gemahrv0415
By Victoria Schlintz
It was an unusually quiet day in the emergency room on December twenty-fifth. Quiet, that is, except for the nurses who were standing around the nurses’ station grumbling about having to work Christmas Day.
I was triage nurse that day and had just been out to the Replica Handbags waiting room to clean up. Since there were no patients waiting to be seen at the time, I came back to the nurses’ station for a cup of hot cider from the crockpot someone had brought in for Christmas. Just then an admitting clerk came back and told me I had five patients waiting to be evaluated.
I whined, “Five, how did I get five; I was just out there and no one was in the waiting room.”
“Well, there are five signed in.” So I went straight out and called the first name. Five bodies showed up at my triage desk, a pale petite woman and four small children in somewhat rumpled clothing.
“Are you all sick?” I asked suspiciously.
“Yes,” she said weakly, and lowered her head.
“Okay,” I replied, unconvinced, “who’s first?” One by one they sat down, and I asked the usual preliminary questions. When it came to descriptions of their presenting problems, things got a little vague. Two of the children had headaches, but the headaches weren’t accompanied by the normal body language of holding the head or trying to keep it still or squinting or grimacing. Two children had earaches, but only one could tell me which ear was affected. The mother complained of a cough, but seemed to work to produce it.
Something was wrong with the picture. Our hospital policy, however, was not to turn away any patient, so we would see them. When I explained to the mother that it might be a little while before a doctor saw her because, even though the waiting room was empty, ambulances had brought in several, more critical patients, in the back, she responded, “Take your time, it’s warm in here.” She turned and, with a smile, guided her brood into the waiting room.
On a hunch (call it nursing judgment), I checked the chart after the admitting clerk had finished registering the family. No address – they were homeless. The waiting room was warm.
I looked out at the family huddled by the Christmas tree. The littlest one was pointing at the television and exclaiming something to her mother. The oldest one was looking at her reflection in an ornament on the Christmas tree.
I went back to the nurses station and mentioned we had a homeless family in the waiting room – a mother and four children between four and ten years of age. The nurses, grumbling about working Christmas, turned to compassion for a family just trying to get warm on Christmas. The team went into action, much as we do when there’s a medical emergency. But this one was a Christmas emergency.
We were all offered a free meal in the hospital cafeteria on Christmas Day, so we claimed that meal and prepared a banquet for our Christmas guests.
We needed presents. We put together oranges and apples in a basket one of our vendors had brought the department for Christmas. We made little goodie bags of stickers we borrowed from the X-ray department, candy that one of the doctors had brought the nurses, crayons the hospital had from a recent coloring contest, nurse bear buttons the hospital had given the nurses at annual training day and little fuzzy bears that nurses clipped onto their stethoscopes. We also found a mug, a package of powdered cocoa, and a few other odds and ends. We pulled ribbon and wrapping paper and bells off the department’s decorations that we had all contributed to. As seriously as we met physical needs of the patients that came to us that day, our team worked to meet the needs, and exceed the expectations, of a family who just wanted to be warm on Christmas Day.
We took turns joining the Christmas party in the waiting room. Each nurse took his or her lunch break with the family, choosing to spend their “off duty” time with these people whose laughter and delightful chatter became quite contagious.
When it was my turn, I sat with them at the little banquet table we had created in the waiting room. We talked for a while about dreams. The four children were telling me about what they would like to be when they grow up. The six-year-old started the conversation. “I want to be a nurse and help people,” she declared.
After the four children had shared their dreams, I looked at the Mom. She smiled and said, “I just want my family to be safe, warm and content – just like they are right now.”
The “party” lasted most of the shift, before we were able to locate a shelter that would take the family in on Christmas Day. The mother had asked that their charts be pulled, so these patients were not seen that day in the emergency department. But they were treated.
As they walked to the door to leave, the four-year-old came running back, gave me a hug and whispered, “Thanks for being our angels today.” As she ran back to join her family, they all waved one more time before the door closed. I turned around slowly to get back to work, a little embarrassed for the tears in my eyes. There stood a group of my coworkers, one with a box of tissues, which she passed around to each nurse who worked a Christmas Day she will never forget.
Light in the Window
By Eileen Goltz
It was the first night of Chanukah and the night before Ellie’s last final. As a freshman she was more than ready to go home for the first time since August. She’d packed every thing she needed to take home except the books she was cramming with and her menorah, the 8 branch candelabra that’s lit every night of Chanukah. Ellie had been so tempted to pack the menorah earlier that night. However, just as she was getting ready to justify to herself why it was OK to “skip” the first night’s lighting – (A) she’d have to wait for the candles to burn out before she could leave for the library and (B) she had no clue as to where her candles were hiding – her conscience (and common sense) kicked in. The voice coming from that special place in her body where “mother guilt” resides said, “You have the menorah out, so light it already.” Never one to ignore her mother’s advice, Ellie dug up the candles, lit them, said the blessings, placed the menorah on her window sill and spent the rest of the evening in her room studying.
Ellie’s first winter break was uneventful, and when she returned to her dorm on the day before classes started she was surprised to find a small note taped to her door.
“Thank you,” the note said. It was signed “Susan.” It was dated the day that Ellie had left after finals. Ellie was totally perplexed. She didn’t know a Susan. Convinced that the letter had been delivered to her by mistake, Ellie put the note on her desk and forgot about it.
