A Bed by the Hospital Window

The only thing worst than being Blind is to have Sight but no Vision – Helen Keller

A bed by the hospital window

Moral stories

Two men, both seriously ill, occupied the same hospital room. One man was allowed to sit up in his bed for an hour each afternoon to help drain the fluid from his lungs. His bed was next to the room's only window. The other man had to spend all his time flat on his back. The men talked for hours on end. They spoke of their wives and families, their homes, their jobs, their involvement in the military service, where they had been on vacation.

Every afternoon when the man in the bed by the window could sit up, he would pass the time by describing to his roommate all the things he could see outside the window.

The man in the other bed began to live for those one hour periods where his world would be broadened and enlivened by all the activity and color of the world outside.

The window overlooked a park with a lovely lake. Ducks and swans played on the water while children sailed their model boats. Young lovers walked arm in arm amidst flowers of every color and a fine view of the city skyline could be seen in the distance.

As the man by the window described all this in exquisite detail, the man on the other side of the room would close his eyes and imagine the picturesque scene.

One warm afternoon the man by the window described a parade passing by.

Although the other man couldn't hear the band - he could see it. In his mind's eye as the gentleman by the window portrayed it with descriptive words.

Days and weeks passed.

One morning, the day nurse arrived to bring water for their baths only to find the lifeless body of the man by the window, who had died peacefully in his sleep. She was saddened and called the hospital attendants to take the body away.

As soon as it seemed appropriate, the other man asked if he could be moved next to the window. The nurse was happy to make the switch, and after making sure he was comfortable, she left him alone.

Slowly, painfully, he propped himself up on one elbow to take his first look at the real world outside.

He strained to slowly turn to look out the window beside the bed.

It faced a blank wall. The man asked the nurse what could have compelled his deceased roommate who had described such wonderful things outside this window.

The nurse responded that the man was blind and could not even see the wall.

She said, "Perhaps he just wanted to encourage you".

Artists are some of the most driven and courageous people on the face of the earth.

"Artists are some of the most driven and courageous people on the face of the earth. They deal with more day to day rejection in one year than most people do in a lifetime.

Every day, artists face the financial challenge of living a freelance lifestyle, the disrespect of people who think they should get ‘real’ jobs, and their own fear that they’ll never work again.

Every day they have to ignore the possibility that the vision to which they have dedicated their lives is a pipe dream.

With every passing year, many of them watch as other people their age achieve the predictable milestones of normal life - the car, the family, the house, the nest egg. But they stay true to their dream, in spite of the sacrifices. Why? Because artists are willing to give their entire lives to a moment - to that line, that laugh, that gesture, or that interpretation that will stir the audience’s soul.

Artists are beings who have tasted life's nectar in that crystal moment when they poured out their creative spirit and touched another heart. In that instant, they were as close to magic, God and perfection as anyone could ever be. And in their own hearts, they know that to dedicate oneself to that moment is worth a thousand lifetimes.” - David Ackert

How to be effective and successful? - Chatham House rule

As Ted Turner famously said, my son is now an ‘entrepreneur’. That’s what you’re called when you don’t have a job! What Turner did not mention is that entrepreneurs can collectively create hundreds of thousands of jobs and may be the only sustainable way to navigate out of the global financial crisis which began in August 2007 and has caused huge youth unemployment in high double digit percentages around the world.

In one-to-one conversations, the most often asked question was how to be effective and successful? The ATCA 5000 Research and Analysis Wing (A-RAW) and the mi2g Intelligence Unit (mIU) have attempted to answer that question both by looking back at highly successful personalities and conducting one-on-one interviews with top entrepreneurs mostly under
Chatham House rule.

1. Love, Happiness and Excellence

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart said that neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go into the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius! Identify the things we love to do, the things that give us satisfaction: that is where excellence and success lie! It is love which allows us to bring something new into creation. Once we identify what we love to do, in happiness we can ride on the coat-tails of that perpetual inspiration to find the spirit of our life’s work! As Thomas J Watson said, if you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less-than-excellent work! [Ref ATCA 5000: What Makes People Happy? Ten Key Trends 3rd September 2012]

2. Fear and Greed

As Franklin Delano Roosevelt said the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. The flip side of fear is greed. Although we see greed and fear as separate, they are totally intertwined like the Caduceus snakes symbolising medicine. Once we remove fear and doubt from our way of thinking, we begin to address greed.

Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need [for more] without ever reaching satisfaction according to Eric Fromm. Once we have begun to recognise the obstacles posed by greed and fear, we are moving closer to the dimensions of love. We can then easily focus on keeping positive in every situation and we are likely to be surprised by how much our genuine effectiveness multiplies.

3. Humility and Character

We are undergoing multiple paradigm shifts and this requires a change in mindset both to be effective and successful. [Ref ATCA 5000: Symptoms and Signs of ‘The Shift’ 9th September 2012]

The preceding ages including the agricultural, industrial and informational have been overly reliant on the left-brain because they are driven primarily by logic. As Sir Rabindranath Tagore said, a mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it. The logic-driven ages have brought us to the dumb age in which we have cannibalised our environment and eco-system to make short term profits and ended up with an unbalanced financial system that has brought hitherto sovereign nations and individuals down on their knees by significantly increasing their debt. [Ref ATCA 5000: Creativity and Empathy: Complexity in the Conceptual Age? 11th September 2012]

As we enter the Conceptual Age, the left brain has to engage with the right brain, which is about all those soft skills that can help to spark a renaissance. [Ref ATCA 5000: Wisdom Renaissance: How to Embrace the Conceptual Age? Unite the Left Brain with the Right! 13th September 2012]

Being effective in attaining goals associated with our success is all about embracing humility, aligning ourselves with our core guiding principles, and anchoring ourselves to ethical values that remain universal and timeless forever and ever. [Ref ATCA 5000: What Do the Rise and Fall of Empires Suggest? 23rd August 2012]

4. Knowledge, Power and Imagination

Sir Francis Bacon said knowledge is power! We ought to gather as much information about anything and everything, which we love, as we possibly can. We need to study, understand, listen, learn and love so that we can develop all the requisite skill-sets! [Ref ATCA 5000: What Is Energy and What Role Do We Play Within It? 24th September 2012 and Holistic Quantum Relativity initiative]

Albert Einstein said that imagination is more important than knowledge. The more vividly and accurately we can imagine the success we love, the easier it is for the rest of ourselves and those with whom we are associated to follow through with us in delivering what we are passionate about.

5. Problem Solving, Persistence and Perspiration

Albert Einstein said any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex… it takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction. Successful people encourage progress by being curious and solving problems by posing and answering a series of simple questions. No matter where we are or what we are doing, we ought to look around and try and think of the ways in which we can contribute.

As Calvin Coolidge said nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated failures. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. As Zig Ziglar said people often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily!

Don’t give up! If the first attempt doesn’t work, don’t quit. Thomas Alva Edison said that genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. When asked about his 10,000 failed attempts to develop a storage battery, Edison responded, I have not failed; I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work! However, there is a case to be made for working smart rather than working dumb and not repeating mistakes.

6. Studying Success

Study successful people. Look around: Who has the success that we envision for ourselves? What are they doing that we are not doing? How do they approach life which is different from our approach? We have to become their apprentice in spirit. We ought to ask them for advice. Spend time around them, if we can. Learn from them via osmosis. By surrounding ourselves with successful people in those areas that we are passionate about, we can learn from their mistakes without making our own. When we are surrounded with people who are highly-driven, it can be extremely inspirational.

7. Accepting Failure

As John F Kennedy famously said, success has a thousand fathers, failure is an orphan. Understand that behind every success there are many, many failures and in order to be successful one has to learn to appreciate the value of failure. Sir Winston Churchill said success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm!

8. Be Courageous, Bold and Set Schedules

As Henry Kravis said a real entrepreneur is somebody who has no safety net underneath them. Take calculated risks. Let us step out of our comfort zones and let us not wait for opportunities to fall in our lap. Carpe diem! Seize the day! Yet, let us not be reckless. Success requires that we study our risks and make sure that the odds are in our favour before we take a leap by being bold! As Jack Welch said, if you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete!
Set a time-line by when we want to achieve our objectives! If we don’t know by when we will achieve our objectives then we will never know when we will have achieved them!

