Great Thought for the Day

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.
– Saint Francis of Assisi


There are times when past mistakes swim into our vision and do their best to consume us in guilt or regret. At such times it is essential to turn all our attention outwards, away from ourselves.

Analyzing our mistakes and developing a guilt complex benefits no one. If, when you were in Milwaukee, you happened to say something insulting about your girlfriend’s dog, it is not necessary to go to Milwaukee and find your old girlfriend or her dog and make amends. Every dog you treat with kindness will be a proxy for that dog. In this way, if you have treated a particular person badly, even if you can no longer win that person’s forgiveness, you can still win the forgiveness of yourself, of the Lord of Love within, by bearing with people who treat you badly and doing your best not to treat anyone badly again. Whatever we have done, we can make amends for it without looking back in guilt or sorrow.

By Eknath Eswaran

I always love reading his thoughts and comments--very insightful, meaningful and soothing!

A very productive weekend!

Just spending some free time with my family on the weekend. This semester I am teaching six days a week, which is very challenging. Thus, the only day I have will be dedicated to my family at home. This week, Meen and I played volleyball with her friends at school. It was a lot of fun and deminded me of the old days when I played sports. Meen is so good at sports, especially volleyball and badminton.

Also, we cooked lots of food. Mom, my sister-in-law and I cooked some Thai dishes to sell to people in the neibouhood. It's Mom's gig! She enjoys doing it big time.

I could not help but have to talk about my car which will be paid off in a year! Judy, a friend from Brisbane, gave me a Red Nose sticker. I had to put it in front of the car. I think it's a very good idea to donate money for the sticker. It's cute though! :)

Rich in Love!

Could not wait to write this blog after arriving the office. In a minibus at 6 am., I was standing on the bus for the whole time (it might sound torturing, but this is life in Bangkok...you have got to take the best of it...right!); however, I was so occupied observing a family on the bus. The father is the driver himself, the mother is a bus conductor, and a very cute 2 year-old-daughter. What a life! Yes, it is the real life living in the true world these days. However, they seemed to make the most and best of whatever they have..on the bus with the whole family. How great!

At the traffic light (could not help, but smiling as I am typing), the mother, our bus condector, grabbed her daughter real quick as soon as the red light flahed. Meanwhile, the father, our bus driver, grabbed a big bottle of water and jumped off the driver seat. I was puzzled!? They got off the bus to clean their daughter's dirty diaper...on the sidestreet! They both had to rushed to beat the traffic light. I could not help then, but smiled. The whole family also smiled and giggled. They hopped onto the bus just in time. The mother came back to her duty with a nice smile to her customers.

It's very good to see the whole family spending time together. However, I am sure the parents would want to have their daughter in a daycare, rather on the bus. When you don't have the luxury to do so, I assume you have got to take the good with the bad. You just have to love what you do or try to love things that you do. Keep positive mind is the key!

Here I have a good passage and a great thought again from Eknath to share with my readers. Enjoy!

Late have I loved thee, O Beauty so ancient and so new; late have I loved thee! For behold, thou wert within me and I outside; and I sought thee outside and in my unloveliness fell upon these lovely things that thou hast made. Thou wert with me and I was not with thee. I was kept from thee by those things, yet had they not been in thee, they would not have been at all. Thou didst call and cry to me and break open my deafness. . . . I tasted thee, and now hunger and thirst for thee; thou didst touch me, and now I burn for thy peace.
– Saint Augustine


When we use the word love, let us use it very carefully, in the deeply spiritual sense, where to love is to know; to love is to act.

If you really love, from the depths of your consciousness, that love gives you a native wisdom. You perceive the needs of others intuitively and clearly, with detachment from any personal desires; and you know how to act creatively to meet those needs, dexterously surmounting any obstacle that comes in the way. Such is the immense, driving power of love.

"Beauty is all very well at first sight.."

First thing first, I have just read a very good passage from Eknath Eswaran's Thoughts about Beauty and I would help but wanted to share it to everyone who reads my blog.

Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?
– George Bernard Shaw


Often we try to build relationships on what is pleasing to us, particularly on physical attraction. But if there is anything sure about physical attraction, it is that it has to change. We cannot build on it; its very nature is to come and go.

Physical attraction is a sensation – here one minute and gone the next. Love is a relationship. It is pleasant to be with someone who is physically attractive, but how long can you enjoy an aquiline nose? How long can you thrill to the timbre of a voice when it doesn’t say what you like? It’s very much like eating: no matter how much you are attracted to chocolate pie, there is a limit to how much of it you can enjoy. Beyond that limit, if somebody merely mentions chocolate, your stomach stages a revolt.

If you want to build a relationship, build it on what endures. To build on a firm foundation, we have to stop asking, “What do I like?” and ask only, “What can I give?” Then there is joy in everything, because there is joy in the relationship itself – in ups and downs, through the pleasant and the unpleasant, in sickness and in health.

I wholehearteele agree with George Bernard Shaw and Eknath's thought on it.

There are some photos of the KM seminar I attended at Sripatum University.