About a half an hour before she was getting ready to head out for dinner, there was a knock at Ellie’s door. There, standing in the hall was a woman Ellie didn’t recognize. “I’m Susan,” she said. “I wanted to thank you in person but you’d already left before I finished my finals.”
“Are you sure it’s me you’re looking for?” asked Ellie. Susan asked if she could come in and explain.
It seemed that Susan had been facing the same dilemma that Ellie had been that first night of Chanukah. She really didn’t want to light her menorah either. Not because she was packing, or was heading home, couldn’t find the candles or because she busy studying but because her older sister Hannah had been killed by a drunk driver ten months earlier, and this was the first year that she’d have to light the menorah candles alone. The sisters had always taken turns lighting the first candle and this wasn’t Susan’s year. She just couldn’t bring herself to take her sister’s place. Susan said that whenever it was Hannah’s turn to light the first candle, she’d always tease Susan that the candles she lit would burn longer and brighter than when Susan lit them. One year she even went so far as to get a timer out. It had always annoyed Susan that Hannah would say something so stupid but still, it was part of the family tradition. Susan said that it was just too painful to even think about Chanukah without Hannah and she had decided on skipping the entire holiday.
Susan said that she had just finished studying and was closing her drapes when she happened to glance across the courtyard of the quad and saw the candles shining in Ellie’s window. “I saw that menorah in your window and I started to cry. It was if Hannah had taken her turn and put the menorah in your window for me to see.” Susan said that when she stopped crying she said the blessings, turned off the lights in her room and watched the candles across the quad until they burned out.
Susan told Ellie that it was as she was lying in bed that night thinking about how close she felt to Hannah when she saw the menorah, that it dawned on her that
Hannah had been right. Hannah’s last turn always would have candles that would burn longer and brighter than any of Susan’s because for Susan, Hannah’s lights would never go out. They would always be there, in her heart for Susan to see when she needed to reconnect with Hannah.
All Susan had to do was close her eyes and remember the candles in the window, the one’s that Hannah had lit the last time it was her turn.
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gemahrv0415
All day long I had been very busy; picking up trash, cleaning bathrooms and scrubbing floors. My grown children were coming home for the weekend. I went grocery shopping Replica Handbags and prepared for a barbecue supper, complete with ribs and chicken. I wanted everything to be perfect.
Suddenly, it dawned on me that I was dog-tired. I simply couldn’t work as long as I could when I was younger. “I’ve got to rest for a minute,” I told my husband, Roy, as I collapsed into my favorite rocking chair. Music was playing, my dog and cat were chasing each other and the telephone rang.
A scripture from Psalm 46 popped into my mind. “Be still, and know that I am God.” I realized that I hadn’t spent much time in prayer that day. Was I too busy to even utter a simple word of thanks to God? Suddenly, the thought of my beautiful patio came to mind. I can be quiet out there, I thought. I longed for a few minutes alone with God.
Roy and I had invested a great deal of time and work in the patio that spring. The flowers and hanging baskets were breathtaking. It was definitely a heavenly place of rest and tranquility. If I can’t be still with God in that environment, I can’t be still with Him anywhere, I thought. While Roy was talking on the telephone, I slipped out the backdoor and sat down on my favorite patio chair. I closed my eyes and began to pray, counting my many blessings.
A bird flew by me, chirping and singing. It interrupted my thoughts. It landed on the bird feeder and began eating dinner as I watched. After a few minutes it flew away, singing another song.
I closed my eyes again. A gust of wind blew, which caused my wind chimes to dance. They made a joyful sound, but again I lost my concentration on God. I squirmed and wiggled in my chair. I looked up toward the blue sky and saw the clouds moving slowly toward the horizon. The wind died down. My wind chimes finally became quiet.
Again, I bowed in prayer. “Honk, honk,” I heard. I almost jumped out of my skin. A neighbor was driving down the street. He waved at me and smiled. I waved back, happy that he cared. I quickly tried once again to settle down, repeating the familiar verse in my mind. Be still and know that I am God.
“I’m trying God. I really am,” I whispered. “But you’ve got to help me here.”
The backdoor opened. My husband walked outside. “I love you,” he said. “I was wondering where you were.” I chuckled, as he came over and kissed me, then turned around and went back inside.
“Where’s the quiet time?” I asked God. My heart fluttered. There was no pain, only a beat that interrupted me yet again. This is impossible, I thought. There’s no time to be still and to know that God is with me. There’s too much going on in the world and entirely too much activity all around me.
Then it suddenly dawned on me. God was speaking to me the entire time I was attempting to be still. I remembered the music playing as I’d begun my quiet time. He sent a sparrow to lighten my life with song. He sent a gentle breeze. He sent a neighbor to let me know that I had a friend. He sent my sweetheart to offer sincere sentiments of love. He caused my heart to flutter to remind me of life. While I was trying to count my blessings, God was busy multiplying them.
