Singapore bid farewell to Kwa Geok Choo, hailed as the �mother of Singapore�, on October 6.

The glass-encased brown coffin of Kwa Geok Choo, who died aged 89 on Saturday October 2 after a long illness, was transported to Mandai Crematorium on a ceremonial gun carriage normally reserved for state and military funerals.

Her son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, 58, had presided over two days of public mourning at the Istana state complex where more than 14,000 visitors including foreign envoys and dignitaries paid their respects.

The government said the usage of a ceremonial gun carriage “is in recognition of her exceptional and unique contributions to Singapore for more than five decades, beginning before Singapore became independent.”

Lee Kuan Yew delivered the first eulogy at his wife’s funeral service. His was a telling of their love story.

Lee Kuan Yew�s Eulogy

Ancient peoples developed and ritualised mourning practices to express the shared grief of family and friends, and together show not fear or distaste for death, but respect for the dead one; and to give comfort to the living who will miss the deceased.

I recall the ritual mourning when my maternal grandmother died some 75 years ago. For five nights the family would gather to sing her praises and wail and mourn at her departure, led by a practiced professional mourner.

Such rituals are no longer observed. My family�s sorrow is to be expressed in personal tributes to the matriarch of our family.

In October 2003 when she had her first stroke, we had a strong intimation of our mortality.

My wife and I have been together since 1947 for more than three quarters of our lives. My grief at her passing cannot be expressed in words. But today, when recounting our lives together, I would like to celebrate her life.

In our quiet moments, we would revisit our lives and times together. We had been most fortunate. At critical turning points in our lives, fortune favoured us.

As a young man with an interrupted education at Raffles College, and no steady job or profession, her parents did not look upon me as a desirable son-in-law. But she had faith in me.

We had committed ourselves to each other. I decided to leave for England in September 1946 to read law, leaving her to return to Raffles College to try to win one of the two Queen�s Scholarships awarded yearly. We knew that only one Singaporean would be awarded. I had the resources, and sailed for England, and hoped that she would join me after winning the Queen�s Scholarship.

If she did not win it, she would have to wait for me for three years.

In June the next year, 1947, she did win it. But the British colonial office could not get her a place in Cambridge.

Through Chief Clerk of Fitzwilliam, I discovered that my Censor at Fitzwilliam, W S Thatcher, was a good friend of the Mistress of Girton, Miss Butler.

He gave me a letter of introduction to the Mistress. She received me and I assured her that Choo would most likely take a �First�, because she was the better student when we both were at Raffles College.

I had come up late by one term to Cambridge, yet passed my first year qualifying examination with a class 1. She studied Choo�s academic record and decided to admit her in October that same year, 1947.

We have kept each other company ever since. We married privately in December 1947 at Stratford-upon-Avon. At Cambridge, we both put in our best efforts. She took a first in two years in Law Tripos II. I took a double first, and a starred first for the finals, but in three years.

We did not disappoint our tutors. Our Cambridge Firsts gave us a good start in life. Returning to Singapore, we both were taken on as legal assistants in Laycock & Ong, a thriving law firm in Malacca Street. Then we married officially a second time that September 1950 to please our parents and friends. She practised conveyancing and draftsmanship, I did litigation.

In February 1952, our first son Hsien Loong was born. She took maternity leave for a year.

That February, I was asked by John Laycock, the Senior Partner, to take up the case of the Postal and Telecommunications Uniformed Staff Union, the postmen�s union.

They were negotiating with the government for better terms and conditions of service. Negotiations were deadlocked and they decided to go on strike. It was a battle for public support. I was able to put across the reasonableness of their case through the press and radio. After a fortnight, they won concessions from the government. Choo, who was at home on maternity leave, pencilled through my draft statements, making them simple and clear.

Over the years, she influenced my writing style. Now I write in short sentences, in the active voice. We gradually influenced each other�s ways and habits as we adjusted and accommodated each other.

We knew that we could not stay starry-eyed lovers all our lives; that life was an on-going challenge with new problems to resolve and manage.

We had two more children, Wei Ling in 1955 and Hsien Yang in 1957. She brought them up to be well-behaved, polite, considerate and never to throw their weight as the prime minister�s children.

As a lawyer, she earned enough, to free me from worries about the future of our children.

She saw the price I paid for not having mastered Mandarin when I was young. We decided to send all three children to Chinese kindergarten and schools.

She made sure they learned English and Malay well at home. Her nurturing has equipped them for life in a multi-lingual region.

We never argued over the upbringing of our children, nor over financial matters. Our earnings and assets were jointly held. We were each other�s confidant.

She had simple pleasures. We would walk around the Istana gardens in the evening, and I hit golf balls to relax.

Later, when we had grandchildren, she would take them to feed the fish and the swans in the Istana ponds. Then we would swim. She was interested in her surroundings, for instance, that many bird varieties were pushed out by mynahs and crows eating up the insects and vegetation.

She discovered the curator of the gardens had cleared wild grasses and swing fogged for mosquitoes, killing off insects they fed on. She stopped this and the bird varieties returned. She surrounded the swimming pool with free flowering scented flowers and derived great pleasure smelling them as she swam.

She knew each flower by its popular and botanical names. She had an enormous capacity for words.

She had majored in English literature at Raffles College and was a voracious reader, from Jane Austen to JRR Tolkien, from Thucydides� The Peloponnesian Wars to Virgil�s Aeneid, to The Oxford Companion to Food, and Seafood of Southeast Asia, to Roadside Trees of Malaya, and Birds of Singapore.

She helped me draft the Constitution of the PAP. For the inaugural meeting at Victoria Memorial Hall on 4 November 1954, she gathered the wives of the founder members to sew rosettes for those who were going on stage.

In my first election for Tanjong Pagar, our home in Oxley Road, became the HQ to assign cars provided by my supporters to ferry voters to the polling booth.

She warned me that I could not trust my new found associates, the leftwing trade unionists led by Lim Chin Siong. She was furious that he never sent their high school student helpers to canvass for me in Tanjong Pagar, yet demanded the use of cars provided by my supporters to ferry my Tanjong Pagar voters.

She had an uncanny ability to read the character of a person. She would sometimes warn me to be careful of certain persons; often, she turned out to be right.

When we were about to join Malaysia, she told me that we would not succeed because the UMNO Malay leaders had such different lifestyles and because their politics were communally-based, on race and religion.

I replied that we had to make it work as there was no better choice. But she was right.

We were asked to leave Malaysia before two years.

