It was 2 days before Chinese New Year and I was sent to the cold storage to buy some beef, lamb and chicken wings. My mum wanted to serve some curry, stew and grilled chicken wings to our friends and relatives that would come to visit.

At the cold storage, as I was choosing the beef, a Malay Lady came along so we started talking to each other as we sorting through pile of chucks of  beef. She told me that she was going to cook beef rendang. Then I was surprised as I saw her pulling 6 big chucks of beef into her baskets as i was only to buy 2 and those chucks were really big. So I asked her what the beef rendang was for, if she was going to sell it, like many Chinese trying to make extra money during Chinese New Year.

The Malay Lady looked at me and said no, it was not for sale.  She said she was going to give to her Chinese friends for Chinese New Year as gifts as they had been good to her.

What she said really touched my heart. I thought, “This is really 1Malaysia in practice.” This is not some slogan chanting nor merely a speech of great ideals but real friends of different races and religions living together with love and respect.

The lady was not celebtrating Chinese New Year  herself but she was taking part in it by giving gifts of the heart though she was of a different race and religion. There wasn’t segregation, you, your, yours and I, me, mine but we, us, ours.

I told the lady what a great thing that she was doing and she gave me a great big smile. I would not say that the lady was a great beauty but her smile if captured in a photo, would beat any billboard supermodel with the real joy and radiance.

Then she had found what she had came to buy and as she was leaving to pay for her purchase at the counter, she waved goodbye and I gave her a “thumbup”.

After all the reading of Keris waving, watching of cow head protesting, listening to “balik ke China” scolding… , it is in meeting people like that Malay Lady that brings such a great ray of hope and such a refreshing  breath of  air.

Behold!

How good and how pleasant it is for brethen to dwell together in unity.

~Psalm 133:1~

In 2011,

You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country.

The fruit of your womb will be blessed, and the crops of your land and the young of your livestock—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.

Your basket and your kneading trough will be blessed.

⁶ You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out.

The LORD will grant that the enemies who rise up against you will be defeated before you. They will come at you from one direction but flee from you in seven.

The LORD will send a blessing on your barns and on everything you put your hand to. The LORD your God will bless you in the land he is giving you.

The LORD will establish you as his holy people, as he promised you on oath, if you keep the commands of the LORD your God and walk in obedience to him. Then all the peoples on earth will see that you are called by the name of the LORD, and they will fear you.  The LORD will grant you abundant prosperity—in the fruit of your womb, the young of your livestock and the crops of your ground—in the land he swore to your ancestors to give you.

The LORD will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands. You will lend to many nations but will borrow from none. The LORD will make you the head, not the tail. If you pay attention to the commands of the LORD your God that I give you this day and carefully follow them, you will always be at the top, never at the bottom.

Amen

Deuteronomy 28；1-13

How do u like it, if we only have less than 5 months to Judgement Day and less than 10 months to the End of the World???
I have just posted New Year Prayer on my Blog, wishing that things will change for the better, praying that the desires of my heart will come true in the new year. I have plans and dreams for 2011.

Then I read on Yahoo! News that a group is believing that 21st May 2011 is Judgement Day and The End of the World on 21st October 2011, 5 months later. The following is the article.

Loose Christian movement says End of Days in May

By TOM BREEN, Associated Press Tom Breen, Associated Press – Mon Jan 3, 3:28 am ET

RALEIGH, N.C. – If there had been time, Marie Exley would have liked to start a family. Instead, the 32-year-old Army veteran has less than six months left, which she’ll spend spreading a stark warning: Judgment Day is almost here.

Exley is part of a movement of Christians loosely organized by radio broadcasts and websites, independent of churches and convinced by their reading of the Bible that the end of the world will begin on May 21, 2011.

To get the word out, they’re using billboards and bus stop benches, traveling caravans of RVs and volunteers passing out pamphlets on street corners. Cities from Bridgeport, Conn., to Little Rock, Ark., now have billboards with the ominous message, and mission groups are traveling in countries from Latin America to Africa to spread the news outside the U.S.

“A lot of people might think, ‘The end’s coming, let’s go party,’” said Exley, a veteran of two deployments in Iraq. “But we’re commanded by God to warn people. I wish I could just be like everybody else, but it’s so much better to know that when the end comes, you’ll be safe.”

In August, Exley left her home in Colorado Springs, Colo., to work with Oakland, Calif.-based Family Radio Worldwide, the independent Christian ministry whose leader, Harold Camping, has calculated the May 21 date based on his reading of the Bible.

She is organizing traveling columns of RVs carrying the message from city to city, a logistics challenge that her military experience has helped solve. The vehicles are scheduled to be in five North Carolina cities between now and the second week of January, but Exley will shortly be gone: overseas, where she hopes to eventually make it back to Iraq.

“I don’t really have plans to come back,” she said. “Time is short.”

