Jump to content

Something Inspirational

Echelon

By Echelon,
in Lite & EZ

 Share

Recommended Posts

Echelon

Echelon

3rd Gear

Something inspirational. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k08yxu57NA

About this contest in the UK called "UK You Got Talent" or something like that. In this segment it is about this ordinary everyday mobile phone sales man that has a dream to be an opera singer when he entered the contest. He lacks self confidence and not the most good looking guy around, he is your everyday Joe. Watch it from start to finish to enjoy the clip. - Cheers.

↡ Advertisement
  • Praise 3
Link to post
Share on other sites
Jman888

Jman888

Moderator
Moulding Heman into Ironman
Chef, ceramic artist and triathlete Heman Tan overcame dyslexia and gangster past
PUBLISHED ON JAN 21, 2015
BY WONG KIM HOH, SENIOR WRITER
ST_20150118_JANKHHEMAN18A_988861e.jpg
Mr Heman Tan, 47, sculpts and fires ceramic art pieces in his home studio. The former gangster’s life changed after he became a student of sculptor and Cultural Medallion winner Ng Eng Teng when he was at a half-way house. -- ST PHOTO: MARK CHEONG
Heman Tan opens the door to his 1,900 sq ft jumbo flat in Woodlands.
A poster of him in a chef's suit hangs on one wall, partly obscured by four racing bicycles stacked one atop the other on a rack. Many of the ceramic art pieces that dot the spacious apartment were sculpted and fired in his home studio which is equipped with a kiln, potter's wheel and work bench.
True to his artistic leanings, the 47-year-old chef, ceramic artist and Ironman triathlete is fashionably decked out in a navy blue floral shirt and a pair of powder blue slim-fit trousers.
He is polite and a little diffident, but that, he says with a laugh, has not always been the case. "You wouldn't have liked me in the past," he says. "I was a b*****d. Every word which came out from my mouth was foul."
Up until his early 20s, he was every parent's nightmare. Dyslexic and deaf in one ear, he dropped out of school in Secondary 2 and became a hell-raising gangster and drug addict.
Two people changed him: the late sculptor and Cultural Medallion winner Ng Eng Teng, and accountant Lydia Lim, who became his wife.
"And when I really matured was when I became a father," says Mr Tan, who has three children aged between eight and 13.
Driven by a hunger to make good, he conquered his learning disability and slogged tirelessly. From a humble cook, he is today the executive chef of JP Pepperdine, overseeing about 30 food outlets including 17 Jack's Place and four Hoshigaoka Japanese restaurants in everything from menu planning to quality control and training.
He says sculptor Ng, regarded by many as the Grandfather of Sculpture in Singapore, once asked him if he wanted to be an ordinary man. "I said I didn't mind. But he scolded me, saying, 'Why do you want to be an ordinary man? You only live life once. You should aspire to be someone special.'"
The third of five children of a vegetable dealer and his wife, he started life on a morbid note.
When he was five, he saw his 12-year-old sister killed in a road accident right in front of him.
"We were going to cross the road together but she stopped and told me to stay where I was and that she would come back and get me," he recalls. Then she was hit, the accident happening in front of their walk-up flat at Havelock Road.
The shock and sight of her bloodied, lifeless body traumatised him. "I couldn't touch or stand the sight of raw meat and blood or anything red for years. It took me a long time to conquer the fear," he says.
The episode probably disturbed him psychologically in other ways. It did not help that he was dyslexic and lost the hearing in his left ear after a high fever when he was 10.
He became impossible at home and in school. He joined a gang, picked up drinking and smoking at 11 and moved on to drugs including heroin at 13.
"I just couldn't cope. I could not read or spell. I could not do maths, especially multiplication and percentages," he recalls, of his days at Nan Chiau Primary School. "My teachers could not understand why my English was so poor and my Mandarin so terrible. To them, I was just lazy and naughty."
He dropped out of Bukit Merah Secondary in Secondary Two. By then, he had driven his parents - who had lost a second child to illness - to their wits' end.
He ended up in a boys' home where he stayed for more than a year after he left school. "It made me even more angry. I asked myself why they didn't want me any more and why they put me in this place?"
After he left the home, he helped out at his father's vegetable business in the mornings and at a relative's Teochew eatery in Clarke Quay in the evenings.
"I helped to wash dishes but was really interested in the cooking. I was amazed raw fish could be so delicious after steaming and suckling pig could become so golden brown and nice after roasting," he says.
Despite stints in halfway houses, he could not quit the company of his ruffian friends or his need for pills and drugs.
After national service, his parents decided to send him to England, hoping that distance from bad company would help him turn over a new leaf.
"My brother got me a job as a cook in Walker's Inn, which catered to backpackers," he says.
It was tough but the kitchen skills he picked up served him well.
"When I dealt with Caucasian customers, I had to look at their lips to fully understand what they were saying," he says.
To get around his dyslexia, he resorted to visuals and graphics to remember recipes.
Narcotics, however, were like his stalker.
He came back after a year and a half and ended up in Agape, a halfway house, where one of the directors noticed his talent in woodcarving and introduced him to Dr Ng.
