Starring: Ronald Cheng, Tony Leung Ka Fai, Vincent Kok, Teresa Mo, Yuk-Wah So – It’s A Wonderful Life. 2007
The reality of life is that we are born to die. The future is set & final. It’s only the question of when & how – over which we have absolutely no choice or control.
From the womb to the tomb, one room in the ground is certainly waiting for us. There’s no escaping!
Some people always look to the future – moving forward, moving on, living for tomorrow, hoping for a better day. Others are grounded in the present and still others spend a lot of time reliving their past affairs and accomplishments.
Imagine the possibility of these scenarios:
Living a life without limits (Refer T D Jakes’ Reposition Yourself)
To have the option of living all over again repeatedly. (Refer “Groundhog Day” 1993)
To live life backwards – instead of living in a forwardly linear progression. (As propounded by T. H. White in “Living Backwards or In Reverse”). One takes inspiration from the past, energy from the present and vision from the future
Most will agree that living in the present is the most favourable and realistic rather than the three mindsets mentioned above. The present is all we have & anything that we can be certain of.
Often, in word processing software, we use the Un-Do button. Ever experienced a “faux pas” and wish life itself came equipped with such a key? Regrets live in that rear view mirror and no longer affect you. Hitting un-do brings the past back to the present only to force you to relive it. So, whenever you feel you’ve chosen poorly, forgive yourself and move on. There is no “retry” no “re-do” and no “un-do” to our experiences. What’s done belongs to history and you choose to either live with it and make it right the next time under similar circumstances or you can live your life in a constant loop of regret and blame. Life teaches us we can’t “un-do” anything. Choose instead to learn and grow. Make the best out of the circumstances.
The movie“Holiday” is about Johnny, a thirty-year-old man, played by Gary Grant who decides that he would like to use what little money he has to take a few years off for self-discovery. Afterward, he’ll be ready to settle down to a life of work and responsibility. Johnny feels, ‘Why wait until you’re old and sick to retire?’. That’s doing things backwards & it’s most mundane.
They say that “Youth is wasted on the young”. Alternatively, it’s often said “Don’t grow up so fast” or “Don’t grow old but grow up!” No matter how old you are, grab hold of that youthful spirit and natural ferocity and go for it. It may take some bending over backwards, but life happens now and the future becomes a memory in an instant.
Here’s Woody Allen’s Perspective on Living Backwards.
Woody Allen describes why he wants his next life to be in reverse, starting old and getting younger. Source: cslacker.com
I love words. It’s why I write & read. Also why I love lyrics and poems and movies. Words are powerful. They need to be guarded, for no retrieving is possible once they depart from our mouth. Most of us use words for the purpose of communication. Some of us wield words like artists wield brushes, painting something beautiful and or compelling out of what could have been merely mundane. Good writers have the ability to “paint with words”.
US is no longer “a government of the people, by the people, & for the people”, but a government of ‘Wall Street, by Wall Street, & for Wall Street.’ What does it mean when Wall Street is contributing $500 million to both the Democrats & the Republicans for their political campaign? People in the Main Street are deprived, cheated & in more ways than one given a very bad deal . . . homeless, high unemployment, burdened with a national debt beyond their wildest dream, while the culprits & perpetrators are being baled out & rescued. Imagine the big crooks or “Financial Mafias” escaping the full justice of the law & the average & poor public reeling with pain & suffering!
If ever any justice is to come to pass, it will be anything but a show trial or theatrical act!
It’s the quality of leadership together with the system of government that will determine the health of a nation.
The best political system there is must be evidenced & seen to be in practice. You don’t have to dominate or elect for “a change in regime” in order to impose a good government system. If it is any good, it will be copied generally by all globally. Leadership is by example & no involvement of a bargain or gamble. Goodness is clearly seen in practice devoid of all hidden agenda or any real motive.
If a system is good & operable, it’s bound to be duplicated & copied by many without any unwarranted imposition, threats of war & domination. The worst crime ever committed by any nation is the invasion & intrusion upon the sovereignty of other nations, with the resultant cruel & unnecessary deaths of women & children plus the millions of displaced refugees.
The time-tested system of leadership selection, qualitatively & quantitatively, as practised by ancient China to the present, is through examination grading or academic attainment & performance, to be followed by a period of internship & training. Singapore adopts, adapts & adjusts to the method very well indeed . . . the proof is in the pudding, so to say. I must say it’s a rather laborious way of candidate sourcing for election, filling & fitting the various political portfolios.
Singaporean politicians are well paid, from a lowly ranked minister starting with a salary of $1.5 million (Singapore dollars) to the Prime Minster with $3.8 million, with the President commanding $3.9 million. These salaries may seem excessive, but they ensure a totally “clean & transparent” government unlikely to be tempted with greed, graft or corruption. Singapore has always been known for its squeaky clean image.
