It’s a brand new year, 2012 is the year of the Olympics, in China it’s the year of the animal zodiac the Dragon. That means that this should be a pretty good year with wealth, luck and new beginnings.

How are you spending your new year? Take a different attitude to life and live it to its fullest.

For me I’m going to try and join new things such as Twitter. I joined it a few years ago but found it boring and ridiculous. But now I’ve rejoined and will start tweeting my blogs and other random things that may just pop into my head!

Look out for me my name is Charsie007 (see any resemblance with my user names?!) and follow me if you like.

I will be carrying on with my little puzzles so look out for them as well.

Image via CrunchBase

No, there was no Abhinav Bindra then. When a man begins his journey the first person he interacts is with his parents and relatives. Then he slowly but steadily goes outside the cukoon of his new world and steps into what funnily may be called a big,bad world. In the material world there are seldom any friends as all try to go on the top of another.

Success for a student means to do good in studies and in activities of school. After passing from school a person enters into a broader horizon of life. He goes to college. In college he enteracts with various types of people. Academaic interests still remains one of his major agenda but the meaning of success changes. He interacts with the opposite sex and develops a liking for them.

Espiacally in today’s world he realises that having or not having a boyfriend or girlfreind becomes a status-issue. Success, then for him becomes to be a hero among his peer -group. Then he enters the work-field. Slowly the amount of his friends becomes more and more less. He marries and develops a bonding with his family namely wife ,relatives and his children.

 The same person who was a forerunner of his dreams slowly becomes a faciliter of his children. True it’s not possible for anyone of us to become Abhinav Bindra or Bijendra Singh but if we want we all can surely become successful provided we live our life to the fullest and do not harm anyone,in the sametime donot allow anyone to harm us.

Today I realise that success is a relative concept. People may be very successful in professional life but in personal life he may be a failure.Success means different things to different  people . A person unable to earn two square meals a day visualises success as something like a better meal where as a millionaire even after earning a lot may think that why his friend’s car is bigger than his or his neighbour’s girlfriend is  sexier than his. Success again as I say is a multidimensional concept as we all run after it but it changes in accordance to the various stages of life. For a student success means good grades and a good aura of friends. But that same child after growing up  will find success in his girlfriend’s arms. After finishing education he visualises success in job  but there too the concept of success is multidimensional as for some achieving more and more is success where as for others success means living a meaningful life with family and friends.When a person marries he finds happiness in family life. There too there are many hindrances as domestic violence and lack of harmony between the spouses . After retirement a man finds success in the well being of his children and grand children.

Again a question that keeps perturbing me is that can a sage be called successful ? Different people have different answers to it. According to some may be yes as he has dedicated his life for others and finds peace and joy in helping others. To others he is nothing but a weird fool as he is not concerned about material success. All these discussions lead us to the point that success is a very confusing word  and varies from age to age,people to people and generation to generation. Thus in a unique way each individual who does his duty well and lives a functional life is successful.

After a standout career at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was a member of the Tar Heels’ National Championship team in 1982, Jordan joined the NBA’sChicago Bulls in 1984. He quickly emerged as a league star, entertaining crowds with his prolific scoring. His leaping ability, illustrated by performing slam dunks from the free throw line in slam dunk contests, earned him the nicknames “Air Jordan” and “His Airness“. He also gained a reputation for being one of the best defensive players in basketball. In1991, he won his first NBA championship with the Bulls, and followed that achievement with titles in 1992 and 1993, securing a “three-peat”. Although Jordan abruptly retired from basketball at the beginning of the 1993–94 NBA season to pursue a career in baseball, he rejoined the Bulls in 1995 and led them to three additional championships (1996, 1997, and1998) as well as an NBA-record 72 regular-season wins in the 1995–96 NBA season. Jordan retired for a second time in 1999, but returned for two more NBA seasons from 2001 to 2003 as a member of the Washington Wizards.