Sripatum Academic Forum: Research and Innovations for Sustainable Development

August 13, 2008. Today there was an academic forum on the title of Research and Innovations for Sustainable Development held at Sripatum University. What I liked the most about this forum was the keynote speaker in the afternoon. Asst.Prof. Kanok Wongtrahgan, Ph.D. He gave a talk on Education in Thailand.

He noted that Thailand had become greater than many countries like Australia in terms of reinforcing people to receive higher education. As we can see that there are many students have entered to universities. In juxtapose, not many Australians (or New Zelanders)pursue their education after finishing high schools. However, many of the Thai students who have graduated can find no job or are not capable of working. Like my students, for example, they have learned English all their lives, yet they can't communicate with foreigners effectively. In conclusion, we have focused too much on quality, but lack in quality. Unlike people in Australia, after high school, they would go on training to apprenticeship to learn skillful tasks/jobs to become , for example, a locksmith and so forth.

Now, there is a new challenge/ weakness for the education system of Thailand to have to solve the latter problem and solve a question on how to take the burden of the parents and society of new graduates not getting a job. We can't just keep producing people with higher education, but lack of knowledge,competency, and proficiency.

In order to become successful and famous, according to the speaker, university should learn to blend in with its community, help people in the community (acknowledge what the university can do for the community, not what they can get from the community). Here, community and university should be united. For instance, Columbia University in New York used to separate itself from the New York City, so they were not quit successful and could not build as good reputation as Harvard University. Later on, they changed the management and strategy, they were more involved in the city and open the university to the city and tried to be a part of it by opening more schools that are in high demands in the job market in the NYC. Then, they became famous.

Furthermore, the speaker also mentioned about the goal of UNESCO of the basis of learning. UNESCO (2005) came up with the Basis of learning: Learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together, and learning to be.

Key Skills from Dan Buckley: Communication skill, Problem solving, Evaluation own and others, Information and communication technology, and working with others.

Now, education is not just some one's responsibility. It's every one's. We need to teach our students how to think, not what to think or do. They need to be able to apply the theoretical knowledge they have learned in classrooms to the real situations. They need to be able to answer the questions of their companies about what they do know, what they can do and how they can solve problems.

The speaker left a good note on students' imagination. Imagination is important and many times teachers spoil their imagination, so that they don't make progress and do not know how to think! It's very sad, but true!!

Teaching Co-Operative students

Today it's the first day of teaching (Cooperative Program) again after 2 months of teaching in Australia. This program was for those who would have to do there internship in companies and organizations for about 4 months. Prior to working, they needed to have some kind of English competency. The lesson comprised of four different topics in English business. The first two that were introduced today was preparing for a trip and booking a flight and a hotel room.

It was fun actually to run activities with the students. They seemed to interact better. Perhaps I was fortunate to have students who were majoring in English for Business and Communication. The first activity that I ran this morning was to pair students by employing words, phrases and sentences that would be taught in the first chapter. Once they had found their partners, I had them read them out loud in class. Then, I started introducing them vocabulary words. Power Point prepared by my colleague was utilized throughout the lesson. It was good to have the program; however, I could be detrimental since the teacher might not have enough time to do other activities that would have emphasize some of the points he or she might want to focus on.

Working in pairs and groups was also effective. I have them role play in pairs, but some of them were still stuck with the old way of doing it--memorizing the dialogue. Thus, I walked around and listened to them pair by pair to make comments. Another activity that was very effective in regard to reviewing a dialogue. I had my students repeated a dialogue with me once. Then, we started to interact by me reading person A's line and students would read person B's line and switched. The third time, I had them choose which line they would like to say, then, I had them close the book and we said the dialogue without reading. They really enjoyed doing this activity. There was another thing that I had students do--writing dictation. I had them listen to a conversation they learned in the last two hours, then I had them write down as many words, phrases and sentences that they had just learned as they could to review them. It was fine.

I was a good start of teaching Thai students again. One important thing of teaching is great attitude of the teacher and students!

Thai Mother's Day

It's Sunday 10 August 2008, we went to my niece's school for Mother's Day. Her mother and I attended the ceremony. All mothers were invited to the event today. I thought it was a great event which should be held every year and throughout the country. It reflects our wonderful culture and great traits of Thai people. We try to instill good traits to our children by paying respect to olders.

In the morning, we gave food to monks. Then, there were activities and performances from students from forms 3 to forms 6. Meen is in her last year in a local primary school. Then, the teachers asked all students to pay respect to their mothers or what we called "Wai" and gave flowers to them. We were very proud of Meen. Many moms had tears in their eyes. It was a touching moment.

On Tuesday 12, actual Mother's Day (and the Queen's Birthday), I took my mom and Meen to dinner in the mall nearby. We really had a great time eating dinner, shopping, and having some ice-cream. I gave my mom kisses and told her how lucky I was to have her in my life.

Family is the most important part of my life. We all should live our lives in balance by trying to seperate work from family. However, we should pay our most attention and always do our best to what we do and what we are responsible for.