Winners of the various art awards have now been decided and these works are on display in the exhibit, including a label showing the prize division which they won.

On Friday night, the 10^th October 2008, an auction was held in which some 61 items went under the hammer including a sailing boat which sold for $500.00, several art works and various other items and packages which included massages, holidays and meals at various restaurants.

It was interesting to see that one package valued at $100.00 actually went for $110.00.

The art show has been a success and raised funds for several charities including the Westpac Rescue Helicopter and Meals on Wheels.

The web site for the Art Show is:

Mae Linat © 2008

Click here to read part 1

Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it, you can never get it back.

We all have a measured amount of time. Nobody knows (to the day/minute/second) how much time they have left to live. So the amount of time you spend with an individual (or doing something for that individual) determines how much you actually care for them. I mean seriously, face it! You won’t give your enemy more than a few seconds (if even that) but more than likely you will give your family and friends hours or days. You will take the time — even amid a crazy schedule — to spend time with people you truly love.

I wish, for whom i am writing this will understand. Just remember: words aren’t everything! Give the person your time and show them with actions that the words aren’t just empty. You actually mean what you say! Prove it!

So does time really matter? .........

Cheers....

:)

Time is free, but it's priceless. You can't own it, but you can use it. You can't keep it, but you can spend it. Once you've lost it, you can never get it back.

I see love for another person best shown through the amount of time you are willing to give them. We all have a measured amount of time. Nobody knows (to the day/minute/second) how much time they have left to live. So the amount of time you spend with an individual (or doing something for that individual) determines how much you actually care for them. I mean seriously, face it! You won't give your enemy more than a few seconds (if even that) but more than likely you will give your family and friends hours or days. You will take the time -- even amid a crazy schedule -- to spend time with people you truly love.

So the next time you say "I LOVE YOU", just remember: words aren't everything! Give the person your time and show them with actions that the words aren't just empty. You actually mean what you say! Prove it!

Time goes by so fast, people go in and out of your life. You must never miss the opportunity to tell these people how much they mean to you.

T-I-M-E really does spell LOVE.

Le temps, tous les grands penseurs vous diront qu’aujourd’hui c’est la plus grande richesse de l’Homme. Au rythme effréné où va la vie contemporaine, heureux celui qui possède le temps de s’arrêter et de profiter de ses acquis. À quoi bon posséder le monde si on ne peut pas s’asseoir pour respirer ? Il y avait d’ailleurs un excellent dossier dans La Presse il y a un environ un mois. Les articles traitaient des personnes riches du Québec, on apprenait qu’une grande partie étaient « low profile » et que, surtout, ils préféraient « s’acheter du temps » plutôt qu’exposer leur richesse en achetant des Mercedes, des châteaux ou/et des putes.

Que voulaient-ils dire par acheter du temps ? Simple : engager une ménagère pour sauver le temps de ménage, embaucher une gardienne à temps plein pour s’occuper des enfants lorsque les parents sont indisponibles (on sauve ainsi le fastidieux temps pour aller chercher/porter les enfants à la garderie), payer une homme à tout faire pour l’entretien extérieur et domiciliaire, avoir un chauffer privé, etc. Des petits luxes que la majorité ne peut pas se payer mais qui ne visent qu’une seule chose : maximiser le temps passer à rien faire.

Bon, rien faire, c’est exagéré. En fait, je veux dire, maximiser le temps à pouvoir faire autre chose que des tâches ménagères, de la bouffe et du transport. Ainsi, lorsque Papa et Maman arrivent à la maison, le repas est prêt et les enfants sont contents de les voir arriver. Ils partagent tous ensemble le souper et au lieu qu’après le dessert tout le monde s’éparpille un peu partout (les parents à la vaisselle, les enfants dans leurs chambres, etc.), tout le monde peut profiter du salon ou du jacuzzi en famille tandis que la ménagère fait la vaisselle.

Je sais, je sais. Je vous vois déjà maugréer contre mes propos en disant « Oui mais King, les gens riches peuvent se permettre ces luxes, pas nous, classe moyenne ou pauvres. » C’est vrai, je conçois qu’un gars de shop et sa femme caissière ne peuvent pas se payer une bonne, une gardienne, un chauffeur et un jardinier. Cependant, plutôt que d’acheter du rêve avec leurs 20$ de loterie, de payer 600$ par année pour les 60 chaînes télé, d’acheter pour 1000$ d’alcool par année et toute autre dépense « superflue », s’ils investissaient 100$ par semaine pour gagner du temps, ils seraient plus heureux.

100$ par semaine, ça permet de payer 2 visites de ménagères. 1 visite de ménagère et 1 repas préparé. Si ce maigre 100$ pouvait permettre à la famille X d’avoir le jeudi soir de libre de tout stress parce que quand ils arrivent ils n’ont pas besoin de se soucier du repas ni du ménage, ils pourraient passer du temps avec leurs enfants plutôt qu’avec John Molson qui leur permet, sans perdre de temps, de vivre un état de complaisance qu’ils n’ont pas lorsqu’ils sont sobres.