When separation was imminent, Eddie Barker, as Law Minister, drew up the draft legislation for the separation. But he did not include an undertaking by the Federation Government to guarantee the observance of the two water agreements between the PUB and the Johor state government. I asked Choo to include this. She drafted the undertaking as part of the constitutional amendment of the Federation of Malaysia Constitution itself.

She was precise and meticulous in her choice of words. The amendment statute was annexed to the Separation Agreement, which we then registered with the United Nations.

The then Commonwealth Secretary Arthur Bottomley said that if other federations were to separate, he hoped they would do it as professionally as Singapore and Malaysia.

It was a compliment to Eddie�s and Choo�s professional skills. Each time Malaysian Malay leaders threatened to cut off our water supply, I was reassured that this clear and solemn international undertaking by the Malaysian government in its Constitution will get us a ruling by the UNSC (United Nations Security Council).

After her first stroke, she lost her left field of vision. This slowed down her reading. She learned to cope, reading with the help of a ruler. She swam every evening and kept fit. She continued to travel with me, and stayed active despite the stroke. She stayed in touch with her family and old friends.

She listened to her collection of CDs, mostly classical, plus some golden oldies. She jocularly divided her life into �before stroke� and �after stroke�, like BC and AD.

She was friendly and considerate to all associated with her. She would banter with her WSOs (woman security officers) and correct their English grammar and pronunciation in a friendly and cheerful way. Her former WSOs visited her when she was at NNI. I thank them all.

Her second stroke on 12 May 2008 was more disabling. I encouraged and cheered her on, helped by a magnificent team of doctors, surgeons, therapists and nurses.

Her nurses, WSOs and maids all grew fond of her because she was warm and considerate. When she coughed, she would take her small pillow to cover her mouth because she worried for them and did not want to infect them.

Her mind remained clear but her voice became weaker. When I kissed her on her cheek, she told me not to come too close to her in case I caught her pneumonia.

I assured her that the doctors did not think that was likely because I was active.

When given some peaches in hospital, she asked the maid to take one home for my lunch. I was at the centre of her life.

On 24 June 2008, a CT scan revealed another bleed again on the right side of her brain. There was not much more that medicine or surgery could do except to keep her comfortable.

I brought her home on 3 July 2008. The doctors expected her to last a few weeks. She lived till 2nd October, 2 years and 3 months.

She remained lucid. They gave time for me and my children to come to terms with the inevitable. In the final few months, her faculties declined. She could not speak but her cognition remained.

She looked forward to have me talk to her every evening.

Her last wish she shared with me was to enjoin our children to have our ashes placed together, as we were in life.

The last two years of her life were the most difficult. She was bedridden after small successive strokes; she could not speak but she was still cognisant.

Every night she would wait for me to sit by her to tell her of my day�s activities and to read her favourite poems. Then she would sleep.

I have precious memories of our 63 years together. Without her, I would be a different man, with a different life. She devoted herself to me and our children.

She was always there when I needed her. She has lived a life full of warmth and meaning.

I should find solace at her 89 years of her life well lived. But at this moment of the final parting, my heart is heavy with sorrow and grief.

Mrs Lee Kuan Yew�s grandson Li Shengwu also gave a touching eulogy for his grandmother.

Li Shengwu�s Eulogy

“To everything there is a season,

A time for every purpose under heaven:

A time to be born, And a time to die;

A time to weep, And a time to laugh;

A time to mourn, And a time to dance;

A time to gain, And a time to lose..” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-6)

President S R Nathan, Distinquished guests and family who are here to honour my grandmother’s memory, Ye Ye, Pe Pe, Gu Gu, Papa.

One of our family’s abiding institutions is the Sunday Lunch. Our three (once four) generations gather to Oxley Road on Sundays and share a meal.

When I was little, the grandchildren tended to eat far too fast and play far too loudly. I remember Nai Nai’s good humour as we mistook her rocking chair for a climbing frame.

In lieu of a television, Nai Nai provided a tall, well-stocked bookshelf next to the childrens’ table, and thereby contributed much of my early childhood literacy.

She chose our books well, and the selection was expansive, ranging from Peter Rabbit to a picture book on exotic animals (on the lowest shelf), from Roald Dahl to Arthurian legend (on the higher shelves).

I never saw what was on the highest shelf; it was a very tall bookshelf and I was not a very tall child.

Little did I suspect that the best books were on a yet higher shelf; up the stairs and in Nai Nai’s bedroom, where she kept the accumulated stories of a lifetime’s reading, a hoard of Chaucer and Shakespeare, the Sejarah Melayu, Confucius and Mencius, to which the cheery bookshelf downstairs was a mere shadow or stepping stone.

The King Arthur of Roger Lancelyn Green occupied the downstairs bookshelf; the King Arthur of Thomas Malory held court upstairs.

Without her urging or insistence, I inherited her love of the kind of stories that are now called fairy-tale or fantasy, but used to be, simply, stories.

It took me more than a decade to discover The Odyssey, Beowulf and Le Morte D’Arthur, but Nai Nai had the patience to sow the kinds of seeds that take long to fruit.

Nai Nai had the benefit of a classical education, and upon returning from my studies overseas I discovered that she had long been reading the Greek philosophers that I had late come to appreciate.

Well-worn copies of Plato’s Republic and Symposium occupied places near her bedside. I wish we’d had the chance to talk about them.

It is well to say that Nai Nai lives on in memory, but she was more than memory. She was a great person; lively, quick-minded and kind.

Her passing is to us an inconsolable loss, and it cuts keenly.

Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings has for decades been a family favourite. In its final chapters, at the parting of the fellowship, the wizard Gandalf counsels, “Go in peace! I will not say, ‘Do not weep!’, for not all tears are an evil.”

Ye Ye and Nai Nai’s lives are a story to occupy many volumes. Coming late into the narrative, I am a minor character who has missed many chapters.

I cannot bear witness to the earlier plot twists, climaxes and denouements. But I know that they have loved one another steadfastly, through many trials and joys.

The Bard tells us,

“Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no! It is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose Worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come:

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.” (William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116)

Nai Nai and Ye Ye have been, to me, an example of that kind of love.

Nai Nai’s grandchildren arrived relatively late in her life, and she loved each one dearly. When Huanwu and I were children, we became entangled in a book on Cat’s Cradle, a game of string figures played with a loop of twine and four hands.

Seeing our difficulty, Nai Nai carefully unknotted our initial attempts, and showed us new spiderweb configurations mentioned nowhere in the book’s pages.

She passed to her grandchildren a love of learning and reading, as well as the kind of knowledge not found in print.

