Love....

A heart that loves is forever young - Greek Proverb.

Happy Valentine's Day 2011

Drawing at Egypt's Alexandria Qaitbay Citadel.

老佛爷驾到 (The arrival of Empress Dowager)

I always think of myself as pretty nimble footed and flexible. That was, until last week, when I had to navigate the steep lava-rocks down towards the Blue Nile Falls in Bahar Dar, Ethiopia. Blue Nile Falls ranks 3rd in the world as one of the grandest falls.

On the way down, a local boy, Tefra, probably seeing my shaky knees, handed me his walking stick - fashioned from a tree branch. Sturdy stick in hand, already I felt much better to negotiate the climb. After a few minutes, Tefra offered me his hand, which I gladly took.

For the next few hours (climb was downwards to the Fall, and then up again - back to the bus), I felt like Grand Old Empress Dowager Cixi. Shaky knees, breathlessness, and one big stick in hand, and a young man's hand on the other!

Story of two pebbles

A farmer owed a local rich but very ugly and old man a lot of money. And the farmer had a beautiful young daughter that the old rich man favours. The latter proposed to the farmer to waive the debt in return for the hand of the beautiful daughter. Both the farmer and daughter were shocked at the proposal.

In any case, the shrewd old man wanted to make the proposal "fairer" to the young lady. He said, I will put two pebbles into the bag and you pick one. Should you pick a black pebble, you are to marry me and I will extinguish your father's debt. If you pick the white pebble, you do not have to marry me, yet I will still extinguish your father's debt. If you picked neither, I shall have your father thrown into prison.

With that said, the old man picked two pebbles from the ground which is full of pebbles and put them in a bag. The young girl's sharp eyes caught the old man stuffing two black pebbles into the bag. What can she do? Expose the cheat? Or sacrifice herself? Or let her father go to jail?

What would you do?

This calls for lateral thinking over logical thinking (For more on lateral thinking, read Edward De Bono's books).

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What the girl did was she reached into the bag and picked out one pebble. And dropped it onto the ground (full of pebbles) before anyone could see the colour of the one she picked.

"Oops. Clumsy me." announce the young girl apologetically.

"Never mind. The pebble left in the bag would prove which pebble I picked first", offered the girl, knowing very well, the other pebble left in the bag is surely black. And that way, "proves" the first pebble must have been white.

The old man did not dare to reveal he cheated in the first place and therefore had to extinguish the debt without a bride in return. This is how the young lady turned a seemingly hopeless situation to a most advantageous result, with a little bit of lateral thinking.

Moral of the story - a solution exists in every problem. Just take a moment to examine it from a few more angles.

(This interesting story extracted from a PPT circulating on the internet)