Journey home

Stripes and spots
In front of me
A girl toying
with smartphone
A child at the window
lost in her novel
A babble of voices
Excitement and anxiety
People rushing home
from work
A sharp turn
People hold on to the bars
The traffic light turns red
Children cross the road
On the way to school
Friendly chatter, love,
dreams, emotions
unite
on the bus ride
Soon there is
A flurry of beeps
People tap their cards and exit
The bus has reached
the bus-stop
Where are you going next?

© copyright skm, 18th July, 2013

 

 

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Annoying questions ???

 

What are some questions that irritate you?  There is no shortage of people who like
to poke their nose in others affairs and like to just ask annoying questions and offer
even more annoying advice.  It is good to have some answers ready for such irritating
questions ( I hope that I would be able to answer this way – there is no choice but to
put off such ridiculous queries).

Q. A bachelor is asked: When are you getting married?
Are you running a match-making agency?.  Or do you work as a marriage broker?

Q. A married guy is asked: When are you planning for a child?
As soon as I figure out how – do you have any tips or suggestions?

Q. A couple expecting their first child is quizzed – Is it a boy or a girl?
      Do you want to accompany us to the doctor to find out?

Q. A couple who has a child is asked:  Aren’t you planning for a second child?
How soon do you need to know that – let me call my husband

Q. And here comes the most annoying one – “Do you like your mama or papa more?”
     Innocent kids find it very difficult to answer this one and are put in a spot.  Give them a break.’

Q. At a restaurant – asking the waiter if a particular dish is good?
      I have yet to come across a waiter who will say that the food in his restaurant is not good.

Then there are those that ask you the most obvious questions..

You are drenched and they go – Q.  Is it raining outside?
      No.  Its so hot that I had a shower before work

You are watching a movie and they ask – Q. Are you watching a movie?
No I’m trying to teleport myself into the TV

What are some of the questions that annoy you the most?

Lincoln’s Gettysburg address

On November 19, 1863, President Lincoln went to the battlefield to dedicate it as a National Cemetery. Over time, however, this speech with its ending – government of the People, by the People, for the People – has come to symbolize the definition of democracy itself.  The Gettysburg Address stands as a masterpiece of persuasive rhetoric.  It is one of my favourite speeches:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate – we cannot consecrate – we cannot hallow – this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

President Abraham Lincoln – November 19, 1863