Samuel Butler wrote,

“I fall asleep in the full and certain hope

That my slumber shall not be broken;

And that though I be all-forgetting,

Yet shall I not be forgotten,

But continue that life in the thoughts and deeds

Of those I loved.”

We love you, Nai Nai, and we will remember you.

If you wish to see more photos of the funeral, go to this link.

Farewell, Mrs Lee Kuan Yew!

Every now and then a story comes along that�s so extraordinary it takes your breath away. TV talent shows have a habit of finding a contestant that makes everybody sit up and take notice. Heartening tales of overcoming adversity are typical fodder on “Got Talent” and other reality shows, but the shocking saga of “China’s Got Talent” contestant Liu Wei makes this season’s batch of “America’s Got Talent” sob stories look like the pampered brats on VH1′s “You’re Cut Off.” And this is a true sob story–seriously, if you watch the video below and don’t get at least a little bit misty-eyed, you clearly have no soul.

Liu, now 23 years old, lost both of his arms in a freak accident when he was 10, after he touched an electrified wire while playing hide-and-seek. Both limbs were amputated and although initially he was distraught about his condition, he soon realized he had a choice to make.

“For people like me, there were only two options. One was to abandon all dreams, which would lead to a quick, hopeless death. The other was to struggle without arms to live an outstanding life,” Liu explained to the judges on “China’s Got Talent.” Thankfully, Liu chose the latter option.

However, these tragic circumstances did not stop Liu from pursuing his dream of becoming a pianist–teaching himself how to play with his feet at age 18, after one piano teacher told him he would never succeed. And it turns out, Liu has more talent in one of his pinky toes than most four-limbed piano players have in both of their hands.

Of course, contestants overcoming adversity is a frequent subtext of talent showcases, but Wei’s accomplishment is extraordinary. He told judges that teaching himself to play piano with his feet was “hard” and that he endured cramps and abrasions, but he also says his mother inspired him and he wanted to make his parents proud.

“Whatever other people do with their hands, I do with my feet. It’s just that,” says Liu. “Nobody ever decreed that to play the piano you must use your hands.”

Watch Liu’s perfect performance of “Mariage D’amour” below, and make sure to have some tissues nearby:

Liu�s performance on the August 8 2010 show wowed the audience and judges and blew away the competition as he gave an impeccable performance of the classical piece Mariage D�Amour on the piano with his toes. The stunned audience, many in tears, rose to a standing ovation at the conclusion of his performance. The judges bowed in respect to his achievement.

Apparently he taught himself how to play the piano in secret when he decided at the age of 18 that it was what he wanted to do, after his teacher said it would be impossible to play with toes.

This really puts into perspective life�s problems, doesn�t it?

Note: Liu Wei subsequently won the China’s Got Talent on October 10. Please read this new post on Liu Wei’s triumph.

Hongkong superstar Chow Yun Fat, aged 55, has pledged to donate 99 per cent of his reported HK$1 billion ($130 million) wealth for charity upon his death. He told Hong Kong paper Sun Daily: “This is not my money, I just earned them but this doesn�t mean it will be forever mine.”

Chow has been married twice; first in 1983 to Candice Yu , an actress from Asia Television Limited that lasted nine months. In 1986, Chow married Singaporean Jasmine Tan. Chow transition from Hong Kong movie star to international star was in no small part due to his wife’s planning and financial support. The couple has no children, although Chow has a goddaughter, Celine Ng, a former child model for Chickeeduck and other companies.

“I’m not taking anything with me (when I die),” he said.

Chow has come to an agreement with his Singaporean wife Jasmine Tan to donate his wealth.

Chow Yun-fat is best known in Asia for his collaboration with filmmaker John Woo in heroic bloodshed genre films A Better Tomorrow, The Killer, and Hard-Boiled; and to the West for his role as Li Mu-bai in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. He mainly plays in dramatic films and has won three Hong Kong Film Awards for “Best Actor” and two Golden Horse Awards for “Best Actor” in Taiwan.

Chow was born on May 18, 1955 in Hong Kong, to a mother who was a cleaning lady and vegetable farmer, and a Hakka father who worked at a Shell Oil Company tanker. He grew up in a farming community on Lamma Island in a house with no electricity. He woke up at dawn each morning to help his mother sell herbal jelly and Hakka tea-pudding on the streets and in the afternoons he went to work in the fields. His family moved to Kowloon when he was ten. At seventeen, he quit school to help support the family by doing odd jobs – bellboy, postman, camera salesman, taxi driver. His life started to change when he responded to a newspaper advertisement and his actor-trainee application was accepted by TVB, the local television station. He signed a three-year contract with the studio and made his acting debut. With his striking good looks and easy-going style, Chow became a heartthrob and a familiar face in soap operas that were exported internationally.

Chow became a household name in Hong Kong following his role in the hit series The Bund in 1980. The Bund, about the rise and fall of a gangster in 1930s Shanghai, was one of the most popular TV series ever made in Hong Kong and was a hit throughout Asia.

Although Chow continued his TV success, his goal was to become a big screen actor. His occasional ventures onto the big screens with low-budget films, however, were disastrous. Success finally came when he teamed up with director John Woo in the 1986 gangster action-melodrama A Better Tomorrow, which swept the box offices in Asia and established Chow and Woo as megastars. A Better Tomorrow won him his first Best Actor award at the Hong Kong Film Awards. It was the highest grossing film in Hong Kong history at the time, and it set the standard for Hong Kong gangster films to come. Taking the opportunity, Chow quit TV entirely. With his new image from A Better Tomorrow, he made many more �’heroic bloodshed’ films, such as A Better Tomorrow 2 (1987), Prison on Fire, Prison on Fire II, The Killer (1989), A Better Tomorrow 3 (1990), Hard Boiled (1992) and City on Fire an inspiration for Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs.

Chow may be best known for playing honorable tough guys, whether cops or criminals, but he also starred in comedies like Diary of a Big Man (1988) and Now You See Love, Now You Don’t (1992) and romantic blockbusters such as Love in a Fallen City (1984) and An Autumn’s Tale (1987), for which he was named best actor at the Golden Horse Awards. He brought together his disparate personae in the 1989 film God of Gamblers (Du Shen), directed by the prolific Wong Jing, in which he was by turns suave charmer, broad comedian and action hero. The film surprised many, became immensely popular, broke Hong Kong’s all-time box office record, and spawned a series of gambling films, as well as several comic sequels starring Andy Lau and Stephen Chow.