Americans are faced with heaps of problems – self-arising from within not instigated from without (as what the US government is adept in doing with other nations in the world).
The biggest democratic system of governance is India with a population second only to China. There in India, the corporations are controlled by elite bankers, pretending to be a government of the people, by the people & for the people. Parties like Congress & BJP have changed this definition to be “a government of the relatives, by the relatives & for the relatives”.
In US, the talk of freedom in the democratic world is misleading – more like big fish eating small fish. The Free Enterprise System is really the big oil companies & corporations. Where do small enterprises stand?
Western democratic system is a money power game with greed, corruption, cronyism & nepotism overtones attached. It’s a system fraud with conspiracy & a network of wheeling & dealing. It’s the survival of the fittest.
It’s all very well to see great performances by politicians on television, repertoire of oration, great campaign speeches & promises, but when it comes to implementation & delivery, nothing or little happens. Vested interest groups got to be strong to exert enough pressure to get their demands.
When the late Deng Xiaoping visited Singapore & was awed by the achievement of the little city state under the capable leadership of Lee Kuan Yew, he was assured that China would do far more better. Lee Kuan Yew, while flattered by the admiration, told Deng Xiaoping that Singaporeans are after all descendants of peasants & workers from China, but what China possesses is the great reservoir of true talents & scholars from the upper society elite who never had to leave the motherland in search of economic survival & wealth. Given the right motivation & opportunities, the whole nation of 1.3 billion could be mobilised to attain far greater success than Singapore within the shortest time frame possible.
Yes, indeed . . . how prophetically true!
Never in the recorded history of mankind has any nation come close to be of any compare with China! It’s amazing to witness its phenomenal leaping success. China’s leadership & government can truly & deservedly claim the accolade of success.
A nation must sail under good captainship with the crew working in unison not opposition. Everybody got to pull together to brave the storm & then only get to savour its triumph.
With a scenario as below . . . what would you expect?
Wall Street dominating & cheating the Main Street
Democrats fighting the Republicans in Congress
No less the infighting in the Senate
A lame President who attempts to look good on the outside
Greed hovering above the political-economic-socio problematic scene
Vested interest groups pressuring & carving out their own goods
80% of the general public not trusting Washington
Sinking ship braving not the storm but remaining sinking beneath the dilemma of economic ills
Divergent forces & influences ripping the nation apart
A carton portrayal: “The Bush disaster is over! The Obama catastrophe begins!” in full display by the general public
Unconcerned Secret Elite or Illuminati, the real power behind the throne, only laughing to the bank, which they own anyway!
How do you hope to dominate, propagate or even duplicate
when the democratic system is ripped with rot right to the core?
You can only stay strong together but weak apart.
Nations should work together in the spirit of co-operation not domination!
Chaos reigns when order feigns!
And catastrophe sets its claim!!
There’s every danger of the US destroying itself from within like the Fall of Rome.
“What does it mean” asked Stacy Herbert from Keiser Report on RT-TV, “to be a Banana Republic without the Banana?”
Comments by:
Mike Chong: “Many will nod their heads to this . . . the so called land for the free is land of the greedy, selfish and “live at others expense” Government/public.”
Richard Chiang: ” Yes, very well said! Yet, the Americans, etc, try to impose their system on other countries. Unfortunately, many of the people in these countries are misled into believing the so called Western democracy is the only system. Also, in the name of the so called human rights, they try to impose their will on other countries while their indiscriminate bombings of unarmed people, including women and children, have often been ignored!”
Americans have had great presidents in the past. Abraham Lincoln was one such president. Herein below are some of his great wisdom:
How true in what he said. He had the absolute ability of saying a lot with the least number of words. Abraham could “paint with words”. World leaders should emulate him and implement his wisdom . . . then the present world would not be this topsy-turvy.
People at the helm of government must be smart and act the part. The destiny of a nation depends entirely upon the calibre of leaders.
Consider this true incident of a supposedly great lady politician:
Nancy Pelosi – A “Brain Lift” Rather Than A “Face Lift”
A noted psychiatrist was a guest speaker at an academic function where Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of Congress, happened to appear. Ms Pelosi took the opportunity to schmooze the good doctor a bit and asked him a question with which he was most at ease.
”Nothing is easier,” he replied. “You ask a simple question which anyone should answer with no trouble. If the person hesitates, that puts you on the track.”
“What sort of question?” asked Pelosi.
“Well, you might ask, ‘Captain Cook made three trips around the world and died during one of them. Which one?”
Pelosi thought a moment, and then said with a nervous laugh, “You wouldn’t happen to have another example would you? I must confess I don’t know much about history.”
Can you imagine that? With people like that, what can you you expect of the country? Surely not as dumb as a box of rocks!
