Reach Beyond Your Limits: December 2008

31 December 2008

Happy New Year!

Wishing you all and your loved ones all the things that bring happiness and joy to your heart this new year. More bountiful blessings this 2009.

Do You Like Yourself Too Much? 6 Ways to Tell

Recognizing your accomplishments – and demanding respect for them – are two signs of emotional well-being. Less clear-cut is the point at which healthy appreciation turns into unhealthy narcissism. Psychologist Steven Berglas, Ph.D., author of The Success Syndrome: Hitting Bottom When You Reach the Top, points out six signals of self-love overindulgence.

1. You toot your own horn excessively – not out of a healthy sense of pride, but out of a deep-rooted need to be noticed, praised and reassured of your self-worth.

2. You have an inflated sense of yourself. To satisfy your yen for admiration, you exaggerate your talents and assets to an extreme degree. For example, you may brag you’re a terrific hostess, yet you haven’t thrown a party in years.

3. You have an unwarranted sense of entitlement. Because of your feelings of grandiosity, you always demand the best – expensive cars, clothes, jewelry, etc., and in particular, special treatment from others. You don’t insist on a good table at a restaurant, but the best table.

4. You are exploitive of or insensitive of others. You magnify your own gains, you callously point out others’ shortcomings. “It’s too bad you didn’t get the account, Bob. Of course it was given to me because I have a better track record.”

5. You’re overly sensitive to criticism. You perceive it as a life-threatening blow to your self-esteem, responding with rage instead of mild indignation or acceptance.

6. You’re told by others that you’re selfish and demeaning. The outside world may pick up on the telltale signs of unhealthy narcisissim long before you do; listen to the feedback.

Maja Ala Ilongga

My sister in law Salome cooked this for our media noche. She's not an ilongga though but this recipe is called maja ala ilongga.

Ingredients:

6 tbsps. nata de coco (red and green)

6 tbsps. cheese (grated)

1 tbsp. raisin

1 cup cornstarch

3 cups coco milk

1/2 cup condensed milk

1 tbsp. butter (melted)

1/2 cup sliced buko

1 170 gram nestle cream

Arrange 2 tbsp. nata de coc, 2 tsbp. cheese and raisin in a mold and set aside. Combine cornstarch, coco milk, condensed milk, sugar, and butter. Pour into 1 1/4 cups boiling water stirring continuously. Mix the remaining nata de coco and add in together with the buko, corn and stir until it curdles. Put in a pan.

29 December 2008

Potato Crocket

I cooked my version of a potato crocket last Christmas. It's a mixture of mashed potato, ground pork, butter, fresh milk, cheese, egg, and bread crambs and mayonnaise as toppings. My nephews and nieces loved it! :)

Youth

You is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.

Youth means a temperamental pre-dominance of courage over timidity of the appetite, for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of 60 more than a boy of 20. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals.
Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust.

Whether 60 or 16, there is in every human being’s heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing childlike appetite of what’s next and the joy of the game of living. In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station: so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power from men and from the Infinite, so long are you young.

When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with the snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at 20, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at 80.

How to Strengthen Weak and Brittle Nails?

Supplementing your diet with extra iron, zinc and a good dose of the B vitamins, nails became considerably stronger and with much less incidence of splitting and breaking. Protein is also very good for strengthening and aiding the healthy growth of nails. Gelatin is high in protein and can help strengthen nails, as well.

28 December 2008

Killer Bamboo

The bamboo forests of the western highlands of China are known throughout the world as the vanishing habitat of the last remaining pandas. With farms and villages now encroaching on its forest territory, the panda, which depends on bamboo as its only food, is fighting a desperate battle for survival. Bamboo is usually seen as merely the passive backdrop for this evolutionary tussle. But Truman Young, an ecologist at the Gallmann Memorial Foundation in Kenya, has put an entirely new spin on the scenario. The squeeze for space, he suspects, has intensified a much older battle that began when pandas took up eating bamboo in the first place. Killing pandas, he suggests, may be the plant’s time-honored strategy for ensuring its own survival.

