Mi Choza De Nipa

A BIRD’S EYE VIEW: The biggest Philippine flag measuring 180 metres was unfurled yesterday at northern Baguio city’s Burnham Park , as the country marked its 110th year of independence from Spain . In Manila , President Gloria Arroyo assured people that the country had sufficient rice supplies and vowed to achieve self-sufficiency in the staple food in the coming years during her Independence Day address.

From FOCUS ON THE FAMILY TODAY • Friday • June 13, 2008 By Dr James Dobson I’m sure you’ve noticed that the world seems to worship youth and fears getting old. But there was a time when age was associated with wisdom and experience. In fact, some of the greatest accomplishments in history came very late in life. Immanuel Kant wrote one of his best philosophical works at the age of 74. Verdi penned his classic Ave Maria at 85. Alfred Lord Tennyson was 80 when he wrote Crossing the Bar. Michelangelo was 87 when he completed The Pieta, his greatest work of art. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes set down some of his most brilliant opinions at the age of 90. Titian painted his famous Battle of Lepanto at the age of 98. And Ronald Reagan was the most powerful man in the world at 75. Generally speaking, older people today are healthier than ever before and anything that squanders their talents is foolish. And while we’re on the subject, it bugs me a little that television advertisers are only int...

From FOCUS ON THE FAMILY TODAY • Thursday • June 12, 2008 By Dr James Dobson A Russian novelist once wrote: “If you want to utterly crush a man, just give him work that’s of a completely senseless, irrational nature.” It’s true. In a concentration camp outside Hungary during World War II, Jewish prisoners were forced to move a mountain of dirt from one end of the compound to the other. The next day, they were told to move it back again. For weeks, this went on until one day, an old man began sobbing uncontrollably and he was led away by two captors. Days later, another man who had survived three years in the camp suddenly darted away from the group and threw himself on an electrified fence. In the weeks to come, dozens of prisoners just went mad, running from their work and eventually being shot by the guards. It was later learned that the cruel activity had been ordered by the commander as an experiment in mental health just to see what would happen when people are forced to do meanin...

From FOCUS ON THE FAMILY TODAY • Wednesday • June 11, 2008 By Dr James Dobson Imagine two boats drifting together on a choppy lake. A man sits in one of them and a woman in the other. They have every intention of crossing the lake together because they genuinely care about each other. But slowly, they begin to drift apart. Each catches different currents and gusts of wind that turn their little boats in opposite directions. Before they know it, one person is at the north end of the lake and the other bobs along at the south. They can hardly communicate without shouting from such a great distance. And by then, there are a number of children in a third boat, little bewildered children. This is a dramatic analogy to the plight of too many marriages today. Husbands and wives begin their journey side by side, with every intention of remaining together for a lifetime. But the pressures of everyday living turn them in their own directions and towards their own pursuits, and away from each oth...

From GLOBAL ROUNDUP TODAY • Tuesday • June 10, 2008 A young Indonesian mother gave birth to a baby girl with four arms and four legs but the child died within hours, a hospital director said yesterday. “She was to be a twin but because of an intrauterine problem, the separation process did not proceed well,” said Dr Wijayanti Utoyo, the director of the general hospital in Garut, West Java. The baby girl, born after a normal nine-month pregnancy, had one head and one torso, but an extra pair of arms and legs, she said. The 24-year-old mother already has one child. — AFP

From today's devotional... "... The value of our college education is not the amount of raw knowledge which it gives us. There are men whose minds are amazingly full of facts, yet no one would call them educated men. And there are others who have comparatively few facts at their command, yet you instinctively recognize that they are educated..." "... For true education is not meant to store us; true education is intended to awaken us; and the joy of the truly educated man is no poor pride in his superior knowledge: it is that he has been so wakened that in every realm and sphere he can see glories unobserved before."

From FOCUS ON THE FAMILY TODAY • Tuesday • June 10, 2008 By Dr James Dobson At 2.2 metres, Sandy Allen is the tallest living woman, but it’s her big heart that’s most impressive. Most people would consider it a thrill to be listed in the Guinness Book of World Records, but Sandy’s claim to fame is a bit more difficult to accept. It’s hard going through life being stared and pointed at by people on the street. And it hasn’t always been easy for her. “The most unpleasant part is trying to overcome the pain of growing up different. It wasn’t much fun, because the children, especially the boys, teased me a lot, and the girls basically ignored me,” she said. Nevertheless, Sandy learned to live with the rejection and instead of becoming bitter and wounded, she chose to use her pain to assist others. Today, she spends her time helping children understand that being unique isn’t something to be ashamed of. “What I try to do is encourage people who might be down on their lives and show them tha...

