A Butterfly's Lesson

A Butterfly’s Lesson (www.doyoubelieve.org/Butterfly.htm)

     One day, a small opening appeared in a cocoon/kəˈkuːn/;  a man sat and watched for the butterfly for several hours  as it struggled to force its body through that little hole.  

     It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could and  it could not go any further. Then, it seems to stop making any  progress.

So the man decided to help the butterfly: he took a pair of scissors and opened the cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily.   But it had a withered body,  it was tiny and shriveled wings.

     The man continued to watch because he expected that, at any moment, the wings would open, enlarge and expand, to be able to support the butterfly’s body, and become firm.

     Neither happened!  In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a withered body and  shriveled wings.  It never was able to fly.    

     What the man, in his kindness and his goodwill did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get  through the tiny opening, were God’s way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.

     Sometimes, struggles are exactly what we need in our life.  If God allowed us to go through our life without any obstacles, it would cripple us.  We would not be as strong as we could have been. Never be able to fly.  

I asked for Strength... and God gave me  difficulties to make me strong.

I asked for Wisdom... and God gave me problems to solve.

I asked for prosperity...and God gave me a brain and brawn/brɑːn/ to work.

I asked for Courage…and God gave me obstacles to overcome.

I asked for Love...and God gave me troubled  people to help.  

I asked for Favours...and God gave me  Opportunities.  

"I received nothing I wanted...but I received everything I needed."

"Live life without fear, confront all obstacles and know that you can overcome them."

Japan, where the toilet is also a shrine

Date  December 16, 2015

Kita-kyushu, Japan: If there's one thing Japan is passionate about, it's toilets. Potties, loos, restrooms, john, powder room, however you say it, Japan has put a lot of thought into the smallest room of the house.

Japan is famous for its high-tech, derriere-washing, tushie-warming toilets. These are now such a valued part of Japanese culture that Toto, the beloved Japanese brand, has just built a $60 million museum devoted to its renowned product, at its home base in Kita-Kyushu, on the southern-most of Japan's four main islands.

Here are four things you might not know about Japan's obsession with lavatories.
1. There's an app for that.

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Don't take your chances going to a restroom without a little seat in the stall for your baby, or a fold-down platform for standing on while you get changed so you don't have to put your feet on the bathroom floor.

There are a bunch of apps in Japan that can help you find the nearest public 
bathroom, or one with a special facility, like large stalls with facilities for people with an ostomy (a relatively common issue in rapidly ageing Japan).

Lion, a manufacturer of diarrhoea medicine Stoppa (and various toiletries and detergents), provides an app @Toilet for people who need to take care of their business urgently away from home or office. Click on the "emergency" button and it locates the closest restroom.

NPO Check operates a free app called Check a Toilet, listing over 53,000 restrooms in major cities. It shows restrooms nearby with information including whether they're wheelchair accessible and/or have ostomy-friendly functions. Users can contribute by submitting information of the restrooms they've visited.

And for those women who need to know the location of clean bathrooms if they're ever to leave the house, the well-known map publishing company Zenrin offers an app for women called Koisuru Map – A Map in Love – with information about nail salons, cafes and clean restrooms. This app includes information such as whether there's a powder space for fixing your make-up, electrical outlets, and nappy-changing facilities. Zenrin's (female) staff visit and review each bathroom before adding it to their list.

2. There's a god of the toilet. Really.
You know how Japan's washrooms got to be so clean and full of advanced technology? Maybe because they're being watched over by a toilet god.
According to the myth, Kawaya-no-kami, the Japanese toilet god, was, appropriately enough, born from the excrement of Izanami, the Japanese goddess of the Earth and darkness. 

In a time long before Washlets, the contents from outhouses were used as fertiliser, so Kawaya-no-kami was said to both provide a good harvest and also protect people from falling into the toilet pit. In 2010, the song Toire no Kamisama (The Toilet God) was a hit.

Japanese loos, almost always a separate room in the house, often feature flowers to keep the toilet god happy.

This also helps uphold another Japanese maxim, Kaori Shoji wrote in the Japan Times: "The restroom is the face of the household."

3. There are toilet rituals.
Different parts of Japan sometimes have customs associated with toilets.
In Aichi prefecture, there's a tradition known as "benjo-biraki" (opening of the toilet) during which people sit on the loo to eat snacks and sip tea.