9. Staying Focused

Sometimes it seems that this world is fraught with so many distractions that it is impossible for us to achieve our objectives. That is why we need to stay tightly focussed on achieving our goals. Whatever we are attracted to may not be useful or productive and we ought to be able to set the discipline to devote the least possible time to our most attractive distractions.

10. Defining Success

What is the meaning of success? We can’t have success if we don’t know what it means to us. Everyone views and defines success differently. We all need to set clear goals and be realistic in defining our success. How will we know that we are successful if we never set any goals? Our standards and parameters for success should be broadly quantifiable, or else we could spend our entire life chasing after a vague goal and all the success we achieve is never enough. When there are quantifiable goals in regard to our success, that can give us a sense of satisfaction, completion and closure making our journey towards being successful much more rewarding than it would be otherwise.

Time with the Hyperactive James Gannaban

THE HYPERACTIVE GAY BOY

Time to spend with the Hyperactive James Gannaban, Charmaine Mirandilla and Running Kan.

                

The girls looked gorgeous in the Red and Blue jackets, matching to their own attire.

They created another creative dimension in me.

Thanks guys...

COLLEZIONI OnLine Magz Article

Out of Africa

“Afrique” è il titolo della nuova collezione per la primavera-estate di Ika Butoni. In particolare la designer si è ispirata alla fiera tribù dei Tuareg, di religione islamica, chiamati anche “gli uomini blu del deserto” in quanto i loro abiti sono di colore blu indaco. La combinazione tra i colori africani e l’arte Tuareg è alla base della collezione di Ika che, partendo dall’idea di combinare stili distinti, ha realizzato delle creazioni allegramente brillanti, e al tempo stesso comode ed estremamente attraenti. Nati da tessuti stretch e della maglia, impreziositi da diversi pattern, adornati con macramé, pietre di conchiglia e perline, i capi di “Afrique” sono perfettamente prêt-à-porter e si abbinano con legging ricchi di stampe.
www.ikabutoni.com

        

The 11th FCC Charity Ball & Auction

As much as I love what I do daily, breaking the routine was surely welcome..

On 6 October, 2012  The FCC - Foreign Correspondence Club - hosted their eleventh Hong Kong Charity Ball at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, in aid of the Po Leung Kuk Scholarship and foreign Language Study. The evening was attended by 1500 beautiful people and expatriate of Hong Kong, ready to donate while attending one the most entertaining and well organised events in Hong Kong.

IKA BUTONI donated a set of 2 dresses for this event.

 

 

Big names and important players poured in anxiously to be part of Hong Kong Help for the needy by sponsoring their products in the Silent Auction. Showing their supports were also wine and alcohol companies, Champagne, Vodka, Tequila and Red wines...

 

 

I was very happily tipsy by the end.

 

 

  The event is to ensure that every child can receive a suitable education, and this year the FCC is helping the Po Leung Kuk/UBS/ FCC Language Training Program, the Po Leung Kuk/Merrill Lynch/FCC Children’s Learning Centre, the Po Leung Kuk/UBS/FCC Child Development Program, the Po Leung Kuk/Henrik Nielsen/FCC Scholarship Fund and the Po Leung Kuk/Sprouts Foundation/FCC Education Services Centre.

 

 

 

I definitely love to be part of this event again next year, promising to prepare for a better support for the charity to come.

I had a great time meeting many new friends.

 

 

 

 

 

Mardiana Ika at the Bali Bombing Oct.12, 2002

Doctors, volunteers recount Sanglah’s ‘panic room’           

by Rita A.Widiadana and Luh De Suriyanion 2012-10-12

It was a nightmarish time for I Nengah Kuning Atmadja, a surgeon at Sanglah Hospital, who on that Saturday evening of Oct. 12, 2002 was on night duty with a small number of staff in the hospital’s emergency room.

“The silence of the cold October night was suddenly broken when ambulances kept coming and going to drop off the bodies and the injured at the hospital’s emergency ward, and the hospital turned into a ‘panic room’,” Atmadja recalled.

