.: Say No To Violence :.

I came across the online news of the shooting rampage in Alabama.

At gym, right after work, CNN was reporting of a shooting rampage. I thought it was the same incident, until I realise that this incident was in a school located in a small town in Germany.

11 (including the gunman) dead, victims include an 18 month old daughter of a local sheriff in the Alabama rampage.

In Winnenden,Germany, the 17 year old gunman took away 15 lifes with his fathers' collection of 16 firearms along with multitude of ammunition. Most of his victims are school students and school teachers.

What has the world become, when people are resorting to violence to resolve whatever problems they may face?

People (from teenagers to politicians) need to realise that this is NOT the solution to ANY problems! What kind of message are we trying to convey to our younger generations?

In memories of all the victims of this devastating violence and their families.

.: CON-sultant II :.

Another con-sultant joke :)

Qian, this is dedicated to you! :)

A man lands on a hot air balloon in the middle of the desert, not knowing his whereabouts he looks around. Along walks another guy so the balloon man asks "Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?"

"Sure" says the other one "longitude 23'45", latitude 34'12".

"Oh," says the balloon man, "you must be accountant"

"As a matter of fact, I am, how did you know?"

" Well, you just gave me a very precise piece of worthless information."

" I see" says the accountant "and you must be a consultant."

"You are right, how did you know?"

"As long as you're up in the air, you seem to know where you're going, but as soon as you get down to earth, you're lost."

.: Vote Earth, Because Every Vote Counts :.

THIS IS THE WORLD’S FIRST GLOBAL ELECTION, BETWEEN EARTH AND GLOBAL WARMING

On March 28 you can VOTE EARTH by switching off your lights for one hour.
Or you can vote global warming by leaving your lights on.

The results of the election are being presented at the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen 2009. We want one billion votes for Earth, to tell world leaders that we have to take action against global warming.


What you can do?

Turning your lights off for an hour is a great start. However, there are many other things you can do to make Earth Hour 2009 a success.

Sign Up Now. Become a part of Earth Hour and get useful tips and tools to reduce your carbon footprint everyday

Tell A Friend. Better still – tell them, your family and even your work mates. Encourage them to sign up. Email them a link to this website and mobilise even more people!

Tell Your Story. How is climate change affecting your family and your community? We want to hear how you're becoming part of the solution.

Run your own Earth Hour. Download our quick guide for how to run Earth Hour in your city or town. It's easy!

Your Earth Hour. What will you be doing at 8.30pm on Saturday March 28? We're keen to know what you have planned for Earth Hour 2009. If you'd like to share your plans with Earth Hour and the media, then please send us an email describing with as much detail as you can what you have planned to myearthhour@earthhour.org. Don't forget to include your name, where you live (City and Country), and your contact telephone number including your country code.

Blogger Tool Kit: Create a blog post about the importance of global action on climate change and how participation in Earth Hour can make a difference.

VOTE EARTH, BECAUSE EVERY VOTE COUNTS!

.: I ♥ Books :.

I ♥ books.

My reading status for the past month or so (excerpt from Facebook's Visual Bookshelf)

.: Weekend of Food :.

It's been a great long weekend.

I went down to Malacca with JC to visit my dearest grandma :)

We had a food-spree, where we ate till we we stuffed. We had:

1) Nyonya Laksa @ Donald & Lily (but nothing beats my grandma's rockin authentic Nyonya Laksa) for lunch.
2) Heavily pork-lard laden popiah from the famous vendor opposite Madam King Supermarket at Jalan Bunga Raya.
3) Banana fritters (pisang goreng) along the once-beach-now-reclaimed-land
4) Coconut shake (coconut juice + flesh + vanilla ice-cream all blend into one) just opposite our house
5) Oh Chien - which is fried omelette with oysters
6) Nasi lemak kukus which is only RM 1.50 for a generous portion of steamed coconut rice plus unlimited condiments of cucumber, ikan bilis, egg & samba l(extra spicy - just the way i love it)
7) Home made cendol from this nice Peranakan lady in her house at Bukit Rambai - the coconut milk she uses is so sinfully rich!
8) Grandma's homecooked meals - the best of the best :)

And on Sunday night, I was at SJian's place, where he cooked for us dinner. Loved the beef stew so much! *thanks SJian* And the dessert that CKong made was also superb! :)



So nice to have male friends who can cook :)

Gosh, so much eating for one weekend! Must go on a diet this week! :)

.: Fool :.

There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what is not true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.

- Soren Kierkegaard-

.: Vote Earth :.

Earth hour 2009 is a global call to action!

A call to stand up, to take responsibility and to get involve in working towards a sustainable future.

VOTE EARTH

YOUR LIGHT SWITCH IS YOUR VOTE

This year, Earth Hour has been transformed into the world’s first global election, between Earth and global warming.

For the first time in history, people of all ages, nationalities, race and background have the opportunity to use their light switch as their vote – Switching off your lights is a vote for Earth, or leaving them on is a vote for global warming. WWF are urging the world to VOTE EARTH and reach the target of 1 billion votes, which will be presented to world leaders at the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen 2009.