The clue to bamboo’s insidious nature is the plant’s bizarre sex life. For most of its life, this large woody grass reproduces asexually, by extending new shoots from underground runners. Over the years large areas may consequently be covered by genetically identical clones of single plant. Then, like clockwork, all the individuals in a species go into a sexual phase when they flower, seed, and die. Only the sprouting seedlings survive to recognize the area, but ten or more years may have to pass before they’re a viable food source again. Pandas can survive these die offs if they can switch to another type of bamboo, but as their range has shrunk, so has their selections of bamboo species. When several species go to seed simultaneously, which happened in the mid-1970s in the Min Mountains of northern Sichuan and Gansu, pandas simple starve.

Young asked himself why bamboo plants do this. Bamboo, of course, is by no means the only type of plant or animal to reproduce in sync. The same strategy is used by perennial flowers, by many antelope, and by salmon who clog their native streams when they return to spawn. The idea from an evolutionary standpoint is to glut your predators with more offspring than they can possibly eat, so that at least some of your offspring survive.
Bamboo, however, goes in for an eccentric variation of this evolutionary strategy. It indulges in sexual reproduction at only very long intervals – after 15 years or, in a few species, more than 120 years. Why bamboo waits so long to flower has been a puzzle. “But when you look at it from the bamboo’s point of view,” says Young, “it all makes sense.”

Synchronous mass seedings let bamboo stay one step ahead of predators like rats and insects, which eat the plant’s seeds when they are plentiful but revert to other types of food when the pickings get slim. For bamboo the biggest obstacle to staying alive long enough to flower and seed again is the panda, who insists on eating this plant only.

Young hypothesizes that the bamboo’s peculiar reproductive cycle may have evolved to rid itself of this nuisance. It’s a slow, sly two-part strategy. First, bamboo proliferates asexually, providing pandas with an abundant larder of food, allowing even these notoriously slow-breeding animals to gradually build up their numbers. Then, when the panda population has grown, the bamboo abruptly dies off, leaving the animals on the brink of famine. To make matters worse, the animals that are most likely that are pregnant or nursing, since they have the highest nutritional needs.

Once you have heard this theory, you will never look at bamboo the same way again. Green and slender, deceptively innocent-looking, it spreads out slowly, year by year, until it has its victims surrounded. Meanwhile the pandas, poor patsies, are eating out the bamboo’s hand. Only when the pandas are well and truly dependent on it does the bamboo deal its coup de grace. It flowers and seeds, thus ensuring its own survival as a species. And then, in an act of sweet self-sacrifice, it dies, taking its arch-enemy with it.

26 December 2008

Foiling Fleas

Fleas can lay up to 25 eggs a day – in one quick month, ten adult fleas could generate thousands more.

Control:
A good, long bath will drown many fleas. Groom your pet regularly, outside, with a fine tooth flea comb to remove the blood-thirsty guests. Don’t crush fleas with your fingernails – no matter tempting. They could be carrying diseases or parasites.

If you’re snagging more fleas than usual, it’s time for sterner measures. Dust your pet with pyrethrum powder, a botanical insecticide made from dried flowers that you can buy at some nurseries. It will temporarily paralyze the fleas. Then stand the pet over newspaper and comb out the immobilized fleas. Gather up the newspaper and burn it.

To make a non-toxic flea-killing potion, pour two cups of boiling water over two sliced lemons. Let the mixture sit overnight and then sponge it on your pet. Or score the skin of an orange and rub the citrus oil right onto the animal.

24 December 2008

Merry Christmas to All!

As we enter Christmas and New Year, I am glad to express my best wishes of peace, health, love, tranquility, long age, unconsumed inner energy and prosperity for my family and dear friends.

23 December 2008

Stretch!

When you first get up in the morning, your muscles and soft tissues are tight. In fact, at that time your muscles are generally about 10 percent shorter than their normal resting length. As you move around, they stretch to their normal length. Then when you start to exercise, your muscles stretch even more to about 10 percent resting length. This means that you have a 20 percent change in muscle length from the time you get out of bed until your muscles are well warmed up.

According to the basic laws of physics, muscles work more efficiently when they are longer; they can exert more force with less effort. This means, too, that longer muscles are much less prone to injury.

22 December 2008

Why Gals have tough time losing weight?

Women find it much more difficult than men to lose weight and its not because they lack will power – it’s because they are padded with an extra layer of fat, says an obesity specialists.

Nature has made it much tougher for a woman to lose weight than a man because they possess an extra layer of fat designed to protect the unborn baby once a woman gets pregnant.

