As if to remind the world that 2005 had been a torrid year of horrendous terror from the sea, from the earth, and even from the heavens and also from people, a bomb exploded in a busy marketplace in the Indonesian town of Palu, killing six and injuring 45, to bring a year of suffering to a close. May 2006 be a slightly happier year for all!

You can read the news report here.

But the … case seems like yet another example of the lack of coordination between agencies serving the poor, homeless and mentally ill. The cracks are too wide and deep, and the political will for reform is too weak, if a man who suffered a life-threatening head injury less than five months ago can be left to the streets again.

Sometimes reading articles like the one from which the above quote is taken, gives me pause. Yet I still think there is hope as I alluded to a few days ago. You can read the whole article here.

As I said a few days ago in my previous post highlighting the story about the little boy saving the beached fishes one at a time, making a difference to each fish as he threw them back to the sea, it may not be the case of changing society dramatically all at once. However, if each of us do our part and if we only get involve in the cause of changing lives and impacting others so that the under-resourced and the marginalized of our societies can be empowered, we can then create a ripple of change that will impact others one life at a time.

As a cursory view of my sidebars indicates, I have signed up on quite a few different blog exchanges. Initially the blog exchanges, did bring me some new traffic. BlogExplosion is especially effective, and it is still attracting new visitors each day. However, I am beginning to think that each new exchange just bring in more of the same folks to this site, and even though there may be an increased number of hits, I many still not be getting as many repeat visitors. This may be because the same folks are the one who are traffic hungry and signing up on the same exchanges, but I cannot be sure, so, when I find out about BlogMad, of course, I jumped on the bandwagon and signed up!

Apparently, this new blog traffic exchange intends to be different from others, and is dedicated at increasing traffic to your site in innovative new ways! That sure sounds tantalizing!

Well, it is in pre-launch mode right now, so if if you are interested in generating more traffic, and would like to start at the ground floor, so to speak, go here to sign up now

The other day, #1 Daughter and I were having a long chat. Part of the conversation was about her plans post-college. She is finding her experience at NYU and in the Big Apple in general to be just a blast and a whole world of difference from where we have lived the past five years. Living and going to school by herself in the Big City has opened her eyes to so much more about life in America as opposed to our safe little surroundings in a city filled with planned neighborhoods, which is also known as “The O.C.” in some circles.

Anyway, #1 Daughter was talking about doing some traveling, both during and after jer college years. She hopes to travel to Thailand, but also she was hoping to live and work in Europe before settling back to America and either working or going back to school. As we talked, I mused about the love that most young Australians (all my kids are born and bred true-blue Aussies, although they are fast picking up much Americanisms since we have re-located here five years ago) for adventure spurring almost every young Australian I know to travel the world. And, not just to travel, but to live and work in international locations for periods of up to a year or two and in many cases, to do so shortly after high school - what is often known as “working holidays“. Even though my daughter had done quite a bit of travelling herself (as a high schooler in Australia, she traveled with a dance troupe to California for three weeks, and of course, this move across the globe some five years ago was some kind of travelling experience), yet for this young Aussie, that doesn’t count!

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BlogExplosion’s recently added feature, Rent My Blog, allows member blogs to put up ads on their own sites that can be rented to other members in exchange for credits.

I have observed this new feature from afar and today decided to give it a try. My first victimrenter is ONEMANBANDWIDTH is the blog of a self-professed “Writer, Professor, Editor, Entrepreneur, China SEO, Business and Trade Specialist and a Sourcing Consultant for emerging and established businesses seeking to improve their visibility in overseas markets.”

I’ve visited his blog numerous times and have read some of his postings. Often humorous sometimes you will find either satirical pieces (or perhaps serious ones), but almost always accompanied by a funny cartoon or illustration.

The Rent A Blog program acts like any other advertising program. Renters have the opportunity to advertise their blogs on those who rent out the space. As you can see, ONEMANBANDWIDTH’s blog is advertised on the space on the left, so I invite you all to click on the ad and go pay the good professor a visit. And when you do, please leave him a nice comment and tell him that The Bloke sent you!

I received an email from a friend today. She is slowly losing her father to cancer and she is feeling exhausted from the pain and anguish of the suffering and impending loss. Her email reminded me of my own experiences with the loss of my own mom. My mom’s death devastated me, and left a mark in my psyche for a long time. In fact, as I re-read my earlier post, “Why did God let Mom die?” I bawled my eyes out again. I was surprised that the emotional onslaught was just as unrelenting and the pain of the memories was just as acute. I thought I had been healed from the trauma of the experience, but I guess one never really gets healed from such painful loss.

As my friend, a social scientist herself, walks through this dark and lonely valley of loss and losing, she finds herself questioning not just the incomprehensibility of the entire experience, but also the very fabric of the world we live in. She writes:

Going through such painful experiences made me question even more about the world we are living in. With all the social problems around us getting worse by the day, someone wrote to our local newspapers and said that social scientists, especially sociologists, have to do more work to make the world a better place. We, social scientists, have already voiced out what is wrong with the world, but is society willing to take up the challenge and follow our suggestions. For a start, materialism, selfishness and self-centeredness are the major factors contributing to most crimes and deviant behaviour. Are corrupted politicians willing to turn a new leaf? Are some professionals and businesses willing to charge with their conscience instead of thinking of making large profits all the time?