I laughed to realize that the “interruptions” of my quiet time with God were special blessings He’d sent to show me He was with me the entire time.
gemahrv0414
I hurried into the local department store to grab some last minute Chirsmas gifts.I looked at all the people and grumbled to myself .I would be in here forever and I just had so much to do .Chirsmas was Replica Handbags beginning to become such a drag.I kinda wished that I could just sleep through Chirsmas.But I hurried the best I could through all the people to the toy department .Once again I kind of mumbled to myself at the prices of all these toys,and wondered if the grandkids would even play whit them.I found myself in the doll aisle.Out of the corner of my eye I saw a little boy about 5 holding a lovely doll.
He kept touching her hair and he held her so gently. I could not seem to help myself . I just kept loking over at the little boy and wondered who the doll was for. I watched him turn to a woman and he called his aunt by name and said,”Are you sure I don’t have enough money ?”She replied a bit impatiently, “You know that you don’t have enough money for it.” The aunt told the little boy not to go anywhere that she had to go and get some other things and would be back in a few minutes . And then she left the aisle .The boy continued to hold the doll.
After a bit I asked the boy who the doll was for , He said,”It is the doll my sister wanted so badly for Chirsmas.She just knew that Santa would bring it.”I told him that maybe Santa was going to bring it . He said,”No,Santa can’t go where my sister is….I have to give the doll to my Mama to take to her.”I asked him where his siter was . He looked at me with the saddest eyes andsaid,”She was gone to be with Jesus.My Daddy says that Mamma is going to have to go be with her.”
My heart nearly stopped beating .Then the boy looked at me again and said,”I told my Daddy to tell my Mama not to go yet. I told him to tell her to wait till I got back from the store.”Then he asked me if i wanted to see his picture .I told him I’d love to.He pulled out some picture he’d had taken at the front of the store.He said,”I want my Mama to take this with her so the dosen’t ever forget me. I love my Mama so very much and I wish she dind not have to leave me.But Daddy says she will need to be with my sister .”
I saw that the little boy had lowered his head and had grown so qiuet. While he was not looking I reached into my purse and pilled out a handful of bills. I asked the little boy ,”Shall we count that miney one more time ?” He grew excited and said ,”Yes,I just know it has to be enough .” So I slipped my money in with his and we began to count it . Of course it was plenty for the doll. He softly said ,”Thank you Jesus for giving me enough money .”Then the boy said ,”I just asked Jesus to give me enough money to buy this doll so Mama can take it with her to give my sister .And he heard my prayer.I wanted to ask him give for enough to buy my Mama a white rose ,but I didn’t ask him ,but he gave me enough to buy the doll and a rose for my Mama. She loves white rose so much.”In a few minutes the aunt came back and I wheeled my cart away.
I could not keep from thinking about the little boy as I finished my shoppong in a ttally different spirit than when I had started .And I kept remembering a story I had seen in the newspaper several days earlier about a drunk driver hitting a car and killing a little girl and the Mother was in serious condition ,The family was deciding on whether to remove the life support.Now surely this little boy did not belong with that story.
Two days later I read in the paper where the family had disconnected the life support and the young woman had died. I could not forget the little boy and just kept wondering if the two were somehow connected . Later that day ,I could not help myself and I went out and bought aome white roses and took them to the funeral home where the yough woman was .And there she was holding a lovely white rose,the beautiful doll,and the picture of the little boy in the store.I left there in tears ,thier life changed forever .The love that little boy had for his little sisiter and his mother was overwhel .And in a split second a drunk driver had ripped the life of that little boy to pieces.
gemahrv0414
The holidays are a tough time of year to survive for most when it comes to staying fit or keeping up a diet. Rich food, busy schedules, and holiday shopping are a three-headed monster when it comes to your Replica Handbags physique. You’re more likely to take in more calories than you need, you won’t get the rest or exercise that you’ve become used to, and on top of it all you have the stress that is the mall.
I’ve come up with a handful of tips to help you stick to your progress during this season. None of these ideas are complicated or even a big secret. You probably could sit down and think them up yourself. However, have you done it? If so, then you’re on the right track. If not then consider this to be your holiday accountability kick in the (in danger of being softer) rear!
1. Set a holiday goal, and keep up with it. Part of the reason that people gain weight over the holidays is that they expect to. They just accept it and use it as their excuse to go whole hog. There’s no need of it. Just like everything else, if you set a good goal and focus on what you need to do in order to reach it, success is much easier.
Write your goal on the refrigerator, put a word document up on the computer, or tell a three year old to remind you every day. Do whatever you need to do to keep checking in on that goal.
a.Health b.Top Tips c.Nutrition d.Lifestyle
2. Reassess your schedule. Carve out a time when you can exercise. Things WILL get busy over the holidays. For most people their schedules will get messed up. This is a prime opportunity to miss gym time. Spend a few minutes dragging out your calendar and figuring out when you can make it to the gym. health and fitness is a priority for you, so treat it like it is.
3. Limit holiday eating to special events. Why is it that people think of the holiday season eating as taking place from about November 20th to January 10th? There’s Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve, and maybe a couple of holiday parties. We’re looking at five or six days out of two and a half months. Even if you have a busy holiday social schedule you’ll spend more time in “normal days” than holidays if you plan for it. Don’t eat like it’s a holiday when it’s not.
4. Maintain your diet and fitness consistency. This ties in with number three. One of the big killers of holiday eating is the lack of consistency. People will overeat at one party, then starve the next day to compensate. Well, all that does is make them so hungry that they overeat the next evening.