The artist took him under his wing and taught him how to work with clay. "Dr Ng was very strict. He made me throw clay for nearly half a year. I was so mad," recalls Mr Tan.
But by then, he had managed to overcome his drug habit.
Somehow, working with clay intrigued him.
"Clay is a very different medium from wood. You need to wedge it properly; you can't have air bubbles. Only when everything falls into place will you be able to fire it and come up with a nice piece. If not, it will collapse or even burst."
His fascination with the medium intensified when he found out from one of Dr Ng's students that the artist had actually stopped taking students for more than a decade.
"He said, 'Do you know how lucky you are? So many people have knocked on his door but he said no'... Dr Ng motivated me a lot. He was my spiritual father, very patient and he never gave up on me," he says.
Softly, he relates how he once asked Dr Ng why he helped him.
"He laughed and replied, 'Wo qian ni de ba.'" he says, using the Mandarin expression which means "Maybe because I owe you".
In fact, Dr Ng had so much faith in him that he helped him secure a place to study ceramics at Lasalle College of the Arts, and even took him along as his assistant when he taught at The Potteries at Stoke-on-Trent in England for a few months.
Unfortunately, Mr Tan did not finish his course at Lasalle because the sponsor for his scholarship ran into financial difficulties. Still by 1990, his works were featured in several exhibitions and could fetch a few thousand dollars.
He toyed with the idea of becoming a full-time artist but decided to concentrate on his culinary career because he felt it would help him to make a stable living. He decided to head back to London, where he spent another year at Walker's Inn.
Back in Singapore, he found work as a cook for a small cafe in the police officers' mess near the Botanic Gardens. Over the next decade, he climbed the ranks, from chef de partie to sous chef working for the likes of Prima and Seoul Garden. A chef de partie takes charge of one section of the kitchen while a sous chef is the head chef's right-hand man.
At Seoul Garden, he met his wife Lydia, who was then working in the company's accounts department. They married in 2001 despite strong objections from her parents and friends.
Mrs Tan, 52, says: "He went through a lot. What I admired was his strength in wanting to change, and overcoming what he had gone through."
She reveals a little more. "We were listening a lot to the song Kum Guan," she says, referring to the Hokkien classic titled Willing. "When you are willing to do them, many things are possible."
Just when he thought his trials were over, Mr Tan found himself grappling with another setback.
The couple had taken some loans and poured their savings into opening a restaurant cum lounge called Maxus at the International Business Park in Jurong East in 2003. But poor business and partner problems forced him to throw in the towel barely a year later, just as their first child arrived.
"It was a big lesson. I was too impatient and too impulsive," says Mr Tan, who lost a six-figure sum.
The next couple of years were spent rebuilding his career and life. It was tough as his wife had stopped working to look after their baby and was also pregnant with their second child.
He found work as a canteen manager with catering company ISS.
"I would eat at 4pm at work so that the extra dollars I saved on dinner could help to feed the family," he recalls.
It took a toll on him and his weight plummeted from 78kg to below 60kg.
Around that time, he started running as a way to cope with the stress. Swimming and cycling came next, and he decided to take part in races the following year.
Since then, he has completed countless marathons as well as three Ironman events, where participants must complete a 3.86km swim, a 180.25km bicycle ride and a 42.2km run.
As a child, he loathed such pursuits. But his mother had forced him to take swimming lessons and his father had gone out of his way to teach him how to cycle.
"It made me realise that whatever you learn will not be wasted. It will come back and be of use one day," he says.
Meanwhile, he moved up from canteen supervisor to become executive chef at ISS, overseeing more than 50 factory and hotel canteens.
He went on to work for a couple of other companies, including the JR Group - the catering arm of saucemaker Sin Hwa Dee - before becoming executive chef at JP Pepperdine in 2013.
An executive committee member of the Singapore Chefs Association, he has led local culinary teams in competitions abroad.
He has worked hard to ensure that his dyslexia does not get in the way of doing his job.
"I put a lot of pressure on myself and my staff. Because I represent the company, I make sure that every e-mail I write is correct before I send it out. I always have a dictionary with me, and whatever I do not understand, I will ask my wife."
His wife also taught him how to use spreadsheets and read numbers. "My secret weapon is my accountant wife," he says with a laugh.
Mr Tan is determined to live up to his promise to his mentor Dr Ng and become someone special. That is why he has started a Facebook page and launched a Vimeo series called The Iron Man Chef to offer not just culinary and health tips but also motivational lessons.
His only son - who is eight years old - is dyslexic too. Mr Tan plans to write a cookbook and donate the proceeds to the Dyslexia Association of Singapore to help raise awareness about the condition.
"I don't know what's next but I walk with faith. I've learnt that the journey is as important as the destination."

