Good cheer may be contagious

By MARIA CHENG,AP Medical Writer AP - Friday, December 5LONDON - When you're smiling, the whole world really does smile with you.

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A paper being published Friday in a British medical journal concludes that happiness is contagious _ and that people pass on their good cheer even to total strangers.

American researchers who tracked more than 4,700 people in Framingham, Mass., as part of a 20-year heart study also found the transferred happiness is good for up to a year.

"Happiness is like a stampede," said Nicholas Christakis, a professor in Harvard University's sociology department and co-author of the study. "Whether you're happy depends not just on your own actions and behaviors and thoughts, but on those of people you don't even know."

While the study is another sign of the power of social networks, it ran through 2003, just before the rise of social networking Web sites like Friendster, MySpace and Facebook. Christakis couldn't say for sure whether the effect works online.

"This type of technology enhances your contact with friends, so it should support the kind of emotional contagion we observed," he said.

Christakis and co-author James Fowler, of the University of California in San Diego, are old hands at studying social networks. They previously found that obesity and smoking habits spread socially as well.

For this study, published in the British journal BMJ, they examined questionnaires that asked people to measure their happiness. They found distinct happy and unhappy clusters significantly bigger than would be expected by chance.

Happy people tended to be at the center of social networks and had many friends who were also happy. Having friends or siblings nearby increased people's chances of being upbeat. Happiness spread outward by three degrees, to the friends of friends of friends.

Happy spouses helped, too, but not as much as happy friends of the same gender. Experts think people, particularly woman, take emotional cues from people who look like them.

Christakis and Fowler estimate that each happy friend boosts your own chances of being happy by 9 percent. Having grumpy friends decreases it by about 7 percent.

But it also turns out misery don't love company: Happiness seemed to spread more consistently than unhappiness. But that doesn't mean you should drop your gloomy friends.

"Every friend increases the probability that you're at the center of a network, which means you are more eligible to get a wave of happiness," Fowler said.

Being happy also brings other benefits, including a protective effect on your immune system so you produce fewer stress hormones, said Andrew Steptoe, a psychology professor at University College London who was not involved with the study.

But you shouldn't assume you can make yourself happy just by making the right friends.

"To say you can manipulate who your friends are to make yourself happier would be going too far," said Stanley Wasserman, an Indiana University statistician who studies social networks.

The study was only conducted in a single community, so it would take more research to confirm its findings. But in a time of economic gloom, it also suggested some heartening news about money and happiness.

According to the research, an extra chunk of money increases your odds of being happy only marginally _ notably less than the odds of being happier if you have a happy friend.

"You can save your money," Christakis said. "Being around happy people is better."

Entry from David's blog again.. a God who knows how to forgive...

Have you/ us ever thought about how much how much how much we actually need forgiveness in our lives? It's not just some Christian jargon or theology, but something that is so missing and desired for in our empty hearts.


we long so much for someone to tell us, "It's alright!"
we long so much for someone to tell us, "I just appreciate you for you who are, i don't care how much you screw things up!"


we never find ourselves good enough for someone or some people... in fact, we live our lives with this mentality that we're never good enough for ourselves.... deep within, an ache exists - an ache of loneliness, an ache of meaninglessness, an ache of hurt from long ago - something we choose to bury and refuse to acknowledge..


if there ever is a God in this world, He got to be one who displays the FULL range of emotions as His created beings, instead of being an emotionless (or most often angry) vending machine in which we desperately dump in coins at the correct amounts to obtain our desired wants in life.. This kind of supreme being seems..... flat... too flat to be REAL at all... do i desire to worship a vending machine? er.... not exactly...

and when i talks about this God who forgives - you know how wide the range of emotions this word (FORGIVENESS) covers? Just think about it!

does God compensate us for our suffering?

i'm getting more and more convinced of the idea that God compensates us for our sufferings.. juz like in Job, after that horrible dunno how many years of bitter and terrible loss and suffering, Job received 7 times his original possessions..

one church sister shared how she felt like Job in teh 9 months of "hell" when she worked in a company with nasty colleagues.. then later got into company tat was "heaven".. full of wonderful colleagues who shared close-knit relationships. and incidently, i was itchy-handed enough to calculate the ratio between teh good times she had and the times she lost in that suffering.. and it was really 7 lo.. she spent 9 months in the "hell" job and in her words, "5 and a half years" in teh "heaven" company.. the ratio is roughly equals to 7.. woo....

and for me, i suffered 3 years too..mebbe not as bad as "hell", but bad nevertheless. and now im' feeling so much better than 1 year ago, and even 1 year ago i was feelign so much better htan 1 year ago before. hopefully i will continue to stay in teh light, and even go to brighter places..