This is kind of like watching someone learning to ride a bike. They might start off on the straight and narrow, but then they get a little wobble… We all know that what they should do is stop, stabilize, and restart. Instead they start overcompensating one way and then the other, getting worse and worse with compensation. Soon they go too far and crash. A holiday yo-yo dieter will do the same thing until they finally throw their hands up and just go back to the way they used to be. That’s the way they managed to gain five or ten pounds every holiday.
5. Eat vegetables and lean protein first. This tip is a bit more specific than the others, but it works. When you sit down to that big Christmas dinner, hit the salad, greens, and turkey first. At the infamous table covered with goodies, take a few trips around the vegetable platter before you go after the other stuff. Taking some time to eat quality protein and fibrous vegetables will help fill you up. The good food you take in will take the edge off of your hunger and give you some extra willpower at the buffet table.
Take these five tips and move forward to the holidays. With some consistency and planning you’ll not only survive the holidays but you’ll come out leaner, fitter, and ahead of the game for your new year!
gemahrv0413
When I was younger,I thought that to love one’s self was vanity and not a virtuous trait.As I have grown olders,that belief has past away,as have so many others .There is Replica Handbags a vast deviation between being vain and loving one’s self.
We are all in this world together striving for more or less the same things.To contribute and have our lives count for something.To love and be loved.To laugh and yes,to cry.
We seek shelter,nourishment,a mate,warmth,clothing,family,friends;we seek approval,love and selfesteem.We are all imperfect.Often during our search we forget to simply enjoy what life is.We become so caught up in what could have been,what should be,what maight be,that many of our todays are lost.Let yesterday rest,live for today,hope and dream for your tomorrows.
If there is some part of you that lessens your selfimage,some part of you that prevents you from loving yourself,change it,for only you can.Life is filled with things we have no control over,but overselves we can control.You are the clay,you are the sculptor and you have the ability to creat a masterpiece.The shape and form are there.You have only to refine the work.
Is the task an easy one? No.There will be slips and flaws and you will be repuired to work and rework the clay before the piece condemning it as worthless because of a blemish or nick? Of course not,where then would all the word’s treasured art be?I doubt we would have any.How many masterpieces do you think have been created in one fell swoop,a first effort completely successful without error,without change?Is it possibole we fail to see that mankind is the most marvelous of all works of art? A living, continuous,developing work of art.
Again, I say to you that these words are merely feedlings and thoughts,one person’s outlook and subject to change with tomorrow’s setting sun,as I too continue to sculpt the lump of clay given to me at birth,called self.
gemahrv0412
29th February only happens once every four years
The year 2008 has one extra day in it – February 29th. This is because it’s what we call ‘a leap year’.
Every four years, the year has 366 days in Replica Handbags it instead of 365 – but why does this happen? Well, it actually takes the planet Earth 365 days and six hours to revolve completely around the sun. After four years an extra 24 hours have accumulated so an extra day is added to the calendar.
It is called a leap year because hundreds of years ago in England, the extra day wasn’t legally recognised. Contracts that were made were apparently not seen as binding on that day. The British just leapt over that day. Therefore a year with 29 days in February is consequently called a leap year and that 29th day is sometimes called Leap Day.
If you are born on 29th February in a leap year, there are difficulties in celebrating your birthday as the day only occurs once every four years. So people tend to celebrate on either 28th February or 1st March every year.
There is a well-known tradition in the UK associated with 29th February, introduced many centuries ago. Women are allowed to break with tradition and propose to their boyfriends on this day.
This all started back in the 5th Century, when a famous Irish saint, Bridget, complained to Saint Patrick, another famous Irish saint, that women had to wait too long for men to propose. According to the legend, Saint Patrick said any females yearning for a proposal could ask their boyfriend to marry them on this additional day in February.
This so-called tradition was even written in law in the 13th Century. Scotland passed a law allowing women to propose to men in a leap year. It was said that if the men refused, they had to pay a fine!
Now in 2008, there are calls for 29th February to become a public holiday. Some people believe that it should be an official day off, because no one gets paid extra for working an extra day in a leap year. For the moment though, the British still have to go to work on this day.
gemahrv0410
What is it that makes people successful and I mean really successful compared to you or me? Are they smarter or do they work harder? Are they risk takers or have powerful and influential friends?
The financial newspaper Investors Replica Handbags Business Daily (IBD) asked these same questions a few years ago and started a multi-year search for the answer. They studied industry leaders, investors and entrepreneurs to understand the traits they all had in common that contributed to their success. Reproduced here is their list of 10 Secrets to Success along with my commentary on each no-so-secret, ‘secret’.
I decided to reproduce the list here and comment on each of the traits in hopes of motivating you and myself in the process. It’s time for me to take my own advice and start on the path to my dreams. I hope to motivate you, by using myself as an example.
I originally came across this list when I was staring at some papers on a refrigerator owned by someone who was very successful – both personally and financially. My family and I had just spent the night as a guest in a great house in the suburbs of Boston. We were living life large as we played pool in the rec room, drank wine from the wine cellar, and enjoyed a dip in the hot tub. The problem was, neither of the couples in the house owned the property or the life we were pretending to have. You see, my friends were house sitting for the original owner and they had invited us to stay for the weekend.
