Courtesy of GOOD & Whole Foods
A Very Warming Story for Modern Cold Times
NPR has a weekly spot called StoryCorps. This week, they ran a story of self-recorded interview on this one person. He is a janitor. Nothing extraordinary there. However, he and his wife of 25 years do not have kids. So Willie Jefferson feels that the kids at the school that he has served as janitor for 23 years are his kids. He has had impact enough on these kids over the years so much that they think of him and his wife as their parents.
These days, I feel that our society is getting more and more distant and colder as technology and crime seem to distance us away from each other. So I take these warm stories like Haagen-Dazs coffee ice cream: savor every word of such awesome story. Stories such as this gives me hope that people can be trust-worthy…
I hope we all have people that we are fond of and love… Like in the words of DC Talk, “We all wanna be loved”
For a Greener World
We have lived a life of ruining the world. Pollution and waste are at the worst high and worst of all, we aren’t really aware of it. We need to bite the bullet and strive for a greener world. So where do we start, you ask? Start using less gasoline. Use re-useable bags for shopping instead of plastic bags. Check sites like TreeHugger.com. And here are some developments that could help.
There’s a company called Brammo which is producing a motocycle. That’s nothing new. But it’s an all-electric bike! Currently, it only has about 42-mile range and requires about 4 hours to recharge. That’s lame, you say. But it’s perfect for commuting to work. The downside is that it is expensive at $10K. But you will practically pay nothing on fuel anymore. And as it gets revamped, the cost will come down. It’s this kind of progress and direction the world needs to make.
Another cool idea that’s coming around is making ethanol out of garbage! That’s ingenious! I do believe that alternative energy source is the future in saving the Earth from dying. I hope we all try to contribute in saving the Earth.
Soda Tax a Possibility
Why didn’t we think of this before?! Government is thinking about and planning on taxing soda. Soda is mostly sugar water. And it’s one of the leading reasons why the Americans are so dang unhealthy, and the contributor to America’s health insurance cost.
It’s so simple. Tax soda to let people know that you are paying extra because it’s known to make you unhealthy. We do it to cigarettes and alcohol. Why not soda?! Heck, why stop there? Tax other stuff like cakes and cookies!! Ok, ok… some of you are probably freaking out. But seriously, we are the fattiest country (by far) in the world! We consume way more food than the rest of the world. We need to be less selfish and strive for change.
As prices for such unhealthy products go up, perhaps it will wake us up to smell the coffee and strive for healthier lives… and lower the nation-wide healthcare cost. \
Now my favorite sodas of Coca Cola (none of that Pepsi crap please) and Sweppe’s Ginger Ale will cost me more and will prevent me from drinking so much! Actually, I have pretty much stopped drinking soda altogether. I drink perhaps about 1 serving of soda per week or two. Let’s do it America!
A Story That Crossed an Ocean and Half a Decade
Wow… this story definitely crossed several genres of walls for me. A story of a US soldier who coincidentally picked up a drawing and a picture of a Japanese baby girl that transcended time to reunite them fifty+ years later. That baby girl grew up not knowing her father at all but upon being reunited with the picture, she saw her father’s unspoken and unknown side: that her father had adored her and carried her picture to his dying field.
War has never been pretty. World War II was never an exception. If anything, it seemed to bring that point out even more sharply with two big powers. Iwo Jima was such a small island and losing several tens of thousands of soldiers seemed so tiny of a reason. Yet, what this story was able to do was to make this war so much more personal for these 3 people involved.
I fought back a load of tears as I read this story. Having allergies actually was a positive thing for once as it helped cover up the tears and the runny nose. This story also softened my heart about wars because it showed that there’s always a personal side to something so tragic and terrible.
Pathways Mission Trip to El Salvador with Living Water International 2009
So our church sent a group along with another church, Fellowship of Memorial, to head out to El Salvador this summer to dig fresh water well for a village called Acajutla. This is a slide show of it… It is rather long (at 14 minutes) but worth the look… We are already planning on sending another team next year…
Pathways Mission Video from Shawn Kang on Vimeo.
Please donate time on your PS3 and PC to help find cure!
I have lost my uncles, aunts, and grandparents, not to mention friends, to cancer. Liver cancer, lung cancer, stomach cancer, you name it. I’ve even lost my cousin to Leukemia. That’s why I searched for ways to help in whatever I can do.
Enter Stanford University. A professor there started studying the ways proteins change and become new molecules, also known as “folding”. By studying and knowing how proteins fold, a cure for cancer can be found. I have my PS3 and my 2 PCs doing this whenver I am not using them. So yes, you do pay a bit extra for electricity usage but for a 200W PC, that equates to about $20/month extra! If you have the new PS3 Slim, it only uses about $10/month of electricity!
By helping and contributing, I feel like Morpheus from Matrix…
“Now consider the alternative. What if I am right? What if the prophecy is true? What if tomorrow the war could be over? Isn’t that worth fighting for? Isn’t that worth dying for?”
Don’t you want to feel like you’ve done all you can? So as to not have regrets?! I sure do. I want to know that I’ve done all I can in help fighting cancer. Let’s make cancer history… If you need help setting this up and running it, please ask and I’d be ecstatic to help!