Life is always beautiful when we get to share melting moments with our loved ones.
Tonight, once again my family and I dined with Jackson's family. He is on a full scholarship and finishing his second year in Business Administration in Tamkang University in Taipeh and for the record, is tops in his English and Economics classes. :-) I wrote about Jackson and his family in the blog post called Is it possible to have lasting friendship?
Last week, my family treated his family for dinner and tonight it was their treat before he returns to Taiwan. We dined at Feringghi Garden in Batu Feringghi.
Jackson's family and yours truly...We had such a wonderful time together reminiscing and wondering where we would be in the years to come....
Here we are - my dear beloved ever patient, tolerant husband and yours truly looking much broader after a lovely dinner.
My two heroes and I standing outside another dining area of the restaurant. The dishes came in such large portions that there was simply no space left for desert!
Por Por enjoyed the Thai Green Curry and condiments that came along with the dish.
Jackson enjoyed his Chicken and Steak Combo.
Nick, as usual, went for Grilled Salmon Steak...
My other half had baked red snapper and crab.
I had Cheesy Sambal Red Snapper - an interesting combination.
Jackson's mom had Teriyaki Salmon Steak.
To be honest, I put on a bit of weight since Chinese New Year but managed to shed one third of it. My diet will start again after I have lunch tomorrow with another two former students who are studying Engineering at University of Melbourne. At this rate, I hope I can still see my toes by the end of this month!!!
I know I am greatly blessed to have such people in my life who accept me - lock, stock and barrel - who can see and forgive my weaknesses and yet love me...that is love in unspoken words and I just want to dedicate this song to Jackson, who is like another son to me, and his very loving family ...Thanks for the unforgettable dinner but more importantly, thanks for being a real friend to me for the past 13 years and for allowing me to teach, guide and nurture you. I have been greatly blessed by the exchange for I have learnt precious lessons from you and your wonderful family!!!!! See you again when you are back for your next term break. I am very proud of you, young man!!! And we will all miss you!!!!
*teardrops*
by Todd Hicks
Love is one of the most essential components of life. All human beings and animals need it to feel important, be healthy, live for a long time and thrive. To enjoy an existence comprised of love, you must earn love and often show strangers, your relatives, your pets and your friends you love and appreciate them. You will learn how to express your love to others and receive love from them.
One easy thing you can do to receive love is to buy a cat or dog. Pets are loyal and they love you, especially if you treat them properly. To show your pet you love it and make your life more satisfying, bond with your pet by petting it. You can even hug and kiss your dog or cat as long as it does not mind it. This bonding will make both of you happier and healthier.
There are better gestures to use to express and receive love than a fist bump, hand shake or “high five”. Hug as many people as you can. If you are married, kiss your spouse at least once a day. When the two of you are in private, it is okay to have a good embrace and kiss for more than a few seconds.
Maintain the right attitude around others. Smile and laugh. If you avoid frowning and looking sad, you will show others you care about making things pleasant for them and improve your chances of receiving love.
We tend to be recipients of what we give. To earn love, you must show others love and respect. Treating everyone with respect and compassion can go a long way for you in regard to being loved and expressing love.
Spend quality time with your family, pets and friends. Play games and do other things you each enjoy together. Wrestle and run around with them. By doing these things, you will show the people in your life that they mean a lot to you while developing and maintaining a strong relationship.
Show affection and be affectionate. Rub and tickle your pet’s belly. Let your pet lick your face. Tickle your kids and siblings. Say to your friends, “I love you like a brother or sister.”
What else can you do to express and receive love? Express appreciation to the people in your life by thanking them for what they do for you, themselves and others. Let them know when they are doing a good job. Compliment them on the good things they do and wear.
Make people you do not know feel better when you encounter them. Smile at them and return their smiles – you just might gain a friend doing this.
To express and receive love, avoid becoming furious and going into a tantrum around others. Being a hothead can turn others off.