It wasn’t until the morning after our little ‘party’ that I noticed something taped to the refrigerator – something that impacts me each time I read it. It was the IBD 10 Secrets to Success. Once my head cleared, I quickly copied them down and read them over and over again. After our vacation I made copies and posted them in my Home office and inside a journal I decided to keep.
The problem was, after a couple of months I forgot about the secrets and they fell by the wayside. And so did my actions towards my goals. At the time the articles 7 Ways to Grow the Action Habit or How To Motivate Yourself – Self Motivation didn’t exist and I lost my motivation. Well, I re-discovered the list and want to share it with you now. I hope you take these not-so-secret, secrets to heart and realize your dreams – whatever they may be.
1. How You Think is Everything.
Always be positive. Think Success, not Failure. Beware of a negative environment.
This trait has to be one of the most important in the entire list. Your belief that you can accomplish your goals has to be unwavering. The moment you say to yourself “I can’t…”, then you won’t. I was always given the advice “never say I can’t” and I’d like to strike those words from the dictionary.
I’ve found that from time-to-time my attitude waivers. A mentor of mine once said “it’s ok to visit pity city, but you can’t stay and there comes a time when you need to leave”. Positive things happen to positive people.
2. Decide upon Your True Dreams and goals: Write down your specific goals and develop a plan to reach them.
Write down my dreams and goals? Develop a plan to reach them? You mean like a project plan? Yes, that’s exactly what this means. You may have heard the old adage: A New Years resolution that isn’t written down is just a dream, and dreams are not goals.
Goals are those concrete, measurable stepping stones of achievement that track your progress towards your dreams. My goal is to start a second career as a freelance writer – what are your goals?
3. Take Action. goals are nothing without action.
Be like Nike and “Just do it”. I took action by reaching out and started writing. Every day I try to take some action towards my goals. It may be small, but it’s still an action. Have you taken action towards your goals?
4. Never Stop Learning: Go back to school or read books. Get training & acquire skills.
Becoming a life long learner would benefit us all and is something we should instill in our kids. It’s funny that once you’re out of school you realize how enjoyable learning can be. What have you learned today?
5. Be Persistent and Work Hard: Success is a marathon, not a sprint. Never give up.
I think every story of success I read entails long hard hours of work. There is no getting around this and there is no free lunch. But, if you’re working towards something that you’re passionate about, something you love – then is it really work?
6. Learn to Analyze Details: Get all the facts, all the input. Learn from your mistakes.
I think you have to strike a balance between getting all the facts and making a decision with incomplete data – both are traits of successful people. Spend time gathering details, but don’t catch ‘analysis paralysis’.
7. Focus Your Time And Money: Don’t let other people or things distract you.
Remain laser focused on your goals and surround yourself with positive people that believe in you. Don’t be distracted by the naysayer’s or tasks that are not helping you achieve your goals.
8. Don’t Be Afraid To Innovate: Be different. Following the herd is a sure way to mediocrity.
Follow through on that break-out idea you have. Ask yourself “What would I do if I wasn’t afraid?”
9. Deal And Communicate With People Effectively: No person is an island. Learn to understand and motivate others.
Successful people develop and nurture a network and they only do that by treating people openly, fairly and many times firmly. There is nothing wrong about being firm – just don’t cross the a-hole line. How do you deal with people?
10. Be Honest And Dependable: Take responsibility, otherwise numbers 1 – 9 won’t matter.
Enough said.
gemahrv0410
JUST like every Friday, I had to rush into work, barely making it on time. No sooner had I put my bag on the table and sat myself down, than the HR manager came up to me Replica Handbags with another resume. Could this be the one? I asked myself.
I had submitted my letter of resignation a few weeks before. Procedure dictated that it would be my job to interview the candidates who applied to replace me. But after several weeks of sieving, the right one still hadn’t turned up.
I wanted desperately for this person to be the one who could relieve me of my position. So, I stood up decisively and walked to the reception area, where the candidate was waiting.
There she was. I’m young and people seem to think I look naive; I didn’t want to give her that impression. Accordingly, I decided to play it as hard as I could. I coughed like a VIP about to make a big speech and spoke the candidate’s name. She followed me nervously into the interview room. While she was preparing to make her self-introduction, I browsed her resume, making marks here and there. But as soon as she started speaking and I found myself mesmerized by her melodious voice.
When she had finished, I found that my throat was dry and that I was totally lost for words. I kept swallowing and couldn’t stop blinking. It took me several minutes before I could find the words to speak. “Oh, well… er.. can you tell me what your hobbies are?” What a question! She looked a bit surprised, “Well, dancing…”, then she mentioned several other activities. Walking back to the HR office after the interview, I committed to memory he cellphone number she had written on the resume. The next day, I decided to send her a message.
After I had pressed the “send” button, I stared at the phone screen. Almost immediately, a vibration traveled through my palm. She had replied to my message.
After initial greetings, I tried to put her at ease by telling her how nervous I had been at the interview. She relaxed and we spent the next few hours swapping notes about our lives.
We got into the habit of sending each other text messages, saying what we were doing at the moment.
One night, I tentatively asked her about her boyfriend. I didn’t quite understand whether she had one or not, but It seemed like I was in with a chance. I decided to push it a bit further.
