A Star in God's Eyes

During the Christmas program at Brahma Kumaris, each one was given a card containing a Christmas symbol. My husband got a symbol that fits him, and here's what I got:

The Star

"You are the star in God's eyes, who illuminates and shows everyone to true peace and happiness".

Wow! I think that will be the biggest dream I'll ever have, and the biggest challenge too. But I guess I've started to try to be one though perhaps I lacked self-confidence. I wrote about "God's Message" which was the main reason for starting a blog, but I didn't care if people will believe it or not. Maybe I was right that the message was for specific people at specific times, but maybe I could have exerted more effort to make mankind believe it because the message was for the whole mankind and not just for selected people.

How do I fulfill that biggest dream now? Perhaps I'll just continue sharing everything that I learn which will help people attain peace and happiness. In the first place, that was my main objective in creating the three blogs I'm now maintaining. I couldn't believe that while writing this and searching for the URL of my "God's Message" post, I found another venue or a popular site where I can fulfill that dream!

May the year 2012 bring true peace and happiness to everyone!

Lubel

My dream condo unit

There was a time I dreamed of owning a condo unit but forgot about the idea. Until I realized the difficulty of building a house and also maintaining it at this age. I got units in Basic Interior Design course and as a result, I said to myself when the time comes I'll build my own house, I'll focus on it and even take a leave from work. Time flew and it's a different story now.

I'm again dreaming of owning a condo unit, but this time I have very specific requirements so it's not easy to find one. The most critical requirement is the toilet and bath which should not be located at the southeast, nor south and north part of the unit, simply because those are my lucky directions where I should study or work. Again related to the toilet and bath, preferably it should not be seen from the entrance but that will be hard to follow because most units especially the small ones have the T&B located next to the entrance door.

Another consideration is the placement of the stove which should not be fixed so I can put it in a place where the front door is not facing the back of the person cooking. "A surprised cook will spoil the meals", I'm not sure why that belief should not make sense but I'd like to follow that anyway.

The floor where the unit is located should be at the ground or second floor, though a breathtaking view will of course be sacrificed so I may still consider a higher floor. Why I'd like a unit at the ground or second floor is because of its accessibility to the amenities specifically the pools and the gardens. I have a special reason, the kiddie pool will help in the therapy of my special child.

That's about it, my dream condo unit. I've seen a lot of them but the earliest turnover is 2014, LOL!

A Dream Workplace

Six months ago, I posted about "My Dream Office" which should be in my own house. But for most who are employed in a regular job, working in a common workplace is inevitable. There should be a dream common workplace then, the kind that will help employees live a healthy life. Is that possible?

In Japan, workers in some offices are required to attend the warm up session in the morning before the official working hour starts. But since a dream workplace would like to maximize the health of the employees while in the workplace, other solutions can be worked out.

1. Exposure to sunshine is a must for a person’s health and the best time of exposure that will surely help the body to produce Vitamin D is from 9:30 to 10 in the morning. Eating should not be allowed in the office in the morning, instead, a special canteen without a roof or located at an open field that operates only in the morning should be provided, where snacks may be taken or short meetings may even be conducted . Employees may be scheduled alternately and those scheduled to be at the open field canteen starting at 9:30 A.M. may be motivated with a free snack ticket. When it’s raining, that’s the only time snacks in carts may go to the offices.

2. Thirty minutes before the closing time of the office, all elevators should be switched off and all employees should be required to use the stairs.

3. The main canteen of the office should serve healthy foods only, without any meat. These food should be sold at cheaper prices.

4. Turn on the centralized air condition only during hot seasons. Use electric fans during cool seasons since too cold temperatures can affect a person's health.

5. Employees with no abnormal findings during the Annual P.E. should be rewarded, and if they have ideal weights, their rewards should be doubled.

6. Of course provide gyms with saunas and work-out programs for the employees.

There are more ways than just the above 6. Where to get the funds for such program? Decrease the amount for health insurance to add to the savings in electricity when the centralized air condition and elevators are turned off, and the open field that will not require lights. This is not an original idea, only the ways differ, but that only means that achieving a dream workplace similar to this is not an impossible dream.

A dream garden of a cat and a CEO

Every morning at 9:30, the sun's rays are right in front of our door and I don't let that opportunity to be exposed to sunlight even just for 20 minutes pass. To motivate myself to regularly do that, I look at the garden, check if its overall view looks good. Both the left and right gardens would fit the frame of a camera, therefore their full views are easy to appreciate or assess.