Show your friends and relatives you care about them by having empathy toward their feelings. When they look sad, ask, “What’s wrong?”
Employ these ideas to express love and receive more of it!
Author's Bio
Todd Hicks owns Skill Development Institute, an enterprise that provides a keyboard typing lesson and academic study guide. To become a great typist or student, visit Skill Development Institute.
This is one of my favorite collection of quotable quotes which was also posted at my other blog at Masterwordsmith@Writers.Inc. earlier today. Enjoy....
1. 1. If time doesn’t wait for you, don’t worry! Just remove the damn battery from the clock and enjoy life!
2. Expecting the world to treat u fairly coz u r a good person is like expecting the lion not to attack u coz u r a vegetarian. Think about it.
3. Beauty isn’t measured by outer appearance and what clothes we wear, but what we are inside. So, try going out without clothes tomorrow and see the admiration!
4. Don’t walk as if you rule the world, walk as if you don’t care who rules the world! That’s called Attitude…! Keep on rocking!
5. Every lady hopes that her daughter will marry a better man than she did and is convinced that her son will never find a wife as good as his father did!!!
6. He was a good man. He never smoked, drank & had no affair. When he died, the insurance company refused the claim. They said, he who never lived, cannot die!
7. A man threw his wife in a pond of Crocodiles. He’s now being harassed by the Animal Rights Activists for being cruel to the Crocodiles!
8. So many options for suicide: Poison, sleeping pills, hanging, jumping from a building, lying on train tracks, but we chose Marriage, slow & sure!
9. All desirable things in life are either illegal, banned, expensive or married to someone else!
10. Laziness is our biggest enemy- Jawaharlal Nehru
We should learn to love our enemies- Mahatma Gandhi
11. 10% of road accidents are due to drunken driving. Which makes it a logical statement that 90% of accidents are due to driving without drinking
-AUTHOR UNKNOWN-
Art was the only subject that I failed in school. Unbelievable right? Since my kindergarten days, I dreaded art sessions. When I progressed to primary school, things got worse as my skills did not improve. By the time I was in secondary school, I was always filled with dismay on the day that I had art lessons. The fact that most of my cohorts were brilliant in artistic skills exacerbated matters and my inferiority complex worsened. My works succeeded in entertaining them and while I laughed it off, deep inside, I felt miserable and most ashamed of myself.
In upper secondary school, I did not have art lessons any more as I was in the science stream and I thought I would be deeply relieved BUT ironically, the artistic side of me was awakened. The yearning to draw and to be able to paint -not for any artistic reason but as an expression of my reaction to what I saw, was no longer latent. During my sixth form years, most of my close friends took art and I used to marvel at their works and different aspects of art that they learnt. In university, I took a couple of papers from the Fine Arts faculty including Islamic Art where I studied Islamic calligraphy and Islamic architecture. By that time, I resolved to take Art lessons to get rid of my hangups. I did try my hand at Chinese brush painting but being illiterate in Mandarin was a serious handicap and I dropped out of the course, much to my regret today, as the instructor was indeed a fantastic teacher and celebrated expert in his field.
When my older boy was four, I started sending him to art lessons for I was determined that my kids must develop their artistic side. His teacher was willing to teach me but the thought of sitting together with other kids and worse still, my own son, really put me off. Again, I procrastinated.
One fine day, an old friend called me up and asked me to join him in an art course conducted by a renowned artist cum retired teacher, Tan Lye Hoe.
The rest of the students were in their late teens or early twenties and it was quite disconcerting to hear them calling me "Auntie" this and that...It is not so much the age that mattered but warning bells rang as I knew that their skills would be better than mine.
As a former teacher/lecturer, I expected to be taught in a most methodical fashion as to how to sketch etc. To my surprise, Mr. Tan took me on a soul searching journey. He taught me how to see objects and people differently and challenged me to put aside my pre-conceived and mechanical ideas of approaching art. Stunned, I could not even sketch a line.
