Bad time management skills so I am now stuck doing last minute analysis and homework for tomorrow... While everyone else is out.

Here is the cat folder I recently got and used as conversation fodder with a 4-year-old kid:

We spoke in Malay and I kept trying to coax more out of her by making her talk about my cute file.

Ada banyak kucing.
A'ah ada banyak kucing! Lagi ada apa?
Ada kucing kecik tidur atas sudu. (Translation: got small cat sleep on spoon)

XD and the way she said it, so cute please, I feel like squeezing her.

Speaking of kids saying the cutest things, over dinner recently, I got Insyirah to feed me yoghurt, which she was super excited to do. Little girls are obsessed over mainly: princesses, glitter, and being a teacher/mother/big sister. So she was very psyched to get to spoon me yoghurt. And at each spoonful, she mutters, "I cut for you kay, I cut for you." What's there to cut, darling! hahaha. Which made me helpless at her cuteness. So I just said "Okay!" at each spoonful.

Back to work, and not spazzing.

A sign of the end of times: ignorant people who give opinion on the affairs of the community. Today, "we call them bloggers".

Ohhhh dear. Hahaha. Hmm, well, I do try not to blog about things I have no idea about. Because having been a blogger for a long time, I have come to realise that it is far too easy to go oops, what on earth was I saying! when you blabber on about things you are no expert on. Also, it helps to clarify when writing, like: hey, these are only my silly little ideas and I am quite possibly 110% wrong.

I have come to realise that everything is habit. It's like that well known phrase, You are what you do. (or is it, You are what you eat? both apply, maybe.) I recall reading somewhere that even worship is habit. You've just got to work at it until it becomes second nature and then it becomes an inseparable part of you. I think this is part of the reason why a small deed done consistently is preferred to sporadic bursts of big deeds. Because consistency builds character. It follows that love is habit too, then. I think that part of the reason we love our family so much is because they've been part of our lives and they're just part of our system now. And childhood friends, who might turn out quite despicably or differently from us but who we love anyway just because they've been there for years. (I do not speak from experience! :P only observation; e.g. Pi/Jin OOPS for being mean).

And... my brain just rolled out of topic because now I'm wondering if this gives validity to the ideas of behavioural conditioning in psychology. O.O We are all potentially Pavlov's dogs?

I think it's time to say goodnight before my brain rolls around too much.

I'm feeling the downward tug of the gloomies on my heart. In other words, I'm about to succumb to feeling upset; but then, I'm remembering what I've seen and heard this past two weeks at attachment and I feel like I shouldn't. (I mean, of course I shouldn't, period, but...) Being in the company of people who actually have something substantial to feel upset about helps puts things into perspective, no? So then I feel upset that I actually shouldn't feel upset! :\ haha, silly much.

But seriously. This past week I've been feeling thankful that I can speak and think and string thoughts together and actually make some sense of the world i.e. my brain is working a-okay (as far as I can tell, of course). I've also been thinking that... there's actually a lot of heartbreak that goes on in this world; and that I've been fairly well-protected thus far from feeling such intense pain, emotional or physical, Alhamdulillah. It scares me a lot, the prospect of such tribulations. God giveth, and God taketh away, right.

Feels like every conscious moment is a gift. Only we often forget.

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Away from emo-ness, I'm in trouble with my deadlines again! :\ mou. After almost 20 years of school :OOO, I still haven't gotten procrastination out of my system.

A TED video definitely worth watching! Jill Bolte, a brain scientist, has a stroke and learns how it actually feels like to lose her left brain and use the right one instead.

I can't believe I hadn't watched this until now!



Excitingz! Suddenly I am excited for more than a couple of movies including this, and X-men: First Class, with James McAvoy (!!!!), and of course GANTZ (going to catch hopefully this coming Tuesday, hooray).



I am often amazed by how much Nino can be kakkoi sometimes, haha! He's a tiny man, but gosh, he's sooooo smart and acts awesomely and somehow, he manages to be a convincing hero. And I really do think he could have been a real stud if he'd grown up with less of the video games and more of the baseball, maybe. (But then, he wouldn't be Nino, would he.) Haaaha, but point is, I really do get why JW loves him.

I'm wondering what the director does to reduce the height difference between Nino and MatsuKen, hahaahmm.

Celebrated Mother's Day today, at granny's place, and then attempted to have ice-cream some place, but everywhere was super-crowded, cannot tahan. (Seriously, is there a way to stop this country from becoming a megacity? I don't think I can bear the crowd. Please PAP, I BEG YOU. Be merciful dictators at least.) So we were thwarted and ended up eating chicken rice (good food nonetheless) later in the night. Next time, must remember to PLAN PROPERLY e.g. reserve seats at restaurants.

Was sitting at Baba Wok's dining table, and found The Bottom Line on Happiness by Clayton M. Christensen (a Harvard Business Management Professor, or stg of the sort) in Reader's Digest.

