤排毒，而弥猴桃有很高含量的维生素C，可干扰黑色素生成，有助于消除皮肤上的暗沉，让肌肤更明亮。

　　第三天：豆浆

　　重点：增加肌肤的细滑度

　　豆浆富含维生素C和E，每天饮用豆浆能增加肌肤的细滑度，并改善疤痕。

　　第四天：红豆汤

　　重点：排水肿

　　红豆自古便是养生圣品，不但可以排水肿，还可以补血行气，让你即使不上腮红也可拥有红润的苹果脸!

　　第五天：红糖糕

　　重点：加速代谢速度和美白

　　红糖在日本被视为美肤圣品，它含有的氨基酸和微量元素可以帮助肌肤排毒，加速痘痘和粉刺的代谢速度，美白肌肤。

　　第六天：蜂蜜红枣茶

　　重点：使皮肤细嫩有光泽

　　蜂蜜含有大量易被人体吸收的氨基酸、维生素及糖类，可使皮肤细嫩有光泽，红枣具有活血养颜的功能，能改善冬天手脚冰冷的状况。

　　第七天：薏仁牛奶粥

　　重点美白滋润肌肤

　　薏仁加上牛奶，可以让肌肤美白效果更突出。牛奶滋润肌肤，薏仁帮助排水肿。

九种食品让30岁女人越吃越美丽

2009-10-14T08:52:00.000-07:00

当今时代，水果、蔬菜和其它各种植物，正越来越明显地改变着传统美容方法。它们正在成为特效护肤产品的重要成分之一，为我们的皮肤阻隔环境毒素的侵害，抵抗细菌的感染，减少岁月的痕迹。对于皮肤而言，越来越多的发现，越来越高超的科技，再加上你的细心呵护，无疑地延长着我们皮肤的青春寿命。今天，裸妆，从三十岁开始都不怕!

　　30岁女人养颜该吃九种蔬果

　　樱桃

　　自古以来就是美容果。樱桃汁能帮助面部皮肤嫩白红润、去皱清斑，是不少美白产品的最爱。樱桃不仅富含维生素C，而且含铁极其丰富，是山楂的13倍，苹果的20倍。除了含铁量高之外，它还含有平衡皮质分泌、延缓老化的维生素A，帮助活化细胞、美化肌肤。

　　石榴

　　娇艳欲滴的红石榴已经被证实具有很强的抗氧化作用。它含有一种叫鞣花酸的成分，可以使细胞免于环境中的污染、UV射线的危害，滋养细胞，减缓肌体的衰老。有研究表明，鞣花酸在防辐射方面比红酒和绿茶中含有的多酚更“厉害”。

　　胡萝卜

　　胡萝卜被誉为“皮肤食品”，能润泽肌肤。胡萝卜含有丰富的果胶物质，可与汞结合，使人体里的有害成分得以排出，肌肤看起来更加细腻红润。它含β胡萝卜素，可以抗氧化和美白肌肤，预防黑色素的沉淀，并可以清除肌肤的多余角质。它也含有抗氧化不能少的维生素E。

　　橄榄

　　早在古希腊时代，橄榄树就是生命与健康的象征，除了可以作为健康食品食用之外，更有突出的美容功效。由树叶到果实，橄榄树全身都能提炼出护肤精华。橄榄叶精华有助皮肤细胞对抗污染、紫外线与压力引致的氧化;而橄榄果实中则含有另一强效抗氧化成分--酚化合物，它与油橄榄苦素结合后，能提供双重抗氧化修护。

　　黄瓜

　　它的味道鲜美，脆嫩清香，备受瘦身人士的推崇。而且它富含人体生长发育和生命活动所必需的多种糖类和氨基酸，以及丰富的维生素，为皮肤、肌肉提供充足的养分，可有效地对抗皮肤老化，减少皱纹的产生。所含丰富的果酸，能清洁美白肌肤，消除晒伤和雀斑，缓解皮肤过敏。

　　葡萄

　　它含有大量葡萄多酚，具有抗氧化功能，能阻断游离基因增生，有效延缓衰老;它还含单宁酸，柠檬酸，有强烈的收敛效果及柔软保湿作用。另外，葡萄果肉蕴含维生素B3及丰富矿物质，可深层滋润、抗衰老及促进皮肤细胞更生。

维生素E美容作用

2009-10-13T08:46:00.000-07:00

天然维生素E能够有效地提高机体耐力、增强免疫功能、有明显的防衰老、防病、防癌作用；能降低胆固醇、改善人体微循环；能有效地防止心脑血管疾病的发生。天然维生素E同时也是美容护肤的最佳选择，它有清理人体内氧自由基的功能，阻止生理色斑的产生，对紫外线灼伤的皮肤起良好的修护作用；它易被皮肤吸收，能促进皮肤新陈代谢，改善皮肤弹性。

一、调节血脂
动脉硬化是造成心绞痛、心肌梗塞、高血压、脑中风的主要原因。引起动脉硬化的“罪魁祸首”是血液中的坏胆固醇，它能附着血管的内壁，导致血管老化、硬化。而且血管壁制造的细胞膜脂质，一旦与人体内的活性氧结合，就会产生脂质类过氧化物，坏胆固醇便在血管壁上找到了“温床”，这样动脉粥样硬化和血凝块就形成了。
为了不使血管内制造出脂类过氧化物，最具效果的便是天然维生素E。因为天然维生素E抗氧化能力特别强，不让恶性胆固醇在血管壁附着，让血管保持清洁状态。

二、延缓衰老
维生素E是一种很强的抗氧化剂，它可以中断自由基的连锁反应，保护细胞膜的稳定性，防止膜上脂质过氧化作用。人到老年体表出现褐色斑点，叫做寿斑或老年斑。这是细胞膜上的不饱和脂肪酸和脂肪酸在自由基作用下生成的脂褐素。不仅体表，在心肌、肝脏，特别是在脑细胞中都有大量存积，且随年龄增高而越积越多，可引起老年人神经功能、记忆力和智力障碍，以至帕金森氏症等。维生素E还可以抑制人体脂褐素的沉积，起到延缓细胞衰老的作用。

三、美容护肤
维生素E与护肤：人的皮肤是由鳞状上皮和结缔组织构成的，其中硫酸软骨素、透明脂酸和胶原纤维是结缔组织的主要成分。青春年少者透明脂酸吸收了许多水分，所以皮肤有弹性，娇嫩、充盈、没有皱褶。随着岁月流逝，人体最先表现衰老的是从结缔组织开始。各种因素使硫酸软骨素的合成和透明脂肪酸吸收水分的能力减弱，皮肤弹性也就日趋下降。
维生素E与美容：维生素E对保持皮肤代谢，防止皮肤衰老起着至关重要的作用。维生素E可防止面部产生黑褐色寿斑，也即类脂褐色素的积累，促进末端血管的血液循环，使皮肤有丰富的营养供应，保持光泽滋润。
维生素E与秀发：维生素E可改善头发毛囊的微循环，保证毛囊有充分的营养供应，使头发再生。单纯性斑秃是因小血管发生收缩所致，用天然维生素E油搽斑秃区，并辅以多食富含维生素E食物可以治愈。

『走急的人看不見地上的釘子，煩惱的人享受不到幸福的日子。』

2009-10-09T06:28:00.000-07:00

<<很值得與親朋好友分享>>

舒特曼：『走急的人看不見地上的釘子，煩惱的人享受不到幸福的日子。』

黑幼龍專欄》我有幫別人更快樂嗎？

一年多前我看過一部電影叫《一路玩到掛（The Bucket List）》，
講一個人聽到自己罹患絕症噩耗時，會想做什麼事？
故事從一個億萬富翁（由傑克尼克遜所飾演）
在病房遇到了另一個修車工（由摩根費里曼所飾演）講起，
兩個人都因癌症住進醫院，走到了人生盡頭。

過世前想看、想體驗的事
有一天，億萬富翁看到技工一直在書寫，
很好奇追問才發現他在寫人生清單（a bucket list），
他剛進大學時，哲學老師叫他們列出的一份人生清單，
寫出他們在過世前想做、想看以及想體驗的事。

億萬富翁聽了之後覺得這個點子太棒了，
隨後也列出自己的人生清單，兩個人還結伴做了許多想做的事，
包括賽車、打獵和旅行，在世界各地留下許多快樂的足跡。

有一天到了埃及金字塔，技工突然變得很認真嚴肅，
不管是表情還是話語都很慎重，他說埃及人一直有個傳說，
說人死後到天堂門口會被問兩個問題，
回答的內容會決定你往哪裡走。

第一個問題是：「你在世上的這一生快樂嗎？」
億萬富翁聽了之後沉默不語，
因為他雖然擁有私人飛機、豪宅和美食，十分富有，極其享受，
但他回答不出來，因為他的確不快樂，
他知道有很多東西不是金錢能換得的。
他無法回答，
催促著趕快說第二個問題，
技工說：「那你在世上這一生有沒有幫助別人找到快樂？」
億萬富翁聽了更加沉默，甚至生氣，
因為他是個大老闆，對人極為嚴苛，常常挑剔找麻煩，
不要說幫助人快樂了，甚至還讓人很不快樂，是別人痛苦的來源。
加上自己還離過四次婚，唯一的一個女兒不相往來，
他這一輩子從來沒幫助別人快樂過。

減少批評、責備、抱怨，才會快樂起來
我對那一幕印象極為深刻，我們現代人都忙著工作，
競爭壓力很大，如果我沒猜錯，很多人跟我一樣，
從來沒想過第一個問題：「我這一生快不快樂？」
而對第二個問題，反應還會是：
「問了還不是白問，我還能怎麼樣？還不是得上班、下班？」

實際上是不是這樣？當然不一定。
同樣的環境職場，同樣的工作，
如果我們很能珍惜自己所擁有的，感恩惜福，
也會在逆境中抱持正向態度，可以讓自己快樂的程度就不一樣。

至於第二個問題：「我們有沒有幫助別人更快樂？」
可以想的東西就更多了，似乎跟第一個問題關係很密切。
一個不快樂的人，很難帶給別人快樂，
因為他的想法、作為都是負面的。

卡內基講得很清楚，
人要減少批評、責備、抱怨和挑毛病，才會快樂起來，
也才有可能跟別人好好相處溝通，帶給別人快樂。

我有個朋友是快遞公司總經理，有一天他的助理跟他說：
「總經理，拜託你不要這麼愁眉苦臉的好不好？」
他生氣地說：「難道我連自己不快樂的權利都沒有嗎？」
那小姐說：「你真的沒有權利愁眉苦臉，
因為你害得我們的工作士氣也很低落。」
在家裡也是，如果父母愁眉苦臉，
孩子也沒辦法快樂起來，影響一家人。
自己積極正向，不僅自己能快樂，也會大大影響別人的。

學會讚美，帶給別人快樂
我最近在看巴菲特的自傳，
裡面提到員工都很喜歡跟他一起工作，因為他很會讚美別人。

其實巴菲特以前並不是快樂的人，內向、害羞和退縮，
他是在二十幾歲參加卡內基訓練之後改變的，
他在自傳裡提到卡內基有16次之多，
講到他如何從退縮害羞變得有自信，懂得跟別人溝通，
成為一個成功的企業家，甚至讓他娶到老婆。
那是他在一次訓練得獎後，十分開心快樂，
晚上才有自信開口跟女朋友求婚，結果一舉成功，
更加深他日後持續改變，愈來愈有信心。

我們在台灣長大的人，
特別是40到60歲的人，不太會也不好意思讚美別人。
但要帶給別人快樂，就要先學會讚美別人和聆聽別人說話，
這部份我們以後慢慢再談。

寫《追逐日光》的尤金·歐凱利
是美國KPMG會計事務所的總裁兼執行長，
他也是在發現自己得腦瘤，生命只剩100天後，
寫下最想做的事，
結果發現前幾項都是想去跟別人說感謝和讚美的話。

他寫信給一個高中同學，說自己跟他在一起時有多開心，
結果對方沒回應，他乾脆打電話去，才知道對方根本沒收到，
他就在電話裡說了起來，對方也很真誠地回答他：
「你在我們班上什麼都是跑第一的，第一個當總裁，
第一個做什麼什麼的，現在連去天堂都是第一個的，
但我們早晚都會在天堂見。」

尤金·歐凱利在死前給我們的建議就是，
不管你現在幾歲，身體健康狀況如何，
都要把你想做的事情儘量往前移，
不要等到五十幾、六十幾才做，現在就去做。

我看完書，立刻打電話給我在美國的妹妹，告
訴她我們以前在家裡有多快樂，
最佩服她不記仇，不會對人懷恨在心，
我講完後好開心，她也好開心，
這就是我講的，自己快樂，
對別人說出讚美肯定的話，就能帶給別人快樂。

從此刻起，不管你是做哪個行業，什麼樣的工作，
每天進辦公室前，
都可以先問自己這兩個問題：「我快樂嗎？」、
「我能不能幫助別人更快樂？」
那麼一天的工作就會很不一樣。

女性健康实用宝典

2009-06-12T08:29:00.000-07:00

粉色题板

1. 在干净的床上裸睡
3. 生理期不吃巧克力，因为会加重痛经
4. 经期只穿无钢圈内衣
5. 养成记录生理周期的习惯
6. 通过运动而非调整型内衣来塑造曲线
7. 不翘二郎腿，以免压迫神经
8.ML后去一次洗手间
9. 贴身衣物要干洗
10. 拉风的丁字裤不适宜日常穿着
11.不穿标有 '免烫 '标识的衣服
12. 丝巾扎得过紧会导致头晕
13. 去年的衣服要进行曝晒后才可以穿
14. 如非必要，不使用卫生护垫
15. 定期检查化妆品的保质期
16. 洗浴后一小时再化妆
17. 每周只用一次清洗液，用温水清洁私密部位
18. 即使爱美，也不要在耳朵上部的外缘软骨部位穿耳洞
19. 染发频率控制在半年一次
20. 了解自己的家庭病史，特别是母亲和外婆的病史

蓝色题板

21. 每天踏进办公室，先将窗户打开透气，再坐下来工作
22.如果一天要接听5 小时电话，使用无线耳机
23. 复印文件时，与复印机保持至少一米
24. 只在非常必要时才使用滴眼液
25. 不趴在办公桌上午睡
26. 该午休的时候不玩电脑游戏
27. 在办公室为自己准备小靠垫，放在腰部
28. 从不戴着眼镜接听手机
29. 别让电脑包围你，它的侧、背面辐射更凶
30. 不要将笔记本电脑放在膝上使用
31. 在办公桌上养一盆仙人掌，帮助吸收辐射
32. 阅读完报纸后，记得清洗掉沾在手上的油墨
33. 每 30分钟伸一次懒腰
34. 办公室地毯定期清洗杀虫
35. 用完电脑后要清洁面部及手部，清除辐射微尘
36. 下班时将洗净的水杯倒扣在办公桌上
37. 单肩的短带挎包会加重肩周炎症状
38. 公文包时的口红与签字笔分格存放
39. 每天保证有2 小时以上的时间，让脚从高跟鞋时解放出来
40. 每周晚过22：00 的加班不超过一次

绿色题板

41. 浴室保持干燥，防止霉菌滋生
42. 沐浴不超过10分钟
43. 不要坐在马桶上看报纸
44. 用温水刷牙，同时刷刷舌头
45. 用冷热水交替洗脸
46.不用塑料器皿盛装热水
47. 定期清理冰箱
48. 微波炉在工作时，请离开厨房
49.使用抽油烟机
50. 晚餐时关掉电视机
51. 尽量避免使用厚绒布窗帘
52. 杀虫剂和清洁剂要放在远离起居场所的储物间
53. 用天然的花香或果香代替芳香剂
54. 和宠物嬉戏完要认真洗手
55. 冬天居室里的加湿器使用纯净水
56. 不要贪图方便将电脑带进卧室
57. 不要把手机放在枕边充当闹钟
58. 别在临睡前服药，安眠药也要提前半小时服用
59. 头发没干时，别急着入睡
60. 卧室的房间要用柔和色彩

黄色题板

61. 在牛奶和豆浆之间，选择后者
62. 觉得还可以再吃半碗饭时，离开餐桌
63. 如果身体不感到饥渴，每天只需饮用4杯水
64. 多喝酸奶
65. 无论什么原因，都别抽烟
66. 在食谱里添加杂粮和蔬菜
67. 饮绿茶胜过红茶
68. 重视早餐多过晚餐
69. 控制盐的用量
70. 起床后先刷牙，再喝水
71.经常嚼口香糖
72. 一早一晚，两个苹果可以有效改善便秘
73. 纯素食可能导致荷尔蒙分泌异常，造成不孕
74. 每周至少吃一次鱼
75.远离可乐等碳酸饮料
76. 不喝久煮的火锅汤
77. 没有果汁牛奶这回事，它们是天生的冤家
78. 饭前吃水果胜过饭后
79. 睡前可以来一杯红葡萄酒
80. 喝咖啡可能引起女性骨质疏松

橙色题板

81. 多享受早晨8－9 点的阳光
82. 跑步、骑脚踏车等运动可以保持优美的腿部线条
83. 热水泡脚可有效预防静脉曲张
84. 精神极度疲倦时并不适宜以运动减压，休息更重要
85. 冬季少做户外运动
86.10 层以下，不乘坐电梯
87.每三个月改变一次你的健身菜单
88. 每天运动半小时，而非周末运动3小时
89.运动前先卸妆
90. 边看电视边做柔软体操
91. 在游泳池里一定要戴上泳帽和泳镜
92.经常散步
93. 午休也是健身的好时间，不一定非等到晚上
94.光脚穿运动鞋固然舒服，却对健康不利
95.睡半硬的床铺更有利于颈椎健康
96. 去正规的医院而非美容院接受按摩
97. 非运动状态下不喝功能性饮料
98. 运动后休息半小时再入浴
99. 不在过吵的健身房中锻炼
100. 正确的姿势比专程去健身更有效

给自己的女朋友及身旁的女性朋友

2009-06-11T08:28:00.000-07:00

女人月经来潮前会有头晕者，是癌症的前兆
抗癌之母 — 庄淑旗博士生于 1922 年，今年 80 岁了
庄淑旗博士的抗癌养生法
女生月经来时为何不能洗头 ?
很早以前就常听到老一辈的人这样规劝我们这些不怕死的年青人
因为问他们：为什么不行？没人回答得出来，只说：那是以前人经验累积的
告戒，不听的话，以后老了就会知道！
所以就这样，一直觉得那可能是古早环境不好，没有像我们现在有吹风机，
洗好马上吹干，应该就没事了 …
想不到 …… 看了这篇文章后，才知道不是有没有吹干的问题
各位不论是小女孩还是大女人，都应该要注意，不要洗头就对了
男生收到也看一看，跟你有关的女人都应该让他知道这个正确观念才是 !
台湾的女医学博士庄淑旗女士，在日本留学潜心研究发现，她以中国医理的
根基研究医学，先后在日本庆应大学修得药理博士、医学博士，她对日本癌症患
者三万人的病发前的生活调查发现，绝大多数的癌症患者均有极端的偏食习惯，并在
调查中有惊人的发现，大多数的乳癌及子宫癌患者，喜欢在月经来潮时，洗头发、提
重东西、或产后不注意调养或吃冰冷食物，致子宫收缩不完全，而使体内贺尔蒙分泌
不平衡，长久累积而致癌。
由于这项发现，庄博士乃潜心研究女性月经期间生理调理的方法，在日本发
表改善月经期间饮食法，与改变生活方式疗法，结果使许多日本妇女因乳癌、子
宫癌症及得患其它癌症开刀者，因饮食、生活的改善，而使癌症不再发。
现在这个疗法已在日本被广为宣传，每年有数万人因而得救，这个方法就是，
在月经期不能洗头，她说古老的时侯，妇女们都知道月经期间不能洗头，将之传
给她的女儿媳妇，但不知其原因，有许多现代人总以为科学发达，古老的说法无凭
据，不信，结果竟得乳癌，庄博士说：以往子宫大量出血的妇女，在妇科未发达以
前，她们都不愿找医师看病，而有一个自疗方法，即是将头发用水打湿，则子宫收
缩，血立刻止掉。
因为这个原理，她发现，月经来潮时，不能洗发，不能吃冰冷食物，以免让
排出的污血未排净，而残留在子宫之内，日积月累，贺尔蒙分泌失调，而有乳
癌、子宫癌的发生，除了不洗发，不吃冰冷食物外，如月经来潮前会有头晕、胀
奶、便泌者，这是癌症的前兆，预防方法可依体型用黑糖、莲藕、萝葡、薏仁等，熬汤饮
之，
则可防止癌细胞的发展，达到最佳的预防方法 ·

少喝奶茶，不吃刚烤的面包，远离充电电源，白天多喝水晚上少喝，一天不喝多于两杯咖啡，少吃油多的食物，最佳睡眠时间为晚 10点到早6点，晚 5点后少吃大餐，一天喝酒不能超过 1 杯，不用冷水服胶囊，睡前半小时服药忌立即躺下，睡眠不足8小时人会变笨，有午觉习惯的人不易变老，手机剩一格点时不要打电话，因为一格电打电话时的辐射是平常的1000倍，还要记得要用左耳接电话，右耳接电话会直接伤到大脑。

Reasons for sleeping and waking up early.

2009-06-01T09:04:00.000-07:00

Evening at 9 - 11pm: is the time for eliminating unnecessary/toxic chemicals (detoxification) from the antibody system (lymph nodes). This time duration should be spent by relaxing or listening to music.. If during this time a housewife is still in an unrelaxed state such as washing the dishes or monitoring children doing their homework, this will have a negative impact on health.

Evening at 11pm - 1am: is the detoxification process in the liver, and ideally should be done in a deep sleep state.

Early morning 1 - 3am: detoxification process in the gall, also ideally done in a deep sleep state.

Early morning 3 - 5am: detoxification in the lungs. Therefore there will sometimes be a severe cough for cough sufferers during this time. Since the detoxification process had reached the respiratory tract, there is no need to take cough medicine so as not to interfere with toxin removal process.

Morning 5 - 7am: detoxification in the colon, you should empty your bowel.

Morning 7 - 9am: absorption of nutrients in the small intestine, you should be having breakfast at this time. Breakfast should be earlier, before 6:30am, for those who are sick. Breakfast before 7:30am is very beneficial to those wanting to stay fit. Those who always skip breakfast, they should change their habits, and it is still better to eat breakfast late until 9 - 10am rather than no meal at all.

Sleeping so late and waking up too late will disrupt the process of removing unnecessary chemicals. Aside from that, midnight to 4:00 am is the time when the bone marrow produces blood. Therefore, have a good sleep and don't sleep late.

TAKE CARE OF YOUR HEALTH

Live Life Without Limits!

3 Protein Sources You Must Add to Your Diet Today

2009-04-08T08:58:00.000-07:00

When it comes to eating healthy and getting in shape protein is known to be very important. Protein is the building block of muscle and bodybuilders have been singing its praises for years. Even if you are not looking to add on slabs of muscle and be the next ahh-nald you should definitely be adding in some quality proteins to your diet. It can work wonders for your overall health. One thing people do not understand though is the need to make sure these are quality proteins.

One of the best proteins to add in to your meals is wild salmon. One of the keys here is the wild in wild salmon. Sometimes when eating a fish portion that you pick up at your local supermarket you have no real idea where it came from and what it contains. Some of the fish comes from a fish farm and as such it can be diseased and unhealthy. Of course this is not always the case but if you want the best you should always go with wild caught fish. With salmon you are also getting a bonus. It is an oily fish so it is packed with good fats. These good fats are essential to a healthy fat burning diet. Again the wild salmon generally has more of these good omega 3 fats due to the fact that farmed salmon are sometimes fed cheap feed and are generally not as healthy.

Eggs have gotten a bad rap when it comes to buring fat and eating healthy. But these things are some of the best sources of protein to add to your diet. They are packed with vitamins that actually help to burn fat. Vitamin B12 is on the top of the list of vitamins on eggs. Of course the yolk does contain cholesterol and you have to be very careful to keep this in moderation. I am a believer in eating the whole egg yolk and all I just feel that you have to be sensible about it. Of course you cannot expect to have a six egg omelet and call it a day. You have to limit your intake to a couple of eggs a day. As long as you do this then you should definitely add this protein source to your diet. The effects (not to mention the taste) are wonderful.

Last but not least almonds can be a great source of protein for your diet. Again though like with other quality sources of natural protein the almond comes with an added benefit and added caution. Almonds are also high in good fats. These fats are good for you and definitely need to be utilized in your program. You just have to make sure you watch overall calorie intake. It does not take many almonds to tip you over the limit on total calories. Be mindful of this and these are a great source of quality protein with the added benefit of good fats. Add these in and you can not go wrong.

NIELSEN: ONE IN TWO MALAYSIANS TAKE VITAMINS AND DIETARY SUPPLEMENTS

2009-04-07T08:53:00.000-07:00

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysians are faithful vitamin poppers with around half of the population (52%) found to be consuming vitamins and dietary supplements, ranking them fourth in the Asia Pacific region and seventh globally,
according to findings from the latest survey by international market research firm, The Nielsen Company.

The online survey undertaken across 52 countries highlights the importance of vitamins and dietary supplements in the lives of people around the world. Usage is more prevalent in North America and Asian countries than Europe and Latin America. Highest levels of usage were recorded in Philippines and Thailand where two thirds (66%) of those surveyed claimed to use the products, with the USA not
far behind at 56 percent.

“Urbanites find it tough to stick to a well-balanced diet and meal-skipping is quite common given the frenetic pace of city life. Hence, it’s not surprising that many consume vitamins and dietary supplements to ensure that they get enough nutrients that might be missing from their diet,” commented Ms Sujata Mehta, Director of Consumer Research, The Nielsen Company Malaysia. Among Malaysians who consume vitamins or dietary supplements, 66 percent claim to make it a daily ritual, much higher than their regional counterparts who averaged 47 percent. Denmark tops the global ranking, scoring 81 percent for daily intake. Overall, less than 60 percent of global consumers are regular daily users.

“It is obvious regional considerations play an important role with vitamins and dietary supplement products. Daily usage is prevalent in the more developed economies of Western Europe and North America compared to most Asian and Middle Eastern markets. This could be an indication of the types of products used and the routine in which they are taken, but also of the economics of daily usage and the reasons for usage,” added Mehta.

The primary benefit that consumers globally are expecting from their usage is “to boost their immune system”. Over 60% of consumers chose this option globally and 39 out of 52 countries had this as their top response. This is also the case in Malaysia where 79 percent choose strengthening their immunity as their top consuming reason. One other important driver for usage among locals was the response "to ensure my
diet is balanced" (56%).

“Manufacturers have eagerly latched onto this growing consumption trend and aggressively marketed their host of healthcare products such as multi-vitamins as well as traditional herbal-based products which are also very popular here,” said Mehta. Based on Nielsen Advertising Information Services (AIS) data, vitamins and tonics products ranked as the sixth highest advertising category in 2008 valued at RM100 million, a whopping 39% growth over 2007.

