What's this business about profesors insisting they be called by their first names, huh? Like Daniel. And then Patrick. I mean, it feels weird. Cause I've grown up calling any authority figure with, at the very least, a Mister before their names. And now, anytime I send an email to a professor and address them respectfully as such (practically begging for help with ISMs and UROPs and whatnot and then receiving minimal rsponses, but that's another story), they send back emails signed off with "Cheers, Daniel!" or "Regards, Patrick." And then the next time I attempt to send an email, I fret over what to address them. Usually, I eventually settle with a neutral and simple "Hi".

I know this friendly-first-name-addressing is supposed to encourage a camraderie of some sort between faculty and students, but I say again: it is weird. I'm just not used to it. Although, I sort of got used to calling Daniel, Daniel, seeing as how the long US trip did make us all friendly with each other. oh well.

On semester one results: appallingly bad. CAP now lower than ever and I had a bad day trying to get over it and convince myself that there's still a future for me.

2008 Resolutions: Be very hardworking, till there's no space left for worrying about not being hardworking enough. And make money for distant-future holiday plans.

Finally, I've decided to add an entry after a drought of blogging. Before I jump in with the Morocco photos, can I just say first that I am slowly going nuts with planning my independent study modules. I feel like I'm swimming in a big pile of confusing rubbish, trying to figure out what to do. ah sigh - life takes courage, it does. Meeting a professor tomorrow to discuss; please don't let him think I'm a hopeless blurblob.

anyway. photos!

The family sending us all off at the airport. Also bumped into Kak naz, who was on the way to India!


In Hassan II Mosque, the 3rd largest in the world. Extremely pretty.


Exterior of Hassan II.


Hassan II from afar. And Ahmad making a fuss.


El fresco seafood lunch


The guard at the royal mausoleum


Terrace photo at Helnan Chellah Hotel in Rabat




Our first Moroccan tajine dish: with lots of potato and mutton.


Mint Tea, poured by Eddie Murphy lookalike.


I love this photo! Spot the doggie.


Volubilis, ancient roman city.




Scenic stopover


We stopped to pet the camels! But yes, we were still freaked a little by them.


THe famous Jamaa El-Fna in Marrakesh. The place is all hustle and bustle.


Desert scenery.


That's all I have patience for, I'm sorry. Haha. I still have the video to work on, and my gosh - just thinking about it makes me tired. Why do I have to be so goddamn ambitious all the time when I know all along I'm part-sloth? I keep thinking things, but not doing them.

But nevermind: positive thinking yields positive results!

OHMYGOSH! I am soooo proud of Hady!!! The screaming in my house rivaled the time Taufik won idol. I screamed like crazy! I mean, it was totally unexpected, totally unbelievable. You have the Indian Idol there, with about a billion supporters, and the Indonesian Idol, who was on his own turf. Not to mention the judges constantly trumping how EEEEVeryone else had fantastic voices, lightly dismissing hady and phuong vy (who is so superbly pretty, I think). Then Hady won! Like ohmygoodness. I think it was the shock of the year for Singapore. We were actually cheering for Abhijeet, cause we felt Hady had no chance, and we just didn't want Mike to win, cause it was irritating the way the Indonesian channel was so blatantly favouring him. But when Hady won: EUPHORIA yar! >.<

I want to be at the airport when he comes back to Singapore! When is he coming back!!!

Back from Morocco! I haven't uploaded photos onto my comp yet. I'm more occupied with trying to print them. My family has got the latest gadget - the canon photoprinter! which rocks. :) I really like. So now am on a new project, trying to make a scrapbook of Morocco. As if making the video wasn't enough work, I had to do something else! I am a nutcase sometimes.

In a nutshell, Morocco was: sweet and cosy. Mostly due to the small company (relatively so) - my family minus my brother, and ahmad and aunty jah. The weather was COLD. Surprisingly so. We saw camels again! And petted them. And lots of fluffy cats.

(I think I really, really want my own cat. But I digress.)

And the food was really shockingly not to our taste. Travel and living made all the food look deceptively delectable. But it really isn't something people in the far east can easily appreciate. The taste was just utterly... foreign. It's hard to explain. My dad was complaining how one of our fish dishes tasted like "ubat batuk ibu dan anak". Haha. And I really couldn't disagree all that much.

Architecture was gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. I especially like Volubilis, the Roman ruins. And I also like the Hassan Mosque in Casablanca; the third largest in the world and one of the most beautiful I've ever laid eyes on. And Marrakesh was a pretty sight too. I really will try to find time to post photos here amid my other projects.

Also, I have to confess here that Gossip Girl has gotten me too. It is just too juicy. What with all the pretty people and the gorgeous clothes to die for (yes, even I succumb!) and the crazily tangled relationships. But of all of the characters, it just had to be Chuck that I absolutely feel most for. And therefore love. He makes you want to strangle and hug him at the same time. I think DT!Draco probably ruined me forever. Ever since my 15-year-old self discovered the appeal of woobies, no matter what the story, I always find myself going for the bad boy with the bad reputation but misunderstood by the world. I really do wonder behind the psychology of it.

So anyway, I was just watching episode 10, and @_@. Please, Chuck. I need you on the show.

I dreamt I had a talking golden cat the other night! It was the prettiest thing. And when I woke up in the morning, all I wanted to do was go back to sleep so I could stroke its fur again. haha. It felt so silky in my dream. And it talked! Man. I so want a talking pet. Which of course doesn't exist. But I want one.

Today's LSM paper wasn't too bad. Mostly cause it was open book. Hah. The problem with open book exams though is the constant flutter of pages in the exam hall that is kind of distracting. And the extremely cluttered desk one has to contend with, what with two files and a big textbook.

Only math left. The worst left for last. But at least there's only 21 hours left to the end of exams (for me at least!) and happiness.

And I'm going to Morocco on Friday night too. So here's a public declaration that I won't be around from Dec 1st to Dec 9th, in case, for some reason I haven't anticipated, you want to look for me. I don't want what happened last time to happen again: when the linear gang wanted to have lunch and thought I'd turn up but then I was in Surabaya. :p

And oh, I already have at least one song I KNOW will have to be in the Morocco video: Taufik's Teman Istimewa! It is so bouncy and fun. I am excited about being a part-time filmmaker again. heh.

It's not fair! It doesn't seem fair! Practically two-thirds of my math module class scores 95 and above for both CAs. And there are definitely more than 10 people soring full marks for both. LIKE SERIOUSLY. Don't these people do anything other than math?! So that despite my scoring what are seemingly decent scores of 74 and 85, I sit at the 59th percentile of the class! That's like a C or something on the bell curve.

Somebody calm me down before I go strangle one of these people. It just makes my blood boil!

God knows I can't afford another C.

And today's LSM paper sucked! I just couldn't remember a lot of everything and was massaging my head in frustration throughout the paper, trying to recall.

I'm just so angry! And I know it's probably 95% my fault. Not Lawton's. Or the damn module itself. argh.

