This will not only make it even harder to get to the worst-affect area but will also add on to the agony of the survivors.

“They are already weak,” said Pitt, the U.N. spokeswoman. A new storm will impact “people’s ability to survive and cope with what happened to them … this is terrible.”

Although the news of a second cyclone was not broadcast by Myanmar’s state-controlled media, Yangon residents picked up the news on foreign broadcasts and on the Internet.

“I prayed to the Lord Buddha, ‘please save us from another cyclone. Not just me but all of Myanmar,’” said Min Min, a rickshaw driver, whose house was destroyed in Cyclone Nargis. Min Min, his wife and three children now live on their wrecked premises under plastic sheets.

“Another cyclone will be a disaster because our relief center is already overcrowded. I am very worried,” said Tun Zaw, 68, another Yangon resident who is living in a government relief center.

The most frustrating thing is that soldiers have barred foreign aid workers from reaching cyclone survivors in the hardest-hit areas, but gave access to an International Red Cross representative who returned to Yangon on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press.

According to the agency’s country head, Bridget Gardner, the damages were extensive and large but also selflessness as survivors joined in the rescue efforts.

“People who have come here having lost their homes in rural areas have volunteered to work as first aiders. They are humanitarian heroes,” said Gardner.

Gardner’s team visited five locations in the Irrawaddy delta. In one of them, they saw 10,000 people living without shelter as rain tumbled from the sky.

“The town of Labutta is unrecognizable. I have been here before and now with the extent of the damage and the crowds of displaced people, it’s a different place,” Gardner was quoted as saying in a statement by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

In Labutta and elsewhere she said volunteers were giving medical aid to hundreds of people a day even though “they have no homes to go back to when they finish.”It is truly an act of selflessness from the survivors.

Let us join our hands in prayer for the people of Myanmar and China in this difficult time and wish goodness upon them. Regardless of what religion you believe in, do include the people of Myanmar and China in your prayer everyday.

According to John Holmes, the U.N. coordinator for humanitarian affairs, he said that the death toll from Cyclone Nargis ranges from 63,000 to 100,000, well above the Myanmar government’s announced toll of 22,000. Most of the victims were in the Irrawaddy Delta, where as many as 6 million people lived. It was reported that about 2,000 square miles of land in the Irrawaddy Delta is under water. With phone lines down, roads blocked and electricity networks destroyed, it was nearly impossible to reach isolated areas in the swamped Irrawaddy delta, where the stench of unburied and decaying bodies added to the misery. Heavy rain that is forecast in the next week is certain to worsen the plight of almost 2 million people awaiting food, clean water, shelter and medicine, according to The Associated Press.

Survivors in one of the worst-affected areas, near the town of Bogalay about 20 miles inland, were among those fighting hunger, illness and wrenching loneliness.

“All my 28 family members have died,” said Thein Myint, a 68-year-old fisherman who was overcome by tears and trauma as he tried to explain how the May 3 cyclone swept away the rest of his family. “I am the only survivor.”

Survivors were sleeping amid the debris of their splintered homes in Bogalay, where more than 95 percent of the houses were destroyed.

Three Red Cross aid flights loaded with shelter kits and other supplies landed Friday in Myanmar without incident. “We are not experiencing any problems getting in, (unlike) the United Nations,” said Danish Red Cross spokesman Hans Beck Gregersen.

“Many are not buried and lie in the water. They have started rotting and the stench is beyond words,” Anders Ladekarl, head of the Danish Red Cross.

The United Nations has issued a “flash appeal” to its members to raise $187.3 million in cyclone relief for Myanmar. That amount is based on a quick assessment of needs by more than 20 organizations, and it includes $56 million for food, nearly $50 million for logistics and about $20 million for shelter, according to CNN.com.

“If we do not act now, and if we do not act fast, more lives will be lost,” said John Holmes, the undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs.

U.N. officials said the pledges are needed to provide food, water purification tablets, emergency health kits, mosquito nets, cooking sets, plastic sheeting and water jugs for at least 1.5 million people in the next three months.

I have added a badge from Network for Good on the right which will allow people in the US to make a donation to the people of Myanmar. For people in Singapore, you can still follow this link http://www.worldvision.org.sg/st_donation_methods.php to make your contribution. If you know of any other ways where people can contribute, please let me know. Let us all do our part to help the people in Myanmar. Many thanks in advance and wishing everyone a wonderful weekend ahead.

