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Congratulations Azhan, you are 50% not Malaysian.

That means you're as Malaysian as... Michelle Yeoh!

How Un-Malaysian Are You?

Life has been so hectic. I barely socialize on the net and read blogs and blog as much as I could like before and I'm missing it. I just can't wait to finish my misery- the all time hated SPM exam a.k.a. O-level. Till then I will bump here and bouce once a blue moon or at least a week; I hope. gotta go now..chemistry tuition on the run!

AFS News

Three days ago, I graduated from college. Seated in the football stadium with 5,300 of my fellow Tar Heels, I wore yards of Carolina blue nylon, chatted throughout the commencement address, and then tossed my cap skyward. Now I must confront the daunting reality of postcollegiate life: a job.

I am not entirely bereft of future prospects—I have a six-month internship at a magazine in Santa Fe that starts in June. But an internship is not a job, nor is it certain that whatever I think I want to do at age 21 is what I should do with the rest of my life. So, I did what any recovering grad would do: I took a trip to Borders and picked up armloads of career guides to see if they could help me find my calling.

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Methodology

I selected books that would help me figure out what career to pursue as well as those with practical advice on how to obtain that perfect job. Some were helpful on both fronts, and some on neither. All assured me, thankfully, that work doesn't have to be miserable. My crucial considerations included:

Usefulness: How insightful was the text? Did the book tell me something more novel than "follow my dreams"? Did it give me constructive tips?

Applicability: Was the text appropriate for recent graduates? Or more geared toward those in midcareer? If it included profiles of individuals, were their stories interesting and informative?

Readability: Was the tone too reminiscent of a high-school guidance counselor's? Did it pander to college students with its "hip" lingo? Would I consult it again?

The results, from worst to best:

Not Recommended

How To Find the Work You Love, by Laurence G. Boldt, 158 pages, $12

This book's appeal lies in its diminutive size and its reassuring Zen title. I read it first of all the books, figuring I would start from the theoretical and work toward the practical. But it was a bit too theoretical. The book argues that your "life's work" is created through dedication to either your personal values, service to others, or pursuit of what you excel at or enjoy. Boldt offers plentiful encouragement and "focusing questions" to help refine your ideal career. But actual content is slim, as the font is large, the margins wide, and the famous quotations ubiquitous. And it plods along—once you sift though the jargon, insights are only about once a page. Its attempts at practicality were especially unhelpful: "More often than not, when we do the work we love, the money takes care of itself." Tell that to my parents when I'm still living at home.

Advice of Note: "The commitment to excellence requires that we put aside any false modesty. It is not a sign of arrogance to expect great things of ourselves."

Recommended for: People who like the Tao of anything and who view their job search as an epic quest.

Bottom Line: Too flimsy. Save time and money and buy a motivational poster about dedication instead.

The 2006 What Color Is Your Parachute? by Richard Nelson Bolles, 402 pages, $17.95

First published in 1970, Parachute is the godfather of all career guides. Chapters address the best and worst ways to look for a job, whether to move away for a new career, and tips for interviewing and salary-haggling. While its layout and design—illustrations galore—is the most appealing of all the books, Bolles' writing style is the most annoying. He takes liberties with punctuation and italicization that are distracting, and his voice is numbingly didactic—he repeatedly explains that "percent" means "out of 100."

The book's churchy tone and endless asides made me groan: Bolles ends with a 22-page epilogue titled "How To Find Your Mission in Life," and he means mission in the Christian sense of the word. His lack of irony or humility felt like a stern rap across my knuckles. The sprawling nature of this book and its plethora of exercises make it a good resource to thumb through, but it also makes the job search seem overwhelmingly momentous—as if in addition to finding a job, I must first read this tome.

Advice of Note: "Job hunting is more like dating than any other human activity we might compare it to. … Do I like you? Do you like me? Do we want to take a chance on going steady?"

Recommended for: Adults (not recent grads) who like faith-based advice and are nervous about a career switch in the Information Age. Includes enough exercises to keep a reader busy for weeks, allowing one to put off looking for a job.