The Los Angeles Times proclaimed Chow Yun-Fat “the coolest actor in the world.” Being one of the biggest stars in Hong Kong, Chow moved to Hollywood in the mid ’90s in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to duplicate his success in Asia. His first two films, The Replacement Killers (1998) and The Corruptor (1999), were box office disappointments. In his next film Anna and the King (1999), Chow teamed up with Jodie Foster, but the film suffered at the box office. Chow then returned to the east and accepted the role of Li Mu-Bai in Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It became a winner at both the international box office and the Oscars, finally making Chow a global star. In 2003, Chow came back to Hollywood and starred in Bulletproof Monk in yet another Asian stereotyped role of a martial art expert. In 2006, he teamed up with Gong Li in the film, Curse of the Golden Flower, directed by Zhang Yimou.

In Chow�s latest movie �Shanghai�, he is again teamed up with the gorgeous Gong Li and international stars John Cusack and Ken Watanabe. In this Mikael Hafstrom�s film, Chow played the role of a triad boss with Gong Li as his wife. I watched the movie two weeks ago and found it to be quite a good movie. Both Chow and Gong Li gave solid performances in this spy thriller set in Shanghai during World War II.

Chow has said that the money he made is not his. What a philosophy! I salute you, man!

Living life to the fullest is a choice. It is your choice.� You can just sit thereon your butt and do what you have always done and get the results you�ve always gotten or you can start today to live a better life.� It is up to you.� You can whine and moan or you can take action.� Which will it be?� Which do you think is going to make a difference? For so long I was under the belief that overcoming the impossible was the only way to fulfill my zest for life. I’ve learned to embrace what life throws at you, instead of chasing after what it didn’t.

Albert Einstein once said “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.� Is your life on this insane treadmill?�� If you aren�t completely happy with your life, then do something different to get better results! It will take a little work, but won�t it be worth it?� Isn�t your happiness worth investing a little of your time and energy?

A great life doesn�t just happen.� It is created .� If you want to live life to its absolute fullest, then you have to make a plan.� You�ve got to take specific steps to make it happen.

If you have a passion for something, just go ahead and pursue it. Don’t let others hold you back. Don’t be discouraged by the negative criticisms that may be thrown your way by some of your so-called friends. Don’t let others steal your dreams.

I started this blog about one and a half years ago. It is something that I enjoy doing. I have a couple of friends who have sort of ridiculed me for wasting my time writing my blog. What they failed to appreciate is that it gives me immense satisfaction to see my blog being read by over a thousand people from all over the world on an average day. That satisfaction is priceless and has brought a lot of direction and meaning into my life.

I know we can change the world for the better, one starfish at a time, enjoying the many blessings of life along the way…especially the fascinating people I’m lucky to know….my family, my schoolmates, my friends, my colleagues, my teachers, my relatives and the countless people with whom I have crossed paths in my life journey so far.

I can’t help but be reminded of a TV commercial where a little girl is walking along a beach, throwing washed-up starfish back into the ocean. The message is simple; never doubt that one person can make a difference.

The Power of One. Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr and Rosa Parks are people that immediately remind me of the power of one. The world became a much better place because of people like them.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was the pre-eminent political and spiritual leader of India during the Indian independence movement. He pioneered satyagraha�resistance to tyranny through mass civil disobedience, a philosophy firmly founded upon ahimsa, or total nonviolence, which helped India to gain independence, and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. Gandhi is often referred to as Mahatma Gandhi and in India also as Bapu. He is officially honoured in India as the Father of the Nation; his birthday, 2 October, is commemorated there as Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday, and worldwide as the International Day of Non-Violence.

Mother Teresa, born Agnes Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, was a Catholic nun of Albanian ethnicity and Indian citizenship, who founded the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, India in 1950. For over 45 years she ministered to the poor, sick, orphaned, and dying, while guiding the Missionaries of Charity’s expansion, first throughout India and then in other countries. Following her death she was beatified by Pope John Paul II and given the title Blessed Teresa of Calcutta. By the 1970s, she was internationally famed as a humanitarian and advocate for the poor and helpless, due in part to a documentary and book Something Beautiful for God by Malcolm Muggeridge. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and India’s highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, in 1980 for her humanitarian work. Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity continued to expand, and at the time of her death it was operating 610 missions in 123 countries, including hospices and homes for people with HIV/AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis, soup kitchens, children’s and family counselling programs, orphanages, and schools.

Martin Luther King Jr, born January 15 1929, attended lots of public schools and he graduated from high school at the age of fifteen and received his degree in 1948 from Morehouse College from where his father and grandfather graduated. Then in Boston he met and married Coretta Scott, a young woman and eventually they had four kids. He is a hero to me because he changed the world with blacks and whites. He brought them together, so look at the world now and think of what it was like then and you�ll just see what he did. He made the races come together and now the blacks and whites can play and go to school together and do business together.

Rosa Parks changed the world because she didn�t give up her seat and would not get off of the bus, she went to jail. She kind of showed them that white people and black people were equal with some of the help of Martin Luther King Jr. She was called �the mother of the modern day civil rights movement, � because of the things that she did to change the world. Blacks and whites couldn�t drink from the same water fountain, go to the same schools, and also play together, but now they can.

And who can ever forget the image of the lone Chinese man trying to stop a convoy of armour trucks during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989? To this day, the identity of that man remains a mystery but he is regarded as a hero the world over for his courage.

One person. You. Me. Any one of us can have this same influence in the lives of others. Love them today, for we know not what tomorrow holds. Leave them smiling at the end of the day. Touch their lives. Spark their souls. Be that One in someone else’s life… nothing else can compare with the joy in your heart and the gratitude in their eyes as such a moment.

Continue to smile and above all remember that it is not what we do that makes a difference… but who we are. The power of one is within us, it is our very self.

The world will witness a marriage of Olympic-sized proportions tomorrow when China’s 2010 gold medal pair skaters Zhao Hongbo and Shen Xue get married in front of thousands of fans — on ice.

The glittering wedding, scheduled to take place at Beijing’s Capital Gymnasium that has been decked out in sweeping red ribbons and spotlights, has been an affair three years in the making. Zhao proposed to Shen after a gold medal-winning performance at the 2007 World Figure Skating Championships. �Zhao shocked Shen by dropping to one knee at the centre of the rink in Tokyo and popping a marriage proposal. Misunderstanding at first, Shen got down on her knees too, in perplexed solidarity. When it finally dawned that Zhao had just asked her to marry him, Shen squeaked a yes, the crowd roared.

