09.20.06
Set aside preferred parking for disabled
I READ with dismay about a new parking system which was recently introduced by a shopping mall that offered VIP parking spaces for certain credit cards holders.
The rich can now park their luxury cars at this special car park, which is nearer to the entrance. Not having to park their cars in the “public” car park means they can worry less about the sort of crimes reported to have happened in such places.
The rich have comfortable rides to the mall and with one swipe of a card their safety is assured. Come rain or shine, they only need to walk a short distance to the entrance of the mall.
If shopping malls have extra space near their entrance that can be converted to parking spaces, wouldn’t it be better to reserve it for the disabled, pregnant women and the elderly?
localview
20/09/06 @ Opinion :Thestar.com.my
09.14.06
Of Sincerity and Wedding Vows
Ever since our wedding was featured in a local bridal magazine, doors have been opened for me to participate more actively in the wedding scene in Malaysia. I have been receiving the strangest request too, including a request to write a wedding vow!
How strange, I thought. If there were many vows that a person would make in his or her life, there will be only one vow which you can only make once – and that would be your wedding vow. It would be the most sincere thing that you would say to the person that you want to spend the rest of your life with. That would be your vow to the person whom you will wake up to every morning. And that would be a vow that will keep you together – happily married, as it was meant to be.
Looking back to our very own wedding, I had started drafting my vow even the week after he proposed to me! I wanted it to be meaningful and beautiful. We had planned to exchanged our vows during our garden reception, but we eventually changed the plan. We finally exchanged our vows at the only place which we thought was worthy of such event – in the church where I grew up.
My vow actually didn’t turn out as beautiful as I wanted it to be, but I am sure that I was being true to myself. And I am glad that I did so.
So to my dear friend whose name I can’t reveal here, I can’t really write your wedding vow on behalf of you. It has to be one thing that you have to write for yourself. It doesn’t need to be beautiful, but being truthful would be the best thing to do. And I know you can do it. And I will be there listening to you when you exhange your vow with him.
It would be beautiful, no matter what you say, because sincerity shines through even the lousiest speech ..
09.12.06
Save the innocent babies!
I READ about a teenage girl who tried to flush her newborn baby down the hospital toilet in the newspaper yesterday. The underaged girl somehow managed to keep her pregnancy secret from her parents through the nine months. And last night she complained about a diarrhoea and her mother sent her to a hospital at 2.00am. The caring mother also rushed to check on her after she was in the hospital toilet for more than an hour.
What is missing from this picture? I saw a caring mother who rushed her daughter to hospital at 2.00am. I also saw a teenage girl who is too afraid to let her parents know about her pregnancy. It is also possible that she had such strict parents that she knew that breaking the news to them would do more harm than good. She probably also realised that the society would never accept her baby into this world. She murdered her baby to save herself and the baby.
This innocent baby is a victim of our unforgiving society. Our religions and cultural values taught us that pre-marital sex is a sin. Pregnancies out of wedlock is wrong. But we are also taught to forgive each other. And most values teach us that everyone deserve a second chance. We are not here to encourage pre-marital sex, but we are also here to guide those who has committed these sins to repent, and to accept them when they have turned over a new leaf. And to give the innocent babies a chance to see the world.
We see many single unmarried mothers who raised their children successfully in other countries. These children deserved the chance of survival, and to live the life that God has granted them, be it with or without a father.
But our society in general cannot accept this. We are too quick to judge, and this fact create such a fear in these pregnant teenagers to get rid of their babies in any ways that they could. Flushing them down the toilets, or abandoning the newborn babies at the dumpsters to be eaten by the stray dogs. These innocent babies became the victim of a society who have rejected them even before they were born.
If only we could be more forgiving and speak about sex to our children more openly, we may be able save many of these innocent babies. We could stop cruelty to babies by accepting them into this world.
Teenagers with pre-marital sex probably deserves punishment, but innocent babies definitely deserves survival.
Think about it.
09.11.06
ROCK4HOPE in Retrospective
This post is written with no intention to harm and without prejudice.
The ROCK4HOPE Charity Rock Concert for Yvonne Foong took place as planned last Saturday. Everything was great, except for the scarcity of the audience. The entire event + the preparation prior to the event was truly a great lesson for me. Learnt a lot – including the fact that the Bohemian Rhapsody sounded so much better when you listen to it live! Not from Metallica though, but from the acclaimed Deja Voodoo Spells. They are great!
Though I was not in the actually committee for the event, I could say that much that I have done to help only end up in dissappointment.
And here are some of them ..
* Nel from Astro Infozone (for Hitz.fm and Mix.fm) told me that they could not list the charity event on their Infozone announcement listing, merely because the “scope” was too small. The concert was only meant to raise fund for ONE person, and they can’t accept a scope as “insignificant” as that. Since when did saving one’s life is “insignificant”? There’s always a problem in our society – an event to raise fund for one person is insignificant, but a seminar on ‘how to make money’ is significant enough to be announced 3 times a day over the radio.
* An 8TV consultant spoke to me and assuring me that they will contact me and Yvonne on promoting the concert over the Quickie show. We even discussed about free-ticket-giveaways to callers who called in during the show. I was all excited for the meeting with the ever-beautiful Marion Counter and Adam C, but then we waited and waited and we never receive the call. And our subsequent calls to them were simply not answered. Oh well, maybe something happened on the way to Heaven ..
* I faxed the press release to The Star and they gladly listed in on their Metro Diary for only ONE day, and it was not even on the day of the event, it was about 3 weeks before. But maybe it helped. I received the next phone call from one of The Star reporter requesting me for Yvonne’s photo. She said that to highlight the event on the day itself, they would like to put up her photo in the middle of the Metro Diary, so that it would get more attention. Well, we thought it was great idea, and we gladly sent her the photo. And on 9th Sept, I opened the paper the first thing in the morning and saw the picture of Multimedia University MMU on the page, instead of Yvonne’s photo.
* We sold only 16 tickets to our friends. Including the tickets for me and my spouse, that would be 18 tickets. Many promised that they would turn up and purchase the tickets on the day itself, but none that we knew actually turned up.
In retrospective, I think most dissappointment were lead by false hope. We get dissappointed when others did not keep their words.
We also saw how only the needy would understand the needy.
* My cousin who earns 5 digit a month would not even buy one ticket.
* A friend who is in the progress of raising fund for his own father’s surgery – bought 5 tickets.
* I saw how most of those who came to the concert also supported Yvonne’s Heart4Hope products – some wanted to buy 2 t-shirts but they had only RM30. Some wanted both the earrings and the book but had to settle for only one of the two because they did not have much cash in their wallet.
It’s true how only the needy understand the needy. I remembered our little observation trip to Paris last year. We were warned about the pick-pockets who were mostly blacks. And we were warned that the riots around the suburbs of Paris were mostly committed by blacks. But when we arrived there lost in our limited vocabulary in French, the black teenagers showed us the way to our hotel. And as we walked along the backstreets of the city, we saw blacks giving food to the white beggars. How ironic. Paris was an eye opener for us as we saw the worst in ourselves -we are just hypocrites in our very own way.
So there goes the retrospective or post-mortem for the concert. The next charity concert that I’ll be attending would be the Heart to Heart Charity Concert for the Desa Amal Jireh, to be held near my workplace at Bukit Jalil Stadium, we will see Daniel Lee (i voted for him, and am convinced that it was my winning vote that made him win!), Jaclyn Victor and Misha Omar. I am not sure if this concert would see a bigger turnout. We shall see …