This layer of fat remains in place whether they ever become pregnant or not. It appears during early adolescence. It’s not until she gets much older – as much as 10 years past the menopause – that this layer of fat will begin to recede.

21 December 2008

Is There Anything Wrong With Having Flat Feet?

Not really. Despite the clumsy flat-footer, the estimated 15 to 20 percent of people with flat fee may be the lucky ones after all. Studies indicate that feet with low arches – most feet we call flat actually have a bit, of an arch – may be less prone to injury than the high-arched variety.
Army volunteers monitored in 1989, those with the flattest feet experienced the fewest foot and leg injuries during two months of basic training.

The reason may have less to do with the actual height of the foot’s arch than with its flexibility. Flat feet tend to be more supple than arched feet because the muscles, tendons, and ligaments that create the arch are more relaxed. An extremely high arch can mean a stiffer foot – one that doesn’t flatten enough and absorb shock evenly when you run or jump.

Flat feet may have gotten a bad name because the terms is also used to described a foot that over pronates – rolls too much and for too long to the inside of the foot. This prolonged pronation can lead to injury of the instep or a twisted knee.

20 December 2008

Chinese Tea Kills Malaria

Malaria kills about two million people a year worldwide. The disease is spread by a parasite carried in mosquitoes. Two drugs have been used to treat most malaria. They are quirine and chloroquine. However, the drugs are no longer effective against malaria in many parts of the world.

Recently a scientific study showed why a kind of Chinese tea may be the most effective drug against the disease malaria. They study showed that a chemical in the tea destroys the malaria parasite.

The tea is called quinhaosu. Chinese doctors have been using the tea to treat fever. It contains an active chemical artemisin. In malaria patients, artemisin starts a reaction that poisons the malaria parasite. The parasite is unable to destroy the iron in hemoglobin. The tea’s active chemical artemisinin sticks to the iron. The resulting chemical reaction releases molecules called free radicals. These molecules destroy major parts of the malaria parasite.

Left-Brain and Right-Brain People

Are you very organized? Do you plan things? Do you like to control things? Or, are you very artistic? Emotional? Do you like to talk a lot? If you fit either of these descriptions, there may be biological reasons for it.

Educational researchers say one side of a person’s brain may be more powerful than the other. They say that using one side more than another effects the way a person learns.
The different sides of the human brain control different kinds of intelligence. For example, very organized people generally use the left side of their brain more than the right. Left-brain people are good at mathematics and at solving technical problems.
More creative people generally use the right side of their brain more than the left. Right-brain people are very emotional. They are good at art and music.

Everyone uses both sides of the brain. But people do seem to process information more in one side of their brain than the other. It is difficult for students who use the right part of their brain, leave before finishing school more than do students who use the left part of their brain. This is because schools almost always present information in a way that left-brain people understand better.

Right brain people do not like to read or listen. They like to learn by doing things. They like to use their hands and touch.

Humba

Humba Recipe (Braised Pork Belly) is one of the comfort foods of every Filipino household. It’s a popular filipino food dish in the Visayas and Mindanao regions. I don’t know how they call it in the Luzon region, but I knew they have a version of humba too. Humba is one of the dishes prepared during our Faculty and Staff christmas party yesterday at the beach. Everyone loved it!

19 December 2008

Should Pregnant Women Exercise?

Exercise during pregnancy helps woman maintain a sense of well-being and control over her changing body. Despite common fears, there's no evidence linking exercise to miscarriage: The fetus is well-cushioned and won't be disturbed by vigoruous movement. But does exercise pose other dangers?

According to Marshall Carpenter, M.D., assistant professor, department of obstetrics and gynecoloy, Brown University Program in Medicine, "Exercise is demonstrably safe for pregnant women when their heart rate remains below 150 beats per minute." That's sufficiently vigorous to give a woman a good aerobic workout and allow her to participate in most sports. Exercising to exhaustion, though, may cause problems.

Doctors have typically recommended that a woman simply maintain her previous level of exercise during pregnancy. Conversely, Dr. Carpenter believes that there is no risk to the fetus if a woman who is poorly trained begins a moderate exercise program during pregnancy. He warns, though, that there may be risk of injury to the mother, since the hormone relaxin, released during pregnancy, causes a loosening of joints in the pelvis and elsewhere. Playing racket sports or other high impact activities may result in twisted or hyperextended joints, particularly in women who are not thouroughly familiar with what their bodies can do.