On better things: I'm set for Golden Compass with mumu and eunice. I shall bring the book on the trip to reread. ah yes. friday is so close and yet so far.

The ULTIMATE personality test

Seer
Take this quiz!








Quizilla |
Join

| Make A Quiz | More Quizzes | Grab Code

eeeh. obviously wrong, I think, seeing as how more often than not, I don't know anything.

I have minimal time left to mug for metabolism! :s Last night I managed to eke out 8 and a half pages of words for the heritage paper. Again: :s. I actually need 10 pages!

I have photos of bubu's wedding and hashim's passing out parade. But I'll have to leave that for later. After I'm done with this week.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

e. e. cummings

I think it's one of the sweetest poems I've ever heard! I cried buckets when Cameron Diaz read it out at the end of In Her Shoes. Sister stories always strike a chord with me. Maybe it's because I do have my own sister, and sisterhood is a bond so tight. It's like, no matter how many friends you have, no matter how much time you spend talking with someone else instead, I feel like my sister is the only one who knows me best.

Or maybe I just love drama. ahah.

Marina Mahathir's coming to NUS to give a talk on Islam and AIDS. I want to go! She's a controversial person. Would be interesting to see her speak in person. But what bad timing, I ask you!!! It is the study week. I need the entire of it to finish my heritage paper and study for three finals. :s - chews lip incessantly - To go or not to go, that is the question. And must reply today! eesh.

Haven't I said many times before how I wish a day had 40 hours instead?

Eh, I like The Noose! If you didn't know, it's sort of a spoof of Singapore's local news, with crappy news stories (at 10pm on Sundays on channel 5). Of course some stuff are lame, but some are really quite original and funny. It's really great that we're learning to poke fun at ourselves. Learning to laugh at oneself is a sign of progress, ne? :)

Like they're saying the merlion is having a gender identity crisis. what is that lah. haha.

Also:

"Nobody studies political science just cause they like it! That's preposterous!"

omgosh. what am I doing, what am I doing, what am I doing!!! I need to severely bonk my head and wake up. And do something concrete.

Okay, things over the past few days:

1) Spent another whopping 12 hours on boinformatics project: from 10 to 10! nyeeaah. But thankfully, I think we're almost done and I'm just left with compiling.

2) Watched Lions for Lambs, which is a good story that I absolutely heart. (Goodness, when did I start speaking like this?) And the fact that the theatre had a magnificent total of less than 15 people (on a friday night, mind you! during the school holidays!) really proved the whole point about apathy. The story's all about how much people are actually doing to change things in this world. Very, very moving. And I love Meryl Streep - awesome.

3) Had the last tutorial for Politics of Heritage, in which Patrick told us of a professor in NUS who had the unshakeable opinion that the large majority of NUS are an "apathetic mediocrity". I was so incredibly affronted and angry by that. I resent that! I do! That is so very unfair - I think there are quite a few people I know who are not apathetic but are trying to find ways to be involved; to do things. And when I watched Lions for Lambs, it totally connected with me, and I got angry at that unnamed professor again.

4) Had liqa' last night at Ami Omar's place. After which we told ghost stories until I had nightmares last night.

5) Speaking of ghost stories, my bioinfo team mates were in LT25 at night and started telling each other ghost stories and we started getting freaked out. Then Thaharah went to switch off the lights and we screamed! I never thought of Thaharah as a prankster before then. It reminded me how you should never underestimate people in general. haha.

6) I am slowly getting excited about Morocco. :) Ahmad says it's about 12 degrees. Might be even colder in the mountainous regions. I'm already having vague plans of how this holiday video will turn out. yay.

7) I have decided that my new year resolution for 2008, and for which I will start working on starting this moment, is to be: HARDWORKING. I was thinking how, when I was bored last night, that playing doesn't excite me anymore. I want to try to achieve goals instead. Maybe that'll give me more satisfaction, Allah willing.

Toodles.

My math professor is a serious nutcase! But also very amusing. He refuses to give answers to our review questions. And insists we work on them. People complain they couldn't see the board during lecture and that the webcast quality is bad (this means I'm screwed) and still he refuses to relent. Man.

The problem that you cite below : "it is impossible for the students to see from the back."

has the following solution:

LET STUDENTS SIT IN THE FRONT ROWS.

This solution is based on the physics of wave propagation. First, luminosity decreases with the squared distance between the board and the student. Second, the area subtended on a students retina by a letter or mathematical symbol written on the board also decreases with the squared distance between the board and the student. Third, the absorbtion and scattering, especially of shorter wavelength blue and green colors, by molecules comprising the atmosphere, increases monotonically with increasing distance between the board and the student.


ah. isn't uni life so exciting? such sarcastic professors.

dear prof. sitting in front wouldn't be a solution because the lecture is OVER to begin with! I am dead.

Got distracted with the stuff I've saved on my comp. Like my quotes etc. Want to post one that made me laugh again. haha.

"Excuse me, your highness. I thought I made it clear that it wasn’t my journey. She made up her mind to get to the capitol, I was just along for the ride because my home was gone."

"You spent a week traveling with Sakura and risking your life just because you had no home?"

"Well, no. I guess I felt sorry for her, a little. I mean, she had no idea how to get to the capitol, and she was helpless in the countryside."

"Uh-huh. So you stayed by her, and protected her?"

"That’s right."

"All the time?"

The prince must be pretty appreciative, thought Li, and nodded.

"All the time." He was surprised when Tory yanked on his shirt and pushed him up against the wall.

"So you slept with her?"

"No!"

"So you did leave her alone!"

"No!"

"Well, which is it?"

~ Heir to the Kingdom by Peacewish

In the midst of her Olevels, my sister completely forgot about her madrasah exam. @_@ ahah. And is now cramming everything within a day of study. But I think it's okay. God will forgive honest slips of the mind.

Went out for dinner last night and met up with aunts and company. I do miss having fun. Sometimes I wonder if I'll just become a half-machine if I coop myself up constantly. My sis and me decided that Umar is our most kawaii cousin, both looks and personality-wise. Haha. Yesterday, cause his dad wasn't around, he was offering to pay his share of the dinner. My sis and me immediately went, "Cuuuuuutttteee!" And when he grows up even more and grows even that much taller than he is now, he'll be even more kawaii, what with his semi-mat-salleh looks.

Can anyone tell that I'm trying to avoid doing work? Nyyeeeah. 3 weeks to end of november.

Went for the Tony Blair talk. I'm glad I went. I think it made me realise some things. Like maybe a global utopia is possible. (Okay, maybe not a utopia, but something halfway there.) Like it doesn't matter if you're Jew and I'm Muslim, we can hug anyway. (Honestly, I don't think I can. Not out of any true feeling of animosity; just that I'd be too weirded out. haha.) And all countries will have responsible, selfless, non-corrupt leaders. And people by the millions won't have to die of preventable causes and diseases, as documentaries often lament.

oh man, who are we kidding.

optimism! We must have that!

I think politicians are generally very idealistic and optimistic people. Unless they're faking it, of course, and they're just in it for the money and fame. :| gasp. haha.

