Windy as some of you already know, is a Blogger whom I met and befriended for over two years now. Jimmy is the sweetheart of Star who blogs from A Maiden’s Testimony.

I have also written about my vacation experience at my other Blogs but I still feel that it deserves more and better. To me, it is one of those events in one’s life that can never be diminished with the passage of time.

Firstly, being a first time arrival in Malaysia, I found the place and the people courteous. None of us experienced anything disagreeable or unsafe and that is a huge plus when we read about regrettable experiences of other travellers. We arrived during the wee hours of the morning at the Kuala Lumpur Airport and it was good because the weather was cool.

It became even cooler as we headed from the Airport towards Genting Highlands Resort by road. Jimmy was at the Airport to meet us and the five of us packed into his car for our ride to the stupendous Resort in the mountains.

Simultaneously, Windy was also making his journey towards Genting Resort Highlands that same night and we would meet him. Frankly, Star and Lollii, her daughter who is also a Blogger at I Am Loved, and I could not contain our excitement because moments before we left Manila for Kuala Lumpur, it appeared that we would not have the opportunity to meet Windy. However, just before we boarded our plane, Windy texted me a short message to inform me that he was going to travel by bus to Kuala Lumpur and meet us at Genting Highlands Resort.

It was like we received an energy booster shot in our arms. I related a lot about Windy to the other two friend, Ate Tess and Kathleen who are not Bloggers because they could hardly understand why there was such an excitement shared amongst Ate Vilma, Lollii and I. At least now, they had a background about who this person, Windy is.

As it turned out, Windy arrived at the Hotel Lobby before we did and he waited patiently. We broke our journey to Genting as we were hungry. Jimmy feted us to Malaysian food which we found very palatable.

The moment we alighted at the Hotel, the girls were astounded by the beauty of the Resort Hotel. The premises is huge and beautifully designed. There they went like frenzied shutterbugs instead of heading right into the Hotel Lobby to find Windy.

After a couple of photo snaps, I could not resist entering the Hotel Lobby to find where Windy was. I saw a man of medium build and slightly taller than I. He stood there with his back facing me. My intuition knew it was him in the throng of hundreds of hotel guests that were at the Lobby.

I yelled out his name, “WINDYYYYY” and he turned around towards the source of the yell when he heard being called.

The immediate impression that I had seeing him live in person, it resembled what I often pictured him from the Blogs he used to manage. Alarmingly unassuming, simple in appearance, intelligent face and bright eyes, Windy let out a wide and warm smile as he opened his arms wide and said to me, “Here’s my chance to hug and kiss you.” Spunky in real life as he is when he writes at his Blogs.

I turned suddenly nervous despite all the excitement that preceded, having the opportunity to meet this man, Windy.

He is indeed a woman’s man. Always cheerful, he kept ripping away with his wit. The others who finally caught up with me stood there studying him like he was an animal at a Zoo. Windy has a effortless way to keep his friends unnerved and we felt as though he was right in the Philippines with us.

We were kept waiting at the Hotel Check-in as there were lots of arrivals. Although excited by what we saw, we did feel the heaviness of the hours of travel. Windy too made a long dash to be in Genting. So we were all feeling rather heavy but Windy never let up and kept us lively with his humor.

Finally we had our Check-in completed by the Desk operator and we headed to the elevator to get us to our rooms.

Then guess what Windy was up to next? He sped ahead of us and tried but in vain to get a pack of sanitary pads for Star. Can you imagine this man? He keeps thinking steps ahead of everything that happens around him.

More to follow in my next Article. Stay tuned.

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I ordered them to handcuff him, but there was no order to make an arrest.

Manila Mayor, Alfredo Lim told a press conference at the Manila City Hall.

Gone are the days, when the King himself rode on his horse and led his warriors into battle. Today, we have leaders who are nothing better than armchair managers whose behinds are glued to their seats and are rarely seen at the scene when there is a crisis.

Then comes the Joke of the Century!!!

Lim also pointed out that his orders to handcuff Gregorio were not carried out because “they (MPD) still have to look for handcuffs.”

And a dash of face saving…

Gregorio was struggling with his colleagues while being dragged to a waiting police car. Another policeman managed to secure a pair of handcuffs from the nearby precinct at the Rizal Park.

As the police were to about to handcuff Gregorio, Lim said he prevented them and ordered the lawmen to bring Gregorio to the MPD General Assignments Section for investigation.

So, Mr. Mayor Lim

What exactly did you order or re-order and in your rigmarole of armchair managing, you now have become an accessory for the death of innocent Hong Kong tourists because…

Observers said what might have triggered the killing of the hostages was when Mendoza saw his younger brother being arrested on television.

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The technical forensic inspection will determine the trajectory of the bullets that went into and were fired from the bus to allay speculation that some of the Chinese tourists were killed by police fire.

Talk about when the sh*t hits the ceiling fans ha! The aftermath of the tragic hostage incident in Manila which cost the lives of 8 Hong Kong tourists and several others critically injured, has only led the irk of the rest of the World to be fanned even higher.

