Month: July 2009

Plain Old Greed – An Unwanted Creed

On By Paul1 Comment

Plain Old Greed

An Unwanted Creed

Banking institutions use the principle of “OPM” which literally

means “Other People’s Money”. Likewise with all the stock exchanges

where corporations made their listings to secure & amass additional funds

from the public. In the western democratic capitalist world this principle

is exploited without compassion to the fullest extent. Such practice is rampant

and widespread right down from the Government to the Man in the street.

imagesBernard Madoff

You have heard it often said ‘It could only happen in America’! This is a country of high drama and crimes . . . with happenings to dwarf any other globally. This is a country that is out to dominate, dictate, decide & even define in all spheres of human endeavour. The recent fraud case of Bernie Madoff who was sentenced to 150 years life sentence sets an unbeatable human record and defies all human crimes since time memorial. How could an apparently innocent-looking guy cheat the system, pulling wool over the eyes of the SEC (Securities & Exchange Commission) and was undetected for as long as three decades fraudulently grossing over 65 billion? The world is without an equal in this respect. Could it be just plain stupid policies & lax regulations that breed such fraudulent crime?

A scenario of such nature paints vividly a big picture of greedy moneymen, free market hucksters, white-collar thieves of the highest & self-serving politicians. It bespeaks a system that caters for the rich & powerful to the detriment of the poor & neglectful.

Whenever events of such magnitude happened, politicians only speak in terms of statistics. Numbers & statistics are so meaningless in place of compassion, human values & sufferings. It’s what people do to people that matters most . . . jobs lost, life savings spent, millions of homes foreclosed, the emotional strain & stress & lots of other intangible consequences.

A society of thrift & frugality cannot be instituted overnight. Such culture must long be inculcated & established & must be able to endure the test of time. It is not something that comes & goes. Any sensible individual will know that you cannot go on spending like crazy & hope to make life easy.

Can you imagine all the nation’s wealth, i.e. the tax payers’ money, is being used to service a backbreaking load of debt that was accumulated to fuel the booming bubbles in the stock market, the bond market, the housing market & whatever credit of the economic hell! How do you solve a double-digit unemployment and a mounting national credit of $2.7 trillion expected by the end of 2010. Interest rates virtually down to zero! The amount of cash in circulation printed & pumped in by Federal Reserve has surged past the horror-inflation of 30 years ago. To begin to understand what’s it like having a dead currency is to ask a Zimbabwean!

The imbecility of the US Congress in thinking it can spend America’s way out of a recession caused by too much spending and debt takes the breath away – that should set you crying all the way to hell! It’s not a recession . . . it’s all the way a financial scandal that is the shame!

In times of financial crisis such as the present, Dubai’s building has become its undoing. Dubai’s propensity for building big while also throwing funds at overseas banks has left it looking to its neighbors for spare cash as boom turns to crunch. How much in the way of silly lessons has it learned from the master, the US government?

At least some countries like the Chinese are recognizing that the US way of finance involves running up vast debts through deficit spending while taking what’s wanted and killing anybody that gets in the way.

US Population, brought up on a politicized & substandard education system of pop culture rather than the classics, believe in greed to be the creed. Greed is the excessive desire to acquire or possess more than what one needs or deserves, especially with respect to material wealth.

Greed is the American disease – seriously considered as “cancer” hard to eradicate. This reckless greed is responsible for:

  • The obscene salaries of the CEOs

  • The crooked cops & politicians

  • The disgraceful corporate scandals that cover the media

  • The murders of the narcotics world

  • The proliferation of wars & encroachment of others’ sovereignty

In brief, greed is the reason that US is being run by the insurance, pharmaceutical, weapons and the petroleum industries. Suffice to say that greed is the cause of every conceivable problem existing within the American social structure. It’s not just Bernie Madoff or the Garys and the Morgans, who are but a small bunch of evil men . . . but the evil has seeped right through from Wall Street to the Main Street.

Believe me

Greed is no Creed

It’s utterly evil in Deed

Totally an unwanted Creed!

Paul Chong

A Chinese by Descent

An Australian by Consent

Sunday, 19 July 2009


The Beauty of Colours

On By Paul1 Comment

By Paul Chong

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A Kaleidoscope of Colours

Colours are naturally positive

Nothing about colours is negative

How sad & dull it would be

In a world without any colours to see.

Behold the glorious sunset or rainbow

Behold the colourful flowers in rows

The rainbow attracts both young & old

Flowers delight the eyes, heart, mind & soul.

In art colours render their part

In films colours rapture our hearts

One colour alone cannot claim the glory

Different hue of colours magnify the story.

The world is never to be just black or white

Neither is sunlight of pure coloured light

It’s the mix and blend

That made all things grand.


