Personal and Environmental Wellness

Here are some energy-saving tips that my wife and I use to keep our costs down and decrease our burden on the earth's natural resources:

1. Your computer monitor uses approximately 60 percent of the total energy used by your entire computer. When you are not working on your computer but don't want to turn it off, at least turn off your monitor. Doing so will save you more energy than simply putting your computer on standby.

My wife and I saw an excellent movie over the weekend.

It's a Korean film called The Way Home.

It won the Korean Oscar for Best Film in 2002 and
surpassed even The Lord Of the Rings to become the
highest grossing film in Korea in 2002.

I won't attempt to describe this film. I'll just say
that it captures a few aspects of Korean culture that Read more »

I have to admit, this past weekend, my wife and I were
toast. Mentally and physically, we needed a break.

So we were grateful to get a call from the library on
Saturday morning saying that our request to borrow the
movie, "Hotel Rwanda" was ready to be fulfilled.

Let me tell you, although parts of this movie had us
in tears of sadness, it also left us deeply inspired.
Viewing this film really opened our eyes to some of Read more »

Every now and again, my mom likes to teach me a Korean proverb. I think she does this because she knows how much I like learning new Korean phrases and tidbits of Korean culture that I missed having grown up in Canada.

One of the best proverbs that she has ever shared with me translates to:

Like a knife cutting through water.

Now before you start thinking that this proverb is similar to an English metaphor that involves butter, let me set you straight. Read more »

One of my wife's favourite pastimes is to read Oprah Magazine at the kitchen table while sipping on a mug of hot tea. We actually go to the library once every couple of weeks to borrow a few issues of Oprah Magazine to have for this purpose.

From time to time, I like to flip through these magazines as well. I like some of Dr. Phil's advice on relationships, as well as Suze Orman's financial guidance. Read more »

The other day, it occurred to my wife and I that ithad been taking a lot longer than usual for our dryer to get our laundry dry.

We pulled the dryer away from the wall and opened up the exhaust tube to find that it was completely filled up with lint, almost about two feet deep! After getting down and dirty emptying that tube, we went to the garage where the other end of the tube comes out to release the moisture that dryers produce. There, we found another build-up of lint, this time about a foot deep. Read more »

Anne FrankI thought I would share another favourite passage of mine from Anne Frank's diary. In case you aren't familiar with Anne's life, Peter was a 16 year old German-Jewish boy whose family was also in hiding with Anne's family during the Holocaust.

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"I really can't understand people who don't like to work. Of course, Peter isn't one of these people. Peter just doesn't know what his life purpose is yet. He lacks confidence and has concluded that he can't accomplish too much in life because he wasn't a very good student in school. I feel sorry for him because he doesn't seem to know how good it feels to make another person happy. And this is somethinig that he has to learn on his own.

Anne FrankWhen I began learning the Korean language, I decided that a great way to go about it was to read some of my favourite books that had been translated to Korean. One of the first books that I read was The Diary of Anne Frank, translated directly from German to Korean.

I never get tired of reading Anne Frank's diary. I can't get over the wealth of thoughts and experiences this young German-Jewish girl had while hiding with her family in a house for two years during the Holocaust. Anne spent two years of her life without taking a single step outdoors or feeling the wind on her face, and yet, she was able to find beauty and meaning in her life on a regular basis as she interacted with her parents, sister, another Jewish family, and an old dentist.

Recently, I had to take my mom to a local hospital for a painful hip condition. I hope that the following account of our experience will help you and your loved ones when faced with a need for medical care.

About a week and a half ago, my mom woke up in the middle of the night with a sharp pain in her right hip area. Based on the nature of her pain and some neurological and orthopedic tests that I did, my feeling was that she had a severe case of hip bursitis, an inflammatory condition of the outer hip area that normally gets better with rest and pain management. Read more »

Back in 1999, a chiropractor friend sent me an article that described the healing properties of a cat’s purr. Although it perked my interest, I wasn’t compelled to do any further research at the time, probably because I didn’t have any friends or family members who had cats, and my life circumstances were such that it was impractical to have one myself. Read more »