The whole experience reminded me of episodes when students in my classes just stared at the piece of paper before them during a class test, an exam or even just some class work. Then he dropped a bombshell when he said something to me that pierced my heart and soul and made me look at life, art and teaching so differently that till this day, I still remember his words that seem to resonate in my brain now :
"Every mark that you make with your pencil on that piece of art block paper is a commitment that you dare to express from what you see before you. Do not let your inner fears inhibit you from leaving your mark on that paper. Relax! Do not be afraid of making mistakes as you appreciate the form and shape of the subject. Just let yourself go and start drawing.."
With that, he walked away and left me staring at the paper. Initially, I was dumbfounded by what he said but the stark realization of the truth of his words dawned on me and slowly but surely, I started working on my first piece - a sketch of an old red brick. I spent hours and hours and wasted many pieces of art block paper while trying to recall and to apply what he taught us in the class about cross hatching, shading and how to see the source of light. Finally, I was quite satisfied with what I regarded as a fairly good job (or so I thought!).
I gasped during the next lesson as the other students handed up brilliant pieces of work and I could see the approving nods from Mr. Tan as he studied each piece. Needless to say, I was MOST reluctant to hand up mine which paled in comparison; in fact, I wish it would self-destruct in Mission Impossible style. See for yourself in the following photograph.
To this day, I still remember he said something like this: "It looks more like Swiss cheese because the texture is wrong and the source of light is also wrong....etc etc."Wow!
I almost cried in class. Strange huh? And why so? Simple. The whole experience made me realize how my students felt when I made comments about their works. Empathy filled my soul and from then, I believe there was a breakthrough in the way I related to my students. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why many of my former students still keep in touch with me...Of course I am not saying that the teacher did wrong. Nope. Mr. Tan is a brilliant teacher and he released within me a certain side of me which was predominantly dormant. I accepted his comments and worked even harder, especially with all the competition around me!!!
Yet, I fared quite badly in the next assignment where I had to sketch pots. The idea was to see things in different geometric forms.
I did get the shapes but somehow, the lighting was not quite right and most definitely, the texture of the pots was wrong. Although I did improve in certain aspects, I still had a long way to go...The course became more difficult and I had to grapple with the challenges posed by each task. The next one was on shells and the fruit of my labor was MOST disastrous as you can see below. It is supposed to be a sketch of a seashell but till this day, it appears like some mutated alien form. *sigh*
When Mr. Tan revealed the subject of the next assignment, I nearly died from shock. It was none other than a plain and simple withered leaf. I went through a catharsis of emotions when undertaking the task and had to come face to face with many of my fears, feelings of inadequacy, lack of confidence etc...You must understand that by then, ALL the other students but me were excelling....Yet, I plodded on. I told myself that no matter how badly I drew, it is MUCH better than what I USED to draw years ago....After many attempts, this is what I produced:
Please do not misunderstand me. I am not showing off these poor works of art. The point I am trying to make is that we may feel that we are inadequate in a particular field but we have a choice of whether to feed that fear and hangup or to release it and to replace it with something else.For me, I was the worst student in the class but it did not matter. What mattered to me then and now is that it changed my perspective of art and how I dealt with my inadequacies and inhibitions. It revolutionized the way I taught my classes and helped me to see how students felt when they expressed their difficulties in a particular task. I could relate to them and could more effectively encourage and motivate them to do better, if only they would just try ...And today, I have greater appreciation for the fine arts and can draw better than what I used to do in my younger days. To me, one of the greatest barriers to learning is ourselves..Thank you, Mr. Tan Lye Hoe for all that you have done for me...
At John Dewey's lecture series at Harvard in 1932 which has become one of the seminal works of aesthetic theory, he said this:
"For to perceive, a beholder must create his own experience. And his creation must include relations comparable to those which the original producer underwent....Without an act of recreation the object is not perceived as a work of art."
