Clean Hands Save Lives

That's the theme of the first ever Global Handwashing Day, slated on October 15, 2008, exactly a month from now. The event for which at least 20 countries are expected to participate will bolster UN's call for better hygiene through practice of handwashing with soap.

A section of the Planner's Guide that has been issued is about the five facts about handwashing with soap. These fundamental five are as follows:

1. Washing hands with water alone is not enough.
   
2. Handwashing with soap can prevent diseases that kill millions of children every year.
   
3. The critical moments for handwashing with soap are after using the toilet or cleaning a child and before handling food.
   
4. Handwasing with soap is the single most cost-effective health intervention.
   
5. Social marketing approaches that center on the potential handwasher and his or her specific motivations are more effective than traditional diseased-focused approaches.

What My Playing Cards Tell about My Future

Blogthings.com offers various tests that anyone online may want to try. Questions asked range from extremely trivial, such as What number are you? to highly intriguing, such as What gender is your brain?.

This is the result of The Playing Card Test I answered.

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What Your Playing Cards Tell About Your Future

Right now you are focused on your internal emotions, including a bit of pain and suffering. Your emotions are currently tied to success. You've either had some unexpected success or an unexpected lack of success. Your closest friend always can cheer you up... whether it's through flattery, funny stories, or simply just being there. The near future will bring a new competitor or rival - in business or love. This person may seem like a friend at first. Beware of a cruel woman who will first befriend you and then betray you.

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Speaking of cards, I've read that the present deck of 52 playing cards originated in France in the 14th century. The suits depict the different classes of French society. Hearts represented the church; spades, the army; diamonds, the merchants; and clubs, the peasants and farmers.

Don't Read This

Don't you know that, in an online survey which asked "Are you aware of a coworker trying to make you look bad or sabotage your work in the last year?", almost 75 % of the respondents replied "yes"?

The complete article can be found here.

Animal Farm by George Orwell

From youtube:mewichigorocks1

Taking Time to Write

When I was still an undergrad, I abhorred writing. I never got excellent or superior marks on subjects where professors required term papers and assessed students through essays. Simply not being good at it, I thought I could dodge it at all times. But I was wrong. Last May, when I finally decided to start working on my thesis' manuscript for the preliminary defense, I was left with no other choice but do it. The problem with voracious readers is they can clearly distinguish good from bad writing. Being one, I tried my best that it would be something worth reading. The manuscript was finished after seven revisions. The result wasn't bad but it wasn't that good either. Last July, I was done with the preliminary defense and now hope that I could have the final defense before this academic year ends.

Having realized how important writing is and hoping that I'm not yet too old to learn its rudiments, I've bought and read books on it. The list includes Zinsser's On Writing Well, Landy's Seven Rules for Writers, Waddell's The Art of Styling Sentences, Levy's Rhethoric in Thought and Writing, and Carillo's English Plain and Simple.