How would I assess a garden? A blooming flower will surely make the overall view of a garden look good so it would be easy to spot and assess in more detail. The morgana flower will make a garden beautiful and at first glance one would like to look at it more closely and in so doing, discover flowerettes also blooming on the fully bloomed large flower. On the other hand, wilted leaves will surely mar the overall view of the garden so they should be regularly removed.


Why is the title of this post "A dream garden of a cat and a CEO"? Because our cat FPJ always looks at the garden like I do. Like me, perhaps he appreciates that he could see the overall view of the garden at one glance. I like big gardens, but if there is no spot in a beautiful garden that fits the frame of a camera, it will be hard to remember how beautiful it is.


It goes without saying that even a small garden can be a dream garden not only to a cat but also to people like me, and even perhaps to a CEO of a company. What if the overall view of a company is like a garden that I just described? The CEO will surely be very glad that at one glance he or she could see how healthy a company is. The small garden in this last photo looks good, but the branch of a beautiful plant with dark pink leaves is almost on the ground. That would be easy to correct but if left unattended, the beautiful leaves will finally fall to the ground and wilt.

The perfect plant for a perfect grade

"I could have given you a perfect grade for this, but you drew the wrong plant!". I will never forget that comment from my teacher in Freehand Drawing in my Interior Design course five years ago. It was almost lunch when we started drawing the three vases, one vase with plant on it, so we were asked to finish the drawing at home. I wasn't able to find the same kind of plant that was on the vase when I got home. But there was another reason, I just didn't find the plant beautiful. They said it was a water plant.

I've never forgotten that incident, and the plant. Since then I've been looking for the presence of that plant everywhere there were plants, until I realized that inside the school of my son where we had a coffee kiosk, the plant was abundant. It is beautiful when the leaves are already big. I grew the plant at home and wondered if it will fulfill my dream of replacing my artificial decorative vine at home with a natural vine. But every time I put some on a vase with water, the plant just didn't last. I realized that was because I've always forgotten to add water. So I bought clear vases so I could see if there was no more water. Until I got used to adding water even when the vase was still half-filled.

I later learned that the plant's name is "Devil's Ivy", also called "Golden Pothos" and it has grown with big leaves outside our house which I intentionally trim to use as decors on vases. And from the grown plant with big leaves, I finally managed to grow its vine just using water exactly at the place where I used to hang artificial leaves.

I finally got my dream. It was a small dream that had nothing to do with my bad experience for not getting a perfect grade. Now I know why I shouldn't had misjudged that ugly plant that became my way to fulfill a dream.

A Mother's Dream

As a mother of two grown-ups, I can say I have fulfilled my dreams. Good upbringing, good education, and good health, those were my dreams for them. When they finished college, my dream was for them to have good jobs. Now that they are adults and have good jobs, they have their own dreams and I can only pray that they will always be in good health because most of the time, it is health that is sacrificed to achieve most of an adult’s dreams.

But God doesn’t stop to challenge me as a mother and as a dreamer combined. For my special needs child, my dreams are more complicated. Her health comes first. Good upbringing is to constantly show her that she is loved. The hardest part is good education which means special education plus complete therapies for her and that will require a big sum of money. That is what makes my dream complicated. And perhaps, that dream was the very reason why this blog was created in the first place.

Today, July 24, is Lyca’s 9th birthday. I started this blog in 2008, seriously dreaming that I should win the Lotto so I can bring this special child to the United States where I’ve seen very good facilities for her development, in the internet. That was three years ago and I haven’t stopped hoping for that dream to come true. Even with her disabilities, I know this child has the right to be educated and that obligation makes my dream stronger, and I have to look for ways to fulfill that even without winning the Lotto.

My wish for her birthday next year is to already have a clear picture of the fulfillment of my dream of special education and the necessary therapies for her. For now, my dream is focused on her health, that she will be seizure free with the help of a Modified Atkin’s diet. In fact, that shouldn’t be just a dream but a prayer, a prayer that will be granted if two or more people will pray for that. If you happen to read this and join in that prayer, a mother’s dream is about to come true.