“How about now?”
“I told you I didn’t have one up until now.”
“That means you’ve got one now?”
“I am not sure.”
Upon hearing this, I dialed her number. A hoarse voice answered the phone.
“Er…you have a cold?”
“Yeah, but I’m getting better now. You must have something to say. It’s so late.”
“Er…”
Waiting for me to say something, she kept silent.
“Er.. We were talking about boyfriends. Would you be willing to…?”
“What?”
I twisted and turned on my bed and pulled the quilt over my head. With a muffled voice, I said, “Would you be willing to be my girlfriend?”
“Oh… but… I hadn’t thought about that. But I do feel something for you.”
For the rest of the night, I was confused. I didn’t know what to make of what she had said. She said she likes me, but she is not my girlfriend yet.
That was a few days ago.
I don’t know what lies ahead for us, but I do trust my feelings. So when the time is right, I will ask her again, “Will you be my girlfriend? “
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Mopie looked the picture of ape fitness: His shoulders were broad and imposing, his silver-haired back sculpted and muscular, his biceps bulging as wide as a wrestler’s thighs when he scratched his head.
He had a healthy appetite (he’d put away 7 pounds of food daily) and Mopie was no couch gorilla, either: He’d nimbly scale the mesh of his enclosures at the Replica Handbags National Zoo in Washington, D.C., playfully chase the younger gorillas, and perch himself high in an outdoor maple, as if to show the world he was the king of the Great Ape House.
“The unique thing about Mopie was how extremely handsome he was,” says Lisa Stevens, curator of primates and giant pandas at the National Zoo, and whenever the silverback sat, proudly, in the exhibit’s trees, “it just added to his impressiveness.”
Which is why Stevens and the zoo’s staff were so stunned when, on the afternoon of July 3, 2006, this prized western lowland gorilla suddenly collapsed after playing with some newly introduced mates. By the time the keepers cleared out the other gorillas and tried CPR on Mopie, the gentle, 430-pound giant was lifeless — a victim of heart failure at 34.
Like his father, who had died the same way at the zoo in the early 1990s, Mopie had previously been diagnosed with an unexplained form of heart disease known as fibrosing cardiomyopathy, in which healthy heart muscle turns into fibrous bands unable to pump blood. And yet, he had not shown any outward symptoms, and his diet and behavior were normal.
“There was nothing to indicate he was feeling poorly or under the weather,” recalls Stevens. “That’s what made it even more of a shock.”
No less troubling, two days earlier the National Zoo had lost its only other male group leader, a silverback named Kuja. Diagnosed just a month earlier with congestive heart failure related to cardiomyopathy, Kuja ) died while undergoing surgery to receive an advanced pacemaker. He was 23.
Sadly, Mopie and Kuja were not alone.
Gorillas in zoos around the nation, particularly males and those in their 20s and 30s, have been falling ill — and sometimes dying suddenly — from progressive heart ailments ranging from aneurisms to valvular disease to cardiomyopathy.
Just two months before the deaths at the National Zoo, the San Francisco Zoo had lost a lowland gorilla named Pogo to heart disease. A week before that, the Memphis Zoo lost one named Tumai the same way. And in previous years, there were others: Akbar at the Toledo Zoo in 2005, and in 2000 both Sam at the Knoxville Zoo and Michael at the Gorilla Foundation in California.
Now zookeepers are scrambling to understand what factors may be causing the illnesses and what might be done to save the 368 lowland gorillas that currently reside in 52 zoos across North America.
A 1994 study of 74 captive gorilla deaths, published by veterinarians Tom Meehan of the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago and Linda Lowenstine of the University of California at Davis, found that 41 percent — and 70 percent of males older than 30 — were from heart disease, mainly fibrosing cardiomyopathy.
“That study was a wake up call,” says Meehan, now the vice president for veterinary services at the Chicago Zoological Society. It showed the need to “go to the next level of evaluating the animals and figuring out how their lifestyle related to their health.”
In the mid-1990s, when the study was published, about 100,000 western lowland gorillas roamed freely within vast forests in Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Angola and Nigeria. Far less endangered than their relatives, the mountain gorillas, these apes were officially considered only as “vulnerable.”
Since then, however, lowland gorillas in the wild have been dying at an accelerating rate. Poaching, logging, a dramatic expansion in the trade of bushmeat, and outbreaks of Ebola have reduced their numbers to roughly 30,000 — and in September, the species was reclassified as “critically endangered.” At their current rate of decline, the gorillas are projected to disappear from the wild by 2050.
“Soon, these great apes may only exist in captivity,” says Haley Murphy, director of veterinary services at Zoo New England, which runs Boston’s Franklin Park Zoo and the Stone Zoo in Stoneham, Mass. The zoos are home to seven western lowland gorillas, the only species kept in captivity.
In 2000, Murphy, together with Dr. Ilana Kutinsky, a cardiologist with the Michigan Heart Group, began reviewing cardiac ultrasounds of zoo gorillas in hopes of discovering why the animals were at risk for heart trouble. It was part of a broad, veterinary detective effort to help save what Murphy calls “our closest living relatives, evolutionarily.”
Problem was, no one had defined how a normal gorilla heart operated.