Though they had legally registered their marriage in China on May 28 2007, they have yet to go through a formal ceremony with their families and friends. Most Chinese do not consider a couple formally married until they have undergone a wedding ceremony.

They have been skating together since 1992, and fell in love between practices and competitions around the world. Through all those years they skated together, Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo were not allowed to so much as kiss. The couple was under intense and overt scrutiny, living and training full-time for 15 years at their country’s figure skating incubator in distant, freezing Harbin, where romantic fraternization was strictly forbidden.

Shen and Zhao were the first Chinese pair team to win a medal at an International Skating Union event and at the World Figure Skating Championships. In 2002, they became the first Chinese pair skating team to win a World Championship.� In February 2010 in Vancouver, they became the first Chinese skaters to win the gold medal at a Winter Olympic Games in any figure skating category, ending almost half a century of Russian and Soviet pair skating dominance.

They are considered by many critics of the sport to be one of the best pair skating teams of all time. They are the world record holders for pairs’ score in the short program and in the combined total under the ISU Judging System.

It won’t be just any ordinary friends in attendance on Saturday evening. Taking part in the couple’s wedding will be some of the world’s best skating stars who have flown into Beijing to perform as their gift to the couple. 2006 Olympic champion Evgeni Plushenko of Russia will skate to “Sex Bomb” while Japan’s 2010 Olympic silver medalist Mao Asada will perform a tango-inspired program.

The men’s 2002 Olympic champion Alexei Yagudin of Russia and two-time World Champion Stephane Lambiel of Canada will also hit the ice with Zhao and Shen.

The newlyweds will conclude their wedding celebration with the classic “Turandot.”

Perhaps the only program that might outshine Zhao and Shen will be American Johnny Weir’s performance to Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face,” which is slated to immediately follow the wedding vows.

“So many of my fans want me to perform ‘Poker Face’ in China,” Weir told CNN. “Yes, I am a little nervous that I am going right after because Poker Face is a little bit dirty… but I am excited by the challenge.”

The bride and groom’s Olympic friends are tight-lipped about what they will give Zhao and Shen. “We have all been discussing what we will do but I can’t tell you what the gift it. It’s still a secret,” said 2010 Olympic bronze medalist Joannie Rochette of Canada.

“I have prepared a traditional Japanese gift for them,” Asada said.

China and the world are awaiting tomorrow night with bated breath to the wedding on ice.

I listen to a wide range of music ranging from rock, jazz, pop, new age, easy-listening, alternative music, gospel to some classical. But in my teens and early adult, my favorite music was rock and I was hooked on to music by Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, The Who, Rolling Stones, Queen, Eagles, Deep Purple, Scorpions, Rod Stewart,� AC/DC, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, Styx, �Supertramp, Heart, Bob Dylan, Tina Turner, Jackson Browne and a whole lot of others.

Rock music is a genre of popular music that entered the mainstream in the 1950s. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, rhythm and blues, country music and also drew on folk music, jazz and classical music. The sound of rock often revolves around the electric guitar, a back beat �laid down by a rhythm section of electric bass guitar and drums, and keyboard instruments such as Hammond organ, piano, or since the 1970s, synthesizers. Along with the guitar or keyboards, �saxophone and blues-style harmonica �are sometimes used as soloing instruments. In its “purest form”, it “has three chords, a strong, insistent back beat, and a catchy melody.”

It is not easy to pick my favorite top 10 greatest rock songs but after a couple of hours� search on the internet to refresh my memory, the following 10 songs are my choices:

“Stairway to Heaven” is a song by the English rock band Led Zeppelin, released in late 1971. It was composed by guitarist Jimmy Page and vocalist Robert Plant for the band’s untitled fourth studio album (dubbed Led Zeppelin IV). The song, which runs almost eight minutes, is composed of several sections, which increase in tempo and volume as the song progresses. One of the highlights� of the song is the intricate guitar solo by Jimmy Page. This song is about a woman who accumulates money, but finds out the hard way her life had no meaning and will not get her into heaven.

“(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” is a song by English rock band The Rolling Stones released in 1965. It was written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. The number is noted for Richards’Bohemian� three-note guitar riff which opens and drives the song, and for the lyrics, which include references to sexual intercourse and a theme of anti-commercialism. The latter in particular caused the song to be “perceived as an attack on the status quo”. Mick Jagger wrote all the lyrics except the line “Can’t get no satisfaction.” The lyrics deal with what Jagger saw as the two sides of America, the real and phony. He sang about a man looking for authenticity but not being able to find it. Jagger experienced the vast commercialism of America in a big way on their tours, and later learned to exploit it, as The Rolling Stones made truckloads of money through sponsorships and merchandising in the US.

“Bohemian Rhapsody” is a song by the British rock band Queen. It was written by Freddie Mercury for the band’s 1975 album A Night At The Opera. “Bohemian Rhapsody” is in the style of a stream-of-consciousness nightmare that has an unusual song structure, more akin to a classical rhapsody than popular music. The song has no chorus, instead consisting of three main parts – a ballad segment ending with a guitar solo, an operatic passage, and a heavy rock section. Because of its ambiguous style and arrangement, the song is rarely classified by the band or critics under a particular genre of music. It is usually described as a rock opera piece. When it was released as a single, “Bohemian Rhapsody” became a huge commercial success, staying at the top of the UK Singles Chart for nine weeks and selling more than a million copies by the end of January 1976. It reached number one again in 1991 for five weeks following Mercury’s death, eventually becoming the UK’s third best selling single of all time.

“Imagine” is a song written and performed by English rock musician John Lennon. It is the opening track on his album Imagine, released in 1971. It was also Lennon’s only post-Beatle Australian Number one single, spending five weeks at the summit. When asked about the song in one of his last interviews, Lennon declared “Imagine” to be as good as anything he had written with the Beatles. The song is one of three Lennon solo songs, along with �Instant Karma� and �Give Peace A Chance�, in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame�s 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll. Rolling Stone ranked “Imagine” the 3rd greatest song of all time in their editorial The 500 Greatest Songs Of All Time. John Lennon� s widow, Yoko Ono, indicated that the lyrical content of “Imagine” was “just what John believed � that we are all one country, one world, one people. He wanted to get that idea out.

