Serene sent me this SMS that I want to share with ya all, especially since I don't have all ya numbers and this is a faster way to reach to a larger audience.

I know a woman who's funny & caring, loving & sharing, mad & crazy, as sweet as a baby & a great mate & she's reading this message right now! Send this to the girls you'll never forget, including me, if you don't send this to anyone it means you're in a hurry and have forgotten all about your friends! If u get 6 back you're truly loved! Happy Women's Day! :)

This is in celebration of International Women's Day falling on the 8th of March 2009. It's not about how many are in political power, it's not how powerful or rich women are, it's not the numbers. It's about having fair opportunity and just treatment. No one should be denied things like education, work opportunities, etc., just based on gender. She can be feminine and wear her dresses and yet be given the right to work in the "tough" working environment of a shipyard, do medicine instead of law (it was like that in the past that girls should do arts instead of hard core non-bio sciences or engineering), to protect her loved ones and be protected by her husband. No more gender prejudices. As what was on "Stone Soup", a comic strip in the newspaper, it's about giving a future to the girls growing up now one that they don't have to fight for their rights like we and our mothers had to.

Though I'm not a woman (yet, gosh I am getting older!), I am thankful that I am given the opportunity to go to university to get an education, to study my hardcore physics-based civil engineering with other girls too who have either chosen or was allocated here, to decide whether to get married or not (though grandmother says "No! You must get married!, but haha, Mum and Dad don't mind me being single now and 4eva). I am thankful that the civil engineering sector and the maritime industry is quite open and fair to the prescence of women, who are treated with respect. The once held notions are being broken down very quickly, unlike for many industries where there are still stigmas that this job is only for women or only for men. I can be judged meritocratically, unlike for those girls in other countries who still are bound to strict traditions and decorums, early marriage and rape, abuse yet knowing they can fight for their rights for fair treatment. God, free them from pain of abuse and what not, and for those who are not in pain, but stuck in social class, help free them and inspire them to help those around them.

Happy Women's Day.