The final day have come. A day which ends all suffering. My FIL passed away last night. Away from the suffering invoke by the big "C". The past weeks have been torturing with the sight of him getting weaker and weaker. His breathing getting heavier and heavier. Finally, he could not eat anymore and then , the time come when he cannot drink anymore. His face was so peaceful and serene as if in a deep sleep. Yes, I could not agree more, it is the best way to end it all.
Life is very fragile as life come and go. He was full of life six months ago before CNY and now, he is lifeless. Is there a purpose in life ? What is the meaning of it all? We studied so hard to get our degrees and we work for hard for our wealth and finally, we use a large portion of our wealth to maintain our health and leave the balance of our wealth to our next of kin. So, why is the hassle ? These questions is constantly in our mind and it keeps testing our resolution and undermining our purpose in life. What I have to say is finally it is worth it. The process and the experience of moving through life , with its suffering and tribulations. We cry when we fail and we laugh when we succeed. The joy and fun of it all. Falling and getting up, abuse and be abused and learning to dance in the rain or live in adversity.
Having said that, we should not be one sided. Taking our failures too harshly and blaming our self for all the failures and sink into depressions. No, take things easy. Come what may. Take each punch with a smile. Take success like a passing perfume and each its fragrance while it last. It is all about balance. How we balance our life, so that when we reach the end of our journey, we have the last laugh. We should laugh without constraint and smile in silence.
To my FIL, he fought a tough fight and he failed with pride. So, the message is to live and really live and enjoy the time on this earth. Lets shout it out " Come what may, we will live it my way ".
Namaste.
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Japan acts to prevent elderly dying alone.
TOKYO (Reuters Life!) - Japan's rapidly aging society, where nearly one in four people is over 65, means that more elderly are living alone every year -- and also, sadly, dying alone, their bodies sometimes undiscovered for days.
But now, local authorities are teaming up with groups such as the post office to check in on senior citizens, increasing their human contact and improving their lives.
Tokyo's Shinagawa ward, where last year at least 25 elderly died alone in their homes, in August began a venture with Japan Post in which postmen check up on people over 65 once a month by handing them seasonal greeting cards.
"We hope to strengthen ties within the community," said Akihiro Hara, a Shinagawa welfare official.
The experimental program calls on postmen to make sure nothing is amiss when they visit the homes of the elderly and to contact a special center at the ward office if something is wrong. That office will in turn contact hospitals and local welfare officials if needed.
Lonely elderly are an increasingly urgent social problem.
Last year, 4.6 million elderly lived alone across Japan, and the number of those who died at home rose 61 percent between 2003 and 2010, from 1,364 to 2,194, according to the Bureau of Social Welfare and Public Health in Tokyo.
A deep-seated Japanese reluctance to interfere in the lives of others, even those living nearby, means that some of these people may go through their days without talking to anybody.
Another problem is a gradual drift away from traditions of respect for the elderly and Japan's once tightly-knit community bonds, resulting in increasing isolation, experts said.
"In some ways this can have its merits, because we can be free, independent. The demerits, though, are that we ignore each other," said social commentator Tomoko Inukai.
"One terrible characteristic of Japanese society is that we treat our elderly like they're lifeless animals."
A few other creative approaches are being taken to keep in touch with senior citizens.
One realtor has started to promote the idea of house sharing by single mothers and senior citizens, bringing together senior citizens who are interested in renting space in their house after their own families are gone with single mothers in search of affordable housing and also, perhaps, a live-in babysitter.
But the venture is not without its problems, admitted Hiroshi Kuwayama, the CEO of Now-e, the realty firm involved.
"Single mothers are young, and are more flexible in accepting the idea of house sharing, but it takes some time for the elderly to accept the concept in the first place."
Other efforts involve necessities such as food.
Mills, a firm in northern Niigata prefecture, delivers daily meals to senior citizens who are no longer able to shop or cook for themselves -- and checks as well to make sure they are fine.
"Where we can, we provide 3 meals a day, every day of the year, excluding the New Year holidays," said Masahi Hayashi, a delivery manager at Mills.
"When we deliver, we also make sure our customers are safe."
Hayashi noted that while delivery personnel are not doctors, all of them have undergone basic first-aid training -- but "we thankfully haven't needed to use it so far."
Still, delivery personnel are often the first to find elderly customers who have died, as many as five to six a year.
In the end, the simplest solution may just be trying to reach out, Inukai said.
"An enormous flaw in Japanese society is that we don't look each other in the eye when we're walking in the streets. We need to re-think the Japanese fear of interacting with others."
(Editing by Elaine Lies)
But now, local authorities are teaming up with groups such as the post office to check in on senior citizens, increasing their human contact and improving their lives.