And a longer quote that, to me, describes the ideal nature of arts management—an ability to foster and channel the energy of creative expression without dispersing its strength, and without devolving into crisis management:
“A surgeon, golfer, ball player, as well as a dancer, painter, or violin-player has at hand and under command certain motor sets of the body. Without them, no complex skilled act can be performed. An inexpert huntsman has buck fever when he suddenly comes upon the game he has been pursuing. He does not have effective lines of motor response ready and waiting. His tendencies to action therefore conflict and get in the way of one another, and the result is confusion, a whirl and blur. The old hand at the game may be emotionally stirred also. But he works off his emotion by directing his response along channels prepared in advance: steady holding of eye and hand, sighting of rifle, etc. If we substitute a painter or a poet in the circumstances of suddenly coming upon a graceful deer in a green and sun-specked forest, there is also diversion of immediate response into collateral channels. He does not get ready to shoot, but neither does he permit his response to diffuse itself at random throughout his whole body. The motor coordinations that are ready because of prior experience at once render his perception of the situation more acute and intense and incorporate into it meanings that give it depth, while they also cause what is seen to fall into fitting rhythms.” (pp. 97–98)
(Source : Arts journal)
Personally, it was well worth the soul searching journey...and dear reader, may you too find yourself in the little things you do....
Have a nice day! God bless you!
by Lisa Gawlas
Our soul journey into the physical is to re-member who we are. That’s it! This is the big mystery of life (smile). As we move through this crazy little thing we call life, every person, every experience, every breath is there to help you re-member who you are and who you want to be. Even the most unconscious person is going through this process—everyone is.
We attract, into our Oneness of being, people who will help us understand ourselves more intimately. When that other person enters our realm of existence, a wonderful, chemical change starts to happen within us. Within that chemical change, we start the process referred to as “falling in love” and what a fall it is!
Those “others”, who will help us to re-member who we are and what we are capable of, are also going through that internal change as well. They, too, are seeking the same thing—to know themselves through this impending union of souls. Each breath you take together brings you into an even greater expansion of who you are both individually and collectively (since we are not separate to begin with). The more you learn of who you are via the “other person”, the more you want to know about yourself (and visa versa) and this goes on forever.
When two people come together and are continually learning, expanding, and seeking in that Oneness of each other, the moments never fade. The moments together become grander and a deeper awareness of the soul is revealed in each expanded breath together.
When one person stops growing and does not wish to seek further, the chemical reaction that created this Holy Union starts to change. This chemical reaction of the intense learning together was put to a halt and so the counterpart will react to that change chemically and unconsciously. The expanded energy fields of the Oneness (two people in a relationship) start to disconnect as one retracts to the point that the other can no longer feel their Oneness within the union in which the relationship started. The “in-love” feeling fades then ceases.
As this once intense chemical interaction retreats from every cell of the body and mind, the partner who is still wishing to know his/herself fully starts sending out signals to the next person who will help them further realize their Oneness. These highly charged signals can reach far across the globe. The human has no idea where their next soul mate is living, but the soul itself does, and will be sure to have the two unite no matter where in the world they live.
This is not to be looked at as right/wrong or good/bad—it simply is. Perhaps the only way one can truly experience oneself fully in re-membering who one really is would be with another and the first relationship has gone as far as it could go.
We try and live in such a restricted world and become entangled in the misguided teachings that love is forever (which it is spiritually, but very rarely a human trait). The experience of Self-realization is an ongoing process, and will always seek a higher union with Self. ~
Author's Bio
My name is Lisa Gawlas (It was Parkhurst until I got married). I am 46 years young with three children aged 25 thru 18 and am happily divorced. I was born and raised in the valley of the Pocono Mountains - Wilkes-Barre PA, and now live in Newport News, VA.
I have made it my life's goal to teach all I can about this magical and wonderful world of Spiritual Beings incarnating as Humans (you and me). I also publish a bi-monthly magazine called "The Wonder of You."
