Life's Rules...

( a forwarded message from yahoo group Boomers International)

Murphy's First Law for Wives: If you ask your husband to pick up five items at the store and then you add one more as an afterthought, he will forget two of the first five.

Law of the Search: The first place to look for anything is the last place you would expect to find it. Corollary: It will not be in the last place you expect to find it.

Kauffman's Paradox of the Corporation: The less important you are to the corporation, the more your tardiness or absence is noticed.

The Salary Axiom: The pay raise is just large enough to increase your taxes and just small enough to have no effect on your take-home pay.

Miller's Law of Insurance: Insurance covers everything except what happens.

First Law of Living: As soon as you start doing what you always wanted to be doing, you'll want to be doing something else.

Weiner's Law of Libraries: There are no answers, only cross-references.

Kenny's Law of Auto Repair: The part requiring the most consistent repair or replacement will be housed in the most inaccessible location.

Second Law of Business Meetings: If there are two possible ways to spell a person's name, you will pick the wrong one. Corollary - If there is only one way to spell a name, you will spell it wrong anyway.

The Grocery Bag Law: The candy bar you planned to eat on the way home from the market is hidden at the bottom of the grocery bag.

Yeager's Law: Washing machines break down only during the wash cycle. Corollary: All breakdowns occur on the plumber's day off.

Lampner's Law of Employment: When leaving work late, you will go unnoticed. When you leave work early, you will meet the boss in the parking lot.

Quile's Consultation Law: The job that pays the most will be offered when there is no time to deliver the services.

How to Acquire Power

1. Pray

2. Relax

3. Be patient.

4. Think cool. Act cool. Be cool.

5. Maintain a peaceful and joyous attitude.

6. Practice mental control, concentration, meditation and positive imaging.

7. Don’t make unnecessary movements whether alone or talking to another person. Practice control of your body and senses.

8. Dance your activities. Maintain a rhythmic way of doing things.

9. Dress as if you are important. . Feel good about yourself.

10. Try to see other people first and observe them. Be always attentive and alert. Cultivate a sense of awareness of the present moment.

11. Read. Be well informed.

12. Be slow to speak, slow to get angry, but quick to listen. Try to understand the meaning behind the words ot the person talking to you.

13. Look straight at the person whom you are conversing and keep your gaze on the person longer than he does on you.

14. Keep an aura of mystery. Don’t volunteer information about yourself, your wife, your children and family.

15. Avoid publicity. Be careful to work behind the scene, set things up patiently and quietly –so that what they want is offered you.

16. Don’t laugh too loud but always keep a sense of humor. Tell jokes but don’t laugh at them loudly.

17. Don’t preach, lecture and try to change others to your way of thinking. Try to let other just be themselves.

18. Use everything you have - talents, looks, strengths, effort, time and treasure to improve yourself, your relationships with others and with God.

road to cadulawan

We used to gather and sit at the middle of this road when we, my friends and I , were a bit younger.
This used to be a lonely road where only a few vehicles pass through...
With a bottle of rum, a songbook and a guitar, our evenings were complete
Thats how simple our lives were...

flowering plant

I never expected this plant to flower,
but lo and behold, a yellow beauty
amid the thorns aplenty ! ...

The Whole Community as Guardians of the Youth

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By: Alan K. Caña

There is a problem creeping within our communities. And because people are taking it as an ordinary phenomenon happening everyday as a product of modern culture, no collective effort is being done to counter it. This problem has been here for years and is prevalent in all parts of the world.

Youth unruly behavior and disorderly conduct such as drug abuse, alcoholism, vandalism, vagrancy, and all forms of destructive actions are driving some parents crazy and disrupting lives of family members and even the whole neighborhood where they belong.

All Barangays in our towns is experiencing these problems. All one has to do to know what is going on is to hang around some street corner store or some corner “lantay”where local residents gather, and listen to what the people are talking about. Mostly one will overhear people talking about their children or gossip about what their neighbors’ children are doing.

Who among your neighbor’s children are “shabu” users? Who is going around with whom? Who is the new “sugar daddy” of the neighborhood’s “syota ng bayan”? Who came home so drunk last night? Who is being imprisoned for stealing? etc…

Look at the surrounding fences and walls of houses and buildings in your place and realize for yourself what gangs and so-called “frats” the young people are involved in. Some of our young nowadays have no qualms in advertising their membership in such groups - groups that promote vandalism, drug abuse, drunkenness, sexual promiscuity and violence.

Do you know of a son or daughter, your own or somebody else’s, who is giving their parents sleepless nights and is causing them endless worries and anxiety because of his/her disrespect for the family and society’s rules of conduct? Are the neighbors helping you cope with your problem? Or do you hear snide remarks from other people, un-educated and professionals alike, blaming you of your plight because you are “lousy parents”?

If so, you are not alone. Literally thousands of parents are trapped in this seemingly hopeless situation. You’ve done your best to change your child’s behavior. You prayed. You have asked for help and even tried countless ways to change yourself, believing what your neighbors, the so-called modern psychologists, the clergy and the educators alike are saying - that “the parents are to be blamed.”

Sounds familiar isn’t it? But will subscribing to this kind of reasoning solve your problem? Will looking for something wrong in yourself, in any way , stop your child from doing what he’s doing now, say, coming home drunk and hanging out with local thugs? The truth is, it won’t. Nothing can be solved by self blaming and finger-pointing.

The problem of some of the youth of today should be seen as a community problem having its roots in modern culture. Being cultural, this needs a communitarian solution .It is within this frame of mind that parents victimized by their kids unbecoming conduct should come together to unite and organize themselves and share experiences, console each other, find solutions, and take a stand against what their children are doing to them.

The principles of communitarianism and networking could apply to this. Parents need to be aware who their children’s friends are, what they are doing and where they usually hang out. Once organized, this Parents Group can help monitor each others children and foster links with the police and other concerned government agencies, the local PTA, NGOs and Church Organizations, to get involved and help their cause.

There is no reason for parents to feel alone in their struggle to maintain order in their families. After all, the whole community gets affected whenever any crime is committed by any of its members. Children who disobey and intimidate their families by rude behavior and of conduct unbecoming of a family member and a good citizen should learn to suffer the consequences of their actions.

Parents organizing themselves as a group, supported by the bigger community will be able to take a stand and say, “enough is enough, because the whole neighborhood does not condone what you young folks are doing. The whole community demands respect.”

This is what it means to live in a community - a community that guides its young to become cooperative members of society. Aptly put by an old saying, “It takes the whole tribe to raise a child”.

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you are the creator of your universe

you ar the creator of your universe.