Not everyone who’s heard Camping’s message is taking such a dramatic step. They’re remaining in their day-to-day lives, but helping publicize the prophecy in other ways. Allison Warden, of Raleigh, has been helping organize a campaign using billboards, post cards and other media in cities across the U.S. through a website, We Can Know.

The 29-year-old payroll clerk laughs when asked about reactions to the message, which is plastered all over her car.

“It’s definitely against the grain, I know that,” she said. “We’re hoping people won’t take our word for it, or Harold Camping’s word for it. We’re hoping that people will search the scriptures for themselves.”

Camping, 89, believes the Bible essentially functions as a cosmic calendar explaining exactly when various prophecies will be fulfilled.

The retired civil engineer said all his calculations come from close readings of the Bible, but that external events like the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948 are signs confirming the date.

“Beyond the shadow of a doubt, May 21 will be the date of the Rapture and the day of judgment,” he said.

The doctrine known as the Rapture teaches that believers will be taken up to heaven, while everyone else will remain on earth for a period of torment, concluding with the end of time. Camping believes that will happen in October.

“If May 21 passes and I’m still here, that means I wasn’t saved. Does that mean God’s word is inaccurate or untrue? Not at all,” Warden said.

The belief that Christ will return to earth and bring an end to history has been a basic element of Christian belief since the first century. The Book of Revelation, which comes last in the New Testament, describes this conclusion in vivid language that has inspired Christians for centuries.

But few churches are willing to set a date for the end of the world, heeding Jesus’ words in the gospels of Mark and Matthew that no one can know the day or hour it will happen. Predictions like Camping’s, though, aren’t new. One of the most famous in history was by the Baptist leader William Miller, who predicted the end for Oct. 22, 1844, which came to be known as the Great Disappointment among his followers, some of who subsequently founded the Seventh Day Adventist church.

“In the U.S., there is still a significant population, mostly Protestant, who look at the Bible as kind of a puzzle, and the puzzle is God’s word and it’s predicting when the end times will come,” said Catherine Wessinger, a professor at Loyola University in New Orleans who studies millennialism, the belief in pending apocalypse.

“A lot of times these prophecies gain traction when difficulties are happening in society,” she said. “Right now, there’s a lot of insecurity, and this is a promise that says it’s not all random, it’s part of God’s plan.”

Past predictions that failed to come true don’t have any bearing on the current calculation, believers maintain.

“It would be like telling the Wright Brothers that every other attempt to fly has failed, so you shouldn’t even try,” said Chris McCann, who works with eBible Fellowship, one of the groups spreading the message.

For believers like McCann, theirs is actually a message of hope and compassion: God’s compassion for people, and the hope that there’s still time to be saved.

That, ultimately, is what spurs on Exley, who said her beliefs have alienated her from most of her friends and family. Her hope is that not everyone who hears her message will mock it, and that even people who dismiss her now might still come to believe.

“If you still want to say we’re crazy, go ahead,” she said. “But it doesn’t hurt to look into it.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110103/ap_on_re/us_rel_apocalypse_soon

A group of Christians believe that the secret that has been kept all through the ages has finally been revealed. Through the studying of the bible, they believe that 1st May 2011 is Judgement Day and The End of the World on 21st October 2011. Not only are they preparing to the Coming of the Lord, they are also ernestly spreading this urgent message so that the rest of the world will be prepared. The following is their message.

Judgment Day! May 21, 2011
And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man. Revelation 9:5
The End of the World October 21, 2011

The purpose of this tract is to inform you of the great urgency there now is in the world for each and every person to be reconciled to God.  The Bible is the Word of God!  Everything the Bible declares has the full authority of God Himself.  Now, at this time, information is coming forth from the Bible which clearly reveals God’s plan for Judgment Day and the end of the world itself.  The Bible has opened up its secrets concerning the timeline of history.  This information was never previously known because God had closed up His Word blocking any attempt to gain knowledge of the end of the world.  We read about this in the book of Daniel:

Daniel 12:9 And he said, Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end.

However, now in our present day, God has opened up His Word (the Bible) to reveal a great deal of truth concerning the end of time (and many other teachings).  Also, in the same chapter of Daniel, it says:

Daniel 12:4 But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.

God is now opening up His Word because we have arrived at the time of the end.  For this reason, it has become very obvious to the serious student of the Bible that we are now living in the last few days of earth’s history.  As a matter of fact, because we are living at the end of time, God is now revealing to His people the following information:

You can read more on:

http://www.ebiblefellowship.com/may21/index.html

However, before you start to quit your job, sell your house and car, give every cent you owe to the charity and move to the caves believing that we only have 5 months to live, I would like to remind you of Jesus said about the End of Age:

Matt. 24:36,  “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

That means that nobody, absolutely nobody knows, not even Jesus Himself knows the day or the hour of the Judgement Day or the End of World.