Please God, let me see more and more of Your face as the days go by.. amen.

so, for my fellow brothers and sisters who are suffering.. endure, be patient, for ur reward will come after.

my Baby

yes this is the Liu Qin, 柳琴, the instrument that i played in my secondary school.. and this is 1 song that i used to practice alot.. really brings back memories..

i own 1 of this instrument at home.. but it cannot replace the Baby in my heart.. played that for only 2 years, but it was with me as i went through the peak of my Chinese Orchestra "career" (which lasted for a total of 8 years) the name "Baby" is actually quite apt as i literally had to cradle it in my lap everytime i played it, as you can see from the video.. heh..

unlike the one at home, my Baby's tone is very nice..its notes were melodious and bright.. it also looked v nice, having gold platings on its "pin"s 品, which are basically the ridges seen on the front of teh instrument.. the more you play the instrumetn, teh more friction the ridges experience, the more it is polished. hence it is brighter.. so that was part of the reason y i practiced so frequently, so that the gold can shine brightly haha. the flower on top and teh 2 "windows" 音窗 at the front(like in the teh video) also were made of elephant tusk, and it had a "ruby" (basically an oval red plastic stone) in teh centre of the flower, which made it so pretty.. and its "zhou"s 轴 which is basically teh 4 things you see sticking out at the top which are for tuning the instrument are supposedly made of jade.. possibly its inferior quality jade, cuz otherwise the instrument would have been freaking expensive. haha. but its still jade, cuz i rem they were cold to teh touch.. and it DID cost slightly more expensive, at $1000 then, compared to the $500 one i have at home.

after i graduated from sec school, i returned it (as it was my school property) with its gold brightly polished, and yielding strings.. but a few years later when i went back to visit, the gold was reduced to a rusty hue.. and it felt so hostile to me.. the strings dun yield as easily as it did to me like before.. haiz.

now as i write, i have a mind to buy it back from my school. probably it would cost me between 1 to 2k.. hmmm if i have the money, i will definitely do tat.. now the question is, when will i have teh money?

delicious pic there

.... delicious.......

and by the way, that guy's a v famous dancer in america. and he's danced q a few times with Mel B, the spice gal..

i can be a drug peddlar

Juz back from the doctor's.. finally got my Anarex and Prednisolone.. these are 2 of my favourite medicines (yes i actually have favourite medicines, if only because they cure my most chronic discomforts), which also includes DiarrStope. from these drugs i guess those of you who are pharmacists can guess at least 3 of the illnesses that i'm most commonly plagued with. bleah

when i added my newly acquired Anarex and Prednisolone to my drug collection, i realise that i actually have q alot of drugs on hand, more than half of which is off duty, thankfully.

i have medicines for 4 afflictions, namely sensitive nose (my doctors calls my nose the Sensitive New Age Nose, because apparently nowadays many pp seem to be afflicted with sensitive noses), indigestion, muscular pain relief, and acne. and understandably since my Sensitive New Age nose is my most chronic illness (those who have known me for sometime will notice that i'm forever having flu) i have the most medicines for that. i've got 4 for Sensitive New Age Nose, vs 2.5 (.5 because one of the medicine is actually a variant of another one) for indigestion vs 2 for muscular pain vs 1 for acne. GASP about 10 medicines. oh juz realised i havent counted my nasal sprays on my bed, which is another 1.5 (yes i've actually got 2 but one of them is a variant of the other) medicine for my Sensitive New Age Nose. actually i've still got 2 more offduty medicines for my acne. so altogether about 12 to 14 medicines in the last 9 months. that's scary. but think i'll juz be using 5 regularly.. anarex, fenfedrin + prednisolone, rhino/nasa-cort and diarrstope, which is actually the bacteria used in yakult to aid digestion, so mebbe it shouldnt be counted as a medicine.. i'm not taking the rest either because they are deemed to be not so effective or i've recovered from the illness.

