I am very irritated with self.

I actually still have a LOT OF WORK, LIKE UNBELIEVABLE AMOUNTS OF WORK, to do, but I have this incessant need to blog. Like if my feelings bother me, I just need to let it go. And it's different from letting it go in private too, because here, at least I think someone out there might be listening and it's different from my private lj entries I know won't be seen by a single soul. It must be that 'feely' part of my MBTI personality type. So 'feely'. Or maybe it's about being a female; the need to blabber about feelings.

Oh no. I shall stop thinking about that now.

Am doing the bio functional genomics thing and I can't write without pausing after every other sentence so I don't know how I'll ever finish this on time, and if I don't stop and force myself to keep writing, I get seriously upset and I feel like I'll get a stomachache. Eeee.

Why is the last few weeks of school always hell. Everything always spins out of control or something. My fear is that when I leave school, and I go into the bio industry or stg, it'll keep being like that - crazy deadlines and endless stress. :( GAH. DON'T WANT.

I want to work in happiness, please. Because that's when creativity and ideas shine. Not this crazy let's-do-as-many-things-in-as-little-time-as-possible crap. -.-

Thank you, Arashi, for making my night! :) I laughed so hard (I've been needing some) when I watched a clip of Sho drawing a kangaroo - it was hilarious. But that clip couldn't be embedded, and I decided to post this one instead - this one makes me laugh every time. What Jun wanted his girlfriend to call him when he was younger:



The part when Nino suggests, "Jun-pon?" always cracks me up! XD

Love this one! from xkcd.

Found another Ralph Waldo Emerson quote:

It has seemed to me lately more possible than I knew, to carry a friendship greatly, on one side, without due correspondence on the other. Why should I cumber myself with regrets that the receiver is not capacious? It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the reflecting planet. Let your greatness educate the crude and cold companion. If he is unequal, he will presently pass away; but thou art enlarged by thy own shining, and, no longer a mate for frogs and worms, dost soar and burn with the gods of the empyrean.

Aishiteru by Monkey Majik

The video is a little weird (ignore the irritating speech bubbles!) but strangely makes sense if you think hard enough. I thought it'd be more angsty or stg, seeing how the lyrics are so beautifully sad. It makes my heart weep; love it.

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Something unrelated: my sister says I telah memalukan diri (i.e. made myself lose face, haha) for saying in a previous entry I don't know what mengandalkan means. -.- But really! Who uses it! My dad thinks a synonym for it is mengalaskan.

Okaylah, I admit defeat. My malay is just so getting from bad to worse. That's it! I will improve my mother tongue! Just you see. >:|

I think I almost died standing today, heh. Was helping out at Anugerah Mendaki (where academically excellent Malay/Muslim students are awarded prizes) from morning till late afternoon, and stood practically 95% of the time. I felt like the top half of my body was ready to be dislodged from the bottom half. :P But aside from that, I felt kind of inspired. And a bit nostalgic. Looking at the little rafflesians fresh from PSLE made me smile. The pinafores. And the green, black and white. And 13-year-old boys are tiny (yes, even to me!). And the teenage students and their frivolity. And all those JC blazers.

Then the first class honours graduates came up and were all really wow to me. It doesn't help that I've actually seen some of their full resumes, having helped at Mendaki first-hand, and known how much wow they really are. I felt a little wistful about the whole thing. Like... I know I could have stayed on the same path if I tried. Like if I mugged hard enough and battled through exams the way I'd had all my younger days, maybe my first class wouldn't be so out of reach as it is now. I don't know, somewhere along the way, I'd lost the drive. Because I'd started to think about big pictures and destinations and what the point of it all was.

And!!! :D While ushering guests in, I spotted this angmoh dude and immediately, I was like, "Eh, I've seen him!" And I realised he was Kak Filza's german husband! :DDDD (Kak Filza was the RJ senior who co-wrote the script for Laila, the drama production in which I acted as a mother.) I've always managed to bump into Kak Filza now and then. And I finally got to congratulate her when she walked past me to get to the stage. She looked very pretty in a green baju kurung. And she got a first class honours in chemistry and bio! @.@ awesome lah.

I felt a little good on the way home. Like, yes, let's ganbarimasu, Shamiah! And work hard for a 2nd Uppers miracle. And then maybe Allah and Rasul will help open doors to the future. I've finally voiced to my parents what I think I might want to do with my degree. Might, might, might - not sure yet how things are to work out. I'm going to take a stab at a speech pathology course. An alternative to working in a bio research industry. Or yes, medical writing. Hm.

I've been attempting to read several books in Bahasa Indonesia recently and the language is just -- boggling. I always feel like every sentence is super long and convoluted and were it to be in English, would be at least half as short! It's frustrating. Why can't this be in English. -.- Not to mention coming across words I'm sure do not exist in Malay! Like pungkiri - what on earth does that mean. Makes me wish I had persevered in my Arabic so I could read the original versions. I'm sure they sound less convoluted.