From "Succeed With John Bittleston" TODAY • Monday • June 9, 2008 There will be inflation when something vital to human existence is scarce HALF the people alive today have never experienced serious inflation. They will shortly. At the end of it, many will have starved to death. Those remaining will live in a very different world from that of the past 50 years. Cheap food, easy personal mobility, considerable leisure time, increasingly high medical standards — all these are going to be severely dented by “the enemy within”: Inflation. Can we prevent it? Can we cure it when it happens? How can we cope with it? Societies wake up to threats quite suddenly, having long ignored the warning signs. Those who predicted problems were castigated as pessimists, ignored and mentally pilloried. “Optimism will solve our problems. Let’s be positive.” Yes, indeed, but let’s be realistic first. The planet is not short of food or energy. It can support more people if we conserve a responsible ...

From ceo101: BALANCING WORK AND FAMILY TODAY • Monday • June 9, 2008 MS CLAIRE CHIANG, MANAGING DIRECTOR, BANYAN TREE GALLERY Banyan Tree strongly believes the balancing of work and family life is vital to the well-being of our associates which in turn results in the well-being and success of the company. To achieve these goals, employers must consider aspects such as workplace design, rewards, career development and work-life strategies. Banyan Tree places an emphasis on flexibility with management actively encouraging associates to make use of existing policies. Equitable proposals for re-design of work roles and re-deployment are supported throughout the different stages of our associates’ lives. We also promote family bonding through company gatherings, and have instituted the complimentary hotel stay benefit.

From Voices, TODAY • Monday • June 9, 2008 Letter from DUDLEY AU THE REPLY from Resort World Sentosa (RWS) to the letter “Of sharks’ fins and high rollers” (June 5) from Liang Dingzi appears to have missed the point. RWS referred to a synergy of business and environment protection in “The 90-10 business decision” (June 7). While we understand that in any business, profitability is preferred to insolvency, the moral balance sought relative to the consumption of sharks’ fins is based on cruelty. Protection, it is admitted, has a link to the species whose fins are consumed to satisfy epicurean fastidiousness, as well as traditional epicurism. The species can be brought to the brink of extinction or extinction itself. In this sense, RWS is correct about fauna protection because the breeding of sharks is relatively slow, having only one or two offspring between fairly long intervals. The crucial factor, however, is the cruelty inflicted on the sharks. The dorsal fins are sliced off and the ...

From Voices, TODAY • Monday • June 9, 2008 A balance has to be struck between individual rights and overall good of society Letter from PROFESSOR WALTER WOON Attorney-General I REFER to the letter “Keep our door open to ideas” by Siew Kum Hong (June 6). Mr Siew has misunderstood me. I surmise from his letter that he was not present at my talk. In my address at the launch of the Law Society’s Public and International Law Committee, I said that for some people human rights has become a religion. This religion, like so many others, has its fanatics who display all the hypocrisy and zealotry of religious bigots. They believe that there is only one permissible view of human rights — theirs. They assume that when they decide what human rights are, that decision is for the rest of humanity. I gave the example of those who think that the right to free expression means that one can insult the Prophet of a great religion with impunity. I asked rhetorically, can we accept this in our society? I p...

Lifted from FOCUS ON THE FAMILY TODAY • Monday • June 9, 2008 Make Room for Childhood By Dr Bill Maier Applying makeup to four-year-olds and giving them adult-looking dolls at five, letting them date at 12, and virtually emancipating them at 16 … Is this the best preparation for adulthood? I think not. We used to give children time to grow up. We dressed them differently from adults – boys in short pants and girls in fluffy dresses with natural hairstyles. We told them to act respectfully, to address their elders and to mind their manners when adults were around. Becoming a grown-up was a big deal. Adults were considered to be stronger and wiser than children. Children had plenty of time to play and giggle and be themselves. Nowadays, though, kids are presented on television as having more insight than their elders. They are used as confidants and are rushed, ready or not, from the womb to nursery school to the adult world in a few short years. But all this scurrying to maturity leaves...