Oh me gad. I didn't know Sami Yusof was big; he is big. I thought he was someone obscure. I mean, isn't that why nobody seems to know him? But apparently that's just Singapore and Asia. Apparently, there's a Beatle-sized phenomenon across Arabia, Turkey and now it's starting to creep into the Muslim communities in Europe and US. I can't believe I took this long to find out.

I am practically dying to watch his music videos. He is young and cool and smart and super-talented. And good looks too. Melt. Melt. Melt. See www.samiyusuf.com if you're interested.

Honestly, Muslims in Singapore can be so ignorant sometimes. Thank god we have people like Mudaris (who gave us Sami Yusof's cd in the first place) to keep us informed on the hot and hip happenings in faraway places.

I am the most karut girl, I think.

I dumped my phone into a mug of cold water and now it's dead. I was balancing too many things at once - my laptop, Elsie, a book, my phone and a mug of iced water - and there was a cg crisis and I scrambled and the phone plopped very nicely into the mug. It made a very nice plop sound too. I saw the light flicker and disappear and I had no time to do anything but gasp.

Then today, after the SS CA (which was okay. hand got tired but I could answer the question), Lin accompanied me to the musollah at science but when we got to the stairwell, I ended up not praying. Because it was so freaking dark! And so freaking scary! Hello, where are the damn lights?! But in retrospect, I should have braved it and prayed anyway cause get more pahala. Ah, so dumb.

And I had a very strange psycho thought today. As I was walking to the bus stop from home, I saw a cat sleeping on a bench, very nicely curled up, very, very adorable. Then, naturally, I thought of my adorable lamb, Elsie. Then I thought, "If this cat saw Elsie, would it think her edible; some creature meant for eating?" Then I had a scary vision of Elsie being mauled by the cat, its sharp teeth clamped over my poor lamb's cuddly neck, and me bawling my eyes out and chasing after the cat. And then I shuddered. And then I thought,"I'm insane to even think such things." I really sometimes wonder if I am.

Been clearing the favourites folder on my computer. It's a mad accumulation of stuff and random websites over the past year or so. I have websites about weird latin phrases and the mad monarch websites which has stories of lunatic-sounding rulers throughout history.

Iftar project is going relatively smoothly. So far. Of course, the budget I proposed was apallingly high, but then I expected them to chop it down anyway, so... hope that goes well.

Quite scared for Natural Heritage of Singapore CA. Have no idea what they could possibly ask. And have yet to finish reading the chapters. By the way, did you know you could kill the house crows and the pigeons and the mynas in Singapore without any penalty whatsoever??? You'd be helping the environment more by killing them because they're alien species and they're breeding too much and causing ecological imbalance. Our native birds have been displaced cause of them. Of course, you can't kill all birds. Just them and a few more specific kinds.

Had a photog gathering yesterday to say a little bit of farewell to Tsz San. What was most memorable to me about the whole thing was the fact that we had a discussion about cockroaches over ice cream. Colin was telling us about how he did a little bit of microsurgery for Bio Olympiad last time, and how they had to use their bare hands when cutting up the roach. Because, Colin claims, one cannot actually feel the roach properly if one wears gloves. You can imagine how horrified I was. Luckily I was done eating my apple crumble. And he talked a bit about how roaches have fat stores in their bodies - that's why roaches can survive for a couple of days even with their heads cut off. They just starve to death when their fat stores are used up. And the squish that you get when you crush a cockroach is because of those fat stores as well. Of course, we started laughing when we realised how insane it was discussing the disgusting creature over a meal. Mad.

After that, met up with Shen Onn for the last time before she flies off. Had a ridiculous time trying to photograph three of us together because we initially refused to ask someone to help us take the photo. There were a total of eleven tries before we got a shot with everyone's face of decent size and unchopped.

I can't wait for Ramadhan! Almost. I seriously think it's the best damn time of the year. There's this feeling of working towards a climax - Raya - and everyone's excited and planning. And we have the makciks comparing kuehs and dishes and ketupats. And people asking, "What colour you gonna wear this year?" And my insane family sahur (early morning meal before sunrise) - where my dad will essentially be deaf and say 'Hah?' to every word uttered, and depending on the general mood, causes annoyed grunts or hysterical laughter. And meeting up with extended family over the weekend to break fast together, which is always so superbly fun. And terawihs, which I think I get better at each year. Maybe I'll do twenty this time. And the nice feeling that my body is cleansed because I haven't consumed junk all day. And the nice anticipation of dusk while staring at the food in front of you - waiting for the moment when it's okay to sip that very appetizing-looking fruit juice - and realising that food never looks as good as that point in time.

