Untitled #2

Rich men cry money,
Sad men cry tears,
Mad men cry blood
of others.

Looked for a picture to match this poem and I found this with the description of the poem:

My close friends know that I love Africa -- the entire continent. In fact, I'm going to Uganda for three weeks in just a few days and when people ask me why I am going, I am just left speechless. There are so many atrocities, problems, and reasons, I want to look at them and ask them why they are not going.

In our society, we claim ignorance as a valid reason to ignoring things like genocide, rape, mass murders, poverty, malnutrition, kidnapping, etc. We hear about it on the nightly news while eating our dinners and feel sad for about 30 minutes until the next big sitcom airs.

Here is a list of problems that I am putting up so that you can no longer claim ignorance as an excuse:
- 315,000,000 people in Africa survive on less than 1 US dollar per day. (Per capita income of the US is over $40,000. Average personal income is significantly less, but not so small that we can't spare a dollar a day.)
- 184,000,000 Africans (that is 33% of the entire continent) suffer from malnutrition.
- As recently as 2000, over 300,000,000 did not have access to safe drinking water.
- Average African life expectancy is 41 years old. (That is less than 66% of the most pessimistic life expectancy numbers for the average American.)
- 1 out of 6 African kids never make it past the age of 5.
- 50% of civilian causalities in African wars (and there are always multiple African wars going on at any given moment) are children under the age of 13.
- Of 1,000 Africans, statistically, only 200 have any electricity at all, only 15 have access to a telephone, and only 7 can use the internet.
- 3,000 children under the age of 5 die from malaria EVERYDAY in Africa -- that's over a million CHILDREN a year. (Only 8 people -- all together -- in the US died from malaria last year.)
- 12,000,000 children have lost their parents to AIDS.
- At least 25,000,000 people in Africa are HIV-positive.
There are plenty more facts like this. Educate yourself.

Know the facts. Stop ignorance. Support Africa. Spread the love.

I think he wants you to check out his photostream, maybe. He has some pretty thoughtful photographs.

Peace'

Where is my last blog post????

O dear, I think I have deleted my last post X(. Good thing it wasn't to long though but I'm not repeating what I said! Only thing I wanted to say was that I've started uploading my good pics of the Sri Lanka trip on flickr, here.... not many of them are uploaded and I have a cap on how much I can upload, so I'll find somewhere else to upload the rest.

Reaching homeplate

Back home and boy does it feel good! Ok maybe a little cold (just got used to 30C), I'll get onto writing a post travel blog once I have sorted all the photos, all the cool photos will be put on flickr and then I might put them here.

Just another day

I'm not meant to be in Colombo, yesterday we were meant to to travel to the cool upland interior of the Island (where all the tea estates are at etc.). However my granddad got sick just the day before we were meant to leave. I'm not complaining too much, my throat was hurting me like hell on that day. However that means less awesome photos, sorry guys X(, I've been stuck in Colombo since I got here! (ok technically the airport isn't in Colombo but that doesn't count), travelling halfway around the world to sit in my grandparents house and being bitten by mosquitoes is not my idea of an ideal holiday but nevertheless I'm here now and if every goes to plan I'll be going to a coastal town for the night tomorrow =).

Sickness is such a weird thing isn't it? Normally when we are well we run around and keep ourselves busy, but when we are sick it forces us to keep still. I have read 1 book (not Campbell xo) the whole year but in the last two days I've read two, incredible isn't it? Maybe if we were more still in our day to day lives we would get sick less often

Peace``

Histamine induced rage

Look you would not be happy if you had 13 mosquito bits on your face, that are bright red a swelling up a bit. All that histamine has been getting to my head. Sleep deprived too... Why does the rest of my family insist of getting up at 6am, Im trying to have a holiday over here!

It feels like I've been here for weeks not days! sigh, anyway my body will get used to the mosquitos, eventually.

Geez I better get the postcards sorted soon otherwise I'll turn up there before the postcards =p

Specific

Is there anything you guys actually want, like from Singapore? It makes my job so much easier when I have something to look for specifically instead of looking through lots of stuff looking for stuff you may like.

Untitled

Sorry just couldn't think up a proper title, spent about 3 mins thinking. There is so much I have to communicate yet I have little to say. Overall, I think we are all very lucky to live where we live.

We tend to overlook what we have in the present moment and seek distraction in the illusionary, how bad our life is at the moment, how lonely we are, how we could have been somewhere else, I'm sure one can add numerous words that all mean the same thing. When we do these things we are no longer in spirit, like zombies. This is ultimately the source of our unhappiness or if we look at it the other way we can say that the ultimate source of happiness is being in tune with our presence.

If we dissect some aspects of my life,

How many teenagers have the freedom that I have?

How many can say they can hop in a car whenever they want and go where ever they want?

How many can say they have decent food?

How many can say they have clean water?

How many can say they have family and friends that love them?

Etc...

Lets enjoy the time left in school and/or with each other.

MISSING YOU GUYS IN CHCH!!!! ='(