Serious Heroes of this World

[Sikodolaukazzz]

Well Done everyone.
Good job in saving the man.

This made my day: Yishun coffee shop patrons and doctor save man who collapsed​

When a man collapsed in a coffee shop in Yishun, a few patrons and a doctor wasted no time in helping him, likely saving his life.

Roslan Rahman, who operates a satay stall at the coffee shop in question, detailed the incident in a Facebook post on Wednesday (Oct 30).

His assistant and close friend, Rahmat, had gone to the coffee shop on his day off after cycling and suddenly collapsed as he was having a seizure, said Roslan.

Rahmat also stopped breathing soon after, he added.

Upon witnessing this, a woman who was sitting near the collapsed man sprung into action, instructing bystanders to lay him on the floor.

Another coffee shop patron ran to the nearby Heartland Clinic at Yishun Street 31 to fetch a doctor, while a third bystander called an ambulance.

CPR administered by doctor​

A Dr Lee, who arrived at the scene almost immediately, began performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on Rahmat, said Roslan.

The female patron then got an Automated External Defibrillator (AED) and assisted Dr Lee in using it.

Their efforts paid off, as the man started breathing again, although remaining unconscious.

Meanwhile, the patron who had called an ambulance waited by the road to guide paramedics to the scene.

Responding to AsiaOne's queries, the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) said that it received a call for assistance at Block 335C Yishun Street 31 on Tuesday, at about 8:10pm.

SCDF conveyed a person to Khoo Teck Puat Hospital.

In his post, Roslan wrote that Rahmat is currently in the intensive care unit (ICU) at the hospital, where he remains unconscious but in stable condition.

He thanked Dr Lee, the female patron who took charge, and all others that helped his friend.

"Without you and the lady diner, a life could have been lost today. Everyone at the coffee shop played a part during this emergency. Thanks to all," wrote Roslan.

"This shows the racial harmony that we enjoyed at Yishun Riverwalk," he added.

AsiaOne has reached out to Roslan and Heartland Family Clinic for more information.



A few patrons at a coffeeshop and a doctor from the nearby clinic saved a man's life after he collapsed from a seizure.

 

[Sikodolaukazzz]

How many have helped the poor and the hungry.
Or just walked by the person thinking no one has seen you walk by.
Well Done Thomas
God is very happy with you.

A man, a cooler of sack lunches and a mission: How a formerly unhoused New Yorker helps combat food insecurity in his city​

Outside Macy’s flagship store in Herald Square, a young woman sits on a brown sheet of cardboard, her knees drawn tightly to her chest and her head buried between them. An endless stream of New Yorkers and tourists toting fancy shopping bags pass by without so much as registering her existence.

But when Henry Thomas sees her, he rushes to cross the street, dragging a beat-up gray cooler on wheels behind him.

“Are you hungry?” he asks as he approaches her spot on the sidewalk.

Without saying a word or meeting his eyes, the woman nods quickly and accepts the Wendy’s bag Thomas pulls out of his cooler. Inside is a burger, fries, chicken nuggets, a packet of honey mustard and a plastic cup of Sprite.

Thomas tries to talk with her, but the young woman stays quiet, distant. Without judgment, he grabs his cooler by its handle and shoves off through the crowd, his grown son following closely behind.

Thomas starts off each day with a cooler full of food and drinks, walking the city’s streets and subway system handing them out until it’s empty.

As a formerly unhoused person, Thomas holds the cause near to his heart. “I see myself in their eyes. I was once where they are at and I desperately want to help them,” the 47-year-old father of two tells CNN, his eyes darting from corner to corner in search of others who might be hungry.

His Free Food for the Homeless program was inspired by generosity bequeathed upon a friend of his nearly a decade ago and fueled by volunteers and donations from the public. As a formerly unhoused person himself, Thomas can “see myself in their eyes,” he says of those in need.

New York City is experiencing its highest level of homelessness since the Great Depression, according to the non-profit group Coalition for the Homeless. In August, more than 350,000 unhoused people slept in shelters, with friends and family, on city streets or subways throughout the five boroughs, the group estimates. Another New York non-profit, City Harvest, says nearly 1.3 million residents are food insecure, including 1 in 4 children, in America’s most populous city.