Sometimes, I think I'd probably be a plebeian if I were to be put in old Rome. I'm too easily swayed by words. Hm.

I think I said we already had our last day in the biochem lab. But today we painstakingly went back again to redo our SDS gel electrophoresis. And our hard work paid off in the end. Because we managed to get protein from all our chromatographic batches!!!

:))))))))))))))))))

ohmygod. People probably don't get why I'm so nerdily happy about this. But it was just SO INSANELY IMPOSSIBLE before this to detect the minimal protein content from our ion exchange column. We were giving up on it and speculating that we majorly screwed it up despite the fact that we repeated the ion exchange THREE TIMES, okay. But I am so happy because we could detect the enzyme band on the gel, faint as it was, at 6 pm today. And this means we did it right!

yay yay yay.

And Wei Chieh actually brought the gel back home to take a proper photo of it (cause the lab camera sucks) and he wrote on the gel container, "Our Pride". heh, so funny! Many groups didn't manage to get pretty gels like we did, so our gel is entitled to such a name. Hee.

After days and hours of toiling in the lab and breathing chemicals every day and exposing ourselves to carcinogenic polyacrylamide, a beautiful gel means a lot.

Only little more than a week left to the end of sem. I think I worked really hard this semester. Although I'm still flailing in numerical analysis and much of my projects still remain incomplete, I hold much hope for my cap and my future this time.

hooray again for our SDS gel! Lalala.

And oh, am excited for the Tony Blair talk at NUS on friday! Managed to get the invite. yay yay yay.

I thought this was cool and very fascinating, although in his book, The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins seemingly dismissed it all together, as he does such a priori (go look this up) arguments about God.

You know the formula, m over nought equals infinity, m being any positive number? Well, why not reduce the equation to a simpler form by multiplying both sides by nought. In which case you have m equals infinity times nought. That is to say that a positive number is the product of zero and infinity. Doesn't that demonstrate the creation of the universe by an infinite power out of nothing? Doesn't it?

From Aldous Huxley's Point Counter Point

You know, I keep telling myself things like, "I am going to fnish my math assignment by tonight if it kills me." Or "I will DIE DIE study biochem tonight." But then, I fail to do what I intended to anyway, and I realise that, GASP: I have become immune to death threats. Waaha.

I try to amuse myself, I do.

Today was crazily exhausting though strangely satisfying. somewhat. My bioinformatics project team worked for 12 hours from 9 to 9 on a saturday! We sat in the science library the whole time. >_< Is that nuts or what. I am so damn crazy tired. But I feel a little accomplished and a little good cause we managed to progress with our project. Like they say, hard work is gratifying in its own way.

And I'm thinking that maybe, it's good to want to do many things in life. I just want to be colourful that way.

okay, am soooo sleepy. I need to reduce the size of my eyebags and get some serious rest.

I got asked by two different people today: "What's your ambition?" And both times I said, "I wish I knew."

I wish I could say, I want to be a doctor, a scientist, a teacher, or at least something! And stop straddling boundaries and going back and forth over decisions and agonize over every choice that I make. I can burst into tears thinking about these things and I just wish wish wish I could figure things out. Because wishy-washy is not a good way to be in this world.

Actually, I do have dreams of what I want to do, but those are unfeasible things. Like, I want to build a library. Like a real library where knowledge is treasured and revered; not the cold, impersonal, irritating, overcrowded pseudo-libraries we have in Singapore, in which people are actually forbidden from studying. What nonsense, I tell you.

And none of this business about competition and chasing after paper qualifications. I am just truly sick to my stomach over it.

Amityville Horror is scary. >.<

We finally had our supposed last day in the lab today. And honestly, I don't care if I don't ever hear of enzyme purification again. -______-

I also need to be very very much kinder to myself. sigh sigh sigh.

OHMYGOD. There are too many math freaks in this world! I cannot compete with math freaks. I will die.

I love this poem we did in secondary school.

I AM

by John Clare

I am: yet what I am none cares or knows.
My friends forsake me like a memory lost,
I am the self-consumer of my woes -
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shadows in love's frenzied, stifled throes -
And yet I am, and live- like vapors tossed

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
Even the dearest, that I love the best,
Are strange - nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes, where man hath never trod,
A place where woman never smiled or wept -
There to abide with my Creator God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling, and untroubled where I lie,
The grass below - above the vaulted sky.

Went for the global education seminar on the UN millenium development goals today. And I decided to join ONE singapore (whose goal is to make poverty history, in case you didn't know), despite not really knowing how strongly I can contribute. I don't know... Eunice and me kept talking about the efficacy of all such movements, especially on an individual level, but at least, we do something anyway, you know?

And just so I remember, and just so you know as well, the UN Millenium Development Goals (by 2025) are:

1) Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.
2) Make primary education universal.
3) Achieve gender equality and empower women.
4) Reduce child mortality
5) Improve maternal health
6) Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
7) Ensure environmental sustainability
8) Develop a global partnership for development

I keep wanting to dedicate time to doing good works but... it's always easier said than done. As it is, I'm dying under the pile of work I have to do. And I'm always so bogged down that I can barely keep promises. I think I'm inadvertently making people hate me along the way.

Ah sigh.

After a whole day of talks and powerpoint slides, Eunice and me had BK for dinner and talked about random stuff: Religion, as per our usual, and how pharmacy is horrid and my lab sessions are killing me and how much we want a holiday. And oh yes, I finally passed Eunice her birthday present.

Speaking of which, my brother's spending his birthday in some forest in Taiwan. Poor boy.

34 more days! To a brief escape. :) I wait, I hope.

I was watching Isaac on E! today. And he brought a flirtologist on the show. Apparently, there's such a thing. So, he was asking her for tips (despite him being gay and all, or rather because. anyway.) and she was saying how, in essence, it is the girl that makes the first move.

Like if a girl sees a cute guy across a room, she has to look at him in the eye and smile. Look away momentarily perhaps, but look him in the eye again, and smile.

LIKE WHAT THE HELL.

That little bit of eyeing and smiling is the invitation that has to be put forth first. Then the guy would know you were okay with him coming over if he was interested.

NYEEEAAAAH.

That's it then.

I'm doomed.

HAHA.

Nak main mata?!?!?!?! Me?!?!?! That would be the day.

Also, stupid people need to stop saying things like "If you were to look for where Al Qaeda is going to find its bomb, it's right in their backyard - in Pakistan." Don't these people know that such unfounded accusations have massive repercussions??? Haven't we learnt enough from the past? This time, it's just a Newsweek article. But the next thing you know, Bush is scrawling Pakistan down on his list. SIGH.

In math lab right now.

I really really wish my life revolves around more than my modules. But it just does! And I can barely do anything about it.

Got the lowest of the low marks for my math homework assignment. And what did I do? Laugh. I'm not sure if this is good or not. It's good cause it did not drive me to self-injury but it's bad cause maybe I'm really starting to not care or something.

CANNOT. I cannot NOT care.