another interesting thing..since i've had Sensitive New Age Nose since i was little child, i'm not surprised if the brands of medicines that i've taken constitute most of the ones in the market.

no wonder someone said i'm sickly =( but its not my fault that i'm sickly right? you think i want to be sick meh? in fact 3 out of 4 of the chronic illnesses i mentioned juz now could very well be due to stress. its bad enough to be stressed, worse to be stressed AND sick, even worse to be faulted for being subject to all these bad things. haiz.

anyway on the way to the doctor's i saw an interesting thing..



its a solar panel! possibly cuz of the setting up of REC in Singapore, we may very well begin to see more tapping of this green energy source on our little tropical island. (i'm proEarth!! if REC wasn't located in Tuas, i'd be surfing its career pages now hur hur)

God's reminder for me

Was doing some tidying this afternoon and came across a card given to me by a fren when i was quite down.. and on the card was written this very apt and true poem..

God knows what's in your heart and what you need before you ask.
Even when you don't know for sure, God knows, because He knows you.
He knows the outcome of every situation, and He's guiding you even when you might feel that you have lost your way.
He knows how much you can bear, and He will give you strength and fill you with His grace and blessings as He walks with you every step of the way..
He is surrounding you with His love and holding you gently in the palm of His hand.

~Sharon Valleau

basically, its what God meant when He said this to me, "you3 wo3 zai4, ni3 hai2 pa4 shen3 me?" (I am in control. No fear)

Trust God!

Below is a post from David's blog..

Making our own sense of things...

During Touchpoint last week, we heard a message by Chip Ingram - Trusting God when He doesn't make sense... touching on the story whereby Jesus allowed Lazarus to pass away instead of going down to heal him right from the start...

And a couple of days later, as I was sharing with Ben, we were discussing about how things may be uncertain and it is in these moments of uncertainties and out-of-comfort-zone experiences that challenges us in our belief of Him...

We have a knack to look for illumination... we HAVE TO see where we are going, otherwise we will panic... it makes no sense to walk in the darkness at all and hope to get to somewhere.. but i do recall a passage in the bible which deals with this issue:

"Let him who walks in the the dark, who has no light, trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God. But now, all you who light fires and provide yourselves with flaming torches, go, walk in the light of your fires and of the torches you have set ablaze. This is what you shall receive from my hand: you will lie down in torment"

- Book of Isaiah 50:10-11

Let me adapt something from Dr Larry Crabb's book - Connecting... :

"There is an enormous difference between the joy of discovery and the passion to explain. The former gives life a sense of adventure. The latter makes us hate mystery......

For those who enjoy discovery because they know a good God is moving through the chaos toward a wonderful conclusion, mystery poses no problem. It is welcomed. Explain what you can, and relax even when you can't . But for those ruled by a passion to explain, for those who insist on feeling confident in their own plans, mystery is offensive. They want to know exactly what they must do to provide for their economic future, to restore harmony in their relationships, to succeed in their career of ministry. Confusion is an enemy. Uncertainty is a challenge to overcome....

Fire lighters love formulas. They live by them. When they can't devise their own, they turn to experts who confidently tell them what to do to achieve desired results. When fire lighters try to help people, they are more concerned with doing it right than touching others' souls. They trust their own model for helping more than the voice of God, more than the Spirit speaking through His Word into their redeemed hearts. Connecting is replaced by control. Fire lighters work too hard. They follow theory too closely; they depend too much on approved technique."


We can't get by trials in life, or life in general, trying to follow formulas... we do not get through difficult times via formulas.. It never starts with METHODS... it always begin at the heart... every journey we take in our lives starts very first in our hearts, not in our feet... and every help we extend to people starts with our hearts too, not with our hands....