Encore, imaginez 100$ pour 2 visites de ménagères : le lundi et le jeudi. Jeudi soir, la maison est propre, on est heureux puisque demain, vendredi, c’est la dernière journée de travail avant la belle fin de semaine. Durant le week-end, pas de stress sur le ménage puisque la maison était déjà propre et qu’ils suffit juste d’entretenir un peu. Lundi matin, la maison est presque un bordel, mais ce n’est pas grave, lundi soir elle sera de nouveau propre.

Bon, bon bon…Je m’égare. Vous vous dites la même chose j’en suis certain. Je me suis emporté, ce qui devait être un court paragraphe d’introduction est devenu un billet complet. Ce que j’avais à vous dire sur le temps, je vous le dirai demain. Je manque un peu de temps aujourd’hui pour vous en parler.

Restez donc branchés sur ce blogue.

Scream for hell !

And if my love would hold a baloon,

I'd grab the wrists of time

And reach out to you soon,

Before i'd give surrows back and try

To fix this aching moon.

Im sure there is a whole lot of very good explanations.  But this has all been a tanget thought anyways.

Anyways back to my heartbreak.  No you dont get to see the juicy details and its not because I dont want to tell. It is because they don't matter, they really don't.  There are a few points in your life when reality will step away from you and then come back and slap you right in the face.  These past few months have done so to me.

All that I was and all that I strived to be was perfect in my opinion at that time.  I thought I always made the right decisions for some time and followed my brain over my heart.  I PROMISE that is not always the right thing to do.  Heartbreaks are necesary, as much as they hurt it always takes time for one to appreciate it.  The fact of the matter is what I have been going through was completely necesary and I deserved everything.  That huge man that I thought I was, was not a man at all.

"You can't truly love unless you can truly grieve."

Well I've grieved a whole bunch and my god did it change me and my being.  My foundation was cracked and I crumbled.  I was nothing... for a while. Now I've pulled myself up back on my feet.  Now I see how foul and corrupt I was.  Now I see what I'll never be again.  Now I don't think I can ever forgive myself for possibly ruining what I have always dreamed of. Hence, Volo Morior.

"Forgiving does not erase the bitter past.  A healed memory is not a deleted memory.  Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget creates a new way to remember.  We change the perspective of our past into a hope for our future."

I've forgiven everything less the things that I did.  Shame is not something that is easy to accept and once accepted its extremely hard to live with.  I have to live with my shame for the rest of my life and there is not a day that I wont think of it. I watched my father go through this five years ago.  I swore I would never be him in that sense. I swore I would learn from my ancestors mistakes.  I failed. I've never failed so much.

So to anyone out there: If you get crushed, if you get heart broken, if you get devestated... There may be a reason.  It may be a calling.  You may need your eyes opened.  You may need to change who you are.  You may need to change what you are.  Fate is tied within the fabric of the universe.  What goes around comes around and in the end we all get what we deserve. We all stand before one for final judgement.

And remember.  Don't rush.  Don't move too fast.  Do not take the frame down before the concrete dries.  Do not move the bandage until the wound heals.  Do not pour more glue on until the old glue dries.  Love yourself before you love anyone else.  Doing any of these will only open the wound further, and cause more pain.

Amabo te, Ignoscesne me.

Aku tahu itu memang sudah menjadi resiko orang-orang yang bekerja. Hanya saja mungkin aku belum terbiasa dengan keadaan ini. Sungguh capek dan selalu terasa lelah tatkala aku menginjakkan kakiku di rumah saat jarum jam menunjukkan pukul 6 sore. Setelah itu, aku mandi, makan sore, dan menunggu tunanganku datang ke rumah untuk bercerita tentang segala sesuatu yang terjadi beberapa jam sebelumnya.

Terkadang aku sempat merasa bersalah, karena ketika seharusnya aku mendengarkan dia bercerita tetapi nyatanya aku malah tertidur di hadapannya! Aku sungguh malu sekali, tapi untungnya dia mau mengerti aku.

Mungkin hanya itu yang aku takutkan. Aku takut aku tidak memiliki satu menit pun waktu untuk mengurus dan melayaninya. Aku hanya ingin menjadi seorang pendamping hidup yang baik, juga ibu yang baik bagi anak-anakku kelak. Aku harus memikirkannya beribu-ribu kali untuk semua ini.

Aku senang dengan pekerjaanku sekarang, karena inilah yang aku impikan sejak dulu. Tapi, di sisi lain aku seorang wanita yang kelak harus mengurus suami dan anak. Aku tidak ingin waktuku habis hanya untuk pekerjaan. Karena bagiku, pekerjaan bisa dicari, sementara keluarga takkan pernah bisa tergantikan oleh apapun.

]]> http://bugbear.wordpress.com/?p=2059 Sat, 11 Oct 2008 09:03:41 +0000 amuirin http://bugbear.da.wordpress.com/2008/10/11/tactile-memory/ On recommendation from the king of cashmere socks, I'm trying to think of one good story from 1st or 2nd grade.   Just one... good... story. Well, without bringing up how terrified I was of going to the bathroom that whole school year, my memory is coming up short. My overall impression of 1st grade is the smell of creamed corn and the intense need to go to the bathroom.