Tokyo's Shinagawa ward, where last year at least 25 elderly died alone in their homes, in August began a venture with Japan Post in which postmen check up on people over 65 once a month by handing them seasonal greeting cards.
"We hope to strengthen ties within the community," said Akihiro Hara, a Shinagawa welfare official.
The experimental program calls on postmen to make sure nothing is amiss when they visit the homes of the elderly and to contact a special center at the ward office if something is wrong. That office will in turn contact hospitals and local welfare officials if needed.
Lonely elderly are an increasingly urgent social problem.
Last year, 4.6 million elderly lived alone across Japan, and the number of those who died at home rose 61 percent between 2003 and 2010, from 1,364 to 2,194, according to the Bureau of Social Welfare and Public Health in Tokyo.
A deep-seated Japanese reluctance to interfere in the lives of others, even those living nearby, means that some of these people may go through their days without talking to anybody.
Another problem is a gradual drift away from traditions of respect for the elderly and Japan's once tightly-knit community bonds, resulting in increasing isolation, experts said.
"In some ways this can have its merits, because we can be free, independent. The demerits, though, are that we ignore each other," said social commentator Tomoko Inukai.
"One terrible characteristic of Japanese society is that we treat our elderly like they're lifeless animals."
A few other creative approaches are being taken to keep in touch with senior citizens.
One realtor has started to promote the idea of house sharing by single mothers and senior citizens, bringing together senior citizens who are interested in renting space in their house after their own families are gone with single mothers in search of affordable housing and also, perhaps, a live-in babysitter.
But the venture is not without its problems, admitted Hiroshi Kuwayama, the CEO of Now-e, the realty firm involved.
"Single mothers are young, and are more flexible in accepting the idea of house sharing, but it takes some time for the elderly to accept the concept in the first place."
Other efforts involve necessities such as food.
Mills, a firm in northern Niigata prefecture, delivers daily meals to senior citizens who are no longer able to shop or cook for themselves -- and checks as well to make sure they are fine.
"Where we can, we provide 3 meals a day, every day of the year, excluding the New Year holidays," said Masahi Hayashi, a delivery manager at Mills.
"When we deliver, we also make sure our customers are safe."
Hayashi noted that while delivery personnel are not doctors, all of them have undergone basic first-aid training -- but "we thankfully haven't needed to use it so far."
Still, delivery personnel are often the first to find elderly customers who have died, as many as five to six a year.
In the end, the simplest solution may just be trying to reach out, Inukai said.
"An enormous flaw in Japanese society is that we don't look each other in the eye when we're walking in the streets. We need to re-think the Japanese fear of interacting with others."
(Editing by Elaine Lies)
I am a family man.
Recently, I have interviewed several job applicants , both male and female and all of them told me that salary package is not the only thing but stability in the job and a balance life style is more important. My Japanese colleague told me that he has been interviewing so many applicants before and it is the only time that a job applicant quote his reason for turning down an assignment because he is a family man. I appreciate the guy’s frankness but I also feel strange about his reason.
Maybe, the trend is changing and people want more time for themselves or for their family in exchange for lower pay jobs. Life becomes more valuable and I heard that the youngsters nowadays want more freedom and space for creativity. Many people are dyeing their hairs and become rebellious against the Establishment.
Perhaps, it is the right thing to do. To be fair to one’s self and to live your life the way you want, this is the fundamental mission. In the theory of 90/10, there is a parallel that if a person spend 90 % of their time on their job, they remained a poor person but if they spend 90 % on their investments, they could retire before 40. This assumption is true if the same intensity is put in to the two task.
The life style is changing like the weather and evolving in circles but it is moving towards the emphasize of self importance. This maybe because the people are getting cleverer and know what they really want and start to balance what they want in their life in exchange with what they forgo for money. With the vastness and speed of information flow and exchange via Facebook, SMS MMS, skype ,etc, the basic needs of people have been awaken and people is aware of what is available.
The world is flat and information is criss crossing with rapid speed via words and pictures and people became more aware and smarter. What is waiting in the future, nobody will know. Could it lead to an extinction of Mankind ?
Rgds.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Weight loss won't add years to elderly ~study
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Dieting to lose weight may not help older overweight adults live any longer, suggests a new study.
But dropping a few pounds on purpose also does not seem to cause any harm to the elderly -- which had been a concern raised by previous studies, researchers wrote in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
"There is a general sense in geriatrics...that weight-loss is a bad thing," said study author Stephen Kritchevsky, from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Improvements in diet and weight loss in the overweight and obese are linked to blood pressure, cholesterol and diabetes benefits, including in the elderly.
Still, "there's been a little bit of a conundrum on whether it's a wise thing or not to ask an overweight older adult to lose weight."
That's because some research has linked weight loss in older adults with a higher rate of death -- probably because unintentional weight loss in the elderly is often due to an underlying illness, Kritchevsky added.