 

 

honestly i can hardly imagine so many events can squeeze into 47 years of a life [thumbsup][thumbsup]
  • Praise 2
Link to post
Share on other sites
Vid

Vid

Hypersonic

http://newsfeed.gawker.com/what-happened-to-the-runner-who-shit-himself-during-a-h-1681442684?utm_campaign=socialflow_gawker_facebook&utm_source=gawker_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

 

 

What Happened to the Runner Who Shit Himself During a Half-Marathon?

afscuecqn42cpv1comlf.jpg

Years after Swedish distance runner Mikael Ekvall crapped his shorts in the midst of a half-marathon, his photo still shows up on Facebook. You might've seen it with a "fail" caption or a demotivational poster—played-out viral image formats that were de rigueur at the time—or in any number of "world's most embarrassing photos" compilations. Clearly, people still haven't gotten over Ekvall's uncomfortable grimace and the liquified shit trickling down his legs.

Micke Ekvall seems to have gotten over it, though. The runner who was once saddled with the nickname "bajsmannen" ("poop man") finished that 2008 race, the Göteborg half-marathon, in 21st place. In a post-race interview, a reporter asked him, "Did you ever consider stopping to clean off?"

"No, I'd lose time," he explained, "If you quit once, it's easy to do it again and again and again. It becomes a habit."

"Despite the enormous problems with stomach cramps that lasted between two and 12 kilometers, Micke completed his goal," Swedish site Jesper.nu reported, "He did fine with [a time of] 1:09:43 and came in a creditable 21st. This is despite the misery! Imagine what he could accomplish without a bad stomach."

The poop man, now 25 years old, has accomplished quite a bit since then. He ran the same race the following year, placing 9th. He went on to set a Swedish national record at the Copenhagen half-marathon in 2014, and represented Sweden at the European Athletic Championships.

hfcc2pauvckexcre0vnu.png

Ekvall's story is truly an inspirational one: Never quit. If you can live down running around in public with your own feces streaming off your bare legs, you can live down practically anything. Either that or never, ever, leave the house, because anything you do could go horribly wrong and everyone is looking at you.

Whatever. It's up to each of us to receive the poop man's wisdom in our own way.

 

  • Praise 4
Link to post
Share on other sites
Philipkee

Philipkee

Twincharged

Happy Mon! Something to share w you..

