SM BLOG

Once a group of 50 people were attending a seminar. Suddenly the speaker stopped and decided to do a group activity. He started giving each attendee one balloon. Each one was asked to write his/her name on it using a marker pen. Then all the balloons were collected and put in another room. Now these delegates were let into that room and asked to find the balloon which had their name written within 5 minutes. Everyone was frantically searching for their name, colliding with each other, pushing around others and there was utter chaos. At the end of 5 minutes no one could find their own balloon. Now each one was asked to randomly collect a balloon and give it to the person whose name was written on it. Within minutes everyone had their own balloon. The speaker then began, “This is happening in our lives. Everyone is frantically looking for happiness all around, not knowing where it is. Our happiness lies in the happiness of other people. Give them their happiness; you will get yo...

An elderly carpenter was ready to retire. He told his employer-contractor of his plans to leave the house-building business to live a more leisurely life with his wife and enjoy his extended family. He would miss the paycheck each week, but he wanted to retire. They could get by. The contractor was sorry to see his good worker go & asked if he could build just one more house as a personal favor. The carpenter said yes, but over time it was easy to see that his heart was not in his work. He resorted to shoddy workmanship and used inferior materials. It was an unfortunate way to end a dedicated career. When the carpenter finished his work, his employer came to inspect the house. Then he handed the front-door key to the carpenter and said, “This is your house… my gift to you.” The carpenter was shocked! What a shame! If he had only known he was building his own house, he would have done it all so differently. So it is with us. We build our lives, a day at a time, often putt...

A well known speaker started off his seminar by holding up a $20 bill. In the room of 200, he asked, “Who would like this $20 bill?” Hands started going up. He said, “I am going to give this $20 to one of you but first, let me do this.” He proceeded to crumple the dollar bill up. He then asked, “Who still wants it?” Still the hands were up in the air. “Well,” he replied, “What if I do this?” And he dropped it on the ground and started to grind it into the floor with his shoe. He picked it up, now all crumpled and dirty. “Now who still wants it?” Still the hands went into the air. “My friends, you have all learned a very valuable lesson. No matter what I did to the money, you still wanted it because it did not decrease in value. It was still worth $20. Many times in our lives, we are dropped, crumpled, and ground into the dirt by the decisions we make and the circumstances that come our way. We feel as though we are worthless. But no matter what has happened or what w...

There was a man who had four sons. He wanted his sons to learn to not judge things too quickly. So he sent them each on a quest, in turn, to go and look at a pear tree that was a great distance away. The first son went in the winter, the second in the spring, the third in summer, and the youngest son in the fall. When they had all gone and come back, he called them together to describe what they had seen. The first son said that the tree was ugly, bent, and twisted. The second son said no – it was covered with green buds and full of promise. The third son disagreed, he said it was laden with blossoms that smelled so sweet and looked so beautiful, it was the most graceful thing he had ever seen. The last son disagreed with all of them; he said it was ripe and drooping with fruit, full of life and fulfilment. The man then explained to his sons that they were all right, because they had each seen but one season in the tree’s life. He told them that you cannot judge a tree...

he first day of school our professor introduced himself and challenged us to get to know someone we didn’t already know. I stood up to look around when a gentle hand touched my shoulder. I turned around to find a wrinkled, little old lady beaming up at me with a smile that lit up her entire being. She said, “Hi handsome. My name is Rose. I’m eighty-seven years old. Can I give you a hug?” I laughed and enthusiastically responded, “Of course you may!” and she gave me a giant squeeze. “Why are you in college at such a young, innocent age?” I asked. She jokingly replied, “I’m here to meet a rich husband, get married, and have a couple of kids…” “No seriously,” I asked. I was curious what may have motivated her to be taking on this challenge at her age. “I always dreamed of having a college education and now I’m getting one!” she told me. After class we walked to the student union building and shared a chocolate milkshake. We became instant friends. Every day for the next t...

ometimes people come into your life and you know right away that they were meant to be there, to serve some sort of purpose, teach you a lesson, or to help you figure out who you are or who you want to become. You never know who these people may be (possibly your roommate, neighbor, coworker, longlost friend, lover, or even a complete stranger) but when you lock eyes with them, you know at that very moment that they will affect your life in some profound way. And sometimes things happen to you that may seem horrible, painful, and unfair at first, but in reflection you find that without overcoming those obstacles you would have never realized your potential, strength, willpower, or heart. Everything happens for a reason. Nothing happens by chance or by means of luck. Illness, injury, love, lost moments of true greatness, and sheer stupidity all occur to test the limits of your soul. Without these small tests, whatever they may be, life would be like a smoothly paved, straight, flat...

