Sakura in Hokkaido

Spring is the Sakura season. Cherry blossoms appear wherever their trees grow. This was the reason we joined a tour to Hokkaido. We wanted to see the sakura or cherry blossoms. Our guide told us that Goryokaku is the most beautiful Sakura Park in Hakodate in southern Hokkaido. This place is warmer than most so the sakura blooms come out first before other places.

True to his word, we saw a lovely park but not all the trees were in bloom. However, those that were, took my breath away. The delicate blossoms covered the branches in hues of pink and white. Some blossoms were deeper shades of pink. Many people crowded into the park to take photographs of the flowering trees. This week was the Golden Week in Japan where many Japanese were on holiday. They came out with their families to the parks, to the restaurants, to the shops to enjoy the cool weather and bright sunshine.

These blossoms do not last long either. The guide said that within two weeks they would have dropped and new leaves would emerge on the trees. So we were lucky to see them as their blooming depends on the weather too.

Other places also had sakura in bloom. Many homes had at least one flowering tree in their backyards. City parks too had their own trees, some in bloom while others were still bare, their buds still asleep. It is strange.

Flowers evoke a very happy sensation. I saw the delight on the faces of one of the ladies in our tour group. She kept exclaiming at the beauty of the blossoms. I was spell-bound by the beauty around me and I could not help but take many photos of these lovely flowers, to capture their essence if I could. Indeed, a thing of beauty is a joy forever. It rejuvenates one and entrances.

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Unforgivable

I just received an email forwarded to me which contained an attachment of a video showing a maid's abuse of a young child in the presence of a much younger sibling.

What makes a human being so depraved as to do physically abuse a toddler, one who is totally helpless and remains at the mercy of her caregiver? The maid is a caregiver entrusted with the responsibility of looking after the two young children in the absence of their parents. I'm sure the parents pay her well to look after their children and they depend on her to feed them and to take care of their needs while they are away at work.

If not for the surveillance camera installed in their home, the parents would never have known how their children are abused in their absence, by someone whom they had entrusted to look after them.

Watching the video made me not only angry and sick but it also aroused murderous feelings in me. I wanted to treat the maid just the way she had abused the child. Worse, I wanted to put her behind bars with a whipping sentence and to throw away the key to the jail!

I then realised that such feelings in me put me in her category as well!! But then, how can one not be affected by the sight of a helpless, innocent toddler being abused so violently by someone who is supposed to take care of her? Even if the child had dirtied the floor or wet herself or got into a tantrum ( these are just suppostions as the video doesnt show what the poor child had done ), she doesnt deserve to be abused the way she was.

This must be the reason why my cousin in the UK, when his children were born, arranged for his parents and his parents-in-law to take turns to be there to look after the children while he and his wife were at work. He was very lucky to have both sets of parents agreable to such an arrangement. Each couple stayed there for six months.

Another college mate also did the same for her son when he had his family. She and her husband and the other set of parents also took turns to go to Singapore to look after the baby, even though their son had a maid. After seeing this video, my friend's son was wise in asking his parents and his wife's parents to make the trip and stay there to supervise the maid so that there would not be an opportunity for abuse. Likewise, my daughter stays with me and my husband and I have been looking after her children ever since they returned to the Land below the Wind. This was to prevent any kind of abuse, physical or emotional.

Abuse in any form will deform the child and retard his/her development. It will leave a scar on the child's soul and mind. Fear and insecurity will be constant companions in his/her existence. Yet many parents have no choice but to depend on maids to look after their child when they go to work. Not many have parents who are available to help them out. Perhaps sending their young to creches is an alternative. There will be other staff and this will be a deterrent to abuse. Other children in the creche will also provide companionship in play and this would stimulate the children and the interaction among them will make the creche a more amenable environment than the home where the maid, in the absence of the parents, is lord of the house and the children are at her mercy.

Here is the link.
video[1]_WMV V9.mpg4894K

I'm not sure if you can download it to watch.

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How goes it?

These are days of excitement depending on how you view things.

Politics is a favourite subject in coffee shops, school carpark waiting areas and emails. Umno, the main partner in the coalition of Barisan National has completed its party elections which had been postponed from last year to this year in view of the impending transition of power to the next Umno president. The newsmedia had been reporting pre and post election news. Now that all these are behind us, let us hope that things will change for the better as the outgoing PM has reiterated that there must be change for a better tomorrow. I hope this will take root and that things will really change.

Sabah is pretty laid back compared to the bustling Peninsular states. However the absence of the "rush, rush everywhere" syndrome makes life more tolerable although there has been tremendous traffic jams of late, especially during peak hours, though not to the degree which KLites experience day after day. Nonetheless, what has been affecting the world, the term I believe, is 'global meltdown', has not really hit us squarely between the eyes yet. There have been reports of thousands who have been left jobless due to factory shutdowns and downsizing of organisations. For these people, life is a big question mark. How are they going to survive and put food on the table for their families?

The government is trying to find jobs for them through various means but it will not be able to cater to everyone's needs. Other countries are much worse off. How bad is it going to get? This is anyone's guess.