I like this bit:

People who are driven to excel have this unconscious propensity to underinvest in their families and overinvest in their careers, even though intimate and loving family relationships are the most powerful and enduring source of happiness.

So, have you made your mum happy this mother's day?

The lesson I learned is that it's easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold to them 98% of the time. If you give in to "just this once", based on a marginal cost analysis, as some of my former classmates did, you'll regret where you end up. You've got to define for yourself what you stand for and draw the line in a safe place.

I like this too because a lot of the time, I think people are floating around in their lives not knowing what they really want. Life has got to be built on solid rock (i.e. good principles unfailingly adhered to) if you don't want it to collapse halfway.

I didn't know Arashi's Blue was such a sad song! you would think the title had given it away. oh, so melancholic.

I want to see you, I want to see you.
It's not a dream, you are for real.
It's painful, It's painful.
That light blue blurs away.


full translation here.


Speaking of dreams: after a nap today (because we have a respite from placement just for this afternoon), I started thinking about dreams in general; a specific question bugged me. Where do the people in our dreams come from? I mean, aside from the people we do know who appear in dreams, sometimes there are these strangers who appear and with whom I sometimes have lengthy exchanges but I don't know who they are! And then I wake up and wonder how my mind conjures up these persons. I dreamt earlier of a pair of parents accosting me about their child and whether he had a (development) problem and I kept saying the wrong thing and making them panic, haha. I assume this has to do with one of the teachers suggesting earlier today that we assess one of the girls for real, but then oops, we remember we aren't supposed to, meh.

I think dreams are magical. Besides the fact that it must have some cognitive benefit in terms of the organization of thoughts and memories and even feelings, I like to believe that it has some unexplained connection to our soul or even larger collections of souls or telepathy or to a separate dimensional plane. (haha, a theory about our strange congruity of thoughts, Eunice?) Kinda like what Carl Jung seemed to hint at, although I've yet to fully understand the ideas he had proposed.

Anyway, Islamically, it has been said that dreams are 1/40th of prophecy, so that's why, you know, we have those special people who have premonitions or knowledge of the non-empirical sort. And we all have had those moments of whoa, deja vu. You go, oh, I dreamt this! as though dreaming of the future is  nothing much out of the ordinary. It reminds me that while a lot of the times our consciousness grounds us in the real sensory world, a lot of the things we experience are actually unconscious stuff that gets stored somewhere inside us, and because somehow they don't dominate our thoughts, we think they don't exist! But then, when something freeeaaakky happens, we're forced to think about it; we think, freeeaaaky. And then just move on with our lives.

Several interesting things today:

* Bumped into Mdm Yeo Lay, ex-physics teacher at my elder placement centre! Super-interesting exchange we had, where I even told her that I still keep the awesome green physics file from Sec 3. How tiny is the world, huh.

* Went for NSP rally at Tampines tonight! I wasn't too surprised at any new speeches or what. But there was an excessive bashing of MBT, eheheh; I almost pity the dude.

* Suddenly feeling the workload pile up again, my shoulders ache almost physically, please. -.- Of course, waking up super-early this week to go to childcare centers at the other end of the island and spending hours in the train is not helping.

* And now, it is an (in my sister's slang) IRRITZ situation, because the faculty is dumping last minute (impossible-to-do-in-such-short-notice) assignments, because we only have this week with our test subjects whaaat. >:\ (And it is election week please, can chill or not!)

* Mother's Day preparations! :s

Goodnight, I must sleep, unfortunately.

KMN, so cuuuute, these kids.

Can ask me why I wear scarf some more, and whether can take off or not. ahak, high level questions! Then I tried to speak in Malay to one of them, but she responses in English though she seems to understand. (Die, takkan Melayu hilang di dunia? haha.)

When I go madrasah, I wear scarf! "Madrasah" pronounced merdrahseh, like mat salleh. Haaaaah. XD

Had a nice birthday weekend, starting Friday. (:

And today, met up with the birds and the first thought that crossed my mind when I finally caught sight of them: "Oh my god, we're so old." It's like, in my little brain, us is the us as always, and I'd expected to see tinier and less well-groomed girls being silly around the table; but then, the sight of three adult women kind of made me zone out for a bit. For real, haha. What with Shen Onn's nice jacket-y top that made her seem she'd just stepped out of her office; high-heels, highlighted hair, the air of we're-making-our-own-money-and-can-splurge (although Eunice would disagree with this!) and then talks of politics and more work stuffs.

Then again, it was only moments before the childishness began. -.- Maybe this is what they say by young/immature at heart.

Anyway, my presents!

The bookends I've been needing! My table needs a clean-up too, before the bookends can be used proper. And these books are the ones I always feel like flipping through now and then. Or whose quotes I've yet to store someplace.

The card. With silly stickers which are apparently becoming tradition.

Also, an owl flask! And the cat folders in the background.

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Embarking on another year of life: I want to build confidence, and as clear a conscience as I can. And to follow both my brain and my heart, Amin.