Footprints…

Not able to sleep again..so I thought I would post something inspirational. I am sure many people would have seen or read this poem somewhere. Just thought it would be nice to read it once again. Its has helped me through dark times before, and recently I have turned to it once again. Enjoy.

Footprints in the Sand

 

One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord.
Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky.
In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand.
Sometimes there were two sets of footprints,
other times there were one set of footprints.

 

This bothered me because I noticed
that during the low periods of my life,
when I was suffering from
anguish, sorrow or defeat,
I could see only one set of footprints

 

So I said to the Lord,
“You promised me Lord,
that if I followed you,
you would walk with me always.
But I have noticed that during the most trying periods of my life
there have only been one set of footprints in the sand.
Why, when I needed you most, you have not been there for me?”

 

The Lord replied,
“The times when you have seen only one set of footprints in the sand,
is when I carried you.”

 

Mary Stevenson

Copyright © 1984 Mary Stevenson, All rights reserved

Even Love Bites Fade…

I can’t sleep, so I thought I would post something which I thought of sometime ago.

“even love bites fade…”

I thought this phrase was really cool. Love bites or Hickeys are usually given in the heat of passion, when there is nothing else in the world besides yourself and your partner. Passion fade with time (very sad to admit), many years of marriage usually attest to that.

then..

there is an old saying and also a Def Leppard song, “Love bites”. Sometimes and a lot of times, love hurts. When we are hurt by a loved one, or the loss of a loved one. This too will fade with time…

Both the good and the bad fades…

Once a day…

I recently came back from a short trip to Singapore. Had to get away from life for a while. While I was in Singapore, I decided to open my dusty drawer of skeletons and flipped through my stash of old letters from friends, old flames and Ex-girlfriends.

With many of the painful memories faded with time, it was a surprisingly uplifting experience. The words of love and care no matter from how long ago or its current relevance brought a smile to my face and a warming feeling. It brighten my day.

Sometimes, having gone through painful experiences or just from drenching through our daily routines, we forget our worth. We forget how special each one of us are and that there are people in this world who value us, who find us special.

It has been said, that you should tell your loved ones, “I love you” at least once a day. It’s good for your soul, but it also reminds them, that they are special, that they are valued. It makes going through each day that much easier.

Imagine, simple words like “I love you” written on a page, by someone from a long distant past can remove such gloom, what it would be like to have your loved one, who is here, say “I love you”.

Taiwan Women

Disclaimer

I am going to make a whole bunch of generalisations and probably piss off many women out there. Just I just want to say these are just pure observations and I would probably change my perceptions of them if I had met them or spoken to them. No harm is intended to anyone who might be affected by what I say. These are only my personal views.

Taiwanese Women

From my few days here, I have noticed a few things about the women in this country.

1) On average the women here are similar to women from where we come from and pretty much most other asian countries. Many people have said that taiwanese women are pretty. Like how we have the notion that korean women are pretty too. From what I have observed, the average women here are, well just average, like average women any where else. What taiwan has however are more of the prettier women amongst the population. On a normal outing, you might see maybe 5 women that one would call pretty. In taiwan, you would see probably 10-15. They are also not anymore prettier than the pretty girls in our countries. This might be due to the higher population. I won’t go into that. Too long a discussion…:)

2) The women here in taiwan are more daring than most places I have been to. Granted, I have not been to Japan in a long time (at least at an age where I know whats daring or not) or korea. Despite the cold weather here (17C) many women are going around in really REALLY short mini skirts. I do not know if they are wearing shorts undernearth or not (I think it would be illegal if I did find out), but they are so short they would not be misplaced if they were on my head as a headband. Another thing that many wear are pants/shorts that are much like 3/4 pants but tapered to end above above the knees. Some end very high above the knees and some not. Still all showing some really shapely legs.