Jordan’s individual accolades and accomplishments include five MVP awards, ten All-NBA First Team designations, nine All-Defensive First Team honors, fourteen NBA All-Star Game appearances, three All-Star Game MVP awards, ten scoring titles, three steals titles, six NBA Finals MVP awards, and the 1988 NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award. He holds the NBA records for highest career regular season scoring average (30.12 points per game) and highest career playoff scoring average (33.45 points per game). In 1999, he was named the greatest North American athlete of the 20th century by ESPN, and was second to Babe Ruth on the Associated Press’s list of athletes of the century. He was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame on April 6, 2009 and was inducted on September 11, 2009.

Jordan is also noted for his product endorsements. He fueled the success of Nike’s Air Jordan sneakers, which were introduced in 1985 and remain popular today. Jordan also starred in the 1996 feature film Space Jam as himself. He is the majority owner and head of basketball operations for the NBA’s Charlotte Bobcats; he recently won a bidding war to buy controlling interest in the team from founding owner Robert L. Johnson.

Image via steventan.org

China’s streets are not clean at all, whereas America just has this clean feeling attached to it.  There is litter everywhere, and city roads can be cracked or broken.  Everywhere you go, you will find cigarette butts on the ground, and soda bottles are scattered all over the place.

Image via pisqa.com

China’s cities are polluted.  Many people smoke, and it is pretty unhealthy environment.  Smog producing factories are everywhere, and the air is sometimes hard to breathe.  China has done a great job cleaning up the air since the ‘08 Olympic Games, but there is still a lot of work to do.

Image via blogs.wsj.com

Chinese kids are not as educated when it comes to personal health.  Have I mentioned smoking?  It’s a widespread problem, and something definitely needs to be done.  Drugs, such as opium, are somewhat more prevalent in China than in America (though it’s getting better).   Dental health is also lagging behind.

Image via Engadget

Many Chinese still have low paying jobs, especially factory workers.  China makes everything, and they have a huge underpaid labor force to work unsafe jobs.  China simply doesn’t pay as well as America.  This can even lead some to suicide.  Check out this editorial for more information on these suicides: http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/21/editorial-thoughts-on-foxconn/. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not like China is a hellhole.  For more info on an example of one, check out this article about Egypt.  China has made great progress over the past few decades, and it will continue to make strides.  However, it is clear that China’s economic progress is far superior to its progress on improving citizens’ lives.

One positive thing about nationalism is that it brings the people of a country together. This has happened on many different occasions for the good of the country and promotes national pride. It has happened recently in Canada during the most recent Olympics. Never before had the country been so alive and so close together as when they were all striving towards one goal; winning the gold medal in hockey on home ice. That final hockey game of the 2010 Winter Olympics had more television viewers than any other event in Canada’s history; about ninety-nine percent of the population was watching that game in Canada, at work, home, or somewhere else. Sport has not only brought a country together in Canada, something similar also happened in South Africa when Nelson Mandela became president. He was the President that ended the racist apartheid regime in the first democratic election in South Africa. Through his efforts he was able to break down race barriers that had formed within the country through the game of soccer. He brought the team together, made the nation proud to be South Africa after so many years of discrimination and succeeded by winning the world cup in soccer. Great things can happen when a nation comes together to experience national pride and joy by doing something that has only been dreamed of, it is important to hold onto that feeling.

Nationalism itself is not something bad, it is the people who wield it and have power to influence the people that can make it something terrible. Many dreadful and disturbing things have been done in the name of country. Many people have been killed, slaughtered, because they did not fit the description of what some felt their country should represent. Dictators with names like Hitler, Mao, and Stalin, are ones that most heavily come to mind. There are others that were not headed by a single leader but more of a renegade militia; the Rwandan genocide is a prime example of this. What happened in these countries were atrocious crimes against humanity, Hitler killed as many Jewish people as he could find, Mao killed any that weren’t of the approved religion, and Stalin killed the intellectuals and any that stood in his way in his rise to power. In two out of these three examples, none had any sort of protest from the people before it was too late, in China today Mao is still celebrated as a hero. This is when nationalism goes too far, if people give up their morals and conscience for their country, things can go very bad, very quickly, the best thing to do is speak up when your country is going too far instead of looking the other way.

