Grandma is eighty-eight years old and still drives her own car. She writes:
Dear Grand-daughter,
The other day I went up to our local Christian book store and saw a 'Honk if
you love Jesus' bumper sticker ..
I was feeling particularly sassy that day because I had just come from a
thrilling choir performance, followed by a thunderous prayer meeting..
So, I bought the sticker and put it on my bumper.
Boy, am I glad I did; what an uplifting experience that followed.
I was stopped at a red light at a busy intersection, just lost in thought
about the Lord and how good he is, and I didn't notice that the light had
changed. It is a good thing someone else loves Jesus because if he hadn't
honked, I'd never have noticed.
I found that lots of people love Jesus!
While I was sitting there, the guy behind started honking like crazy, and
then he leaned out of his window and screamed, 'For the love of God!'
'Go! Go! Go! Jesus Christ, GO!'
What an exuberant cheerleader he was for Jesus!
Everyone started honking!
I just leaned out my window and started waving and smiling at all those
loving people.
I even honked my horn a few times to share in the love! There must have
been a man from Florida back there because I heard him yelling something
about a sunny beach. I saw another guy waving in a funny way with only his
middle finger stuck up in the air.
I asked my young teenage grandson in the back seat what that meant.
He said it was probably a Hawaiian good luck sign or something. Well, I have
never met anyone from Hawaii , so I leaned out the window and gave him the
good luck sign right back.
My grandson burst out laughing.
Why even he was enjoying this religious experience!!
A couple of the people were so caught up in the joy of the moment that they
got out of their cars and started walking towards me. I bet they wanted to
pray or ask what church I attended, but this is when I noticed the light had
changed.
So, grinning, I waved at all my brothers and sisters, and drove on through
the intersection.
I noticed that I was the only car that got through the intersection before
the light changed again and felt kind of sad that I had to leave them after
all the love we had shared.
So I slowed the car down, leaned out the window and gave them all the
Hawaiian good luck sign one last time as I drove away. Praise the Lord for
such wonderful folks!!
Will write again soon,
Love, Grandma
Politicians, gossip columnists, doctors, your best friend -- they’re all
talking about the same thing: fat. Especially belly fat. The great thing
about belly fat is that the better you get to know it, the easier it is to
make it vanish (if only spam e-mail worked the same way!). Digest these
stomach-flattening facts.*
*
*1. All fat is not alike.* Eat more calories than you burn and the extras
get packed away in one of two places -- long-term storage depots beneath the
skin (subcutaneous fat) or short-term bins deep in the abdomen (visceral
fat). Visceral fat is what we call omental fat -- that is, fat in your
omentum, a piece of webbing that hangs off your stomach just beneath your ab
muscles, sort of like a mesh apron.
*2. The fat you don’t see is the most dangerous.* The soft, superficial
stuff that ripples your thighs and tummy may be a bikini spoiler, but if you
can pinch it, it probably won’t kill you. However, if you have a solid “beer
belly" . . . well, you’re likely headed for more trouble than a politician
hooked up to a polygraph. That’s because too much deep fat churns out
supersize amounts of hormones and proteins, which can lead to big hazards.
Among them: lousy LDL cholesterol and triglyceride levels; high blood sugar
and blood pressure; insulin resistance; and widespread inflammation. All are
instigators of many diseases -- including dementia, cancer, heart disease,
and diabetes. But often you can get a “do over,” and it doesn’t take that
long and isn’t that hard, if you know what you’re doing. So don’t stop
reading!
First, don’t rely on your scale. As you start to reduce risky belly fat,
your weight may temporarily go up. So ditch the scale in favor of the tape
measure. If you’re a woman, your waist should be 32.5 inches; if you’re a
man, 35 inches. Creep past 37 inches for women or 40 for men, and the health
dangers increase.
*3. Stress makes you fat.* Not only does stress lead you to eat Haagen-Dazs
straight from the carton, but it also triggers the release of cortisol, a
stress hormone. When stress becomes unrelenting, the omentum attempts to
control cortisol flow by sucking it out of the bloodstream. Nice try, but
cortisol fights back once it’s in the omentum and turbocharges fat there.
That sets off other chemical reactions that leave you feeling hungry . . .
and looking for the Haagen-Dazs again. Fortunately, any kind of stress
reduction, especially exercise, will help short-circuit this stress/fat
cycle. Feeling tense right now? Go for a walk the minute you finish this
column.
*4. The fat you eat affects the fat you get.* When monkeys munched on
trans-fat laced diets for 6 years, they developed more deep-belly fat than
those who went trans-fat-free, even though both ate the same number of
calories. Physiologically, we’re close enough to monkeys to extrapolate that
trans fat doesn’t do anything good for your waist or your arteries.
*5. Blasting belly fat isn’t hard.* If you’re not overweight but still have
an oversized waist, the fastest way to shrink your omentum is by walking.
Taking a brisk 30-minute walk each day will keep those fat cells from
expanding. Pick up the pace some, walk a little longer, and you can give
your omentum a makeover, turning a flabby apron of omental fat into sheer
mesh again. After 30 days of walking, start doing resistance exercises as
well to add muscle and lose inches -- otherwise you’ll hit a plateau. No
dumbbells? No gym? No problem. You can get an excellent workout in 20
minutes by using your own body as a weight to stretch and strengthen all of
your major muscle groups. Find examples at
www.realage.com/ct/shape-up-slim-down/.
*6. Whole grains scare away belly fat.* If you and a friend go on a diet but
you eat whole grains (meaning brown rice, steel-cut oats, and whole-wheat
pasta, not whole-grain Pop Tarts) and your friend eats processed grains
(anything made with white/enriched grains and flours, cupcakes to noodles),
you both might lose the same amount of weight, but you’ll shed more belly
fat and lower your levels of C-reactive protein, a marker of damaging
inflammation. And your food will taste better, and you’ll feel full longer.
AND you’ll have a flat stomach!
Just because someone drives a Beemer the local guards don't dare to wheel lock the car. But sadly there will always be a rule for the well-off and another rule for the rest.
One of my dearest buddies died on the 12 Feb 2006, he was just 38. We had a small memorial for him at my house on the Valentine of 14th Feb 2006.
Laurence, the memory of you is still ever present in our lives. We all miss you Laurence.Tears keep welling up each time I think about you. The saddest part is that you never saw Zoe. She would have been so happy to have you as an Uncle.
This Laurence is your song. The following pals wrote you their tributes:
CoolCat's RIP
Grace Tan's Memory
The Fabulist's Tribute
Duck Drumstick Herbal Soup Mee in Kota Kemunting. A sip of this soup reminds you how u miss your mom's herbal soup of yesteryears. Yes it is that good, and they have a newspaper article to prove it. How do i know that? They ACTUALLY use that that newspaper clip as their menu for those of us who can't read chinese characters.
Okay.. now go find this joint..
Today I just bought my most expensive toy. It's the most I've paid for a phone . Yes the saving grace is it's an all in one device. But still I paid The Most I have ever spent on a phone.
In case you think I spent rm2.8k on an iPhone 3G, I didn't. I bought a used iPhone 2G with 16Gb at Rm1000!
Yes, that's the most I spent on a phone. I bet it's a surprised to you.
Since many spend more on a phone.
