How should we judge a government?

In Malaysia, if you don't watch television or read newspapers, you are uninformed; but if you do, you are misinformed!

"If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." - Malcolm X

Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience - Mark Twain

Why we should be against censorship in a court of law: Publicity is the very soul of justice … it keeps the judge himself, while trying, under trial. - Jeremy Bentham

"Our government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no
responsibility at the other. " - Ronald Reagan

Government fed by the people

Government fed by the people

Career options

Career options
I suggest government... because nobody has ever been caught.

Corruption so prevalent it affects English language?

Corruption so prevalent it affects English language?
Corruption is so prevalent it affects English language?

When there's too much dirt...

When there's too much dirt...
We need better tools... to cover up mega corruptions.

Prevent bullying now!

Prevent bullying now!
If you're not going to speak up, how is the world supposed to know you exist? “Orang boleh pandai setinggi langit, tapi selama ia tidak menulis, ia akan hilang di dalam masyarakat dan dari sejarah.” - Ananta Prameodya Toer (Your intellect may soar to the sky but if you do not write, you will be lost from society and to history.)

Monday, August 20, 2012

A story on eternal gratitude


"...It happened every Friday evening, almost without fail, when  the sun  resembled a giant orange and was starting to dip into the  blue ocean.

Old Ed came strolling along the beach to his favorite pier. Clutched in his bony hand was a bucket of shrimp. Ed  walks out to the end of the pier, where it seems he almost has the world to himself. The glow of the sun is a golden bronze now. Everybody's gone, except for a few joggers on the beach.

Standing out on the end of the pier, Ed is alone with his thoughts...and his bucket of shrimp. Before long, however, he is no longer alone.

Up in the sky a thousand white dots come screeching and squawking, winging  their way toward that lanky frame standing there on the end of the pier.

Before long, dozens of seagulls have enveloped him,  their wings fluttering and flapping wildly. Ed stands there tossing shrimp to the hungry birds. As he does, if you listen closely, you can hear him say with a smile, 'Thank you. Thank you.' In a few short minutes the bucket is empty. But Ed doesn't leave. He stands there lost in thought, as though transported to another time and place.

When he finally turns around and begins to walk back toward the beach, a few of the birds hop along the pier with him until he gets to the stairs, and then they, too, fly away. And old Ed quietly makes his way down to the end of the beach and on home.

If you were sitting  there on the pier with your fishing line in the water, Ed might seem like 'a funny old duck,' as my dad used to say. Or, 'a guy who's a sandwich shy of a picnic,' as my kids might say. To onlookers, he's just another old codger, lost in his own weird world, feeding  the seagulls with a bucket full of shrimp.
To the onlooker, rituals can look either very strange or very empty. They can seem altogether unimportant .... Maybe even a lot of nonsense. Old folks often do strange things, At least in the eyes of Boomers and Busters. Most of them would probably write Old Ed off,  down there in Florida . That's too bad. They'd do well to know him better.

His full name:  Eddie  Rickenbacker. He was a famous hero back in World War II.

On one of his flying missions across the Pacific, he and his  seven-member crew went down. Miraculously, all of the men survived, crawled out of their plane, and climbed into a life raft. Captain Rickenbacker and his crew floated for days on the rough waters of the Pacific.

They fought the sun. They fought sharks. Most of all, they fought hunger. By the eighth day their rations  ran out. No food. No water. They were hundreds of miles from land and no one knew where they were. They needed a miracle.

That afternoon they had a  simple devotional service and prayed for a miracle. They tried to nap. Eddie leaned back and pulled his military cap over his nose. Time dragged. All he could hear was the slap of the waves against the raft...Suddenly, Eddie felt something land on the top of his  cap. It was a seagull!
Old Ed would later describe how he sat perfectly still, planning his next move. With a flash of his hand and a squawk from the gull, he managed to grab it and wring its neck. He  tore the feathers off, and he and his starving crew made a meal  – a very slight meal for eight men - of  it. Then they used the intestines for bait..
With  it, they caught fish, which gave them food and  more  bait......and the cycle continued. With that simple survival  technique, they were able to endure the rigors of the sea until they were found and rescued (after 24 days at sea...).

 Eddie Rickenbacker lived many years beyond that ordeal, but he never forgot the sacrifice of that first life-saving seagull. And he  never stopped saying, 'Thank you.'

That's why almost every Friday night he would walk to the end of the pier with a bucket full of shrimp and  a heart full of gratitude..."

(PS:  Eddie started Eastern Airlines.)

(Taken from Max Lucado's In the eye of the storm - pages 221, 225 and 226)




Link

No comments: