An incredible love story has come out of China recently and managed to touch the world. It is a story of a man and an older woman who ran off to live and love each other in peace for over half a century.
The 70-year-old Chinese man who hand-carved over 6,000 stairs up a mountain for his 80-year-old wife has passed away in the cave which has been the couple's home for the last 50 years.
Over 50 years ago, Liu Guojiang a 19 year-old boy, fell in love with a 29 year-old widowed mother named Xu Chaoqin..
In a twist worthy of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, friends and relatives criticized the relationship because of the age difference and the fact that Xu already had children.
At that time, it was unacceptable and immoral for a young man to love an older woman.. To avoid the market gossip and the scorn of their communities, the couple decided to elope and lived in a cave in Jiangjin County in Southern ChongQing Municipality.
In the beginning, life was Harsh as hey had nothing, no electricity or even food. They had to eat grass and roots they found in the mountain, and Liu made a kerosene lamp that they used to light up their lives.
Xu felt that she had tied Liu down and repeatedly asked him, 'Are you regretful? Liu always replied, 'As long as we are industrious, life will improve.'
In the second year of living in the mountain, Liu began and continued for over 50 years, to hand-carve the steps so that his wife could get down the mountain easily.
Half a century later in 2001, a group of adventurers were exploring the forest and were surprised to find the elderly couple and the over 6,000 hand-carved steps. Liu MingSheng, one of their seven children said, 'My parents loved each other so much, they have lived in seclusion for over 50 years and never been apart a single day. He hand carved more than 6,000 steps over the years for my mother's convenience, although she doesn't go own the mountain that much.'
The couple had lived in peace for over 50 years until last week. Liu, now 72 years, returned from his daily farm work and collapsed. Xu sat and prayed with her husband as he passed away in her arms. So in love with Xu, was Liu, that no one was able to release the grip he had on his wife's hand even after he had passed away.
'You promised me you'll take care of me, you'll always be with me until the day I died, now you left before me, how am I going to live without you?'
Xu spent days softly repeating this sentence and touching her husband's black coffin with tears rolling down her cheeks.
In 2006, their story became one of the top 10 love stories from China , collected by the Chinese Women Weekly. The local government has decided to preserve the love ladder and the place they lived as a museum, so this love story can live forever.
A student asks a teacher, "What is love?" The teacher said, "in order to answer your question, go to the wheat field and choose the biggest wheat and come back.
But the rule is: you can go through them only once and cannot turn back to pick."
The student went to the field, go thru first row, he saw one big wheat, but he wonders..may be there is a bigger one later.
Then he saw another bigger one.. but may be there is an even bigger one waiting for him.
Later, when he finished more than half of the wheat field, he start to realize that the wheat is not as big as the previous one he saw, he know he has missed the biggest one, and he regretted.
So, he ended up went back to the teacher with empty hand.
The teacher told him, "..this is love.. you keep looking for a better one, but when later you realize, you have already miss the person.."
*"What is marriage then?" the student asked.
The teacher said, "in order to answer your question, go to the corn field and choose the biggest corn and come back. But the rule is: you can go through them only once and cannot turn back to pick."
The student went to the corn field, this time he is careful not to repeat the previous mistake, when he reach the middle of the field, he has picked one medium corn that he feel satisfy, and come back to the teacher.
The teacher told him, "this time you bring back a corn.. you look for one that is just nice, and you have faith and believe this is the best one you get.. this is marriage."
14) A plain computer illiterate guy rings tech support to report that his computer is faulty.
Tech: What's the problem?
User: There is smoke coming out of the power supply.
Tech: (keep quite)
Tech: You'll need a new power supply.
User: No, I don't! I just need to change the startup files.
Tech: Sir, the power supply is faulty. You'll need to replace it.
User: No way! Someone told me that I just needed to change the startup and it will fix the problem! All I need is for you to tell me the command.
Tech support: 10 minutes later, the User is still adamant that he is right. The tech is frustrated and fed up.
Tech support:: (hush hush)
Tech: Sorry, Sir. We don't normally tell our customers this, but there is an undocumented DOS command that will fix the problem.
User: I knew it!
Tech : Just add the line LOAD NOSMOKE.COM at the end of the CONFIG.SYS. Let me know how it goes.
10 minutes later.
User : It didn't work. The power supply is still smoking.
Tech : Well, what version of DOS are you using?
User : MS-DOS 6.22 .
Tech : That's your problem there. That version of DOS didn't come with NOSMOKE. Contact Microsoft and ask them for a patch that will give you the file. Let me know how it goes.
1 hour later.
User : I need a new power supply.
Tech support : How did you come to that conclusion?
Tech support : (hush hush)
User : Well, I rang Microsoft and told him about what you said, and he started asking questions about the make of power supply.
Tech: Then what did he say?
User: He told me that my power supply isn't compatible with NOSMOKE.
I came across this nice email which is sent to all Infosys staff by none other than Mr. Narayan Murty. (Click here to know more about him)
Mail sent by Mr. Narayan Murthy to all Infosys staff:
It's half past 8 in the office but the lights are still on... PCs still running, coffee machines still buzzing... And who's at work? Most of them ??? Take a closer look...
All or most specimens are ?? Something male species of the human race...
Look closer... again all or most of them are bachelors...
And why are they sitting late? Working hard? No way!!! Any guesses??? Let's ask one of them... Here's what he says... "What's there 2 do after going home...Here we get to surf, AC, phone, food, coffee that is why I am working late...Importantly no bossssssss!!!!!!!!!!!"
This is the scene in most research centers and software companies and other off-shore offices.
Bachelors "Time-passing" during late hours in the office just bcoz they say they've nothing else to do... Now what r the consequences...
"Working" (for the record only) late hours soon becomes part of the institute or company culture.
With bosses more than eager to provide support to those "working" late in the form of taxi vouchers, food vouchers and of course good feedback, (oh, he's a hard worker... goes home only to change..!!). They aren't helping things too...
To hell with bosses who don't understand the difference between "sitting" late and "working" late!!!
Very soon, the boss start expecting all employees to put in extra working hours.
So, My dear Bachelors let me tell you, life changes when u get married and start having a family... office is no longer a priority, family is.. and That's when the problem starts... b'coz u start having commitments at home too.
For your boss, the earlier "hardworking" guy suddenly seems to become a "early leaver" even if u leave an hour after regular time... after doing the same amount of work.
People leaving on time after doing their tasks for the day are labelled as work-shirkers...
Girls who thankfully always (its changing nowadays.. though) leave on time are labelled as "not up to it". All the while, the bachelors pat their own backs and carry on "working" not realizing that they r spoiling the work culture at their own place and never realize that they would have to regret at one point of time. So what's the moral of the story?? * Very clear, LEAVE ON TIME!!! * Never put in extra time " unless really needed " * Don't stay back unnecessarily and spoil your company work culture which will in turn cause inconvenience to you and your colleagues.
There are hundred other things to do in the evening..
Learn music...
Learn a foreign language...
Try a sport... TT, cricket.........
Importantly,get a girl friend or boy friend, take him/her around town...
* And for heaven's sake, net cafe rates have dropped to an all-time low (plus, no fire-walls) and try cooking for a change.
Take a tip from the Smirnoff ad: *"Life's calling, where are you??"*
Please pass on this message to all those colleagues and please do it before leaving time, don't stay back till midnight to forward this!!! IT'S A TYPICAL INDIAN MENTALITY THAT WORKING FOR LONG HOURS MEANS VERY HARD WORKING & 100% COMMITMENT ETC. PEOPLE WHO REGULARLY SIT LATE IN THE OFFICE DON'T KNOW TO MANAGE THEIR TIME. SIMPLE !
Regards, NARAYAN MURTHY.
=============
Note: I don’t know authenticity of this email. So, if you know that this is fake, please let me know so that I can remove it, this is because I have lot of respect for Mr. Narayan Murty and I don’t want to be wrong here.
ØBe a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.
ØDesign is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
ØA lot of companies have chosen to downsize, and maybe that was the right thing for them. We chose a different path. Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets.
ØHere's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes... the ones who see things differently -- they're not fond of rules... You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things... they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.
ØYour time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma -- which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. Most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
ØNobody has tried to swallow us since I've been here. I think they are afraid how we would taste.
ØApple and Dell are the only ones in this industry making money. They make it by being Wal-Mart. We make it by innovation.
ØSometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.
ØIt's not about pop culture, and it's not about fooling people, and it's not about convincing people that they want something they don't. We figure out what we want. And I think we're pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it too. That's what we get paid to do. We just want to make great products.
ØI'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.
ØI'm the only person I know that's lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year... It's very character-building.
ØThe people who are doing the work are the moving force behind the Macintosh. My job is to create a space for them, to clear out the rest of the organization and keep it at bay.
ØI was lucky -- I found what I love to do early in life.
ØRecruiting is hard. It's just finding the needles in the haystack. You can't know enough in a one-hour interview. So, in the end, it's ultimately based on your gut. How do I feel about this person? What are they like when they're challenged? I ask everybody that: 'Why are you here?' The answers themselves are not what you're looking for. It's the meta-data.
ØPeople think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.
ØYou can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new.
ØI didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
ØIt took us three years to build the NeXT computer. If we'd given customers what they said they wanted, we'd have built a computer they'd have been happy with a year after we spoke to them -- not something they'd want now.
ØTo turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies into a company that can continue to innovate for years, it requires a lot of discipline.
ØWe are very careful about what features we add because we can't take them away.
ØInnovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.
ØApple's market share is bigger than BMW's or Mercedes's or Porsche's in the automotive market. What's wrong with being BMW or Mercedes?
ØI think we're having fun. I think our customers really like our products. And we're always trying to do better.
ØI'm as proud of what we don't do as I am of what we do.
ØWhen I hire somebody really senior, competence is the ante. They have to be really smart. But the real issue for me is -- are they going to fall in love with Apple? Because if they fall in love with Apple, everything else will take care of itself. They'll want to do what's best for Apple, not what's best for them, what's best for Steve, or anybody else.
ØThere's a phrase in Buddhism, ‘Beginner's mind.' It's wonderful to have a beginner's mind.
ØMicrosoft was so brilliant or clever in copying the Mac, it's that the Mac was a sitting duck for 10 years. That's Apple's problem: Their differentiation evaporated.
Ø(We want to) get new products out there and have new ways to buy them. I think if we manage the top line, the bottom line will follow. I don't know what the future will bring, but we're working as fast as we can.
ØWe've had one of these before, when the dot-com bubble burst. What I told our company was that we were just going to invest our way through the downturn, that we weren't going to lay off people, that we'd taken a tremendous amount of effort to get them into Apple in the first place -- the last thing we were going to do is lay them off.
ØOur DNA is as a consumer company -- for that individual customer who's voting thumbs up or thumbs down. That's who we think about. And we think that our job is to take responsibility for the complete user experience. And if it's not up to par, it's our fault, plain and simply.
Ø...Almost everything -- all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure -- these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
ØIt's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led and how much you get it.
ØIn most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating. It's the fabric of the curtains of the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.
ØSo we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You haven't got through college yet.'
ØYou've baked a really lovely cake, but then you've used dog shit for frosting.
ØWe think basically you watch television to turn your brain off, and you work on your computer when you want to turn your brain on.
ØIt's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them.
ØThe cure for Apple is not cost-cutting. The cure for Apple is to innovate its way out of its current predicament.
ØI think this is the start of something really big. Sometimes that first step is the hardest one, and we've just taken it.
ØWe don't get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? And we've all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it.
ØBeing the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me... Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful... that's what matters to me.
ØWe do not say anything about future products. We work on them in secret, then we announce them.
ØYou know, we don't grow most of the food we eat. We wear clothes other people make. We speak a language that other people developed. We use a mathematics that other people evolved... I mean, we're constantly taking things. It's a wonderful, ecstatic feeling to create something that puts it back in the pool of human experience and knowledge.
ØInnovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it.
ØIf you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right.
ØI was worth about over a million dollars when I was 23 and over 10 million dollars when I was 24, and over a hundred million dollars when I was 25 and it wasn't that important because I never did it for the money.
ØI would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates.
ØMy job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better. My job is to pull things together from different parts of the company and clear the ways and get the resources for the key projects. And to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better, coming up with more aggressive visions of how it could be.
ØI mean, some people say, 'Oh, God, if (Jobs) got run over by a bus, Apple would be in trouble.' And, you know, I think it wouldn't be a party, but there are really capable people at Apple. My job is to make the whole executive team good enough to be successors, so that's what I try to do.
ØThe only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it.
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