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Remember that phrase in Joshua: “choose for yourselves today whom you will serve…but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD”?

Now, if you attended Abundant Life Christian Center in La Marque, near Houston, Texas, that phrase might take on a whole new meaning for you!! (HT: Phil’s blog)

I have the week off. For various reasons, our family are not going to be going out of town this year. Instead, we are going to take it easy. I have several goals I am hoping to achieve during this time of relaxation, rest and rejuvenation of sorts:

1. Upgrade my blog. Wordpress 2.0 is out, so I might take a deep breath and be foolhardybrave. I may even take the opportunity to upgrade the design, although I do like the four columns-opening-to-three layout. Perhaps I will just make a few face-lift type of adjustments. I previously blogged about this compulsionintention to upgrade here, and asked for suggestions. One kind person has responded to my request for suggestions and what he has to say makes a lot of sense. Do you have any suggestions yourself? If you do and care to share, I’d truly appreciate it. Let’s see how far I go with this project.

2. Visit the Cerritos Public Library with my kids. I have heard that it is very modern, state-of-the-art and well designed. Almost theme-park-ish, is how one person had described it to me. I have always wanted to take my kids there, but even though I work in the city, it has not been always convenient for us to make a special trek out there just to drop into the library.

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Last night, I sat down with my family to watch Unleashed, starring Jet Li and Morgan Freeman. Now, as much as I like Jet Li, and as much as I like Morgan Freeman’s work, and as much as I like kung-fu flicks and martial arts, I just could not bring myself to enjoy this distorted attempt at movie story telling.

Somehow I just found the entire movie rather distressing, and, well, just plain wrong! Someone should have stopped it from making it to celluloid.

It might be petty of me to do so, but I just cannot help but complain about the simplistic Hollywood stereotyping of Asians (subservient, uncouth and uncivilized who is tamed twice by the more dominant Westerner. And, how in the world could an abused, traumatized young boy who was caged from the moment he was abducted learn to be a deadly martial arts exponent? Oh, but of course! He is Asian! It just come naturally to these exotic, not-quite-human super fighters!).

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Reading for this the eve of Christmas:

“The Lord of Heaven sent the Cool Wind to a girl named Mo Yen. It entered her womb and at the moment she conceived. The Lord of Heaven did this to show that conception could take place without a husband. He knew there was no man near her and that people who saw it would say, “How great is the power of the Lord of Heaven.” Their hearts would become filled with pure faith and they would devote themselves to bettering the karmic condition of all.

Mo Yen became pregnant and gave birth to a son named Jesus, whose father is the Cool Wind. Some people were ignorant and said if she gave birth after becoming pregnant by the Cool Wind, then the whole thing was merely of this world. If a Sage on High issues an edict, then everyone willingly will submit to it. The Lord of Heaven dwells in heavn above and controls everything in heaven and earth.

When Jesus Messiah was born, the world saw clear signs in heaven and earth. A new star that could be seen everywhere appeared in heaven above. The star was as big as a cart wheel and shown brightly. At about this time, the One was born in the country of Ephrath in the city of Jerusalem. He was born the Messiah and after five years he began to preach the dharma.”

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I am thinking of undertaking a major overhaul of my blog. And I need your help. Please read on and help me improve by leaving your comments, either as answers to questions below or comments on anything that you might think of that might help. If you are a BlogExplosion member, and came here via BE, please consider doing a Blog Review. (NOTE: Blog Explosion Battle of the Blog voters - read my specific plearequest in my last paragraph - please!) Thanks!

First, a little bit of a background info. I started this blog more than a year ago, and it enjoyed the first few months of its existence over at Blogger. That site is still up and enjoys some traffic via search engines. By the way, do you know how to completely change all the search engine results to the corresponding pages on this site instead on the blogger site?

Anyway, since my first attempt at building the site over at Blogger, I had looked enviously at other sites that were hosted and that used more sophisticated software such as MT or Wordpress. So, one day, after some research I ventured over to set up my own domain, and adopted Wordpress to build this site. It was a decision that was fraught with much frustration and also not a little joy!

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The other day we have a grave issue at work that needed resolution. It was going to involve a critical meeting, at which my boss, his boss (our company’s CEO) and myself would meet with representatives from this other firm. We were going to attempt to resolve a matter that has significant consequences between our two firms. This matter could potentially negatively impact our division (at least) if not the entire company, and sour the relationships not only between the two firms but the repercussions might even impact other relationships and the overall performance of our division and company.

To say that it is a critically significant meeting is to understate it. Just before we left for the meeting, my boss mentioned to me that he prayed for a miracle to happen. I said to him that I prayed too, but did not ask for a miracle, only for wisdom on behalf of all three of us. Now that I think about it, that in itself might be a miracle. I mean for me, but I digress…

Anyway, I remember that I was in a prayerful mode when the meeting began, and our company CEO started to address the CEO and the team from the other company. I asked again for the Spirit of all wisdom to come take control over the meeting and allow us all to see the way out of the impasse. I asked God’s Spirit to help us find a third way that benefits all parties so that we could all synergistically resolve the issue and enjoy successful collaboration once again.

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