3) The women here seem to be very aware of whether they are pretty or not. From what I have seen, the best dressed and the most daring women are usually of the above average looks. In most places, we have seen women who are, i guess not shape advantaged, wearing outfits that are tight and short. Overall not eye candy. Here in Taiwan however, I have yet to see something like that. Women of the not so pretty kind, tend to cover up more and wear very conservatively. Women who are slender and prettier tend to be more daring.

There. All my rambling. Apologies for having no photos. They walk really quick here, and are very aware of you looking at them. Basically me chicken.

Taiwan 2007 – Day 2

The server is finally working properly, so I have added the photos to the previous post, for those who are interested.

On the second day we found this interesting little drinks store. Taiwanese bubble tea has been making its mark on the world for years now. In some places, its has even come and gone. This quaint little store serves home brewed wintermelon tea instead of the standard black tea. Its a rather refreshing take on the familiar drink. You can still get the usual pearl, jelly, pudding or sago in your drink. At about TWD30 (BND1.20) is reasonably priced.

One of the things that has always gotten my taste buds going, Taiwanese Sausages!!!! We were recommended, by a very friendly cab driver to one of the most famous Taiwanese Sausage in Tainan. Black Bridge Brand!!

These sausages are rather special, they are made from black pigs. This apparantly gives the sausages better and greater texture! Ha! Well, they are alright. Tried some that they cooked.

Everyone knows there a few things to try while in Taiwan. Taiwanese Beef Noodle soup and the Minced Meat Rice. Both of which are a staple meal for the Taiwanese. We found a cool looking noodle shop near the Black Bridge Brand Sausage shop.

They even have a website. I thought the minced meat rice was really good and the noodle soup ok only lah. Eventhough the soup is supposed to be cooked with scallops and stuff.

However what was very interesting is not the food, but this statue that sat outside the restaurant.

Now thats a real “Got Milk?” Ad

Taiwan 2007 – Day 1

Been taking some photos, so figured good excuse to write a post and put them up.

Well arrived in Taiwan on Sunday 8th April, and immediately made our way to the High Speed Rail (高鐵) and travelled the 271.6km from Taoyuan (where the airport is) to Tainan. First impressions of Taiwan, its really really flat. Taoyuan is in the outskirts of Taipei, which is probably why, but all the buildings in Tainan are still really flat.

Taiwan High Speed Train Station – Taoyuan

Inside however, everything is modern and sparse. It seems that all the train stations have a 7-eleven and a Mos burger joint. The beauty of franchising.

Inside the Train Station

The train itself is quite nice, but the tickets are very expensive. The economy seats were all taken, So we had to take the business class seats. NT1990!!!!!! thats like BND91. Economy seating is half that, which still does not make it cheap. I guess its reasonable for the distance we were covering.

Train arriving at the Station


The dude is enjoying the sound of the train..:)

Most of the land between Taoyuan and Tainan are farming land, or at least the parts the train passed through were. The train stations are built quite far from the city itself. We had to travel about half hour from the Tainan Station to our Hotel.

We went to the night market in Tainan on our first night. Its like a mass of people, smells and sounds not unlike our pasar malam, just multiply everything by like 10 or 100. It was funfair games mixed in with a flea market selling clothes and such and then put food stalls in between them. “Organised Chaos” is what my sister called it.

There were a couple of stores which sold some very interesting corn. The corn were red. They usually coat it with a peanut (satay) sauce and barbeque it.

Then in the middle of all the chaos was a prawn fishing store. The prawns are in a tub, and they give you a stick with a bit of string with a loop in it. You get to “fish” for your prawn, which you can immediately barbeque it to perfection.

Overall, an interesting first day. Tainan reminds me much of China, with all the low buildings and the way people dress. Even the so called fashionable young crowd looks like they stepped out of the 1980s. Jane Fonda and all. Instead of bicycles, everyone seem to have a scooter and lots of them are vespas!

Science-Fiction without the Science???

 

Just came back from watching this movie with my cousin. He mentioned something. Why do the movies he watches with me sux so bad?! This movie does sux really bad.