I was thinking yesterday, amidst rushing between serving drinks in the kitchen and blasting DNA sequences in the bedroom: what would happen if I simply stopped caring? The first thing that came to mind: BLISS. To just let go! And not try so hard. I could take life less seriously. Be more light-hearted maybe.

But then. I think I can never make myself do that. Too much of a coward, partly. (Change is scary.) And partly, I just don't know how! How do you not care. I am never happy until I can be as good as I am able to be. Which explains why I'm usually dissatisfied. Because I think I know I'm underperforming or something.

You can DO this. You can, you can, you can. Repeat that mantra. Andrew Matthews says that your physical reality gravitates to your dominant thoughts.

I can't help but want to bitch bout school. -__- I've been sitting at raffles place macs, mostly by my lonesome, working on our politics of heritage presentation, for near five hours.

What life is this! I missed out on jalan raya again! EEEESSSH.

School is making me even more antisocial.

And then, after this, I still need to work on bioinformatics project. I need to start blasting those DNA sequences.

I keep trying to recall how I pictured 20-year-old me when I was 7. I think I imagined something more.

Hotmail is also being a bitch. It won't let me attach our project ppt! for god's sake.

My fries have become ice-cold! >.<

Okay, I shall stop being an annoying whiner and go home.

Why is it that there will always be people intent on burtsing your bubble? :( All bubble bursters should be put into a big black box and never shown the light of day.

Anyway. Finally got a new phone but then stupidly lost all my contacts again. I really thought I had saved it into my SIM card this time. But apparently not. -__- So please please please, if you're my friend and you happen upon this entry, leave your name and number in my guestbook if it's not too much trouble! thank you.

spent ages in the lab today. But spent the first two hours scrambling to finish my math homework while the guys did the assays. I have been having a seriously perpetual headache since morning and it does not dissipate. I think I lack sleep. AGAIN. Experimental biochemistry is a pain in the head, neck, shoulders and eyes.

OHMYGOD.

What did I ever do to become embroiled in a net this complicated.

It's been a happy, happy eid. :)

(Despite the list of foreboding deadlines I have to face.)

It's just been great. And I can't quite pinpoint the reason it's been better than most years. Maybe it's the fact that Ami Akar's family has been going around with us again lately, and I so so miss the talk and the laughs. Like tonight: we were sitting for hours, rehashing old stories and laughing our asses off. My my. I miss this.

okay. Words always fail to express good times sufficiently. So here come photos.

Starting with raya morning at ghufran, overflowing as usual. (I swear, I don't understand why they fail to add more mats every year; they KNOW it's going to be crazily overcrowded.)









This lady was sitting next to me. I sneaked a photo of her - so khusyuk lah.





ohmygosh. Can you feel the love on eid? :)) It's just everywhere.









The family portraits!



Beloved granny and me.


I think this is a cool shot of the boys; they all have unique positions. So natural.


Mandatory sibling shot. My brother is so ridiculous with those shades.


Ex-tutee and me. We were also supposed to partner up at Bubu's wedding as receptionists, but then plans changed. So sayang! Umar grew up nicely lah. :p


Another nice shot of the boys.


Okay. That's all I have time for now. So much work once tomorrow comes, but tonight I'm good.(:

I've been reading this book on happiness by Andrew Matthews. And it talked about how, when you want something badly, the universe will undoubtedly be against you. And it will remain against you, and you will agonize and bitch and moan. But if you still insist you want it and work your ass off for it, and say, "Go to hell, cosmic conspiracy, I want this!" and fight for your dream even when things look 100% bleak, then the universe will look down on you, know that it has fully tested the extent of your ambition and desire, and finally smile and relent. And then you'll have what you so desperately want.

I was watching the finale episode of 'How I Met Your Mother' on StarWorld the other night and Ted totally illustrated with absolute vividness, the above theory. He went so far as to rain dance on top of a building so that it'd rain and Robin could be prevented from going camping with some other guy. Ahah. And it did rain.

Iftar at our house again today.

It's funny how math can make me laugh so. Prof Lawton is just so absent-mindedly hilarious! And he barely ever succeeds explaining anything intelligibly. So far, any concept I've managed to grasp has been a result of my own perusal of the textbook or Bertrand's explanations in tutorial. He'll explain all the useless stuff we obviously get and gloss over the difficult math concepts. Gah! But still, it's hard to hate him because he's so adorably uncle-like and funny.

But Lawton and his antics aside, math is still amusing because there will always come a point in an incomprehensible lecture or class where one utterly gives up and tunes out, and starts seeing all the scary math equations in a humourous light. Like during tutorial, I'll turn to Pi Quet on my left, and say, "Do you get any of this?" He'll say, "No!" And I'll go, "Me neither! HAHAHAHA!" Really, the numbers on the board start to look truly like squiggles. How mathematicians can survive all their lives immersed in a whole other 'language' is out-of-this-world.

Anyway, horrible metabolism test today. The moment I saw the first question, I knew I was doomed. Because I made the mistake of underestimating MCQs - they can be formidable. So I barely scraped through with a passing grade whilst others got decent 16/20s.

Bioinformatics test tomorrow. Umi is being nice and giving me a reprieve from the kitchen just so I can prepare. So, if I do badly, I'll feel ten times worse, cause I can't blame it on the dishes. Damn.

Lymond a Mary-Sue? haha! Never thought of him that way! Read: The Dread Mary Sue

I think he almost is one; almost, almost! :p Perfect almost beyond compare. But because Dunnett rocks and manages to make him real despite his enormous talents, with believable flaws, makes him commit hideous mistakes and makes him suffer accordingly, I'm more inclined to fit him in the hero-archetype category.

I have decided to be happy. I will learn to be happy. I can be happy. I have decided to escape life-rut once and for all. :)

I have a ton-load of math to work through though. And an essay. And three tests to study for. And an SEP I can't seem to successfully plan. And poor job prospects. And falling CAP. And a sad social life. But I will not let happiness slip away, so help me god. >_<

I think I'm having a somewhat non-blogging phase right now. I don't feel like sharing my thoughts. At all. Gandhi says: It's better to be hated for who you are than to be loved for who you're not. aiyah, but it's always easier said than done.

anyway, since it's Ramadhan and all, here's a link: Quran Explorer It's beyond fantastic. You can choose the reciter, the translation and browse through any surah or chapter with a click of the mouse. The internet is magic, don't you think?

Abah came back today! :))) Umi and me took the bus to terminal 2. And Sani Hussain took the same bus as us. We keep seeing him lah! The other time it was at the coffeeshop. But I pretended not to recognise him. And my mum truly didn't. My brother wasn't around to say hi anyway, so we ignored him. Besides, he was wearing sunglasses - which ultimately mean "Stay away from me."

Abah's luggage seriously weighed 35kg or stg. I could barely drag it okay, let alone lift it in any way. It was worse than my US luggage (which I couldn't lift up the train steps to get to San Fran; uber embarassing). And he bought scarves and brooches for us and arabic cartoons for me. haha yay. I really want to improve my arabic. Also, he took photos of a Hotel Shamiah and a Shamiah shopping centre. Apparently, there's a whole place there called Shamiah. Ahah.