I came across another complicated sentence: Tentu saja hal ini adalah masyarakat yang selalu mengandalkan asas pemikiran, bukan melihat problem situasi atau kenyataan yang bersifat sementara.

@.@ what is mengandalkan??? I can't even figure out the root word -- andal??? haha, man. This is irritating. Not to mention the sentence structure... just. what are you saying.

I didn't go for stats class today and Prof returned our midterms. Yvonne collected mine for me and said I got full marks. :O well. It was rather straightforward, I say, if you had the textbook with you. I haven't seen the likes of a good grade in a long time. I feel. yay.

I'm having such a headache though. And tomorrow, am supposed to go out and get more stuff for our museum display. A pot, some blue cloth, a fan. You know, sometimes... I feel like I should just be random and work at a museum when I graduate, or something. The things I do in school are so random anyway.

Also supposed to have done research for functional genomics. And started on the 10-page essay.

-.-

I've identified the places where I have epiphanies. Mad or otherwise. The shower, the train, the route from tampines interchange to home and at the sink while washing the dishes.

Listening to my sister recite her Gatsby essays and it's making me bored, and am supposed to work on a lot of things including my SNP analysis readings and pottery articles for that museum display we're doing, but I am reading quotes on my iTouch instead. It's kinda therapeutic.

"You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give."
~ Khalil Gibran

When you can think of yesterday without regret and tomorrow without fear, you are near contentment. ~ Anonymous

Acceptance is such an important commodity, some have called it "the first law of personal growth".
~ Peter McWilliams, Life101

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. The older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.
~ Mary Schmich

The difficulty is not so great to die for a friend, as to find a friend worth dying for.
~ Homer

To be great is to be misunderstood.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson always has nice quotes; I remember 409 used "You can't have harmony when everyone sings the same note" for our class motto. Or something close to that, I can't be sure.

One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn't do. ~ Henry Ford

Sanity calms, but madness is more interesting. ~ John Russell

Yes, well, interesting eh.

I know I've read this like 5 times or so, and pimped it at least twice, but here I am doing it again because it's just so good. I've been on a Hanadan high for near two weeks now since I bought the first season on DVD and couldn't help stumbling on this again and reading it again and it is so amazingly hilarious, I feel like quoting everything! GOD. It's like reading Cassandra Claire's post-OotP fic, A Lot To Be Upset About - where everything is so insanely funny and I just feel I need to tell everyone about it.

4 Times Domyouji Almost Wrecked (Someone Else's) Wedding, and 1 Time He Saved It
by Literary Lemming

"He said that Akira's sisters couldn't be the flower girls at your wedding because then Kumiko wouldn't be able to do it." Rui laconically turned a page and went back to reading.

"She's the daughter of an F4!" Domyouji barked. "That far outranks a SIBLING!"

"Are you saying my little sisters aren't WORTHY?" Akira seemed to be getting angrier with every passing second.

"Of course not! They flower-girled at MY wedding. Flower-girling for someone else would be a step down!"

"So now SOJIROH'S not worthy!"

"Stop twisting my words!"

"Then stop talking!"

"I am Domyouji Tsukasa and I'll talk when I want to talk!"

"Well I'm Mimasaka Akira and I will BUST YOUR TEETH WITH A HAMMER, you pompous bastard!"

I'm stuck in a loop. Or several loops actually. It's like a repetitive series of actions I'm supposed to have control over but seemingly don't.

Like the fact that I keep pushing and pushing and pushing away my FYP presentation. Sometimes I wish I could just make the whole thing... vanish. There's no other way to say it but I just don't want to do this. I don't think I've ever been this tired of school. Not studying or modules per se. Just the concept of school. And having to do well and memorise and do things I don't necessarily like or care about even. It's starting to be really hard to work at something I don't really have a passion for.

Oh no, I don't think I make very much sense.

I had a wonderful eid celebration with the dandarawis yesterday. Honestly, it really was the best raya gathering I've ever been to. And it's hard to say what it is exactly -- but I think it boiled down to the fact that we were all there for the right reasons. And there was this collective ganbatte! attitude, where everyone put in their enthusiasm and strength to make it a wonderful experience. There was a scavenger hunt, a ketupat-making competition that I totally FAILED at and a guess-the-kuih game for the kids. And the food was too much but so amazing. I really enjoyed myself, although the words FYP were swimming at the back of my mind. Mou, this stupid thing I am so not enjoying and am pretty much clueless about and Chen Yu Zong doesn't seem to care. Unnnnggh. D:

Also, so what if I'm a little less dense now? I just keep running away. -.- aaaaaaaaack.

xkcd and its random button is destroying my life.