But figures – no matter how startling – don’t mean much to Thomas.

“You can’t force a feeling out of the statistics,” he says. “But if you actually look closely and see just one person in that situation, it will give you more emotions than any number, no matter how big.”

“This is a human being,” he insists. “Do you understand?”

Standing on the corner of West 33rd Street beside Greeley Square Park, Thomas lifts the lid off his cooler and counts out loud the number of Wendy’s meals he has left.

Nine.

Today’s haul isn’t much, he says. But its impact could be great.

“I’m not giving them food. I’m giving them hope.”

A daunting task​

On the downtown 1 Train, Thomas and his 22-year-old son, Carl, both wear gray shirts that read “Free Food for the Homeless and the Hungry.” They stand on either side of the cooler. It’s large – the kind that doubles as a table, complete with cup holders – clunky and difficult to maneuver on a packed train. But they don’t seem to mind.

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, we do apologize for any disturbance. Is there anyone on this train who’s hungry?” Thomas bellows from the center of the car.

“We feed the homeless and the hungry on a daily basis. Please help us feed the homeless. We do not ask for much. By donating one penny or more, if you choose, you could help us feed the homeless and hungry.

“And, ladies and gentlemen, we do also accept smiles.”

At that, several passengers smile at Thomas, and he beams back.

“Yes, we gladly accept smiles,” he repeats as he walks down the aisle gathering donations from three people who hold out dollar bills.

Free Food for the Homeless runs almost entirely on the kindness of strangers who see Thomas on the trains with his cooler. His daily cache – usually ranging from $60 to $100 but sometimes up to $250 – buys food for the next day. He also gets food donations from local grassroots groups, including environmental group raeri, which he says gave him 28,000 pounds of food last year, and Staten Island Therapeutic Gardens, which works for food justice.

On weeks when donations are especially low and Thomas encounters lots of needy New Yorkers, he uses his own money to buy as much wheat bread, roast beef and American cheese as he can, then hands out homemade sandwiches.

Even on days like this, when all he has is 10 Wendy’s meals, Thomas loads up his cooler and heads out to find the hungry. At the very least, he says, it lets those people know they haven’t been forgotten.

It’s a lesson he learned from a close friend and neighbor on Staten Island, Rolando “Divine” Farrow, who once got a sandwich from a stranger when he was unhoused – a circumstance Thomas had been in as a child and a young adult struggling with substance abuse. Farrow in 2013 invited Thomas to help him distribute meals to the homeless, and two years later, Thomas launched Free Food for the Homeless.

So far, they’ve fed at least 140,000 people – an average of 50 people a day, six days a week, for the past nine years – estimates Thomas, who’s supported by his partner and public assistance while he builds the charity.

But with the number of unhoused and hungry people in New York City only growing, the task often feels daunting.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/07/us/henry-thomas-nyc-food-homeless-hungry/index.html

 

[Sikodolaukazzz]

The real good wives
Damn the Colonials

Afghanistan village Life| Village girls cooked chicken in a different style​

@Robert217-​

1 month ago
it sure is relaxing watching these beautiful ladies working hard preparing good food

@abushaheed875​

2 weeks ago (edited)
Natural beauty and a life with nature. Please let them live their own conventional way without foreign intervention.

 

[Sikodolaukazzz]

What a good loving father

Before Dying, Dad Saved Son on Capsizing Boat by Putting Him in a Cooler Box: ‘After a Little While, He Just Let Go’​

Charlotte Phillipp
Sun, 17 November 2024 at 3:35 pm GMT-8·3-min read

The 13-year-old boy described the moment his father saved his life as their crab boat capsized

A 13-year-old boy, who was the only survivor of a boating accident off the California coast, is reflecting on how his father saved his life.

On Nov. 2, a 21-foot white Bayliner crab boat carrying three adults and three children — including teenager Juladi “Jude” Khammoungkhoune and his dad Prasong — was reported overdue after traveling off the coast of Bodega, the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office previously reported.

The boat capsized, sending Jude and his family members scrambling to stay afloat, per a CBS Bay Area interview with Jude on Saturday, Nov. 15.