Colour is not a personal or human reality, but has a political overtone attached. In dressing & art, white matches well with other colours, and whatever the mix & blend, the result is often grand. It seems a shame that politically it’s not workable. Instead of easy mixing & blending, we see ugliness, repulsion & all sorts of conflict.

A Good Mix of Colours

In the cinematography, black & white filming has long been out. Glorious technicolour is the result. There is beauty in a colour mix and the best qualities of each colour are often manifested. Qualitatively & quantitatively, the world will be a lovelier place with all its colours, like the sunrise or sunset, the rainbow and the flowers in different hue & rows. It does take a lot of colours to paint a beautiful picture.

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As can be seen, colours add beauty. There should always be a flow and blending of colours. If God had intended the world to be just white or black, yellow or brown, He would have created it so.

Ironically, white people would go to great length to get a suntan and risk having skin cancer. Freckles and other unsightly spots show clearly through white skin. Thus getting a good suntan gives that nice brown shine.

Let not our eyes turn green with envy or jealousy, but rather to let the beauty of the eyes – blue, green, brown, grey or black shine through for all to appreciate. As a matter of fact, white people are more fortunately endowed, apart from their eyes, with a variety & shade of hair colours too.

The world is interestingly full of colours. Can you imagine what the world would be like without colours? Or just White? Black? Yellow or Brown?

Paul Chong

A Chinese by Descent

An Australian by Consent

Friday, 17 July 2009

Chinese Western Opera Stars Coming of Age

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Chinese Western Opera Stars Coming of Age

Most of the average men & women in the street have never been to a night at the opera, or stepped into the grandeur of the Opera Houses in the world like The Vienna Opera House, Royal Opera House Covent Garden London, Paris National Opera House, Metropolitan Opera House New York, or the Sydney Opera House. A night there in any of those Opera Houses with real life tenors, sopranos, altos & contraltos will be a lifetime experience.

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However, in modern times, with the availability of the multi-media, we have been privileged to hear “The Three Tenors” in the persons of Luciano Pavarotti (deceased), Jose Carreras & Domingo. The appearance of the three great tenors singing together has contributed much to the popularity of the opera. Most people are also familiar with The Phantom of the Opera, the stage musical & movie made famous by Andrew Lloyd Webber. The original novel by Gaston Leroux tells of a disfigured musical genius (Gerald Butler) who haunts the catacombs beneath the Paris Opera House.

My romance with the opera stretched back to my early school years in Taiping, Malaysia where we were taught simple appreciation of the classical music. Names of Enrico Caruso, Beniamino Gigli & Björling, the legendary three tenors, come to mind vividly. Caruso with his famous rendering of Verdi’s Rigoletto “La Donna e Mobile” (better known in English as “Woman is Fickle”) was featured in a film by Mario Lanza. As a school cinema operator, with the carbon arc screening 35 mm projector, which by now must be long obsolete, I used to enjoy such great musical shows, and would you believe it, I used to have the voice of Caruso in the my ancient “wire recorder”- a souvenir from the war years.

This afternoon, Hunan Satellite TV presented a tremendous opera program featuring three tenors & three sopranos who have made their talent felt on the world stage. They were demonstrating the unique style of opera singing and what a difference with the conventional pop singing.

Australia’s answer to the famous Three Tenors are the Chinese Trio – Hao Zhou, Stephen Wu & Shidi Chen who came together in early 1990s and were first invited to sing as part of Sydney’s bid for the 2000 Olympics. Since that time the group has performed across Australia as well as in China, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and Hong Kong. They have migrated to Australia charming & amazing audiences with their songs in Italian, French, German, English and Chinese, all in the one program.

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It’s universally contended that authentic western opera can only be found in Europe. But another tenor Ding Yi has broken both the tradition & the mould. He’s made a place for himself on the world stage, while maintaining his strong foothold in his native mainland China. It’s been a long hard road.

Born of a composer father & a soprano mother . . . the teacher was telling him he lacked the talent to be a good opera singer. Doctor told him he should stabilize his voice with controlling his Adam’s apple.

“Concert of Chinese and Foreign Classic Songs” was performed at the Shenzhen Grand Theatre. Of the dozen singers, the most admired was Ding Yi, a tenor who the MC said is the No 1 singer at the Central Opera House in Beijing. He was certainly good. He and another soprano, Ma Mei (who was great too) wound up the concert with a duet from the famous Madame Butterfly.

Opera Arts described him as “a tenor that has made Italian directors sit up.” He has numerically represented China on the world stage & winning awards & praiseworthy criticism. At home, he is equally in demand whether it’s public or charity performance.

China with a pool of 1.3 billion people & millions taking up music, it goes without saying how much more impact the Chinese tenors & sopranos will have on the world stage. It will only be a question of time.