But as ultrasound information was entered into a database and compared to necropsy reports on deceased gorillas, clues began to appear. “We started noticing that some gorilla hearts were grossly abnormal from others,” Kutinsky says. “The abnormal ones were mildly enlarged, very thick, and weren’t pumping as much blood.”
The findings raised more questions: Were the heart abnormalities the result of genetic differences? The gorilla’s sex? Did climate play a role? How big a factor was diet? Were the gorillas getting enough exercise in their enclosures? Or too much? Was heart disease being caused by bacterial or viral infections?
Some even asked: Were gorillas developing heart disease because of the way they were reared or socially grouped at the zoos?
As the scope of the mystery widened, the number of cases of apes developing heart problems steadily climbed.
One was Babec, a 24-year-old lowland gorilla at the Birmingham Zoo in Alabama. Male gorillas in zoos have lived to age 54, and median life expectancy is 30; so when Babec started coughing, eating less and clutching at his chest in early 2003, the staff veterinarians examined him, and identified his nemesis: cardiomyopathy.
Although the gorilla was given medications for heart disease in humans, his condition kept deteriorating. He lost 80 pounds (20 percent of his body weight), was accumulating fluid in his abdomen. And by the summer of 2004, his heart pumped just 10 percent of the blood his body needed.
With Babec in the final stage of heart failure, the zoo risked a procedure never before attempted on a gorilla: the implantation in Babec’s chest of an advanced pacemaker that corrects the heart’s electrical circuitry and restores its ability to contract properly.
Today, Babec’s prognosis is excellent. He’s dropped the excess water weight, his heart and other organs work more efficiently, and his heart and pacemaker are continuously monitored.
Neal Kay, a cardiologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Heart and Vascular Center who volunteered to perform the operation, later remarked that the only reason Babec still greets visitors to the Birmingham Zoo is that “we got to him in time.”
Such intervention could save individuals like Babec — but still largely unaddressed were questions of why gorillas develop heart disease in the first place, and how to halt the disease’s progression.
That’s why in November 2006 — three months after Mopie and Kuja died at the National Zoo — ape experts, human cardiologists, and zoo epidemiologists, pathologists and managers from around the country gathered at the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago to establish what they called the “Gorilla Health Project.”
Their first task: To build a National Gorilla Cardiac Database. With it, veterinarians could track rates of heart disease and death and try to learn why scar tissue was replacing cardiac muscle in apes.
To Kristen Lukas, chair of the Gorilla Species Survival Plan for the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, the project marks “a sea change” in how zoos will care not only for gorillas, but a host of other endangered species in captivity.
This level of networking between veterinary and human medical experts from universities, hospitals and animals rights groups “just never happened before,” she says.
Meehan, the Chicago veterinarian who has worked with gorillas since 1979, expects the initiative to bring animal care forward a quantum leap from, say, the 1960s, when gorillas were originally brought to North American zoos and staff struggled just to keep the captive population alive.
Gathering new data will present challenges, of course. One is the need for echocardiograms of apes. To do the test, a gorilla must be anesthetized, “which carries a certain amount of risk,” says cardiologist David Liang of Stanford University, a consultant to the Gorilla Foundation in California.
Another option, some experts say, might be to perform biopsies on affected gorillas to obtain tiny samples of heart muscle. This, too, would require anesthesia.
Many primatologists and veterinarians consider diet a prime suspect of heart disease in captive animals. And exploring that may require extensive study of the mortality of western lowland gorillas in the wild, they say — which, for many reasons, is tricky.
Gorillas in the wild tend to die younger, meaning not as many live long enough for age-related disorders to show up. Moreover, male silverbacks — the king of gorilla society — often hide symptoms of illness because they fear they may be challenged by younger males.
Still, research in the wild has paid off before. Not long ago, for example, it was learned that lowland gorillas, which are primarily herbivores, wade into swampy lake areas and eat vegetation growing underwater.
“There was no way of knowing that sort of thing was happening until somebody went out there to Africa and noticed what the gorillas were doing,” says primatologist Joseph Erwin of the Foundation for Comparative and Conservation Biology in Needmore, Pa.
Ellen Dierenfeld, a gorilla nutritionist at the St. Louis Zoo, says that a member of the ginger family, Aframomum melegueta, is a staple food of western lowland gorillas in their native environments.
Some scientists say Aframomum is a powerful antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal and anti-inflammatory “natural drug,” which may serve as a preventive medicine for the gorillas. But this and other native African plants are often not part of zoo gorillas’ daily diets.
The Gorilla Health Project’s diet and other data should be gathered by early 2009, analyzed and shared later that year, says Pam Dennis, a veterinarian in charge of analyzing the information.
“The important thing is that we’re now working to prevent the diseases in the first place,” says Dennis, an epidemiologist with the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo and Ohio State University.
“We started out trying to figure out human health by studying animals. Now we’re turning to our findings in humans to figure out how to treat animals,” she says with a chuckle. “It’s come full circle, which is sort of a beautiful thing.”
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Young people on the move face bureaucratic(官僚) hurdles.
EVER since Jing Youliang graduated from Wuhan University in 2003, he’s been on the move. In the past four years, the 26-year-old has worked in Guangzhou, Wuhan and now Beijing.