Bottom Line: This book encompasses both practical and philosophical aspects of careers, but flip through it and read a few pages before buying: You'll either grin or shudder.

Recommended With Reservations

Do What You Are, by Paul D. Tieger and Barbara Barron-Tieger, 386 pages, $18.95

Do What You Are promises individualized career advice based on your Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, a personality test anchored in Carl Jung's work. The book devotes a chapter to each personality type, each of which contains profiles of people supposedly much like you. Unfortunately, these people tend to be strangely similar in experience: All three profiles of my personality type, ENFP, were consultants of some kind—including one personality-type consultant.

The book does do a good job of emphasizing your strengths. It contextualizes them in terms of the job search, offering insight into how you'd fare in different careers. It also suggests how to overcome the pitfalls you're most likely to experience: "The secret to success for an ENFP is learning to: Prioritize, focus, and follow through."

Advice of Note: "Type does not determine intelligence or predict success, nor does it indicate how well adjusted anyone will be. It does, however, help us discover what best motivates and energizes each of us as individuals, and this in turn empowers us to seek these elements in the work we choose to do."

Recommended for: People who like taking quizzes in magazines and enjoy having their personality analyzed.

Bottom Line: This book helps readers articulate their character traits in terms of workplace skills. But if you know yourself well enough to admit you're bad with deadlines, you probably already know you shouldn't work at a newspaper.

Smart Moves for Liberal Arts Grads, by Sheila J. Curran and Suzanne Greenwald, 320 pages, $16.95

This book intends to reassure students (and their parents) that liberal-arts majors can get jobs, too, by imparting 23 life stories of now-successful people in their 20s, 30s, or 40s who made good career decisions. Smart Moves is like Po Bronson's What Should I Do With My Life? (assessed below), but with more extensive profiles, subtler narration, and a motive: defending the liberal-arts degree. The writing is smoothly geared toward ambitious college kids, and each profile ends with a bulleted list of its subject's "smart moves," making this book solid but uninspiring.

Advice of Note: "The only thing that's certain in your career life is that you can't reliably predict where you'll be in five years, let alone twenty-five. There is no single career that's right for you and no dream that's too outlandish."

Recommended for: Current college students who want to get a head start on career planning. Then they should give this to their parents when asked what they'll do with that degree in philosophy.

Bottom Line: A well-organized book of in-depth career stories—but more than most people will want to read, and they don't hook the reader quite as well as What Should I Do With My Life?

Recommended

What Should I Do With My Life?, by Po Bronson, 436 pages, $7.99

A best seller when it was published in 2002, this book is a compendium of mini biographies of people who have gutsily chosen to embrace their passions. Bronson is an active narrator with a casual tone, and the profiles are linked by his yearlong quest to research this book. The book is also a good examination of work itself: Is life about the journey or the destination? Is it OK to work a crummy day job and live for the weekend? The prose reads like a human-interest segment on the Today Show; the stories are surprisingly addictive.

Advice of Note: "Of all the psychological stumbling blocks that keep people from finding themselves, the most common problem is that people feel guilty for simply taking the question seriously."

Recommended for: Voyeurs of all ages who love hearing the life story of the person next to them on an airplane.

Bottom Line: Too hefty and repetitive to read all at once, but I may occasionally refer to this to remind myself that you figure out life as you go along. A good gift for college grads, though it might lure them into becoming, say, a catfish farmer.

Have No Career Fear, edited by Ben Cohen-Leadholm, Ari Gerzon-Kessler, and Rachel Skerritt, 201 pages, $12.95

This book, which is part of the Students Helping Students series published by Penguin, is less visually attractive than most of the others, but much more useful. It boils down the philosophical aspects of the job search to a few bulleted questions: What inspires me? What do I love to do? This book is packed with practical suggestions on how to network, apply and interview for a job, excel in your work, and even addresses what to do if you're fired. The collegiate tone can be grating (after using a clever interview tactic, you'll feel "really frickin' good"), but the editors cover a lot of ground in this slim book. I enjoyed the straightforward advice from recent grads rather than career coaches.

Advice of Note: "Keep in mind, your first job is never quite what you're looking for. It's meant to be a stepping stone and for you to acquire experience."

Recommended for: College students and recent grads who like lists and snappy words of wisdom.

Bottom Line: Doesn't get into anything too deeply, but this book has an upbeat tempo and quick pace that make the job search feel manageable and even fun.

I'm an English Major—Now What? by Tim Lemire, 252 pages, $14.99

I assumed that "English major" was merely a euphemism for "liberal-arts student." It's not. This new book is made for those who have spent the last four years critically contemplating Middlemarch—a specificity that allows Lemire to give bright graduates practical advice, not simply encouragement. I found this book to be by far the most useful, as well as the most fun to read.

I didn't major in English (though I minored in creative writing, perhaps the only discipline less lucrative), so I can attest that this book is a valuable resource for any grad with aspirations for writing, publishing, or academia. It's not padded with quotations or truisms. Lemire launches into the realities and requirements of careers most appealing to literary types: teaching, grad school, journalism, book publishing, even corporate jobs. The writing is funny without trying too hard, thanks to Lemire's well-executed wit and sarcasm. He deals honestly with the delusions of the English major (it can't be that hard to write a novel), and the sidebars for each field are especially useful, summarizing "Most Important Skills" and "The Best Advice I Ever Got."

Advice of Note: "If you are considering teaching because you can't think of anything else to do … stop. You should not enter the teaching profession by default or with a sense of resignation. Doing so will make you a lousy teacher, and lousy teachers produce worse students."

Recommended for: English majors and those who wish they were.

Bottom Line: A worthwhile purchase for liberal-arts types, and one to reference when you want to make a living as a freelance writer.

The Pied Piper of Penang
Madamme Heritage Heboh lures children away from homes and into old buildings

by J-Teoh30-03-2006, kakiseni.com

The first question Janet Pillai asks me when she sees me is: “Have you finished your folio yet?” Even now, she is moving very fast around the music practice area of Universiti Sains Malaysia ABM-AMBRO, sternly asking the same of every young-ish looking person (and unsuspecting members of the press). “Haveyoufinishedyourfolioyet? Haveyoufinishedyourfolioyet? No, you’re doing it. Don’t do it here, do it over there! Don’t use a pencil – use pens! Use crayons! Use colours!”

Janet Pillai seems to be one heck of a busy lady. It is not for nothing that she is declared an Amazing Malaysian by Digi and nicknamed Madamme Heritage Heboh of Penang. When she is not running around teaching theatre at USM, she is running around conducting workshops like Young Theatre Penang (for finding your child’s inner all-rounded performer) and Anak-anak Kota (for finding your child’s inner heritage conservationist). What she is doing these few days (Mar 11-15, 2006) is a little special. She has meshed both programmes into one – teaching kids to do performances about heritage. But who on earth is paying for such meaningful projects? For Young Theatre Penang and Anak-anak Kota, Janet receives money from the State Cultural Council and the Penang Educational Consultative Council respectively. This time however, telco company Digi is funding the workshops, the recruitment drive, the subsequent performances, and even the flying of reporters into Penang (luckily for them, I’m just across the bridge).

When I get the chance to steal some time off Janet, one of the first things I wanted to know is: whutadilly about the folios? Janet’s folios are determined not to be the average Malaysian school kid’s folios – they are to comprise of collages, photographs, drawings… basically retraining and teaching them how to think out of the box. They’re kind of like homework, to gauge how much the students have learnt day by day, but unlike mathematics, you can’t just copy somebody else’s answers.

The folios are about the Historical Walk these participants had done the day before. And in spite of the torturous heat wave that’s been plaguing Penang lately, they had done it on foot. Janet wanted the participants to “get used to the idea of working under the hot sun,” as this was a necessary part of her projects. But can they take it? Says 11-year old Teow Pei Sing: “Even though I felt tired and bored, I learnt a lot… Ms. Ho [Sheau Fung, the visual arts facilitator] and I were extremely thirsty, so she bought two packets of drinks from the coffee shop – one for me and one for her. We got here at two, and went home at five. Wow, this walk is so cool!”

The Madame “Heritage Heboh” of Penang programme is now in its Discovery phase (one of three phases in all DiGi’s Amazing Malaysians projects, the other two being Implementation and Showcase). This is when the participants are made aware of the importance of the project they are about to embark on and also given the opportunity to pull out if they choose to. There are around 80 participants ranging from Standard 5 to Form 6 in the respective workshops: music – “Journey of Sound”; dance – “Gerak-gerak Borak-borak”; and visual arts – “Wayang Bayang-bayang”. The facilitators are in the process of narrowing down the numbers before proceeding with the three months of intensive workshops.

It is also nice to see that Janet has not forgotten those who aren’t talented enough to make the cut during auditions by letting them be documenters. Boring as documenting sounds, the job is actually pretty cool, as Andrea (13, from St. George’s Girls School) and Andrea (16, from SMK Permatang Rawa) can testify. Working as documenters, the youngsters pick up camera, video and other interesting skills, besides experimenting with different ways of presenting the information collected – whether in the form of posters, writing, or even puppets! “I can get first-hand experience of what journalism is like, which can help me decide my career options later!” enthused one of the Andreas.

The majority of the participants belong to the “Journey of Sound” group. The rest are spread between “Gerak-gerak Borak-borak”, with approximately 20 participants, and “Wayang Bayang-bayang”, which has the least – 15. Though ninety-nine percent of the project participants are from the arts stream, this doesn’t guarantee they know how to draw. Janet attributes this to many budding visual artists being lost to the science stream.
Eventually we arrive at the Cheah Kongsi where Penang’s budding young artists (or what is left of them) are listening to a lecture on the artistic elements of Penang architecture by David Yeo. The children seem very quiet, as if attending lessons at school. They come alive later during fieldwork as they walk down the street to the Khoo Kongsi – to admire the fine architecture, or rather, to learn to admire the fine architecture.

Visual art facilitator Ho Sheau Fung explains that the students are going to recreate one of the stories on the panels (either Yang Xiang Wrestling The Tiger To Save His Father or Wang Xiang Lying On Ice For Carp, both from The 24 Paragons of Filial Piety) in the form of wayang kulit and perform it during the Discovery Launch on Wed Mar 15. “We’re not going to do the traditional Ramayana sort of wayang kulit… that takes a lot of time and skill and it’s very hard to master. What we’re going to do is a simplified form… utilising Chinese, Indian, Muslim, European and contemporary influences,” says David. “The result at the end of these three months should be something fresh, different.”

For 14 year-old Mun Hoe from SMJK Chung Ling Penang, the Madame “Heritage Heboh” project gives him a better perspective of Penang heritage compared to the week-long Anak-anak Kota project he had participated in previously. “I didn’t get to learn the stories behind the artwork then, it was more of visiting heritage sites and drawing what we saw there, learning the technical aspects. This is more fun, and I think it will help me a lot in my sejarah homework.”

Use your imagination

I get back to Penang island the next day (Tuesday). The “Journey of Sound” children at USM had gone off the day before to “collect sounds” at Market Street and are now supposed to do a group composition by replicating the sounds, noises and snippets of conversation they had collected.
I manage to grab hold of music facilliator Dr. Tan Sooi Beng. Dr. Tan is a music lecturer in USM and like David, has been working together with Janet for close to 20 years. Watching the participants run around to the deafening shouts and screams, I can’t help but notice the infectious energy radiating about the building. Heck, I want to join in and start screaming as well. “They have a lot of energy,” agrees Dr. Tan with a smile. “Music gives them a sense of confidence.” When talking to the press later, Janet stresses that music is an alternative tool for expression, just as art can be a tool for education, to stimulate creativity and learning.