 

A cruise ship met with an incident at sea, on the ship was a pair of couple, after having made their way to the lifeboat, they realized that there was only space for one person left.

 

At this moment, the man pushed the woman behind him and jumped onto the lifebuoy himself.

 

The lady stood on the sinking ship and shouted one sentence to her husband.

 

The teacher stopped and asked, "What do you think she shouted?"

 

Most of the students excitedly answered, "I hate you! I was blind!"

 

Now, the teacher noticed a boy who was silent throughout, she got him to answer and he replied, "Teacher, I believe she would have shouted - Take care of our child!"

 

The teacher was surprised, asking "Have you heard this story before?"

 

The boy shook his head, "Nope, but that was what my mum told my dad before she died to disease".

 

The teacher lamented, "The answer is right".

 

The cruise sunk, the man went home and brought up their daughter single-handedly.

 

Many years later after the death of the man, their daughter found his diary while tidying his belongings.

 

It turns out that when parents went onto the cruise ship, the mother was already diagnosed with a terminal illness.

At the critical moment, the father rushed to the only chance of survival.

 

He wrote in his diary, "How I wished to sink to the bottom of the ocean with you, but for the sake of our daughter, I can only let you lie forever below the sea alone".

 

The story is finished, the class was silent.

 

The teacher knows that the student has understood the moral of the story, that of the good and the evil in the world, there are many complications behind them which are hard to understand.

 

Which is why we should never only focus on the surface and judge others without understanding them first.

 

Those who like to pay the bill, does so not because they are loaded but because they value friendship above money.

 

Those who take the initiative at work, does so not because they are stupid but because they understand the concept of responsibility.

 

Those who apologizes first after a fight, does so not because they are wrong but because they value the people around them.

 

Those who are willing to help you, does so not because they owe you any thing but because they see you as a true friend.

 

Those who often text you, does so not because they have nothing better to do but because you are in their heart.

 

Saw this in SMS. Tot should share

  • Praise 8
Link to post
Share on other sites
Columbian78

Columbian78

6th Gear

A similar story is the father and son and their mule.

Just heard it last night from the channel U TVB show, the confidant. Li LianYing the enuch was relating this story.

 

Father and son bought a mule from market and were both walking home with it. Along the way, people laughed at them saying they are stupid to walk and not ride on the mule.

So the father sat on the mule while the son walked. People started criticizing the father making his young son walked while he sat comfortably on the mule.

So father decided to walk and let his son ride the mule. Thereafter people started criticizing the son for making his old father walk.

Then father and son decided to both ride on the mule. People also criticize that they are unkind to the poor animal, overloading it.

 

Whatever you do also kenna complained. So just trust yourself doing the right thing.

 

My personal advice is to stay out of the limelight if you foresee what you do will kenna criticize.

  • Praise 2
Link to post
Share on other sites
FourZero

FourZero

Hypersonic

 

 

honestly i can hardly imagine so many events can squeeze into 47 years of a life [thumbsup][thumbsup]

 

 

Yep,,,,,,,,,,,,, a true inspiring story [thumbsup] really call life [thumbsup]

  • Praise 1
Link to post
Share on other sites
Vid

Vid

Hypersonic

Wonderful gesture by Robert Downey Jr.

 

http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/celebrity-life/robert-downey-jr-made-a-young-boys-dream-come-true/story-fn907478-1227260877436

 

 

THIS adorable video proves why Robert Downey Jr is one of the nicest guys in showbiz and how he made a young boy’s dream come true.

Downey Jr gave the most incredible gift to seven-year-old Alex who was born with a partially developed right arm.

 

Thanks to the work of Albert Manero, a college student who creates 3-D printed bionic arms for children, Alex was able to get his own custom fitted, working bionic arm presented to him by the Iron Man himself

 

Manero teamed up with Microsoft OneNote and non-profit Limbitless Solutions to develop the Iron Man bionic arm.

It didn’t take long for Alex to get to grips with his new arm which will surely make him the coolest kid in school.

 

Click to watch video.

 


I watched it like 5 or 6 times

  • Praise 3
Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share
Go to topic listing
×
×
  • Create New...