Raya itself almost completely pales in comparison to Ramadhan.

I want to be normal. But not mediocre. What a horror. I'll kill myself thinking like this.

I want to be normal. I want to be like those girls who bake cookies and complain about how the oven conked out on them. I want to be the kind of girl who worries enough about their weight to actually lose some. I want to be the kind of girl who has numerous girlfriends and seem constantly happy. The kind of girl who's close to her mummy and is cheerful and the apple of her daddy's eye. A girl who actually knows how to shop. (Other than for books or vcds.) A girl who endeavours to make her room flawless and pretty. A girl who gushes about boys without feeling more than a tad bit bashful. How enviable. But not always.

Here I am, always going on about how depressing life is, more often than not. gah. Maybe it's because I feel like too much of an anomaly. But the weird thing is, sometimes, I relish that fact; that I am able to easily distinguish myself. So there you have it. A self-contradicting, ungrateful, indecisive psycho, I am.

Getting away from this, I just want to say that I have started to appreciate Singapore's natural scene - yes we have some. Went to Labrador Park to look at what's left of our rocky shore. And absolutely loved that 300m stretch of coast. Some weird seagrasses, some squishy things that shrink upon touch, crabs of various sizes, sea cockroaches and other numerous life. It's beautiful to know how much life there is in such a small place. Why do humans have to destroy so much?

Why are we given the capability to? So doomsday would come? Of our own doing; since we're destroying earth slowly and steadily? I think so. I mean, if God created all animals in nature so interdependent; to exist in an indisruptable, ecological balance (think beautiful food webs), why are we given the exception to violate that very rule? It seems that we were given the power of thought to rise above the animal level because God (or if you refuse to believe in an almighty, then, Nature), meant for the earth to be killed. We were allowed to learn to hunt, build, invent and kill more than any other animal is allowed to. If the point of this earth - its existence - was to sustain life, then humans wouldn't have been allowed to get this smart. The fact that we are smart enough to pollute and alter the face of the earth so much, shows that God had assigned the assasination of this world to us. This world is meant to end. Of course, I don't mean to endorse pollution and such; just because the destruction of the world is inevitable, doesn't mean we have to speed up the process. I'm just saying it's obvious something bigger is playing a hand in this world than mindless nature. Nature wouldn't have allowed the advent of humans. Nature would have carried on a ceaseless existence of peaceful flora and fauna; not suddenly dump destructive humans in the midst of every other creation. We were put here for a reason.

Wow. How did I digress so much.

I've been staring at the screen for ages, wondering what to put in this blog. What does that mean? That I have nothing to say? Or nothing to say to people who might read this? Or am I just sick of the idea of blogging already?

Maybe I'm just too lazy to put thoughts into words, especially when your thoughts are so muddled up all the time and it takes too much energy to distangle one from the other.

I shall be mundane.

The math and lit tutors aren't turning out as bad as I thought at first. They're nice people and they try to teach but it isn't their fault, I suppose, that they aren't that great at communication skills. Got a B- grade for the 15 minute essay assignment in lit tutorial which is way better that I expected, considering I wrote crap for the last 5 minutes and barely understood the poem. I'm still considering the S/U option. I'll see how the 700-word essay on Ozymandias fares. I think that, after being a pure science student for a long time, one loses the confidence of writing creative or reflective essays.

I must make myself busier. Because when you're busy, you focus on the task at hand, and have less time to reflect and think and be depressed or angry or confused. Ignorance is bliss.

I think I am somewhat incapable of disciplining myself within the confines of my home. Scratch that; not somewhat incapable, completely incapable. The freedom that I feel, especially with my laptop at hand and sitting on my comfy bed, always unfailingly makes me forget whatever few responsibilities I have. It's a strange thing: freedom in confinement. I am a walking contradiction. I go on about trying to get away and escaping and so on, and then I talk about freedom. I can't even begin to comprehend myself. Maybe here, I'm talking about freedom of mind.

Ugh, I have to stop.

