Australians can count... but s l o w l y

The Australian General Elections held on the 21 August, 2010 would not have the complete results, probably in weeks, according to political analysts. As at noon 23rd, August, the Australian Elections Commission has confirmed that Labour and the Liberal Coalition each had won 71 seats; 4 other seats were won by 3 independents and one Green party. There were still 4 seats undecided as counting was still on going as only 79% of the total votes have been counted, after more than 72 hours.
No wonder Paul Henry, the anchor of Breakfast NZ asked, "Is Australia a 3rd world country?"
14 million Australians have registered to vote (compulsory in Australia) for the 1198 candidates from 25 parties to the 150 Parliament seats.
Australians must have thought the May UK elections which produced a Hung Parliament was a fanciful thing to emulate down under too!?
In the last Parliament, Labour had 83 seats whilst the Liberal Coalition, 59.
The Elections were called by Julia Gillard, the current Prime Minister from Labour, who had earlier outsted Kevin Rudd as the PM through an internal party struggle.
Australian Governor General, Ms Quentin Bryce who has a very boring constitutional and ceremonial role, was recently becoming a little bit high profile in the "official sacking" of Kevin Rudd and the swelling-in of Julia Gillard. The lastest high profile news on her is that she is seeking legal advice on her role in the formation of the coming Government as her daughter is married to a winning Labour candidate in Victoria. Life must be a little bit exciting in the comfort of her Admiralty House in Sydney.
In the meantime, the Australian sun continues to rise and the miners are busy mining away!

p/s as at 26th August, it all boils down to Tony,Tony, Rob, Bob & Julia.

Land of Opportunities

Indeed USA is a land of opportunities. There are many many who have achieved their American Dream of being rich and powerful, in the old-fashion way - they have earned it. The list is impressive although post Enron, WorldCom and the sub-prime induced recession, their asset value may be slightly reduced.
According to Forbes Magazine, currently there are about 1011 billionaires globally, of which 403 are in the USA followed by a distant second place, China with 66. China's top 10 billionaires total asset is just over US$46b, which does not even match one Warren Buffett. In time to come, there will be more emerging billionaires from China joining the top rank, considering the exponential growth in the Middle Kingdom of the 21st Century.
The 2010 list of top billionaires in the US includes
Bill Gates III ($53b); Warren Buffett ($47b); Sheldo Adelson ($26b); Lary Ellison ($25b); Larry Page ($19B); Sergey Brin ($19b); Michael Dell ($17b).....
Most of these billionaires are businessmen and entreprenuers. They may not be saints but they have complied with the law of making money. Along the way, they may have caused pain to their competitors and staff alike. Of course, the cynics and critics would still say that they maybe lucky to have escaped the long arm of the law.
There could be more billionaires spending their time in the Chinese prison in future, if some of them do not learn the hard lessons from the West or from those who have been executed for corrupt practices in the One-party state. Watch out the two evils - greed and temptations!

Naming Kittens

The pregnant mother cat named Nabe, belonging to the neighbour, chose to be residing at Josh and Abby's house some time in January 2010. She was warmly welcomed and was renamed Keba who later gave birth to 7 kittens on the 5th February.
Abigail named all of them, based on their faces and fur colours:
Brown Sugar; Ginger; Bear Face; Zebra; Snow Leopard; Tinsel and Midnight.
Only Ginger the male kitten and Brown Sugar the female kitten were retained whilst the rest were given away to friends. Kiba has since moved on to other neighbourhood to start her life anew.
Josh gave the following reasons for having cats instead of dogs as pet:

Cats don't bark at you and lick you all over
Cats do their poo and bury it themselves
Cats do not need to you to bathe them, they groom themselves clean
Cats do not over-eat
Cats can fit into any car

Y Poh would not feel easy with these furry animals in the house.

The Land of Opportunists?

The land of opportunities really. It is a place where dreams come through. They call it the American Dream.
What is The American Dream?
It is freedom for every individual to be creative and to achieve his ultimate potentials and goals.
A black African-American can accend to the highest office in the land as the President, testifies to the fact that that Dream is possible. Many other talents in entertainment and sports have also achieved their goals in the highest level. Goals in terms of wealth, fame and power!
Some have gone all the way to attain this status of being rich and famous by hooks or by crooks, bending every rule along the way.
The list of convicted white-collared crimes in recent years include the once rich and powerful people like
Ken Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, Andrew Fastow, Michael Kopper of Enron; Scott Sullivan and Bernard Ebbers of WorldCom; Bernard Madoff of Madoff Ponzi Scheme; Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco; Gary Winnick of Global Crossing and Joseph Beradino of Arthur Anderson.
Personal integrity and moral values have been overtaken by greed and temptations.
The saving grace is that at least the US Justice Department has promptly put those in fraud and public breach of trust, to justice.
In another land of "Yes We Can" or popularly known as "Bolehland", you hardly can get a list of convicted prominent rich and famous who are involved in gross criminal breach of trust. No corruption there? No corrupt persuaders? No Justice Department?
"Americans only learn from catastrohies and not from experience" (Teddy Roosevelt) and in the case of Bolehland, "Rakyat senang lupa" (Dr M).

Stolen Prayer

The Weiling Wall in Old Jerusalem City, which I had the privilege of visiting in 2007, is full of pieces of papers containing prayers of worshippers of God, irrespective of their religion but mainly from the Jews. These private prayers are collected periodically and are buried in the Mount of Olives.

One such paper did not make it to Mount of Olive. It was stolen from the Western Wall in July 2008 and was published by a local Israelist newspaper, which contains the following prayer:

"Lord - Protect my family and me. Forgive me my sins, and help me guard against pride and despair. Give me the wisdom to do what is right and just. And make me an instrument of your will.

The writer of this piece of paper is Barack Obama, now the 44th President of the United States of America.

There was no official protest from Obama or his political team at the time of its publication, as he was the Democratic nominee for the Presidency. Was this intended as a public prayer for public office?

Made For Bigger Things

When I was climbing up the corporate ladder, particularly beginning the late 1980s culmulating in the early 2000s, I had this infamous phrase which was known to all my colleagues and bosses... "I am made for bigger things".

Indeed, that spurred me on and I was lucky to have encoutered the opportunities to expand my roles until attaining the pinnacle of my career, as the expat MD of a MNC based in Thailand.
"Made for bigger things" meant the accomplishments of bigger roles, which came with the commensurate bigger power, rewards and recognition. Along the way, and over the years, I must have impacted some positive influence on many young people's career development and enhancement.

Post retirement, I have come across two more quality phrases...."Made for Significance" by Dr Randolph Walters and "Made for Goodness" by Desmond Mpilo Tutu, the Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1984 from South Africa.

Dr Randolph defines "Success without significance is empty self-centredness." Significance suggests value and it connects ourselves with the sense of our humanity.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu says, "Goodness changes the way we see the world, the way we see others, and, most importantly, the way we see ourselves. It affects how we treat people. It affects the quality of life for each and all of us. This quality is the sum total of our daily interactions. Each kindness enhances the quality of life. Each cruelty diminishes it."

As long as you are still granted the time to walk this planet, there are still opportunities to make a difference, to be made of significance and of goodness.

In layman terms, money and success can buy you luxuries but cannot buy you Class!

Golden Pond

This is the vision .... getting closer now...