I'm sure there were stories, but the sense of things seems to have stuck with me more. The cold black metal of the strange merry-go-round we had at John Gumm, that I was so afraid to ride, and then I did, and that's all I wanted to do. Hanging on for dear life, elbow to knee with older kids who would make it go faster and faster.

The thrill of running away from a boy wielding an earthworm 'wedding ring'. Even in 1st grade, there was a certain boy you wanted to have chase you.

And the edge of my chair, sitting contorted, trying to hold it. Why was I so scared of having my name on the board? If I could have gotten a glimpse of what real life was going to feel like down the road, I woulda skipped down that hall every-damn-day to a merry, good piss. My name on the board?!? Ha! What freedom. A consequence that doesn't even hurt.

I can't get into my first grade head very well, is the thing. At least not at school time. I was there, that's all. A fairly contented inmate. But what about home?

Different. The year I turned five was the year my parents divorced and we lived in so many different places, staying with our mom as she crashed at friends' houses. That was kinda fun; better than walking on egg-shells around our dad's displeasure. All too soon we were in the house above the hill, across from the Hanson's, sharing an upstairs apartment with "the man".

I remember things best when my brother was there. I don't know why. I think people maybe discount it, the sibling link. Too many explanations to separate people, shrink the wonder of shared experience down to D.N.A. It wasn't so. We always fought, but my brother being there sort of vivids each experience for me. I remember the stuff we both saw and lived and went through much better than I remember anything I did by myself.

In that upstairs apartment there wasn't even room for us. We were little, stuffed shirt children, in a way. We'd been brought up in a non-demonstrative, cerebral environment, and our mom's new fella was just too much. Too much smells. Too much hair. Too much trying to hug us or ruffle our hair. I know you'd think a child would lean into that affection, but we didn't really like it.  We tolerated the too-much man, cus there was other stuff going on that caught our attention.

Like the dark wood bannister that went all around the hole in the middle of the second story. You could look down into the rest of the house from there, the 2nd floor was almost like a four-sided balcony. That bannister was our play thing- bars to play prison, an obstacle course to weave in and out of when our mom wasn't looking, (she thought we would fall in the hole, and it scared her to death). The man had the television on all the time, and we saw things our parents had never let us see.

Across the street was a house full of older kids, and they were fascinating, too. The middle boy flipped his eyelids inside out because it freaked me out. The girl became my protector, my after-school babysitter. The oldest boy had something wrong on one of his arms, and I think I would see him now as handsome, but back then he only seemed too close to boring grown-upness, and gross, to boot, for his scar.

And I remember 'The Jar'. While we stayed in that upstairs apartment, we didn't have a room. It must have been a very crowded space. Mom and the man took large shelves, and split their sleeping room in half with my brother and I on one side, them on the other. We could see past objects on the shelves to the other-side, and at the right angle, you could watch the t.v. He always had the t.v. on. My brother and I found a way we could both watch, with one of us sitting upright, the other laying down, lined up just so. We'd watch The Twilight Zone late into the night while our mom snored on the other side of the shelves, and the man zoned in and out.

We got frightened.

Because, see, though we hadn't noticed it, 'The Jar' from one of the Twilight episodes was right there on the shelf. It looked horrifying on the t.v., though we couldn't make out the exact contents of the real one when the room was dark. But it was the right size, and we thought something horrible, twisted and bleak was living in there, just like in the show.

Mom found us curled up, clinging to the bannister the next morning, under a blanket.

I don't remember our discussion, but I have a vague memory of a debate. One of us was all for leaving the thing there with the grown-ups, and one of us was worried about mom, but we thought, since she was sleeping, it would probably eat the man instead of her. We were pragmatic children, and to our minds, this was an acceptable loss.

Yeah, the memory is just impression now: The creeping horror of the jar. Padding softly, single file past the shelf. My brother's fuzzy, slightly damp head pressed against my arm as I curled my wrist around the bannister. The feeling of anchoring us there, in place, if only for a little while.

Patience.

I think it's funny how I'm just now thinking about these kinds of things. My life is great, I still have wonderful friends, a great career, a great family and my health, so I can't complain about any of that. It's just that I'm realizing now that time goes by whether you want it to or not, and you can't take back anything that's already passed you by. In less than 7 years, I'm going to be 30 years old. I can't even come to grasp that yet. Just yesterday, I was walking down the halls of my old high school. It's amazing how fast the time goes by when you don't have any more magical ages to look forward to...like driving at 16, being an adult at 18, and drinking at 21....after that, what is there?

Any thoughts?

Never did I know that teaching myself web design would be such a challenge. Widgets, gadgets and modules oh my! From .php to MySQL, I will save the tech savvy translations for another day, When you start to see what you are creating come together it is amazing. 

I have pulled together a great bunch of writersm but I am going to need more, I won't to make something that everybody can be apart of and to be able see what you create accross the world.

www.WhotshotinMiami.com will be up and running soon, stay tuned.