This meeting will determine official government policies to take action against global warming, which will replace the Kyoto Protocol. It is the chance for the people of the world to make their voice heard.Earth Hour began in Sydney in 2007, when 2.2 million homes and businesses switched off their lights for one hour.

In 2008 the message had grown into a global sustainability movement, with 50 million people switching off their lights. Global landmarks such as the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, Rome’s Colosseum, the Sydney Opera House and the Coca Cola billboard in Times Square all stood in darkness.

In 2009, Earth Hour is being taken to the next level, with the goal of 1 billion people switching off their lights as part of a global vote. Unlike any election in history, it is not about what country you’re from, but instead, what planet you’re from.

VOTE EARTH is a global call to action for every individual, every business, and every community. A call to stand up and take control over the future of our planet. Over 74 countries and territories have pledged their support to VOTE EARTH during Earth Hour 2009, and this number is growing everyday.We all have a vote, and every single vote counts. Together we can take control of the future of our planet, for future generations.

VOTE EARTH by simply switching off your lights for one hour, and join the world for Earth Hour.

Saturday, March 28, 8:30-9:30pm.

Join this campaign at www.earthhour.org today!

I am doing my part!

What about you?

.: Story Of The Moon & Cheese :.

In an email to Qian:

Ok, the stories goes this way.

Once upon a time, Xiao & Shan went to the same chemistry tuition.
We were bored, so we started to devise an evil plan……*muahahaha* *thunder strike*

We wanted cheese, and where else to get that many cheese but the moon. But we then realise that it cost too much money (fuel cost) to go via a spaceship.

So we decided to go via a rope and a basket & to move the basket, we would get a friend to cycle to generate electricity (see we were paying attention durin physics dynamo lesson).

And who else better to cycle than an ahtletic and so we nominated you :)

And that my friend, is the story of the moon & cheese.

.: Public Speaking :.

Sometimes I wonder why I agree to do the things that I fear doing.

I'm gonna be giving a talk to a group of parents & students on accountancy in Sunway College next weekend. And god knows how fearful I am speaking on stage. The only way to conquer my fear is to face them I guess.

Dear Uqba and Shan Lyn

Thank you so much for agreeing to take time off your busy schedule to speak to potential students on our Open Day. Just thought I could email the details to you:

Date: 14th March 2009
Time: 1.30pm – 2.30pm
Title: ACA as a Profession: A Personal Perspective
Venue: Audi 7
Guest speaker: Uqba

Date: 15th March 2009
Time: 2.45pm – 3.45pm
Title: ACA as a Profession: A Personal Perspective
Venue: Audi 7
Guest speaker: Shan Lyn

Ms Loh Wei Yuen, Head of ICAEW Malaysia will start off by introducing herself and talk about the ICAEW. She will then pass it on to you for about 10-15 minutes to share your ACA experience before finishing off with Q&A session. It would be great if you could touch on the following (you can select a few or add to it, if you wish!):

1. Why did you choose the ACA
2. What's the difference between ACCA and ACA exams (this is for you, Shan Lyn)
3. How did you benefit from the work-study structure
4. How did the exams prepare you for your job and career
5. What did you enjoy most
6. What's the hardest part
7. Any practical tips or advice for students who are considering the ACA

Once again, thank you so much for supporting Sunway and the ICAEW in this manner. You can buzz me on my mobile phone once you arrive. See you then and have a wonderful evening.

Cheng Soo Min

.: Reading List :.

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
2) Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE.
3) Tally your total at the bottom.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X+
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X+
6 The Bible - X++
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X+
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne X+
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker 1/2X
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle X+
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Beloved - Toni Morrison
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Read: 7 1/2
Loved: 6

So I am like most people. Need to catch up on my reading! :)

.: Wings To Fly :.

The story behind this, coming soon......

.: Chillin :.

Chillin with Drew & SJian @ Old Town Cafe in Uptown Damansara NOW :)

.: Encouragements :.

Words of encouragements :

You say: "It's impossible"
God says: All things are possible
(Luke 18:27)

You say: "I'm too tired"
God says: I will give you rest
(Matthew 11:28-30)

You say: "Nobody really loves me"
God says: I love you
(John 3:16 & John 3:34 )

You say: "I can't go on"
God says: My grace is sufficient
(II Corinthians 12:9 & Psalm 91:15)

You say: "I can't figure things out"
God says: I will direct your steps
(Proverbs 3:5-6)

You say: "I can't do it"
God says: You can do all things
(Philippians 4:13)

You say: "I'm not able"
God says: I am able
(II Corinthians 9:8)

You say: "It's not worth it"
God says: It will be worth it
(Roman 8:28 )

You say: "I can't forgive myself"
God says: I Forgive you
(I John 1:9 & Romans 8:1)

You say: "I can't manage"
God says: I will supply all your needs
(Philippians 4:19)

You say: "I'm afraid"
God says: I have not given you a spirit of fear
(II Timothy 1:7)

You say: "I'm always worried and frustrated"
God says: Cast all your cares on ME
(I Peter 5:7)

You say: "I'm not smart enough"
God says: I give you wisdom
(I Corinthians 1:30)

You say: "I feel all alone"
God says: I will never leave you or forsake you
(Hebrews 13:5)

.: Let Me Let Go :.