Anyway, I wanted to blog about the fact that my sis and me found an account of our old attempt to make a crap movie called I Know What You Did Last Lebaran. I think it was about three years or so ago. And my video cam was still relatively a novelty. And we had this storyline planned out. It's hilarious just rereading it. I was to be the camerawoman of course and the editor. And the boys were going to act. And the setting was going to be in an Australian college abbreviated RJC (Am crying tears of mirth here. Roombawamba Junior College, with aboriginal origins, hence the name.). A group of boys were staying back in school instead of going home to their homelands to celebrate raya. Obviously, we then have a killer on the loose who starts murdering the boys to teach them a lesson (to remember their roots and not westernise themselves completely).

We had even planned names for our various characters! I was to do a cameo as a stall holder called Cik Leha (how she came to be selling kueh in Australia, I have no idea). My brother was to be the janitor of the school called Pakcik Kus; that old, wise character always present in urban legend movies who dispenses advice but initially arouses suspicion. Said was going to be the psycho kid - ridiculously named Asaad Kelada after the director of 'Who's The Boss?' - intent on teaching his friends the meaning of raya. He was going to go around killing his friends with spiky ketupats, and slash at them with green packets. And his trademark killing tactic was to be:

"Selamat Hari Raya!"

- K I L L -

"Maaf Zahir & Batin."

He was also to leave telling clues of trails of serunding and the smell of rendang at the scenes of his crimes. My sis and me were laughing our ass off. It's all so unbelievably hilarious. Hefni's character, Adam Muskat, was to be the first one killed off, being the most skeptical about the urban legend. And Hussein's character, Harun Stokin, and Saiful's, Nizam Dali, were to follow suit.

I wish we could have done it properly. I still hope we'll do something like it one day; if not this, something else. Hysterical fun it would be. We succeeded only once in making a movie called Misteri Bungalow Putih and a news broadcast which turned out hilarious as well. Damn. How come the old days always seem better.

Math tutorials are driving me nuts. Some of these tutors don't know the difference between tell and teach. Teaching does not mean saying the answer and staring at the student hoping to convey understanding simply through eye contact. I swear, feel like screaming almost. So far, best tutor is my organic chemistry module one. Very thorough. He doesn't have to have perfect English, but at least he communicates and one can tell he is attempting to make us understand. The math tutor simply gets on my nerves. She just flashes her crap transparencies and reads off what she writes. And assumes everyone gets her crap explanations. And when someone tries to ask her a question, she doesn't understand. So dumb dumb dumb.

I loved tonight's liqa'. My brain is still working overtime, thinking over stuff. Have found Harun Yahya's website and other links at www.harunyahya.com. Amazing. I'm starting to seriosuly question Darwinism. Was there ever irrefutable truth of evolution (and am not just referring to monkey-human transformation, but in everything)? Have scientists actually tried isolating some fruit flies in a different environment or something and observed the formation of a new species over time? Okay, fine, the selection pressure thing makes sense: you know the story; the pepper moth, which was previously prevalent, was the displaced by the black moth in polluted industralised places because the pepper moths became easily spotted by predators on the black polluted bark of trees. But that black moth ALWAYS existed before; they simply started to dominate. But it wasn't a new species, was it? Has there ever been a new species that was formed??? I should look around some more.

Anyway, got nice quotes.

There are three indications of a person's greatness: not complaining in the face of calamity, not groaning in the face of pain, and not praising oneself. ~ Abu Darda (whose maqam I went to in Egypt! It was in the middle of a road but they didn't bring the monument down but built their train tracks and roads around it.)

Narrated K’ab bin Malik: Allah’s Messenger said, “Two hungry wolves sent in the midst of a flock of sheep are not more destructive to them than a man’s greed for wealth and fame is to his religion.” ( At-Tirmidhi)

A person asked Allah’s Messenger (saas): “What is faith?” He said: “When a good deed becomes a source of pleasure for you and an evil deed becomes a source of disgust for you, then you are a believer.” He again said to Allah’s Messenger (saas): “What is a sin?” Whereupon he said: “When something pricks your conscience, give it up.” (Tirmidhi)

Idolatry is more hidden in my Ummah than the creeping of ants across a great smooth stone on a black night... (Tirmidhi)

Those who are most aware of death and prepare themselves for it, are the wisest of people. (Fiqh-us-Sunnah, Volume 4, Number 13)

The whole world is a provision, and the best object of benefit of the world is the pious woman. (Muslim)