"It was already filled up in one side, and it was already too late before I noticed," the teen told the outlet, recalling the moment when he and the rest of the boat's passengers — including his 17-year-old brother, his uncle Johnny, Johnny's two sons and a family friend — realized that their vessel was quickly filling with water and was going to tip over in rough water.

"As soon as we were on our last equipment, we decided to just floor the boat," Jude added. "It was already kind of too late and the water was already forming inside. So, we just started flooring it a little bit until the equipment snapped. As soon as we kind of went a little bit faster, the boat just stopped working and we just went overboard with our life jackets on."

The teenager said that everyone either jumped into the ocean or tried to cling to the boat.

"I remember some of us splitting up in the water and some of us stayed on the boat like holding on," he recalled. "Some of us went different ways. Like me and my dad were on the cooler and some of us were split up."


Thanks to his father's quick thinking, Jude was quickly tucked inside of a cooler. Prasong held on to the cooler from the outside in an attempt to stay afloat, but Jude said his father let go of the cooler in hopes his son would reach shore sooner.

But "after a little while, he just let go," Jude said, remembering his father's sacrifice

Jude recalled how he didn't know how long the ordeal lasted or where he was, he told CBS.

"I just thought about my family," he said. "I just decided to be smart about it and fall sleep and see what I got and just use it to get out of here."

Shanice, Prasong's older sister, told CBS that it was painful to hear about her brother making the decision to try and save his son.

"That broke my heart," she said. "I mean to hear that he probably had to make a choice."

Shanice added to CBS that the family hosted a vigil on the shore of Bodega Bay, where the boat set off from more than two weeks ago, to honor the passengers who have died and those who are still missing.

Jude’s brother, identified by the sheriff's office as 17-year-old Johnny Phommathep II, was found dead after the incident. The missing passengers are presumed dead.

"Tomorrow's vigil is about allowing my brother's life, my cousin's life, my nephew's life to kind of find their way and just be set free and not trapped at wherever they're at," Shanice said.


https://sg.yahoo.com/news/dying-dad-saved-son-capsizing-233500784.html












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[JurongEast]

Up

 

[Sikodolaukazzz]

This little boy is a Hero while his mother's murderer is a Nazi War Criminal.

@Omabedalrahman2​

2 weeks ago
I'm a mother of 4 kids from Palestine, my family and my husband's family have all passed away. We will not give up and will continue our path despite all circumstances. Thank you to those who supported and encouraged me. May God bless you

@annoyingannonymous3181​

2 weeks ago
He reminds me of my nephew, same age, same looks....I burst into tears when I imagine my nephew in this scenario... This kid is so so so brave to cope with such a loss and grief.

@dixitmadhav907​

2 weeks ago
God bless you little champ, may god give you more strength to bear the pain and bless you to the infinity. A kids emotional connect to his mother cannot be expressed in words. I wish almighty God to shower the blessings

 

[Sikodolaukazzz]

A real Hero
Was it his prayers, never give up attitude, his nature or NS training (lol)
I think a combination of all.

'Never trust anyone': Singaporean robbed in Barcelona refuses to give up, tracks down and confronts culprits​

https://www.asiaone.com/singapore/n...erral&utm_campaign=A1+trending&utm_content=c1

 

[Sikodolaukazzz]

What a Heroine and an 18 year old wrongly sentenced to Death by people and Judges who think they are not answerable to God.

But will God have mercy on these Judges who sentence a person to death and then go home and celebrate their status as a "highly regarded and respected" person who can legally kill another human.

------- Singapore judges probably love their murder trials. The mentally challenged youth----- A psychologist (while other govt psychologists say he was fine) assessed his IQ to be 69.

"At the end of the hearing, Dharmalingam and his family wept as they grasped each others’ hands through a gap in a glass screen, Reuters reported, adding that Dharmalingam’s cries of “ma” – which means “mother” – could be heard in the courtroom".

By the way he did not kill anyone but trafficked more than 15 mg of drugs -- less than a table spoon-- while the drug lord probably mingles with the politically connected.