There has been no convincing scientific evidence that exercise improves the health of a pregnancy or improves delivery. But he asserts that exercise will improve a pregnant woman's outlook and general well-being. It may also help her regain her shape after the baby is born.

18 December 2008

Love and Laughter

New Research suggests that couples who laugh together have a better chance to last together. A study of more than 100 adults, conducted at Black Hawk College in Moline, Illinois, found a close association between the willingness to laugh in all kinds of situations and the capacity to form successful, intimate relationships.

"Previous studies have shown a positive link between humor and relationships in the business and professional world," says William Hampes, Ph. D., who directed the research, "so it makes sense to find a connection between humor and deep intimacy."

Defined as the ability to listen to someone else's innermost thoughts and feelings and, in turn, to reveal one's own, intimacy appears to blossom in an atmosphere of wit and hilarity - although Hampes isn't sure whether intimacy allows one to relax and be funny or whether humor opens the door for emotional relating. He also notes that humor dovertails with closeness as long as one is laughing at oneself and the foibles of life. A sarcastic, hostile wit applied at the expense of others doesn't have any of the same magic and, in fact tends to keep people at a distance.

Can couples use humor - whether it's watching a Marx Brothers video together or just sharing a good new joke - to help a 30 or 40 year marriage out of the doldrums? "I don't see why not," Hampes says. "Humor reduces stress, and handling stress successfully is a hallmark of a relationship that works."

Baloney

Baloney is a kind of sausage that many Americans eat often. The word also has another meaning in English. It is used to describe something - usually something someone says - that is false or wrong or foolish.

Baloney is an idea or statement that is nothing like the truth... in the same way that baloney sausage tastes nothing like the meat that is used to make it. Baloney is a word often used by politicians to describe the ideas fo their opponents.

Fifty years ago, a former governor of New York State, Alfred Smith, criticized some claims by President Franklin Roosevelt about the successes of the Roosevelt administration. Smith said, "No matter how thin you slice it, it is still baloney."

A similar word has almost the same meaning as baloney. It even sounds almost the same, The word is "Blarney." It began in Ireland about 1600.

The Lord of Blarney Castle, near Cork, agreed to surrender the castle to British troops. But he kept making excuses for postponing the surrender. And he made them sound like very good excuses. Finally Queen Elizabeth said, of the latest of his excuses, "This is just more of the same Blarney."

A former Roman Catholic bishop of New York City, Fulton Sheen, once explained, "Baloney is praised so thick it cannot be true. And blarney is praise so thin we like it."

Another expression is "pulling the wool over someone's eyes." It means to make someone believe something that is not true. The expression goes back to the days when men wore false hair, or wigs, similar to those worn by judges today in British courts.

The word "wool" was a popular joking word of hair. If you pulled a man's wig over his eyes, he could not see what was happening. Today, when you "pull the wool over someone's eyes," he cannot see the truth.

17 December 2008

Just for Fun... Who is Who?

Germany

Hongkong

Indonesia

Italy

Korea

Malaysia

Philippines

What Your Dreams Tell About You

As one psychologist has observed, if we could be arrested for what we dream, a lot of us would be in jail. No activity in life runs a more bizarre and fantastic gamut. This quiz reveals some of science's recent findings about what goes on. Check yourself by rating each statement true or false.

1. Many people lead a more interesting life asleep than awake.

2. If you dream in color, this indicates that you are living more fully, getting more out of life.

3. People who have difficulty adjusting to problems of everyday life find a pleasant escape from reality in their dreams.

4. There are ways to make your dream life more interesting.

5. If you usually remember your dreams, you have a fine memory.

6. Some people do their best thinking while asleep.

True: It is not all uncommon for people to have more exciting, romantic and adventurous experiences in dreams than in waking hours -- which may be why many people who lead dull lives spend more time sleeping. A person can feel blue and down-in-the dumps and during the same period have the most pleasant dreams.

True: Dreams in color indicate that the person has a heightenend sensitivity to things around him, or a more satisfying emotional life. With women, dreaming in color is associated with intuitive ability.