Dr. Tan prefers the phrase The Music of Sound to The Sound of Music. “Music is all around us, and we are going to teach them how to make music using the elements of music from our environment.” Instead of musical instruments, the participants are taught to make music with everyday utensils, and then to develop an ear for interesting but hardly noticeable sounds from everyday life.
A sense of rhythm is essential for the music participants. Soon, I find myself watching a young girl struggling to replicate the rhythm of monetary exchange among traders by jiggling coins in a Milo tin… and getting rather frustrated. Dr. Tan is on hand of course, coaxing the girl to “use your imagination”. No success. Keep on trying. Eventually, the coins are abandoned in favour of reproducing flour-making sounds through role play – with the children pretending to be rice, machine, as well as the flour squealing with laughter while exiting the machine. Elsewhere, little groups of young people are making music out of spoons and forks, broken senduk, Milo tins. The disorganised din had me somewhat worried – at the rate things are going, how will they be able to put together a show by tomorrow evening?

You’re just dancing?

Meanwhile, at the Actors’ Studio Greenhall with the “Gerak-gerak Borak-borak” gang, two groups of young dancers are attempting to choreograph their pieces for the launch, but I am not able to make out what they were doing. One group in particular seems to take the floor for a drum. The funky beat is very cool and contemporary, but the dance appears more MTV than a roti canai-teh tarik dance At least that is what they are supposed to be doing. Twelve year-old Amirul, who appears to be a most natural drummer, doesn’t care: “I boleh menari seperti sotong dan saya suka menari seperti itu lagi.”

Janet is very busy with the other team: “Spin on your butts! Then up! Bounce up! Nonono, not like this… That’s not spinning…” These young people had visited the famous Goddess of Mercy temple the day before. Now they have to convert the sights and sounds of the temple into dance. I can’t understand the spinning on butts, so I asked them. This is what they say: “You know, it’s like when you start a dance you can’t just start dancing, you need some sort of introduction.” So it doesn’t mean anything in particular? “No.” But what are you trying to trying to do through your dance? Are you telling a story? “Nope. We’re just taking the people’s movements we saw at the temple and then we just put them together to make a dance lah!” So that’s what you’re doing? You’re just dancing? *Unanimous nodding of heads*

“At the moment we are not doing in-depth teaching just yet,” explains Janet. “They are supposed to observe the behaviour of people at the temple and put it together with the rhythm and beat. In the future, we will train them how to develop a viewpoint on the things they see and express that opinion through their dance.” Janet believes that all forms of theatre must have a function, to get people, both audience and performers, to reflect on their lives. “Take the Taoist praying at the temple for instance. They can dance that in such a way to make the audience question themselves: ‘Who are we praying to? Why are we praying?’… All theatre must have a function.”

I am a firm believer in the power of youth. Despite having sat through just-plain-awful inter-school drama competitions, I am lucky to have seen enough magical performances by young people to confirm my belief in them. Apparently, Janet Pillai and DiGi believe in them too, as emphasised by the PR personnel: “the DiGi’s Amazing Malaysians project is targeted at children in particular. Who will continue to fight for the arts, who will carry on the conservation work?” The purpose of the DiGi’s Amazing Malaysians project was to educate the future generation of young Malaysians about their roots and culture.

In the past, Digi’s dual mission of heritage awareness and children outreach used to merge in a one day affair. That quickly proved too little time for either. According to the press release: “When DiGi evolved its CSR [Corporate Social Responsibility] programme from the one-day culture workshops it held under the DiGi Yellow Mobile banner to the three-month Amazing Malaysians project, one contributing reason was to be able to ensure the projects create lasting change in the participants and, hopefully, even in the communities they come from.” Janet, who has earned the love of children across Malaysia, some of whom have grown up and gone on to take up careers in the creative line, is certainly a no-brainer choice. The other Amazing Malaysians this year are Bishan Singh (The Champion of Pahang’s Lake Chini); Eddin Khoo (The Shadow Player of Kelantan); Rashid Esa (The Woodcraft Warrior of Selangor); and Laurence Loh (The Heritage Architect of Kedah). Each of them have to design a project in their field involving up to 100 children. Last year’s Amazing Malaysians and their protégés had so far staged an evening of Melanau dance and music in Sarawak, a lion dance and 24 drums performance in Johor, rebuilt a 100-year-old kampong house in Terengganu, and created a wetlands garden and resource centre in Perak.

