I have all these random thoughts in my head; but no time to consolidate them.

* I feel like my weekends are waaay more draining than my weekdays, in some sense. Can sakit dada (i.e. chest/heart pain) sometimes, teaching people. Although, my gosh, some kids are so cute, I have to refrain from saying sayang when I scold them.

* Some headaches are persistent. I tell myself: okay, I shall nap for 40 minutes so that my head gets some rest, which of course turns into at least an hour and a half, and then the headache still ain't gone. -.- I think it's a physical reaction to homework.

* Where can you find a lot of germs? Germany! Ahak, lame. Yesterday, the APEX mentors played this pick-a-question-from-a-box game; we all contributed a question each into the box and take turns being put under the spotlight. I got the question, What is your pet's name? To which I answered Elsie, haha. Someone got the question, What is the meaning of life? And we were all whoooaaa, and Ammar, I think, described how his life is mendak now, which cracked me up, man.

What stuck with me though, is the fact that Aisyah asked me, Shamiah, you gave that question, right? Because I was laughing and totally high or stg (maybe also cause of the chocolate cake), I simply said no. But later, when I had time to think about things, I realised what it meant, and part of me wanted to headdesk. :P I realise that I have this Miss Philosopher image or stg. Also, some people think I am so, so serious but haiyah, are you kidding me? Seriously. -.- If I could offer someone who was off her rocker, I'd offer myself.

* I think that if there's anyone constantly straddling boundaries, it's me.

* Oh, someone else got asked, What do you think is Allah's most beautiful creation? And I was sad that the obvious and only answer was not given, i.e. Rasulullah s.a.w.. Still need to ask, meh? :( Nothing else Allah created was given the honour of being next to Allah's name. People, wake up leh.

* The NUS computing school site is down, I think, and now I can't access my module site and thence cannot do assignment due tomorrow! :O eh, this is annoying da yo. EDIT: eh, can already! :D

Speaking of my computing module, Prof told us a joke about a Russian-made translation machine. The Russians were super proud of it and tested it in front of the English. They asked the English for a phrase to translate into Russian and to verify it, they would translate it back into English. So the English first gave the biblical expression, The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. The machine translated it into Russian and then back into English and gave, The vodka is strong but the steak is lousy. Then, they subjected yet another phrase to the machine -- Out of sight, out of mind -- and got back, Blind Idiot.

 

hehe.

I found a beautiful post from one of my favourite places for advice:

Source

You are strong…
When you take your grief and teach it to smile.

You are brave…
When you overcome your fear and help others to do the same.

You are happy…
When you see a flower and are thankful for the blessing.

You are loving…
When your own pain does not blind you to the pain of others.

You are wise…
When you know the limits of your wisdom.

You are true…
When you admit there are times you fool yourself.

You are alive…
When tomorrow’s hope means more to you than yesterday’s mistake.

You are growing…
When you know what you are but not what you will become.

You are free…
When you are in control of yourself and do not wish to control others.

You are honorable…
When you find your honor is to honor others.

You are generous…
When you can take as sweetly as you can give.

You are humble…
When you do not know how humble you are.

You are thoughtful…
When you see me just as I am and treat me just as you are.

You are merciful…
When you forgive in others the faults you condemn in yourself.

You are beautiful…
When you don’t need a mirror to tell you.

You are rich…
When you never need more than what you have.

You are you…
When you are at peace with who you are not.

I think I drank too much coffee today and now a headache is building up because I'm actually crazy tired but I can't sleep. -.-

Tonight, I realised that comfort can come from wonderfully unexpected places. I feel calm and confident, and more certain than ever that being true to oneself is a prerequisite to happiness and contentment. And that life may be hard, but it's so you can be grateful  for the shoulders to cry on.

Also, took a peek into fandom a little tonight, after what feels like a long time, and omg, have I said enough how I love Horikita Maki? She's like a beautiful porcelain doll and my favourite girl on tv (although it's not on my tv, heh), ever. And her movie Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac is likely coming to SG in April. yippee, I can look forward to it as a gift for the ending of uni life. :))

doll!

I've been telling myself: full speed FYP work begins tomorrow.

I was watching an old episode of Himitsu no Arashi-chan, where the boys were talking about Valentines that they received when they were younger. And Nino said he got a heart-shaped cookie of some sort from some girl he really liked. And it was pretty and homemade and left in a bag at his doorknob. Except that when he ate it, it tasted both sweet and salty -- she'd done the most cliched mistake of mixing up sugar and salt!

And then Nino added that he ate up every bit of it anyway. XD Oh, Nino. He can be such a meanie and a smartmouth, but at times like this, he is too cute. I swear, my Arashi ranking never remains stable. Every other time, one of them does something absolutely endearing or hilarious, and the ranking gets shuffled again. Haha.

School slowly taking over all my time again. And my weekends taken up by tutoring. It's quite exhausting, trying to balance everything. -.-

But looking forward to meeting up with Jean on Thursday night! I haven't seen her in nearly a year. o.o And seeing mumu, jw and eunice on Sunday, yay.

