Read this; I think her speech is great :)

Wisdom from Lee Kuan Yew's Daughter

By Lee Wei Ling

My house is shabby, but it is comfortable There is no end to wanting - after the Ferrari and the Birkin bag, what next?

In 2007, in an end-of-year message to the staff of the National Neuroscience Institute, I wrote: 'Whilst boom time in the public sector is never as booming as in the private sector, let us not forget that boom time is eventually followed by slump time. Slump time in the public sector is always less painful compared to the private sector.' Slump time has arrived with a bang.

While I worry about the poorer Singaporeans who will be hit hard, perhaps this recession has come at an opportune time for many of us. It will give us an incentive to reconsider our priorities in life.

Decades of the good life have made us soft. The wealthy especially, but also the middle class in Singapore, have had it so good for so long, what they once considered luxuries, they now think of as necessities. A mobile phone, for instance, is now a statement about who you are, not just a piece of equipment for communication. Hence many people buy the latest model though their existing mobile phones are still in perfect working order. A Mercedes-Benz is no longer adequate as a status symbol.

For millionaires who wish to show the world they have taste, a Ferrari or a Porsche is deemed more appropriate? The same attitude influences the choice of attire and accessories. I still find it hard to believe that there are people carrying handbags that cost more than thrice the monthly income of a bus driver, and many more times that of the foreign worker labouring in the hot sun, risking his life to construct luxury condominiums he will never have a chance to live in.

The media encourages and amplifies this ostentatious consumption. Perhaps it is good to encourage people to spend more because this will prevent the recession from getting worse. I am not an economist, but wasn't that the root cause of the current crisis - Americans spending more than they could afford to? I am not a particularly spiritual person. I don't believe in the supernatural and I don't think I have a soul that will survive my death.

But as I view the crass materialism around me, I am reminded of what my mother once told me: 'Suffering and deprivation is good for the soul.' My family is not poor, but we have been brought up to be frugal. My parents and I live in the same house that my paternal grandparents and their children moved into after World War II in 1945. It is a big house by today's standards, but it is simple - in fact, almost to the point of being shabby.

Those who see it for the first time are astonished that Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew's home is so humble. But it is a comfortable house, a home we have got used to. Though it does look shabby compared to the new mansions on our street, we are not bothered by the comparison? Most of the world and much of Singapore will lament the economic downturn. We have been told to tighten our belts.

There will undoubtedly be suffering, which we must try our best to ameliorate. But I personally think the hard times will hold a timely lesson for many Singaporeans, especially those born after 1970 who have never lived through difficult times.

No matter ho w poor you are in Singapore , the authorities and social groups do try to ensure you have shelter and food. Nobody starves in Singapore. Many of those who are currently living in mansions and enjoying a luxurious lifestyle will probably still be able to do so, even if they might have to downgrade from wines costing $20,000 a bottle to $10,000 a bottle. They would hardly notice the difference.

Being wealthy is not a sin. It cannot be in a capitalist market economy. Enjoying the fruits of one's own labour is one's prerogative and I have no right to chastise those who choose to live luxuriously. But if one is blinded by materialism, there would be no end to wanting and hankering. After the Ferrari, what next? An Aston Martin? After the Hermes Birkin handbag, what can one upgrade to? Neither an Aston Martin nor an Hermes Birkin can make us truly happy or contented. They are like dust, a fog obscuring the true meaning of life, and can be blown away in the twinkling of an eye?

When the end approaches and we look back on our lives, will we regret the latest mobile phone or luxury car that we did not acquire? Or would we prefer to die at peace with ourselves, knowing that we have lived lives filled with love, friendship and goodwill, that we have helped some of our fellow voyagers along the way and that we have tried our best to leave this world a slightly better place than how we found it?

We know which is the correct choice - and it is within our power to make that choice. In this new year, burdened as it is with the problems of the year that has just ended, let us again try to choose wisely. To a considerable degree, our happiness is within our own control, and we should not follow the herd blindly?