What a journey!

The evening starts off on an optimistic note as screams and peals of laughter catch my ear as I arrive at SMK Convent Light Street for the Discovery Launch. The participants are gathered in one of the courtyards and cooking up a fuss over their Penang-style cooking. “I think the Char Kuey Teow and Hokkien Mee are trying their best to be Char Kuey Teow and Hokkien Mee,” comments Chee Pok Jin, the Chief Marketing Officer for DiGi. “The rest are rather bland.” Whether or not the food is edible is hardly the point, more importantly, the participants are changing… Some previously quiet, introverted youngsters are more open and confident than before, and Pei Sing from the “Wayang Bayang-bayang” group who complained that he could not understand Malay is now best friends with Hamizal. Maybe the Malaysian government should think of recruiting Janet Pillai and her crew to be national service trainers!

Showtime began when the “Wayang Bayang-bayang” group station themselves behind a white screen to present their take on Yang Xiang Wrestling The Tiger To Save His Father. The students had warned me beforehand that “our puppets are not that good” – I beg to differ. The fluidity of the presentation is slightly affected as the participants have difficulty controlling the puppets, but it is an entertaining show nonetheless. As is typical of student sketches, the dialogue is rather contrived at some parts and there is a liberal dose of slapstick (especially when the tiger grabbed Yang Xiang’s father and jiggled about the screen roaring). Yet somehow, these kids manage to engage the audience and carry them along the waves of the story with the help of an open-air stage, cardboard puppets, and a naïve but refreshing sense of humour.

Then the agile dancers charm the audience with their graceful adaptation of their sightseeing experience at the Kuan Yin temple. Their mesmerising, seductive movements – selling joss sticks, praying, fortune sticks, mediums in a trance – are all improvised upon and sewn together in a tapestry of liquid whirls and glides. (No butt-spinning, by the way.) I am amazed to see that the rattling of the fortune sticks is actually reproduced by hands clapping very fast! One dancer in particular, Ong Huey Huey from Methodist Boy’s School, catches my eye. “I combined what I saw with some Siamese influences, using my own experiences from praying in Siamese temples. They [the facilitators] told us to imagine, and add in some ideas of our own, so I did that because I’m half-Siamese.”

The roti canai-teh tarik crew is next, and soon the audience is bobbing along to the funky beats (this time on Milo tin drums). Who woulda thought tossing roti canai was so cool! Energy levels are on an all time high and this group of young performers is evidently the audience favourite. Between them, the two groups of dancers have managed to capture some vivid images of modern-day Penang, and not just touristy Cuti-cuti Malaysia stuff.

The final performance of the night is an ensemble piece by the music group, who proceeds to take the audience on a “Journey of Sound” around Penang. And what a journey! Probably worth a dozen Manglish-speaking tour guides put together. The variety of sounds replicated is astounding and I gasped and tried (but failed) to identify the “instruments” as we travelled aurally to the Kuan Yin temple, an old-fashioned kopitiam, a spice factory. To think that I was just wondering how they were going to even put up a half-decent performance the day before!

Now all there is left to do is three more months of workshopping. All these creativity and energy will climax on July 15 in a street festival called Heritage Heboh. The children (after today, only about 60 are chosen/remain) will be performing in Little India, and then inside the Teochew Association, then along Pitt Street and finally at Khoo Kongsi. Janet Pillai’s biggest concern, however, are not the youngsters. She wants audiences: “We want to get inner-city residents out of their house and out of their TV habits – to come out to the streets and watch what they are not normally used to.”
~ ~ ~
J-Teoh is a teenaged dramatist.

 

Croc Cayman Clogs. (Once)Ugly, big and funky yet comfortable clog.



The bulky clog with a strap along the heel and holes across the top and around the toes is winning consumers over with its versatility and comfort. Food service and factory workers, hair stylists and hospital personnel buy them for comfort. Boaters and swimmers buy them for function. And some just think they're fun.