Paul Chong

A Chinese by Descent

An Australian by Consent

Friday, 17 July 2009

Turn Your Disability to Victory

On By Paul2 Comments

Turn Your Disability to Victory

In golf there’s often that love hate relationship!

Do you look forward to your weekend round of golf, only to experience frustration, anger and disgust!

If so, the following story will fire you with inspiration and wild imagination!

The human body is a miraculous piece of biological mechanism capable of performing feats beyond your wildest imagination. Recently, I learnt from CBS of a young man by the name of Kyle, through the mishap of congenital birth was born without arms and legs, and yet is a champion wrestler. For the keen golfers, whether you are only a weekend player or playing more frequently, you might have heard of Dr David Gaudin, whose handicap, as low as 12, is now about 20.

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Such a handicap you might say is nothing worth emulating. However, David Gaudin was born without legs, and like Kyle, that hasn’t stopped him from playing the game he loves. Zeke Bratkowski, that old Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers quarterback, a 5-handicapper at age 73, who’s been to places and seen lots of things, has this to say: “Dr. David shows how magnificent a human being can be.”

The amazing thing is that he uses regulation clubs and hits full shots from his stool with a conventional grip. He pitches, chips and putts from the ground. His best drives are low-trajectory fades that go some 200 yards to his target. He makes an uncommon number of putts inside 10 feet. This is what he has to say: ”We all do the best we can with what we’ve got.”

David Gaudin is 57 years old and has played golf since his Baton Rouge High School days, when a school buddy said. “Let’s get a stool.” Initially, David was falling off the stool and repeatedly getting on and was soon loving it. At Louisiana State University, whenever he and his buddy Walter Smith III were short on grocery money, they would look for golf opponents, or rather golf pigeons, eager to take advantage of a handicapped player with no legs. Smith might have negotiated three shots a hole because of David’s physical handicap – no legs and how could he ever play golf? At day’s end, two shots a hole were more than enough to feed the hungry college students.

David was born with a condition known as femur-fibular-ulna, a good-looking guy and everybody’s friend. He wrestles, plays football. With a torso of a 200-pounder, he bench-pressed 450 pounds, but they wouldn’t let him wrestle heavyweights saying he might get hurt.

Together with his wife Beth, a nurse practitioner, and four partners, they have 25,000 patients. Now a husband and father of two sons and step-father of a daughter, Dr. Gaudin drives most every weekend from Louisiana to Florida, where he pilots his 65-foot yacht and plays golf with whatever pigeons flutter his way.

Paul Chong

An Avid Golfer

Story of the Five Fingers

On By Paul11 Comments

Story of the Five Fingers

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Let me tell you a moral story

Of the Five Fingers seeking glory

The Thumb was strong, stout & proud

Ruling leadership contest out

Whereupon the Index Finger pointed out

That challenge was there and about

The Third Finger stood tall and said

“You’re all short & below me you’ll stay.”

Then the Fourth Finger countered

Urging them to recall their day’s of great encounter

Everyone agreed that it was their wedding day

When they had the ring with the Fourth Finger there to stay

Being so important, he claimed the day

Finally & amusingly, the Last Finger took hold of the ship

Reminding them all of the Holy Bible

“The first shall be the last & the last shall be the first principle.”

When the argument seemed futile

The Guardian Angel from above put them to the trial

She dropped a piece of paper for each one to pick

Seemingly ridiculous, the Thumb tried to stick

But alas he could not lift

Likewise with each & everyone in turn

The paper appeared to be such a burden

When everyone was satisfied with their own vain attempts

The Guardian Angel urged them to combine to save their energy then

Together they picked up the paper

Then they realised what they could master.

Paul Chong

A Chinese by Descent

An Australian by Consent

Time – The Threshold of Eternity

On By Paul1 Comment

TIME – THE THRESHOLD OF ETERNITY

(Read Ecclesiastes 3)

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William Shakespeare, the great English playwright, said that everybody had twenty-four hours a day. . . it’s what you do with your time that matter. Time, after all, is an illusion. It expands

and contracts to suit one’s convenience.

Time on earth is brief and fleeting

Rapidly it passes like a ship a-sailing

Three score and ten years are but a span

The life of man does come to an end.

Time cannot be accumulated nor recalled

Every moment though precious, cannot be stored

Unlike the bank of money deposits can be made

The bank of time offers only “Take”.

Time can be spent or wasted in reality

Make your priorities with keen possibilities

Procrastinate not with rationalization

God’s calling requires no justification.

There is a time for everything

Everything demands your right thinking

No human logic can be applied however

When it comes to God’s grace and power.

Make your spiritual life count

Care not just your bank account

Send your booking ahead to heaven

Lest it’s too late towards the end.

Paul Chong

A Chinese by Descent

An Australian by Consent