“Won’t Get Fooled Again” is a song by the rock band The Who. Written by Pete Townshend, it combines guitar power chords with heavily processed organ and synthesizer sounds to create a textured, atmospheric introduction that explodes into the verse. It is based upon the idea of revolution, somewhat cynically portraying the hope surrounding the concept – “I tip my hat to the new constitution/Take a bow for the new revolution” – and the disappointment that the new regime is the same as the old one – “Meet the new boss/Same as the old boss”. Pete Townshend wrote this song about a revolution. In the first verse, there is an uprising. In the middle, they overthrow those in power, but in the end, the new regime becomes just like the old one (“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss”). Townshend felt revolution was pointless because whoever takes over is destined to become corrupt. Roger Daltrey’s scream is considered one of the best on any rock song.

“Hotel California” is the title song from the Eagles�album of the same name and was released as a single in early 1977. It is one of the best-known songs of the album-orientated rock era. Writing credits for the song are shared by Don Felder, Don Henley and Glenn Frey. The song’s lyrics describe the title establishment as a luxury resort where “you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.” On the surface, the song tells the tale of a weary traveler who becomes trapped in a nightmarish luxury hotel that at first appeared inviting and tempting. The song is an allegory about hedonism and self-destruction in the Southern California music industry of the late 1970s; Don Henley called it “our interpretation of the high life in Los Angeles” and later reiterated “it’s basically a song about the dark underbelly of the American dream and about excess in America, which is something we knew a lot about.�

“American Pie” is a folk rock song by singer-songwriter Don McLean. Recorded and released on the American Pie album in 1971, the single was a number-one U.S. hit for four weeks in 1972. The song is a recounting of �The Day the Music Died� – the 1959 plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper. The importance of “American Pie” to America’s musical and cultural heritage was recognized by the Songs of the Century education project which listed the song as the number five song of the twentieth century. The song is well known for its cryptic lyrics that have long been the subject of curiosity and speculation.

“Hey Jude” is a song by the English rock band The Beatles. Credited to John Lennon/Paul McCartney, the ballad evolved from “Hey Jules,” a song Paul McCartney wrote to comfort John’s son Julian during his parents’ divorce. The change to “Jude” was inspired by the character “Jud” in the musical Oklahoma This was the Beatles longest single, running 7:11, and at the time was the longest song ever released as a single.

“A Whiter Shade of Pale” is the debut song by the British band Procol Harum, released 12 May 1967. The single reached number one in the UK Singles Chart on 8 June 1967, and stayed there for six weeks. With its haunting Bach-flavored instrumental melody, soulful vocals, and unusual lyrics�by the song’s co-authors Matthew Fisher, Gary Brooker, and Keith –”A Whiter Shade of Pale” reached #1 in several countries when released in 1967. In the years since, it has become an enduring classic. It was the most played song in the last 75 years in public places in the UK (as of 2009), and the United Kingdom performing rights group Phonographic Performance Limited in 2004 recognized it as the most-played record by British broadcasting of the past 70 years. Also in 2004, Rolling Stone placed “A Whiter Shade of Pale” #57 on its list of the 500 Greatest Songs Of All Time.

“Smoke on the Water” is a song by the British hard rock band Deep Purple. It was first released on their 1972 album Machine Head. In 2004, the song was ranked number 426 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, and in March 2005, Q Magazine placed “Smoke on the Water” at number twelve in its list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Tracks. The song �is about a fire in the Casino at Montreux, Switzerland. The band was going to record Machine Head there right after a Frank Zappa concert, but someone fired a flare gun at the ceiling which set the place on fire. The band was relocated to another hotel and recorded the album in the Rolling Stones mobile studio.

Dance is the hidden language of the soul. It� is also an international language. Dancing is the ability to speak volumes to hundreds of people without using any words. To dance takes strength, artistry and passion. You can express any emotion possible in the most beautiful form. Dance is your pulse, your heartbeat, your breathing. It’s the rhythm of your life. Its the expression in time and movement, in happiness, joy, sadness and envy.

The genius of Alvin Ailey changed forever the perception of American dance. Over 50 years later, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has come to be known as a cultural ambassador to the world.� Do visit their website at www.alvinailey.org.

Alvin Ailey ((January 5, 1931 � December 1, 1989), an African-American from a small rural town in Texas, founded the all-black company in 1958. He wanted to give voice to a population all-too-often unheard from, and to reflect the joy � and sadness � of the American black community. Until his death in 1989, not only did he choreograph 79 ballets and run an incredibly successful international dance company, he worked tirelessly to include the public � to �break the wall between performer and public�, for, as he put it, �dance is for everybody.�� Ailey is credited with popularizing modern dance and revolutionizing African-American participation in 20th century concert dance.

Ailey’s choreographic masterpiece �Revelations,� �a stylized, elegant combination of ballet and modern dance set to the music of Negro spirituals, is believed to be the best-known and most often seen modern dance performance. For this signature work, Ailey drew upon his “blood memories” of Texas, the blues, spirituals, and gospel, resulting in the creation of his most popular and critically acclaimed work.

Though Ailey created 79 works for his dancers, he maintained that his company was not merely a showcase for his own work. Today, the company continues Ailey’s vision by performing important works from the past and commissioning new additions to the repertoire. In all, more than 200 works by over 70 choreographers have been performed by the company.

Ailey was proud that his company was multi-racial. While he wanted to give opportunities to black dancers, who were frequently excluded from performances by racist attitudes at the time, he also wanted to rise above issues of negritude. His company always employed artists based solely on artistic talent and integrity regardless of their race

Cry (1971), was one of Ailey’s greatest successes. He dedicated it to his mother and black women everywhere. It became a signature piece for Judith Jamison who has been leading the company as its Artistic Director since Ailey�s death.

Jamison �says she wants audiences to be �touched in their hearts, in their spirits, and in their minds � I want them to feel lifted when they leave the theatre, to feel changed � and to feel as if the experience belongs to them – and that they want to share it�.

A rhythm begins in your soul

Your body moves

The music flows

Into your veins

A throbbing pulse of

A drumbeat primeval

Voices hypnotizing

Melody and rhyme

Beat of bass and drummer

Feet that move in time to

Guitar, sax and keyboards

The wail of clarinet

A song�s intoxication

Lovers� silhouette

Senses play the music

Feet and hearts and hands

Romance and dreams transforming

In the alchemy of dance

~ Winsome

Are you touched? Shall we dance?

In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: �It is more blessed to give than to receive.� � Acts 20:35

As for the rich in the present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share. – 1 Timothy 6:17, 18

But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind - Luke 14:13

Warren Edward Buffet is one of my most admired persons. Born on 30^th August 1930, �he is one of the most successful investors in the world. The legendary investor, often called the �Oracle of Omaha� or the �Sage of Omaha�, is one of the richest persons in the world. He is the primary shareholder, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. Despite his immense wealth, he is known for his adherence to the value investing philosophy and for his personal frugality.