Meanwhile, the survey also explored the reasons why respondents claim they do not use vitamins and dietary supplement products, providing a range of options to choose from. Nearly half of all respondents who do not consume these products said they did not see any need for them. This was the top response in 42 out of the 52 countries, including Malaysia (48%) and was particularly strong in Europe (55%).

Interestingly, among Malaysian respondents who claim to never consume vitamins and dietary supplements, 44 percent cited the expensive price tags as a deterrent. Close to one fourth (26%) also find it too confusing to understand what products to use. “It would seem that locals shy away from these products not because they don’t want to but rather they are put off by the high prices and mind-boggling array of information,” said Mehta, adding that manufacturers can address these concerns by embarking on educational roadshows and health themed campaigns for their targeted customers.

Installing a Husband

2009-04-06T07:33:00.000-07:00

Dear Tech Support,

Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5..0 to Husband 1.0 and I noticed a distinct slowdown in the overall system performance, particularly in the flower and jewellery applications, which operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0.

In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programs, such as
Romance 9.5 and Personal Attention 6.5, and then installed undesirable programs such as NEWS 5.0, MONEY 3.0 and CRICKET 4.1.

Conversation 8.0 no longer runs, and Housecleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system.

Please note that I have tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, but to no avail.

What can I do?

Signed,

Desperate

DEAR DESPERATE,

First, keep in mind, Boyfriend 5.0 is an Entertainment Package, while Husband 1.0 is an operating system.

Please enter command: ithoughtyoulovedme.htmland try to download Tears 6.2 and do not forget to install the Guilt 3.0 update.
If that application works as designed, Husband1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewellery 2.0 and Flowers 3.5.

However, remember, overuse of the above application can cause Husband 1.0 to default to Silence 2.5, Happy Hour 7.0 or Beer 6.1.
Please note that Beer 6. 1 is a very bad program that will download the Farting and Snoring Loudly Beta.

Whatever you do, DO NOT under any circumstances install Mother-In-Law 1.0 (it runs a virus in the background that will eventually seize control of all your system resources.)

In addition, please do not attempt to reinstall the Boyfriend 5.0 program. These are unsupported applications and will crash Husband 1.0.

In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly. You might consider buying additional software to improve memory and performance. We recommend:
Cooking 3.0 and Hot Looks 7.7.

Good Luck Babe!

Tech Support

Are the Salads You Eat Really That Healthy?

2009-03-01T19:21:00.000-08:00

All health conscious people love to eat salad and if you’re one of those people, you probably know how sumptuous well-made salads can be. All that lettuce topped with your favorite dressing and sprinkled with other toppings is enough to make your mouth water. However, not all salads are really healthy as you might think, and discussed here are the factors you must consider if you have maximum health in mind while eating salads.

Most of the vegetable salads we know today are composed of a primary ingredient called lettuce. Now, don’t get me wrong, lettuce is a very healthy thing to eat, however, its downside is that it really doesn’t have much of an impact when regards to taste. That’s why we include all those extras in our salads to enhance its flavor. Fruits can easily accomplish this, but most of the time, we add in a little bit sin to the meal.

These are the ingredients that make the salad not so healthy and if you’ll like to have an actual example, then take a look at any local salad bar. If you take a closer look, many of the items in a salad bar are not for health conscious people, but all salad bar patrons love to include them in the mix. So, let’s just take a closer look at these ingredients and provide some guidelines to lessen their consumption.

Obviously, fruits and vegetables are the healthy part of salad so we’ll just look at the next tray of ingredients. Here we see bacon bits and croutons which are both adding to the downfall of your salad. Bacon bits and any other meat add fat to your body. But I’m not saying avoid them entirely, just moderate additional meat and you’re perfectly fine.

Another part of salad we cannot do without are dressings. Generally, dressings are unhealthy, so the greatest way around the use of dressings is to measure just enough of them before you begin eating the salad. At an average, a two tablespoon of dressing will accumulate eleven grams of fat in your body. Not really a lot, but it can certainly build up overtime if you consume more.

Unfortunately, a salad is not a happy salad unless it has a dressing on top and adding flavor to every bite. That is why in order for you to cut back on the calories, here’s a handy little tip you can implement. Try using a fat free or low calorie dressing to add flavor to your salads. Nowadays, this is already a very famous option seen on groceries, with most of our favorite flavors already having its low fat counterpart.

The downside to all these is that low fat dressings doesn’t really taste the same as their original counterparts. This will probably make you use more of them, which is a downside to cost savings. For this problem, here’s a possible solution. Instead of spreading the dressing evenly across the salad before you eat, try putting it in a small cup. Use the dressing as a dip for your salad, taking in only a few portions just to add taste to the vegetables. This way, you can monitor well your calorie intake and see more progress in your health efforts.

To sum it up, in order for a salad to become really healthy, you must pay attention to the ingredients you put in it. I know it takes a bit of self control but hopefully with these little tips, you can still enjoy eating your favorite salads without much toll on its taste.

WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU STOP SMOKING NOW?

2009-02-28T18:26:00.000-08:00

In 20 minutes
Your blood pressure returns to normal. Pulse rate will drop and the temperature of your hands and feet will increase.

In 8 hours
The carbon monoxide (a toxic gas) level in your blood stream will drop by half and your oxygen level will return to normal.

In 24 hours
Your risk of having a heart attack will decrease.

In 48 hours
All nicotine will leave your body. Nerve endings begin to regrow. Your sense of taste and smell will return to a normal level.

In 72 hours
Your bronchial tubes will relax and your energy level will increase.

In 2 weeks
Your blood circulation will increase and it will continue to improve in the next 10 weeks.

In 3 to 9 months
Coughs, wheezing and breathing problems will dissipate as your lung capacity improves by 10%. You will feel invigorated and rejuvenated.

In 1 year
Your risk of having a heart attack will drop by half.

In 5 years
Your risk of having a stroke returns to the level of a non-smoker.

In 10 years
Your risk of having lung cancer returns to the level of a non-smoker.

In 15 years
Your risk of having a heart attack returns to the level of a non-smoker.

Source: 2004 Surgeon General’s Report: within 20 minutes of quitting by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

5 DON'T when you are sleeping.‏

2009-02-27T18:10:00.000-08:00

1 DON'T SLEEP WITH WATCH
Watches can emit a certain level of radioactivity.
Though small, but if you wear your watch to bed
for a long time, it might have adverse effects on your health.

2 DON'T SLEEP WITH BRA
Scientists in America have discovered those that
wear bras for more than 12 hours have
a higher risk of getting breast cancer.
So go to bed without it.

3 DON'T SLEEP WITH PHONE
Putting the phone beside your bed or anywhere
near you is not encouraged.
Though some of us will use phones as alarm clocks,
but please put the phone as far as possible.
Scientists have proved that electrical items including
mobile phone and television sets emit magnetic waves when used.
These waves can cause disruptions to our nervous system.
Therefore if you need to put your mo! bile phone near you,
switch it off first.

4 DON'T SLEEP WITH MAKE UP
People who sleep with make up might have
skin problems in the long run.
Sleeping with make up will cause the skin to have
difficulty in breathing and problem in perspiring.
You will also need a much longer time to go into deep sleep.

Lastly.....

5 DON'T SLEEP WITH OTHERS' WIFE / HUSBAND
You may never wake up again. : )
HA..HA...HA.........!

LIPSTICK INFORMATION

2009-02-01T07:53:00.000-08:00

LIPSTICK INFORMATION:

Something to consider
Next time you go shopping for
Lipstick......

This comes from someone
Who works in the breast cancer unit at
Mt. Sinai Hospital , in Toronto .

From: Dr. Nahid Neman

If there is a female you care anything about,

Share this with her. I did!!!!!

I am also sharing this with the males on my e-mail list,
Because they need to tell the females

THEY care about as well!

Recently a lipstick brand called 'Red Earth'

Decreased their prices from
$67 to $9.90.

It contained lead.

Lead is a chemical which causes cancer.

The lipstick brands that contain lead are:

CHRISTIAN DIOR

LANCÔME

CLINIQUE

Y.S..L

ESTEE LAUDER

SHISEIDO

RED EARTH (Lip Gloss)

CHANEL (Lip Conditioner)

MARKET AMERICA-MOTNES LIPSTICK.

The higher the lead content,

The greater the chance of causing cancer.

After doing a test on lipsticks,

It was found that the Y.S.L. Lipstick
Contained the most amount of lead.

Watch out for those lipsticks
Which are supposed to stay longer.

If your lipstick stays longer, it is
Because of the higher content of lead.

Here is the test you can do yourself:

1. Put some lipstick on your hand.

2. Use a Gold ring to scratch on the lipstick.

3. If the lipstick colour changes to black,

Then you know the lipstick contains lead.

Please send this information to all your girlfriends,

Wives and female family members.

This information is being circulated at

Walter Reed Army Medical Centre

Dioxin Carcinogens cause cancer,

Especially breast cancer

心理測驗 ~~ 準到不行

2009-01-10T08:02:00.000-08:00

真的還蠻準的ㄟ~~
準到不行

心理測驗題目：什麼原因會讓你想哭?
排一下自己最易哭的原因! (1是最容易 , 5是最不容易)
五個選項分別是：
a.感動
b.傷心
c.痛( 是肉體, 不是心靈)
d.生氣
e.擔心/緊張

排好了嗎？準備看答案囉！
請看自己把該選項排在第幾個順位來找解答喔～
----------------------------------------------------------------

] 感動：不是跟你很熟的人覺得你是 ......
排在第1 - 一個常常把自己藏起來的人。很有神秘感。不容易接近。
排在第2 - 一個很會關心別人的人。很容易發現身邊有人不開心。不會很容易講錯東西或話題。
排在第3 - 一個傻傻的人。怪怪的。想做什麼就做什麼。不過很可愛。
排在第4 - 一個不會想﹐老是要人擔心的人。(特別是長輩)
排在第5 - 一個很聰明﹐很負責任的領導人。對你很尊敬。

] 傷心：跟你很熟的人覺得你是 ......
排在第1 - 對很多事都要求很高的人。不過有很多時候都太固執。
排在第2 - 可以跟你講道理。黑白之間分辨得很清楚。
排在第3 - 心思很細膩的人。很多時候傷心不會表現出來，不過其實大家都看得出來。
排在第4 - 會先想很多才會做選擇。不想自己給人看扁,自尊可以算是很強的人。
排在第5 - 外剛內柔的人。但其實知道你的內心不是那麼堅強。

] 痛：你想要別人覺得你是 ......
排在第1 - 很需要別人保護的人。
排在第2 - 不是那麼容易接近的人。
排在第3 - 好人一個。很關心身邊的人。不怕做犧牲的人。
排在第4 - 很聰明 , 不過又不會驕傲的人。
排在第5 - 很清楚自己想什麼要什麼的人。

] 生氣：你最希望你的情人是......
排在第1 - 跟你很合拍。你跟他想的東西是一樣 ,不用問便知道對方要什麼。
排在第2 -不會很客易發脾氣。要懂得容忍你。外剛內柔。有自己的性格。
排在第3 - 內心是很可愛的一個人。你猜不到下一步他會做什麼。
排在第4 -很細心。你需要什麼他都有準備。不會因為很少的東西便找你。
排在第5 - 智慧很重要。可以管得到你的人。而且要講道理。

] 擔心 /緊張：其實真實的你是 ......
排在第1 - 一個很怕給別人看到自己是什麼樣的人。不喜歡自己性格的人。
排在第2 -孤獨的人。很希望可以跟一大堆人在一起。不過很多時候都不知道怎樣跟別人溝通。
排在第3 -覺得朋友比天還重要的人。很珍惜身邊很多朋友。敢愛敢恨。不過不喜歡的人你就不會去管..
排在第4 -直接的人。很多時候因為這樣的性格跟別人不合。希望有多一點人可以了解你, 特別是你喜歡的人。
排在第5 -不是很清楚自己將來要什麼。不過就很幸運的走過半生。不會對很多東西有要求。最重要是可以開心過每一天!

人啊！

2009-01-09T07:54:00.000-08:00

人啊！

沒錢的時候，養豬；
有錢的時候，養狗。

沒錢的時候，在家裡吃野菜；
有錢的時候，在酒店吃野菜。

沒錢的時候，在馬路上騎自行車；
有錢的時候，在客廳裡騎自行車。

沒錢的時候想結婚；
有錢的時候想離婚。

沒錢的時候老婆兼秘書；
有錢的時候秘書兼老婆。

沒錢的時候假裝有錢；
有錢的時候假裝沒錢。

人啊，都不講實話：

說股票是毒品，都在玩；
說金錢是罪惡，都在撈；

說美女是禍水，都想要；
說高處不勝寒，都在爬；

說煙酒傷身體，就不戒；
說天堂最美好，都不去!!!

當今社會，窮吃肉，富吃蝦，領導幹部吃王八；
男想高，女想瘦，狗穿衣裳人露肉；

過去把第一次留給丈夫；
現在把第一胎留給丈夫。

鄉下早晨雞叫人，
城裡晚上人叫雞；

舊社會戲子賣藝不賣身，
新社會演員賣身不賣藝。

人生是什麼?
只用了 4 4 個字 , 就把人生講完了 ...
所以人與人 , 有啥好計較的咧 ?
快樂好相處比較重要啦！

1 歲時出場亮相
10 歲時功課至上
20 歲時春心盪漾
30 歲時職場對抗
40 歲時身材發胖
50 歲時打打麻將
60 歲時老當益壯
70 歲時常常健忘
80 歲時搖搖晃晃
90 歲時迷失方向
100 歲時掛在牆上

祝大家愉快，好好做人!

Love & Anger

2009-01-08T07:41:00.000-08:00

Dear Family & Friends,

This is such a beautiful piece...so touching..

Here is story for you which actually matters a lot. I learnt
from it...now it's your chance.

While a father was washing his new car, his 4yr old son
picked a stone & scratched lines on the side of the car.
In anger, the man took the child's hand & beaten it
many times, not realizing he was using a wrench.

At the hospital, the child lost all his fingers due to
multiple fractures.

When the child saw his father with

painful eyes & asked 'Dad when will my fingers grow
back?', the father was so hurt and speechless.

He went back to car and kicked it a lot of times.
Devastated by his own actions... sitting in front of that
car he looked at the scratches, child had written 'LOVE

YOU DAD'.

The next day the man committed suicide...

Anger and Love have no limits; choose the later to have a
beautiful & lovely life...

Things are to be used and people are to be loved, But the
problem ..today's world is that, People are used and

things are loved...

Peace, Lady Cruz

如果被劫匪强制到atm按钱。。。。该如何？

2009-01-01T07:39:00.000-08:00

If you should ever be forced by a robber to withdraw money from an ATM
machine, you can notify the police by entering your Pin # in reverse.

For example if your pin number is 1234 then you would key in 4321. The ATM
recognizes that your pin number is backwards from the ATM card you placed
in the machine.

The machine will still give you the money you requested, but unknown to the
robber, the police will be immediately dispatched to help you.
This information was recently broadcast on TV and it states that it's
seldom used because people don't know it exists..
Please pass this information to as many people as possible.

如果有一天你面对劫匪要你到提款机提款，记得不要反抗，照他的指示，不过当你按你的密码时要从后面按起，如123456，你就按654321，提款机会照样出钱，可是劫匪万万想不到警方会立刻获得通知来协助你。
这个系统很少人用所以都被人们遗忘了。。。。