“Capitalism creates a rational frame of mind which, having destroyed the moral authority of so many other institutions, in the end turns against its own.” – Joseph A. Schumpet
Japanese toymaker Bandai has released paper-thin bath soap that looks like the American 100-dollar bill.(Xinhua/AFP Photo)
Environmental experts recently called toilet paper
“one of the greatest excesses of our age.”
Once the pride & might
Its collapse is now in sight!
This is not just theory. It’s the real thing! Let’s hear from the experts:
US billionaire & investment guru, Jim Rogers, influential former partner of financier George Soros (The World Today Dec 3, 2009) is advising investors to desert the greenback and put their money into commodities. He says the US dollar is a flawed currency that has no future.
Or as Dr. Ron Paul, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, recently noted about the rampant, unprecedented money creation going on, “If we continue doing what we are doing right now, we will literally destroy the dollar.”
The first dramatic debt growth spurt of US debt-based approach financing system occurred with the Civil War. The debt was just $65 million in 1860, but passed $1 billion in 1863 and had reached $2.7 billion following the war, slowly fluctuating for the rest of the century, finally growing steadily in the 1910s and early 1920s to roughly $22 billion as the country paid for involvement in one war after another – wars which they never did win.
Major foreign investors such as China are quickly catching on to the hard reality of US insolvency. Inescapably, they’re concluding that the “only way Washington can keep its Ponzi finance going is by running the monetary printing presses non-stop.”
Mega-investor Warren Buffett recently admitted publicly that the frantic spending and money creation underway right now will trigger a currency-destroying inflation that will be much more severe than in the 1970s.
Big-time investment gurus such as Jim Rogers dispatched a strongly worded email offering this sobering assessment:
“The world at large does seem to understand innately that governments are bankrupting themselves and destroying paper currency.”
The sheer havoc unleashed by a dollar crisis will be nationally jolting on a par with Pearl Harbour, John F. Kennedy’s assassination and 9/11. And yes, the bottom could drop out in just a single harrowing day.
The coming dollar collapse will wreak economic and social havoc far beyond skyrocketing prices. Widespread fuel and food shortages, relentless crime waves and the government’s endless socialistic machinations will devastate the American way of life like a giant tornado.
US – Greatest Debtor Nati
With US main creditors & all the global supporters pulling out,
there will be a catastrophic tsunami unimaginable.
Just this week, US Fed Chief Ben Bernanke declared the US economy is facing “formidable headwinds” & effectively vowed to continue its relentless printing paper dollars.
China’s Andy Xie, recently named by BusinessWeek as one of China’s most influential economists, quickly reacted with the accusation that Bernanke was “poisoning” the US economy by keeping interest rates near zero & creating a tidal wave of newly printed paper dollars. He warned that the next global crisis will be driven by asset inflation . . . which is exactly the present scenario.
Incidentally, toilet roll goes off very quickly towards its end!
Being at the top is not good, there is only one
way to go from there – down.
By Paul Chong Sunday, 29 November 2009 A Chinese By Descent, An Australian By Consent
President Hu Expounds China’s Views On Development
China can boast of its silk and tea culture long before any other country in the world. Even the technological plough was first discovered in China. By and large, all discoveries were directed towards peaceful use and the enrichment of life and culture, as with the gun powder. Now the world is witnessing an unprecedented quantum growth in China – all within one generation!
China Foreign Reserve World No. 1
China Oil Consumption World No. 2
China Trade Value World No. 3
China Economic Output World No. 4
Latest: China is the richest nation in the world.
‘Xiang Qian Zou’ – The Road To Riches
The Road To Riches – A Nation of Bicycles To Motor Vehicles
Of the nations in the world today, China stands out progressively tall and strong. It is as though a sleeping dragon is finally awakened. This appears to be the fear of the West. Though an economically strong China is good commercially for all the trading nations in the West, politically China poses a great threat. It is feared that “once China stands up, it won’t topple or be toppled.” That was why precisely Napoleon in his wisdom decided to let China be and not to rouse her.
In retrospect, China is undoubtedly the world’s greatest civilised nation over a continuous period of thousands of years – a civilisation undiminished and unbroken, unlike past civilisations like Egypt, Greece, or the Romans. By any reckoning, China should have by now be far more superior than the rest of the world. Why not?
Map of the “Middle Kingdom”
Of the many reasons why China did not progress beyond its initial lead in technology and discovery, the main cause of which can largely be attributed to its inward looking policy . . . viewing all territories outside the Great Wall of China and its boundaries as barbaric in nature. This nationalistic pride and closed door policy led to its seclusion, totally depriving itself from the inter-change of ideas and exposure to new scientific developments and industrial growth. While China lavished in its culture, philosophy and essentially non-materialistic form of development, it began to lag behind the West in terms of economic industrial growth. In preserving its civilisation from being tainted by corruption, disruption and deterioration, it never knew new growth, development and discoveries elsewhere in the whole wide world. The “Middle Kingdom” realised too late the encroachment of other nations upon its shores and territories. Countries like Britain, Portugal, Japan were making inroads into China through modern superior arms of war instead of its age-old “kung-fu”.