The writer is director of the National Neuroscience Institute

Labels: Articles

Recently, a friend of mine randomly said this.

he says:
u so high sia..
_ning`- ______infinity]- says:
?
_ning`- ______infinity]- says:
high?
he says:
so many events
_ning`- ______infinity]- says:
lol
_ning`- ______infinity]- says:
like that i wont bored mah
_ning`- ______infinity]- says:
make full use of my time
_ning`- ______infinity]- says:
better den slacking at hme do nth right?
_ning`- ______infinity]- says:
lol
he says:
rest rest also can ah..
he says:
haha..
he says:
go get a bf la..
he says:
hehheh

verdict: As if all e potential bf material guys drop from the sky everyday. hahahahahh. i'll take my time :)

oh ya, i chanced upon this article today on O, The Oprah Magazine, which i truly felt that it's very reality. sharing it with all of you.


"Can't We Be Friends?"
By Michael Vincent Miller, PhD

Breaking up is hard to do, but trying to go from romantic to platonic—
which sounds like a sweet idea—only adds to the pain.

A young man I know, still in love with his girlfriend, tried to go along with her plea to remain friends after she told him that she wanted the freedom to see other men.
A couple of months later, she invited him to her birthday party.
In the course of the evening, while searching for a bathroom, he saw her through an open bedroom door passionately kissing another man.
Feeling deeply hurt and angry, he later confronted her, whereupon she retorted, "But we said we'd be friends."
The girlfriend's response seems lacking in empathy and concern—traits we usually associate with friendship—but one wonders whether the young man wasn't setting himself up for a fall in the first place.

Can't we be friends? It's an old refrain, ready-made for the one who wants out of a relationship to deliver to the one who doesn't.
Frank Sinatra gave it a permanent place in popular culture with the song "Can't We Be Friends?" (This is how the story ends / She's gonna turn me down and say / Can't we be just friends?) Sinatra, who never backed away from melancholy (at least in his music), understood a thing or two about mourning.

And mourning is the theme that matters here. Trying to be friends immediately following a breakup tends to prevent the rejected partner (and maybe both partners) from mourning the death of romantic love—from accepting its finality by suffering it all the way through.
As painful as this can be, it ultimately performs an essential function.

Behind the tears, mourning has silent work to do: It binds up the torn places where love was and gives them a chance to heal.
This is crucial, because falling in love carries us beyond our customary limits of self-expression into territory that puts our sense of self at risk.

Two people in love place much of themselves in each other's hands for safekeeping; that kind of interdependence is why the loss of an intimate partner entails the depressing experience of being left behind with a diminished sense of your own existence.
Grieving the end of a relationship is a gradual process of extracting the "I" from a vanishing "we."
It provides a way—the only way—to retrieve what you invested in a lover or spouse who has departed.
Mourning is like casting a line into dark waters and trying to reel in those parts of yourself that you surrendered to the relationship, before they, too, disappear.
Although friendship just after the split may offer temporary relief, it blocks the slow but necessary passage from loss to restoration of independence.

A number of years ago, I saw a patient who felt that her sex life was essentially over because she had suddenly been left by the man with whom she had experienced her first grand erotic passion.
She did everything she could to win him back—calling, sending gifts, even promising to change anything about herself that wasn't satisfying to him—all to no avail.
It took extensive work (and many tears) before she was able to see that the unparalleled sexiness she attributed to him was in fact the power of her own sexual desire.
At this point, his image began to lose its magnetism for her. What her experience suggests is that if you give in to mourning, unsettling though it may be, it will eventually finish its work.
Only then do you again become free to fully inhabit your present life and turn from a sorrowing fixation on the past to the exciting unknown of the future.

All human development entails suffering losses that need to be grieved.
At every stage of life, we are propelled beyond familiarity and security into a new situation: A baby's first steps mean that she will soon leave behind the comforting security of being carried.

A young adult going off to college feels the thrill of freedom but has to contend with homesickness. For all the important gains, there are also losses that bring up anxiety and sadness. Grief might be thought of as the growing pain of human development.