Today is better than yesterday.

:)))

It's when they say things like this, that I feel I'm working towards the right direction. SIGH. I feel alternately sedih (i.e. Malay word for sad; the word sedih always seems to convey more sadness than the word sad to me. heh.) and hopeful. But I get it; life is supposed to be tough and hard and trying. My dad says it's sunnatul hayah. Because you can't achieve true victory without trials.

My first day of school was a parabola on the graph of happiness against time. I was kind of happy and excited to go for the first lecture of the semester (Virtue and Leadership module), but so far, I don't like the class atmosphere very much. I think the professor is kind of a cold person. Things got steadily more depressing and I started getting anxious. For no single reason -- just, among other things, FYP swimming around in my head, eating the same boring food at the Science faculty and meeting up with Turk who was not in a great mood either.

Then I started getting really depressed, after Turk went home, when I walked around Science trying to look for my profs so that I could get an advanced module approved. It was good exercise I suppose, running from S1 to S16 and back, but this sinking feeling just started when I couldn't find either of them in their offices. So I took a break from prof-hunting and prayed first. And then after that, I resumed the prof-hunting and thank God, Chen Yu Zong was back behind his computer in his messy office. And when I trudged to S1 the second time, I was afraid I wouldn't be able to catch Prof Low (cause he's like a super-busy man) but guess what, when the elevator doors opened, it was Prof Low! I was super happy. "Prof Low, you're precisely the person I'm looking for!" And he was like, "You! Haiyah, you ah, I thought you didn't want me to sign the form anymore. Never say anything!"

And I wanted to laugh, cause haiyah, I really like Prof Low. He can be funny. Which was why I went to him first for an FYP project but he didn't seem to have anything for me. He's always so jovial and seems to really care about students. And so he signed my form and went off to his car. And I realised that, hey, all it took was one happy person to pass on his happiness to me, and I'm happier already. :)

And then I met Adilah before Structural Biology class started and we caught up about each other and I was happier. And I was very pleasantly surprised when suddenly, Aisyah and Yeatian (the Biology concentration people) popped out of the classroom Adilah and me were going into and we all kind of screamed simultaneously. XD Not high-pitched screaming, just like AAAAH-HOW-WONDERFUL-IS-IT-THAT-WE-SEE-EACH-OTHER screaming. Haha, it was cute. Yeatian still had frogs to catch after her class.

So, my school day ended on a happy note. I hope this is a good sign for my final semester. Eheh.

I don't know; I like that little things like that make me happy. Like bumping into old friends. It makes me feel glad that I don't need big things to feel happy; it's always the little things.

And this long entry seems to be some revenge post after being MIA for some time. Haha.

I love how eloquent this man is. The calmness that he displays when confronted with the journalist's too-easy-traps about what's wrong with Islam -- amazing. Too easily, we get mad at how people ignorantly perceive our religion and twist words around and deal with complex issues simplistically, and we fall in their traps. But here is someone who weighs his words, talks with understanding and conviction and clearly empathises with the ignorance. I feel so awed and humbled.

This past Saturday, when I went for the APEX Mentoring Talk and we were all asked who our mentors or role models are (and Mr Shaheed actually said other than Rasulullah -.-), I happily realised that this man is one of them. I want to achieve what he seems to have done; a marriage of true Islamic knowledge and a deep understanding of the world we live in today, so that we may be effective in this time.

If I had to choose a favourite comic from xkcd, it'll probably be this one. XD It describes the general theme of xkcd's comics; like they always seem to be saying, here are the incredible and weird contents of my brain.

I've been having one of those times again -- the I-can't-write-on-my-blog periods. I feel like my thoughts are too irrational, my emotions too incomprehensible and all of it so mixed up, I wonder if I should just stop thinking sometimes. Hm, not that I can even if I wanted to. Maybe I'm just trying to rationalise the irrational and I have to concede I'm just banging my head against a dead-end repeatedly.

When your head is in a mess, it's best to blog list-like:

* I'm starting to wonder if blogging publicly is at all a good thing. And maybe it's finally time I stop. I don't know.

* Trying to wean myself off facebook. How I got slowly sucked into that pit is beyond me. Mel and her it's-the-only-way-I-can-keep-in-touch-with-you justifications. That was how it started, meh. Don't they say the road to hell is paved with good intentions?

* How I realise that big things are always a result of a chain of small events one did not have the foresight to anticipate.

* Shaykh Hamza Yusuf said: Life gives you the same lessons repeatedly until you get the point.

* What is the freaking end-point of my focal adhesion pathway!!! :( It's the one thing I should have worked on and figured out for FYP by now but still haven't because I am getting majorly distracted.

Okay, I should really stop now. More pressing things to be done. And I don't think I'll be blogging again soon.

For 2010, I want clarity of thought and more awareness of time. And to finish reading things that need to be read.