Deciding what your country should do is a hefty weight on everyone’s shoulders. With today’s growing internationalism it is impossible for any country to have a solitary existence within its own borders, everyone today is connected to everyone else, what happens in the United States or any other country will have an affect on all countries in the world. Internationalism is also something that keeps growing and will continue to have a larger and larger impact on everyone’s lives and countries need to start compensating. The European Union is an excellent example with how far people have come in the last hundred years, and how much closer people are to each other. However this scares many people, they believe that they will lose their jobs to foreign workers or the government will lose its sovereignty, or the people of the world will be so homogenized that you will not be able to tell the difference between someone from Mexico and someone from Great Britain. These are valid concerns that need to be addressed. Sometimes the government of a country will make a bad decision regarding these issues and it is up to the people to correct it, if it solely up to the government and people blindly follow these things could end up happening or something even worse. The people need to work with their government to ensure the best possible future and retain their culture while still being an active participant in world affairs. 

To support your country is one thing, but people also need to become involved with world affairs and be able to stand up to their country if things are going wrong. To find a balance between yourself, your country, and the world is a difficult thing but is something that people must achieve if the world as a whole is to succeed. It is wrong to blindly follow anything; it is beyond sporting events that bring a country together that it gets dangerous; it is when people believe that others are not welcome in their country that things become threatening. Some people can become very intolerant to things they do not know about very quickly and it is the citizens’ job to make sure that the spread of such thoughts do not continue. There is also the balancing act between what should be given and what needs to be kept when it comes to world affairs. It is good for a country to help other nations in need but it should not be at the cost of the people’s livelihood. In the past, people have made grave mistakes about how to create, lead, and guide a country, but there have also been many successes; the rise of empathy and peace and understanding between people. History has a valuable lesson to offer and it should not be wasted.

The downtown eastside of Vancouver, BC is the poorest postal code in Canada. While the majority of readers are American we can all relate to the challenge of homelessness on urban living. In Vancouver the situation is compounded with the coming 2010 Olympics. In a four-block walk in my neighborhood I can find three ‘No 2010’ graffiti tags.
    The problem is not the Olympics themselves, though issues have been raised over the possible lingering debt and the so-called ‘protest zones’ where protestors will be encouraged to do their free speechmaking. The former city government promised all sorts of things around affordable housing and funding to DTES programs. As the Olympics draw closer few of these have shown up and the current city government struggles to pick up the slack. 
    There are many organizations doing the good work to fight homelessness and bureaucracy that is so often indebted to maintaining the ‘we/them’ dichotomy. Too often in a global city – a Vancouver, a Seattle, a New York, and a Chicago – young urban progressives become enamored with various causes-of-the-week. This one nightstand approach of advocacy sees people flitting from protest to protest with out any real investment of heart of energy into a cause.
    If we view the one-night stand as a the fast food of relationships – the acquiring and disposing of a partner with out further investment – then this sort of advocacy is the one night stand of justice work. In Vancouver one of the jokes is that Vancouverites have to go shopping before every protest in order to ‘look the part’ of whatever cause they are a part of, furthering the comparisons to consumer practices.
    Any serious call to action on the part of the homeless is a call to a deep relationship with our common humanity. To fly past the actual human experience of homelessness in order to play the part in large, theatric protests does no one any good. Any good world changing activity requires time, energy and votes. To address the issue of homelessness in an Olympic city like Vancouver those passionate about the cause must keep their elected officials feet to the fire through advocacy and voting.
    Beyond this the work of advocacy can be done through the furthering of human relationships. If the homeless of any of the global cities are causes and not friends and partners then the work is to naught. To engage in party-advocacy is to abandon the sphere of common dialogue. To enter into world changing action requires we engage in a deep love with our brothers and sisters in humanity, to the point of a committed relationship not to a cause but to a people