'Love your neighbor as yourself.'

Aussie 'free hugs guy' to donate kidney to stranger: report
21st Sept (GMT +8)

SYDNEY (AFP) - - An Australian man known around the world for giving free hugs to anyone who asks, is planning to go one step further by donating one of his kidneys to a stranger, a report said Sunday.

Juan Mann, who came to worldwide attention in 2004 after a video of him dispensing free hugs in Sydney's central business district appeared on YouTube, expects to undergo surgery next year.

"I am young, I am fit, I am healthy, I have two kidneys," the 26-year-old, who does not use his real name, told the Sun-Herald.

"I don't really drink. I don't need that second one and someone will be able to get out of hospital."

Mann will face psychiatric and physical tests in hospital before he can make the donation, the process of which will be filmed and later broadcast online, the paper said.

"I will never meet the (recipient); I will never know if the transplant is a success or a failure; I will never know if my kidney kills the person," Mann said.

"Apparently once you give your kidney you will never feel whole.

"(But) I'll get a cool scar and apparently chicks dig scars."

Mann, who spends about one day a week holding a 'FREE HUGS' sign above his head in Sydney's Pitt Street Mall, has inspired free hugs movements around the world.


The Parable of the Good Samaritan
Luke 10:25-37

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

"What is written in the Law?" he replied. "How do you read it?"

He answered: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'"

"You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live."

But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"

In reply Jesus said: "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins[e] and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Look after him,' he said, 'and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.'

"Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?"

The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him."
Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise."

zegna's "finest" wallpaper

"finest wallpaper"???? hahahaha.. it juz tickles my funny bones...

i din think wallpaper can be "fine" as well.. they really try hard to "fine"ify all their products... haha...

another amusing thing.. there's only juz 1 wallpaper.. of cuz its the "finest".. haha..

a word about healthy Dating

here's an excerpt adapted from
Boundaries in Dating: Making Dating Work by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr John Townsend.

"Dating is ultimately about love. People seek it through dating. When they find it, and it matures, they often make deep commitments to each other. Freedom and responsibility are necessary for love to develop in dating. When two individuals allow each other freedom and take ownership of the relationship, they are creating an environment for love to grow and mature. Freedom and responsibility create a safe and secure environment for a couple to love, trust, explore and deepen their experience of each other.

Simply put, many of the struggles people experience in dating relationships are at heart caused by some problem in the areas of freedom and responsibility. By freedom, we mean your ability to make choices based on your values, rather than choosing out of fear or guilt. Free people make commitments because they feel it’s the right thing to do, and they are wholehearted about it. By responsibility, we mean your ability to execute your tasks in keeping the relationship healthy and loving, as well as being able to say no to things you shouldn’t be responsible for. Responsible people shoulder their part of the dating relationship, but they don’t tolerate harmful or inappropriate behavior. "

peugeot's stylo error404

as per angelus's request, here i am to post sthg..

this is now my 403rd post.. and i rem making a hoo ha over my 100th post on my blog last time.. how time flies.

anyhow, you know sometimes you try to get to a webpage but you're shown error404 and you're super irritated/frustrated? i came across peugeot's page for erroneous links, wah it really reduces teh negative emotions with its super stylo layout.... but then peugeot is known for its support for design. in fact it was precisely while i was surfing the entries for a design competition organised by peugeot that i came across this stylo error404 webpage.



now where did the error code disappear to? its found on the car plate number. fun and quirky. but at the same time some pp may not be able to spot that, since its not at the usual and prominent place. and for techies who need techincal information to troubleshoot, this little lack of usability may prove to be a source of inconvenience and of cuz irritation.

as someone (i forgot who) said in a human factors seminar which i attended recently, when human factors clash with the aesthetic/mechanical/etc design of teh product, it simply means that the design is not finished yet. the design muz keep on improving such that it is wholistic, being attractive, functional, and easy to use, all at the same time.

anyway, here's teh entries for the design competition. there're some really cool cars here.. and there's even a sg entry, which managed to garner 1200plus votes. not bad ald. =) (but no, the sg entry is not called alexandra road..haha)

Enjoy!