蘇民峰 So Man Fung 2009‏

2008-12-15T05:46:00.000-08:00

> > 蘇民峰 2009 生肖運程 - 牛
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > 屬牛的你，去年運勢強勁，可說一時無兩，事事稱心順意。但希望你知道要居安思危，不會因為好運降臨而樂極忘形，因為踏入牛年，你犯上本命年，命宮有眾多凶星埋伏，缺乏吉星解救、助運，所以全年的運程都會反覆不定，做事波折重重、危機四伏，必須要小心應付。
> >
> > 事業
> >
> > 流年命犯太歲，人事關係和事業發展都不能順心隨意，加上今年命宮見「劍鋒」，而由於這顆凶星主有刀光和鬥爭，因此在牛年中，你在公司裏必然與同事之間有一番龍爭虎鬥；而不幸的是，你將會是失敗者。另外，「黃旛」凶星加臨，令你時常失魂落魄，做事不能集中精神，影響工作表現。
> >
> >
> > 不過，流年又見一顆「華蓋」星，表示從事藝術創作、出版文化和娛樂事業的牛人，將有機會發揮才華，邁向事業高峰。
> >
> > 財運
> >
> > 肖牛的你，由於事業表現未如理想，正財收入難以增添，加上今年有「破碎」星出現，令你無法積聚錢財，即使賺得財富，也會因某些原因而令你完全耗掉，以致財來財去一場空。投資者避免短炒概念，在下注之前更要考慮再三；當然，沒有十足把握的話，最好忍手。另外，你缺乏理財之道，不懂管理金錢，以致收支更難達到平衡。
> > 愛情
> >
> > 由於「華蓋」的出現，故此今年你在感情路上大都是孤單一人，原因是「華蓋」既主才華，也主孤獨。已婚的你，容易與配偶因家庭瑣事或兒女問題發生爭執；蜜運中的牛人與愛侶聚少離多，令兩人感情由濃轉淡；年長者更防老伴身體欠安，要進醫院診治調理；至於未有對象的你，今年不宜追求觸摸不到的霧水情緣，努力工作才是上策。
> > 健康
> >
> > 流年犯太歲，所謂「太歲當頭坐，無喜必有禍」，主牛人今年多憂心之事，也多心理壓力問題，加上有「伏屍」在旁，情況更加嚴重，所以你必須隨時留意身體的變化，健康問題不可掉以輕心。另外，「黃旛」凶星令你失魂落魄，駕車人士或行人過馬路時，容易發生交通意外，不可不防。
> > 錦囊
> >
> > 你在己丑年正犯太歲，無論是事業、錢財、愛情、家庭或健康等方面的運程都並不理想，但你毋須過份氣餒。今年只要你能緊守工作崗位，作風低調；做好理財計劃，減少不必要開支；對伴侶和家人要處處關懷，主動溝通；處理健康問題要緊記病向淺中醫，自然可以減低太歲帶來的禍害，平穩過渡這個太歲年了。
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > 蘇民峰 2009 生肖運程 - 虎
> >
> >
> > 屬虎的朋友，去年事業和錢財有一顆中級的「驛馬」星照命，發展半吉半凶，又見一些影響健康和愛情運的小凶星出現，故全年的表現普普通通，並無重大突破，可算是乏善足陳。踏入牛年，你的事業和財運續向下滑，情況開始令人擔心，加上命宮出現不少凶星，做事更要格外留神，否則稍一不慎，便會跌入眾凶星所佈的陷阱了。
> > 事業
> >
> > 流年命宮得見「太陽」星。「太陽」是一顆一級貴人星，能在你的事業前途上發揮重大助力，而由於這顆吉星屬陽性，所以流年的貴人多是男性。
> >
> > 今年公司內的男性上司或老闆非常欣賞你的工作表現，有機會委派你擔任重要項目的負責人。機會來臨，你當然是全力以赴，但可惜的是，流年出現在命宮的另一顆「劫煞」星將會在此時作祟，影響你的工作情緒及阻撓你的工作進度，最後，你的一番努力變成徒勞無功，而吉星帶來的機遇，也白白地流失。
> > 財運
> >
> > 屬虎的你沒有財星助運，加上命宮出現「天空」和「吞陷」兩顆凶星，所以今年你的錢財收入極難達到理想了。「天空」主虛花不聚財，而「吞陷」主受騙，代表在牛年中，你會因為一些突發事情而要耗用大筆金錢；同時，你的購買慾戰勝了理智，時常會將收入花費於一些沒用的東西，以致無法累積儲蓄。另外，今年會有陌生人甚至友人設計欺騙你的錢財，會否應劫，則全看你的意志力和分析力了。
> >
> > 愛情
> >
> > 無論是單身、正在蜜運中或已婚的朋友，今年愛情路上桃花明現，，原因是流年命宮出現一顆「紅鸞」星。「紅鸞」星動，單身的你將會在今年遇上理想伴侶，甚至會火速結成佳偶。蜜運中的男女，愛情生活十分愜意稱心，部份虎人會在牛年中締結良緣，部份則繼續享受拍拖的樂趣。已婚的你，與配偶的感情與日俱增，但自己要注意跟其他異性保持適當距離，以免惹起配偶誤會。
> > 健康
> >
> > 雖然流年有一顆「晦氣」星影響著你，但幸好沒有病星降臨騷擾，所以整年看來，除了因為事業不順意而偶然間感到悶悶不樂外，不論老人家或是年輕人，健康大致良好，若能減少無謂壓力，避免不必要的擔憂，則身體及精神狀況更理想。
> > 錦囊
> >
> > 全年來說，屬虎的人在牛年的運程也是吉凶參半。今年凶星作祟，因此事業和財運的表現都不太理想，而眾凶星主要是衝著你的性格弱點而來，如果你能夠以堅定的意志力和謙虛的心態迎接工作挑戰的話，成功機會較大。年初時應要做好理財計劃，定下每月的收支預算，嚴格遵守，便可避免亂花無謂錢了。
> >
> >
> > 至於愛情和健康方面，今年的運勢可說是銳不可擋，幾乎無人能及，但已有對象和已婚的你，切記不可有越軌行為；年輕人也不可過份流連夜店，才可保全年平安。
> >
> >
> >
> > 蘇民峰 2009 生肖運程 - 兔
> >
> >
> > 肖兔的朋友，在鼠年得到「太陰」貴人的助力，在事業方面平穩進步，而愛情又得到「紅鸞」星的照顧，因而與伴侶相處甜蜜，但因凶星纏繞，健康方面的表現就較為遜色了，希望你能夠保重身體，不受病魔的困擾，以應付牛年的種種挑戰。兔人踏入牛年，凶險重重，一方面沒有吉星之助，另方面又見眾多凶星潛伏，蓄勢以待，固此流年必須步步為營，處處小心。
> >
> >
> > 事業
> >
> > 由於今年命宮欠缺吉星守護，四處皆無助力，令屬兔的你在工作上不單難有突破，甚至阻礙重重，做事事半功倍。在牛年裏，只見「囚獄」、「災煞」等凶星坐守命宮，肆無忌憚。「囚獄」主有官非、刑罰事件，代表你今年將會因為公事出錯而招來麻煩，輕者受上司責罰，重則惹起訴訟事件，須以法律途徑解決。而「災煞」主有意外破損，做事徒勞無功，換句話說，無論你今年如何辛勞，都難有重要收穫。
> >
> > 財運
> >
> > 由於事業出現重重阻滯，正財也就無法強求有突破進賬，唯有希望保持往年水平已經算不錯了。今年命宮欠財星，偏財、橫財欠奉，故投資者必須要謹慎，千萬不可貪求短線利益而獨注一擲，否則一塗敗地，後悔莫及。流年不利，賭博必要避之而吉，以防辛苦積蓄，付諸一炬。
> >
> > 愛情
> >
> > 已婚人士與配偶相處，時有爭端，為子女，也為家庭開支；蜜運中的兔人，與愛侶常因小事而陷於冷戰之中，聚少離多，甚至有鬧分手的危機；未有對象的你，感情仍然一片空白，唯有繼續等待良緣吧。
> >
> >
> > 健康
> >
> > 今年命宮逢「披頭」、「喪門」、「災煞」及「地喪」等凶星，每一顆都影響著你，以至你家人的健康。「披頭」和「地喪」都是主家人、近親患病，代表今年你家中的老人家身體欠安，嚴重者需要進醫院治理；「喪門」則影響著屬兔的長者，令你健康受損，而「災煞」除了破壞你的工作表現外，也令年輕的你容易受手腳之傷。
> >
> >
> > 錦囊
> >
> > 雖然有凶煞在旁，工作難望有美好收成，但也不可因此而自暴自棄，相反，你應該要加倍用功，守好崗位，希望累積更多經驗和實際知識，以求在好運降臨時，能發揮最大的潛能，振翅高飛。此外，健康無價，流年凶星群出，令你身心遭受困擾，連帶家人也受到影響，所以在牛年裏，你除了要預防意外受傷之外，也要多抽時間照顧家人健康，希望一家人可以有驚無險，平安過渡牛年。
> >
> >
> >
> > 蘇民峰 2009 生肖運程 - 龍
> >
> >
> > 龍人在鼠年的運程吉多於凶，相信憑著個人的意志和魄力，你在各方面都有不錯的表現。踏入牛年，你的運勢稍為有點下滑，除了健康有所提升外，無論在事業或金錢方面，都比較去年遜色，這都是因為「天煞」、「歲煞」、「貫索」、「勾神」等凶星作祟，架設了重重障礙，打擊你的士氣，幸好今年命宮得見「太陰」貴人相助，能讓你在對抗逆境時獲得片刻喘息的機會。
> >
> > 事業
> >
> > 屬龍的你，在牛年得到「太陰」星坐命，代表工作上有女性貴人提拔，給予你發揮才幹的機會。不過，流年並見「貫索」、「卒暴」和「勾神」等凶星，發展恐怕難如人意。「貫索」有被動和消極的特性，「卒暴」易招是非謠言，而「勾神」則使麻煩事情更加糾纏不清，這幾顆凶星將令你陷入事業困局，需要你以堅強的毅力衝出難關。
> >
> > 財運
> >
> > 今年你得到「太陰」星的扶助，錢財運本應有賴事業進步而有所增添，可惜，流年命宮所見另一顆「羊刃」，卻令你的財運大受打擊。「羊刃」既主血光，也主破財，換句話說，即使你能夠賺到財富，這顆凶星也會製造禍端消耗你的金錢，令你財來財去一場空。流年財運反覆不定，求財不易，令你容易求諸賭博，祈求以小博大，但結果當然難從心願。
> >
> > 愛情
> >
> > 龍人在牛年的愛情運跟去年差不多，但幸好「華蓋」已去，所以情況略見好轉。已婚的你，與丈夫或太太相聚的時間增加，只要兩人能夠以真心、愛意互相關心，婚姻仍然可以保持幸福。未婚而有愛侶的你，約會的時間比去年多，相處也比較融洽、愉快，雙方感情也甜蜜、溫馨。不過，仍然未有戀愛對象的你，今年良緣未到，愛情路上依舊孤單一人。
> >
> > 健康
> >
> > 基本上，你在牛年的健康並無嚴重問題，全年平平安安、無災無病。不過，龍人長者在農曆八月和十一月身體抵抗力較差，時常感到心神不安，也易染上傷風感冒，雖是小問題，但仍然需要好幾個星期才能徹底痊癒。年輕的龍睡眠嚴重不足，以致日間工作時精神難以集中，影響表現，若不知檢討改善，下半年健康將會變差。
> >
> >
> > 錦囊雖然龍人在牛年的運程並非鯉躍龍門，但也算中規中矩。雖然你的事業受到眾多凶星干擾，但因為你有「太陰」貴人之助，所以，如果你能夠努力做好自己的本份，把握貴人給予的機會，專心做事，不理是非，則事業理應有不錯的發展。此外，又有凶星帶來血光，兼且令你損財，不過，煩惱皆因強出頭，今年只要作風低調，並能緊守信念，不貪不賭，則流年仍可保身心平安、收支平衡。
> >
> >
> > 蘇民峰 2009 生肖運程 - 蛇
> >
> >
> > 屬蛇的朋友，去年各方面的運勢只算一般，踏入牛年，地支巳酉丑三合，運程稍見起色。首先得吉星扶助，你的事業明顯有進步，而財運更是在眾生肖朋友中數一數二，大有鯉躍龍門之勢；不過，流年又見凶星雲集，影響了愛情和健康的發展。聰明者宜把握先機，掌握運程起伏，便能進退有據，增加各方面的成功機會。
> >
> >
> > 事業
> >
> > 流年「三台」、「金輿」兩大吉星相逢，大有求名得名，求利得利的凌厲勢頭。「三台」主謀事可成，大利事業，今年上班一族若向老闆獻上滿腹發展大計，定能得到認同，並且獲得公司裏各部門互相配合，計劃得以貫徹實行，任務完成之後，升職加薪自然有望。不過，命宮同時見「官符」和「飛符」凶星，將影響你的判斷力，令你在工作上出錯，輕則受老闆責罵，重則惹上不測之官非，不可不防。
> >
> > 財運
> >
> > 「金輿」是一顆財帛福星，既然「三台」為你創造事業良機，那麼，「金輿」財星也就能順理成章地為你創造財富，但蛇人不可不知，無論你是打工一族或是老闆級，這兩顆吉星都不會主動給你帶來金銀財寶，它們需要你來主導，先付出努力和恆心，才能發揮作用，所以你千萬不可疏懶做事，守株待兔，否則白白辜負了吉星附帶的財氣。
> >
> > 愛情
> >
> > 今年凶星群集，加上你外冷內熱的性格、愛保護自己的心態，時常害怕受感情傷害而對愛情卻步，所以單身的你，在牛年也難有機會遇到拍拖對象，唯有繼續等待吧。已婚或者在戀愛中的你，流年兩人感情一般，未見突破，甚至經常因小事爭拗，互不理睬，影響了彼此工作和日常的心情。已婚人士家庭運更差，需注意配偶健康可能起變化。
> >
> > 健康
> >
> > 流年見「天哭」，主有孤獨、寂寞的事情，情緒也容易受環境影響，所以必須盡量保持心情輕鬆。今年你時常會在工作或愛情上遇到困擾，令你鬱鬱不悶，連帶身體健康也受到影響，最常見的就是失眠。凶星也主有流淚事件，與長輩同住的蛇人，今年老人家身體欠佳，時常感覺不舒適，你切不可掉以輕心、馬虎處理，否則小病變大病，也就應了流淚的災煞了。
> >
> > 錦囊
> >
> > 蛇人在牛年全年表現有起有落，基本來說，你的事業和財運都有明顯的進步，當中特別以金錢的運勢更見突破，應好好把握之餘，也要有居安思危的想法，做好儲蓄的預算，以備不時之需。至於愛情方面，你必需檢討一下自己的個性，多主動與伴侶溝通，才能減少兩人之間的誤解，而單身者則有助提高自己的吸引力，增強異性緣分，或許有機會在牛年中得遇新的戀愛對象。
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> >
> >
> > 蘇民峰 2009 生肖運程 - 馬
> >
> >
> > 馬人去年沖犯太歲，所遇的傷害非同小同，希望你能以無比的鬥志和耐力克服重重障礙，安穩過渡鼠年。踏入牛年，太歲帶來的衝擊逐漸消減，但並未完全除去，所以上半年各方面仍須以穩守為策略，避免與凶星的遺禍正面衝突，直至下半年開始，你的事業和財運才稍為緩和，但你仍未能樂觀，因為你的運勢依然徘徊在失落與穩定之間。
> >
> > 事業
> >
> > 流年遇「年煞」、「死符」、「六害」等凶星，並見「月德」貴人，可以預測今年工作時經常無法集中精神，加上公司裏的人事鬥爭仍未平息，各人都不肯互相配合，做好自己崗位上的工作，結果「年煞」便有機可乘，先使你的事業陷於停滯狀態，再帶出你上司的不滿情緒，所以馬人註定要受到責備。幸好在事情惡化之前，你的流年貴人及時出現，為你解決糾纏不休的問題，將你的工作重新納入正常軌道。
> >
> > 財運
> >
> > 雖然「大耗」已去，但又有「小耗」臨門，所以馬人在牛年的財運仍然不濟。首先事業未順，不單不可奢望正財收入增加，更恐去年的晦氣未去，今年出現減薪的情況，故只能寄望保得住職位，每月有糧出便好了；其次橫財不可求，即使小注也註定要賠本。收入開源無望，而你又控制不了你的購買慾，當有推銷員向你美言幾句，你就會抵受不住誘惑，將並沒有急切需要的東西買下來，致令今年你的財政總無法達到平衡。
> >
> > 愛情
> >
> > 今年馬人的命宮出現「咸池」，的確會有點異性緣，但要注意，這顆星宿帶來的桃花並非真正的姻緣，而是會令你意亂情迷的劫數，所以單身的你，即使在牛年結識到你認為不錯的對象，結果也只是霧水之情，情花驟開驟落，不會長久。已婚或已有對象的你，也有異性主動接近，在你的愛情路上帶來一點新的刺激，但如何取捨，還看你的意志和自制能力了。
> >
> > 健康
> >
> > 「死符」、「六害」同臨，所以今年仍未見進步，前者既主爭鬥，也主疾厄，後者則主精神倦怠，也就是說，馬人由於長時間睡眠不足，以致經常精神不振，抵抗力弱，故容易受病菌侵擾，另一方面，你受「咸池」的附帶影響，夜生活甚多，時常飲酒，再加上不懂節制飲食，致令腸胃和頭部常感不適，健康也就更差了。
> >
> > 錦囊
> >
> > 屬馬的人，雖然度過了沖太歲的年份，但到牛年的運勢仍然差強人意，所以仍要步步小心，以防犯錯。幸運的是，即使今年在命宮出現的凶星凶猛異常，你仍得到一級「月德」貴人星為你排難解紛，化險呈祥，因此你並非全無還抗之力，事實上，只要你能夠堅持正確的原則做事，不與小人為伍，再多做善事，積德積福，流年自然可以如履平地，無災無厄。
> >
> >
> > 蘇民峰 2009 生肖運程 - 羊
> >
> >
> > 羊人去年運勢凌厲，各方面都有很好的表現，希望你能把握好時機，為自己的事業闖出一片天，賺取豐厚的收入，與愛侶相處融洽，身體健康平安，度過了不平凡的鼠年。另外，更希望你沒有在順風順水的時年得意忘形，任性揮霍，令身邊沒有隔宿糧，因為踏入牛年，你與太歲相沖，運程動盪不堪，需要你以很大的努力，才可平伏風波，克服太歲帶來的障礙。
> >
> > 事業
> >
> > 流年沖太歲，事業難望有大成就，而且命宮沒有吉星助運，兼見凶星重重包圍，情況更加驚險。今年影響事業的凶星主要有「歲破」和「闌干」，顯示你的工作出現嚴重阻滯，除了個人做事欠順利，常常遭到困難或不獲上司信任外，在公司裏更有人事不和的問題，加深了工作的難度。另外，「豹尾」星令你間中失魂落魄，無法集中精神處理事務，影響表現。部分打工的羊人，今年會被老闆辭退，宜用心做事，及早防範。
> >
> > 財運
> >
> > 丑未相沖，諸事不順，事業難成，正財也不可奢望有重要進帳，更悲觀的想法是部分人連正職也失掉！今年你的命宮出現了一顆「破碎」凶星，也就是說，你將全法積聚財富，即使賺到金錢，也會因故耗掉，當然可能是你自己買東西花掉，但也有可能是因賭彩輸掉，或者其他意想不到的事故用去。總之流年財運不利，小心為盼！
> >
> > 愛情
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> > 流年沒有桃花星，但也沒有衝繫愛情的凶星，所以羊人在牛年的愛情運並不算太差，只是由於今年你經常表現心神恍惚，即使與伴侶相處時，也仿似魂遊太虛，令伴侶強烈不滿，因而影響大家感情。本來羊人的性格十分溫馴，但因為今年受到太歲的影響，所以脾氣變得較差，令人感覺不易相處，也令伴侶產生埋怨，宜檢討。
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> > 健康
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> > 在沖太歲的年頭，健康也屬一般。年紀較大的羊人，必須注意身體變化，不要以為小毛病不足為患，這可能是大病的先兆，所以有病要馬上看醫生，千萬不可拖延。如果你的年紀尚輕，則今年多見睡眠不足或睡眠質素欠佳，即使睡在床上也難入眠，致令日間精神不振，影響工作效率之餘，也令抵抗力下降。
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> > 錦囊
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> > 由於今年你正沖太歲，故此事業運和財運都非常動盪。在牛年裏，你最好保持低調作風，凡事忍耐，緊守工作崗位，避免轉工，也不宜遠行、探病、問喪，無論是公司或家居都不宜動土，如果無法控制前者，可考慮在公司裝修時申請放大假，便可避免觸動壞磁場，影響自己的運程。流年身體狀況平平，但長期病患者則須留意出現併發症，令健康惡化。
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> > 　　
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> > 羊人在牛年若能夠咬緊牙關，少說話，多做事，則不難順利過渡，流年平穩無災。
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> > 蘇民峰 2009 生肖運程 - 猴
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> > 屬猴的你，在鼠年裏並無驚喜收穫，做事時甚至更有被縛手縛腳、才華無處發揮的感覺。不過，踏入牛年，你的命宮裏有眾多吉星聚集，主有富貴吉祥、貴人指路、地位提升、家宅喜慶等美好事情發生。不過，你千萬不要驕傲自滿，因為在吉星的旁邊，仍有不少凶星窺伺，意圖在你得意忘形之時發動攻勢，令你陷入破敗之中。
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> > 事業
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> > 今年你得到「紫微」、「龍德」和「貴人」等大吉星照臨命宮，事業的發展將是眾生肖人士之冠，無人能及。打工的你向上司獻計，獲得接納，有機會發揮所長，做出令人刮目相看的成績，奠定了升職的基礎，可是，你的成就卻招來旁人妒忌，甚至有小人在你背後製造事端，阻礙你工作的進度，幸好你有敏捷的反應和異乎常人的洞察力，能夠在事故發生之前做好部署，令自己安然度過危機。
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> > 財運
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> > 吉星獻瑞，事業順遂，正財收入十分理想，打工的猴人甚至有額外的花紅獎金，可算是意料之外的喜訊；如果你是做生意的，今年的營業額可以錄得不錯的升幅。不過，吉星只利正財，而且流年命宮未有橫財星，所以你不宜寄望有天降橫財，只宜在喜慶日子小注耍麻雀或六合彩怡情，但賭博則萬萬不可，以防有失。另外，流年主猴人有失物和意料不及的破財事件，所以必須緊記財不可露眼。
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> > 愛情
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> > 除了「紫微」星主流年吉祥，為你帶來喜悅和順利的事情之外，另外又有一顆「天喜」星，主有喜慶事情。已婚的你，今年家宅興旺，將有添丁之喜，但男性猴人卻會陷於酒色的誘惑，也會因此而與丈夫或妻子發生爭執、意見。蜜運中的你，與愛侶相處十分和睦，溫馨甜蜜，令旁人羨慕，假如雙方戀愛成熟，可以考慮締結婚姻，一起組織家庭。如果你仍是單身的話，恭喜你！你將在今年找到理想的對象，享受愉快的愛情生活。
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> > 健康
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> > 雖然你有一級大吉星坐守牛年，但無奈凶星數目不少，部份更會衝擊健康，加上今年工作忙碌，身體容易感到疲累；部份男性猴人，因夜生活過多致令休息不足，以及因煙酒過多而使呼吸道抵抗力減弱，易受細菌感染，若能預早洞識問題，便要採取適當措施，減少無謂應酬，保持飲食均衡，盡量安排時間做運動，則患病機會自然降低，身體就更加安康了。
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> > 錦囊
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> > 工作順利，做事得心應手、事半功倍，對於猴人來說，牛年可說是洗脫霉氣、送舊迎新的好年頭，實在值得高興。不過，善用吉星者吉，反之卻會帶來厄運，所以今年你必須言行謙虛正直，規行矩步，若能多做善事，更可錦上添花，福祿多增，遇吉更吉，遇凶減凶。
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> > 蘇民峰 2009 生肖運程 - 雞
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> > 屬雞的你，去年運程仿如順水行舟，氣勢如虹，一時無兩，各方面都有很好的表現，尤其在工作和金錢的收穫，令你最為滿意。踏入牛年，你仍得到眾吉的保護和助力，令你做事可收事半功倍之效，可是，今年的凶星數目也有所增加，所以阻礙和困難也比去年多，做事必須小心籌謀，處處提防。
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> > 事業
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> > 由於得到「將星」和「八座」值年，屬雞的你在牛年的事業發展仍然保持穩定姿態，兩者都有利權力和地位的提升，故此你的工作仍然有進步機會，若能配合「將星」這顆武將星宿的特質，善用謀略，努力求成，自然可以在聲望上凌駕他人，創造更理想的成績，但因為流年有「大煞」、「飛廉」、「浮沉」等凶星在旁趁機發難，意圖削弱你的判斷力和工作表現，所以你必須行藏小心，以防行差踏錯，令凶星有機可乘，將你帶入厄運之中。
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> > 財運
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> > 雖然「八座」只利升遷，不能為你帶來財富，但「將星」卻有升官發財、有名有利的推動力，加上掌管財帛的「金匱」吉星同時出現在雞人的命宮之中，意味著無論你在賺錢或開源方面，都有很順利的發展，也就是說，今年你毋須刻意求財，但卻財來自有方。不過，你必須檢討你追求享受的性格，以防因過度虛榮和奢侈而花掉辛苦賺來的財富。
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> > 愛情
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> > 肖雞的人感情豐富，很容易對異性動心，時常主動表現慇勤，但有些時候，這種態度卻會將對方嚇跑。今年你所遇的「飛廉」星，就是一顆誘使別人誤會你的凶星，而單身的你正因為這顆凶星作祟，令你今年仍然無緣入情關。已有親蜜戀人的你，感情受到考驗，因為將有小人在你的愛人面前搬弄是非，引起愛人對你誤會，這段感情能否持續，還須看你倆的緣份了。至於已有家室的你，今年將有第三者介入婚姻，應要好好處理這個問題。
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> > 健康
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> > 由於「血刃」當前，「大煞」坐命，故此雞人在牛年的健康容易發生問題。前者主有流血、破損事件，後者主有突如其來的意外，所以今年使用利器時必須特別小心，乘坐交通工具或過馬路時要打醒精神，駕車人士更要格外留神，即使在街上行走時，也會有滑倒或遭高空擲物所傷，必須小心。
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> > 錦囊
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> > 肖雞的朋友遇牛年，是巳酉丑半合之格局，除了健康較差，愛情其次之外，事業和財運的運程仍屬中上，當中更以金錢的勢度最強，甚稱眾生肖人士之冠，希望你能把握這賺錢的好年頭，並戒掉胡亂花錢的習慣，多儲點錢，以備財運受阻時有錢可用。感情上，對愛人坦白，態度真誠，可減少遭人誤會的機會。另外，流年多爭取休息時間，出入謹傎，小心家居安全，有助改善健康運。
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> > 蘇民峰 2009 生肖運程 - 狗
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> > 屬狗的人，剛過了一個十分不錯的鼠年，相信對自己的成績甚為滿意，甚至連身邊人也會為你感到高興。踏入牛年，你仍然得到吉星的助佑，但凶星的傷害卻比去年厲害得多，所以比較去年來說，運程難免有點滑落，不過，由於你的性格忠誠、勤奮，做事不會使詐，不會計算別人，故此縱觀整年來說，情況也不至於太差。
> > 事業
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> > 「天德」和「扳鞍」同時出現在流年命宮之中，再配合狗人本身勤奮、堅毅的性格，意味著你在今年縱遇困難、險阻，仍能順利克服，突破障礙。不過，這兩顆吉星主要的功能都在解厄扶危，對於提升運程的助力卻不算太大，再加上「卷舌」帶來的是是非非和口舌之爭，以及「三刑」惹來的恩恩怨怨和矛盾事件，令你更加煩惱不堪，所以，在牛年裏，你必須憑著不屈不撓的精神對抗面前的禍患，才能順利度過難關。
> > 財運
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> > 由於流年事業發展不錯，又得到「福星」貴人照耀，代表你的正財運十分不錯，不過，事業上的阻滯也會影響到你的財政狀況，特別對於工作收入不穩定的你更加靈驗，也就是說，當吉星大放光明時（農曆正月、四月、七月和八月），你的金錢運會比較順利，但當凶星橫行時（農曆二月、五月、六月和十二月），你的財運就有點麻煩了，因此，你必須緊記在順遂的日子多勞多獲，在蹇運時緊守工作崗位，就可以在全年立於不敗之地了。
> > 愛情
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> > 肖狗的你流年命宮欠缺桃花星，也不見喜慶星，卻出現一顆「寡宿」星，這顆星主有孤獨感覺，預兆今年你的愛情道路並不平坦。年紀大的狗人，今年你的老伴經常感到身體不適，嚴重者需要送院治理。已婚的你，與丈夫或妻子時常發生爭執，影響婚姻和諧。戀愛中人，與愛侶溝通不足，甚至有第三者出現，介入你們的感情關係之中，觸發分手危機。至於單身的你，今年會有一兩段霧水情緣，但對方並不是你的真命天子。
> > 健康
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> > 今年的工作量不少，需要你以很大的精神和體力去應付，所承受的心理壓力也不輕，嚴重影響睡眠質素，偶然間更會失眠，以致休息不足，令身體狀況變差，抵抗力不足，增加患病機會。另外，由於感情運不理想，連帶情緒也受到影響，經常感到悶悶不樂，幸好這純粹是心理毛病，若能自我鬆弛，問題便可迎刃而解。
> > 錦囊
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> > 肖狗人士在牛年的整體運程半吉半凶，既有大吉星扶助，也有大凶星擾命，所以全年做事總無法一帆風順。不過，你毋須為此而苦惱或氣餒，須知七分由天，三分由人，今年若你能加倍努力，便有機會在劣境中找到出路，扭轉乾坤。工作方面，你必須遠離製造謠言的小人，低調做事，避免與小人爭執。錢財方面，不可貪，不可賭，專心工作，賺取回報。愛情方面，多關懷愛侶，多主動溝通，感情自然有增無減。至於健康方面，就要靠你自己減少應酬，多爭取休息時間，才能改善問題。
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> > 蘇民峰 2009 生肖運程 - 豬
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> > 屬豬的朋友在鼠年得「陌越」吉星扶助你的事業發展，但另一方面卻有幾顆不利健康與財富的凶星不斷纏繞你，以致運程無法一帆風順，希望你能夠憑著自己的堅持、努力和智慧，度過困難，做出理想成績。踏入牛年，命宮只現一顆力量不太強勁的「天馬」吉星，但卻有影響深遠的「弔客」和「天狗」騷擾，故此流年運勢不可言吉。
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> > 事業
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> > 流年見「天馬」，主有出國觀光或遠地旅行之事。肖豬的你，今年有被派到國外出差的機會，但工作辛苦，卻沒有額外報酬。雖然如此，但上司派下來的工作，你仍然要努力完成，做好自己的工作，守好自己的崗位，才可免招人話柄。須知你在牛年裏沒有吉星照護，令身邊的小人更易得逞，對你作出諸多留難，但只要你做事堅持十足定力，便不會有太大問題了。
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> > 財運
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> > 流年在命宮見「天狗」。「天狗」是一顆影響你金錢開支的凶星，它會令你金錢超支，失掉財政預算。今年你將有很多意外支出，首先是家中有水電工程問題，要花錢修理；其次是自己或家中老人家患病，需要急錢治病；也有親友向你借貸，之後「劉備借荊州，一去不回頭」；當然也有因為要到外地旅遊而需支付旅費。總之，各種各樣的支出，大部份都在你的預算之外，令你全年的財政失去平衡。
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> > 愛情
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> > 屬豬的你性格熱情，對人親切，與異性的關係都很好。不過，今年你的感情運卻未見有驚喜。已婚的你，今年因為金錢問題時常與配偶發生小爭執；蜜運中的男女愛情無增無減，平淡而過；如果你仍是單身而未有對象，在農曆正月和二月份有機會結識到新異性，若不能把握時機，則今年將繼續交白卷，需要耐心等待下一年了。
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> > 健康
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> > 由於「天狗」入命，主有損傷、車禍、疾病和開刀。今年老人家易因病患而要入院檢查及醫治；牛女易因婦科疾病而需要動手術；駕車人士易生交通意外，輕則車損人安，重則身體受創，須住院一段短時期。另外，今年你的睡眠嚴重不足，以致時常感到疲倦不堪，影響健康之餘，也影響日間工作表現。
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> > 錦囊豬人在牛年裏沒有吉星幫助，工作上諸多阻滯，做事很難成功，金錢運程令人失望，愛情和健康也未見稱心如意。今年可算是一個運勢比較低沉的年頭。不過，你毋須為此而氣餒，甚至自暴自棄，事實上，只要你稍為改掉過份熱情的性格，在公司裏保持低調作風，少說話，多做事；不投機，不炒賣；主動關心愛侶和家人，則流年自然可以平平安安，無災無禍了。
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> > 蘇民峰 2009 生肖運程 - 鼠
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> > 去年屬鼠的朋友命犯太歲，若無喜事臨，必有禍事憂，事業運程難免不順意，身體也容易出現問題。踏入牛年，雖然年初時運勢仍然有點不順，但春季以後，漸入佳境，命宮更見眾多吉神拱護，大有一洗鼠年的霉氣之勢。
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> > 事業
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> > 今年在命宮出現「陌越」和「玉堂」星，主有地位突破和大貴人助運，故能將你的工作帶進新局面。凡流年得「陌越」坐命，事業地位必可更上一層樓。打工的朋友，在公司裏將得到上司貴人提拔，給予你發揮所長，甚至獨當一面的良機，如果你希望自己能在眾同事中突圍而出，奠定升職的基礎，就要好好把握這個難得的機會了。
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> > 財運
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> > 鼠人踏入牛年，財運未可言吉。雖然表面看是相合年，但卻暗藏隱憂。受薪的你，今年會有加薪的機會，但加幅並不理想；一向有投資習慣的朋友，小心高買低賣輸掉財富，即使在部份投資項目上賺得微利，但全年計下來也是輸多贏少；做生意的你，雖有客似雲來，但總見旺丁不旺財。總之，今年求財宜守不宜攻，可免重大破耗。
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> > 愛情
> > 肖鼠的你，踏進牛年，子丑相合，主有喜悅的事情發生，但可惜同時見到一顆令你孤單、空虛的「孤虛」星飛臨命宮，預兆今年你的感情有喜有憂。未有對象的你，今年有機會遇上心儀的異性，但愛情路上波折重重，難享甜蜜；已有對象或配偶的你，雖然兩人仍然恩愛，但今年大家將會聚少離多，令你在大部份時間都要感到空虛寂寞。
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> > 健康
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> > 「病符」是一顆主小病的凶星，在牛年出現於肖鼠朋友的命宮之中，表示你的健康狀況較差，抵抗力弱，容易受到疾病侵擾，老人家更要特別注意身體健康。今年注意多吸收有營養的食物，每天保持充足睡眠，便可抵抗病魔。另外，「病符」入命，易犯凶煞，所以流年不宜探病問喪，喪家食物也不宜吃，以免負面磁場影響個人運氣。
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> > 屬鼠的朋友在己丑年的運程尚算理想。事業得到貴人和吉星之助，宜好好把握，發揮自己的長處，勿讓此難得機遇白白流失。如果你是有伴侶的鼠人，今年最好平衡一下工作和愛情的比重，不要令愛侶常常孤枕獨眠。
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> > 整體看來，今年你只是在財運方面的表現稍欠理想，但情況不算太壞，只要你能保持積極的工作態度，緊守自己的崗位，便有機會扭轉逆勢，最終得到合理的回報。
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這些案例！觸目驚心！！！女生男生萬萬小心！！！不是鬧著玩的！！！

2008-12-13T00:25:00.000-08:00

個案1：有一婦女手提包被偷，裏面有手機、銀行卡、錢包等。 20分鐘後，她打通了老公的電話，告訴自己被偷的事。老公驚呼：'啊，我剛才收到你的短信，問咱家銀行卡的密碼，我立馬就回了！'他們趕到銀行時，被告知裏面所有的錢都已被提走。小偷通過用偷來的手機發送短信給 '親愛的老公' 而獲取了密碼，然後在短短20分鐘內把錢取走了。提醒：不要在手機通訊錄中暴露自己與聯繫人的關係，忌用 '家電' 、' 老公'、'爸媽'等稱呼。一律用名字，字越少越安全。

個案2：有三位自駕游的朋友不慎連人帶車跌落一百五十公尺深的山谷，受困四日三夜後，才獲救。其間，他們曾多次想以手機向外求救。無奈一隻被摔壞，一隻沒電了，一隻收訊不良。他們還多次移動位置以尋找較佳的收發信號地，但都不成功。如果這三位元人士平常就知道１１２專線，緊急時刻也能知道如何用那只收訊不良的手機撥出１１2專線，相信他們可以很快獲救。

提醒：全國各地通用的１１２專線，在手機打開後即使沒有接收信號，甚至電力極為微弱，任何廠牌的手機在任何地點皆可撥通。撥出１１２後，馬上會進入語音說明如下 ∶這裏是行動電話１１２緊急救難專線，如果您要報案，請撥0，我們將會為您轉接警察局；如果您需要救助，請撥９，我們將會為您轉接消防局。中文講完後，會以英文重述一遍。此時只要撥0或９，一定會有人接聽。以三位元人士所處的情況，或登山迷途或遭遇其他困境時，應撥９，將可獲得及時的救助。

個案3：有個留學生喜歡吃速食杯面，後來，這位留學生因身體不適去醫院看病，醫生發現他的胃壁附著一層蠟！原來，杯面的容器裏包含一種可食用的蠟！各位下次吃杯面的時候摸摸看杯壁是不是覺得滑滑的，那就是了。而長時間的食用杯面，將造成我們的肝臟無法分解這種食用蠟。最後，這位留學生不得不尋求手術治療以移除這層蠟，不幸去世。提醒：吃泡面的時候，儘量把面拿出來，另外用碗來泡食，不要用碗面、杯面所附的容器直接衝開水食用。哪怕是出差，也要帶上一隻大茶缸泡面用。為了自己的身體，不要偷懶啊！

個案4：一件很可怕的事：有一天，一個 21歲男生戴著隱形眼鏡去參加一個烤肉野聚會！就在他開始以木炭生火之後的幾分鐘，他突然大叫一聲，然後很痛苦的跳來跳去，在地上打滾……全場的人都嚇呆了，沒人知道究竟發生了什麼事？大家趕緊送他到醫院，醫生檢查後遺憾地說，他的眼睛失明了！提醒：參加野外燒烤或任何有可能接觸到火源的時候，請不要戴隱形眼鏡！因為隱形眼鏡是用塑膠製成的，過熱的溫度會熔化我們眼中的隱形眼鏡！

個案5：蘇西跌倒了，雪麗看到蘇西跌倒就立刻問了蘇西'三個問題'。她見蘇西無法回答這三個問題，就立即打120電話求救。雖然當時蘇西的血壓正常，看起來也沒有中風的樣子。但因為雪麗有'三個問題'的認知常識，堅持把蘇西送到醫院救治，使蘇西很快康復而沒有留下後遺症。提醒：有時候中風的徵兆很難辨識，常因為中風患者旁邊的人沒有適時發現，延誤救治而使患者腦部受損。我們要問患者的三個問題是：要求病患展示笑容；要求病患兩隻手都舉起來；要求病患說出一句簡單的話。如果病患無法做到這三點，周圍的人就應該立即打120救護電話，並且告訴隨車的救護人員這是中風的徵兆。如果我們能夠廣泛傳遞並且應用這種詢問方式，測試中風徵兆，就可以迅速診斷治療中風患者，最大限度地避免患者腦部受損。

（1）建行一同志轉述: 今天經過一棟大樓門口，門口有一提款機。有一個老伯，一直看著我走過他身邊，突然叫住我,他說他不識字，拿一張銀行卡要我幫他在大樓門口的自動提款機取錢。我回答我無法幫你取，叫警衛幫你。結果，他就回答我說不用了,繼續找其他路人幫他取錢。朋友們要記住---取款機可是有攝影機耶。萬一他說我搶劫或是偷他的提款卡，甚至他的卡片是偷來的，幫他領錢會在提款機留下影像，絕對會讓你百口莫辯！我會警惕 ! 是因為已有同事上當，目前仍官司纏身。顯然這是詐騙集團在找替身了! 請立即傳出去~~~ 騙案真是層出不窮,一不小心就會踏入陷阱,真是令人防不勝防！提醒各位朋友在外多小心！　　　

（2）芍藥居一業主，家中突然斷電，看到窗戶外別人家裏都有電，就出門查看自家電錶箱，打開門就被刀子頂著了——持刀入室搶劫....提醒大家如果家裏突然斷電，不要貿然就開門查看，有貓眼的多觀察一會門外動靜，沒貓眼的也隔著門靜聽一段時間，沒有異常響動再開門 . 　　　