People who study the bible and are watchful may know the season which means one can discern that the Day is near but no one knows the exact day. Having said that, I am not about to resign from my job and prepare for the Judgement Day on 21 May 2011 nor the End of the World.

However, I do want to clarify, that I may not prepare for it to be on 21 May or 21 October, I would prepare to face my Lord on Judgement Day for I do believe that there is a day of Reckoning.

Even though it may not be on 21 May 2011, there is going to be a Judgement Day. We can’t just live as we please like it is never going to come or that there isn’t going to be one.

So for a moment, may be we should pause and ponder, if we really only have 5 months to live,

What sins are we to repent?

What affairs of our are we to put right?

What things are we to do before time runs out?

Who are we to see?

Who are we to reconcile with?

Who are we to spend more time with?

Who are we to say, “I love you.” to?

. . . ?

What would we live our lives in the 5 monthsof our lives?

21 May 2011, may not be the day but the day will definitely come.

Are we ready for it?

Believe while others are doubting.

Plan while others are playing.

Study while others are sleeping.

Decide while others are delaying.

Prepare while others are daydreaming.

Begin while others are procrastinating.

Work while others are wishing.

Save while others are wasting.

Listen while others are talking.

Smile while others are frowning.

Commend while others are criticizing.

Persist while others are quitting.

~William Arthur Ward~

“Lord, may my life be so. Amen.”

This is a follow up article of the Tales of 2 Rapists, my previous post. Malaysia is one country that I know where serioius allegations are met with silence, silence from the accused, silence from the police and the people who are supposed to protect and look after the welfare of our country. There have been too many, too many of such for the comfort of my mind.

The silence is deafening….

The people of Malaysia, the blood of the victims are crying out for justice. May our conscience be awaken and not keep silent when there is injustice right before our eyes.

I don’t see myself as an activist for rape victims but when I read the 2 articles in 2 days, it made a deep impression, it wears down heavily on my heart. For Malaysia is my country. If there is a crime committed then the culprit should be brought to justice, especially when it is a case of a rich and powerful vs the poor and helpless.

Below is an article taken from The Malaysian Insider.

JAN 2 — This must be the only country in the world where serious allegations of rape perpetrated by a Cabinet minister is met with silence (or elegant silence, since the rape allegedly happened during the Abdullah administration).

To recap, a week ago several bloggers alleged that a current minister raped his Indonesian maid while serving in the Abdullah administration in 2007. Apparently, then prime minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi covered up the crime and the minister continued his life unmolested.

Heck, he was not dropped from the Cabinet or cold-storaged. The maid who was allegedly raped, however, was sent home and her claims only came up in a report by Migrant Care, Indonesia’s migrant workers group.

Is there any truth to these allegations? Who knows? There has been absolutely nothing in either comment or denial from the minister (who has been identified by some bloggers).

The Migrant Care report on the matter is also circulating in cyberspace, with some lines blacked out although some have managed to use software tools to uncover the minister’s name.

The police, famously aggressive in breaking up peaceful assemblies and such, have not made any comment.

Silence has also been deafening from the Najib administration. It probably does not want any of the mud from this incident to find its way to this administration.

But what of Abdullah? He has seen fit to comment on everything from PKR’s troubles to the attendance of a DAP MP at an aerobic session at the grounds of a mosque.

But on this very, very serious allegation of concealing a crime, he has maintained an “elegant silence”.

Malaysians should not tolerate this silence. The minister or Abdullah has to address this allegation. The man who used to think of himself as Mr Clean should come clean.

If either he or the minister accused of rape has been wronged, they can sue the bloggers for defamation. They can even go the whole nine yards and try for criminal defamation, as was done in a case taken up against blogger Raja Petra Kamarudin.

But if the rape did take place and there was a cover-up, then the minister should be charged with rape and Abdullah should have to answer for concealing the crime.

Unless, of course, the police and authorities are telling us in a subtle way that Umno ministers are above the law.

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/breakingviews/article/elegant-silence-on-rape-claim-the-malaysian-insider/

I would like to wish everyone a Very Happy New Year.

Here I would like to share ABBA’s New Year Song with you.

