From my early childhood, I have been captivated by animals. My favorite outings as a kid were going to the zoo and even more exciting; the circus.

I would visit my cousins as often as possible because they had a dog. A dog! How cool is that! When my parents came to take me home, it would inevitably end in tears.

My solace would come by way of dreams, vivid dreams, where me and my dog would run through a field and fall in a joyful tumble where my dog would bark with excitement and smother me with licks all over my face.

While getting a dog of my own was always on my wish list come my birthday, my parents were not animal lovers and to them dogs equaled mess and responsibilities they were not prepared to take on.

This did not stop my love for animals and that only increased once I would go on the aforementioned trips to the zoo and watch in awe the majesty of the big cats and the towering matriarch of an elephant troop.

As I grew up, my love of animals never left me, it just got distracted by my being a typical teenager and young adult when the opposite sex and my education took precedence over most of everything else. To be continued…

Since I began my quest this year to hi-lite the excellent work carried out on a daily basis by so many charitable organizations, a lot of the research I have been conducting has lead me to some very somber conclusions.

It is quite easy to despair at the hatred and animosity perpetrated thousands of miles away. Innocent men women and children being killed in the name of God, or in the name of ancient rights to ancient lands.

People persecuted and killed for their right to practice their religion or the right to their sexual orientation. Women are still a subjugated section of many societies, where choosing who they marry is not based upon whom they love but dependent upon parental approval.

Of course I do not  need  to look further than home to notice injustices on a grand scale. America – the land of the free, is not free. Homelessness has been on the rise for many years, and the numbers are as astonishing as they are tragic.

According to a survey carried out by The National Coalition For the Homeless , the number of homeless people has reached 3.5 million of which 1.5 million are children.

According to the non partisan Kaiser Family Foundation, 79% of the 48 million uninsured in America today are either US citizens or legal residents/aliens. That does not include the under insured, which would vastly increase the number if it was to be included.

Currently the unemployment rate exceeds 10 per cent, a number not seen in over a quarter of a century.

Since President Obama’s historic election victory, politics has become more nasty, more divided, than ever before.

Never before has a member of the House interrupted the President during a speech to a joint session of Congress, and certainly never shouted at the President “You Lie” as Joe Wilson, GOP congressman from South Carolina did in September of last year.

And never in the history of US politics has a previous Vice President consistently berated, belittled and criticised a sitting President as Dick Cheyney has done.

The current fight over the health care epitomizes the split between the left and right, both in Washington and in the country at large.

I could go on a whole lot longer. But I will spare you the pain.

Which brings me back to the beginning of my article. Spending my time researching so many charities allows me to restore my faith in mankind. Sometimes I tear up just reading about what some of these charities do to make a difference in peoples lives. And it happens every minute of every hour of every day.

And that is why I feel blessed in doing what I do. It’s what lets me sleep peacefully at night. And for that I am very grateful indeed.

New York Like Never Before!

Due to my auto immune disorder, I try not to step outside too much during the very cold weather that we are currently experiencing.

Still, at least once a day I like to go out onto the balcony from my condo in Brooklyn, where I can see the beautiful Brooklyn Bridge and I feel a sense of peace in its quiet majesty.

Which reminds me of a website I came across recently of New York that knocked the socks off me!! The photography and videography combine together to produce breathtakingly beautiful results. The music in the background is hauntingly relaxing.

From the Brooklyn Bridge, to Downtown, to Central Park, to the Chrysler Building and Times Square – you can be the pilot of your own plane (using the toggle feature)and sit back and fall into a dream world.

Take a few moments to visit. This is one site you will never forget. I guarantee it!

THE MOST IMPORTANT DECADE OF MY LIFE.

At the age of 36, I can say whole heartedly that this is the decade to remember. It is also, to be fair, the first decade that I can remember most comprehensively.

The 70′s started with my birth in England and I was watching the Muppet show in 1979 at the age of 6, so the big stories of the 1970′ s would have gone over my head, including the the OPEC oil crisis,the Yom Kippur war, Roe VS Wade, Watergate and the end of the Vietnam War.