（3）各位女同胞們注意了！這是最新騙局　　女同胞請注意男同胞請叫自己的朋友注意 :新出的情況,女性朋友要特別注意啦:一位上班的小姐在下班回家的路上看到一個小孩子一直哭，很可憐 ,然後就過去問那小朋友怎麼了.小朋友就跟那個小姐說:' 我迷路了,可以請你帶我回家嗎?'然後拿一張紙條給她看, 說那是他家地址.然後她就笨笨的帶小孩子去了.一般人都有同情心,然後帶到那個所謂小孩子的家裏以後,她一按鈴，門鈴像是有高壓電,就失去知覺了.醒來就被脫光光在一間空屋裏,身邊什麼都沒有了,她甚至連犯人長啥樣子都沒看見.所以,現在人犯案都是利用同情心啊，如果遇到類似這種的,千萬別帶他去,要帶就帶他到派出所去好了,走丟的小孩放到派出所一定沒錯啦，請通知身邊所有女性，為了廣大女士的安全，看完後麻煩給轉發給所有人....　

（4）今天遇到討飯新招，大家注意提防了～～　　今天在家休息，有人按門鈴，開門一看，是個50來歲的老婦女，手裏拿了2包喜糖，我還以為是鄰居來分喜糖的，結果一開口，聽得出不是本地人，她說什麼這2包糖給我們的，圖個喜氣，要換一點錢給她，後面還說了一大堆不知道什麼，我也沒聽清楚，感覺就是不對，嚇的馬上關門，暈！這年頭，還有這麼討錢的... 　　　

（5）大家注意了！到自動取款機取錢時一定要倍加小心！！！！！　　昨晚在金海裏的工行自動取款機取錢時，後面來了個老婦女，問我能不能取錢，還說什麼取款機有個鍵可能壞了，旁邊不知什麼時候來了個小女孩，一直想往我身邊擠，我也沒在意，小孩子淘氣嘛，可是過分的是她竟然把手朝出鈔口放，準備拿我的錢了，我感覺不對勁了，立即把她推到一邊，等著把錢取出來。之後我想了一下，她們倆給我設了個套：老婦女負責和我瞎聊，吸引我的注意力，小女孩趁我不注意時搶走我的錢！如果我不防備的話，錢說不定就被搶走了，這樣的話，我就進套了：（一:我立即去追小女孩，去追回我的錢，可是誰又會相信一個小女孩能搶我一個大人的錢呢？更可怕的是站在我後面的老婦女將會取光我卡中所有的錢，因為我的卡還在取款機裏面；二:我不立即去追小女孩，等拿到卡再追，到那時小女孩就無影無蹤了，錢也就沒了啊：（她們真的很'聰明'，很可恥的！！！) 　　　

（6）我父母都退休在家。昨天上午，來一陌生中年人，說自己摩托車油開沒了，加油站太遠，摩托車又太重推不動，所以想問我父母要一個可樂瓶去買汽油，剛開口就說實在不行就出2、3元買一個空瓶好了。我母親就拿了個空瓶給他，別說他還真從口袋裏掏出錢來，不過是幾張百元大鈔，還讓我父母找錢。我母親頓生警覺，說算了，不過是一個空瓶而已。他非要把100元錢破開買下來，只不過還是那張百元大鈔。好在我母親尚未龍鍾，也不是那種愛貪小便宜的人. 　　女性朋友一定要認真看完，注意自我安全啊，現在萬惡的社會。。。。朋友發給我一篇報導,現轉給各位看看 ,出門在外,千萬小心,小心千萬。。。　　　　

（7）一對新婚夫婦到巴黎度蜜月。在巴黎,妻子在一間時尚服裝店試衣服 ,身為丈夫就在試衣間外等候。但等候多時卻不見妻子走出來 ,緊張的丈夫要求店員幫忙到裏頭查看 ,卻意外發現試衣間空無一人。丈夫以為妻子開玩笑作弄人 ,要他緊張.於是回到酒店等她回來。幾小時後卻不見妻子的蹤影,才知事態嚴重。丈夫趕忙報警 ,並到巴黎所有服裝店和醫院詢問妻子下落。三星期過去了，妻子猶如從人間蒸發,音訊全無,傷心的丈夫只能收拾包袱回到老家。由於無法從絕望中振作,丈夫無心工作,一直獨自生活 ,決定把自己放逐,流浪到各地方。幾年後 ,他心血來潮到巴厘島，在一破舊的屋子參觀一畸形秀 ( freak show ) 。他見到一髒生銹的鐵籠裏,有一女人四肢全無,身軀,包括臉部,猶如破布般殘破 ,充滿疤痕。她在地上扭曲著 ,並發出有如野獸般的XXXXX聲。突然間男人驚恐地發出尖叫聲。他從那毫無人樣的女人臉上見到,他再熟悉不過,屬於他新婚不久就告失蹤的妻子臉上的紅色胎記。　

（8）另一版本則發生在上海。幾年前一女通知公安她的表妹在上海市集購物時無故失蹤,可是遍尋不著 ,直到五年後一友人撞見這表妹在泰國曼谷街道上行乞。XXXXX的是她不知何故沒了雙手雙腳,身子被鐵鏈綁在燈柱旁。　

（9）最近有人告訴我，他的朋友在晚上聽到門口有嬰兒在哭，不過當時已很晚了而且她認為這件事很奇怪，於是她打電話給JC。JC告訴她∶ 「無論如何，絕對不要開門。」這位女士表示那聲音聽起來像是嬰兒爬到窗戶附近哭，她擔心嬰兒會爬到街上，被車子碾過。JC告訴她∶我們已派人前往，無論如何不能開門。警方認為這是一個連續殺人犯，利用嬰兒哭聲的錄音帶，誘使女性以為有人在外面遺棄嬰兒，她們出門察看。雖然尚未證實此事，但是警方已接到許多女性打電話來說，他們晚上獨自在家時，聽到門外有嬰兒的哭聲，請將這個消息傳給其他人，不要因為聽到嬰兒的哭聲而開門。　　

請嚴肅看待這篇文字！有這麼離譜！小心為妙!!!

载自网络文章，不知是真是假，但小心為妙！

做一个人前不疲倦的漂亮女人

2008-12-07T04:41:00.000-08:00

　混乱的环境会给人失控的感觉，因此，定期清理工作和生活环境使它们井然有序，可以有效的调解心情，助你远离压力。
学会休息
　　如果有太多事情要做，你是否会因此减少自己的睡眠时间？调查发现约四分之一的美国人不得不挤占睡眠时间工作，这通常使得他们在白天过于疲惫。有句老话叫不会休息的人就不会工作，那么该如何改变你的现状呢？下面有些小建议供朋友们参考借鉴：

晚上八点以后关掉电脑和电视
　　电视和电脑屏幕发出的光线会驱散你的睡意，因此为了保证睡眠，最好在8点前将他们全部关闭。
　　如果你不得不在晚上工作，那么尝试提前一两个小时关掉他们，你会有意想不到的收获。
定期清理工作和生活环境可以有效的调解心情。

收起你的闹钟
　　当你躺在床上却无法入睡时，不停看表只会增加你的压力使你更难入睡。专家建议，如果你遭遇睡眠问题，那么在设定好闹钟之后最好把它们放在你看不见的位置，这会让你忘记时间，尽快进入梦乡。

别把房间弄得过凉/热
　　过凉或过热的房间都会影响你的睡眠质量，把房间温度设定在合理的范围，可以帮助你尽快入眠。

适度锻炼
　　有氧运动可以帮助你迅速进入睡眠状态，同时，适度的运动也有利于建立正常的生物钟，使你的身体运转的更加顺畅。

如果你过于担心一件事，那就把它写下来
　　如果你无法克服对事情的焦虑，那么试着把它写下来，然后认真分析下这件事情发生的可能性有多大。研究发现，人类忧虑的事情有七成都是不会发生的。
（文章转载自新华网）

Hot Pepper Benefits

2008-12-06T08:37:00.000-08:00

Originating from Central and South America, the hot pepper is nowadays cultivated worldwide for its food and therapeutic qualities. It is a 30-60 cm high annual herbal plant. It has got different variants, both with a sweet taste and especially with a hot taste.

The fruit is red or yellow coloured, with many seeds on the inside. The ripe fruit of the plant is used both for culinary and therapeutic purposes. In a document appeared in 1493 together with Columbus' travels, the hot pepper is said to be a spice. In naturist medicine the most used variety of hot pepper is "cayenne".

Pharmacologic action: antiseptic, vitaminizing (it contains a large amount of C vitamin and of beta-carotene), it regulates the blood circulation, it strengthens the heart, the arteries and the nerves, it has an excellent anti-flue action, it eliminates pains and abscesses, it is an excellent remedy against alcoholism.

Caution! when cooked alongside other spices it is likely to give birth to burns, irritations of the digestive system and even to ulcers.

The dried up hot pepper has got exceptional healing qualities. As a powder, the hot pepper is used for quickly healing wounds. A thin layer of pepper powder cleans the wound, destroys the germs and hastens its healing process.

Another external application is the one related to sinus decongestion. On adding a little hot pepper powder in a glass of water and stirring it well, when the mixture is slowly breathed in each nostril, this one will unclog fast and the infection will be gone. Still externally, the hot pepper is an exceptional remedy for healing the infections appeared at the level of the tooth gums as well, eliminating the pains and the abscesses.
The simplest treatment is to apply hot pepper powder on the toothbrush and to gently brush those respective areas.

In order to treat alcoholism, the hot pepper tincture made from 2-3 broken up peppers macerated in 100 ml of alcohol for 15 days is used. 5-10 drops of tincture in one litre of alcohol, preferably the patient's favourite one, should be taken.

Ingesting the alcohol with the hot pepper tincture will shortly give that alcoholic person repulsion toward drinking. If during the treatment three mugs of toad's tail tea cure is
additionally introduced, the alcoholic patient will quit drinking himself.

The hot pepper tincture used in frictions may re-establish the blood circulation and relieve the pains due to rheumatism, neuralgias and frostbites.
For an internal use, the tincture should be taken 20-25 drops 30 minutes before the main meals. The treatment is recommended in flus, colds, and cough.
Caution! Consuming hot peppers is forbidden in various stomachs, liver, urinary ways disorders and in hemorrhages, because they worsen the effects of the diseases, seeing that they are irritating.
The physicians that know well the therapeutic qualities of the hot peppers recommend that half a hot pepper should be taken a day in order to stimulate the nervous system and to be in high spirits.
Natural treatments and application procedures:
1. The hot pepper powder:
It is made from dried up and ground hot peppers. In various treatments it heals the infections at the level of the tooth gums and the abscesses; it cicatrizes old wounds, decongests the sinuses and cures cold.
2. The hot pepper tincture:
It is made from 2-3 broken up hot peppers macerated in 100 ml of alcohol for 15 days. It should be used for treating alcoholism, in frictions for relieving the pains due to rheumatism, neuralgias and frostbites.
As for its internal use, the tincture is to be taken 15-20 drops 30 minutes before each main meal. Such a tincture treats flu, cold and cough.
3. The decoction made from hot peppers:
It is made from broken up hot pepper boiled for 15 minutes in 250 ml of water. Gargles will be performed with this tea for treating the fatigue of the vocal cords.

Caffeine In Coffee and the Effect on our Bodies

2008-12-05T08:22:00.000-08:00

Millions of people consume coffee on a daily basis. That rich, smooth taste and the pick-me-up feeling you get from drinking coffee can't be beat. But what is the caffeine in every cup doing to our bodies? Here are the most common side effects of caffeine.

Caffeine is a stimulant by the way it's strong effect on the central nervous system. Those effects begin as quickly as 15 minutes after drinking for up to six hours later. Caffeine can increase blood pressure, your body temperature, heart rate, blood flow to the skin & extremities, blood sugar levels, stomach acid secretion and act as a diuretic.

Side Effects of Caffeine.

Moderate doses of about two 6-ounce cups of coffee will create very few or no negative side effects. Moderate consumption of caffeine hasn't been found to increase the risk for irregular heartbeats, heart disease, high cholesterol levels, cancer, fibrocystic breast disease or infertility.

* It increases wakefulness and motor activity.

* Drinking coffee, contrary to popular belief, won't help you become sober if you're intoxicated.

* Sensitivity to caffeine can vary by individual. Some can drink several cups of coffee with hardly any side effects. Others are so sensitive to caffeine that even small dose makes them uncomfortable.

* Sensitive drinkers who consume more that 2 size-ounce cups of coffer at a time, might experience insomnia, irritability, hand tremors, restlessness, nervousness, headaches, extra heartbeats and have a difficult time concentrating.

* Other side effects that might be temporary felt include a rise in blood pressure, breathing rate and your metabolism. PMS symptoms may become more noticeable with caffeine.

* Some of the more serious long term side effects of drinking over ten cups of coffee a day might include increased heartburn problems, conception problems, and changes in bowel habits.

* Caffeine can increase your alertness, especially in tired individuals. Caffeinated beverages may help you stay alert at work or while studying.

* Research by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has found there aren't any differences in how children and adults handle caffeine. This means the long held belief that caffeine causes hyperactivity or short attention spans in children probably isn't the cause. Just use common sense when allowing your kids to consume high caffeine foods, as with any foods.

* Caffeine doesn't affect reproduction in humans, although pregnant women need to consume caffeine products in small doses.

* Consuming too much caffeine can lead to sleep deprivation since you might have a tendency to disregard your body's tiredness signals.

* Too much caffeine can lead to anxiety-related feelings like sweating, excessive nervousness, and tremors.

Caffeine comes from the German word kaffee and the French word cafe. They both mean coffee. Caffeine is completely absorbed in the body within 30 to 45 minutes and the effects normally lessen in three hours. Caffeine affects the mood, stamina, the gastric and colon activity and the cerebral vascular system of the body.

Is it addictive?

That depends on whom you ask. Some researchers found that the effects of caffeine withdrawal included a wide range of symptoms including headaches, tiredness, depressed mood, difficulty concentrating, drowsiness or sleepiness, irritability and other similar symptoms. The symptoms began within 12 to 24 hours after abstaining from caffeine products and lasted any where from 2 to 9 days. This amount of time shows evidence that some may be addicted to caffeine.

Other research, however, has found that caffeine is not addictive. The research shows that we have a desire to repeatedly consume caffeine merely for pleasurable reasons such as the aroma, taste and social aspects of consuming caffeine. They believe caffeine product consumption is simply a habit and not a need.

So whether you drink caffeinated beverages in moderation to boost your alertness or consume only a small amount for the taste, you should know the effects it may have on your body.

Bottled Mineral Water. Healthy or Not? Discover the Truth

2008-12-04T07:30:00.000-08:00

Let me tell you a story about a guy who considered mineral water healthy. He thought that the best thing in the world he could drink was a particular brand of natural mineral water H20.
He also happened to work at a treatment facility in North Carolina. He wanted to show everyone how pure his beverages were and why he considered his pricey mineral water healthy.

Now, this particular brand of so-called natural mineral water H20 does come from a spring in the south of France and is naturally carbonated. It contains calcium, chloride, bicarbonate, fluoride, magnesium, nitrate, potassium, sodium and sulfates. The total level of "dissolved solids" is 475 milligrams per liter, very close to the maximum suggested by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Most brands of natural mineral water H20 do not come from a spring and the mineral content is usually limited to one or two elements, typically potassium. They use ion exchange or another method to alter the water’s natural content and "enhance" the flavor. Sometimes, this is a good thing. Sometimes, it is not.

One particular brand of natural mineral water H20 contains high levels of manganese. That’s an element that has upper advisory limits for consumption, set down by the nutritional guidelines of the US Department of Agriculture, because, at high levels, it can cause liver and kidney dysfunction. Yet, the company considers their mineral water healthy and recommends it for a variety of health problems. But, let me get back to my story.

So, using the tests developed by the EPA, those that he used in the treatment facility to test the waters before they were sent to the public, he checked to see what he would find in his natural mineral water H20. Once again, he was sure that he would find his mineral water healthy and he was going to use the results as an example for the other employees.

"This is true purity," he might have said, before the results showed high levels of an organic chemical compound known as benzene. Benzene pollution is a problem throughout the world. It is used in the manufacture of a variety of products, including plastics, rubber and drugs. It occurs naturally in crude oil, so it is not considered a synthetic chemical, but a volatile organic compound or VOC.

Thinking that the test must have somehow gone awry, he tried another bottle. The results were the same. Hoping that it was merely one affected lot, he went out and looked for a bottle that had a different lot number and tested that one.

Again, the results were the same. He called up a friend in Georgia, who confirmed his findings. It looked as if he could no longer consider his mineral water healthy, since consuming benzene causes a number of health problems including vomiting and dizziness. If enough is consumed, it can even cause death.

The EPA sets the maximum level for benzene contamination at 5 parts per billion. The levels that they found in the bottles of natural mineral water H20 ranged from 12.3 to 19.9.
People consider mineral water healthy largely because of advertising hype.
SOme people said the best choice for drinking purposes is to install a filtration system on your kitchen tap that uses ion exchange to remove the toxic metal lead and replace it with healthy potassium then the water will taste better and be better for your health. But the choice is in your hand.

HOLIDAY SPEED TRAP LOCATION FOR YOU INFORMATION

2008-11-12T07:20:00.000-08:00

PLUS North Bound (ke Utara)
*Under a bridge at about 456km, Sg Buloh junction.
*Under a bridge at about 459km, Bukit Lanjan interchange.
*Under the overhead restaurant at Sg Buloh.
*Under the last bridge before Sg Besi toll at 309.2km.
*Under the bridge at 296.5km, Bangi junction.
*Under the newly constructed bridge at 289.0km, after Nilai North junction.
*Under the bridge at 286.5km, Nilai North junction.

PLUS South Bound (ke Selatan)
*Below signboard at about 454.6km and 455.2km, Sg Buloh layby.
*Under the bridge after Subang junction at 11.3km.
*Under the bridge at 22km, Bukit Lanjan junction.
*Under the bridge before Mint hotel, Sg Besi Toll. 80km/h only!
*Under the bridge at 302.8km, Kajang junction.
*About 1km south of Bangi junction, both south and north bound outer lanes
*At 296.5km and 297km, Bangi junction.
*Under the newly constructed bridge at 289.0km, before Nilai North junction.
*At 285.5km and 285.8km, Nilai North junction.
*On center divider at 251.8km and 253km after Senawang junction.
*After Alor Gajah junction at 213.9km, next to water theme park.
*Behind the right hand crash barrier at 198.4km.

Elite Central Link East/North Bound
*On left hand side at 4.8km after Batu Tiga/Shah Alam exit
*Under the overhead restaurant at USJ/Hicom junction about 8.5km. 90km/h zone!
*Below the bridge before USJ/Hicom junction at 10.5km.

Elite Central Link West/South Bound
*Under the overhead restaurant at USJ/Hicom junction about 8.5km. 90km/h zone!
*Below the bridge before USJ/Hicom junction at 10.5km.
*After exit from KLIA toll to the airport, below Jalan Pekeliling
flyover. 90km/h

NKVE East/North Bound
*300m before Jalan Duta toll, 60km/h!
*Behind crash barrier on the left when going towards Jalan Duta toll,
at 24.9 km, 80km/h!
*Below bridge at Damansara Junction, 17.5km

NKVE West/South Bound
*Behind crash barrier on the left when leaving Jalan Duta toll from
KL, at 25.3 km and 25.7km, 80km/h!
*From Jln Duta, below the bridge, 23km, 80km/h zone!
*From Jln Duta, at the underpass at Sg Buloh Y-junction, 22km.
*Behind crash barrier at Damansara Junction, 17.7km and 16.8km
*Below railway bridge at 11.2km
*Under the bridge at Shah Alam junction.

Kesas East Bound
*Under the bridge at 44.8km, downhill run after Puchong junction.

Kesas West Bound
*At Sg Besi side of East Bound Toll. Kuala Lumpur City
*Jalan Duta; below the flyover at the Damansara junction, 70km/h zone.

Klang
*Dual carriageway between Klang and Port Klang. Towards Klang direction, at
about 13km mile stone. 70km/h only!

East Coast
*Road sign at Karak highway is inadequate especially at Y junction; if
you are unfamiliar, go slow.
*East bound, downhill run after Raub junction.
*Maran, 60km/h zone.
*Paya Bungor, 70km/h zone.

SPEED TRAPS IN JOHOR
South Bound
*Tangkak junction.
*Under the bridge after Yong Peng

North junction
*at 97.3km.
*Ayer Hitam junction.
*Sedenak junction.

SPEED TRAPS IN PERLIS, KEDAH AND PENANG
North Bound
*Around Ayer Hitam in 60km/h zone.
*Before Perwaja Steel.
*Sg Petani junction.
*Between Seberang Jaya junction and Sg Dua Toll.
*Penang Bridge at island end.Speed limit 80km/h.

South Bound
*Penang Bridge island end. Speed limit 80km/h.
*About 2km before Juru Toll Speed limit 90km/h.

SPEED TRAPS IN PERAK
North Bound
*Under the bridge at 197.1km and 198.8km, after Kamunting Junction.
*Under the bridge at 204.3km, after Kamunting Junction.
*Under the bridge at 208km, before Kamunting Junction.
*Under the bridge at 214.8km, before Kamunting junction.
*Ipoh Vista Point at about 263km. Speed limit 80km/h.
*Under the bridge at 271km, Ipoh North Junction.
*Under the bridge at 274.4km, Ipoh South Junction.
*Under the bridge at 286.9km, Simpang Pulai Junction.
*Under the bridge at 296km, Gopeng Junction.
*Under the bridge at 352.6km, after Sungkai Junction.
*Under the bridge at 353km, Sungkai Junction.
*Under the bridge at 373km, Slim River Junction.

South Bound
*Under the bridge at 199km, before Kamunting junction.
*Under the bridge at 241.9km, at Kalau Kangsar junction.
*Under the sign post at 296.1km, before Gopeng Junction.
*Under the bridge at 297km, at Gopeng Junction.
*Under the bridge at 300km, after Gopeng junction.
*Under the bridge at 308.6km, after Gopeng junction.
*Under the bridge at 372.6km, at SlimRiverjunction.

"Daddy, can I borrow $25??"‏

2008-11-11T07:10:00.000-08:00

A man came home from work late, tired and irritated, to find his 5-year old son waiting for him at the door.

SON: 'Daddy, may I ask you a question?'

DAD: 'Yeah sure, what it is?' replied the man.

SON: 'Daddy, how much do you make an hour?'

DAD: 'That's none of your business. Why do you ask such a thing?' the Man said angrily.

SON: 'I just want to know. Please tell me, how much do you make an Hour?'

DAD: 'If you must know, I make $50 an hour.'SON: 'Oh,' the little boy replied, with his head down.

SON: 'Daddy, may I please borrow $25?'

The father was furious, 'If the only reason you asked that is so you can borrow some money to buy a silly toy or some other nonsense, then you march yourself straight to your room and go to bed. Think about why you are being so selfish.... I don't work hard everyday for such childish frivolities.

'The little boy quietly went to his room and shut the door.

The man sat down and started to get even angrier about the little boy'squestions.....How dare he ask such questions only to get some money?

After about an hour or so, the man had calmed down , and started to think:Maybe there was something he really needed to buy with that $25.00 and he really didn't ask for money very often.

The man went to the door of the little boy's room and opened the door.'

Are you asleep, son?' He asked..

'No daddy, I'm awake,' replied the boy.

'I've been thinking, maybe I was too hard on you earlier' said the man.

'It's been a longday and I took out my aggravation on you. Here's the $25 you asked for.

'The little boy sat straight up, smiling. 'Oh, thank you daddy!'He yelled. Then, reaching under his pillow he pulled out some crumpled up bills.

The man saw that the boy already had money, started to get angry again.

The little boy slowly counted out his money, and then looked up at his father

'Why do you want more money if you already have some?' the father grumbled..

Because I didn't have enough, but now I do,' the little boy replied.

'Daddy, I have $50 now.

Can I buy an hour of your time? Please come home early tomorrow so we can have dinner together.'

The father was crushed. He put his arms around his little son, and he begged for his forgiveness. It's just a short reminder to all of you working so hard in life. We should not let time slip through our fingers without having spent some time with those who really matter to us, those close to our hearts.