Fulfilling the dream - to be a therapist

I first blogged about a new dream to study the acupuncture points of the body on September 2, 2008, and then elevated that dream of becoming a "therapist". Today, I'm declaring myself a therapist since I've already proven a number of times that I can indeed treat people by just stimulating their acupoints with my Tiens non-invasive gadgets and boosting their immune systems with the right supplements.

That doesn't mean that I've memorized the 2,000 acupoints of the body. I was forced to fulfill that dream because I needed to address the immediate health problems of my family. It did not really take more than two years because I had a full time job in 2009 but resigned after 9 months because I didn't feel at ease with my own health. As a therapist, I need to be healthy myself.

However, I cannot be a professional therapist because I still lack the required schooling and licence. I am now thinking if my next dream should be to take up "Master of Science in Asian Health Practices".

What is more important at this point in time is that members of my family are immediately treated even without medicines. Every case of illness in my own family that I successfully treat makes me very happy!

The Dream Soul

I'm not so updated with the young people's terminologies but during our time, we had dream boys and dream girls. When we became older, we had ideal men and ideal women. Most of us probably wanted a "dream soul" or an "ideal soul" in a person that we were looking for. But more often than not, we could not eliminate some physical characteristics we were hoping to find in a person, thus we never referred to just the soul of a person.

The dream soul is harder to find and should be first achieved in oneself. It is the best medium to change oneself, and its surroundings will follow. Achieving a dream soul is simply being conscious of its original state: peaceful, powerful, pure, positive, loving and joyful. If this original state of the soul is achieved on a daily basis, then a dream soul is achieved.

Yesterday I was blessed to have the opportunity to attend a seminar in Brahma Kumaris about "Soul Consciousness". At first I could not imagine how the seminar would be effective to the participants. It was amazing to be enlightened how simple the process involved in soul consciousness is, but it could be hard to practice for sure. This morning, I started meditating about achieving my soul's original state. If I can eliminate negative or waste thoughts like gossips the whole day, then I will succeed in achieving that.

Worldwide health care

Under the arms of the United Nations is a World Health Organization which of course is in charge of the world's health. It was created in 1948, the time when the first batches of baby boomers were born. Though born later, I was a baby boomer and I probably knew the very specific functions of this organization when I was in grade school. But that was long ago, and I can just imagine how hard it was to develop health programs for the whole world. This is the 21st century where everything is possible with the help of modern technology and the internet. The great dream for worldwide health care is possible not only by an organization but even by a single baby boomer.

I admit that I am one of those baby boomers trying to be a messiah to save the health of mankind, in my own little way of sharing whatever I learned about health and wellness. I am aware though that caring for the world's health is not as easy as sharing information through the internet. In my blogs, I share some philosophies of TCM or Traditional Chinese Medicine, not knowing who would believe them.

Perhaps the greater dream is for all philosophies of medicine to be integrated, such as Oriental or Traditional Chinese Medicine integrated to Western Medicine. Some might say, that is an impossible dream, but I prefer to base my beliefs on simple observations. For instance, the scrubs which are now worn as medical uniforms in hospitals can easily be the standard uniforms for healthcare. So when one sees a person in scrubs in any part of the world, an instant message is understood: that person's mission is health care.

I've noticed in Wikipedia's definition of health care that it pertains to humans and haven't found the word "animal" in its definitions. In TCM, acupuncture can be applied to animals as well, in fact pet lovers should start learning about it if they really care for their pets. The scrubs can be veterinary scrubs that will send the same message of caring for health though this time it involves animals. Health care includes acupuncture while acupuncture includes the animals, therefore health care should include the animals.

"Brought to you by my friends from www.blueskyscrubs.com"

Inspiring future nurses

The last Nursing Board Examination results in the Philippines showed a low percentage of passers. Those who failed experienced a "shattered dreams" illusion. This is normal, but illusions are temporary and one week of recovery from such should be enough. Continue dreaming and continue learning what you failed to assimilate in the past.

Caring for people is one goal that can never be replaced by other goals. So those who perseveringly studied Nursing should pursue this noble goal. They had been inspired not only by their loved ones but by mankind as a whole. The internet is another effective medium that can inspire future nurses and help them achieve their dreams. Even just the photos of nursing uniforms can inspire them.

It won’t be long until they again look for nurses scrub uniforms in the internet, this time for real. They will be among the many nurses selecting from the several designs of nursing scrub tops or men’s medical scrubs for men.