I Befriended A Man On Death Row. Here's What He Taught Me Before He Was Put To Death.​

Jennifer Wasserstein
Thu, 26 December 2024 at 6:31 pm GMT-8·7-min read

A photo of Brandon Bernard that he sent to the author.
Courtesy of Jennifer Wasserstein

Brandon Bernard called and emailed me daily in the two months before his execution. We spoke a few hours before he was executed and some of our last words were spent discussing his last words. For the first time, his optimism was gone. Even the day before, he sounded hopeful because he had heard that the Department of Justice’s Office of the Pardon Attorney strongly recommended his sentence be commuted to life in prison.

Brandon read his speech to the Pardon Office to me before presenting it, and the profound level of remorse he expressed brought me to tears. He was a different person from the teenager arrested over 20 years earlier. Up until the end, he did not think he would be executed because he knew he had reformed.

I began writing to death row prisoners after reading Bryan Stevenson’s book Just Mercy about an innocent man condemned to death row. Books often change my course; I read a book on factory farming a few years ago and haven’t eaten meat since. After reading Just Mercy, I sent out postcards to about a dozen death row inmates across the U.S. When I started what my husband, family, and friends universally consider an odd hobby, I had no idea how gratifying and life-altering writing death row prisoners would become.

When we first began exchanging letters a year ago, I warned Brandon that I had one other pen pal at Terre Haute Federal Penitentiary. In my experience, inmates do not want to write someone with multiple pen pals at the same facility out of legitimate concerns over privacy and safety. Brandon’s immediate response was, “Well, then that makes me one of the two luckiest men at Terre Haute.” To call himself lucky after over two decades of solitary confinement 23 hours a day in a six-by-eight-foot cell was the first of many lessons in gratitude Brandon taught me.

Brandon was 18 when he took part in a robbery gone wrong. He had no prior history of violence. Brandon’s friends carjacked a white couple, Todd and Stacie Bagley, youth ministers innocently offering a ride to kids purportedly in need. Later, Brandon rejoined the group only to see Christopher Vialva, the ringleader of the crime, fatally shoot Todd and Stacie in the head at close range. The man who had just shot two people in the head and still had a gun in his hand then ordered Brandon and three other teens to set the car on fire with the couple’s bodies inside. Brandon did as he was told.

At trial, Brandon’s court-appointed lawyer made no opening statement, meaning he offered the jury no alternative perspective on the charges. Brandon was the only accomplice not given an opportunity to plead guilty. The other accomplices pleaded out and received prison sentences; two are home with their families now.

Brandon was falsely portrayed as a hardened, high-level gang member. Prosecutors suppressed evidence by their own gang expert that the gang had a 13-tier hierarchy with Brandon at the very bottom. Brandon never got the chance to clarify his case in court — it remained the story poorly told at trial two decades earlier. Five of the nine surviving jurors later did a public about-face, stating that they would not have voted for the death penalty had prosecutors disclosed all facts at trial and had Brandon’s own lawyer competently defended him.

In her dissent written hours before Brandon’s execution, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the execution was taking place “despite troubling allegations that the Government secured his death sentence by withholding exculpatory evidence and knowingly eliciting false testimony against him. [He] has never had the opportunity to test the merits of those claims in court. Now he never will.” Brandon became the youngest person, based on age when the offense occurred, to be put to death by the federal government in nearly 70 years, according to NBC News. He was 40 when he died.

Brandon Bell / Getty Images

Brandon loved his life, even in its limited capacity on death row. He did not have a single disciplinary infraction in his decades behind bars. This is no small feat given that death row is like a prison within a prison, with countless oppressive rules and ensuing frustrations.

Brandon mainly spent his time mentoring at-risk youth, reading, crocheting and playing the guitar. Brandon was calmer and more patient than most people I’ve come across; he spoke slowly and thoughtfully and was an avid listener. He never cursed and when I asked if that was for religious reasons, he said, “No, cursing just feels too aggressive to me.”

A few days before his execution, Brandon’s family visited him for the last time. After the visit, Brandon told me there was a hole in the pane of glass. I naively said, “Oh, so you were able to hold hands.” He explained it was an air hole to speak through, not large enough for hands, “But,” he said, “I could smell my mom.” In 20 years, including in his final days, Brandon was never allowed to physically touch a loved one. Never having physical contact is an inhumane daily assault on the soul.