Ways you can help:
1. World Vision (Singapore)
2. Save the Children (Internatinal)
3. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) (International)
4. The Salvation Army (International - Please remember to state where you want your donation to go to)

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The force of nature is definitely not one to be reckon with. Cyclone Nargis hit the Southeast Asian nation, also known as Burma, early Saturday. Some villages have been almost totally eradicated and vast rice-growing areas are wiped out, the World Food Program said.

According to a report from Associated Press, images from state television showed large trees and electricity poles sprawled across roads and roofless houses ringed by large sheets of water in the Irrawaddy River delta region, which is regarded as Myanmar’s rice bowl. “From the reports we are getting, entire villages have been flattened and the final death toll may be huge,” Mac Pieczowski, who heads the International Organization for Migration office in Yangon, said in a statement.

According to a report from Channelnewsasia.com, “NASA pictures taken on Monday showed the entire coastal plain under water, with fallow agricultural areas of the delta - the country’s main rice-growing region - particularly hard hit by flooding. The storm hammered the country’s former capital, Yangon, over the weekend and left hundreds of thousands homeless across the country. The images showed the city, which sits on the delta’s southeastern edge and has a population of more than six million, surrounded by flooding.”

Foreign aid teams have described scenes of horror in the region, with rice fields littered with corpses and desperate survivors without food or shelter four days after the storm struck.

The United Nations has warned that the widespread flooding will pose a “major challenge” to aid organisations desperately struggling to get assistance to those affected.

It believes hundreds of thousands of people have been left homeless in the Yangon region alone, and there are fears of disease spreading in the absence of proper shelter and drinking water.

For those of you in Singapore who want to make a donation to help out the people in Myanmar, you can do it through the Singapore’s World Vision Website: http://www.worldvision.org.sg/st_newsroom.php

For those not in Singapore, I do not know how you may be able to make a donation. If you know of any website where you can make an online donation, do feel free to let me know. Many thanks!

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This reminded me of another story which I posted previously in my other blog, Inspirational and Heart Touching Story of a Dancer.

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“When the night seems to be its darkest, it means the sun will soon rise up. Press on … Don’t give up!”

Through his personal experience in the concentration camp, he shared that what determined the sort of person the inmate would become ultimately was an inner decision and not the influenced of the camp alone. He said,

“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

This quotation comes at the most fascinating hour. I was just reading Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables and in the book, there were a few passages that questioned, “could the environment and the things that happened to a person eventually change the person’s soul from good to bad and vice versa?” I couldn’t reconcile with that.

I couldn’t have agreed more with Viktor Frankl. I believe that even in the most difficult time, even when one is deprived of life, liberty, or property from an external force, one’s freedom to choose one’s attitude cannot be taken away from one. In so to speak, it is important that we guard our attitudes at all time especially during tough times.

One cannot always control every situation and thing that happens or how they happen. However, one can always control one’s attitude toward every situation and thing after they happened to one. That alone is a most enlightening thought but yet rarely put to use by many. How would one’s life be if one can look at every situation with an attitude that one can make it work or make it better? One’s life would definitely not be the same again!

“I cannot always control what goes on outside. But I can always control what goes on inside.” — Wayne Dyer

In so speaking, which will you choose? I like some excitements in life because they are usually unexpected, which make life more colourful and even more interesting, though excitements may not always be good. Yet at the same time, I think it is important to have plans and goals in life so that we know where we are heading to. The end destination might not always be what we expected but just like the say, “… it is not the end destination, but the journey towards the destination that is most important …” It is important that we enjoy the journey and stop at time to smell the flower along the way. Don’t worry too much about the end destination because when you shoot at the stars, even if you don’t hit any, you will end up among them.

“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” — Les Brown

In an email which I received recently, it mentioned that patience is a virtue. I agree with it immediately when I read the subject line. However, I do not agree totally to the story that was used to illustrate that patience is a virtue. The story went that a couple sought only a job that would keep them in town but ended up with a multi-million dollar company. Patience is certainly a virtue in this case as building a multi-million dollar company not only takes time but also a lot of hard work. So what is it that I don’t agree?

In the story, it said that if the couple had seen the final picture, or the picture on the front of the jigsaw puzzle box, they probably would have shaken their heads and said “Impossible Dream.” It may have appeared to them so hard or impossible to bring to life that they may never have embarked on the journey at all. If you knew how it would turn out? Would you have said, “Impossible Dream” too? Probably a lot of people would have said that while some would hold on to that image and knowing that they could not fail, they would push on into the unknown bravely.