Do remember to share that $50 worth of your time with someone you love.. If we die tomorrow, the company that we are working for could easily replace us in a matter of hours, but the family & friends we leave behind will feel the loss for the rest of their lives.

From my house to yours

From my home to yours - enjoy.

Pringles(Dont Take)‏

2008-11-10T07:07:00.000-08:00

Dengue

2008-11-09T06:31:00.000-08:00

Symptoms of Dengue:

High fever - up to 105 degrees Fahrenheit
Severe headache
Retro-orbital pain - pain behind the eye
Severe joint pains
Muscle pains
Muscle aches
Swollen lymph nodes
General weakness
Nausea
Vomiting
Rash
Children get non-typical symptoms
Fever
Weakness
Prostration
Severe headache
Pain behind the eyes
Severe muscle pain
Slowed heart rate
Enlarge lymph nodes
Maculopapular rash

Preventive measures:

1. Clean drains of stagnant water.

2. Step up checks on vacant properties and ongoing construction sites. Have more frequent fogging measures.

3. Removing broad leafed plants which may breed mosquitoes. These plants like palm trees or any plants with axils capable of trapping water are potential breeding sites. Holes in tree trunks are also a concern. Filling these holes with sand is a feasible way.

4. To prevent being bitten by the mosquitoes wear long sleeves long trousers to cover the limbs. Other measures include use of mosquito repellants window screens and nets. Repellants recommendations are those with active ingredients such as DEET which provide more effective and lasting protection. Placing a potted plant called citronella in the office or home which gives off a strong lemon like fragrance which repels mosquitoes.

這些中藥被禁用了

2008-11-08T04:11:00.000-08:00

Warnings – stop using all these Chinese medicines immediately…..
(Info. taken from forwarded emails)

品名
成份
國別
製藥場
標示字號

五塔標行軍散
O kuntze 7.1g、 Acorus gramineus soland 3.5g, 、 Lysimachia foenum graecum hance 3.3g ,等等
泰國
五塔藥房有限公司
無

天然麝香綠草膏
未標示
中國
成都制藥五廠
標示「川衛藥准字(81)-225 號」

牛黃解毒片
金銀花、連翹、梔子、防風、川芎、甘草、旋復花、薄荷、大黃、菊花、牛黃、石膏、桔梗、蠶砂、荊芥、白芷、蔓荊子
中國
北京同仁堂中藥提煉廠
標示「京衛藥准字(1996) 第004065 號」

正骨水
田七、莪朮、雞骨香、白芷、千斤拔、大力王、薄荷腦、樟腦
中國
廣西玉林製藥廠
無

白鳳丸
烏雞、生地黃、人參、香附、白芍、川芎、當歸、蜂蜜
中國
北京同仁堂
標示「京衛藥准字(1996) 第001243 號」

同仁堂大活絡丹
中國
北京同仁堂
標示「京衛藥准字(93) 第312 號」

西瓜霜潤喉片
西瓜霜、冰片、薄荷腦等
中國
桂林三金藥業集團公司
標示「ZZ-5033- 桂制藥准字(1985) 第 014090號」

京萬紅
蜂蜡、麻油、木瓜、地榆、乳香、沒藥、紅花、當歸
中國
天津中藥製藥廠
無

保心安油
薄荷油45% 、血竭 1%、肉桂油 1.5% 、茶油加至 100%
中國香港
保心安藥廠有限公司
無（核與「衛署中藥輸第000189 號」藥品許可證不符）

保心安膏
英文標示
中國香港
保心安藥廠有限公司
無（核與「衛署中藥輸第000113 號」藥品許可證不符）

保濟丸
木香、赤石脂、菊花、谷芽、薄荷、花粉、茯苓、蒼朮、葛根、藿香、白芷、厚樸、神麴、橘紅、薏米
中國香港
李眾勝堂
無（核與「衛署中藥輸字第000001 號」藥品許可證不符）

桂林西瓜霜
西瓜霜、黃蓮、黃岑、貝母、木汶果、廣豆根、梅片
中國
桂林三金藥業集團公司
標示「桂衛藥准字(1982) 第014041 號」

梁濟時海狗丸
人參、海狗鞭、鹿茸、牛夕、廣狗鞭、川柏、大海馬、杞果、大蛤蚧、生地、上肉桂等
中國香港
香港梁濟時製藥廠有限公司
無

速效救心丸
川芎、冰片等
中國
天津市第六中藥廠
標示「ZZ-5453- 津衛藥准字(1998) 第 0643號」

跌打鎮痛藥膏
土鱉、黃柏、黃芩、大黃、降香、馬錢子、草烏等
中國
廣州衛生材料廠
標示「ZZ-5477- 粵衛藥准字(1994) 第 120004號」

雲南白藥膏
雲南名貴藥材
中國
雲南白藥集團股份有限公司
標示「zz-5350- 滇衛藥准字（1995 ）第 000393號」

雲南白藥膠囊劑
雲南名貴藥材
中國
雲南白藥集團股份有限公司
標示「滇衛藥准字(1995) 第000381 號」

漳州片仔廣
麝香、牛黃、田七、蛇膽
中國
漳州市製藥廠
標示「閩衛藥准字(86) 第20537 號」

銀翹解毒片
金銀花、連翹、牛蒡子、桔梗、薄荷、豆豉、甘草、竹葉、芥穗、羚羊
中國
天津中藥製藥廠
無

複方西瓜霜
西瓜霜、射干、甘草、川貝母、廣豆根、薄荷腦、青黛、梅片
中國
桂林中藥製藥廠
無

Crazy Ah beng ( realli funnie.!)‏

2008-11-07T18:27:00.000-08:00

People - I really enjoy these jokes. Take a break to appreciate them...
crazy ah beng~~

Why did Ah Beng go to a movie with his 18 friends?
Because below 18 not allowed Lah !
-------? ? ? ? ? ?-------

Ah Beng wants to buy a TV set. He goes to a shop.
Ah Beng : 'Do you have color TV ?'
Salesgirl : 'Yes !'
Ah Beng : 'Give me a green one, please '
-------? ? ? ? ? ?-------

Ah Beng is filling up an application form for a job.
He supplied the information for the columns on Name, Age, Address etc.
Then he comes to column on 'Salary Expected', but he is not sure of the question.
After much thought, he writes ' Yes '
-------? ? ? ? ? ?-------

Ah Beng goes to a store and sees a shiny object.
Ah Beng : 'What is that shiny object ?'
Salesgirl : 'That is a thermos flask.'
Ah Beng : 'What does it do ?'
Salesgirl : 'It keeps hot things hot and cold things cold'
Ah Beng : 'I'll buy it'
The next day, Ah Beng goes to work with his thermo flask
Boss : 'What is that shiny object ?'
Ah Beng : 'It's a thermos flask.'
Boss : 'What does it do ?'
Ah Beng : 'It keeps hot things hot and cold things cold'
Boss : 'What do you have in it !?'
Ah Beng : 'Two cups of coffee and one cup of ice cream'
-------? ? ? ? ? ?-------

After taking photocopies of documents, Ah Beng always compares
it with the original for spelling mistakes.
-------? ? ? ? ? ?-------

Ah Beng always smiles during lightning storms because he thinks
his picture is being taken.
-------? ? ? ? ? ?-------

Why can't Ah Beng dial 911?
Because he can't find the number 11 (eleven) on the phone.
-------? ? ? ? ? ?-------

Ah Beng had just bought a new computer and was using it.
When he encountered some problems. He decide to use the 'Help' command after some tries.
Soon after, he became very irritated and called the computer retailer for support.
Ah Beng : 'I press the 'F1' key for help lah, but it's been over half an hour and still nobody come and help me Lah ?!'
-------? ? ? ? ? ?-------

Ah Beng with two red ears went to his doctor.
The doctor asked him what had happened to his ears and he answered, 'I was ironing a shirt and the phone ring, lah - but instead of picking up the phone, I accidentally picked up the iron and stuck it to my ear, lah' 'Oh dear !' the doctor exclaimed in disbelief. 'But.
What happened to the other ear ?'
Ah Beng answered : 'That stupid dumbo called back, lah !!!!'
-------? ? ? ? ? ?-------

Ah Beng talk to a long-distance telephone operator.
Ah Beng: 'COULD YOU PLEASE TELL ME THE TIME DIFFERENCE BETWEEN Taipei
and LAS VEGAS ?'
Operator: 'JUST A MINUTE...'
Ah Beng : 'THANK YOU lah' AND PUTS DOWN THE PHONE.
-------? ? ? ? ? ?-------

After completing a jigsaw puzzle he'd been working on for quite some time, Ah Beng proudly shows off the finished puzzle to a friend.
'It took me ONLY 5 MONTHS TO DO IT', Ah Beng brags.
'FIVE MONTHS ? THAT'S TOO LONG', the friend exclaims.
'YOU ARE A FOOL.' Ah Beng replies, 'SEE THIS BOX, IT IS WRITTEN 'FOR 4-7 YRS'.
-------? ? ? ? ? ?-------

At a bar in New York, the man to Ah Beng's left tells the bartender, 'JOHNNIE WALKER, SINGLE' and his companion says, 'JACK DANIELS, SINGLE'.
The bartender approaches Ah Beng and asks, 'AND YOU, SIR ?'
Ah Beng replies : 'Tan Ah Beng, MARRIED lah'
-------? ? ? ? ? ? ?-------

交通警察。女生

2008-11-06T07:45:00.000-08:00

他在十字路口攔住了她的「MATA」，敬禮後，請她出示駕駛證。
女生:「這是為什麼？」她坦率地驚問道。
交警:「您違犯了交通規則。」
女生:「誰告訴您的？」
交警:「我親眼看到的。快出示證件，我等著呢。」
女生:「您是不是認為我沒有駕照？」
交警:「我沒這樣認為。」
女生:「可是，我怎麼可以把證件交給一個完全不認識的人呢？」
交警:「我是交通警察，我有權這樣做。」
女生:「可我怎樣知道您是交警呢？」
交警:「難道您沒看見我穿的制服？」
女生:「制服能說明什麼？制服是可以假造的。我記得10年前，我的朋友張娜認識了一位軍人……」
交警:「請不要給我講故事，我在等您的證件。」
女生:「這不是故事，是往事。我只是想證明，制服並不總是可信的。」
交警:「那好吧，我可以讓您看一下我的工作證。」
女生:「這個嘛……也好，讓我看看。嗯，這麼說，您叫李維金？」
交警:「李維全。」
女生:「什麼？您瞧這全寫得像個金。算了，就當你是李維金吧，可是照片卻不像你呀？」
交警:「不知道，可能是沒戴帽子吧。強調一下。我叫李維全」
女生:「真的嗎？你摘下帽子讓我看看。還有，站直些，別皺眉頭。是的，有點像了。照片很久了吧？」
交警:「7年前……」
女生:「這能看出來。你那時看上去很帥。」
交警:「好了吧，請把證件還給我。」
女生:「你急啥？只要證件不是偽造的，就不會有什麼事發生。」
交警:「可我沒空呀，我正在值班。」
女生:「你是否認為，我的空閒時間很多？我馬上要去市場，順路還得找女裁縫，還要去看望生病的姑姑，還得給丈夫打電話……」

交警:「我求您了，快把證件還給我！您看看，您讓後面堵了多少車了。」
女生:「這怎麼能怨我？要知道並不是我攔住了您，而是您攔住了我。」
交警:「好吧，好吧，算我錯了。只是懇求您快把證件還給我，把車開走。」
女生:「就是嘛！給您證件。以後可別再製造交通堵塞了。」

Top 10 Breast Cancer Prevention Methods

2008-11-05T08:19:00.000-08:00

Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in women, aside from lung cancer. 1 in every 8 women are estimated to develop breast cancer in their lifetime. While there are certain risk factors like genetics we cannot change, there are many lifestyle changes we can make to aid in breast cancer prevention.

1. Pass on that last call for alcohol.

Studies have determined that women who drink alcoholic beverages develop cancer at a higher rate. How much is too much? Based on studies, ladies who consume 2 to 5 drinks daily have about 1½ times the risk of women who don't consume alcohol.

2. Quitters DO prosper - when it comes to smoking.

Although there has not been a direct link between smoking and breast cancer, studies suggest that smoking at an early age can increase a woman's risk. Not only can it be a risk for breast cancer, smoking is a definite risk factor for lung cancer.

3. Get physical.

Physical activity may reduce your risk of breast cancer. Studies by the Women's Health Initiative found that women who walked briskly 1.25 to 2.5 hours per week reduced a woman's breast cancer risk by 18%.

4. Be aware of your family breast cancer history.

Having a family or personal history of breast cancer may increase your risk. If an immediate woman in your family has had breast cancer, it is important to let your doctor know. Studies have shown that breast cancer can be genetic. Genetic testing and counseling is available for those concerned with their risk. Keep in mind, that just because your mother or sister had breast cancer, it does not mean you will definitely develop breast cancer.

5. Avoid hormone replacement therapy if possible.

Studies have shown a link between long time hormone replacement therapy and breast cancer. This link suggests that combined HRT's (estrogen and progesterone) raise the risk factor. Five years after discontinuing HRT's the risk factor drops. HRT's also make mammograms less effective. If you need to take hormone replacement therapy, talk to your doctor about the risk and your personal condition.

6. Check your breasts every month.

Checking your breasts every month may not reduce your risk of developing breast cancer, but it may help detect breast cancer early. The earlier breast cancer is found, the less aggressive the treatment.

7. Try to keep a low fat diet.

A diet low in fat not only decreases the risk of obesity, it can reduce your risk of breast cancer. We know that estrogen plays a majot role in the development of breast cacner. Fat tissue contains small amounts of estrogen and may increase your risk. There have been conflicting studies about fat intake and breast cancer risk, however all studies have consluded that obesity plays a big part in breast cancer development.

8. Don't forget to get a mammogram - it's not a choice.

Like the breast self exam, a mammogram won't prevent the development of breast cancer, but it can detect cancer. Sometimes it can be difficult to feel a lump in the breast, and a mammogram is likely to detect any lumps that cannot be felt.

9. Have children earlier in life, if possible

Having no children or having your first child in your mid-thirties or later increases the risk.

10. Consider breastfeeding instead of formula feeding.

Researchers believe that the months without a period during pregnancy and breast feeding may reduce a woman's risk of breast cancer. This accompanies the data that suggests that early menopause lowers the risk factor, as well.

女孩子記得多看幾次!!!

2008-11-04T07:24:00.000-08:00

昨晚我參加一個的安全防範的研習會，讓我很驚嘆！這場研習會是由一個叫 Pat Malone 的人主持，他是知名人士的保鑣，也為FBI 工作，並教授警察及海軍的SEALS 徒手格鬥。

以下建議非常實用，多看幾次，受用無窮！

1. 警方的提醒： 手肘是身體最有力的部位。 距離夠近，就善用手肘！

2. 假如歹徒向你要皮夾或錢包， 不要遞給他 ，而是 將皮夾或錢包往遠處丟去。歹徒很可能對財物比對你有興趣，他會去拿皮夾或錢包，這是你逃跑的機會。 往反方向拼命跑！！

3. 假如你被丟進車子的後車廂：把車後燈踢破，
將你的手從洞中伸出去，用力揮手，駕駛人看不到你，但是其他人看得到。這個方法救過無數人命。

4. 女性常常在購物、吃飯及下班後進入車子，然後就坐在駕駛座上處理事情（如記帳、列清單等）。 千萬不要這麼做！ 歹徒會藉機觀察情勢，闖入車內，拿槍威脅，控制你的行動。 進入車內，立即鎖門，駛離現場。

5.在平面停車場及立體停車場的幾個注意事項：

A. 要警覺 ：環顧四周；察看車內的乘客座和後座。（接近車子時，留意車底。）

B. 假如你的車子停在箱型車旁，則應該從乘客車門進入你的車子。

許多連續殺人犯都是趁著女性要進入車中時，將她們拖進箱型車中加害。

C. 觀察停放在你左右兩邊的車子。如果有男性單獨坐在最近的鄰車內，最好回到購物中心或辦公室，找保全人員或警察陪你回去。 寧願防患未然，也不要終生遺憾。 (大驚小怪總比喪命好 )

6. 永遠搭電梯，不要走樓梯。
（樓梯間是一個可怕的地方，容易讓人形單影隻，變成最好的犯罪場所)

7. 假如歹徒有槍而你並沒有受到他的控制，
一定要跑！ 一百次中，只有四次歹徒會襲擊逃跑的目標；
即使他攻擊你，大多不會是致命的部位， 要跑！

8. 身為女性，我們總是發揮同情心： 不要再這樣！ 這樣會增加被強暴或是殺害的機會。
一個叫泰得 ‧ 邦迪（ Ted Bundy）的連續殺人犯就是一個相貌堂堂並且受過良好教育的人，總是 利用女性的同情心。
他走路時帶著一根手杖或是跛行，經常要求別人「幫忙」他進入車內或是看一下他的車子，趁機綁架受害者。
最近有人告訴我，他的朋友在晚上聽到門口有嬰兒在哭，不過當時已經很晚了，而且她認為這件事很奇怪，於是她打電話給警察。
警察告訴她： 「無論如何，絕對不要開門。」 這位女士表示那聲音聽起來像是嬰兒爬到窗戶附近哭，她擔心嬰兒會爬到街上，被車子碾過。警察告訴她:我們已經派人前往，無論如何 不能開門
警方認為這是一個連續殺人犯，利用嬰兒哭聲的錄音帶，誘使女性以為有人在外面遺棄嬰兒，騙她們出門察看。雖然尚未證實此事， 但是警方已經接到許多女性打電話來說，他們晚上獨自在家時，聽到門外有嬰兒的哭聲
請將這個消息傳給其他人，不要因為聽到嬰兒的哭聲而開門。

請嚴肅看待這封電子郵件
因為上禮拜六「美國頭號通緝犯」（ America's Most Wanted）節目中，
報導路易斯安那州的連續殺人犯時，提到了「哭泣嬰兒」的假設。

請轉寄這封信給你所有認識的女性朋友， 並一個接一個傳下去 。

我原本只想把這封信轉寄給女性朋友，
但是男性朋友，假如你愛你的媽媽、太太、姊妹、女兒等等，
你也應該把這個訊息傳給他們

'Have U ever heard about LPG gas cylinder's expiry date?'

2008-11-03T07:01:00.000-08:00

Expired Cylinders are not safe for use and may cause accidents.
In this regard please be cautious at the time of accepting
anyLPG cylinder from the Vendor.

Here is how we can check the expiry of LPG cylinders:
On one of three side stems of the cylinder,
the expiry date is coded alpha numerically as follows A or B or C or D and some two digit numbers following this e.g. D06.

The alphabets stand for quarters -
1. A for March (First Qtr),
2. B for June (Second Qtr),
3. C for Sept (Third Qtr), &
4. D for December (Fourth Qtr).

The digits stand for the year till it invalid.
Hence D06 would mean December qtr of 2006.
Please Return Back the Cylinder that you get with anExpired Date,
they are prone to Leak and other Hazardous accidents...

The second example with D13 allows the cylinder
to be in use until Dec 2013.

It's worth running a check on your cylinder/s NOW!!!

汽油降15分·柴油降20分政府再调低油价明天生效

2008-10-14T08:18:00.000-07:00

【本刊记者撰述】政府今天再次调低燃油价格，从明天开始，无铅97汽油每公升售价2元45分降15分，无铅92汽油2元30分降10分、柴油则从每公升售价2元40分降20分。

首相署今午宣布调降汽油价格后，从明天（10月15日）凌晨12时过后，新油价是无铅97汽油每公升售价为2元30分降，无铅92汽油无是2元20分、柴油每公升售价为2元20分。

http://www.merdekareview.com/news.php?n=7860

Wi-fi: Better safe than sorry

2008-10-09T10:23:00.001-07:00

M Mohamed Idris | Sep 26, 08 5:03pm

We refer to the Malaysiakini article CAP is being unreasonable.

There is sound basis for our call, which we hope the Penang state government will heed, in the name of public health. CAP is an independent, non-profit and non-politically affiliated body that has only the interests of consumers in mind, so there is no hidden agenda for the above call as implied by the writer. The following facts are self-explanatory.

Wi-fi, like mobile phones, is an untested technology, meaning that it hasn’t yet been proven safe for use. Wi-fi operates in a way very similar to mobile phones – which should be of concern, as it is now believed that the universal use of mobile phones may be storing up medical catastrophes for the future.

Like mobile phones and their towers (or masts), wi-fi also emits microwave radiation. Though virtually no research has been carried out, public health advocates and some scientists expect them to have similar ill-effects. It is reported that we are all now living in a soup of electromagnetic radiation (EMR) one billion times stronger than the natural fields in which living cells have developed over the last 3.8 billion years.

At current exposure levels, microwave radiation is already questionable, prompting the German government to warn its people to avoid mobile phone and wi-fi use. The world’s top experts have also advised caution in recent years.

The latest scientific opinion on electromagnetic fields – a 610-page Bioinitiative Report written by 14 scientists, public health and public policy experts, and reviewed by a dozen others, which represents a strong comprehensive review of EMR science, perhaps the most precise done to date – has concluded that existing public safety standards for microwave radiation in nearly every country of the world are “thousands of times too lenient”.

In September 2006, more than 30 scientists from all over the world collectively stated in the Benevento Resolution (issued by the International Commission on Electromagnetic Safety) that: “There is evidence for adverse health effects, including cancer and electro-hypersensitivity, from microwave radiation at current exposure levels, and that a precautionary approach should be adopted”.

It is thus important to take a precautionary approach until more is understood about possible health impacts of wireless technology.

Absence of conclusive studies should not prevent reasonable efforts by the powers that be in our country to respond to the information at hand, as has been done overseas.

In Germany, the government in 2007, warned its citizens to avoid using wi-fi. The ruling was on the basis that a possible risk has not been ruled out, rather than because an actual threat has been determined. It recommends avoiding exposure to wi-fi “because it is a new technology and all the research into its health effects has not yet been carried out”.

The German action, the most damning made by any government on the fast-growing technology, is a stark contrast to the unhesitating promotion of the technology by the Penang state government.

The state government should be informing citizens of – and protecting them from – the wi-fi health risks, not arbitrarily imposing this hazardous technology on them. This new technology may be liberating, but it does not warrant the increase in radiation and the potential risks to the health of Penangites.

At a time when governments around the world are beginning to question the safety of wireless technology, Penang is hastily embracing it to the future detriment of her people. This is not only totally unacceptable, but also highly irresponsible on the state government’s part.

In the present EMF research climate, a move in the right direction is to have say, mobile phone-free zones for starters, followed by wi-fi free zones, if the state government is truly committed to protecting people’s health. Instead, Penangites are pushed into accepting a wi-fi dominated environment with the recent state decision.

Adoption of wi-fi technology may appear to be a positive global trend today, but from a public health standpoint, its use has now gone out of control worldwide. It is a grave mistake to see wi-fi technology as a craze worth emulating as the trend now is towards increasing international concern. It is also a social injustice to involuntarily expose all Penangites to its potentially serious health threats with its free implementation statewide.

In the light of present evidence, CAP also calls on the Malaysian authorities in general to be vigilant over the public’s exposure to electromagnetic radiation from rapidly expanding new technologies throughout the country and implement measures to reduce exposures, especially to vulnerable groups, such as children.

As for the Penang state government, it should place people’s health above other interests. In the interest of all, CAP calls on the state government to find alternatives that do not pose the same level of possible health risks as wi-fi, while there is still time to make changes.

The writer is president of the Consumers’ Association of Penang

The Real History of the GUI

2008-10-07T09:01:00.000-07:00

By Mike Tuck

August 13th 2001

When a lot of us hear the word "gooey," we think about sticky buns or creamy sugary fillings (yum). Others think "GUI [1]", as in "Graphical User Interface." A GUI is what computer types call the system of icons, taskbars, and other objects that our computers use to display and access information. A few of us may wonder how the GUI came to be. We remember the halcyon days of DOS prompts and command line interactions; some of us then take an aspirin and lie down. Others continue to wonder how exactly we got from esoteric UNIX [2], CP/M, and DOS commands on green screens to playing with pretty pictures and colorful desktops.

This article tells how the GUI came about. It starts with the (possibly apocryphal) story of how Cro-Magnon Glug accidentally developed the GUI (along with the personal computer). It then takes us through the better-documented days of Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad, Xerox's PARC lab, Alan Kay's Smalltalk, and the (possibly even more apocryphal) stories of the rivalry between Jobs' Apple and Bill Gates' Microsoft that gave us the Windows and Mac GUI-driven OSs of today. Along the way we'll learn about the memex, the first wooden mouse, "bit-blitting," the Xerox Star, the Apple Lisa, and what really happened that momentous day in the PARC labs when Steve Jobs and company paid a visit, notepads in hand...

Indeed, some people think the GUI was bestowed upon an eager mankind by Steve Jobs, simply because Apple's Macintosh line of computers was the first place most of us ever encountered a graphical interface. It was for me. I first worked with a GUI around 1984 when my computer friend proudly introduced me to his brand new Mac, complete with a neato video game involving a guy digging holes to trap predatory spiders and a totally cool program called MacPaint. I remember to this day creating a beautiful work of MacPaint art that another friend promptly dubbed "Mondrian Waffles." Too bad I didn't know how to print it out.

But today I work almost completely inside a GUI environment; even while typing this document, I click an iconized button to create a font effect or save the document. Every time I surf the Web, I make use of other people's GUI creations. I click on the buttons that take me to new places; I admire the graphics that someone created; I snort at the poorly designed GUI structure. You do the same things, whether on a Mac, a Windows PC, or something else. It's a GUI world after all. But is it a gift from Steve Jobs? Or is the story more complex?

Let's find out. Oh, and feel free to enjoy a sticky bun while you read. It seems somehow appropriate

Editor's Note: This article is fairly long. If you'd like to read a printed version, simply click on the 'Print This Article' link at the top of this page.

The Origins of the GUI

“What I saw in the Xerox PARC technology was the caveman interface, you point and you grunt. A massive winding down, regressing away from language, in order to address the technological nervousness of the user.”

–- an IBM technician lambasting the Apple Lisa’s GUI

Once upon a time, way back in the Stone Age, lived two cavemen, Ugh and Glug. Ugh was a handsome, sportsy, outdoorsy type, with a stunning physique and the mental capacity of a waterbug. His pal Glug was just the opposite: nervous, toothy, skinny (except for the little pot belly he’d earned from eating too many delivery pizzas), and smart. Damn smart. One day, while Ugh was out hunting game and posturing for the caveladies, Glug was sitting morosely in his cave, absently scratching under his loincloth and telling himself that he was not jealous of that lout Ugh. Directly over his head, a chunk of rock trembled and shook as it pulled free from the ceiling. It snapped free and dropped directly onto Glug’s pointy head with a thunk.

When Glug awoke, it was to the annoying feeling of water being sluiced into his face, and the equally annoying scent of Ugh’s aftershave – Mammoth Musk. Ugh was bent over him, concern in his perfect blue eyes. “Glug okay? Rock whack Glug.”