Brandon’s case fits the death row profile: His crime and trial took place in Texas, a state that has executed one-third of the national total. Brandon’s jury consisted of 11 white jurors. Brandon was Black — despite being 13% of the U.S. population, Blacks constitute 42% of death row inmates. The victims are white in approximately 80% of homicide death penalty cases. A recent Death Penalty Information Center study found that in executions involving interracial murders since 1976, 295 Black defendants were executed for killing white victims, while only 21 white defendants were executed for killing Black victims. Death row is riddled with racial bias and is disproportionately home to Black men who have committed an alleged crime against a white person. Fairness cannot be achieved. Executions in our country, whether with rope or needle, have always been about race.

President Joe Biden once pledged to abolish the federal death penalty and to give incentives for states to do the same. There is a simple alternative to government executions: Keep people behind bars without resorting to killing them. Two-thirds of countries worldwide have abolished the death penalty. Italy abolished the death penalty in 1948; England in 1969. In the Netherlands, the last execution took place in 1952; Australia in 1967. Since ending the death penalty in 1976, Canada’s murder rate has steadily declined. The U.S. is the only Western democracy to conduct executions. Even Russia stopped executions in 1996. Our country keeps dubious company with China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt and Pakistan. We are very late in ending state-sponsored executions. It can be done; last month Virginia became the 23rd state to abolish the death penalty. Brandon, with his typical positivity, would say now is the time. ------ SINGAPORE

Friends sitting on death row for years have taught me many lessons: patience, keeping the conversation real and meaningful, and appreciating what I have. The hassle of driving my daughter to school is now about holding her hand at stoplights and rolling the windows down so I can feel the air. The freedom.

I’ve learned that pure good and evil rarely exist in reality and that I can do better than unequivocal righteousness. But, mainly I’ve discovered that love is such a fundamental need of all people that it can create a bond between a “suburban white girl,” as one San Quentin friend calls me, and a former LA gang member who has forsaken the drugs and crime of his youth. I’ve also come to understand that people can profoundly change with time.

During our daily talks, I never had anything to offer Brandon other than my love and support. He never asked me for a single thing besides friendship. Brandon was religious, but since I’m not, I couldn’t offer him prayers or talk about how heaven is a better place. I could only helplessly listen and tell him that I love him.

Brandon’s final words were his deep regret to the victims’ families, his love for his own family and, true to his thoughtful nature, he told the prison guards not to let his execution upset them. Our final words to each other were about what he would visualize on the gurney to stay calm. I told him to imagine my arms holding him down instead of straps and he promised he would. I was crying and told him I was sorry I couldn’t save him. He said I saved him with my love. And we said goodbye.


Jennifer Wasserstein is an immigration lawyer and lives in Italy with her husband and daughter.

https://sg.yahoo.com/news/befriended-man-death-row-heres-023102948.html

 

[Sikodolaukazzz]

I have to thank Lily's Wai Sek Hong for all the wonderful recipes that she posts on her website below which I can share with my fellow villagers in my village by Lake Victoria, Uganda.

Today I had Kueh Bingka with my fellow villagers who were extremely impressed.

https://lilyng2000.blogspot.com/search?q=kuih+bingka+ubi

 

[Sikodolaukazzz]

What a Hero.
Well done bro



This B.C. truck driver’s good deed earned him an award nomination

A truck driver is being recognized for a good deed, after he went out of his way to reunite a woman with her lost purse. Sohrab Sandhu spoke to the driver


https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/cana...r&cvid=43bac362035946048bc7cc69f429aa1c&ei=35

Sikhs Turn To Trucking By The Thousands To Keep The Faith​

By Maggie Mullen
·Jan. 23, 2019, 5:30 am
Listen Now
4min 52sec

Originally published on January 22, 2019 10:50 am

The trucking industry is facing a record shortage of drivers. However, over the last couple of years, one demographic has been gravitating towards the industry by the thousands: Indian-American Sikhs.