~* Let Me Let Go *~
Faith Hills & Tim McGraw

I thought it was over, baby
We said our goodbyes
But I can't go a day without your face
Goin' through my mind

In fact, not a single minute
Passes without you in it
Your voice, your touch, memories of your love
Are with me all of the time

Let me let go, baby
Let me let go
If this is for the best
Why are you still in my heart
Are you still in my soul
Let me let go

I talked to you the other day
Looks like you make your escape
You put us behind, no matter how I try
I can't do the same

Let me let go, baby
Let me let go
It just isn't right
I've been two thousand miles
Down a dead-end road

Let me let go, darlin', won't you
I just gotta know, yeah
If this is for the best
Why are you still in my heart
Are you still in my soul
Let me let go

The lights of this strange city are shinin'
But they don't hold no fascination for me
I try to find the bright side, baby
But everywhere I look
Everywhere I turn
You're all I see

Let me, let me let go, baby, won't you
Let me let go
It just isn't right
I've been two thousand miles
Down a dead-end road

Oh, let me let go, darlin', won't you
I just gotta know
If this is for the best
Why are you still in my heart
Yeah, you're still in my soul, let me let go
Let me let go, let me let go

Let Me Let Go - Faith Hill

.: For The Love Of Money :.

Bernard Lawrence "Bernie" Madoff founder of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, also known for his Ponzi scheme (a hedge fund scheme that was all one BIG LIE) may be the largest investor fraud committed by a single person.

His sales method was to offer his clients a modest return on their investments and his investments was often marketed as "too complicated for outsiders to understand".

So what was his scheme all about? How did he manage to pay out such high yield from his funds - way above market returns? How did many "intelligent" companies/individuals get fooled into this? It's not the housewives-next-door that gets caught in this scheme. Investors includes HSBC, BNP Paribas, RBS, Ascot Partners, etc.

Well, in a nutshell, it works like a pyramid scheme (MLM, Network Marketing or whatever you may want to market it as).

A very simple, yet explains-it-all lesson I learn from my lecturer is this - to look at the cash flow of the company. Where is it getting it's profits (which will later on translate to cash) from? And more importantly, is it sustainable?

Bernie's scheme is such where new investors invest cash into the scheme. Existing investors who wants to draw out cash would be able to do so, but the cash actually comes from the new investors rather than actual profits made by the funds.

In this scheme, it's like a musical chair. Everyone is happy when the music is playing, but once the music stop, the one left without the chair is in the losing end (and it's usually the later investors, while the earlier investors who have already withdrawn from such schemes are safe).

It's really quite sad for I've seen this type of scheme presented to me a couple of times, which I must admit, the returns are really good. The testimonials from the investors of such scheme are so convincing. They are not of older people, but of people my age, who claims to have make it big, driving a Beamer, shopping at KLCC boutiques and all that. But take a more closer look at these schemes, push asides the greed in us for high & fast returns, and you will unravel the wolf behind sheep's clothing.

The main reason why this type of scheme is still around, despite numerous warnings from media, etc is because of human greed. High returns without having to do anything. This young girl came up to me and begin to testify in one of the talks I went to. She began to tell of how she loves to shop, and want to buy branded goods - and because of this scheme, she doesn't have to slave and work, and she can just earn money just like that and can buy whatever goods she wants. I can see why many people will buy that, especially those of my age range. Easy money. No HARD WORK (albeit, no boring 9-5 jobs, sitting behind the office desk). So much time to spend shopping and holidaying and spending money.

Yes, I never dispute the fact that one could make money from such a scheme. Just have to be the pioneers, the top end of the pyramid, extracting money from the bottom end of the pyramid. These schemes are to a certain way legitimate (if it's marketed the right way) but in substance, it is morally wrong.

I have seen and heard, all of this with an open mind, but one should never let greed get in the way of rational. I've seen intelligent friends, some even from accounting backgrounds, who got fooled into such scheme, and got burned in the end.

Sometimes, the money invested and lost can be viewed as "education fees". You learn from your mistakes. And move on. But some, who has poured in their lifelong savings - have literally nothing to live by. Because of the collapse of the Bernie's funds, there were a couple of people who decided to take their life. There was this elderly man who had to go back to work, instead of enjoying his retirement - all because his savings were wiped off overnight.

I really feel very strongly against such schemes but have been keeping mumps about it until recently. I just hope that people would be able to wake up and realize all this and make a wise decision before it's too late.

Remember, money is not the root to all evil. The love of money is.
(1 Timothy 6:10)