Today, I was really sleeping on my feet. Well, almost. Was half-sleeping in the train to school, was sleeping during biocomp lec, and was really dozing off on a study table for an hour after that. Then, slogged through lab with eyes barely open. Electrophoresis is shit work. The machine keeps conking every other try, so that one has to redo the freaking thing all over again. And we got dismal lab report marks.

But, on a lighter note! Eli is going to send me the movie Sunshine that he has on his comp! Yay. I hope he remembers. Been wanting to watch it since forever. :p

Am dreading politics of heritage lesson for once. And I don't think I wanna explain why. Everything is such a muddle, really.

I was whining tonight too. I was doing my normal cryptic whining. "I don't want to fight anymore..." Then my mum surprisingly responded, "Fight what?" And I simply repeated, "I don't want to fight anymore." I couldn't begin to tell her. Fight what? It's hard to say in so many words. (Besides, I have no intention of overloading this entry with emotional regurgitations.) You know what I keep picturing heaven to be? Just me laying down and looking up at the sky, and knowing the battle is over.

Having math lecture now, but my eyes, awake since 4.30 this morning, are dying to close. -_- Zzzz.

I am happy today because I finally got my birthday present from the birds! (5 months late! haha.) A watch! Obviously, they know my watch status is pathetic. I am currently wearing a $10 watch. heh. so yay! :)

We also grilled pigey. very painfully, I must say. :p She was so uncomfortable, she wanted to fiddle with everything she could get her hands on.

Today I feel like Robin Stewart, contemplating the genius that is Lymond. Sometimes people can be overly brilliant. Ah sigh.

And oh my god. I give up already lah okay. fine fine. we're not a malay country. no point fighting already.

I want to post the entry I contributed at my politics of heritage module forum. Cause I feel for it. So here.

It is difficult to address the issue of legitimacy, because essentially, we have to define what is right and what is wrong. And obviously, not everyone can agree on that. For instance, is the creation of the Israeli State justified? Sure, prehistory confirms that it is so. But at the expense of another country? At the expense of other peoples' homes? If we were to take the Israeli state concept and apply it elsewhere, then wouldn't the Native Americans say, have the right to rule USA, because America is technically theirs?

Singapore is of course, the exact opposite of Israel (despite Lee Kuan Yew's awe of the latter). We are not built on a long ancient history. The majority of Singaporeans are not natives. We came from elsewhere and we have settled here and called this place home. Imagine if the Orang Laut, an imaginary Singaporean version of Israelis on their return to motherland, claimed rule over Singapore - would we concede? I doubt so. So whose is Singapore? Does Singapore belong to the people who helped develop it or does it belong to the people who first originated from this land? Or maybe the most essential question is: Does conquering a piece of land immediately imply ownership? I can't even begin to assert my own opinion on this because I am completely torn about it. The Orang Laut would say, "You stole Singapore from us!" And we'd say, "You weren't here to defend it! And we made Singapore what it is today!" It just seems like an impossible situation!

After discussion in class, I went home to ask my mum, feeling quite bothered, "Singapore is originally a Malay country, right?" My mother replied with a vehement, "Yes!" And I told her, "Well, despite the way you always seem to put it, I don't think it's common knowledge at all!" Quite frankly, I feel very appalled, at the disparity of opinions within my household and within class. No one seemed very ready to say that the Orang Laut were essentially Malays, more than anything else, despite the obvious fact that the term "Orang Laut" itself is of the Malay language. The issue seems somewhat scary, and one has to tiptoe around it. It is starting to appear to me, that the term Orang Laut has been conveniently used to displace the roots of the Malays. Oh sure, quite a number of them were from Malaysia, technically not Singapore itself, and some from Indonesia, but surely, surely, there are indigenous Malays amongst them. But I think if you were to ask a Malay if he was a Native, he'd be confused and say no. I'm not sure what to make of it - state success in rewriting Singapore history perhaps, or are Malays really not natives of Singapore at all?

Of course it would be disadvantageous for Singapore to refer to the distant past with regards to our nationality. We'd be going back to talk of Majapahit eras and their ruling of the entire archipelago, and Malay folk tales of Hang Tuah, Hang Jebat and other Malay warriors. Doing so would backfire on Singapore's racial harmony concept; Malays would perhaps realise that they had more reason to live in Singapore; they'd demand more, perhaps; more rights, more power. Prehistory would favour the Malays. But certainly, starting the 1800s, all the races would be on better footing; we'd all be on par. So that's where our nation-state takes the start of Singapore history.

Kohl and Fawcett brings up the dilemma that "minority groups, particularly indigenous peoples, face when they assert their claims over the remains of a past used by the majority population to create an image of the nation's bi-cultural or multi-cultural identity". I can understand that. Because while Malays would claim that Singapore's distant past belongs to them, Singapore today however, isn't entirely theirs. It's a difficult situation and I think will remain so.

Am finally clearing my hotmail inbox. The amount of undeleted mail is incredible. Then I discovered why I saved certain emails - cause they're sweet and I can be sentimental. But I've decided to be brutal and delete them anyway. So here's some stuff that I've decided to salvage... This one's from my sis while I was in the US.

I am chatting with you, yet you are not chatting. Think umi like really misses you and abang. It's quite funny. She stones in the little spaces of time she has. Then she'll say: "Kakak tengah tidur, kakak tengah kat campus sekarang." and so on. Just informing you that you're being missed.

And this one's from Eunice when we were discussing US holiday:

I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE THINKING. You're thinking, "Eeeks! How can I get to SF from Stanford on my own!! My parents will freak out! I will freak out!!!" (Or something along those lines. :D) DON'T PANIC.

Haha. Ended up taking the train with Christine anyway.

Iftar at our house tonight! :)

I dreamt I bought some bisphosphoglycerate tea (ahahahah! metabolism module obviously getting to me) and that my multiculturalism essay received an impossible A++ grade. (Yes, there really were two pluses!) And that Nerney marked it, not Daniel. Man, I wish I wish.

Went to the airport today to send Daddy off for his Ramadhan Umrah. Jealous jealous! Hopefully, I'll get to go again someday. I was telling my sis:

Me: You know what. I think the only time I was really really happy was when I was there. I mean, it wasn't really a high, I wasn't having the kind of high that rollercoasters can give you. But I was content and really happy. Despite, I remember vividly, having to study for freaking prelims and lugging my chem textbook. I was just really... happy.

Sis: It's called peace.

Me: YAR! Peace! That's it!

Heehee. But really. Peace is so hard to find.

Anyway, I also wish I was more affectionate like my sis. I take afer my dad too much (his fault, I say!). When she hugged him today, she immediately said, "I love you." She made it easier for me to tell him I love him too.

Airports are places brimming with love.

***

On other shocking news: pigey! goodnessgracious. I told Duckie today that we should make a pact. Should any of us friends undergo anything major in our lives, the rest should be informed within a one month period, MAX. That should be enough buffer period for whatever thinking, chewing-over, or contemplating that one needs to do. No?

