Life, according to Bill Gates ...

My wife alerted me to this column in the Star by Dina Zaman on 29th February 2009 in which Dina quoted some "truths" that Bill Gates supposedly said to a bunch of American kids. I thought these were interesting:



Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it.

Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something you feel good about yourself.

Rule 4: (and this is for my kids and other kids in Chinese schools) If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger-flipping: they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, our parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes, and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were ....

Rule 11: Be nice to neards. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

Farewell, Markus

There are many things we will never understand on this side of heaven. Death is one of them. I recently went to a friend's son's funeral. It was painful, heart-rending to see the faces of the parents, families and friends as a fine young man was laid to rest. 

Markus in anyway, any yard stick, was an incredible young man. His death is more than a tragedy for many of us who know him. Yet, the nagging question is still - why? Why him, God? Why such a fine young man who was doing so much for so many people around him? Just google his name, and you will find lists and lists of websites on him. 

In many ways, there are no reasons for tragedies. Sometimes things occur because we make the wrong choice, do the wrong things. Sometimes we suffer because someone else do something bad. At other times, bad things just happened. 

To quote Mel Gibson as William Wallace in Braveheart, "Everyone has to die, but everyone lives."

Markus, you really lived.