While the new findings don't show that dropping weight can extend an older adult's life, "if an older person is overweight or obese and has weight-related health conditions, they should not be concerned that losing weight would be bad for them," he concluded.
Kritchevsky and his colleagues looked back on data from a past study of overweight and obese adults with high blood pressure, some of whom had received training and counseling to help them lose weight and keep it off.
Participants in the weight-loss group had dropped an average of close to 10 pounds, while those in the other groups -- who were assigned to tweak the amount of salt in their diets or to not change their diets at all -- lost about 2 pounds.
Twelve years later, the researchers used national death records to figure out which of the original participants were still alive. By then, they would have been in their late 70s, on average.
Out of about 600 people split between the weight-loss and non-weight-loss programs, about 50 died in each group. When Kritchevsky's team took into account factors such as age, race and smoking, participants assigned to lose weight weren't any more or less likely to die during the follow-up than those not in the weight-loss group.
When analyzed separately from women, men from the weight-loss assignment group did seem to have a lower risk of death that those who hadn't tried to drop any extra pounds. But the researchers weren't sure why that was the case and cautioned it would have to be tested again in a larger study.
For now, Kritchevsky called the findings "a reassuring message that weight loss is potentially beneficial regardless of your age, if you're overweight or obese."
And even if losing weight might not add a lot of years to an elderly person's life, it can have many other health benefits, he added -- from easing disease risks to making activities like walking up the stairs easier and reducing osteoarthritis pain.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/mYPSpV American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, online July 20, 2011.
But dropping a few pounds on purpose also does not seem to cause any harm to the elderly -- which had been a concern raised by previous studies, researchers wrote in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
"There is a general sense in geriatrics...that weight-loss is a bad thing," said study author Stephen Kritchevsky, from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Improvements in diet and weight loss in the overweight and obese are linked to blood pressure, cholesterol and diabetes benefits, including in the elderly.
Still, "there's been a little bit of a conundrum on whether it's a wise thing or not to ask an overweight older adult to lose weight."
That's because some research has linked weight loss in older adults with a higher rate of death -- probably because unintentional weight loss in the elderly is often due to an underlying illness, Kritchevsky added.
While the new findings don't show that dropping weight can extend an older adult's life, "if an older person is overweight or obese and has weight-related health conditions, they should not be concerned that losing weight would be bad for them," he concluded.
Kritchevsky and his colleagues looked back on data from a past study of overweight and obese adults with high blood pressure, some of whom had received training and counseling to help them lose weight and keep it off.
Participants in the weight-loss group had dropped an average of close to 10 pounds, while those in the other groups -- who were assigned to tweak the amount of salt in their diets or to not change their diets at all -- lost about 2 pounds.
Twelve years later, the researchers used national death records to figure out which of the original participants were still alive. By then, they would have been in their late 70s, on average.
Out of about 600 people split between the weight-loss and non-weight-loss programs, about 50 died in each group. When Kritchevsky's team took into account factors such as age, race and smoking, participants assigned to lose weight weren't any more or less likely to die during the follow-up than those not in the weight-loss group.
When analyzed separately from women, men from the weight-loss assignment group did seem to have a lower risk of death that those who hadn't tried to drop any extra pounds. But the researchers weren't sure why that was the case and cautioned it would have to be tested again in a larger study.
For now, Kritchevsky called the findings "a reassuring message that weight loss is potentially beneficial regardless of your age, if you're overweight or obese."
And even if losing weight might not add a lot of years to an elderly person's life, it can have many other health benefits, he added -- from easing disease risks to making activities like walking up the stairs easier and reducing osteoarthritis pain.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/mYPSpV American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, online July 20, 2011.
Chewing more help weight loss - the Buddhist way
CHEWING food more helps people consume less food and lose weight, a new study has shown.
According to researchers from Harbin Medical University in China, those who chewed food 40 times consumed about 12 per cent less calories than those who chewed only 15 times.
The study is posted on the latest version of the Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Researchers conducted two experiments with 14 slim and 16 obese males. In the first test, doctors counted the frequency of chewing in each group after serving them equal sized pork pies. Although the size of their bite was similar, the obese group tended to swallow faster.
In the second test, researchers had all participants chew 15 times per bite, and then chew 40 times. They all consumed 11.9 per cent less when they chewed more.
The more you chew, the longer it takes for the brain to receive signals from the stomach to control appetite, according to the research.
Meanwhile, Adam Drewnowski from University of Washington Center for Obesity Research said that because there are foods that cannot be chewed like soup or ice-cream, there is a limit to the weight to be lost through increased chewing./ANN
According to researchers from Harbin Medical University in China, those who chewed food 40 times consumed about 12 per cent less calories than those who chewed only 15 times.