Suddenly dropping the bomb nearly one year later is seriously @_@. SHOCKING. Do that, and on top of the natural initial surprise, expect a "You took this long to tell us you have a boyfriend???" tirade and also expect to be grilled like a sotong. ahah.

I think I'm falling into my pit of angst again. Every other post will start to sound like a tantrum. But really, man. There are a million and one things to be angry about in this world. Not least with oneself. How does one cope?

My sister just sighed over her physics books again. And I had to laugh out and say, "Why must our lives be filled with sighs?"

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. - F. Scott Fitzgerald

In other words, be happy despite miserable situation and in the hope of striving for a better one.

okay, enough of this.

***

Peacewish: Stupid bureaucrats! Stupid politicians! They think they can just do whatever they like to us, trample our rights and take away what’s ours, in the name of what they think is ‘right’. Like, the cotton-brained &$-ups in the State Department that are robbing American citizens of their hard earned money for idiotic foreign projects.

Meilin: As in…

Peacewish: As in the government grant they’re ‘giving’ to my school in Thailand. Some dim bulb thought up a plan to prevent future terrorism by teaching all the Muslims down here some English – I guess in the hope that if they know how to order a hamburger in a restaurant they won’t be so inclined to blow it up. Doesn’t bin Laden speak perfectly fluent English?

Tomoyo: Well, in his fatwahs he seems to think it’s all right to end a sentence with both a question mark and an exclamation mark.

haha. I wonder if that's really true.

Sometimes one can find such a treasure of a writer on the internet. I really do like Peacewish's works. (Above is a dialogue she enacts between herself and all her characters at the end of every fic, in the name of thrashing out the plot and themes.) All her political angst fused into a fantasy/action story with adorable and wonderfully-developed characters are extremely engaging.

***

Time for long-long-overdue photos. (So typical of me, isn't it?) Last last weekend (31st Aug) was a much-anticipated cousin dinner at Sakura, courtesy of dearest kaktiyah. It was full of crappiness (on our parts, not the restaurant) and loads of good food. It was a buffet. Hussain accidentally ordered black herbal chicken, thinking it was black PEPPER chicken. It turned out appearing utterly foreign and inedible-looking, and we all dared each other to taste the soup. A memorable night. :)




This is us when we managed to stop laughing.






Hussain lost the number game and was forced to take a sip of his black herbal chicken. :p





***

What Be Your Nerd Type? Your Result: Social Nerd   You're interested in things such as politics, psychology, child care, and peace. I wouldn't go so far as to call you a hippie, but some of you may be tree-huggers. You're the type of people who are interested in bettering the world. You're possible the least nerdy of them all; unless you participate in other activies that paled your nerdiness compared to your involvement in social activities. Whatever the case, we could still use more of you around. ^_^
Science/Math Nerd
Literature Nerd
Drama Nerd
Artistic Nerd
Gamer/Computer Nerd
Anime Nerd
Musician
What Be Your Nerd Type? Quizzes for MySpace

ahah.

Okay. It's time I blogged. Cause I've been meaning to. But something else always comes first.

This has to be recounted. Because I had such a visceral reaction and I want it to be remembered, and I want people to know. I was having a typical 6-hour-long biochemistry lab session. And some of my lab peers love to converse in Chinese. Which is fine with me, because I have accepted that it is too much of a natural instinct for them when they're together.

But when fellow Indian dude misconstrues Singapore as a result, I SNAP:

Two Chinese dudes walk past blabbering in Chinese to each other, and they seemed harried.

Indian: Eh, what did they say?
Me: Eh. How should I know?
Indian: You've been living in this country forever deh...

I think at this point, my face completely froze over.

Me: Singapore is not a Chinese country, okay. We have a Malay national anthem.

I couldn't control myself. I even jeling ah! Ohmygoodness. And it's so totally not his fault. He was just ignorant. But shock and anger totally monopolised my speech. And then I stalked off to the sink to wash something, before I could say anything else. He looked completely taken aback by my response.

Clearly, this is an uncontrollably sore topic for me. The incredible injustice of it all.

I almost didn't want to blog because I am so freaking tired, I wish I could just keel over, curl into a ball and hibernate like a bear. Really man. I don't know what I'm surviving on. I understand the pull of drugs now. Haha.

You know what I wish? I wish I were a Roswell alien so that I'd only require three hours of sleep a night. I like to sleep, but there just ain't enough time to do all the things that life can offer you.

Had a seriously hectic weekend full of family melodrama, but loads of laughs as well.

Somebody tell me how to survive uni with the family that I have. I feel like rubber slowly being stretched too thin. And then, snap. Haiyoh.

Okay you know what. I am too tired.

I feel like I'm splitting my skull. Critical thinking is an ass. And truly, that's what freaking term papers require of you. They require you to plumb the depths of the mind and come out with some amazing epiphany you can shape into a thesis. It is exhausting in the extreme. I mean, one can sit down in one position for two hours straight contemplating one chain of causality in the quest of finding ultimate root of a world problem. Or something like that.

I've gone beyond wanting to scratch my cheeks to ribbons (I suppose that's a different kind of frustration). My morbidity has brought me to envisioning encasing my eyeballs in a special wooden case. So that, for a little while, I can escape my thoughts and go to sleep. I can't seem to rest.

When you think about it: aaah... the comforts of science. Nice, logical equations.

Watched Notes On A Scandal last night. It has frightened me into wanting marriage, no matter the partner. AHAH. No, I'm kidding lah. I couldn't do that, I think. Briefly, Judi Dench acts as psycho spinster and Cate Blanchett acts as unknowing victim. Spinster clings to fellow colleague like a leech, and it evokes both pity and utter horror. The story explores the dangerous depths of loneliness and lack of human touch. From now on, I shall attmept to hug others more and adopt a kid if I don't manage to have my own some day.

I keep getting back aches and shoulder aches! Eeesh.

My fridays shall all be nice days from now on. Because both my lectures are webcasted! So that effectively, I do not need to turn up. :p But of course, I must discipline myself and watch the webcasts.

Seeing my advisor tomorrow. I don't think I know at all what we'll be discussing.

I am sad because I won't be going for my politics of heritage cambodia field trip!
:( Because it will be Ramadhan. Ah sigh.

I'm still mentally tired from wednesday's 6 hour lab session so excuse the extremely routine, boring post. I can't seem to exert any extra energy. I just want to laze indefinitely and read Lymond. Please?

Because I miss Lymond, I googled him. :p

I read 600 books doing research for the Lymond Chronicles. And, remember, this was before computers and copy machines. I must have copied out thousands of pages of notes - which I still have, collected in notebooks.
~Dorothy Dunnett

Goodness. What wouldn't any of us give for just a little bit of those notes!

And you know what! Donati = Dunnett in Italian!

The name Donati - as in Evangelista Donati, who looks after Joleta and later hands Kuzum into the care of Philippa at Zakynthos - is apparently the Italian form of Dunnett... So like Dorothy to drop such a connection into the story knowing that it might lay undiscovered for years. I can just hear her laughing - ‘oh good, they found one, but there’s plenty more to go’.