With limited equipment, a shortage of medicines, and, more importantly, only a small team of six doctors and nurses, they treated more than 300 wounded people; many of them were severely burned.

“The hospital also received 180 bodies that night and we hardly had room to place them properly in our small morgue,” he remembered.

In just a few hours, local residents, the expatriate community and families of the victims rushed to Sanglah to check if any of their loved ones were among the victims.

Lanang Made Rudhiartha, the-then director of Sanglah Hospital, said at that time those were
the best services the hospital could offer to treat the injured. “That was the first time Sanglah Hospital received such a large number of patients in such a profound emergency,” Lanang said.

“That night, we worked very fast and efficiently to categorize patients according to their condition. We placed black flags for the dead, red flags for the seriously injured and yellow flags for patients who were not too seriously wounded,” At-madja said.

The team of doctors later contacted their colleagues from hospitals in Jakarta, Surabaya, Bandung and even from Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Japan and Australia. Dozens of foreign doctors also joined the medical team.

A day after the bombing, Nyoman Semadi, former head of the hospital’s Intensive Surgery Care (ISC) unit, along with his staff and three Singaporean surgeons — Leslie B Kuek (microsurgery), Chan Siang Sui (surgeon) and Chew Khet Kuen — focused and dedicated their time to the work. The three doctors were flown over by private Parkway Group that runs the Mount Elizabeth and Gleneagles hospitals. Sanglah Hospital treated 635 patients, 136 of whom were evacuated to Singapore and Australia.

I Wayan Suardana was a student at Udayana University’s Technical School when he worked together with 50 other students, residents and even businessmen, as volunteers at Sanglah.

“There were so many individuals, companies, local and international organizations that were eager to donate various necessities — food, beverages, cash, mattresses, blankets, body bags, medicines, but no one organized the donations, so students took the initiative to do so,” Suardana said. The volunteers helped doctors, nurses, morgue staff, families and victims of the tragedy.

“The team of volunteers also worked with staff in the morgue to put dry ice in the hundreds of body bags every two hours. At first, we felt so scared, especially during the night, when there were fewer volunteers,” Suardana said.

Mardiana Ika, a Bali-based fashion designer now residing in Hong Kong, was one of the volunteers who encouraged the Kuta community to help the hospital with medicine and equipment.

A large number of local and expatriate volunteers dedicated their time to ease the burden of the victims and their families.

Suardana also said that numerous expatriates living in Ubud were ready to provide blood and other assistance.

“The tragedy united us so strongly — locals, expatriates, students and local residents, businessmen, as a solid community in Bali. This was the most valuable lesson for me at that time as a volunteer and as a student.” He also saw the kindness and sincerity of all the volunteers and the community, an experience that enriched him and the other students, many of whom have now become leaders, lecturers, businessmen and politicians.

ZSISKA Opening

Sunday could be a boring or fun day.
Today at the Mira Mall, our neighbour shop is opened. The Fun thing is the Dutch Creative  Director/Designer Zsiska Schippers was present at the shop. My partner John ( from the Netherlands) did look forward to some Gouda Cheese and liquorice he called dropje but the feasts were catered by the Vietnamese restaurant...

It was nice chatting with Zsiska, her collection is of high quality fashion jewellery. Each piece is handmade, with love and care and made of resin in combination with different quality materials such as 24k gold leaf, pure silver leaf and Swarovski elements.

Inspiration for every collection is found in the wonderful diversity of cultures, art, upcoming fashion trends and colours.

 

Morning Walk

One of my favourite things to do in the morning or during the weekend is having the Morning Walk. I felt that's my best moment to have 'dialoque' with the Almighty, you call God, Allah, KwanIm etc. Let me verse as the Almighty - The Creator - The Super Power -

When we pray, we have a long list to ask for.. I have decided to pray Full of thankFullness and have a Dialoque at the same time... So thankful I could see another day, to greet my loved ones, and to feel compassion for the living beings..

It's always nice to end the morning with a great breakfast and a cup of Latte..

The pleasure of watching people around me is immense. Smile they create in my heart...