Zhejiang – Economic Zone
To grow, to progress is to change. Sentiment must give way to progress. There is no room for inhibition to changes. Change needs to take place before growth and progress can be attained. It’s attitude more than aptitude that scales the altitude. Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, the great former prime minister of Singapore, is credited for the great strides achieved by the City State. His visionary ideas have no room for inhibition or sentiment to change or any hindrance.
Now, what a change has come about as a result of Deng Xiao Ping’s visionary concept of “Xiang Qian Zou”. In Mandarin, it means “Forward Move”, but by replacing the middle word with the similar pronunciation, it becomes “Moving Forward With Money”. This started a great frenzy for the Chinese striving for monetary progress in all spheres of work and life. China has made a quantum leap – a country virtually with no phone to the modern technology of mobile phones! But capitalistic way of life does have its price. A single generation can witness the most remarkable change & progress. Transformation just sweeps aside all inhibition, resistance and sentiment.
Greed always breed a profound loss of goodness in mankind. Simple honesty, truth, kindness and compassion are lost in the process. The dollar sign is etched prominently on the foreheads of goal-getters. It is evident to an outside observer that the whole civilisation is transformed overnight. China, in its forward economic stride, has done away with its traditional large families, and its door is wide open to the corrupt western way of life. There is a price to be paid, for consequential results cannot be avoided.
Like most economies in the world, the road to riches often affect those who are involved, largely the urban folks, leaving behind a vast majority of the rural peasants. Even then great disparity may result among the urbanites. Encouraged by the concept of “Xiang Qian Zou” and ‘you’ve got to be in it to benefit it’, waves and tides of migrating movement are emptying the youth from the rural and pastoral areas. China is vast country where hundreds of millions of the peasant still labour and toil and are poor by comparison with the urban rich. No doubt, this is creating a set of social chaos unknown before.
Hong Kong, for instance, is a magnetic attraction for mainland Chinese. Tens of thousands cross the border which still has the immigration formality with number restrictions. In 2002 this number has been lifted and the hours of opening has even extended to 12 mid-night. This is largely due to the fact that the constant stream of exchange of people movement just keep on going growing bigger and bigger. The benefits work both ways. The affluent mainland Chinese pour money into Hong Kong, and the Hongkees likewise do the same in respect of investing in cheaper and more attractive housing in Mainland China.
On the more positive & human well being aspects, China has done itself proud by alleviating poverty for the great mass of the population. Consider this report by World Bank: “China has maintained a high growth rate for more than 30 years since the beginning of economic reform in 1978 and this growth has generated a huge increase in average living standards.
China’s sustained growth fueled historically unprecedented poverty reduction. Based on household surveys by the World Bank, the poverty rate in China in 1981 was 63% of the population. This rate declined to 10% in 2004, indicating that about 500 million people have climbed out of poverty during this period.’
Update & in a lighter vein:
China, now second largest economy in the world, has 19% of the world’s population, but consumes
. . . 53% of the world’s cement
. . . 48% of the world’s iron ore
. . . 47% of the world’s coal
. . . and the majority of just about every major commodity.
In 2010, China produced 11 times more steel than the United States.
New World Record: China made and sold 18 million vehicles in 2010.
China currently has the world’s fastest train and the world’s largest high-speed rail network.
China is currently the number one producer in the world of wind and solar power.
China currently controls more than 90% of the total global supply of rare earth elements.
In the past 15 years, China has moved from 14th place to 2nd place in the world in published scientific research articles.
China now possesses the fastest supercomputer on the entire globe.
As at the end of March 2011, China has accumulated US$3.04 trillion in foreign currency reserves- the largest stockpile on the entire globe.
Chinese consume 50,000 cigarettes every second …Not an enviable record though …
And here is the secret to the Chinese miracle: There are more pigs in China than in the next 43 pork producing nations combined.
So it is PORK that is driving China !! ENJOY YOUR PORK !
Now . . . you know why we eat “bak kut the” to be one in spirit with our China cousins.
Comments
Your comments are invited.
What problems do you envisage for China in this economic crisis?
How would the rest of the world, particularly US, react or act towards China?
What role do you think that China is likely to play on the world stage?
Do you think that China would follow the path of US & change its basic peaceful co-existence policy?
Starring: Ronald Cheng, Tony Leung Ka Fai, Vincent Kok, Teresa Mo, Yuk-Wah So – It’s A Wonderful Life. 2007
Woody Allen describes why he wants his next life to be in reverse, starting old and getting younger. Source: cslacker.com
Paul Chong's Blog 