A child's love is really no different from dependence, and that equation haunts us to some degree all our lives. The residues of early dependence in all our intimacies play a large part in making the loss of love so hard to bear. Yet we all go through such loss, leaving behind a trail of casualties—outdated selves, broken promises, lovers we realize we chose for the wrong reasons.

Mourning these helps change what can seem like failures into wisdom. In learning how to grieve our losses, it doesn't help that American culture, with its emphasis on romantic love and happy endings, isn't very hospitable to mourning.
But when we enter into the deeper and more difficult stretches of loving, Hollywood can't shield us from the truth: All love stories come to an end, even those that last a lifetime. When loss hits us hard, it can be difficult to know what to do with it, or even how to bear it.

Many people in grief turn to antidepressants, which may reduce the pain but don't necessarily provide much by way of self-discovery.

Mourning teaches us how to accept the end of love and helps us start the process of feeling whole again.
True, the self you get back is never quite the same as the self you relinquished to your relationship; although wounds can heal, they leave scar tissue.

But there's more to gain than just surviving the breakup; there's also the possibility of becoming more than you were, more able to undertake the experience of love in its moments of sadness as well as joy. As with any art or skill, the only way grieving can be learned is through practice—whether we like it or not.

Michael Vincent Miller, PhD, is the author of Intimate Terrorism (Norton).

Labels: Articles, BGR

I chanced upon this story from the net and i decided to post this to share with everyone. I believed some of you might have read it before but it's just sounded so meaningful to me. Perhaps maybe you can read it again, to remind yourself the message in it.

My husband was an engineer. Since I met him, he was always an unflappable rock in my life. I knew he always had his feet firmly planted on the ground, and it seemed that no matter what else went crazy, he would be the one constant.

Three years of romance, and two years of marriage later, I got tired. He was the most unromantic man I know. He never bought me flowers, he never surprised me, and nothing changed in our marriage.

After some time, I finally found the courage to tell him that I wanted to leave him. He just sat there, speechless. My heart froze... what kind of man was I married to that didn't even know what to say to make me stay?

After a while, he spoke, "What can I do to change your mind?". "I will stay if you can give me a good answer to this question," I replied coldly. "If I asked for a flower that grew on a cliff, and you knew that getting it for me means certain death, would you get it for me?".
His face grew troubled. "Can I give you an answer tomorrow morning?" he asked. Hearing that kind of answer, my heart died. I knew that I could never be happy with a man who couldn't even give me a answer straight away.

The next morning, when I woke up, he was missing. In the living room, under a warm glass of milk, was a note. My eyes grew misty as I read it...

"Dear, I have my answer. I will never pick the flower for you if it meant certain death. But before you leave, I hope you can give me a chance to give you my reasons....

You will always sit in front of the computer and type about for the whole day, but every time you will end up in tears cause your formating will always go all over the place... I need my fingers, to do the formating for you, so your tears will become smiles.

You like to travel, but would always get lost...
I need my eyes, so that I can bring you to the nicest places on earth.

Every time you leave the house, you would always forget your keys... I need my legs, so that I can run home to open the door for you.You never knew how to take care of yourself...

I need my hands to help you get rid of the pesky white hair you hate so much when you grow old, to trim your nails, to feed you.

So you see, that's why I can't pick the flower for you.Until I find someone who loves you more than I do, I will need my body to take care of you.

If you accept my reasons, then open the door, where I will be waiting with your favourite kayabread." With tears streaming from my eyes, I opened the door, and there he stood, with a extremely worried look on his face.

He still had nothing to say, but just stood there waving the packet he had in his hand in front of me.

And then I knew for a fact that I will never find another man who will ever love me as much as he does.
Just because someone doesn't love you the way you want them to doesn't mean that they don't love you with all they have...

isn't it meaningful?

:)

*p/s: Hey dears, thanks for the messages and all.
I was just feeling a lil bit frustrated that day. i'm fine now hehe :) no worries okie!

Labels: Articles, BGR