False: In most cases, people who avoid facing reality in their waking life are brought face-to-face with it in their dreams. For example, the alcoholic -- who drinks to escape from his problems -- is confronted with them after he goes to sleep.

True: If you drink no fluids for an hour or two before going to bed your dreams will be more numerous and varied. Another way to speed up dream activity is to stop smoking.

False: You can remember your dreams and be extremely forgetful during your waking life. People who best recall their dreams averafe the highest score on creativity tests, are more conscious of their inner feelings and anxieties. People who seldom remember dreams tend to repress their feelings and are inclined to be inhibited emotionally.

True: Dreams are just one phase of the brain activity which takes place when we're asleep. Frequently a person will wake up with the answer to a problem which baffled him before he went to sleep. So active are our various processes during sleep that one authority refers to sleep as simply another form of wakefulness.

(Condensed from: Family Weekly, John E. Gibson)

16 December 2008

Stop Twisting and Turning and Get Back to Sleep

Even the soundest sleepers occassionally awaken during the night and have trouble falling back to sleep. Dianne Hales, spokesperson for the Better Sleep Council, suggests these ways to slip back into slumber.

1. Stay put if possible. If you get up and move around you'll be much more awake than you are when just lying in bed. (However, if a noise has awakened you, try to remedy the situation: Complain about the disturbance, put in earplugs - you can make them out of cotton - or run the air conditioner or "fan".)

2. Test yourself, "I'll be back to sleep in a minute." Try not to agonize over the sleep you're going to lose, the presentation you're going jeopardize, etc.

3. If worries persist, try this "cognitive refocusing" execercise developed by Stanford University sleep researchers: Picture a sleep burning brightly. Every distracting thought is like a breeze that makes the flame flicker.

4. If you sense that you're tensing up and are irrevocably awake, read or otherwise occupy yourself until you're drowsy again.

The good news : Once you realize that you can put yourself back to sleep, the problem is much less likely to occur.

Country and Western Music Makes You Drink

The sad, longing, self-pitying lyrics, the raspy-voiced walls of vocalists and the slow tempo of country and western songs make for increased alcohol consumption by bar patrons. Rock music, on the other hand, moderates drinking rate. That's what anthropologist James M. Schaefer, Ph.D., found after ten years of observing drinking patterns in the bars. The more beats per minute, the slower the sipping tempo. He thinks his findings can help people drink more intelligently. "People need to be aware of the influence that their surroundings have on their behavior. Music is a key mood-altering device, affecting self-regulation and self-control, "he says.

11 December 2008

Did You Know That...

7 Don'ts After Eating

* Don't smoke-Experiment from experts proves that smoking a ciga tte after meal is comparable to smoking 10 cigarettes (chances of cancer is higher).

* Don't eat fruits immediately -Immediately eating fruits after meals will cause stomach to be bloated with air. Therefore take fruit 1-2 hr after meal or 1hr before meal.

* Don't drink tea - Because tea leaves contain a high content of acid.This substance will cause the protein content in the food we consume to be hardened thus difficult to digest.

* Don't loosen your belt - Loosening the belt after a meal will easily cause the intestine to be twisted &blocked.

* Don't bathe - Bathing will cause the increase of blood flow to the hands, legs & body thus the amount of blood around the stomach will therefore decrease. This will weaken the digestive system in our stomach.

* Don't walk about - People always say that after a meal walk a hundred steps and you will live till 99. In actual fact this is not true. Walking will cause the digestive system to be unable to absorb the nutrition from the food we intake.

* Don't sleep immediately - The food we intake will not be able to digest properly. Thus will lead to gastric & infection in our intestine.

Friendship Award

"A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart, and can sing it back to

you when you have forgotten the words."

- Donna Roberts

Thank you Donabel and MsRay for this Friendship Award.

I would like to share this award to Sunny, Eva, Shirgie, Kate, Kayal, Faye, Amor, TheManiaX, Azlina, Fat, Eds , Adette and Shirley.

10 December 2008

Unbelievable Accidents

An accident is defined as specific, identifiable, unexpected, unusual and unintended external event which occurs in a particular time and place, without apparent or deliberate cause but with marked effects. It implies a generally negative probabilistic outcome which may have been avoided or prevented had circumstances leading up to the accident been recognized, and acted upon, prior to its occurrence.

Here are some cases of accidents where you can't imagine that it really happened!