Glug shoved his friend out of the way and said, “Give Glug room! Must think!” Glug dashed from the cave and into the grassy meadow beyond the cave entrance. Panting, he snatched up shards of coconut shells, wads of tall grass, smooth flat rocks, and several mammoth bones left over from breakfast. He lugged his haul inside the cave and, almost as an afterthought, picked up the rock that had knocked him unconscious earlier. Ugh looked wonderingly at his friend, then went outside to stare at bugs (he was endlessly fascinated). With a pointy stick, Glug began to draw strange diagrams in the dirt. Ugh peeked inside hours later and, seeing his friend engrossed in his odd cave drawings, shrugged and went to the third cave over to spend the evening with his ladyfriend Oohlala.

Days passed. Ugh quickly learned to stay out of the cave, as Glug snarled and threw bits of rock and coconut shell at him if he entered. Besides, it was more fun staying with Oohlala. On the fourth day, Glug came outside for the first time. He squinted at the harsh sunlight, then motioned for Ugh to come inside. Ugh shoved Oohlala off of his lap and followed his friend inside the cave.

In the corner, hidden by a bearskin, was a squarish object. Dull light seemed to come from underneath the animal skin. Wonderingly, Ugh approached the object, ready to bolt at the first odd noise or threatening motion. Glug said, “Ugh behold!” and whipped the bearskin off of the object.

Whatever it was, it was built of coconut husks and pieces of mammoth bone, with a large hollowed-out coconut shell sitting atop the large, flattish hunk of rock that had brained Glug earlier. Hanks of grasses were twisted together and shoved into the backs of the various objects. A flat rectangular rock covered in tiny river barnacles sat in front of and slightly below the main body of the object, connected to the main housing with a braid of grasses. Dark light poured from the large, centrally placed coconut shell. Ugh stared in fearful awe at Glug’s creation.

“Look, Ugh!” Glug exclaimed. “Glug build wonder thing!” As Ugh gaped, Glug hunched over the flat, barnacle-studded rock and began poking it, apparently at random. But...lines, tiny bright green ones, appeared in the dark light of the coconut shell. Apparently the more Glug poked at the barnacle-covered flat rock, the more the green lines appeared in the shell.

After a few moments, Ugh began to grow impatient. Oohlala was waiting outside, after all. “What good this thing?” he asked. “Not good to eat. No good for wearing in snow. Maybe good for whacking mammoth....”

“No, no, no!” Glug snarled. “Can do things. Count mammoths Ugh kill. Watch.” He began to poke the barnacle board in short, sharp jabs, and one by one, lines appeared in the shell. “One...two...here one you kill last month...here one that you chase over cliff...here one that washed up in river...” He kept poking, and finally he stopped. “See? Ugh kill seventeen mammoths since first thaw. Good to know, uh?”

Ugh was interested, despite himself. “Can Ugh use?” Glug motioned him to sit in front of the shell and placed Ugh’s dirty fingers on the barnacles. “Okay, Ugh pay attention. First, must log in.”

“Log in?”

“Log in...we create Ugh a user name. We call it...Ugh.” Over Ugh’s shoulder, Glug poked at the barnacles, to Ugh’s mounting confusion. “Now Ugh can get in system. Good. Now we go to C: prompt....”

“See prompt? Where? Ugh confused.”

“Ugh wait. Good, we in. Now we access file directory.”

“File directory? User name? See prompt?” Ugh shoved himself away from the strange object and stood up, towering angrily over Glug. “Glug confuse Ugh! Make head hurt! You want Ugh to use strange thing, give Ugh pretty pictures! Bright colors! Point and click, not barnacles and see prompts! Ugh leaving!”

Ugh shoved Glug aside and made his way to the cave entrance and outside. He failed to notice that he had shoved Glug too hard, and poor Glug went reeling headfirst into the cave wall. For the second time in a week, Glug’s skull impacted solid rock.

It was dark outside when Glug finally awoke. Ugh was nowhere in sight. Glug sat up, cradling his injured head in his hands. “Whoof, head hurt big time,” he muttered to himself. “But Glug have better idea!” He found his pointed stick and began drawing in the dirt again. “Him want bright colors, pretty pictures, Ugh, him get bright colors, pretty pictures. Glug call it...Graphical User Interface. But Glug not tell Ugh that. Him hardheaded as cave bear, fancy name scare Ugh. What me call it?” Glug thought and thought. Finally he decided to go for the simple, straightforward approach. “Ugh make baby talk OK,” Glug thought. “Just stick with baby noises. Glug call it...GUI. Gooey. Even Ugh smart enough to say that one. Gooooooeeeeeey.”

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." -- Ken Olson, President, Chairman and Founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

The story is part of the computer world’s mythology. December 1979, an ordinary afternoon: young computer whiz and entrepreneur Steve Jobs leads a band of his homeys into the rarefied enclave of Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Jobs and friends tour the plant with wide-eyed admiration, doing their best Norman Rockwell gee-whiz kids-in-the-dugout impression (“Golly, Dr. Kay, can we have your autograph, huh?”), while behind guileless eyes and black-framed glasses, mental notes are being taken and schematics memorized.

Jobs leads his friends out of the building, waves bye-bye to the nice lab geeks inside, and dashes back to his shabby warehouse, where he and cohort Steve Wozniak stuff every idea and process they can remember from the Xerox tour into their new product, the Macintosh. Xerox is befuddled, Microsoft’s Bill Gates is enraged, and Apple gets the jump on everyone with a new dance craze, the GUI. “Do the GUI” sweeps the computer world and everybody else scrambles to get on the gravy train. Gates takes Jobs’ thievery one step beyond Jobs’ own and brings out Apple-clone Windows, Microsoft does a pas de deux with the local judiciary to dodge an Apple lawsuit, Windows takes over the world, and Apple is relegated to cult status among the renegade hackers and Mac addicts of the computer industry.

Nice story to read your kids to sleep with. It has everything: drama, criminal behavior, ruthless rivalry between former associates, everything except sex (which the stereotyped computer geeks are unfamiliar with, anyway). Hell, it would even make a good David Allen Coe drinking song. The only problem with it is that it isn’t true.

The Real History of the GUI

The real history of the Graphical User Interface is more complex and interwoven than the simplistic “It Takes a Thief” conception.

"So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You haven't got through college yet.'" -- Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and HP interested in his and Steve Wozniak's personal computer

From Small Seeds...

Apple was founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in Jobs’s garage in 1976. Jobs and Wozniak met at Hewlett-Packard and began their collaborative careers by building (Wozniak) and selling (Jobs) “blue boxes” illegal devices that scammed free phone calls from Ma Bell. Both shared an interest in the “primitive” computers of the time and enjoyed cobbling together electronic goodies with solder and breadboards. Eventually they decided to start a company and build computers that wouldn’t take up an entire basement, didn’t need supercooling, and didn’t require platoons of guys in jumpsuits to take care of them. In other words, they envisioned building personal computers for the masses. Of course, neither Jobs nor Wozniak were the first to think of personal desktop-sized computers (common wisdom gives that honor to the MITS “Altair,” a 1975 kit-based creation running Microsoft’s BASIC OS and based on Intel’s 8080 chip), but that’s another story. They put their heads together and decided to call their company Apple.

In March 1976, Wozniak built the first Apple, the Apple I. It was a cobbled-together curiosity made of circuit boards and LED displays stuffed into a wooden box, but it stirred enough interest in the computing community to inspire Jobs and Wozniak to found Apple on April Fools’ Day, 1976 to sell their little beasties. Jobs sold his VW minibus, and Wozniak his HP scientific calculator, to finance the startup. They only managed to sell about 200 of the Apple I’s, so the fledgling company – now consisting of Wozniak, Jobs, and a few friends/employees – used the money they managed to raise from Apple I sales to start work on the Apple II (Wozniak has reputedly said that a large part of his desire to build the Apple II was due to “Breakout,” a classic video game he had designed for Atari. Wozniak wanted to program it for a PC). In 1977 the Apple II debuted, featuring a sleek plastic case (as opposed to the “orange crates” that houses the Apple I’s), game paddles, and color graphics on the video display. Being descendants of Ugh, people were fascinated by the bright colors and the flickering images, and the Apple II began to move off the shelves.

Jobs realized that he had started something that could mushroom into a serious business concern, and he laid on more employees, more workspace, and buckled down to the task of meeting the sudden consumer demand for his goodies. When Apple added the inboard floppy disk in 1977 (abandoning the slow and clumsy tape storage facility), the II‘s sales really took off, and Apple was suddenly at the crest of a wave of interest in personal computing. Never mind that many novices bought an Apple II without a clear idea of what to do with it… the mere concept of the average Joe being able to own and operate a “personal computer” was catching people’s imaginations.

WILL SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME WHAT A PERSONAL COMPUTER CAN DO? -- 1982 Apple Computer ad

Which brings us to Jobs’ infamous trek to Xerox’s PARC facility. Actually, we need to look further back in time to set the stage for Jobs’ visit.

The 40s - GUI Forefathers: Bush and Engelbart

Let’s back up to 1945 (!) and a visionary named Vannevar Bush. Bush, a scientist and futurist, went public with his ideas of the “memex,” a computing device that would use what we’d call hyperlink technology to bring information to every user’s fingertips.

Bush’s ideas sparked some visionary thinking in a scientist named Douglas Engelbart. As early as 1962, while Jobs and Wozniak were still drinking Ovaltine and watching Saturday morning cartoons in their jammies, Engelbart was creating several items of interest to the personal computing crowd that would follow. He invented the first “mouse,” which he called an “X-Y Position Indicator,” a little gizmo housed in a wooden box on wheels that moved around the desktop and took the cursor with it on the display. Engelbart saw the mouse as being an integral part of a “graphical windowed interface,” and invented what he called "a windowed GUI" that fascinated co-workers but wasn’t considered useful outside the lab. In 1968 Engelbart created NLS (oNLine System), a hypermedia groupware system that used the mouse, the windowed GUI, hypermedia with object addressing and linking, and even an early version of video teleconferencing to wow its audience, a group of technicians, engineers, and scientific types at Stanford University.

However, Engelbart was not the only visionary in the history of GUI. In 1963 a grad student at MIT, Ivan Sutherland, submitted as his thesis a program called “Sketchpad,” which directly manipulated objects on a CRT screen using a light pen.

"Sketchpad pioneered the concepts of graphical computing, including memory structures to store objects, rubber-banding of lines, the ability to zoom in and out on the display, and the ability to make perfect lines, corners, and joints. This was the first GUI (Graphical User Interface) long before the term was coined." –- from a Sun Microsystems biography of Ivan Sutherland

The idea of direct manipulation of objects on a screen is integral to the concept of a graphic interface. In fact, the idea of a GUI derives from cognitive psychology, the study of how the brain deals with communication. The idea is that the brain works much more efficiently with graphical icons and displays rather than with words – words add an extra layer of interpretation to the communication process. Imagine if all the road signs you saw were uniform white rectangles, with only the words themselves to differentiate the different commands, warnings, and informational displays. When the “Stop” signs hardly look different from the “Resume Highway Speed” signs, the processing of the signs’ messages becomes a slower and more difficult process, and you’d have even more wrecks than you have now.

Combine this with Alan Kay’s concept of “biological computing,” where computer components function like organic “cells,” either independently or in concert whenever appropriate, and you have an idea of the thinking behind both modern computing, and the GUI.

The 70s - SmallTalk and Xerox

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it." -- informal PARC slogan

The underground buzz stayed underground, but Engelbart’s and Sutherland’s creations were not lost on the creative fellows at Xerox’s PARC facility. PARC was (and is), at least in some respects, a computing “think tank,” where brilliant and brilliantly erratic minds cranked out ideas and tried, with varying success, to implement them on the workbench.

In the early 70s, as part of a (sadly abortive) project called “Dynabook” that envisioned notebook-sized, hyperlinked computers, Alan Kay and others developed an interactive object-oriented [3] programming language called Smalltalk. Kay had previously worked with a team at the University of Utah that developed a programming system called Flex. This was a design for a flexible simulation and graphics-oriented personal computer, with many ideas derived from the Norwegian-developed Simula programming language, another programming language called LISP, and Sutherland’s Sketchpad. Kay also borrowed ideas from a highly graphical language called Logo, which was designed to teach programming to children. Smalltalk featured a graphical user interface (GUI) that looked suspiciously similar to later iterations from both Apple and Microsoft.

Smalltalk didn’t stop with an innovation in user interface: it featured a multi-platform virtual machine years before the folks at Sun came up with Oak/Java [4], object orientation, overlapping “windows,” and the first instance of bit-blt or "bit-blitting," the last two contributed by Dan Ingalls (the object-oriented language featured in ST actually showed up in the Simula-67 program in the late 1960s; “bit-blitting,” or bit block transfer, is, in simplistic terms, the protocol by which objects on a screen can be manipulated). A lot of observers feel that ST’s clean, easy-to-use interface has yet to be surpassed even today. The first program to be written under Smalltalk was Pygmalion, which is most notable for its demonstration that computer programming could be graphically based and not restricted to text. The idea of using icons to stand for data was reflected in Pygmalion.

The first real-life, usable GUI appeared in Xerox’s Alto computer, which debuted in 1974 and was envisioned as a smaller, much more portable replacement for the mainframes of the time. The Alto, which didn’t have a GUI as you and I are used to using, but instead featured graphically driven applications, was about the size of a Volkswagen (well, not quite, but the thing was big) and certainly not useful for the average user, even though it started its life showing an image of Sesame Street’s “Cookie [5] Monster.” The Alto featured a bit-mapping display, which was essential for displaying graphics and WYSIWYG printing. Kay, David Canfield Smith, Bill Verplank, and others also developed iconic representations for various programs for the Alto, most noticeably the drawing program “Markup,” the text editor “Bravo,” and the painting program “Superpaint.”

In 1981, the design and concepts which gave birth to the Alto led to the development and production of the much more streamlined, and more usable Xerox Star – the first true GUI-driven PC. According to Bruce Horn, an ex-Xerox employee who wound up working for Apple, the software architecture for Smalltalk and the Star were much more sophisticated than the Mac or Windows equivalents. While the Apple machines incorporated much of Xerox’s brainstorms, many of the most innovative and sophisticated ideas never made it into the Apples, mostly due to Apple’s insistence on keeping costs down. The Star featured the first “computer desktop,” as well as overlapping, resizable windows, and the sophisticated PARC mouse, a gee-whiz gizmo that ran with no moving parts and used laser beams and a metal grid to track the cursor’s movement (though employees found that the mouse worked just as well on Levis as it did on the metal grid). The interface was known as WIMP – Windows, Icons, Menus, and Pointers. PARC’s consensus was that once these ideas were implemented on a wide scale, computing efficiency would increase dramatically.

1979 - Apple Visits PARC

Jef Raskin, a project manager with Apple, first told Jobs and Wozniak about the research being done at PARC. It’s a mistake to envision this scene as taking place in some deserted parking garage, with Raskin hiding in the shadows and doing his best Deep Throat impersonation. A closer scenario is that Raskin wanted to work more directly on a GUI, and dropped a bug in Jobs’ ear about the neato keeno work being done at PARC. Jobs was reluctant to go at first, but eventually Raskin, who wrote his master’s thesis on a WYSIWYG graphical interface back in 1967 and was seeing some of his ideas brought to fruition by the folks in PARC, piqued his interest.

At any rate, Jobs, who was first told by Raskin about the fun going on at PARC in 1976, decided that he wanted to bring a team of Appleniks into PARC and see what was causing such a buzz – but again, the idea of Jobs coming in like a kid touring Epcot with a tape recorder hidden under his shirt is mistaken. Apple negotiated a deal with Xerox; in return for a block of Apple stock, Xerox allowed Jobs and his team to tour PARC in December 1979, take notes, and implement some of the ideas and concepts being bounced around at PARC in their own creations. I’m not sure how Xerox felt about Apple subsequently hiring half – perhaps the better half – of PARC’s staff away from them, but the process was relatively above-board; no night kidnappings or bribes under the table at Jack In the Box. Xerox allowed Apple to use their ideas in their machines. As Wozniak says on his Website, “Steve Jobs made the case to Xerox PARC execs directly that they had great technology but that Apple knew how to make it affordable enough to change the world. This was very open. In the end, Xerox got a large block of Apple stock for sharing the technology. That’s not stealing outright.”

"The reason why Jobs got the reputation of being so brilliant in human-centered computing is because he neglected to tell anyone at PARC that his perceptive questions about GUIs and so on were drawn from his discussions of such things with Raskin at Apple a month or two earlier. He masterfully made it appear as though he was encountering bitmapped GUIs for the first time in his life instead of having discussed them with someone who had visited PARC himself." -- Neil Franklin

At any rate, Jobs and the Apple guys came back from their PARC tour with stars in their eyes. They were entranced with the idea of a “windowing GUI” and loved the flexibility and power of Smalltalk. They had a new vision, and were determined to unleash it on the computing world ASAP. Development immediately began on the Apple “Lisa.”

1979 - Birth of Apple Lisa

Lisa is worth a paragraph or two on her own. Jobs and his buds envisioned Lisa (named for the original chief engineer’s daughter, and also standing for Local Integrated Software Architecture) as the first of a new, GUI-based PC family, but developed her primarily for business use. It’s notable that the new product line came on the heels of the 1981 failure of the Apple III line, which was so flawed that it had to be recalled. Apple had some ground to recoup. The Lisa line featured the warhorse Motorola MC68000 microprocessor which trundled along at 5MHz, boasted 512K of RAM (upgradable to 2MB), had every bell and whistle that the Apple design team could stuff inside her, and cost more than $10,000. Lisa was rather large and clunky, though many veterans of the PC wars insist that she is still one of the most efficient and usable machines of her type ever built.

Initial development on Lisa began before the 1979 field trip to PARC (Raskin says that Lisa was first envisioned as a text-driven PC along the lines of the Apple II), but she didn’t appear on the market until January 1983. Eventually the cheaper, pared-down Lisa2 appeared, but neither sibling did well on the market – they were too expensive, and the Apple II family was still riding high on the market, even with the competition from other machines like the Commodore 64 and VIC-20, the IBM PC, and the Radio Shack TRS-80. Even later, after the Macintosh had begun to take the PC market by storm, Apple decided to unload some of their Lisa stockpile by repackaging it as the “Macintosh XL.” The buyers weren’t fooled, and many Lisas ended up in a California landfill. Interestingly enough, Lisa featured a set of integrated software called “7/7,” that included a word processor, a spreadsheet, chart builder, outline manager, project scheduler, drawing program, and modem communication utility. 7/7 may well have been the first integrated “works” package.

"A few months after looking at it [the Xerox Star] we made some changes to our user interface based on ideas that we got from it. For example, the desktop manager we had before was completely different; it didn't use icons at all, and we never liked it very much. We decided to change ours to the icon base. That was probably the only thing we got from Star, I think. Most of our Xerox inspiration was SmallTalk rather than Star." -- one of the Lisa development team

Jobs and the Lisa design team worked hard to integrate the Xerox/PARC concepts they had obtained into their own design. Lisa’s GUI was, indeed, based on Smalltalk as it ran on the Alto, but much of Lisa’s design was Apple’s own, including click-and-drag capability, and the pull-down menu -- this according to Jef Raskin, who headed the Macintosh design team and should know, but other sources give the credit for click-and-drag and pull-down menus to PARC. Whether this is another example of PARC’s ideas being implemented at Apple, or it’s an example of side-by-side independent development is uncertain. As they say, it steamboats when it’s steamboat time. Apple also worked with psychologists, artists, teachers, and ordinary users to improve their interface. In one famous example, Apple provided a California elementary school with free machines for every student’s use. During the summers, the Apple programmers worked with the teachers and kids to enhance the software and the GUI, because they felt that kids gave the truest reaction to basic interface issues, e.g. “These menu things are cool!” or “That picture sucks!”

"The [Lisa] user will be able to carry out many functions simply by pointing to a picture of what he wants done rather than typing instructions." -- Time Magazine, 1983

1983 - Mac Arrives

Jobs was no longer the only alpha male in the Apple pack (if he ever was). John Sculley, the corporate executive brought in to reshape Apple into a “grown-up” business, took Jobs off the Lisa project because of Jobs’ poor project management skills, and turned him loose on the next Apple project, a slimmed-down and considerably cheaper “daughter” of Lisa, eventually to be known as the “Macintosh.” The Mac was named for team leader Jef Raskin’s favorite strain of apple, but spelled differently in order not to offend audio manufacturer McIntosh. Under development since September 1979, the Mac lost much of Lisa’s bulk and price tag (the first Mac sold for $2500), and was the first popular PC to feature a graphical user interface. The Mac also bundled MacPaint, which brought computer “art” design to the average user (and not unimportantly, sold the average user on the mouse), and MacWrite, a simple word processor that was the first WYSIWYG product of its kind on the consumer market.

Raskin left Apple in 1982, but the Mac team labored on, and the Mac hit the market in January 1984, heralded by the famous “1984” commercial that aired during the Super Bowl and depicted the Apple PC demolishing the gray, faceless world of IBM computing. Prophetic. Many average users fled screaming from the aggravating world of the DOS command line to the friendly Mac GUI, and while power users and DOS fans dismissed the Mac as a Playskool product, the Mac’s user-friendly interface made friends throughout all levels of the computing community. Later iterations of the Mac boosted the underpowered 128K of RAM, giving it the gumption it needed to compete with the button-down IBM machines. In 1986, Aldus released its desktop publishing app, PageMaker, for the Mac, and the Mac suddenly became everyone’s PC of choice for graphic arts and desktop publishing. GUIs were all the rage (later made even more tasty by the addition of color displays in the Mac II), the Mac ruled the PC universe, Microsoft was scrambling to catch up, and all was right with the world. Even though Jobs had been forced out of Apple in May 1985 by no-fun CEO Sculley, Apple was riding the tiger.

There are supposedly reliable sources that claim everything original in the Macintosh was cooked up at PARC and transposed wholesale into the Mac; other equally “reliable” sources claim that the Mac is virtually a homegrown Apple creation, with very little influence from PARC-generated concepts. Both ideas are wrong; it’s plain that the Mac is a product of intense cross-fertilization between both creative sources. As Raskin says, “The years of study, thinking, and experimentation by many talented people on the Macintosh project – and elsewhere – have gone largely unreported, though they led to the breakthroughs that made the Macintosh and the systems that have been built since its introduction so much of an improvement over what went before. Against this complex reality we have the powerful mythological image of Jobs drinking from a Well Of All Knowledge, having an ‘aha!’ experience and coming back at full cry to Apple to create a fantastic project.” In fact, the Lisa owes more of a creative debt to the PARC designs than does the Mac. Many of Lisa’s features were borrowed wholesale from PARC, down to the fonts and their nomenclature. As Raskin notes, “We were somewhat more pure while I was running the Mac project.”

"The future lies with a graphical windowing interface, mouse cursor control, pull-down menus, dialog boxes, and the like [and computers based on such interfaces] are destined to take over the IBM PC and compatible world as well." -- W.F. Zachmann, 1987

In the Meantime at Microsoft...

Meanwhile, in the Pacific Northwest, a great evil was stirring... Oh, please. To cast Microsoft and its head honcho Bill Gates as the Great Satan, or as Sauron to Apple’s brave little band of hobbits, is ridiculous. Both co-founders, Jobs and Gates, are much more alike than they are different. Neither one is a lily-white altruist just trying to bring personal computing to the masses, nor is either a black-moustachio’ed villain bent on destruction. While I doubt either Jobs or Gates would recognize a code of ethics if it hit them in the mouth, neither one belongs on the Ten Most Wanted List, either. Both wanted to carve out a place for themselves in the PC market, both were willing to cut corners to get what they wanted, and both were tremendously successful at what they did.

"640K ought to be enough for anybody." -- Bill Gates, 1981 (possibly apocryphal)

Microsoft began just as small and insignificantly as Apple did. Starting out as a two-man operation out of the backseat of Bill Gates’s car, Gates and cohort Paul Allen saw the MITS Altair and in the span of a month had a BASIC interpreter ready to go for the beastie. The code wasn’t tested until they demonstrated the program for MITS, and Allen’s first time even touching an Altair was when he inputted the code into MITS’ machine. MITS bought the product – the first programming language written specifically for a personal computer – and Allen joined MITS as Director of Software. By July ‘75, BASIC 2.0, a Microsoft creation, was running the new, more powerful Altairs. The name “Microsoft” wasn’t chosen until November ‘75.

ALLEN: "We would almost always overestimate our competitors' ability to compete." GATES: "Or we'd assume that they were going to execute competently." -- from a 1995 interview with Bill Gates and Paul Allen

1977 - Microsoft and Apple Team Up

Allen rejoined Microsoft in time to christen the company’s new offices in Alberquerque. In early 1977 Microsoft licensed “AppleBASIC” to Apple for the flat fee of $21,000, which turned out to be a steal of a deal, as Apple sold over a million computers with AppleBASIC running the show (Wozniak actually wrote the integer BASIC for the early Apples). By the end of 1979, Microsoft had participated in porting both FORTRAN and COBOL languages to microcomputers, moved to Washington State, entered into agreements with ASCII Corporation of Japan, and expanded into Europe. The two-man operation was now employing 40 people and bringing in over $7 million. Microsoft’s congenial association with Apple continued into the 1980s, with Microsoft bestowing the Z-80 SoftCard upon Apple in 1980. The SoftCard allowed the Apple II to run most of the CP/M programs currently featured on most smaller computers.

Interestingly, Microsoft was working out the details of a secret deal between themselves and Big Blue for a new operating system, which they called DOS (Disk Operating System). MS-DOS (which was spawned from an operating system called Q-DOS written as a CP/M knockoff by Seattle Computer Products, and bought by Paul Allen in 1980) appeared as the operating system for the first IBM machine, the IBM PC, in August 1981. Since Gates had insisted on keeping the rights to MS-DOS for his company, he was able to license the operating system to any number of “clone” computer and application manufacturers. IBM made an effort to keep DOS to themselves by releasing machines that ran their own version, PC-DOS, but with Microsoft’s willingness to license MS-DOS to all comers, PC-DOS never caught on. As late as 1993, IBM was still trying to market PC-DOS as a viable alternative to the Microsoft operating systems, but by then DOS was waning in market appeal – mass-market users liked the various GUIs and had little use for further command-line interfaces) At the end of 1981, Steve Jobs paid a visit to Microsoft to give them a look at the embryonic Mac, and authorized Microsoft to develop apps for the new, GUI-based system. From 1981-1984, Microsoft folks were all over the Apple labs, working alongside Apple techs to develop applications for the Mac. In the process, Microsoft acquired an intimate familiarity with the inner workings of the Mac design.

