Honesty & Willpower

** Willpower

Alf arrives home from work and as soon as he sets foot in the house, Sadie is on to him, telling him that their friend Michael Bloom has finally quit smoking.

"Imagine that, Alf," she says, "someone who smoked 3 packs a day for 20 years has stopped smoking all of a sudden. Now that's what I call willpower - something that you definitely don’t have."

But Sadie hadn’t finished.
"And that’s not all. I hear that Bernard, that drunken friend of yours, is finally giving up drinking – another example of the kind of willpower that you don’t have."

"OK, Sadie," said Alf, "you want to see willpower, do you? Well here's willpower. I am going to sleep in the spare room from now on. I am going to prove to you that I won’t be affected at all by not sleeping with a woman."

Alf keeps to his word. One night, when he had been sleeping alone for a week, there is a knock on his bedroom door.
Alf shouts out, "What do you want?"
Sadie replies, "Bloom has started smoking again."

** Honesty

Maurice & Sarah were Londoners and were blessed with 7 healthy children. After many months of discussion, they finally decided to move to New York. It should have been a simple enough move, but when they arrived, they had great difficulty finding a suitable apartment to live in. Although many were big enough, the landlords always seemed to object to such a large family living there. If only Maurice wasn't so honest about the size of his family.
After several days of unsuccessful searching, Maurice had an idea. He told Sarah to take the four younger children to visit the local cemetery while he went with the older three children to find an apartment. After looking for most of the morning, Maurice found a place that was ideal.

The landlord asked him, "How many children do you have?"
Maurice answered with a deep sigh, "Seven ... but four are with their dear mother in the cemetery."

He got the apartment!

Tags:honesty,willpower

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The Invisible Women

This is an ugly story, although the ladies in it are called Beauty, Precious or Happiness. These names in Nigeria are as common as Jane in England or Maria in Spain. Names chosen to evoke high valued dreams and to ward off or avert the contrary reality, and the inevitable abject destiny most of them are facing. They are condemned to such misery simply for having been born black, female and poor. Nearly everyday there are immigrants coming into Spain from Nigeria, the Sahara or Somalia. Mostly in rickety boats too crowded beyond their capacity, with little or no shelter, hardly any food and insufficient water. Rarely all make it to the intended destination. Those who died of hunger, exhaustion or sickness, often combination of all three, were simply unceremoniously thrown into the sea. The survivors, on reaching land, are immediately locked up, forced to prostitution to pay off their passage that takes an average of 30 months, during which they live in subhuman conditions, forced to prostitute themselves minimum 10 times a day. And these are told by their 'jailers' that they are the lucky ones. The organisation 'Women's Link' has just published the much needed information regarding immigration with all related issues, and provides help where it's needed. The tragedy in Lancelot where 15 girls, all minors, drowned only 20 kilometres from the promised shore, really shook up the society, and that was just one of the many similar cases, with the only difference in the number of dead passengers, including men, women, teens, young children, and babies. Even in broad daylight, one can spot these unfortunate girls dotted about some motorways or some dark street corners. Behind each we know there's a whole string of others, invisible ones. Women immigrants, victims seeking a better future in the ultra modern 21st century. I don't know about what or how much the authorities are doing to try to solve the urgent problem. All I know is that we can't pretend such horror and tragedy didn't exist; or avoid talking about it because it's so unpleasant. Tags:immigrants,invisiblewomen

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Aren't They The Cutest?

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Theories & Observations

Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live. Man will do many things to get himself loved; he will do all things to get himself envied. Familiarity breeds contempt; and children. Adam was the luckiest man; he had no mother-in-law. Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of joy you must have somebody to share it with. Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered -- either by themselves or by others. Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen. When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it's a sure sign you're getting old. If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man. A habit cannot be tossed out the window; it must be coaxed down the stairs a step at a time. Heaven goes by favour; if it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in. It is better to deserve honours and not have them than to have them and not deserve them. A crank is someone with a new idea -- until it catches on. Tags:theories,observations

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