I was 17 by the time the 80′s was over and spent most of that decade exploring my chances with the opposite sex rather than educating myself in world politics. I was also going through High School, concentrating on avoiding my homework and experimenting with cigarettes and pot!!

Then came the 90′s. This was the decade of opportunities and screw ups for me. But also the decade that I first took a deep interest in politics. It started in 1997, when Labour Party’s leader, Tony Blair, swept to power in the UK after 18 years of  Tory rule. I will never forget Tony Blair beaming at his adoring political base stating ” A new day has dawned, has it not?!”

I thought, “here is the youngest man ever to be elected British Prime Minister at age 43, and is as politically savvy as I’ve ever seen anyone on the British political scene. He spoke differently too. No more stiff upper lip or super posh accent. He cared about peoples lives and it showed. The Tories had always felt that they were destined to power as a birthright, while Tony Blair went out of his way to try and earn it. (some say he tried too hard)

It was also the decade that I got accepted into a very decent law school and scored the highest point average in my first year out of 350 students. The stars were starting to align themselves very nicely for me . But I was soon to realize that I had demons inside me that were never going away. It was called bi-polar depression – undiagnosed at the time. And was the cause of me dropping out of my second year and frequenting pool halls, potting/gambling and snorting my life away.

Staring at the precipice, I pulled back, but the last three years of the 1990′s I was hardly available to anyone except me, myself and I. And so yet another decade came and went with only fleeting memories.

Come 2000, I found myself a semi decent job as a telecoms real estate specialist (you know all those horrid cell phone towers, well I was responsible for that!) and started an online relationship with a girl in the USA. And then came 9/11.

And that changed my life. Suddenly I was all consumed by politics as there was plenty politics to be discussed. The war in Iraq, Afghanistan, George Bush, and once I moved to the States to marry my wife who I had met online there was health care, a booming housing market, Katrina, Al Quaida, Osama Bin Laden and of course most notibly Barack Obama.

Then there was also YouTube, the rise and fall of MySpace,, MSN and Yahoo; the dominance of Google, the rise of Apple, the stagnation of Microsoft, the rise of Web 20, Facebook, Itunes, web apps and Twitter.

In short there was and is an ongoing technological revolution.

There was also the ongoing extinction of industries like print media, the collapse of the American car industry, the bust in the housing market and the collapse of the banking industry due to extremely questionable, even predatory, lending practices.

It was also the decade that I was diagnosed with a very serious autoimmune disease – which affects my breathing and which has sent me to ICU five times in the last three years.

So this has indeed been a decade that I remember very well, and one which I think will go down in history as a game changing decade, from world geopolitics to personal finances to the tech revolution.

I am glad that I got the opportunity to enjoy the ups and downs of the decade that was the 2000′s.

Yes, another six month of chemotherapy coming up, but its not all bad news!!

Overtime I have gradually reduced the huge amounts of steroids that I was prescribed at a rate of 4mg a week.

So tomorrow I celebrate with the weekly drop and will be on 24mg of medrol; down from 96mg three months ago!!

My breathing today is so much more stable and I have managed to stay out of hospital since May – I thank God for this blessing and the six monthly treatments of cytoxin that I started in January and completed in June. 

Since then I have been battling with edema (excess fluid build up in the feet and ankles) and a huge weight increase as a side effect of the massive dosage of steroids I was taking.

I ballooned all the way upto 370 lbs at my heaviest, but with the lowering of the steroids and a strict diet, I have managed to lose weight slowly but surely and am now around the 334 lbs level.

The more I lose weight, the easier it gets to walk around, the easier it gets to lose weight, so I have managed to halt the vicious circle and instead am moving in a positive direction.

I still do not have a firm diagnosis of the disease that I have, but I am blessed for every day I can stay out of hospital. The additional chemo is to counteract any possible adverse reaction my lungs could have to the continuous lowering of the steroids.

I have no problem with that. Thank God the doses are tiny in comparison to the dosages given to cancer victims.

My heart goes out to them.