The Asahi Shimbun reported in August on a ceremony to celebrate the new restroom at Nagoya Bunri University in Aichi. The tradition honours the deity of the bathroom, the paper reported.

A group of students placed a cushion on the toilet seat of a restroom in the new building, and one by one, participants including the school's chairman and president, sat on the toilet seat and ate rice cakes and drank green tea.

"It's a rather peculiar event," Yuichi Oie, a 22-year-old fourth-year student, told the paper. "We hope to make use of this interesting tradition in promoting Inazawa [city in Aichi]."

4. The government has launched a "Japan toilet challenge".
Toilets are a feminist issue. Or so the government says.

The Japanese government this year launched the Japan Toilet Prize, part of a campaign to improve quality of life by improving the quality of restrooms. No matter that Japanese public facilities are almost always clean and stocked with toilet paper.

The task is to ensure that washrooms are always clean and safe and to tackle one of the thorniest of bathroom problems: how to reduce the lines outside women's loos.

"Without appropriate environments where women can use sanitation facilities, their access to social participation in schools and workplaces is restricted," Haruko Arimura, the Japanese minister for women's empowerment, told the government's World Assembly of Women forum in Tokyo in August. In fact, she said that restrooms are so pivotal to women's advancement that she doesn't mind if she's known as "minister of toilets".

Akito Yokoyama, an architect who's part of the toilet challenge project, said Arimura had explained why she wanted to concentrate on restrooms.

"Women are unable to bring themselves to enter filthy toilets in public parks," she quoted Arimura as saying, according to the Shukan Shincho, a magazine. 

"To enable women who work outside the home to thrive, it's necessary to improve the environment in public toilets."

At the same forum, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that making washrooms better would help women "shine," his catchphrase for trying to improve Japan's dismal gender equality rankings.

"In terms of sanitation, toilets are a way to encourage women's participation in society, and there is a lot more Japan can do," he said, according to the Wall Street Journal. "Japan has very advanced technology in terms of toilets in particular."

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/japan-where-the-toilet-is-also-a-shrine-20151215-gloga4.html#ixzz3vKCDZsGg
Follow us: @smh on Twitter | sydneymorningherald on Facebook

Language exposure 19/12/2015

Language exposure 19/12/2015

Language learning is a life-long process to refine and upgrade it.  Thus mistakes are inevitable in the production of the language.  I believe that I often make mistakes carelessly or without knowing them.   I see mistakes be the mother of success when I can learn from them and improve myself all the time.   The mistakes  I make without knowing them are considered as  my ‘blind spot’

    
In the English language learning and teaching, I strongly believe that having the knowledge of the English grammar and phonetics is a must and the school must teach them properly.  How proficient you are in English depends on how well-versed you are in these aspects.  It is all about how much you know the language.

     
It is to do a lot of reading and listening in the input to get reinforced in the English grammar and basic phonetics.   Of course, it is as important to engage in the language use in speaking and writing in the output. 

   
In a nutshell, you can master the English language in the course of time if you know English grammar and basic phonetics and do a lot of reading in English texts as well as a lot of exposure in listening activities.  At the same time, you have the chance to practise the language in speaking and writing. 

It is the language exposure that I know:

.

The wind is so strong today.  The word “wind” is pronounced as /wInd/.

He is always so winded in his speech.  The word “winded” is pronounced as /waIndId/.

Tweets 18/11/2015

Tweets 12/11/2015

Vainglory will lead a person to a hard fall into a fathomless pit.  To ban or not to ban e-cigarette requires the wisdom of the decision maker.

虚荣心会使一个人惨跌入一个无底洞。 禁/不禁止电子烟, 这就是真考验一个人的智慧。

Tweets   18/11/2015

对于饮食，我真的几乎都是小心翼翼。 不能任意随意吃，吃，吃，吃。。。我都尽量定时定量，还要适量的运动，我的运动就是走动走动做家事。 不然，嗯。。嗯，会胖得不像样。不然，我的体形 会有比熊猫更熊猫。 这么样的体形会让一个人[面目全非]。 这样的样子真的太可怕了。 这一生能[修好身，养好性]，是要练一门真功夫。