The closest town to A&C Truck Stop in southeastern Wyoming is 20 miles away. Mintu Pandher has been a trucker for 16 years. But a few years ago, he decided to buy this truck stop as well.

"Everybody said it was good money and it's hard work," he said.

He made a few changes. One small building that used to be a fireworks stand is now a modest, one-room Sikh temple.

Pandher built the temple to accommodate the growing number of Sikh truckers traveling through his truck stop. According to the political organization, Sikhs PAC, the trucking industry saw that demographic rise by 18,000 in 2017 alone.

The temple gets used on a regular basis by drivers, but Pandher said he was especially glad he built it one spring, a couple of years ago, when some very weary travelers showed up.

"They were bikers. They were coming in May. They were coming from California. They had no idea that Wyoming gets snow in May as well," he said.

There were twenty of them and Pandher said they were headed to Iowa for a funeral and a rally.

"So they were sitting on their bikes at night and it was snowing. So we opened the temple and we told them to sleep. And they slept all night," said Pandher. "They didn't even wake up until next day's afternoon."

For Sikhs like Pandher, trucking is an attractive blue collar job because it doesn't interfere with their beliefs or traditions.

"You don't have to go cut your hair," he said. "You don't have to take your turban off. You don't have to lose your faith while you're working hard."

In fact, Pandher said days spent on the road reaffirm his faith.

"The biggest thing in Sikhism is service, serve other people. So there's no other industry that you can better do. Because when you drive a truck, you deliver something, so it gives you the satisfaction. If you deliver food, you deliver fuel—anytime you drive a truck the ultimate destination is the delivery," he said.

The soundtrack to his shift in the freight industry is Indian pop music. Surjit Khan's hit song Truck Union has over 2 million views on YouTube and Pandher said: "trucking is actually becoming a pretty hip industry in the Sikh communities."

Khan's music video features turbaned dancers in flashy garments spinning in front of a row of shiny semi-trucks. The lyrics describe working as a trucker as a straight shot to the American dream. Mintu Pandher said a lot of Sikh truckers listen to it on the job.

"You can listen to music all day while you're working. How many other jobs you can? Not too many," said Pandher.

Still, overall, Americans wanting this type of lifestyle is going down. And it couldn't happen at a worse time. Demand for trucking services are up with online delivery companies like Amazon Prime becoming more and more popular.

"Trucks haul 70 percent of all the freight tonnage in the United States," said Bob Costello, the Chief Economist with the American Trucking Associations.

Right now, he said trucking companies have a hard time hiring enough new people to keep up with the demand. And if the current trend continues, Costello said the shortage of drivers could surpass 174,000 by 2026. He said Sikhs entering the business could lighten the load.

"Now that's not going to solve the problem alone, but it's one of those things that will help a little bit," Costello said.

Another bit of help: sweetening the deal for truck drivers generally.

"We saw pay increases every six months last year, right. We also saw things like, 'Hey, come work for me. After you've been here for a little while, I'll give you a sign-on bonus,' and many times that's thousands of dollars," said Costello.

But Costello added that if it was all about money, it would be an easy problem to solve.

"When you become a truck driver especially a long, haul truck driver," said Costello, "this is a lifestyle choice that you are making."

That means long hours behind the wheel, sleeping in the cab of your truck, and long stretches of time without a home cooked meal or seeing your family.

But back at his busy truck stop, Mintu Pandher said there are definite benefits, too, like the different states and vistas he gets to see, and the mountain passes where he often parks his rig for the night.

"Sleeping on 12,000 feet, 11,000 feet. That's basically like sleeping in the clouds," Pandher remarked.

Pandher drives mostly short distances these days, and spends fewer nights on the road. That means more time spent managing the gas station. So Pandher expanded services, he's added an Indian food restaurant to the truck stop.

Past the swinging door and into the kitchen, you can hear the hum of the traditional clay oven used in Indian cuisine. And the menu is pretty extensive: naan, lamb korma, tikka masala, and mango lassis among other things. This way, Pandher said when a Sikh driver stops for fuel, they can also get a meal that tastes like home.

This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUER in Salt Lake City and KRCC and KUNC in Colorado.