The study is posted on the latest version of the Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Researchers conducted two experiments with 14 slim and 16 obese males. In the first test, doctors counted the frequency of chewing in each group after serving them equal sized pork pies. Although the size of their bite was similar, the obese group tended to swallow faster.
In the second test, researchers had all participants chew 15 times per bite, and then chew 40 times. They all consumed 11.9 per cent less when they chewed more.
The more you chew, the longer it takes for the brain to receive signals from the stomach to control appetite, according to the research.
Meanwhile, Adam Drewnowski from University of Washington Center for Obesity Research said that because there are foods that cannot be chewed like soup or ice-cream, there is a limit to the weight to be lost through increased chewing./ANN
Monday, August 1, 2011
Tips on management - 3 don'ts
Management Tip of the Day: Three don'ts of persuasion
Mon Aug 1, 2011 9:04AM EDT
BOSTON (Reuters Life!) - It's not enough to simply tell employees to do something, and there are some common blunders used when attempting persuasion that should be avoided, says Harvard Business Review.
The Management Tip of the Day offers quick, practical management tips and ideas from Harvard Business Review and HBR.org (http:\\www.hbr.org). Any opinions expressed are not endorsed by Reuters.
"In today's business environment, it's not enough to tell employees to do something. You need to also explain why they should. This is why people who've mastered the art of persuasion rise to the tops of the ranks.
When trying to influence others, avoid three of the most common mistakes:
1. The hard sell. Being insistent and exuberant at the outset gives potential opponents something to grab on to. Use finesse instead of brawn.
2. Resisting compromise. Compromise does not equal surrender. Listen to others and when possible, integrate their ideas into the solution.
3. Assuming you have one chance. Persuasion is a process, not a one-time event. Get results over time by listening, proposing a position, testing it, and then refining it."
-Today's management tip was adapted from the book "Harvard Business Review on Communicating Effectively."
(For the full post: http://hbr.org/product/harvard-business-review-on-communicating-effective/an/10320-PDF-ENG)
Mon Aug 1, 2011 9:04AM EDT
BOSTON (Reuters Life!) - It's not enough to simply tell employees to do something, and there are some common blunders used when attempting persuasion that should be avoided, says Harvard Business Review.
The Management Tip of the Day offers quick, practical management tips and ideas from Harvard Business Review and HBR.org (http:\\www.hbr.org). Any opinions expressed are not endorsed by Reuters.
"In today's business environment, it's not enough to tell employees to do something. You need to also explain why they should. This is why people who've mastered the art of persuasion rise to the tops of the ranks.
When trying to influence others, avoid three of the most common mistakes:
1. The hard sell. Being insistent and exuberant at the outset gives potential opponents something to grab on to. Use finesse instead of brawn.
2. Resisting compromise. Compromise does not equal surrender. Listen to others and when possible, integrate their ideas into the solution.
3. Assuming you have one chance. Persuasion is a process, not a one-time event. Get results over time by listening, proposing a position, testing it, and then refining it."
-Today's management tip was adapted from the book "Harvard Business Review on Communicating Effectively."
(For the full post: http://hbr.org/product/harvard-business-review-on-communicating-effective/an/10320-PDF-ENG)
Deep hatred - why
Have you heard that there are some type of people who cannot forgive and forget? These are not the forgiving type who bite on to things very deeply and even if they let go the bite, they leave behind a deep wound or a bleeding scar. Apart from their non forgiving nature, they can be very emotional, irrational and suicidal.
In life, there are those readily forgiving type, some people are generally forgiving type and those suicidal type which I have mentioned earlier on. Those extreme suicidal type could be due to their upbringing and hereditary. These are in their genes so they say. These type of people could hold on to their principles and dis-regard to their personal safety and their family to take revenge or take a big bite as a revengeful step. How do we take the necessary steps to melt them down and re-mold them ?
There is a saying “ Dynasty can change hands easily but character can never move an inch”. So, it is good or bad. Once, you have a good person, you stay good but once, you are a bad person, you remain bad. However, with modern scientific studies, there are steps to influence changes in a person’s character. Those “bad” people who choose to live among the “good” people, there are positive influence on these type of people and if they are taught all the good habits and behaviors, they can live in the “good” way.
In Buddhism, we talk about mental habits which have been formed through our past experience, our knowledge and our external environments. If we go deep inside our self and learn to know who we are or what we are, we can to a such extent , can control our actions and break the hold of our mental habits on us and live as a person we want or really are.
We should not hold on to these classes of “ forgiving “ types as each group can change over time and it depends on the conditions we stimulate for its appropriate response. There are certain flexibility, re-conditioning and recipes to stimulate a response that we want. If there is a will, there is a way and some times, it takes a dramatic event to change a person. It has happen and it will happen again.
Namaste.
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