A note on the above: Microsoft’s DOS 1.0 code structure was virtually a clone of Digital Research’s CP/M 1.4 operating system…one source calls it a “bug-for-bug” copy. Digital Research (DRI) began working on an updated version for 16-bit computers called CP/M86, to be used with machines featuring Intel’s 8086 processor; unfortunately for DRI, CP/M86 wasn’t ready for prime time when IBM came looking for an operating system, and they went with Microsoft’s DOS instead. In 1982, Digital Research finally released CP/M86, and converted it to their own DR-DOS system in 1987. Digital Research sued Microsoft over the CP/M – DOS imbroglio, but the lawsuit fizzled. One source very hostile to Microsoft alleges that Microsoft did their level best to sabotage DR-DOS when it was released, including making spurious claims that Windows would not run under DR-DOS, as well as hustling their own updates to MS-DOS onto the market to cut the legs out from under Digital Research’s product, and using illegal marketing practices to force PC manufacturers to use their own system in lieu of DR-DOS.

Naturally, this isn’t the only version of this story, but the bare facts are that DR-DOS never impacted the market in the way that Microsoft’s competing MS-DOS did, at least partially due to Microsoft’s energetic and possibly underhanded attempts to push their own system over DRI’s. Digital Research later sold DR-DOS to Novell in 1991. After attempting to integrate it into their own Networking Operating System and releasing versions under the name “Novell DOS,” Novell sold it to Caldera in 1996, almost three years after Novell’s final attempts to work with DR-DOS. Caldera transformed DR-DOS into an open-source product, called OpenDOS. Caldera also sued Microsoft for illegal marketing practices over the DR-DOS affair, and Microsoft settled the lawsuit out-of-court in January 2000. Had CP/M86 been ready for use when IBM came calling, it’s possible that Microsoft would never have gotten the “in” with IBM that propelled it to glory, and we’d all be cussing Digital Research today, instead of Microsoft. Who can say?

Two months before the Macintosh officially hit the market, in November 1983, Microsoft announced that it was working on its own GUI-based operating system (actually, a “shell” that rode atop the DOS OS) to be known as “Windows” (which Gates wanted to call “Interface Manager,” but slicker heads prevailed). Microsoft had already caused a stir in April ‘83 by giving a “smoke-&-mirrors” demo of their prototypical Interface Manager, using overlapping windows to simulate multiple programs running simultaneously. IBM executives were not happy with Microsoft’s little toy, as they were working on their own DOS-based program manager, to be called “Top View.” Gates had tried repeatedly to interest IBM in Windows, and was rebuffed each time; IBM felt that the interest in GUIs was a passing phase. Top View was released in 1985 and discontinued in 1987; its graphical interface influenced IBM’s much more noticeable OS/2, even though a GUI-driven version was never made public.

Windows 1.0 made its official debut almost two years after it was announced, in November 1985. Apple was stunned by the similarities between the Mac and Windows interfaces, but as there were almost no applications available for the Windows environment (Aldus’s PageMaker for Windows was a notable exception), Win 1.0 came and went on the consumer market without much fanfare. The failure of Win 1.0 to capture a decent market share, along with plateauing Mac sales, caused some to wonder if the GUI craze was a fad that had peaked. Ironically, in light of the bad blood to come between the two companies, Microsoft’s Excel (a GUI-based spreadsheet that was similar to its predecessor VisiCalc, but easier to use) gave the Mac much-needed viability at this time.

1983 On - Other GUIs Hit the Market

Were the Mac and Windows GUIs the only ones on the market? Hardly. In fact, the first consumer-oriented, PC-based GUI was made not by either company, but by VisiCorp, the makers of VisiCalc. Called VisiOn, it debuted in October 1983, shortly before the Lisa, but was crippled by the lack of popular software written to run under it. The same story can be told of DRI’s GEM (Graphical Environment Manager), which appeared in September 1984 and disappeared shortly thereafter, partially because it, like VisiOn, lacked the ability to run DOS apps, and had no software of its own. Worse luck for GEM: Apple didn’t like GEM’s similarity to the Mac desktop, and threatened to sue. Rather than fight, DRI revamped the GEM desktop to get Apple off its back. Both VisiOn and GEM had their proponents, but neither made a major dent in the consumer market, which continued to be dominated by the twin monoliths Apple and Microsoft .

And there was Quarterdeck’s DESQView, the first program to bring multitasking and windowing capabilities to a DOS environment. DESQView wasn’t a full-fledged GUI OS, but its GUI “shell” over DOS won many fans and intrigued many folks at Microsoft, including Gates, who by some accounts based his first iteration of Windows as much or more on VisiOn, GEM, and DESQView than on the Mac interface (this conflicts with the stories passed around the campfires of the Apple fans, who portray Gates as a petty thief who snarled to his Windows team, “Make it look just like a Mac!”). Berkeley Softworks’ GeoWorks (GEOS) is another GUI OS worthy of note; it was used on the Commodore 64, some Apple IIs, and still survives in an altered form as software for the PalmConnect system. GEOS was lauded as a slick, stable operating system, but the lack of software for it – developer software did not appear for six months after GEOS’ debut – ensured that most PC users never gave it a second thought.

Apple was not happy at all with Windows. Even before the system appeared on the shelves, Apple was threatening Microsoft with lawsuits that alleged patent infringement, intellectual theft, what have you. In an ingenious move, Microsoft signed a licensing agreement with Apple that stated Microsoft would not employ Apple technology in Windows 1.0, but made no such agreement for further versions of Windows. It took a while for Apple to realize that Microsoft had thoroughly skunked them; the realization took longer to hit because of Windows’ dismal failure on the consumer market.

Nevertheless, both Apple and Microsoft forged ahead with their own plans for world domination…er, rather, their plans to expand their niche of the PC market. As always, though, these two were not the only bands marching in the parade. In 1985 Commodore launched its Amiga line of home PCs, and won the hearts of millions of users. The Amiga was the first PC to truly introduce the idea of “multimedia” into PC-dom [6], although since most users didn’t know what to make of their new multimedia capabilities, they played games on it instead. Great-looking games. Amiga’s advanced sound and video capabilities went along with its sophisticated GUI-driven OS (which also featured preemptive multitasking, shared libraries, messaging, scripting, multiple simultaneous line consoles, a real use for the right mouse button, and other features not found in the Apples and IBMs of the day). To add insult to injury, Amiga featured Apple/IBM interface emulation. Apple or IBM users who preferred their old interface could have Amiga mimic that look instead of its own.

So why didn’t Amiga wipe both Apple and IBM/Microsoft off the PC market? As usual, we have a patchwork of reasons. The best guess is that Amiga made the same mistake as the Tucker passenger auto made… it was too far ahead of its time too fast, and couldn’t take advantage of its own capabilities. The heated competition that existed between Amiga and Atari worked to Microsoft’s advantage, as did Amiga’s spotty ability to keep their dealers and customers happy. Adding to Amiga’s problems were the first machines’ failure to settle on a single GUI (one Amiga user tells me that the early models had different interfaces depending on which program was running). But whatever the reasons, Amiga was one sharp puppy, and deserved a better fate – though today Amiga is neither gone nor forgotten; a new OS called “The Digital Environment” is being touted as the next step in GUI-driven operating systems. We may hear from Amiga again before all is said and done.

Yet another mid-80s contender in the GUI wars was the Atari ST. Atari, much better known for their video games, produced a PC that featured the GEM OS. Like the Amiga, the ST couldn’t compete with the big boys, nor could it compete with Amiga for gamers, but its sophisticated sound processing capabilities earned it a niche with audio editors and musicians.

Sometime around the debut of the Amiga, the first UNIX GUI appeared as well. Many UNIX heads had long sneered at the simple-minded, overly convoluted operating systems and playtoy PCs that were populating the consumer market. But some UNIX users decided to see if they could overlay a GUI on UNIX in the same fashion as Microsoft overlaid Windows atop DOS, and thus X was born. X (sometimes called “X Windows,” and sometimes incorrectly called “X for Windows”) was born at MIT, fathered by a Stanford University windowing system called W and mothered by Sun’s “SunView” environment. X became the main graphics system for most RISC-based UNIX operating systems. While X was a well-written and easily handled OS shell, it never settled on a particular “look and feel,” and as a result at least three different interfaces, or “windows managers,” floated around for it.

This isn’t the main reason why X never caught on much outside the UNIX community, but it’s certainly one reason. X is still a viable GUI shell, and has a relatively small but vocal following. X is making something of a resurgence among UNIX users: the battle between “windows managers” has shaken itself out, the interfaces are more polished and easier to use, and it’s very useful for high-end computer graphics production. X is also the underlying GUI for most Linux [7] graphical interfaces. The “several GUIs” are more correctly known as the various *nix windows managers, and users can run desktop environments such as Gnome or KDE for additional functionality. X-driven interfaces are popping up in such non-PC devices as TiVo, Web pads, and PDAs, and one X user speculates that as these devices become more widespread, we may see X actually being used more than either Apple or Windows GUIs.

It’s also worth mentioning that Three Rivers Computing Company manufactured a graphics workstation called PERQ in 1981 that incorporated a UNIX-based GUI, and was marketed in the U.K. by ICL. This GUI actually predates all of the above, including VisiOn, but as far as I know, it was never made available for personal computers.

Completists will point out that IBM’s MVS (Multiple Virtual Systems) mainframe system included an optional program known as ISPF (Interactive Structured Programming Facility) that allowed split-screen windows to be supported on terminal displays. Considering that ISPF was created in the late 1970s, it’s one of the first “windows-like” systems that became available. Of course, it’s highly unlikely that home PC users would have ever seen this.

It’s worth noting that many, many graphically-driven applications were released independently of any of the abovementioned systems. One of the very first was Bill Budge’s Pinball Construction System, which appeared in 1985 for the Atari and quickly became famous among both gamers and programmers for its sophisticated ability to manipulate objects using click-and-drag. Programs like PCS made their mark on the operating systems that followed them into the PC marketplace.

“I had an enormous reservoir of goodwill towards Microsoft because it and it alone – unlike Xerox, Apple, Amiga and many others who tried before it – was the one that finally delivered a usable graphical interface on ubiquitous, inexpensive hardware. Microsoft often wasn't the first, and its software wasn't often the best, but it was inarguably the one that delivered on the early promise of personal computing in a way no other software maker did. Microsoft – more than any other company – opened up computing for ordinary people. I loved Microsoft for that.”

– Fred Langa

Back to the big guys. December 1987 saw the release of Windows 2.0, to the consternation of Apple but the yawns of the consumer. Although Win 2.0 looked more like the Mac than ever, with icons representing files and programs, cascading windows, and the like, Mac users weren’t leaving the Apple flocks to buy the IBM/Windows machines (especially since the hunky Mac II’s were all over the shelves). Apple hemmed and hawwed a few more months, and finally sicced the long-threatened lawsuit on Microsoft, claiming that Windows stole the Macintosh’s “look and feel.” 1988 saw the market all but ignore Apple’s GS/OS for the Apple IIGS, but the Mac continued to dominate the market. By 1989, the general buzz was that Windows was a mammoth flop. Microsoft continued to work with IBM in developing the fully graphical OS system, but kept pounding on Windows, hoping to eventually get one version right. As the cliche says, “even a blind squirrel finds an acorn every now and then.” It was about to be acorn time in Redmond.

Windows in the 90's

"I think Windows 3.0 will get a lot of attention; people will check it out, and before long they'll all drift back to raw DOS. Once in a while they'll boot Windows for some specific purpose, but many will put it in the closet with the Commodore 64." -- John Dvorak, 1990

A great, orchestrated hullabaloo welcomed Windows 3.0 to the market in May 1990. Steve Ballmer led the chant of “Windows! Windows! Windows!” at Microsoft HQ in Redmond, Washington; the great beast that was, and is, Microsoft’s marketing machine took care of the rest of the world. Microsoft unveiled dozens of applications written specifically for Windows at the same time it released the new version of Windows, which now featured the OS/2 style “sculpted buttons” – credit to icon designer Susan Kare for the much more appealing button styles; Kare also worked on the Mac – more color support, real multitasking, and a much-improved program manager, among other things. These new features and fresh software releases finally got the market’s attention. Impelled by the popularity of its own Win-compatible versions of Word and Excel, and numerous other 3rd party apps, Microsoft sold over 3 million copies of Win 3.0 in its first year of release, and Apple was feeling the chill. Win 3.1 (April ‘92) added scalable TrueType font support and better multimedia capabilities, and Apple was on the run. For the first time, Windows-equipped PCs were outselling the Macs. Windows 3.1.1, called "Windows for Workgroups," did relatively well in the corporate world, as well as bequeathing much of its design to later versions of Windows.

1993 saw the first version of Windows NT (New Technology), which abandoned the crash-prone kernel of its predecessors for a new, much more stable kernel. NT started out as a new version of IBM’s OS/2 system, part of Microsoft’s and IBM’s joint venturing. It was originally known as OS/2 3.0 or OS/NT, but during early development, Microsoft and IBM split, and Microsoft walked away with the program, combining IBM’s OS concepts with their own, rewriting the code, and eventually releasing it under the Windows umbrella. Problem was, Microsoft marketers couldn’t decide what to do with it. Obviously it was more useful for business usage, so, being Microsoft, they tried to sell it to anyone but business users. It quickly became known as “Windows No Thanks”, and catty observers decided that Microsoft had shot itself in the foot. Not so fast... it turns out that a lot of people who were using Unix had decided to give NT a go, and liked what they saw. By early 1995, many European corporations had shifted over to version 3.5, the second “official” version of NT. By mid-1995, NT had established itself among technical and business users, and by the time the “bulletproof” (read: virtually crashproof) version 3.51 was available, Win NT was firmly entrenched. NT worked very well in the corporate and office environment, but less so in the home: it wasn’t engineered to run older DOS-based software, which made it the wrong choice for gamers and folks with less-than-cutting edge software.

The lawsuit wasn’t going well, either. Apple’s strategy was to prove that Windows had illegally copied the “look and feel” of the Mac GUI, but that strategy sprang some significant leaks after the Microsoft lawyers pointed out that both systems “borrowed” liberally from the original Xerox concepts. To Jobs’ accusation of theft, Gates made the damning retort, “No, Steve, I think it’s more like we both have a rich neighbor named Xerox, and you broke in to steal the TV set, and you found out I’d been there first, and you said, ‘Hey, that’s no fair! I wanted to steal the TV set!’” The fact that Windows’ interface design looked, if anything, more like the old Alto GUI than the Mac designs didn’t help Apple’s case. Suddenly Microsoft was the buzz, and Apple seemed to be yesterday’s news.

Apple's Torrid Ride

The long-running lawsuit was finally settled in Microsoft’s favor in June 1993, and the doomsayers thought that Apple’s fate was sealed. Wozniak and Jobs were long gone. The company was in financial trouble (though the reports of imminent bankruptcy were wrong). Their long-anticipated “Newton” personal data assistant was a bust. Management seemed more interested in fighting among themselves than righting the company. Orders went unfilled due to production problems. Some predicted that Apple would fade into complete irrelevance when, in August 1995, Microsoft unveiled its groundbreaking Windows 95 OS. Win 95, the first operating system to take advantage of Intel’s powerful 32-bit chips, and a near-clone of the Mac GUI, seemed to be the irresistible force destined to finally run Apple out of business once and for all. Apple tried to recoup by pushing its “Performa” line of low-end PCs (basically older, repackaged Macs) over its higher-end “PowerPC” line, and failed miserably – Performas sat gathering dust in the Apple warehouses, while buyers found it difficult, if not impossible, to get hold of the PowerPCs they wanted. More and more first-time users chose Windows-driven PCs over Apples, in large part because the fierce competition between the Windows-clone manufacturers were keeping the Windows machines’ prices relatively competitive, while Apple’s relentless refusal to let others manufacture clones (only partially loosened in 1994 and yanked in 1999), its embarrassing quality-control problems, and its comparatively high sticker prices, soured many buyers on the Apple name. Microsoft’s decision to slap a modified version of the Win 95 interface onto Win NT 4.0 boosted the NT platform’s popularity, and detracted that much more from the Apple market share.

In October 1994, IBM tried unsuccessfully to yank some of Microsoft’s market share with the third version of its own operating system, OS/2 Warp. OS/2 was originally a Microsoft/IBM joint venture, but Warp was IBM’s own offering, and featured a Windows-like GUI. It managed to stay afloat and win some loyalty, but it never really became anything more than a weak alternative for IBM-machine users who didn’t want to use Windows. And while we’re on the topic of weak alternatives, now’s the time to give a sardonic nod to Microsoft Bob, the “next-generation” GUI that rode atop of Windows and “assisted” novice users with a happy, chatty, virtual assistant named Bob. Bob tanked hard, and became a figure of fun among the computer cognoscenti. His only legacy was the equally annoying Office Assistant, the “dancing paper clip” that currently plagues Microsoft Office.

"Software is getting to be embarrassing." -– Alan Kay

Meanwhile, Apple wasn’t cored just yet. Steve Jobs had founded a company called NeXT, and while the NeXT computer failed in the marketplace, the sleek and sophisticated NeXT OS (an OS built on the UNIX MACH kernel and featuring a fabulous GUI) was quite attractive to Apple. Apple’s Mac operating system was showing its gray hairs, and Apple wanted something new and glitzy to throw up against Microsoft’s monolithic offerings. In December 1996, Apple bought out NeXT, thus acquiring NeXTStep, elements of which would turn up in the new Mac OS, Rhapsody. Jobs came along for the ride, and it wasn’t long before he was again at the helm of the company he had founded.

Apple fans weren’t happy with the return of their hero for long. In August 1997, Jobs announced a formal liaison with Microsoft, to the dismay of the rank and file. Microsoft bought $150 million of Apple stock, and both companies agreed to once and for all end the GUI dispute. Many disgruntled Apple users, already disturbed by Apple’s continuing inability to build enough machines to fill orders, along with Apple’s failure to license the Apple system to clone manufacturers, leapt off the Apple bandwagon once and for all; it’s no coincidence that the new surge of interest in “alternative” OS’s such as Be and Linux began about the same time as Jobs’ perceived “sellout” of Apple to Microsoft. Certainly the ex-Apple minions fleeing their former home didn’t start the Linux/Be/etc. buzz, but they made their contribution, especially when Apple yanked its support from the Be platform, originally designed to run on the PowerPC.

Note, though, that most Appleniks didn’t dive overboard solely because of the “sellout” of Apple to Microsoft. The more knowledgeable in the Apple community understood that Microsoft’s commitment meant more stability for Apple, as well as continued development of MS Office for the Mac. Microsoft’s $150 million purchase was a small fraction of the Apple stock base, and Microsoft’s shares were strictly non-voting. According to some stories, Apple fans had a reaction similar to a church congregation whose preacher announced that Beelzebub was being named as head deacon. But the real reasons why so many Apple fans were disaffected are much more complex.

Apple gained ground with the successful release of the Mac OS 8 “Platinum,” a popular and stable OS. Unfortunately, some of that ground was lost in the confusion that followed OS 8. The original idea was to give Apple users a “next-generation” system to be called Copland. Instead of releasing it in mid-1996, Apple squelched the project in favor of working with the newly acquired NeXT OS. Apple then announced a new system under development, Rhapsody, which would combine elements of the NeXT OS on top of a UNIX core. The aforementioned OS 8 appeared in July 1997, and featured some of the more touted elements from Copland. Rhapsody also failed to materialize, and eventually transmogrified into the OS X project, announced in May 1998. An upgrade to the “Platinum” system, OS 9, was released in October 1999. The next-generation OS X was finally released for the PC in March 2001, and many of the features promised for Rhapsody appeared in this system.

In 1998 Apple reinvented the PC market with the now-ubiquitous iMac. The iMac, with its cutesy color scheme and user-friendly design, won the hearts of many users and the scorn of many reviewers. “Serious” Apple users gravitated to the ever-more powerful PowerMac line, but millions chose to perch the cute little iMacs on their desks. Along with the modestly successful PowerMac and PowerBook laptop/notebook PCs, the iMac gave Apple the recharge it so badly needed. The iMac comes with either OS 9 or OS X installed. The trend of other folks copying Apple continued, with Daewoo’s eMachines drawing Apple’s fire for looking and acting like the iMac. This time Apple prevailed.

Today...

In Redmond, Microsoft barrels along. Its hyped-to-the-max release of Windows 98, launched in June 1998, failed to live up to expectations. Most users, who were led to expect a revolutionary new product, were annoyed when Win 98 proved more of an upgrade than a groundbreaking new product. Feelings are much the same about Windows 2000, or “Win 2K,” the latest and last iteration of the NT line, and even more so about Windows Millennium, which after all the ballyhoo settled, turned out to be little more than a minor upgrade to Win 98. Microsoft is betting its OS fortunes on its integration of the 9x and NT lines in its upcoming Windows XP system. Microsoft hasn’t fared so well in its latest court outing, with the Department of Justice doing what Apple was unable to do, obtaining a ruling that Microsoft was a monopoly and was acting against the best interests of the market and the competition (though as I write this, the DOJ has abandoned its attempts to break up Microsoft). Apple continues to push their latest iteration of the Mac OS, OS X, and promises a new version, 10.1, by the time you read this. Both corporations are poised to continue their dominance of the PC market for the foreseeable future, though UNIX fans remain firm and Linux is steadily gaining ground.

And the future of the GUI? Well, considering that well over 90% of the world’s users employ one GUI-faced OS or another, considering that new GUI-driven OS’s such as Be seem to be catching on, and considering that this season’s darling, Linux, is usually used with any of several GUI’s from Caldera, Corel, and Red Hat, among others, the future for the GUI seems secure. Comrade Gates and others have proposed a much more “involved” interface, with voice recognition, touch screens, retinal and fingerprint scans for security, holographic representations, and virtual “avatars” that interact with the user much more directly than, say, that damned MS Office paper clip. Ugh would be pleased. I’m not sure what Glug would think.

Note: I am indebted to the many people who responded with commentary, corrections, and criticism of the original version of this article. In particular, Jef Raskin was of enormous assistance through the revision process; I appreciate both his cooperation and his patience. The many respondents on the Slashdot message boards were also very helpful, as were the dozens of people who took the time to e-mail me with their own commentary and enlightenment. Thanks to one and all.

– MT, September 7, 2001

How much do you know about obesity?‏

2008-10-06T04:47:00.000-07:00

Do you know?

• At least 20 million children under the age of 5 years are overweight globally

• In many countries, more than 25% of 10 years old are obese / overweight

• Recent research study in Peninsular Malaysia and Sarawak reveals that 20% of boys and 18% of girls are obese or overweight

SHOKING REVELATION ON ALTANTUYA CASE...

2008-10-05T09:34:00.000-07:00

http://jelas.info/2008/07/03/statutory-declaration-proves-najib-knew-altantuya/

True or fake ?! You decide my yourselves....

Some Points to Think about

2008-10-04T09:17:00.000-07:00

1. A Foolish man tells a woman to STOP talking, but a WISE man tells her that she looks extremely BEAUTIFUL when her LIPS are CLOSED.

2. One GOOD way to REDUCE Alcohol consumption:
Before Marriage - Drink whenever you are SAD; After Marriage - Drink whenever you are HAPPY

3. Love your friends not their sisters. Love your sisters not their friends.

4. A man got 2 wishes from GOD. He asked for the Best wine and Best Woman. Next moment, he had the Best Wine and Mother Teresa next to him.
Moral: BE SPECIFIC

5. What is a BEST and WORST news you can hear at the SAME time? It is when your Girl Friend says YOU are the BEST KISSER among all your Friends.

6. Let us be generous like this: Four Ants are moving through a forest. They see an ELEPHANT coming towards them. Ant 1 says : we should KILL him. Ant 2 says : No, Let us break his Leg alone. Ant 3 says: No, we will just throw him away from our path. Ant 4 says: No, we will LEAVE him because he is ALONE and we are FOUR .

7. If you do NOT have a Girl Friend - You are missing SOME thing in your life. If you HAVE a Girl Friend - You are missing EVERY thing in your life.

8. Question: When do you CONGRATULATE someone for their MISTAKE? Answer: On their MARRIAGE.

9. When your LIFE is in DARKNESS, PRAY GOD and asks him to free you from Darkness. Even after you pray, if U R still in Darkness - Please PAY the ELECTRICITY BILL.

10. Why Government do NOT allow a Man to MARRY 2 Women. Because per Constitution, you can NOT be Punished TWICE for the same Mistake.

11. "A Ship is always safe at the shore - but that is NOT what it is built for" - Albert Einstein

A truly amazing touching story..‏

2008-10-03T08:26:00.000-07:00

CHRISTIAN THE LION CUB REUNION REUNITED, with John Rendall Ace Bourke George Adamson Born Free.

A great link here at Snopes all about Christian the lion and his story with the born free foundation.http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/christian.asp

Today, Ace Bourke is a museum curator in Australia. John Rendall is a trustee of the George Adamson Wildlife Trust, an organization actively involved in preserving African wildlife. The organization, according to Rendall, is part of Christian's legacy. Rendall recommends the site www.WildlifeNow.com.Ace Bourke is the Blonde in the Khaki shirt
*** As seen on THE VIEW, ITV NEWS, SKY NEWS, FOX TV, TODAY SHOW, BRAZILS TV RECORD CHANNEL, INDIA HINDI NEWS CHANNEL, AUSTRALIAN CHANNEL NINE NEWS, CHINAS BEIJING CCTV NEWS, BBC NEWS, ABC NEWS and CBC NEWS. ***

The orphaned baby lion cub is reunited with his keepers in africa a heart warming true story.He travelled by Bentley, ate in fine London restaurants and spent his days lounging in a furniture shop. The story of Christian the pet lion - and his eventual release into the wild - is as moving as it is incredible. The furniture shop was on the King's Road in London. It sold tables, wardrobes, chairs and desks - but anybody peering through its plate-glass window on a Sunday might have noticed something rather more unusual.Amid all the pine and oak, stretched out languidly on a bench, there was a lion. And it wasn't stuffed.

"Christian used to lie beside me while I did the accounts at weekends," remembers Jennifer Mary Taylor, who worked there."And every so often, if I'd ignored him for too long, he'd sock me across the head with one of his great big paws."He was very loving and affectionate - he liked to stand and put his paws on your shoulders. But he was...", she pauses. "I mean, he was a lion.

Does that sound silly?"christian the lion (named by someone with a Biblical sense of humour) arrived in Chelsea at a time when the King's Road - home to Mick Jagger - was the very heart of the Swinging Sixties.For a year, the Big Cat was part of it all, cruising the streets in the back of a Bentley, popping in for lunch at Casserole, a local restaurant, even posing for a Biba fashion advert.He eventually grew too big to be kept as a pet and was taken to Kenya, where he was rehabilitated into the wild by the 'Lion Man', George Adamson.

Now, his story is to be told in a new book, written by the Australian John Rendall who, along with his friend Ace Berg, bought Christian from Harrods in 1969.So what possessed them to buy a lion cub in the first place?"

A friend had been to the 'exotic animals' department at Harrods and announced, rather grandly, that she wanted a camel," says Rendall."To which the manager very coolly replied: 'One hump or two, madam?'"Ace and I thought this was the most sophisticated repartee we'd ever heard, so we went along to check it out - and there, in a small cage, was a gorgeous little lion cub.