This is a sci-fi movie with an impressive cast, with the likes of Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), Chris Evans (Fantastic Four), Cillian Murphy (Red Eye, Batman Begins) and what I would imagine an impressive budget. The end result however is not much to be desired.

I won’t even go into technical details like, the acting or the cinematography or even the science behind restarting the sun. Like many other sci-fi flicks, there are things which most people will take as given. Such as, if the lightsaber is a laser sword why doesn’t it have a endless blade, instead of just stopping at a certain length. Its a lightsaber, it just works that way. So, can humans re-start the Sun with a bomb? Its given, it just works.

Now the killer thing is, in the movie, they were trying to dock one spaceship with another spaceship (to retrieve life-giving oxygen, as usual) while being very close to the Sun. The ships are protected from the sun by a huge mirror, shield kinda dish mounted on the front of the ships. So if one of the ships comes up behind the other one, won’t the light reflected off the shield, fry the other ship from behind where there is no shield?

I would imagine something like this would be common sense. It does not take a rocket scientist to see this and have great bouts of laughter. From the Sunshine Website, I found out they had a science advisor which gave them advice regarding the science behind re-starting the sun and they missed this?

The viewing public of science fiction movies don’t usually ask for very much. We do not ask for everything in the movie to be backed up or proved by scientific theory. A little common sense will do.

Getting a Baby!?

I’ve been thinking about getting a pet dog. Its been 6 years since my “Lucky” when to doggy heaven. I’ve been told by many, including my father that I should get an anchor in my life. (ie. Get married). However, I was thinking a puppy could be such an anchor too. All the responsibilities and time required, might make me settle a little more, stop hanging out late at night and sleeping in the next day.

Ah the responsibilities and time required! Toilet training, feeding, cleaning. This has kept me pondering for the past 4 months whether I should and if I could not live up to the responsibilities how unfair to the puppy it would be. Then yesterday I realised, living up to the responsibility was the whole point of getting the puppy.

Ah the toilet training, feeding, cleaning! I found this on the internet. I did not know they existed but what a great idea it is.

Then there is the question of which breed to get? Lucky was a Golden Retriever, Laura was a Dalmatian, Ringo was a Mongrel. I was think another Goldie, as they are just such gentle dogs. Or maybe a German Shepherd.

Then there is a male or female? (headache starting) People have said, males might go around the house marking, even though they have been toilet trained (I would like a “live in house” dog) thus a male might get messy.

so many things to think about. Maybe another 4 months more of thinking.

Jolie

I had one of the coolest dreams the other day. Angelina Jolie wanted to go out with me. Ha ha what a blast! When I asked her about Brad, she said “He’s ok”. Well, its a dream after all. Waking to reality left me swimming in the emotional sea of being in love. What a joke…but it felt good. Its was like, just falling in love with someone new and having this big silly grin on your face the whole day. There was no recurring dream the following night, thus the very next day it was back to being, just me and my life.

However, because of this dream, I had spent several hours on youtube discovering my “dream” love. What I discovered gave me new respect and awe for this TombRaider. Not only is she such a beautiful woman, but she has such a beautiful soul, tempered by intelligence and maturity that could only come from being a mother.(last min of the youtube Vid) She’s no longer just a beautiful person on magazines, films or internet galleries.

Angelina on Ryan Seacrest

With her work with the UN and the donations she has made for her causes, the world could deal with a few more jolies. It will not only be a more beautiful place, but also one without proverty and refugees.

a rather bright light blub

There’s a little riddle from years gone pass about light bulbs, which I had dusted off for a friend today.

” There are 3 light bulbs upstairs and 3 switches downstairs. By going upstairs to take a look only once, how do you find out which switch turn on/off which light bulb”

It is not a truly difficult question, but the average time people usually take is about 5 mins. monkeyfruit blurted out the answer in under a minute, and there I was with a spastic look of awe on my face.

Kudos to you girl, that’s a bright one up there.

ps. by the way I think I got your scales one, driving home…:P