Report after report as published by the Philippine media about the investigation conducted by a Special Commission into the horribly botched up Police rescue effort at the crime scene, is a sick second hero’s public mea culpa from the Government on how poorly trained, functionally ill equipped and organizationally incompetent are those who have been vested with the responsibility for such a serious undertaking for public safety.

Latest report says that the bus will undergo forensic assay to save some red faces. What now if it does not prove that none of the bullets from Police gunfire killed any of the 8 or more victims? Those faces will turn blue in the face. Yah! BLUE!!!

But truth be told, it is those bungling idiots who needs forensic assay and not the lame bus, to determine whether they are fit to continue to serve the public in whatever position that they now hold.

And the entire Police force in the Philippines might have to go for target shooting exercises and depending on their shooting ability, be re-qualified to be worthy to carry and to use a gun.

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I have taken expired medicines before……and they still worked in my case!! What are your thoughts on this issue??

DO MEDICATIONS REALLY EXPIRE?

Does the expiration date on a bottle of a medication mean anything? If a bottle of Tylenol, for example, says something like “Do not use after June 1998,” and it is August 2002, should you take the Tylenol? Should you discard it? Can you get hurt if you take it? Will it simply have lost its potency and do you no good?

These are the pressing questions I investigated after my mother-in-law recently said to me, “It doesn’t mean anything,” when I pointed out that the Tylenol she was about to take had “expired” 4 years and a few months ago. I was a bit mocking in my pronouncement — feeling superior that I had noticed the chemical corpse in her cabinet — but she was equally adamant in her reply, and is generally very sage about medical issues.

So I gave her a glass of water with the purportedly “dead” drug, of which she took 2 capsules for a pain in the upper back. About a half hour later she reported the pain seemed to have eased up a bit.. I said “You could be having a placebo effect,” not wanting to simply concede she was right about the drug, and also not actually knowing what I was talking about. I was just happy to hear that her pain had eased, even before we had our evening cocktails and hot tub dip (we were in “Leisure World,” near Laguna Beach, California, where the hot tub is bigger than most Manhattan apartments, and “Heaven,” as generally portrayed, would be raucous by comparison).

Upon my return to NYC and high-speed connection, I immediately scoured the medical databases and general literature for the answer to my question about drug expiration labeling. And voila, no sooner than I could say “Screwed again by the pharmaceutical industry,” I had my answer.. Here are the simple facts:

Background

First, the expiration date, required by law in the United States, beginning in 1979, specifies only the date the manufacturer guarantees the full potency and safety of the drug — it does not mean how long the drug is actually “good” or safe to use.

Second, medical authorities uniformly say it is safe to take drugs past their expiration date — no matter how “expired” the drugs purportedly are. Except for possibly the rarest of exceptions, you won’t get hurt and you certainly won’t get killed.

A contested example of a rare exception is a case of renal tubular damage purportedly caused by expired tetracycline (reported by G. W. Frimpter and colleagues in JAMA, 1963;184:111) . This outcome (disputed by other scientists) was supposedly caused by a chemical transformation of the active ingredient.

Third, studies show that expired drugs may lose some of their potency over time, from as little as 5% or less to 50% or more (though usually much less than the latter). Even 10 years after the “expiration date,” most drugs have a good deal of their original potency. So wisdom dictates that if your life does depend on an expired drug, and you must have 100% or so of its original strength, you should probably toss it and get a refill, in accordance with the cliché, “better safe than sorry.” If your life does not depend on an expired drug — such as that for headache, hay fever, or menstrual cramps –take it and see what happens..

Case Study

One of the largest studies ever conducted that supports the above points about “expired drug” labeling was done by the US military 15 years ago, according to a feature story in the Wall Street Journal (March 29, 2000), reported by Laurie P. Cohen. The military was sitting on a $1 billion stockpile of drugs and facing the daunting process of destroying and replacing its supply every 2 to 3 years, so it began a testing program to see if it could extend the life of its inventory. The testing, conducted by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), ultimately covered more than 100 drugs, prescription and over-the-counter. The results showed that about 90% of them were safe and effective as far as 15 years past their original expiration date.

Conclusion

In light of these results, a former director of the testing program, Francis Flaherty, said he concluded that expiration dates put on by manufacturers typically have no bearing on whether a drug is usable for longer. Mr. Flaherty noted that a drug maker is required to prove only that a drug is still good on whatever expiration date the company chooses to set. The expiration date doesn’t mean, or even suggest, that the drug will stop being effective after that, nor that it will become harmful. “Manufacturers put expiration dates on for marketing, rather than scientific, reasons,” said Mr. Flaherty, a pharmacist at the FDA until his retirement in 1999. “It’s not profitable for them to have products on a shelf for 10 years.. They want turnover.”