On June 26, 2006, Buffet announced that he would give away eighty-five percent of his Berkshire Hathaway stock � worth $37 billion at that time � to a group of foundations over a number of years. No gift of this size had ever been made in the history of philanthropy. Five out of every six shares would go to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, already the largest charity in the world, in a historic marriage of two fortunes for the betterment of the world.

Buffet would establish no Buffet hospital, no college or university endowment or building with his name on it. By donating the money without naming something after himself, without controlling personally how it would be spent � to put money in the coffers of another foundation that he had selected for its competence and efficiency, rather than creating a whole new empire � upended every convention of giving. Such a thing had never been done by any major donor before. �It was a historic moment in the field of philanthropy globally,� said Doug Bauer of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.� �It �s set a bar, a touchstone, for others.�

The Gates Foundation adhered to a basic creed that Buffet shared: Guided by the belief that every life has equal value, it worked to reduce inequities and improve lives around the world in the areas of global health and education.

More than 99% of his wealth will go to philanthropy during his lifetime or at death. He and his family will give up nothing they need or want by just retaining 1% of his wealth. But fulfilling this 99% pledge will have a huge effect on the health and welfare of others.

The effects of Buffet�s pledge were sizable. Jackie Chan announced that he would give away half his wealth. Li Ka-Shing, Asia�s richest man, pledged a third of his wealth to his own charitable foundation. �Carlos Slim, the Mexican communications monopolist, ridiculed Buffet and Gates for their philanthropy but� did a turnabout a few months later and announced that he, too, would be giving money away.

Buffet said 70 to 80 people on the Forbes magazine list of the world�s richest were contacted as part of his drive to boost giving. Forty individuals or families signed on, leaving about half that need convincing.� Buffet said he�ll keep pressing the billionaires who rebuffed his request that they pledge at least half of their fortunes to charity.

�We don�t give up on them,� Buffet said. �Every saint has a past, every sinner has a future, so we�ll keep working.�

In a landmark moment for philanthropy, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are advocating that all billionaires commit to giving at least half of their wealth to charitable groups within their lifetimes or after their deaths.

Dubbed The Giving Pledge, the initiative�is the result of�a series of dinners the two men held over the past year to discuss the effects of the recession on philanthropy with some of the nation’s richest people, including New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Revlon owner Ronald�Perelman and David Rockefeller, his family’s patriarch.

The Giving Pledge does not accept money or tell people how to donate their money, but asks billionaires to make a moral commitment to give their fortunes to charity and to publicly state their intention with a letter explaining their decision.� The Giving Pledge aims to reverse the recession’s trend of declining donations. In all, (if successful) the initiative would transfer $600 billion � a figure calculated by dividing the amount of wealth represented in Forbes magazine’s billionaires list in half � to charitable causes.

The initiative could place pressure on prominent families like the Duncans of Houston to dispense more of the family’s trust. Duncan gifted more than $250 million to Baylor College of Medicine, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Texas Children’s Hospital and other Houston institutions during his life.

Gates and Buffets’ goal is to instill the expectation that the rich should give away their wealth while creating a peer group of wealthy people that can offer advice on philanthropy, said Melinda Gates, �Bill’s wife and the co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Mr. Rockefeller has pledged to give at his death more than $1 billion to charitable causes, including gifts of more than $100 million to the Museum of Modern Art, Rockefeller University, Harvard University and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

For his part,�Bloomberg said he gave $254 million to nearly 1,400 nonprofit organizations in 2009, adding, “I am a big believer in giving it all away and have always said that the best financial planning ends with bouncing the check to the undertaker.”

Among the rich joining The Giving Pledge campaign are New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, media moguls Barry Diller and Ted Turner, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, “Star Wars” movie maker George Lucas, energy tycoon T. Boone Pickens, Revlon owner Ronald Perelman, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison,� former CEO & Chairman 0f Citigroup Inc. Sanford Weill,� real estate and construction billionaire Eli Broad, venture capitalist , media entrepreneur Gerry Lenfest and former Cisco Systems Chairman John Morgridge. The full list of billionaires and their letters can be seen at www.thegivingpledge.org.

�We took about 70 to 80 names, a fair number were people I didn�t know at all,� Buffet said. �We had reason to believe in most cases that the people already had an interest in philanthropy.�

Buffet said he will hold more dinners in the U.S. to encourage additional promises. Buffet and Gates� are due to meet with some of the wealthiest people in China in September and India in March.

The world has become a much better place because of Buffet, Bill Gates and the billionaires who have made their commitments to The Giving Pledge. The Giving Pledge is really an awesome idea and based on Forbes magazine’s estimates of the billionaires’ wealth, at least $150 billion could be given away. I salute these billionaires!

Desiree Jennings hit the top of Google hot searches a while ago. Out of curiousity, I googled the internet and this is what I found out.

25-year old Desiree Jennings was living a dream come true, with a marketing job at a major company and married to a handsome, successful man. She was an avid runner and a cheerleading ambassador for the Washington Redskins football team.

Then almost overnight, after a routine flu shot last fall, Jennings went from the picture of happiness and health, to a twisted, stuttering vision of pain and suffering. From fever and painful body aches, the symptoms worsened until she could only walk with a twisted, halting gait, and had trouble reading, doing simple math and even remembering things. Her condition put a halt on her once-frenetic lifestyle.

Jennings developed another odd symptom — a strange foreign accent; the Midwestern woman suddenly sounded British. “It sounds like an accent, but it’s not. I just can’t pronounce words anymore,” she said.

But perhaps worse of all is what happens when Jennings tried to recall specific memories. In her “20/20″ interview, Jennings’ speech devolved to stuttering, then complete gibberish.

“The mind keeps bouncing and it won’t stay on that memory,” she explained. “It gets garbled up on a bad hard drive so to speak.”

In search of a cure, Jennings and her husband Brendan visited countless doctors and four hospitals, among them Johns Hopkins Hospital. There, a physical therapist told Jennings about dystonia, a rare movement disorder that causes the muscles to twitch or convulse involuntary. The symptoms resembled her own.

Jennings looked online and saw that in some cases, people with dystonia, who have trouble walking forward like she did, can walk backwards. Even more exciting for the devoted jogger was that a medical website said some sufferers can run.

“Within five minutes of seeing it on the website, she had her running shoes on,” Brendan recalled.

Miraculously, Jennings could run. She also found out she could walk backwards, and even sideways, and that while doing so, her speech returned to normal.

