My Very First Blog

Love. There are many kinds of love.

There’s romantic love between husband and wife, boyfriend and girlfriend.

There’s love for your parents, brothers and sisters.

There’s love for your cousins, your uncles and aunties.

There is love for your good friends and friends whom you care deeply about.

And then there is love for humanity and human beings of all races.

And not forgetting the love for animals and all living things!

But do you know what is the greatest love of all?

Most people either forget this or they are not aware of it, but the greatest love of all is loving yourself!

Yes, before you can love others, you have to really and truly love yourself.

Only when you are full of love can you give love to others.

You may have imperfections and weaknesses. Who doesn’t? You may have committed bad deeds. You may have many bad habits. You may be a total failure. But all these are not excuses not to love yourself!

Because love is the essence of who you are.

There’s a saying that God made us in his image. If you don’t love yourself, it is as good as insulting God. So you see, you are worthy of love no matter what you did, no matter how you look, or behave.

So love yourself more and more everyday.

If you are someone with low self esteem, it is basically a lack of love in yourself.

Read this affirmations to yourself everyday and feel that love that is within you soar to greater heights!

I love myself more and more everyday.

I love myself no matter what anyone say or do to me.

I love myself unconditionally.

I love myself in spite of my many imperfections and weaknesses.

I am worthy of love.

I am love.

There’s a song which inspired me to write this post about love. Most of you probably heard of this song already, but did you really take the trouble to understand its message?

The song is called “The Greatest Love Of All” sung by Whitney Houston.

Take a few minutes now and drop everything you are doing, listen to the song, and sing along with the lyrics provided below. Let the meaning of the lyrics sink in and feel that great wonderful love that is already inside you!

I believe that children are our future
Teach them well and let them lead the way
Show them all the beauty they possess inside
Give them a sense of pride to make it easier
Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be

Everybody's searching for a hero
People need someone to look up to
I never found anyone who fulfilled my needs
A lonely place to be
And so I learned to depend on me

I decided long ago, never to walk in anyone's shadows
If I fail, if I succeed
At least I'll live as I believe
No matter what they take from me
They can't take away my dignity

Because the greatest love of all
Is happening to me
I found the greatest love of all
Inside of me

The greatest love of all
Is easy to achieve
Learning to love yourself
It is the greatest love of all

I believe that children are our future
Teach them well and let them lead the way
Show them all the beauty they possess inside
Give them a sense of pride to make it easier
Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be

I decided long ago, never to walk in anyone's shadows
If I fail, if I succeed
At least I'll live as I believe
No matter what they take from me
They can't take away my dignity

Because the greatest love of all
Is happening to me
I found the greatest love of all
Inside of me

The greatest love of all
Is easy to achieve
Learning to love yourself
It is the greatest love of all

And if by chance, that special place
That you've been dreaming of
Leads you to a lonely place
Find your strength in love

Did the song touch a raw nerve in you? Did it make you break down and cry? Yes, do you love yourself so much that you actually cry? That is love!

Loving yourself is indeed, the greatest love of all.

I know! I know! The Beijing Olympics had been over for more than a week now. It’s yesterday’s story. Yet I still think about it sometimes. I have many fond memories of it, so today I’m going to talk on what I miss most about the Beijing Olympics. Some sort like Beijing Olympics Revisited, if you will.

There are actually quite a number of things I miss but I'm going to concentrate on the top 3 otherwise this post may end up being too long. So the 3 things I miss most are....

1. The footprints fireworks

It’s such a pity that this one had been found to be digitally faked by China. I really love those footprints fireworks that started “walking” from Tiananmen Square all the way to the Bird's Nest Stadium. Actually the fireworks were real but they could not film all 29 footprints from the air, so they resorted to faking it for the audiences in the Bird's Nest Stadium as well as TV audiences worldwide.

Look at the video below – aren’t those footprints awesome? Notice they even included some “camera shake” effect to mimic the effect of filming from a helicopter.

Now this video is the real deal taken from the ground. Still looks awesome.

But do I blame China for this? Not really. Look, safety comes first. If it’s too risky for the pilot to fly the helicopter in such a way and at such an angle so as to film all those footsteps, then it’s too risky. So why not create them digitally? We don’t want the audiences to be disappointed, do we? Anyway, it’s quite close to the real thing.

2. The Fuwa mascots

Oh! Aren’t they cute? Since the Olympics ended, I’ve been seeing less and less of them whether in the newspaper, magazines, TV or on the internet. I miss them!

The 5 mascots, designed by Han Meilin, were originally known as the “Five Friendlies” but later changed to the name “Fuwa” which means good luck dolls in Mandarin. Well all for the better because friendlies sound like “friend lies”. Hmmm.... not very auspicious sounding!

The five fuwa consists of Beibei the fish, Jingjing the panda, Huanhuan the Olympic flame, Yingying the Tibetan antelope and Nini the swallow. The five characters’ name spoken together create a sentence that sounds like “Beijing huanying ni” or "Welcome To Beijing" in English.

Now, that’s pretty cool, no?

My favourite fuwa is Huanhuan. Look how cute in his football pose!



My next favourite is Jingjing. Notice that "smile" as he shoots?



See Huanhuan and Jingjing battle it out at both judo and wrestling!

Here's Beibei with sailing and water polo.

Yingying with road cycling and athetics.



Nini with fencing and trampoline.

Aren't these mascots adorable? I will most certainly miss them!

3. Michael Phelps

This man is simply amazing! At only 23 years old, he won gold medals in all the 8 swimming events he participated and broke the world record in 7 of them! He had already won 6 gold and 2 bronze medals in the 2004 Athens Olympics so he had actually won a total of 16 medals. That makes him the athlete who won the most medals in the history of the Olympic games! Wow!

Photos taken from Yahoo News

Now if you want to know how he did it, go no further than Mun’s blog. It’s the best write-up on Michael Phelps I’ve read!

So there you have it - the 3 things I miss most about the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
How about you? Do tell me what you miss most.