111 Amoy St and a Friend

I was talking to law today and mentioned the old office in amoy st, he had never been there so i dug up another old pic from 2000, it was a tiny little attic space type office but uncle marc and i worked there until he died, then i tried to carry on with some friends...i think the person that spent the most time there beside me was brad, many nights we sat at the conference table packing stuff for sale and just talking, it was a great office..twas a sad day when i had to give it up but life keeps moving on and all we are left with are memories and maybe a few pictures, next month will be u. marc's death annivesary, many people have said many things about the man, some good and some not so good but for my part i will always think of him as a man who gave up everything for his boys. He was always there for the servers and we considered him one of our own. I know that most of you have no clue who i am talking about, but for those of you who remember him say a prayer for a good man.

We meet people like this throughout our lives, people who make a difference, these are people who make such a mark on our lives that when they leave a part of us goes with them but a part of them stays with us forever. Through the barriers of age, culture and so many other differences we form a bond with them, to others he or she may seem to be a negative influence or a bad person, but a person who has bad traits is not necessarly a bad person and we must always try and find the good in people.

As for me 96360810 is still the first number i think about when i need help and its always a couple of seconds before i realise that he is gone,gone but never will he be forgotten....not by his boys. At his wake it was his boys who stood guard for 4 nights over his body, it was his boys who carried his casket and it was his boys who showed him our respect. That last genuflect was a moment that i will carry with me.

Maids saga

I often wonder what goes through the minds of people, last week we had a young indonesian girl prob around 20yrs old, she came into my office and was sobbing saying that she wanted to run away from her employers house where she was working as a maid, she said the employer did not allow her to eat anything except a dinner time and even then it would be scraps or left overs. She was not allowed to have breakfast, lunch or tea, she had to be up at 5am and was allowed to sleep only after the last person went to bed. The thing that struck me the most was that here she was crying while next to her in the pram sleeping soundly was the employers baby, the silly employer was practically treating the maid as a slave yet they calmly allowed her to look after the child. The maid by this time was in no state to control her emotions and was really letting it rip, she called the maid agency who told her that she HAD to stay there for at least 8 months before they could transfer her out, so she called the indonesian embassy who told her to get in a cab and go to the consulate where a guard would pay her cabfare. She was all set to go and leave the baby alone in the house, her fear of her employer was so great that she wold have just abandoned the child, we talked her out if it and she waited till the owners came home and when they left for dinner with the baby, she ran for her life.
Needless to say the employers got a new maid asap and today that maid ran away too. One day they are goimg to get a maid who will take it out on the baby and maybe then they will learn their lesson, that the maid they treat so badly is someones baby too.

Its disgusting to read in the papers who say things like these maids dont deserve days off or that the money we pay them is more then a kings ransome, treat them as people, treat them as living beings who deserve to be treated with respect and dignity, not scorn and abuse. I think that people who abuse maids should become maids as punishment for at least 3 months instead of gong to jail, that will teach them.

Ode to the boss

i wish i was a fly, sitting on a wall, if i was a fly i'd spit upon you all.
i wish i was a mosquito buzzing all around, if i was a mosquito in your blood i'd drown
i wish i was a rat roaming in your house, if i was a rat, your so dumb you'd think i was a mouse.

A conversation on love

I was talkign to an old friend about love the other day and we both historically belive that love conquers all. She was telling me that she is concerned with what is happening to the world around us and the fact that in the modern world the permancy of love does not seem to be eternal anymore, it seems that love is a temporary thing.
This whole conversation which i must point out has been going on with my friend over the past few years has lead me to thinking alot about what i feel love is. My conclusion is that I DONT KNOW, if you ask me why i love my wife i cant tell you i can only say it feels good and right, i have heard people say i love you to their significant other and the next week they have broken off and 3 days later they are with other people, was it love? They say it was.."I loved him but he changed" or my personal fav for the great breakup excuse " love wasnt enough". I think in cases like this, it wasnt "true love" we may have thought it was but its not, love doesnt change, love doesnt die it is a spring that flows forever in the ever changing landscape of life. I say i love my wife, do i mean it of course i do but how do i know it if is true love, well i firmly belive that we dont know for sure until we die and it is only than that we know yes ...good lord that really was love. I have known couples married for 30yrs who get divorced 30yrs man oh man and they claim to have loved each other for most of that time and now they dont even speak, people and that includes me speak more often of the dimise of a relationship that the success of one, we never have hour long conversations about couples who have been married for a long time but we cant wait to talk about couples that break up, it seems more fun, which leads me to belive although more people are getting divorced these days, fewer people are making a serious commitment to each other these days, love will conquer all in the end. So my friend ( you know who you are) and you are feeling worried or depressed and alone, dont because though you are physcially alone in spirit you are standign in room full of friends.

The World of Web Logging aka the blog

It is a very odd thing for me to be using a blog type feature, growing up i never had a diary as i always belived anything written down is meant to be read and i did not want anyone to read anything i had written down...ever.
Anyway after much deliberation i decided to try it out. So if you come across this blog and find to a touch too boring, dont worry i understand......and pardon the many spellign/typo errors..i beg your forgivness

Hmm

I figured that since this is my first day blogging and i am flushed with the first rush of excitement that accompanies a new toy i will most probably be posting more than once a day over the next few days.

I was having dinner at my mums place last night and while flipping through some old phote albums i came across some pictures the boys and i took about 5 years ago on Sisters Island on one of our camping trips there.
The pic above as you will agree is not the best photograph in the world, but it appeals to me, from left to right Raju aka Gerald, Frodo aka Aaron, Dominic, Me, Sherwin and Malcom. Out of the 6 in the picture only 3 of us still hang together, i guess time is the ultimate test of friendship and although it doesnt mean that in the future we wont be friends it still means that right now what was a pretty tight group is fractured.

It was already a pretty dreary night, it was a farewell dinner for my sister and her kids who were leaving today for Japan and who knows when they will be back. Its also that time of the month when all bills are due so instead of being happy i got paid i am concerned if its enough to pay all my bills. Coming across the pics sort of reminded me of what is good in my life and what gives me joy, got a great wife, great family, great dog, great friends, great house, great cigars to smoke and although i will confess it didnt remove my concerns completly it did make me feel better.