When the Beijing Olympics ended, the Chinese were left with a condom conundrum!  They had produced 100,000 of said items which were handed out free to athletes but they had 5,000 left over.  So the ever resourceful country decided to get rid of them by way of a ‘once  in a lifetime’ auction on 29 November 2009.  The starting price is said to be 1 yuan each (the equivalent of 15 cents in the US or 8 pence in the UK).  Each condom bears the motto of the Games – faster, higher, stronger – in both English and Chinese languages but if anyone out there thinks they’re going to be able to get onto Ebay and get their hands on one on 29 November, it’s been stated that all 5,000 must be sold to one buyer.

Presumably once a buyer has been found he’ll want to sell these on at a profit so maybe we’ll be able to go onto Ebay just prior to Christmas and buy a nice little ’stocking filler’ for Grandad!!!

The next tale involves a 59 year old woman (known as Alice) who suffered from temporary amnesia after having sex with her husband, Scott!  Apparently after sex they had turned on the TV and the Beijing Olympics was showing but Alice had no recollection of there being any Olympics at that time.

Scott asked his wife what day it was and she was unable to answer.  He then asked her who the President was and she responded that it was Bill Clinton.  Scott, seeing that something was amiss and instantly thinking Alice had had a stroke, called for an ambulance.  On arriving at the hospital neurologists diagnosed TGA (Transient Global Amnesia) which is a relatively common experience in over 50s and usually occurs after climax.

TGA is caused by pressure in blood vessels and can be triggered by strenuous activities such as bowel movements or sex; it’s also more prevalent for those people who suffer from migraines and severe headaches!  So if you’re over 50, suffer from constipation and migraines and have an active sex life just watch out!!

Unfortunately, although Alice has regained her memory, she still has no recollection of her sex romp with Scott but sounds as if it must have been a bit of an Olympic gold medallist to have had that effect on her!

And now to a rather bizarre sex story from the unlikely venue of West Ham Station in London!  Commuters on their way home during the rush hour, instead of hearing the usual unintelligible tannoy messages of delays due to leaves on the line, train breakdowns and the usual annoyances that one suffers on public transport here in the UK, they were surprised to hear the sounds of a copulating couple over the tannoy system!!

A spokesman for London Transport said that the noises weren’t from the Station but were probably due to some sort of interference with the public address system but it most certainly wasn’t from their staff.  He went on to say that the staff had turned off the loudspeakers as soon as they realised what was happening.

One of the commuters commented that the man was rather loud and the woman ’sounded as if she was enjoying herself’!  She also added that the driver obviously heard it too as he left the doors of the train open longer than usual!!!

All of us has had a good, long laugh at these atrocious translations but some damage China’s reputation as a clean country! Signs like this in a medical centre…:

…are very offensive to some people and this actually leaves a mental scar. People have taken pictures of them and uploaded them on the Internet, and these have circulated all the time. However, closer to the Olympics Chinese people abroad have emailed and wrote to the Chinese government concerning these signs. They were becoming increasingly warning about reputation and the injury to China’s tourism industry courtesy of some little signs. Well, the government had no choice but to investigate, appointing people who actually know some English. In the end, most were fixed (especially the very offensive) in time for the Olympics, but now from time to time you might see one sign which is left in its original glory (NOT)!!

1. He is a typical 21 year old male he makes mistakes.
2. Are you trying to say you never smoked or drank when you were a teenager.
3. His personal life is not the business of the public.
4. If you really believed he was a great swimmer you wouldn’t care about his personal life.
5. Why does it matter what he does out of the pool.
6. Besides a few mistakes he has made in his life people like me believe he is truly a good guy.
7. If you really understood  how great of a swimmer he was, he could kill someone and you wouldn’t care because he is so awesome.