The FDA cautioned there isn’t enough evidence from the program, which is weighted toward drugs used during combat, to conclude most drugs in consumers’ medicine cabinets are potent beyond the expiration date. Joel Davis, however, a former FDA expiration-date compliance chief, said that with a handful of exceptions — notably nitroglycerin, insulin, and some liquid antibiotics — most drugs are probably as durable as those the agency has tested for the military. “Most drugs degrade very slowly,” he said. “In all likelihood, you can take a product you have at home and keep it for many years, especially if it’s in the refrigerator.” Consider aspirin. Bayer AG puts 2-year or 3-year dates on aspirin and says that it should be discarded after that. However, Chris Allen, a vice president at the Bayer unit that makes aspirin, said the dating is “pretty conservative”; when Bayer has tested 4-year-old aspirin, it remained 100% effective, he said. So why doesn’t Bayer set a 4-year expiration date? Because the company often changes packaging, and it undertakes “continuous improvement programs,” Mr. Allen said. Each change triggers a need for more expiration-date testing, and testing each time for a 4-year life would be impractical. Bayer has never tested aspirin beyond 4 years, Mr. Allen said.. But Jens Carstensen has. Dr. Carstensen, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin’s pharmacy school, who wrote what is considered the main text on drug stability, said, “I did a study of different aspirins, and after 5 years, Bayer was still excellent. Aspirin, if made correctly, is very stable.

Okay, I concede. My mother-in-law was right, once again. And I was wrong, once again, and with a wiseacre attitude to boot. Sorry mom.

Now I think I’ll take a swig of the 10-year dead package of Alka Seltzer in my medicine chest — to ease the nausea I’m feeling from calculating how many billions of dollars the pharmaceutical industry bilks out of unknowing consumers every year who discard perfectly good drugs and buy new ones because they trust the industry’s “expiration date labeling.”

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Of all the nerve!

Of all the nerve! for a President who appeared at the scene only after the carnage and after innocent lives were lost.

Of all the nerve! for a President as Chief-in-command, to think that he can silence the rest of the World that is still reeling about the deplorable ineptitude of both, this President’s ability and his impotent Police Chief, to marshal the best there is, at the most crucial time, to save the lives of foreigners who visit his country and from whom his country benefits.

WATCH OUT FOR THE NEXT STATEMENT!!!

“Oh! I wasn’t told that it was that critical….I was informed that it was under control and would take just a matter of time.”

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On August 16th, my Legal Counsel telephoned me to inform me that the Judge’s verdict was in my favor.

The Plaintiff’s motion was dismissed with Costs.

What troubled both my Legal Counsel and I was the fact that the verdict was postponed on July 21st because the Judge who presided on my case had received his letter of approval for early retirement.

The case was transferred to a new Judge. That even shook up my Legal Counsel. It was hard to tell which way the new Judge would proceed with the judgment.

What a relief after 8 years!!! Truth always prevails.

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It was learned over a TV program that the treatment of Sugar (Diabetes) is effective with Ocra (also known as Lady Finger). Ocra was tried and the diabetic found it effective as his Sugar is in control now.

This is how Ocra is prepared and taken:

1. Take two pieces of Lady Finger and remove/cut both ends of each piece.
2. Make a small cut in the middle.
3. Place these two pieces in glass of water.
4. Cover the glass and keep it at room temperature during night.
5. Early in the following morning, before breakfast simply remove two pieces of lady finger from the glass and drink the water.

This has to be done on daily.

Results should appear within two weeks. There will be a remarkable reduction in the blood sugar level.

In another diabetic patient, she got rid of her diabetes. She was on Insulin for a few years, but after taking the lady fingers every morning for a few months, she was able to stop Insulin treatment and she continues to take the lady fingers every day.

In this woman’s case, she chops the lady fingers into fine pieces in the night, adds the water and drinks it all up the next morning.

Anyone out there who suffers from Diabetes should give this a try. If it does not do much good, it will not do you any harm even if it does not do much good to you.

Depending on how serious the Diabetes, the length of this treatment will vary and could possibly last for a few months before tangible results are seen.

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Hi Windy ! Im dead tired but still managed to walk thru ur blog, arrgh!

I have to admit I was always in the state of physical exhaustion and I tend to push myself to the hilt- diving straight into the blogosphere even without having had dinner.

He had me laughing my heartout when after posting that shout at his cbox, he has this wheelchair ready for me. You can just imagine my amusement! Windy did what a man ought to do! Right on. So he got that state-of-the-art Electric Wheelchair you see above for me so that the next time I’m dead tired, I have to plonk my behind on that electric wheel chair and hit the button. No more walk-thru; ride-thru!!!

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As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as ‘Euro-English’.

THE NEW EURO-ENGLISH

1st. Year

In the first year, ’s’ will replace the soft ‘c’. Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard ‘c’ will be dropped in favour of ‘k’. This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.

2nd. Year

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome ‘ph’ will be replaced with ‘f’. This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

3rd. Year

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent ‘e’ in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

4th. Year

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing ‘th’ with ‘z’ and ‘w’ with ‘v’.

5th. Year

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary ‘o’ kan be dropd from vords kontaining ‘ou’ and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensi bl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.

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