“Happy New Year”

by ABBA

No more champagne
And the fireworks are through
Here we are, me and you
Feeling lost and feeling blue
It’s the end of the party
And the morning seems so grey
So unlike yesterday
Now’s the time for us to say…

Happy new year
Happy new year
May we all have a vision now and then
Of a world where every neighbour is a friend
Happy new year
Happy new year
May we all have our hopes, our will to try
If we don’t we might as well lay down and die
You and I

Sometimes I see
How the brave new world arrives
And I see how it thrives
In the ashes of our lives
Oh yes, man is a fool
And he thinks he’ll be okay
Dragging on, feet of clay
Never knowing he’s astray
Keeps on going anyway…

Happy new year
Happy new year
May we all have a vision now and then
Of a world where every neighbour is a friend
Happy new year
Happy new year
May we all have our hopes, our will to try
If we don’t we might as well lay down and die
You and I

Seems to me now
That the dreams we had before
Are all dead, nothing more
Than confetti on the floor
It’s the end of a decade
In another ten years time
Who can say what we’ll find
What lies waiting down the line
In the end of eighty-nine…

Happy new year
Happy new year
May we all have a vision now and then
Of a world where every neighbour is a friend
Happy new year
Happy new year
May we all have our hopes, our will to try
If we don’t we might as well lay down and die
You and I

Yesterday, as usual I read the news online and came across this article, “Umno ‘rapist’ in Cabinet: In the name of justice, form a public probe in Malaysia Chronicle.

Today, I read in Yahoo News, Disgraced ex-Israeli president convicted of rape.

I pray that one day, one day all those “rich and powerful” rapists who are “protected” be brought to justice in Malaysia.

31 December 2010 @ Yahoo! News
Disgraced ex-Israeli president convicted of rape

30 December 2010 @ Malaysia Chronicle

Umno ‘rapist’ in Cabinet: In the name of justice, form a public probe

Written by  Mariam Mokhtar, Malaysia Chronicle

I have read that Christmas trees are now called Holiday trees so as not to offend the muslims. I have read that Christian Apps are removed from by Apple as they are offensive to certain groups. At time like these, it is great to hear from some right minded people.

Thank you Esther for forwarding this email to me.

The following was written by Ben Stein and recited by him on CBS Sunday  Morning  Commentary.

My confession:

I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish.  And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees, Christmas trees.  I don’t feel threatened.  I don’t feel discriminated against. That’s what they are, Christmas trees.

It doesn’t bother me a bit when people say, ‘Merry Christmas’ to me.  I don’t think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto.  In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn’t bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu .  If people want a creche, it’s just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don’t like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don’t think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians.  I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period.  I have no idea where the concept came from, that America is an explicitly atheist country.  I can’t find it in the Constitution and I don’t like it being shoved down my throat.

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship celebrities and we aren’t allowed to worship God as we understand Him?  I guess that’s a sign that I’m getting old, too.  But there are a lot of us who are wondering where these celebrities came from and where the America we knew went to.

In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different:  This is not intended to be a joke; it’s not funny, it’s intended to get you thinking.

Billy Graham’s daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her ‘How could God let something like this happen?’ (regarding Hurricane Katrina)..  Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response.  She said, ‘I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we’ve been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives.  And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out.  How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?’

In light of recent events… terrorists attack, school shootings, etc.  I think it started when Madeleine Murray O’Hare (she was murdered, her body found a few years ago) complained she didn’t want prayer in our schools, and we said OK.  Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school.  The Bible says thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself.  And we said OK.

Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn’t spank our children when they misbehave, because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock’s son committed suicide).  We said an expert should know what he’s talking about.  And we said okay.

Now we’re asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don’t know right from wrong, and why it doesn’t bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out.  I think it has a great deal to do with ‘WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.’

Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world’s going to hell.  Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says.  Funny how you can send ‘jokes’ through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing.  Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.

Are you laughing yet?

Funny how when you forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you’re not sure what they believe, or what they will think of you for sending it.

Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.

Pass it on if you think it has merit.

If not, then just discard it…. no one will know you did.  But, if you discard this thought process, don’t sit back and complain about what bad shape the world is in.

My Best Regards,  Honestly and respectfully,

Ben Stein

About Ben Stein

Benjamin Jeremy “Ben” Stein (born November 25, 1944) is an American actor, writer, author, lawyer, and commentator on political and economic issues. He attained early success as a speechwriter for American presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Later he entered the entertainment field and became an actor, comedian, and Emmy Award-winning game show host.

Stein has frequently written commentaries on economic, political, and social issues, along with financial advice to individual investors.

A friend emailed this test paper to me. After looking through this 8th grade test paper, I sweat -_-” because I will definitelly fail the exam even though I have a Bachelor’s degree to my name and have considered myself to be an English teacher. In this paper, I can only score in the Arithmetic section and won’t be able to get full marks for the section at that. As for the rest, I don’t even know some of the terms used in Orthography Section much less answer the question. By the way, 8th grade is the final year of Elementary School, the year before High School.

THIS IS UNBELIEVABLE!!!!
—————————————————-
1895 8th grade final exam

What it took to get an 8th grade education in 1895…

Remember when grandparents and great-grandparents stated that they only had an 8th grade education? Well, check this out. Could any of us have passed the 8th grade in 1895?

This is the eighth-grade final exam from 1895 in Salina , Kansas , USA .. It was taken from the original document on file at the Smokey Valley Genealogical Society and Library in Salina , and reprinted by the Salina Journal..