I need to revise for my clinical stats midterm but I keep pressing the random button and reading comic after comic -- it's like a disease! Not to mention I need to make some progress on my stagnant FYP status.

Despite horrible work situation, I'm feeling the horrible drought of tv/Jdrama/entertainment in my life right now. I'm absolutely craving Supernatural Season 4 -- I'm starting to get angry about it. Haha. There's a poster at Laser Flair at Tampines that says Supes S4 DVD was supposed to be out September, but it's already October and it is nowhere in sight. -.- I swear I feel like glaring at the sales person. But I refrain, haha. Some people don't understand what being a fan is. It doesn't help that I saw Papa Winchester (damn, I forgot the actor's name) on P.S. I Love You this past Saturday and, god, I realise I miss the Winchesters! So bad. Also, it doesn't help that Supernatural was ranked as Japan's No. 1 Foreign TV Show at aramatheydidn't! @.@

God, I need my Supes fix.

>.< I need to slap myself and study.

Ohmygosh, I feel vindicated! :D

I picked up an article today from Straits Times dated September 23rd, 2009, called In praise of daydreaming, by Ho Kwon Ping. And it mentioned the fact that daydreaming isn't as mindless as convention supposes!

This is what neuroscientist Kalina Christoff has to say: "People assumed that when your mind wandered it was empty. But mind wandering is a much more active state than we ever imagined, much more active than during reasoning with a complex problem."

Neuroscientists were able to measure far more brain activity in volunteers who tried to solve a problem through insight than in those who applied logic. "We often assume that if we don't notice our thoughts they don't exist," said Dr Christoff. "When we don't notice them is when we may be thinking most creatively."

Studies show that problem-solving by insight - when you suddenly feel the pieces click - requires both a higher degree and a different pattern of neural resources than methodical, logical thinking. Daydreaming seems to be a fundamental basis for insight.

And well, if there's one thing I admit to doing a lot of... it's daydreaming. So yay! :P I even remember when I was three or four, my granny used to scold me, "Oi, apasal termenung!" (Which literally translates to, "Oi, why are you daydreaming!") But for some reason, I managed to pay attention in class though. Because well, I've always loved to learn, and my mum probably inculcated in me a drive for excellence, unconscious it may be on my part.

I have this very vivid memory of the time when I realised getting As was a good thing - haha. I remember I was sitting next to Chia Min (who I met again recently and is now working at MCYS - amazing how we're so old) in Primary 1 and she was colouring some grapes. I think it was math class and we were allowed to colour in the pictures when we finished work. And I remember thinking how Chia Min did it well; oooh, that's pretty. Some time later, I remember my parents talking to me. And they kept bugging me about my classmates. I remember my mum asking, "So is there anyone in class you think is very smart?" And I'm like... ehhhhhh? I don't know... But I mentioned Chia Min. Haha! But right then... I don't know, I suddenly got it -- that it was about competition. That I was supposed to look out for those of my peers who were doing well, and do as well, or better. And thus, a large part of my childhood was about doing well in school. :O

I have digressed, eh heh. :P The point is, yes! Daydreaming is not a bad thing after all.

The sob-fest continues... :P

I know I've seen this like don'tknowhowmany times, but gah, it's so sweet so I cry anyway, and I am so jealous of Arashi sometimes. To have such a great and unique bond with each other. Their friendship is so heartening. I'm glad I have friends too.

This is Aiba's emotional letter to the rest of Arashi in the 2004 24-hour TV event:



I was trying to summarise the appeal that Arashi has, while showering the other day, and I think it comes down to this: that they're a bunch of adorable dorks who are awesome together. <3

Fandom Rubbish

All this business about Pi and that half-Canadian girl has of course resulted in the crash-and-burn of possibly my favourite OTP of all time (i.e. Yamaki). But oh well. I do tend to dream unrealistically. :P Then, there was this rumour that Pi and this Kagami girl are already living together and I saw this comment; cracked me up!

I always thought he was living with Jin.

:| Obviously, I read too much fic.

Haha! Oh man. I sometimes do pity these poor stars. And gosh, that does sound so paradoxical. But the insane fame and prying, how do they live with it??? They can't have a decent romance without the whole world wanting a piece of it. And someone else mentioned Jaejoong and how if it were him, the fangirls would probably be planning the demise of his girlfriend. Haha. MAD WORLD.

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Watched half of Ryo's 24-hour drama (just to clarify, it's not 24 hours long; just a drama special for a 24 hour charity show, haha) -- Niini no Koto Wasurenaide -- and already started sobbing like crazy. -.- The sob-fest began last night when my siblings and I watched P.S. I Love You on tv.

It makes me think how amazing humans are sometimes, to be able to overcome loss and grief.