For those who have retired, life will be more of the same. There is no rush, no need to fight the traffic to get to the office. I get up early to go to the golf course for my morning exercise round of nine holes, then back home for a spot of gardening before starting the preparations for dinner that evening. The weather has been so terribly hot these days that I'm seriously considering cooking lunch so that there's no need to go out. The sun's heat is blistering and there is a tinge of blackness on your cheeks, should your skin be exposed even for just a short while.

A housewife's job is never done. I find myself on my feet most of the day and it is more often than not, that I can go online only after dinner. Having a maid is a luxury, and good ones are hard to come by. From past experience, it is the maid who interviews you and not vice versa. A room, a tv, a fan, telephone facilities, a washing machine, these are pre-requisites. The size of the house and the number of people living in it, whether you work ( better that the boss works so that there is no one to monitor the work ) also matter. Refusal to do things the way you want them to be done, the rude repartees, the banging of pots and pans, these are sufficient to put you off them permanently. I'm not complaining 'cos I'm back to being my own boss in my house. I no longer hear my pots and pans being banged about and I can talk to my plants and flowers without being looked at as if I'm cuckoo. I'm happy as I am, with friends to email to, with smses coming in, and the songs on the radio to keep me company until we go to fetch our grandkids from school. So life for me is good and I'm thankful for God's blessings.

For those who are still looking for jobs, maybe it is time to try out self-employment. Work for oneself even though it is hard work and altogether a different experience from what one has been accustomed to. This is where creativity comes in. It is always prudent to start small and work from there. If you find that what you do is successful, then you can think further of expansion.

Otherwise there are other sectors which still need workers although these may not be what you want. However having a job is still better than none. A smaller wage is better than no wage at all. Money means food on the table. Plantation, construction, services such as waitressing, etc are an honest day's work. Once you have a job, things can only get better, and that's what one needs in these trying times. Or if you are good at cooking, you can start a catering business from home. You cook and you deliver. You can stick to catering for lunch at first. Or you can make local foodstuff such as nasi lemak, kuih-muih ( cakes & pastries ) and sell to friends and friends of friends, office people, neighbours. Such businesses usually take off by word of mouth and recommendations. I've also seen enterprising women and men going round to the hospitals to sell their foodstuff to those waiting to see the doctors. Waiting at hospitals can take a few hours and snacks are very welcome.

Whatever one's situation is, I believe that it is up to us to take action if we want to change it. Nothing comes with nothing done. Lending a hand to those in need is a good starting point. Cheers!

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The Cycle of Life

I would like to share some of what I've read from three books about the Other Side, i.e. where we go to after death.

From baby to child, to adolescent to adult, adult to middle-age to old age and on to the next plane when we shed our physical body.......... these stages involve learning, a continuous growh of learning.

We are entities or energy and as such we do not die. Energy does not die and learning does not end with death. Our spirits or souls continue to learn on a higher plane. There we go through a renewal stage and then we decide when we want to return to the physical world , where and for what reason.

According to Sylvia Browne, a renowned psychic, in her book "The Other Side and Back", we prepare a blueprint for our lives and we choose our circumstances to enable us to learn and overcome issues that were not resolved in our previous lives and to achieve spiritual progress.

Sometimes a soul chooses a particularly challenging lifetime in order to accelerate the spiritual progress. A hard life is an opportunity for progress.

We all have debts that must be paid. If we haven't paid those debts we must take them into another life in order that they may be worked through. Karma is an opportunity for atonement, to make up to those we have wronged or hurt in the past. It is about learning, and not about punishment. Once we have learned our lesson, there is no further need to suffer, even if the karmic debt is not fully paid as divine intervention or grace can supercede karma and ease our burden of suffering. We come to earth to learn, not to suffer.

Dr. Brian Weiss in his book "Messages from the Masters", relates Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross' experience. Elisabeth's mother was a very caring person who gave everything to help others but never accepted anything for herself. She suffered a stroke that left her dependent on others for her needs and she died four years later. Elisabeth was furious with God for letting her mother suffer and one day, while she was meditating, a voice asked her why she was so angry and Elisabeth replied that He had made her mother who never asked anything of anyone but gave of herself, suffer for four years.

The voice told Elisabeth that those four years were a gift to her mother, a gift of grace. Love must be balanced. If no one were to receive love, who could give it

and her mother learned this lesson in four years instead of having to come back for one or several lifetimes, impaired physically or mentally where she would have to accept the love of others. Because she had learned, she could move on.

Elisabeth understood the message and let go of her anger and her pain at her mother's experience.

We choose what we need to learn and if we need to come back to work through a relationship, we come back. If we are finished with that, we go on. We continue our learning in the spiritual state.

In the book "Reincarnation" it describes how Dr. Edward Cayce helps his patients to regress into their past lives so that they can have a better understanding of their problems in their current lives and the advice he gives them on how to resolve the issues confronting them.

Come to think of it, this recycling that we go through so to speak, is logical. It would explain why we sometimes have a sense of "deja vu" when we are at a place although it is the first time we are there. We could have been there in a previous life! However, I'm not quite sold on the idea that we prepared our own blueprint right down to the last detail, even the manner of our death. Death comes in many ways and I find it hard to accept that one would plan for a horrific death.

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