We were shocked. We looked at each other and said something's got to be done about that."Harrods, it turned out, was also quite keen to be rid of Christian, who had escaped one night, sneaked into the neighbouring carpet department - then in the throes of a sale of goatskin rugs - and wreaked havoc.

The store, which had acquired the cub from Ilfracombe zoo, happily agreed to part with him for 250 guineas. So began Christian's year as an urban lion.Today, it would be unthinkable for a shop to take such a cavalier attitude towards selling exotic animals (though Harrods did, at least, provide Ace and Rendall with diet sheets).And it is hard to imagine either the animal rights lobby or any local council condoning a shop as a suitable habitat for a lion. But, back then, no one minded at all.

Christian was given his own living quarters (and a very large kitty-litter tray, which he used unfailingly) in the basement of the appropriately named Sophistocat furniture shop."He had a beautiful musky smell that was very distinct," says Rendall. "But he was clean."The vicar of the Moravian Chapel nearby was approached to allow Christian the run of the graveyard, and every day he was taken there to roar around and play football.Once, when he was brought along to a seaside picnic, he dipped his toes reluctantly in the water and intimated with a shudder that it was disagreeably cold. But he was eventually persuaded to swim in the English Channel.

By the way John Rendal and Ace Bourke both released a book in 1972 called A LION CALLED CHRISTIAN heres a link to it on amazonhttp://www.amazon.com/A-Lion-Called-C...

Full story can be read here:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/art...
Copyright of this video is owned by Beckman Direct and the full story in DVD or VHS Video can be bought from the following linkhttp://www.beckmanndirect.com/Wildlif...

Links from --> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjWtRYaxmWM

Related Link ---> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr1pWzoLvT8

Northern Lights over Yellow Knife Canada and a Fire Rainbow‏

2008-10-02T07:51:00.000-07:00

避免洗腎的秘方

2008-10-01T09:55:00.000-07:00

天界傳下此秘方
救人一命好心腸簡單有效免花銀
普告天下廣傳揚

各位親朋好友：這秘方如果早 25 年收到，也許我家孩子現在就不會怨歎：人皆有母我獨無 ! 我家種荔枝 50 餘年，取得荔枝核何其容易，居然不知是寶，連自己的枕邊人也枉費 14 年歲月洗腎，最終還是不支奉召回歸西天。台灣洗腎的病友很多，也許您身邊周圍就有人在洗腎，如同作者所言死馬當活馬醫，可能有願意試試的人，拜託您把此方傳出，度一人就等於救了一個家庭，功德無量 ! 謝謝傳出此秘方的所有有關人士，謝謝 ! 各大醫院差不多設有「血液透析室」，裡頭布滿了各種大小粗細不一的管子，這就是洗腎的場所，將人體的血液經由靜脈通往機器，將身體血液中的廢物、有害物質清除，第一次被推進「血液透析室」。那種心情是複雜中帶些恐慌與無奈。會走到洗腎這條路，主要是腎功能已經無法發揮，導致尿液無法排除，經過一段時間的導尿之後，仍然未見起色，不得不改採洗腎的方式解。我腎功能之所以失效，主要是由於長期糖尿病所造成的，二十年的糖尿病史使得我對人生了無生趣，有幾次真的想自我了斷，然想到萬一我走了，幾個小孩子未成家立業，又想到如果我以自殺了此一生，我的親人、朋友情何以，自己患病雖然痛苦，但如果我的逃避會帶給家人更大的痛苦，那麼，我還是病魔纏身而勇敢的走下去。對於秘方，我有強烈的排斥感，二十年來，我只聽從西醫的話，期間雖有很多的親友提供偏方、秘方，我一概敬謝不敏，直到進了「洗腎室」似乎跟死神搏鬥，我突然想通了，與其坐以待斃，不如死馬當活馬醫，說不定真的有一絲希望。第二次洗腎之後，小嬸的娘家來看我，問我要不要服用秘方，保證一定可以不用再洗腎了。我當場表示願意試試看。當天中午小嬸拎著一鍋腰子湯要我吃，我分成二次把湯喝完，第二天再喝一鍋（約一碗半）同時吃了半個豬腰，當天排尿就有了改善，第三天原本還要洗腎，醫生看了之後，表示暫時可以不必洗。大約喝了一週左右的腰子湯，結果醫生很驚訝地說，腎功能已漸恢復，可以辦出院。小嬸娘家的偏方是：新鮮荔枝的種子七粒、打碎後用紗布包紮，再買一副豬腰，切成薄片、切除白筋洗靜後，與荔枝種子同時放在大碗公內，加上第二次洗米水兩婉，一起放在電鍋中蒸，大約蒸半小時，然後一次把湯喝完，就能奏效。我個人洗腎拜此秘方才能提早免疫，真是功德無量，但願對同病相憐

Health Habits

2008-09-30T09:40:00.000-07:00

SECOND HAND SMOKE IS DANGEROUS.

2008-09-29T09:34:00.000-07:00

Did you know that when you are around someone who is smoking you are probably breathing in smoke? This is know as second hand smoking. Second hand smoke is sometimes called passive smoke or environmental tobacco smoke but all the terms refer to the smoke which escapes from the burning end of a cigarette and also from the smoker's mouth when they breathe out. When non- smokers are around someone who is smoking the amount of smoke the non- smokers breathe in depends on how close they are to the smoker(s), the size of the room, the number of smokers in the room and the number of cigarettes smoked. Opening a window does NOT protect you from smoke. Using ventilation, air- conditioning or a fan does NOT eliminate passive smoke. Second hand smoke is a complex mix of more than 4000 chemicals that are dangerous for your health. At least 40 substances in second hand smoke have been shown to cause cancer. Tobacco smoke also contains large quantities of carbon monoxide, a gas that inhibits the blood's ability to carry oxygen to body tissues including vital organs such as the heart and brain, as well as other substances that contribute to heart disease and stroke. Exposure to second hand smoke can cause both long tern and immediate effects on human health. Immediate effects include irritation of the eyes, nose, throat and lungs. Non smokers, who are generally more sensitive to the toxic effects of tobacco smoke than smokers, may experience headaches, nausea and dizziness. Second hand smoke places extra stress or the heart and effects the body's ability to take in and use oxygen. The long term health impact of second hand smoke is increased cancer and heart disease rates after years of exposure. For asthma sufferers, however, tobacco smoke can cause immediate danger by triggering attacks. The majority of asthma sufferers report symptoms ranging from discomfort to acute distress from exposure to second hand smoke.

Laughter is the best medicine‏

2008-09-28T08:52:00.000-07:00

Confidence will get you Everything
A rather confident man walks into a bar and takes a seat next to a very attractive woman.
He gives her a quick glance, then casually looks at his watch for a moment.
The woman notices this and asks, "Is your date running late?"
"No", he replies, "I just bought this state-of-the-art watch and I was just testing it."
The intrigued woman says, "A state-of-the-art watch? What's so special about it?"
"It uses alpha waves to telepathically talk to me," he explains.
"What's it telling you now?" "Well, it says you're not wearing any panties..."
The woman giggles and replies, "Well it must be broken then because I am wearing panties!" The man explains, "Damn thing must be an hour fast."

Don't Talk to the Parrot
Mrs. Broomfield's dishwasher quit working, so she called a repairman.
He couldn't accommodate her with an evening appointment, and since she had to go to work the next day, she told him, "I'll leave the key under the mat. Fix the dishwasher, leave the bill on the counter, and I'll mail you the check. By the way, don't worry about my Rottweiler, Brutus. He won't bother you. But, whatever you do, do not under any circumstances talk to my parrot!" When the repairman arrived at Mrs. Broomfield's apartment the next day, he discovered the biggest and meanest looking Rottweiler he had ever seen. But, just like she had said, the dog just lay there on the carpet, watching the repairman go about his business.
However, the whole time he was there, the parrot drove him nuts with his incessant squawking and talking.
Finally the repairman couldn't contain himself any longer and yelled: "Shut up, you stupid bird!"
To which the parrot replied: "Get him, Brutus!"

Lending a Hand
A young executive was leaving the office late one evening when he found the CEO standing in front of a shredder with a piece of paper in his hand.
"Listen," said the CEO, "this is a very sensitive and important document, and my secretary has gone for the night. Can you make this thing work for me?"
"Certainly," said the young executive. He turned the machine on, inserted the paper, and pressed the start button.
"Excellent, excellent!" said the CEO as his paper disappeared inside the machine.
"I just need one copy..."

Bathroom Conversation
Leaving KL for JB, I decide to make a stop at one of those rest areas on the side of the road. I go in the washroom. The first stall was taken so I went in the second stall. I just sat down when I hear a voice from the next stall... "Hi there, how is it going?" Okay, I am not the type to strike conversations with strangers in washrooms on the side of the road. I didn't know what to say so finally I say: "Not bad..." Then the voice says: "So, what are you doing?" I am starting to find that a bit weird, but I say: "Well, I'm going back to JB..." Then I hear the person say all flustered: "Look I'll call you back, every time I ask you a question this idiot in the next stall keeps answering me."

Affected Products

2008-09-27T07:56:00.000-07:00

Dairy Products manufactured in China

2008-09-24T09:19:00.000-07:00

1) Straits Times, AsiaOne, Reuters

SINGAPORE'S Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) has advised local importers and retailers to remove from the market a China-made dairy product as it could be tainted with a health-threatening chemical.

The AVA yesterday said the 'Yili brand' Natural Choice Yogurt Flavoured Ice Bar with Real Fruit (90ml) should be withheld from sale immediately in Singapore, pending the authority's investigation and tests.

The advisory came after AVA's Hong Kong counterpart, the Hong Kong Centre for Food Safety, issued a press statement on the recall of the product, which was made by Shanghai Yili AB Foods Company.

A sample of the ice bar was found to contain a low level of melamine (15 ppm) - the chemical at the heart of the infant formula scandal in China.

Melamine is rich in nitrogen, an element often used to measure protein, and can be used to disguise diluted milk. It can cause kidney stones and other organ problems.

China said on Wednesday that a third infant has died after drinking contaminated milk and the number of sick has leapt to many thousands. An official said the health threat had been concealed for at least a month.

The number of children ill after drinking powdered milk laced melamine has risen nearly five-fold to 6,244, and those with 'acute kidney failure' has reached 158, China's Health Minister Chen Zhu told a news conference.
(http://www.asiaone.com/Health/News/Story/A1Story20080918-88532.html)

2) Singapore: White Rabbit Creamy Candy" Found To Contain Melamine

AVA's latest laboratory findings show that the "White Rabbit Creamy Candy" (大白兔奶糖) from China is also contaminated with melamine. Consumers who have bought the affected products are advised not to consume them.

The latest test results bring the total number of milk and related products from China imported into Singapore that are found to be contaminated with melamine to three. The other two affected products are 'Yili Brand' Choice Dairy Fruit Bar Yogurt Flavoured Ice Confection" and "Dutch Lady" brand of strawberry flavoured milk.

All the affected products have been recalled earlier. Since 19 Sep 08, AVA has suspended the import and sale of all milk and milk products from China. These products include milk, ice-cream, yoghurt, confectionery such as chocolates, biscuits and sweets as well as any other products containing milk from China as an ingredient.

As a precaution, consumers are also advised not to consume any milk or milk products from China.

Consumers who have any queries can call AVA's hotline at 63257625 during office hours (8.30 am – 6.00 pm, Monday – Friday). (http://www.ava.gov.sg/)

Additionally, consumers of Dutch Lady products can call 6419-8466 to get further information. Consumers can call the hotline starting from September 22 to 26, from 9am till 5pm daily. (http://malaysia.news.yahoo.com/cna/20080921/tap-297-milk-importer-dutch-lady-brand-d-231650b.html)

Food Alert Crisis

2008-09-24T08:43:00.000-07:00

IMPORTERS / AGENTS TO RECALL IMPLICATED MILK AND MILK PRODUCTS FROM CHINA WHICH ARE ALREADY SOLD IN THE MARKET

Due to the issue of contamination of melamine in milk and milk products imported from China, Ministry of Health is instructing all importers / agents who brought such implicated products to Malaysia which are already sold in the local market to recall them immediately.

The implicated milk and milk products from China cover products as follows:-
a). Milk
b). Milk products
c). Chocolate
d). Ice cream
e). Butter
f). Biscuits
g). Cheese
h). Yogurt
i). Flour and sugar confections
j). Cakes
k). Any food products containing milk imported from China as its ingredients

WHITE RABBIT CREAMY CANDY IMPORTED FROM CHINA BANNED

As a result of a positive detection of melamine in White Rabbit Creamy Candy from China found by Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA), Singapore, Ministry of Health is imposing a ban towards any importation of this product.

Therefore, a Level 6 (Auto Rejection) Examination Level through FoSIM will be imposed for White Rabbit Creamy Candy from China immediately.

The particulars of the product are as follows:-
a). Product: White Rabbit Creamy Candy
b). Exporter: Shanghai Guan Sheng Yuan Food Ltd,
Shanghai Guan Sheng Yuan Food General Factory,
No. 220, Cao Bao Road, Shanghai, China
c). Importer: BB Foods & Toy Trading,
No. 20A, Jalan Kelewang,
Taman Sri Tebrau,
80050 Johor Bahru, Johor.

All importers / agents are restricted from importing White Rabbit Creamy Candy from China for the time being.

Kindly log on to http://fsis.moh.gov.my for more information

Unleashing The Real Meaning Of Motivation And Tips To Build It

2008-09-21T10:04:00.000-07:00

Motivation is a kind of driving force that encourages an individual to get going. It is a kind of boost to the self confidence, faith and inner conscience of a person. All of us look for some kind of motivation in life. It is almost impossible to face a competition, achieve success of accomplish a goal without motivation.

Motivation is provided to an individual from several forces. Different people are motivated by different actions. A child may be motivated by a simple pat on the back or a new toy. An adult gets motivated when his work gets adulation. Some are motivated by success and others look for big awards and fame as motivational drive.

When it comes to success, there are several things that come in role play to achieve it. Intelligence, study skills, time management skills and knowledge base are very important for the achievement of success. However, without the right kind of motivation, nothing is going to work.
It is like this. You purchase your favorite car, fill the tank with fuel, get great set of tires, awesome CD system and amazing exterior. Now you sit inside the car and expect it to take you to places. Will it work? Hey, no doubt. It will not work at all. You need to take the drivers place and put the key in the ignition to drive it. Yes, this is motivation.

To sum up, if you want to achieve something, the key is motivation.
Now the question is, ‘how to get motivation?’ There are several ways you can get that motivational force required to achieve all that you want in your life.

Here are some great tips to build your motivation:

a) Be clear about what you want and why?
The ultimate goal of undertaking a particular task should be clear in your mind. You should know what you want. It is also equally important to know why you want a particular thing. Spend some time and decide about what you want. Thereafter, write down some points on reasons you would like to wish for a certain thing.

b) Plan and make short goals
Once you are clear about what you want, you must write down your goal and break your ultimate goal in to smaller chunks or short steps that would take you forward. Once you start achieving your short goals, you would be motivated to go further. Remember, nothing works better than success to motivate.

c) Follow optimism
You need to be positive about achieving your dreams. You may fear for the first time you start something new. Its O.K. fear is just a way your mind tells you that you are stepping out of your comfort zone. Do not lose hope. Believe you can and you will!

d) Choose confidants carefully
People are often critical and negative. You should not let these people spoil your dreams or kill your zest. You must talk to people who are interested in your plans and encourage you to go a lead with your plans.

Helping Users Remember Their Password

2008-09-20T10:00:00.000-07:00

This question was actually asked of me recently when I configured a new financial software installation. I strongly suggested that the primary user (the office bookkeeper) create a new and unique user name and password, one that no one could possibly guess, and I advised her to not write it down anywhere. How in the heck am I supposed to remember it, she asked? It got me thinking about how reliant we are on passwords, how often we use them, and how vulnerable we are because of them.

What are the most common passwords? Password, 12345, qwerty, and so on, are pretty common. Your kid’s or spouse’s name, your pet’s name, and such are also pretty common. I suppose that’s because these are so easy to remember. However, they’re also easy for busybodies, thieves, cheats, and swindlers to guess. Identity theft has become one of the most common crimes in today’s technological world, and easy password theft plays a big part in that. And for the sake of corporate security and user privacy, passwords are used for any number of purposes.

E-mail account passwords, a second or third e-mail accounts password, document passwords, server log-in passwords, application management passwords, application user passwords, FTP site passwords, Web site passwords, vendor Web support passwords, e-commerce passwords (such as eBay, PayPal, and on-line banking), and the list goes on and on. One can’t possibly use a unique password for each and every case, much less change it periodically — all without writing it down. Yeah, right.

Here’s the advice I gave to the user who asked me how to remember passwords.
For the relatively benign types of uses, I’ll use something easy to remember, and one I’ll never change. Something like a name or easily remembered number. For example, when Hewlett Packard or some other vendor requires a user name and password to download a driver or access some content, it’s always the same one. I couldn’t care less if someone else knows what it is. What’s the worst that can happen? They download hundreds of drivers in my name? Who cares? For these types of things, I use the same one over and over again, I never change it, and I never will. If I have to go to that vendor Web site only once every couple of years, I don’t have to rack my brain remembering its own unique password.

For things that might be of little consequence if someone guessed it, but I wouldn’t really want it to happen, I’ll use a different password. The worst that can happen is that someone stumbles upon it and causes a mild disruption, but it couldn’t really do any significant harm. I might change this password from time to time, but certainly not on a regular basis. My TechRepublic password, for example, is something that’s meaningful to me, something that I’ll not forget, but it’s not unique for only TR; I use the same one for several cases.

For uses that are very personal and private, ones that could have serious repercussions if anyone ever gained access, I do indeed follow the standard advice. This is what I told the user who asked me, because hers was such a case. I do indeed change them from time to time, probably about twice a year, and I never write it down. I make it extremely difficult for anyone to guess (or a program to hack), and I use a combination of numbers, characters, and letters, both upper and lower case. And to make it easy for me to remember, I pick something meaningful to me, but arrange it in such a way to be meaningless to others.

For example, I might remember Central High School class of 1982 and create the password CenHS-co82. (I didn’t really attend Central High School, nor did I graduate in 1982.)
Or I’ll remember the make and model of my first girlfriend’s car — the one I put a nasty scratch on, and the incident over which her father almost killed me! Remembering that 1965 Chevrolet Impala Super Sport (I scratched the fender) might result in a password, ChevI65SS+Istf. How could I ever forget that car? It was a red convertible with a 327 C.I engine. When it comes time to change my password, I could remember the same thing, but connected differently: 65ChevSS@327CI (I suppose I can never use these, since I just gave it away!)
If you have two kids, Mary and Billy, aged 16 and 12, respectively, you might be able to create a password, 2k-Ma16&Bi12.

Anyway, I advised her to come up with a phrase or a combination of things she could easily recall and condense them into upper and lower case letters, some numbers, and a character or two to connect them. After some time goes by and she might want to change it, simply start remembering something different.

That was my advice. Do you have a method to the madness of remembering passwords that you could divulge? (Without giving anything away, of course.)

Date: July 16th, 2008
Author: Joe Rosberg

The Laughing Cure

2008-09-19T09:09:00.000-07:00

Why a hearty guffaw may really be the best medicine.

WebMD Feature

May 8, 2000 -- As a veteran television executive involved in sitcoms like Roseanne and Home Improvement, Sherry Hilber watched weekly as studio audiences writhed with laughter. "I'd see them leave at the end of the show and think, 'Maybe for the rest of the night something is happening inside their bodies.' "

Intrigued, Hilber boned up on the limited literature about humor's effects on physical health. She found a mixed bag of upbeat anecdotes, tantalizing small studies, and contradictory results.

Seeking to use her comedy knowledge for a larger cause, Hilber established Rx Laughter (http://www.rxlaughter.org), a nonprofit project dedicated both to helping the ill via humor and to supporting more scientific research on the topic. Thanks to her fund-raising efforts, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) are set to begin exploring whether funny videos can promote healing.

Sidestepping the Banana Peel

The UCLA/Rx Laughter researchers hope to sidestep some of the banana peels that have tripped up previous researchers.

For instance, if comedy helps, is it laughing aloud or internal amusement that matters most? No one knows. The UCLA/Rx Laughter researchers will start by screening videos Hilber assembled for 100 elementary school children to determine what they find reliably funny. Initially, they'll count how often each kid laughs and also ask whether they thought the video was funny, looking for correlation. (The researchers chose to focus on kids partly because they readily respond to humor and laugh more easily.)

Next, investigators will examine the nervous and immune system effects of laughter: heart rate, blood pressure, and the presence of the stress hormone cortisol in saliva, before and after the funny videos.

Eventually, the researchers expect to explore whether comedy changes how kids perceive and respond to pain. Ultimately, they want to see if humor can change the kids' actual health, not just their stress hormones. For example, they may measure how fast wounds heal after surgery and how fast white blood cells rebound to their normal levels after being lowered by chemotherapy.

"You have to pass the 'so what?' test," says the study's co-director, Margaret Stuber, MD, a UCLA professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences. "It may be very interesting to us that we can change salivary cortisol, but does that actually change anything that matters?"

The concept that comedy could improve health makes some medical sense. Studies show that anger, depression, and pessimism impair the immune response, increase surgical recovery and wound-healing times, and can even contribute to higher death rates. And what better way to counter a negative outlook than through a dose of comedy? "Humor and distressing emotion cannot occupy the same psychological space," says Steven Sultanoff, PhD, a clinical psychologist and president of the American Association for Therapeutic Humor.

Cousins' Comedy "Cure"

It was Anatomy of an Illness, the 1979 memoir by late magazine editor Norman Cousins, that put a potential humor/health connection on the mainstream map. Cousins described how he recovered from a usually irreversible and crippling connective tissue disease with a regimen that -- among other therapies -- included laughing at Marx Brothers movies.

Of course, Cousins' success by itself is no proof. And researchers seeking to put medical laughter on more solid scientific footing have faced serious obstacles -- from a shortage of funding to the fact that guinea pigs don't laugh.

Lee Berk, DrPH, a pathology professor at Loma Linda University in California, is among those who have tried. In a series of studies, including one published in the December 1989 issue of the American Journal of Medical Science, he examined before-and-after blood samples from subjects who had viewed humorous videos and from a control group who had not. He found significant reductions in stress hormones and enhanced immune function -- including increased natural killer cells -- in the video-watching subjects.

But the cost and logistics of such sophisticated blood analyses limited those studies to small groups of five to ten people. Meanwhile, a Japanese study published in the June 1997 issue of the journal Perceptual and Motor Skills -- with all of eight people -- actually found a decrease in natural killer cell activity after a group viewed a comedy video.

Even research on pain relief has shown complex results: For an Israeli study, published in the November 1995 issue of the journal Pain, 20 people each watched either a funny, repulsive, or neutral flick. Before and during the films, each underwent a standard test for pain tolerance -- they had to keep one arm submerged in a tank of icy water and rate the discomfort. Humor clearly helped (though repulsion actually increased pain tolerance most).

The same researchers later found comedy videos worked best when "taken" a half-hour before pain testing and with at least a 45-minute "dosage."

While it will be several years before the UCLA study delivers its first medical punch lines, it has already solved a key riddle: Who will pay to see whether laughter really is, if not the best, at least an effective medicine? After all, drug companies, which spend billions to prove medications work, have little stake in investigating laughter.

Instead, Hilber turned to Comedy Central. The television home of South Park will fund most of the study's initial phases with a $75,000 grant. "If in five years' time this study can determine that comedy is good for you, we really have a marketing opportunity," says network executive Tony Fox. "[Forget] an apple a day. Watch Comedy Central instead!"

David Jacobson is a San Francisco-based writer and satirist. His work has appeared in Health, Men's Health, Salon, Maxim, and Details.

The Stress Management and Health Benefits of Laughter

2008-09-18T08:47:00.000-07:00

Research has shown health benefits of laughter ranging from strengthening the immune system to reducing food cravings to increasing one's threshold for pain. There's even an emerging therapeutic field known as humor therapy to help people heal more quickly, among other things. Humor also has several important stress relieving benefits.

Stress Management Benefits of Laughter:

Hormones: Laughter reduces the level of stress hormones like cortisol, epinephrine (adrenaline), dopamine and growth hormone. It also increases the level of health-enhancing hormones like endorphins, and neurotransmitters. Laughter increases the number of antibody-producing cells and enhances the effectiveness of T cells. All this means a stronger immune system, as well as fewer physical effects of stress.

Physical Release: Have you ever felt like you "have to laugh or I'll cry"? Have you experienced the cleansed feeling after a good laugh? Laughter provides a physical and emotional release.

Internal Workout: A good belly laugh exercises the diaphragm, contracts the abs and even works out the shoulders, leaving muscles more relaxed afterward. It even provides a good workout for the heart.

Distraction: Laughter brings the focus away from anger, guilt, stress and negative emotions in a more beneficial way than other mere distractions.

Perspective: Studies show that our response to stressful events can be altered by whether we view something as a 'threat' or a 'challenge'. Humor can give us a more lighthearted perspective and help us view events as 'challenges', thereby making them less threatening and more positive.

Social Benefits of Laughter: Laughter connects us with others. Also, laughter is contagious, so if you bring more laughter into your life, you can most likely help others around you to laugh more, and realize these benefits as well. By elevating the mood of those around you, you can reduce their stress levels, and perhaps improve the quality of social interaction you experience with them, reducing your stress level even more!

How To Use Laughter:

Laughter is one of my all-time favorite stress management strategies because it's free, convenient, and beneficial in so many ways. You can get more laughter in your life with the following strategies:

T.V. and Movies: There's no shortage of laughter opportunities from the entertainment, both at the theater and in the aisles of the video stores, as well as at home with T.V. comedies. While wasting your time watching something marginally funny may actually frustrate you, watching truly hilarious movies and shows is an easy way to get laughter into your life whenever you need it.

Laugh With Friends: Going to a movie or comedy club with friends is a great way to get more laughter in your life. The contagious effects of laughter may mean you'll laugh more than you otherwise would have during the show, plus you'll have jokes to reference at later times. Having friends over for a party or game night is also a great setup for laughter and other good feelings.

Find Humor In Your Life: Instead of complaining about life's frustrations, try to laugh about them. If something is so frustrating or depressing it's ridiculous, realize that you could 'look back on it and laugh.' Think of how it will sound as a story you could tell to your friends, and then see if you can laugh about it now. With this attitude, you may also find yourself being more lighthearted and silly, giving yourself and those around you more to laugh about. Approach life in a more mirthful way and you'll find you're less stressed about negative events, and you'll achieve the health benefits of laughter. (See this article on maintaining a sense of humor.

'Fake It Until You Make It': Just as studies show the positive effects of smiling occur whether the smile is fake or real, faked laughter also provides the benefits mentioned above. So smile more, and fake laughter; you'll still achieve positive effects, and the fake merriment may lead to real smiles and laughter.

More on Having Fun: See these additional suggestions on laughing more and having fun in your life.