Man! I so want to sit and reread. If I were thrown on a desert island, I'd want the chronicles to be with me.

Been finally working somewhat intensively on multiculturalism paper. :s Daniel thinks I'm in trouble with it. Not far from the truth, that.

whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there? ahahah. with open arms and open eyes? no. Probably mine will be screwed shut in fear.

I have to constantly calm myself down... Fretting over every little thing is my natural instinct. Must fight.

I have photos from the previous liqa'!



And then we insisted on making the boys wear the scarf. Ahahaha. Too bored, we were.




Macam achi rempah. heh.

Okay, have to go. Mudaris coming in a while for arabic!

Every day, I think of at least three different things to blog about. But when I get here, nothing comes easy. Writing is so dependent on split-second inspiration sometimes. Epiphanies should be treated with reverence - I should stop mid-step, mid-work, mid-mrt-cabin and scribble them down or something.

I was incredibly unlucky today. It culminated in my having to wait near an hour for bus No. 10 in old bedok area. After 50 minutes of waiting, I was completely and utterly pissed at SBS, and stalked off from the bedok ria bus stop and walked to tanah merah station instead. But then: (yes, you guessed it) No. 10 drove past. Grrrr.

Not to mention that whilst waiting for the infuriating bus, a couple of banglas wandered over, apparently lost. Looking for some garden called Limau Bali. What on earth. Never heard of such a place. I was being reticent and fairly unresponsive. They were nice and okay-looking but they were still unfamiliar FOREIGNERS and notorious banglas some more and I was alone at a lonely bus stop during the night.

You have no idea how much I wished I had a boyfriend at hand at that point in time. HAHA. Anyway, I digress.

Luckily, they had the sense to sit a bench apart from me, while still insisting on making conversation though. Their english is super unintelligible by the way. One of them said he had a sister also called shamiah. Yes, they asked for my name, and I hesitated at first, but couldn't see too much harm in telling. I didn't want to seem too rude. They were still human beings. So they hung around, one of them messaging on his handphone, while I fidgeted and tried to will No.10 to come by sheer force of mind (didn't work of course). Then to my relief, they decided to take a cab. And I was still there waiting for blasted No.10. Then, like I said, I stormed off after a while more. Seriously man - banglas came and went and still bus failed to arrive!

blah and gah. Also, pentas money matters are making me like this: >.<

We had a syabab united gathering in occasion of isra' mi'raj yesterday. And it was... good. Although 'good' doesn't quite cut the description for the whole event. Yesterday was a day for much pondering and brain-squeezing. (Notice how my adjectives have involved the word 'brain' lately.) aiyah. right now, I am in no mood to be detailed.

I think I've become that little bit better in arabic. humyay.

I wonder if, at the bottom of it all, we all just live to be loved.

I am rich and happy. (okaylah, not so rich, but still happy):)))) Haaaaa. It feels good. After much stress and agony, (right to the last moment, let me tell you), it feels real good to know people were happy with pentas. And that we made it work - DESPITE EVERYTHING.

Despite our certainty that murphy's laws were toying with us at every turn, we managed to overcome. Everything that could have gone wrong really did. So much so that ibnur himself lost faith in 'ibnur's laws'. Haha. So many merepek obstacles overcome. Ohmygosh. Farhanah was right. Can't believe it's over. 10 frakking months, was it? So looooong.

I don't have any photos cause I was lazy to whip out my camera. Too kecoh with everything.

Just to illustrate the craziness of pentas, even on the night itself:

1) an hour to arrival of GOH, I discovered our reserved parking lots were taken over by two unknown vehicles. (Wanted to scream, man.) I was about to breakdown, I tell you. Haha. Then, I paced around the carpark, wracking my brains. Here, I have to thank Yusrina, whose cute, tiny blue car was miraculously one of the cars that managed to get parking. So we begged her to give up her space for GOH's big merc and she obliged. We owe her big. Miracle, that was. Stupid, useless VT people who didn't tell me properly to guard the lots. Eeeesh.

2) Front doors refused to open at 8 pm. Wahlau. People swarming around the registration table with irritated faces is not a pleasant experience.

3) As me and yammie were starting to clear up the registration table at bout 8.30, this boy came up to us and said, "Kak, boleh masuk tak? I baru kena rompak ah. Nak jumpa kawan kejap." We were like @_@, WHAT. "Sumpah???" "Sumpah!" Apparently, some three dudes, just round the corner, took away his bag of money and his ticket. And we gave him the benefit of the doubt and yammie took him in to see his friend. We were freaked out ah! Me especially, owing to the fact that I was holding on to a cashbox overflowing with bills.

4) omg. the most kecoh results tabulation EVER. Lin and Hidayat calculating scores at one end of the world (we had no idea which corner of the theatre they were parked at, painfully taking FOREVER counting), and me freaking out over prizes, at stage right. Waiting for Lin to come over with the results. Hilarious to recall now. Ibnur was writing out names of sponsors on a piece of white paper for our dewa/emcee, as a filler dialgue, while we waited for Lin. And then we couldn't find SCOTCHTAPE to tape the paper onto the dewa's scroll. I was wringing my hands with worry. Then Ibnur started peeling off tape from the plastic bags backstage to pathetically paste the paper on the scroll.

Then, when Mahathir, our fantastic dewa, was on stage unfurling the scroll, the white paper fell, and he went, "Tengoklah makhluk bumi ni, tak tahu nak gam betul-betul!"

OMG! He is so hilarious. Fantastic, spontaneous performer. My sis (who sat right in front of the judges) said Rafaat Hamzah was totally impressed by him. He was like, "Mana dorang dapat budak ni seh?"

I kept calling Lin up to tell her to STOP COUNTING AND COME WITH THE RESULTS NOW NOW NOW. I think there were three of us there running around like worried, headless chickens. Wany was totally stressing, "I need the results now! Now!" And then when Lin finally came, there were like about ten of us crowding over the judges' papers. I was totally totally BRAIN-SCRAMBLED. Cause Mahathir was done announcing the sponsors and we still didn't have the results.

I had to squat down for a moment to gather my thoughts before I totally went nuts.

Then we were all like, crowding around the papers, dashing out:

"Okay, sape overall?"

"I need everyone to look at the drama sheet, the drama sheet."

"Lin, SAPE OVERALL WINNER???"

"Purnama Sari! Purnama Sari!"

"Best actor? Best actor?"

"Just give me a name!"

"(read off judging sheet) Yang pakai baju merah..."

"Sape yang pakai baju merah!!!"

"OHMYGOD!!!" (this is probably me being totally stressed and unhelpful)

"Mat Jenin, Mat Jenin!"

"You sure???"

And all the while, Mahathir was going back and forth, on and off stage, entertaining the audience while we figured out the winners. His booming voice, "Apasal lambat sangat hah!", was half-making me go into hysterics.

GOODNESS.

That whole 5 minute fiasco has made such precious memory now. I'll never forget how crazy it was. HAHAHA.