Each of those moves gave Jing a headache – not because Replica Handbags of all the packing, but because of the bureaucracy surrounding social security, which includes medical care, pension（养老金） and unemployment.
Moving to another place in China means a lot more than leaving old friends and making new ones. It also requires leaping over（跳过） hurdles that, if ignored, could jeopardize one’s future benefits.
“Every time I settle down in a new city, I have to set up a new social security account,” explained Jing, a real estate agent. “When I want to leave, I have to transfer my accumulated payments to an account in Chongqing, or it may hurt my benefits in the future.”
According to the National Bureau of Statistics in 2006, about 147 million Chinese were part of the “floating population”. About 52 million of them, or 35 percent, were young people aged 14 to 29.
Source of the problem
Such movement, however necessary for young people trying to settle into a career, can create problems that last long into the future. Social security funds are collected at the city and county level. Because of this, moving from one place to another means that wage-earners can lose some or all of their required investment.
Under the current system, people cannot carry their whole social security funds with them during a move. Payments made by their former employer into the fund are surrendered to the local government. In most cases, those paid by wage-earners may only be transferred to the city on their residence permit, or hukou.
Zheng Bingwen, a pension fund expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), blames this bureaucracy on local government protectionism. In China, around 2,200 units at county and city level collect and manage the social security funds of local citizens.
“Cities don’t want newcomers. Usually, they can’t take the portion paid by their former employers. It is much larger than the amount individuals pay to the accounts. This means their arrival won’t help much in expanding the city’s fund, but there will be more to share it,” said Zheng.
Fixing the problem
Local governments gained control over social security in the 1980s, when the system was first established. “The central government didn’t have the money to take on the financial burden of providing pension and medical care for the people,” explained Zheng. So the local governments were requested to do it and they began to manage the fund, said Zheng.
Last week, however, the central government took steps to begin fixing this problem. It aims to move control of the funds from the city and county levels to the provincial level. The move would combine those 2,200 separate funds into fewer, more centralized funds.
However, as Zheng Gongcheng, professor of social security at Renmin University of China, explained, this reform has its own problems: “In Guangdong, for example, Guangzhou residents pay 8 percent of their personal wages towards social security. But in poor cities like Shaoguan, wage-earners pay only 6 percent,” said Zheng. “The provincial government has to consider the difference and find a way around it.” 21ST
How to protect your investments
In many cases, if you move, you’ll have to pay for it. Evaluate costs and benefits before moving to a new city for which you do not have a hukou.
Social security
Many places in China require wage-earners to pay 8 percent of their monthly income into the social security fund. Employers pay 20 percent. People have to pay in at least 15 years in order to get a pension upon retirement.
Costs: If you leave a city, in most cases you can’t transfer the money to another city, unless it’s the city listed on your hukou. But you can withdraw the 8 percent – the amount you pay – from your social security account. The city will keep the 20 percent paid by your employer(s). Withdrawing those funds means that you must start from zero and again begin building up to a minimum of 15 years before you retire. If you keep moving between cities, you may fail to reach the 15-year requirement. This means you will not get a pension upon retirement.
How to protect yourself: Open a social security account in your hukou city. Transfer your 8-percent input to the account whenever you move. You may also ask your employers to put your social security money into the same account. This will save you the trouble of dealing with the bureaucracy of the system.
Healthcare
Employees usually pay 2 percent of their monthly income towards healthcare. Companies pay about 10 percent to their employees’ healthcare accounts. You will enjoy the benefits as long as both you and your employer pay the money. When you reach retirement age, you will be able to enjoy the benefits without paying. The minimum payment period for a man is 25 years. For a woman, it’s 20 years.
Costs: As in the case of social security, you can only transfer your medical care account to the city listed on your hukou. And you can’t transfer the 10 percent portion paid by your employers. If you move to another city, you have to set up a new account. This means you have to start accumulating your 20 or 25 years of payment from zero.
How to protect yourself: You can only enjoy healthcare in the city in which you have established your healthcare account. So it’s best to set up a medical care account wherever you go. Whenever you leave a city, transfer it to your hukou city. When you retire, you can enjoy your full healthcare benefits there.
Unemployment
In most cases, the company pays 1.5 percent of your monthly income into an unemployment fund. You pay 0.5 percent of your monthly income. No matter where you go, you can take the account with you. But you can’t withdraw the money until you are legally unemployed.
Housing fund
Wage-earners pay around 10 percent of their monthly paycheck into this fund; employers pay another 10 percent. When moving, employees may transfer both payments to an account in a new city of residence. Wage-earners may also apply for government subsidized loans if they are buying a house in the city where they have established their housing fund.
Other headaches
Today, the hukou still restrains mobility. Here’s how you might be troubled if you work in a city other than the one listed on your hukou.
Driver’s license: In some cities, you will only be able to get a driver’s license for certain types of vehicles. For example, you can’t get a Beijing driver’s license for a big coach if you are not a Beijing resident. But you can get a driver’s license for a four-seat car.
Marriage certificate: Couples must register their marriage in one of the cities listed on their hukou documents. If both work in Shanghai and have hukou documents from Changsha, they must travel to Changsha to register.
Passport and visa: You have to apply for a passport and visa in the city listed on your hukou.
Subsidized housing: In most cases, only residents with a local hukou may receive subsidized housing.