Some men see things as they are and say, “Why?” I dream of things that never were and say, “Why not?” — George Bernard Shaw

It is not the picture on the jigsaw puzzle box that would stop the couple, it would be themselves. It is important to have the end picture in mind and even more important to make plans and goals in working towards the picture in the mind. Just do what is in your heart and trust that eventually you will get there.It is of the utmost importance to believe in yourself and have faith that you can achieve the picture in your mind. Keep this closely in your mind.

“When the night is the darkest, it means that soon the day will break. Press on!”

How often are you affected by something that people said? I know I am guilty of that sometimes. I remembered a quotation by Abraham Lincoln that goes something like this, “I am not affected by what others are saying as long as I know what they are saying is not true of me.” As I recite this quotation repetitively everyday, I know that I will be less and less affected but what others are saying about me. But it certainly does not discourage one from heeding positive advice.

Thus speaking, one must always be flexible to take in good advice which can create positive change in one’s life. If what others said (which is not true of you) affect you, it may appear that they were hindering your progress. But in actual fact, you are the one hindering you.

I remembered when I first started chatting in the internet, I used the nickname ‘mirror.’ Of course the reason why I used that nickname was not because I was vain but rather to constantly reminds myself to reflect on my thought, actions and words. I did not realize then that I was doing myself a great service. Since oneself is the biggest hindrance in one’s progress in life, what would be a better way than to constantly take stock on ones thought, actions and words.

Quoting from the email I read, “There is only one person who is capable to set limits to your growth: It is You” How often did you tell yourself that something is not achievable or not within your reach? Probably there might be some truths in what you said. Let’s put that aside first. Have there ever been cases before where you thought you cannot achieve something, but you went on and achieved it? Can’t think of any? How about the time when you were still a baby? Did you not learn to walk and to run eventually? You are right, when you were a baby, you did not know how to spell the word ‘impossible’. You just picked yourself up one more time after you fell, you learnt to balance yourself and eventually took your steps. The truth is no one is born knowing how to walk - one learns along the way.

“Be the change you want to see in this world.” — Mahatma Gandhi

Gandhi certainly said it well in the above quotation. There is only one person who is capable to set limits to one’s growth and it is one. You are the only one who can create positive change in your life. You are the only person who knows what you want in life and you will know that when you look for it hard within you. I would like to share with you a passage which I like:

Your life Today is the result of the choices you made Yesterday. Your life Tomorrow will be the result of the choices you make Today. What are the choices you would make Today that will change your life Tomorrow!

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Bob Proctor said in his book that money is a servant and we its masters. This is probably what led to the famous saying, “Money is the root to all evil!” Is there any truth to this? Some people would have agreed with it. If money is not the root of all evil, why had it caused so many people to kill, to rob, to cheat and even to betray loved ones for it. All evidences ‘appear’ to support that point. If money is guilty, it should have been hung or locked up for life. Money may have indirectly caused all the heinous crimes but it is definitely not to be blamed. If I may have your permission, I would say, “it is the greed for money that is the root of all evil.”

Money by itself is a neutral medium, it does not know how to perform good or bad deed and it certainly do not know how to differentiate right or wrong. It is the one who holds the money that determines the fate of the money. The money, in the hands of philanthropists, would be put to building schools, hospitals, cancer researches and in any possible ways to increase the well-being of humankind. More often than not, their actions created positive changes in the lives of many … even long after they themselves left the world.

In 2005 alone, Oprah Winfrey donated $52 million dollars to charitable organizations and functions. For publicity? Some may say. But I seriously think otherwise, not that I have known her personally. She could have kept it all for her own use but she chose to give it away to people who don’t have as much. That is certainly a commendable act!

According to Fortune Magazine, “Warren Buffett has pledged to gradually give 85% of his Berkshire stock to five foundations. A dominant five - sixths of the shares will go to the world’s largest philanthropic organization, the $30 billion Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, who activities, internationally famous, are focused on world health — fighting such diseases as malaria, HIV/AIDS, and tuberculosis — and on improving U.S. libraries and high schools.” What can we say about that?

If you run a search for Philanthropist in Google, you can end up with a list that just goes on and on. I believe you would have come across many people around you who are donating or giving to charities. You could have already been a regular contributor to a certain charity too. Remembering that we should always love people and use money — wisely. Money’s worth is determined by one who holds it.

Quoting from Auntie Joyce of Sir Richard Branson, “what’s money for anyway? It’s to make things happen.” That cannot be more true! Money can be a powerful force, when employed by the right people, to do good that go way beyond its worth. However, just in case that you are thinking right now that one can only do good if one is rich, think again. There is no need for one to be rich to do good. Doing good can be as simple as to consciously remind oneself to do no harm to others and that costs nothing. One can change the world, even if in a small way.

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