The natural ecology of malaria involves malaria parasites infecting successively two types of hosts: humans and female  Anopheles  mosquitoes. In humans, the parasites grow and multiply first in the liver cells and then in the red cells of the blood. In the blood, successive broods of parasites grow inside the red cells and destroy them, releasing daughter parasites ("merozoites") that continue the cycle by invading other red cells. The blood stage parasites are those that cause the symptoms of malaria. When certain forms of blood stage parasites ("gametocytes") are picked up by a female  Anopheles  mosquito during a blood meal, they start another, different cycle of growth and multiplication in the mosquito. After 10-18 days, the parasites are found (as "sporozoites") in the mosquito's salivary glands. When the  Anopheles  mosquito takes a blood meal on another human, the sporozoites are injected with the mosquito's saliva and start another...

Murasaki Shikibu THE ART ARCHIVE/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK We're willing to bet your high school English classes featured lots of novels by male writers, from Twain to Dickens to Hemingway. But their craft may not even have existed if it hadn't been for Murasaki Shikibu, a Japanese woman widely considered to be the world's first novelist. Shikibu was a noblewoman living in Japan around the year 1000 AD. She wrote a two-part novel called  The Tale of Genji , which tells a riches-to-rags story about the son of a Japanese emperor forced to live life as a commoner. In addition to  The Tale of Genji , widely considered to be a masterpiece of Japanese literature, Shikibu also wrote a book of poetry. A statue in Kyoto, Japan, commemorates this pioneering writer. Check out these other  incredible female firsts, from Ancient Egypt to the 21st century . Maria Sibylla Merian UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK Today, children as young as preschool can happily ...

COURTESY MCBRIDE SOMOS CONSULTING When I was 35, I would get tired all the time. Whenever it happened, I would wait for the feeling to pass, even if that meant I had to pull over while I was driving and take a quick nap. During a routine checkup, I told the doctor I struggled with exhaustion. She checked my heart and blood pressure, discovering I had a low heart rate. She sent me for an EKG and they immediately sent me to the hospital. During the 72-hour monitoring period, I had to lay down 14 times, because I was fatigued. I was diagnosed with a slow heartbeat. All I could do was pray and hope that when I had my appointment a few weeks later with a top heart specialist, my report would have good news. I shared the story with my church and we all prayed. This was a year after my sister had to get open heart surgery and I cried a lot thinking that I would have to go through the same thing my sister did. When the day came for my appointment with the specialist, he said, "With...

Who's in  Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them 2 ? Eddie Redmayne is returning as Newt Scamander, Katherine Waterston as Porpentina Goldstein, Dan Fogler as Jacob Kowalski and Alison Sudol as Queenie Goldstein. Carmen Ejogo, who portrayed the President of MACUSA Seraphina Picquery in the first film, is also returning. You probably already know that Johnny Depp takes on the role of Gellert Grindelwald and Jude Law stars as a young Albus Dumbledore, but other new characters include Leta Lestrange (played by Zoë Kravitz), Newt's older brother Theseus Scamander (played by Callum Turner), Credence Barebone (played by Ezra Miller) and an unnamed woman played by Claudia Kim. According to  Pottermore , this woman is a Maledictus, described as "someone who suffers from a 'blood curse' that turns them into a beast." Brontis Jodorowsky will play  Nicholas Flamel  in the sequel, and is joined by Wolf Roth as Spielman,  Call The Midwife ' s Victoria Yeates ...

Murray has lost his British number one ranking to Kyle Edmund Andy Murray could make his return from hip surgery at one of two new indoor events in Britain later this spring. Murray said after his operation  that he hoped to return "around the grass court season, or maybe slightly before". The Scot, 30, is unlikely to want to return on physically demanding clay, which precedes the grass court season, and his options elsewhere are limited. But the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) has announced two new indoor hard court events in Glasgow and Loughborough. Both will be staged on the ATP Challenger Tour, the level below the ATP World Tour, with a prize fund of $100,000 (£72,000) The first will take place at the Scotstoun Tennis Centre in Glasgow between 28 April and 6 May. The second is scheduled for Loughborough University's Tennis Centre from 19-27 May. The LTA says the tournaments will provide "quality playing opportunities for British players" in ...