“It’s the strangest thing,” she said. “As soon as you try to get into a running motion, you feel the whole body correcting itself.”

It wasn’t long before Jennings became a media sensation. Video of the beautiful young cheerleader, flopping about and stuttering one moment, running and talking normally the next, went viral. At once, she became the poster child of the anti-vaccine movement and a global Internet joke. YouTube comics garnered millions of hits setting her jerky movements to rap music.

When not running, however, Jennings was far from well. Not only could she not walk or talk normally, Jennings said her brain sometimes forgot to tell her lungs to breathe, leading to fainting spells and convulsions.

Traditional medicine having failed her, Jennings decided to do something “outside the box,” and ended up at a North Carolina clinic run by Dr. Rashid Buttar. Buttar uses an unproven, alternative treatment termed �chelation� (the removal of metals from the body) for almost every medical condition, from autism to cancer.

When Jennings arrived at Buttar’s clinic in October 2009, she could hardly breathe and collapsed in his waiting room. She was pumped with IVs and Dr. Buttar began his unproven chelation process, where chelating agents bind to metals in the body, including mercury, and then are excreted in the urine.

In less than two weeks, Jennings’ condition apparently improved: she walked again and her stutter disappeared.

But just as she was leaving Dr. Buttar’s clinic on her last visit in December 2009 — with “20/20′s” cameras rolling — everything seemed to fall apart again. She could no longer walk forward and was taken out in a wheelchair.

While millions viewed video of Jennings on YouTube, those following her case are skeptical and suspect that her symptoms were all a hoax. In fact, what has bothered Jennings most about her unorthodox fame is the online assault on her integrity.

“Why would I fake it?” she said during her interview with “20/20.” “I’ve had a great life. . . Now I’m sitting at home every day, bored to tears.”

Still, there has been skepticism in the medical world. Dr. Steven Novella, an assistant professor of neurology at Yale, who has followed Jennings’ case closely on the Internet said that Jennings’ symptoms were not typical of the disease. Novella is confident Jennings� condition was not caused by mercury in a flu shot.

Other experts consulted by “20/20″ agree. Dr. Charles McKay, a board member of the American College of Medical Toxicology, said Jennings would have been exposed to far less mercury in a flu shot than in a tuna steak.

But what could have caused Jennings’ strange symptoms? Novella and other leading neurologists interviewed by “20/20″ believe that Jennings’ disease is a psychogenic disorder rather than a neurological disorder. They don’t believe she has faked her symptoms, but instead that her unconscious mind has caused them.

Novella feels the temporary improvements Jennings experienced while undergoing Buttar’s treatment were due to �the placebo effect on steroids�: she got better because she thought she would.

Jennings, on the other hand, finds the “psychogenic” label insulting. “It’s a convenient way for incompetent doctors to get you out of their office,” she said.

Today, Jennings’ condition does not appear as severe, but she remains convinced that the flu shot caused her condition, and her search for a cure continues. She is currently seeing a specialist for her condition and still seeking answers.

“If I have to go over to China and do experimental procedures, I’ll find a way to get it all back,” she said. “It may take a while, but I will get everything back. I will find a way.”

Jennings has a host of detractors who think her condition is just a hoax to garner sympathy and fame. And these people have vilified her with their comments on YouTube, blogs, forums and the like. I just want to put a question to these people. What if Jennings’ condition is genuine? She may truly be living in a nightmare. Don’t be too rash to bombard her with all those obscenities. Just give her the benefit of the doubt, okay? Have some compassion and live a more meaningful and beautiful life!

June 30 2010 was a Wednesday and Christina Perri was at work as a waitress at a caf� in Los Angeles. She had no idea then that within the next 24 hours, her world would never be the same again. Ever.

On the June 30 episode of Fox TV�s �So You Think You Can Dance�, Christina Perri�s song �Jars of Hearts� (also known as �Who Do You Think You Are?�) was used as the backdrop track for a dance routine performed by Billy Bell and Kathryn McMormick. The song struck a chord with the audience and broke into the Top 10 on iTunes overnight. And within two weeks, the song entered the Billboard�s Hot Digital Songs with over 100,000 downloads.

The �Jar of Hearts� lyrics has been among the hottest searches on the internet. One listen to the song is all it takes to understand why. The video below is posted by a fan on YouTube.� For those of you who want to get closer to Christina, follow her on her blog.

Christina�s story is uplifting as it proves that if you are truly committed to something you are passionate about, nothing can stop you. Christina believes in herself and in the beauty of her dreams. Since picking up the guitar at 15, she has been dreaming of becoming a singer. An ardent Beatles fan with their names tattooed around her wrists, she left her native Philadelphia for Los Angeles several years ago to pursue her dreams.� Working as a waitress in various restaurants, she spent her free time doing little things in the pursuit of her dreams: a commercial, singing a song for Diane Warren and posting acoustic performances of original tracks and covers on YouTube.

The pursuit of her dreams continues. The 23-year-old will travel to New York soon and meet up with major record labels. Managed by Tom Gates, the singer will be releasing a four-song EP. She says the songs are already written and plans to record within the next two weeks.

The lyrics of her song “Jars of Hearts”:

No I can’t take one more step towards you
Cause all that’s waiting is regret
And don’t you know I’m not your ghost anymore
You lost the love I loved the most

I learned to live half alive
And now you want me one more time

And who do you think you are
Running around leaving scars
Collecting your jar of hearts
And tearing love apart
You’re gonna catch a cold
From the ice inside your soul
So don’t come back for me
Who do you think you are

I hear you’re asking all around
If I am anywhere to be found
But I have grown too strong
To ever fall back in your arms

I learned to live half alive
And now you want me one more time

And who do you think you are
Running around leaving scars
Collecting your jar of hearts
And tearing love apart
You’re gonna catch a cold
From the ice inside your soul
So don’t come back for me
Who do you think you are

And it took so long just to feel alright
Remember how to put back the light in my eyes
I wish I would have missed the first time that we kissed
Cause you broke all your promises
And now you’re back
You don’t get to get me back

And who do you think you are
Running around leaving scars
Collecting your jar of hearts
And tearing love apart
You’re gonna catch a cold
From the ice inside your soul
Don’t come back for me
Don’t come back at all

And who do you think you are
Running around leaving scars
Collecting your jar of hearts
And tearing love apart
You’re gonna catch a cold
From the ice inside your soul
Don’t come back for me
Don’t come back at all

Who do you think you are
Who do you think you are
Who do you think you are