I once look at them as some extremely ugly shoes sold in hospitals for elder generation but lately, I'ev been seeing many people, especially foreigners and tourist here wearing them almost everywhere they go. This of course incluse their daily routine of touring all the places in inner city and even shopping malls.

I have just realised that I do walk a lot in a day. Go to school, coming back, having to stand and wait for buses and etc etc. My current school shoes are not really that comfortable and I tend to get leg cramps at night and it hurts everyday. I might get bone and knee problem in future. Now its a great thing to do by buying one of these weird boot-like clogs. They are not made of moods like Dutch's but rubber and very comfortable. It's a bout time someone comes out with this idea. Even my current casual shoes kills me after an extreme long walk. I have no trainers and only one pair of Adidas.


Reasons to get one!(at least)


They come in colors!

1.) Really soft, super comfortable, molds to your feet
2.) Barely there, weighing only 6 ounces
3.) Vented so air passes through, keeping feet cool
4.) Non-marking slip-resistant soles*
5.) Bacteria and odor resistant
6.) Ultra-hip Italian styling
7.) Port holes allow water and sand to pass through
8.) Can be sterilized in water and bleach
9.) Easy maintenance, just wipe clean
10.) Orthotic molded foot bed for ultimate comfort and support




Even for wedding!


*just like a performance tire, when the treads become worn, their slip-resistant nature will be compromised. That¹s when you know it¹s time to treat your feet to a new pair.

Now I just regret not having one when I was in Egypt. And now I will bug my parents to get one, not for me but each of the whole family members!

WHAT'S IN A MARRIAGE??? 1. Marriage is not a word. It's a sentence a life sentence. 2. Marriage is love. Love is blind. Therefore marriage is an institution for the blind. 3. Marriage is an institution in which a man loses his Bachelor, and the woman gets?her masters. 4. Marriage is a three-ring circus: engagement ring, wedding ring and suffering. 5. Married life is full of excitement: In the first year of marriage, the man speaks and the woman listens. In the second year, the woman speaks and the man listens. In the third year, they both speak, and the NEIGHBORS listen. 6. Son: How much does it cost to get married, Dad? Father: I don't know son, I'm still paying. 7. Love is one long sweet dream, and marriage is the alarm clock. 8. They say that when a man holds a woman's hand before marriage, it is love; after marriage it is self- defense. 9. When a newly married man looks happy, we know why. But when a 10-year married man looks happy, we wonder why. 10. There was this lover who said that he would go through hell for her. They got married, and now he is going through HELL. 11. Confucius says: a woman who sinks into a man's arm soon, will soon have her arms in the man's sink. 12. When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her. 13. Eighty percent of married men cheat in America, the rest cheat in Europe. 14. After marriage, husband and wife become two sides of a coin. They can't face each other, but they still stay together. 15. Marriage is when man and a woman become one. The trouble starts when they try to decide which one. 16. "I married Miss right, I just didn't know her first name was Always." 17. It's not true that married men live longer than single men, It only seems longer. 18. Losing a wife can be hard. In my case, it was almost impossible. 19. A man was complaining to a friend: "I HAD IT ALL - MONEY, A BEAUTIFUL HOUSE, THE LOVE OF A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN, THEN POW! IT WAS ALL GONE." "WHAT HAPPENED?" asked his friend. He says "MY WIFE FOUND OUT." 20. WIFE: Let's go out and have some fun tonight. HUSBAND: OK, but if you get home before I do, leave the hallway lights on. 21. At a cocktail party, one woman said to another: "AREN'T YOU WEARING YOUR RING ON THE WRONG FINGER?" The other replied, "YES, I AM. I MARRIED THE WRONG MAN." 22. Man is incomplete until he gets married, then he is finished. 23. No matter how often a married man changes his job, he still endsup with the same boss. 24. A man inserted an ad in the paper - WIFE WANTED. The next day he received two hundred forty eight?letters,?and they all said YOU CAN HAVE MINE. 25. When a man opens the door of his car for his wife, you can be sure of one thing either the car is new or the wife is...