To the nurses who pursued their dreams, a job well done!

"Brought to you by my friends in www.blueskyscrubs.com."

My Dream Office

The price of gasoline is rising fast and the road traffic is also getting worse. In this situation, what could be a better solution than working in one's home? Maybe none. But an office setting is always ideal, makes one more focused and far from distractions.

Therefore, an office situated exclusively in another story of the home can be an excellent place. The photo here obviously shows a beautiful house, but for me, that bedroom on the second story can be my office. The adjacent balcony with plants around is an excellent place for breathing exercises or Qi Gong, and be exposed to the sun to get the much needed Vitamin D by the body, during working breaks.

That will be a nice dream to be added to my Dreams List.

Perseverance will be rewarded

It was worth searching the web for the definition of "perseverance" because it inspired me more to write this post about our own experience of persevering. Before my story, here are some of the definitions I have searched:

"Perseverance is a day-to-day decision not to give up".
"Continued steady belief or efforts, withstanding discouragement or difficulty".
"Steady persistence in a course of adhering to a course of action, a belief or a purpose".

Whenever people see us with our special child, people would tell my husband and I that the child will bring us good luck. And then there are also others who'd say that the child is very lucky to have us as her adoptive parents.

A year before the special child was born, though I could no longer give birth because of surgery, I wished for a child but did not want a grandchild. So when this child was born right inside our house, I believed she was God's gift to me. This child is now 8 years old and we are confronted with several challenges that would test our perseverance. Maybe I had been persevering most of the time in the past, but I didn't think it could also be a gift from God.

A few months ago, our child had massive seizures because of her cerebral palsy. Her doctor advised us to try changing her diet into a modified Atkin's diet, because it effectively eliminated the seizures of some children with epilepsy and cerebral palsy, and also eventually eliminated their medicines. I immediately researched about the diet, some guidelines that go with it and its positive effects, and then immediately tried it even without the guidance of a dietician. To our surprise, we noticed several changes which the doctor sees as improvements because our child became more sensitive. There was a negative side effect - constipation. It was very difficult to both the child and us so after a month, I decided to quit. It was just a few days after that decision when we went to the doctor who was glad to hear about the changes, and then told us that the constipation can easily be resolved so we should resume the child's diet.

The two hours after every meal of dealing with our child's constipation was greatly reduced. But the best thing about it is the improvement in her motor skills, caused by the reduction or maybe even the absence of seizures. She can now hold the glass of water she's drinking and is able to control the amount of water she can swallow at a time. Just a month ago, she'd drown herself when she would hold the glass.

There is now big hope that our dreams for Lyca, our special child, will soon come true. And there is only one secret in realizing those dreams - perseverance. I'm glad that it's not only me who was given this gift of perseverance which is now being put to test. There's my immediate family: my husband, my daughter and my son who are now adults and who perseveringly expressed their support for Lyca, emotionally and financially. In due time, their perseverance will be rewarded.

A good sign as the year starts

Last month, I've seen what I feel was the most beautiful Christmas setting in a department store I've encountered so far. It was in Rustan's Department Store inside the Shangrila Plaza mall. I was with my former officemates, one of them just arrived from Canada for a vacation here in Manila. I enjoyed the views inside the department store so much, I dreamed of coming back for a picture taking with my special child before they dismantle the Christmas decors. It was a dream because I knew there was a small chance it could happen.

The second day of the New Year was a Sunday, I decided to wear the new dress given by my Mom though I had to use a coat over it, while I also dressed up my special child Lyca with a new dress and head dress given to her last Christmas. I was in a hurry I used a blazer over my dress and the mass was over when I realized I looked funny. And then I recalled I saw a branded sweater more appropriate for the dress. I thought it would be good to see and fit the sweater while I was wearing the dress. Outlets of the sweater's brand are found everywhere but my companions preferred to go to Shangrila Plaza mall.

We were already at the mall when I was reminded of the Christmas decors in Rustan's in Shangrila Plaza. It should still be there because it was The Sunday of Epiphany and the timing was right since I brought the camera to take photos of Lyca in her new dress so we could thank his uncle who gave the dress, with her photo (I can't be contended with 2 megapixels camera in a cellphone).

It was dream fulfilled on the second day of the new year, it was just a small dream but for me it was a good sign and perhaps just a beginning of more dreams fulfilled within the year.