Wooooooooooooooooooooooh.

I'm glad we all stuck by pentas budaya.

crunch time for pentas. :s

Amidst all these whacked things going on that's frying my brain into mush, it feels strangely incongruous to receive a 'Hi, cher!' from one of my hyper ex-students. Cheerfulness ain't fitting in right now.

The impossibility of tomorrow (but see how we will triumph over impossibilities):
1) We need 36 packets of white printing paper for event booklets, the cost of which was not foreseen by the blur-sighted treasurer - me.
2) We have no transport to carry said paper.
3) 36 packets of paper are heavy.
4) I think we have less than 4 hours to print 1200 copies of event booklets.
5) Current manpower: 2

6) Despite all this, I have the comp bio tea session that I need to attend in the morning, owing to pressing doubts and questions.

Extreme multi-tasking reduces productivity.

All my modules for this sem have been settled. :) thank god.

Today, for the first time at coffee bean, I got a Mango Creme fruit blend instead of my normal coffee blends. Delicious.

The beginning of every sem seems to give me a certain drive. I'm all geared up now to raise my cap. Must must must. Else usp or comp bio might give me the boot.

[Yu Jie] loves the HP books! says:
ahahaha guess WHAT!

shammity rammity says:
eh
shammity rammity says:
WHAT?
shammity rammity says:
you have a boyfriend?

[Yu Jie] loves the HP books! says:
-_________________________-

shammity rammity says:
okay.. not that... you're gonna appear on tv?
shammity rammity says:
WHAT!!!

[Yu Jie] loves the HP books! says:
I GOT A KITCHEN SCALE!
[Yu Jie] loves the HP books! says:
:'D
[Yu Jie] loves the HP books! says:
HAHAHA

shammity rammity says:
-___________________________-"
shammity rammity says:
goodness.

unhealthy obsession over kitchen appliances much? haha.

Everything's so hectic. My favourite time of any day now lies during the wee hours of the morning - past midnight when I've signed off msn and when I've made myself quit worrying about one thing or another. And I can relax and read and escape.

Earlier, I was washing this mug I had used. The mug was from someone's wedding and had all these words of promise and forever-ness inscribed within a heart. And then a moment later, I realised that the couple was no longer together. I zonked out for a bit in surprise. How horrible is it to realise a mug outlasts a marriage? I suppose, if one were to think about it, there must be a million of such items from a million failed relationships. But to hold it in my hand like that - so sad lah. People make so many empty promises of forever, eh?

sometimes, I wish I could just put faces or something. Scrunched up faces of frustration maybe. aiiyaaayy.

Possible modules for USP this coming sem:

- Cyberart: sounds uber fun cause it has video and photography and generally stuff that I love. But sounds extremely time-consuming. Two major projects or something.

- Negotiating Moral Issues: ethics of biotech. Very relevant. Okay, I guess.

- Southeast Asian Studies: Making of a Region - doesn't sound too bad. It doesn't look like social studies.

- Quantum Computing and Information - freakily interesting because it has the whole crazy quantum world involved! you know, electrons disappearing and tiny particles that defy classical physics! but I only have one science module left to do. And if I do this I can't do Time, Space and Matter next time. Time, Space and Matter is even more fascinating cause it's the whole Einstein space theory about the infinitely expanding universe and time stuff I can't understand. Haha.

Waaah. I don't know. My course schedules are still in a mess. I think I need to see my advisor ASAP to help me sort out my uni life. Because at the rate I'm going... I'm pretty screwed. No space for first-tier modules... much less for advanced ones!

My multiculturalism essay still not materialising! :s

I came up with a strategy while praying today. Everytime I feel an anxiety attack coming, I shall pause, blank my mind and count to ten. Then I tell myself, whatever it is and no matter how bad the situation, Allah and Rasul will help me. (Amin.) One must always keep perspective in order to stay sane. Besides, Bertrand Russell (I think) also said that the sign of a nervous breakdown is when one starts taking one's work far too seriously. So CHILL, I tell myself.

potterpuffs are back! now with icons and pics for deathly hallows. Don't scroll down if you fear spoilers of any form.






















luna and xeno!!! adorable, aren't they? :p

go to potterpuffs for more.

It feels wrong not to talk about the end of HP here. It being so influential on my life and all.

I mean to abandon this place for a while, to take time off, for reasons even I have trouble understanding.

But it would be wrong not to mark the end of an incredible (ten-year-long) story. SO here.

AHEAD: MAJOR BOOK 7 SPOILERS. MAJOR RAMBLE.















I have to gloat that I was so spot on about Snape loving Lily! I just absolutely knew it.

But the way Snape died is tragic. Really. How sad is Snape's life, man.

I love the fact that this book really elucidated everything! (Duh, last book and all, huh?) Especially about Dumbledore! My goodness. His past is so fascinating. And the fact that he was once an ambitious, impulsive, young boy makes him all the more real. And everything about Snape - my! No words. Just a long-due feeling of vindication for an underdog and seriously misunderstood man.

Harry's final wand duel with Voldemort? Epic, yo! And throughout the entire book, I kept thinking, "When did Harry evolve into such a leader?" He's so confident and passionate about what he's doing and compassionate and strong and brave and a million other hero-adjectives. It's shocking that JKR managed to turn him into this when we knew Harry as merely a lonely, scrawny and scared boy only seven years prior. It is excellent character development, no doubt. That final showdown didn't diappoint. I love Harry's speech to Voldie. He spoke like... like... like a man! Not a boy anymore.

And how cool is it that Ron used Parseltongue to get basilisk blood! That is genius work! Ron is adorable more than ever this time, because we see him doing extraordinary things on his own, and he doesn't seem to expect it of himself.

And Ron/Hermione finally materialises. :) And very in-character too.

Most devastating death: Fred Weasley. So devastating that I couldn't shed any tears over it at first. Too shocking. We've always banked on the twins to be there and be funny when times go bad. But when one of them goes, it's just like... kind of a helpless feeling. Waaaah.

I shockingly cried over Moody's death. I mean, he's never been prominent enough to gain my affections, but when he just died like that - it was heartbreaking! Probably his death just highlighted the extreme danger and helplessness of the Order's situation.

Dobby's death was similarly devastating. Which author would bother to kill a house-elf? I mean, fandom work that I've read before have never made the death of a non-wizard so tragic! But JKR succeeded. Dobby holds such dear memories of stacks of woolen hats and tea cosies, and serving Harry like no other. Sniff.

AND HEDWIG!!! Hedwig was the first to go! I mean, like hello! Aren't even pets free from the dangers of the Dark Side???

Oh yes, Oliver Wood appeared again, much to Yujie's satisfaction.

Ah sigh. I could go on, I suppose, and list out my exclamation over every other little thing. But that'll be crazy work.

I LOVE HP. Can't believe Harry finally did it, you know. I remember, when that scene was over, when Voldie was laying dead on the floor - I was quite stunned. I just had trouble letting the fact that it was OVER sink in. But wooh! it was GREAT while it lasted.