Get worse, oh crisis, so you can get better;
Your night has declared the coming of the morning.

Been watching BBC adaptations (in between the mugging, I promise!) and finished George Eliot's Daniel Deronda. I have mixed feelings about the story -- it's about Jews and their status in society in Victorian England, and also about the difficult lives of women in general, and also about what chasing after your own desires lead to. I think the main problem I have with the story is that there are in fact too many things going on, and nothing specific to root for. The drama's redeeming quality is its cast! :D ahah. I adore Romola Garai! She's a captivating performer.

And the character she plays - that's the reason I thought this was worth blogging about. A thoroughly unlikeable person - selfish, conceited and vain - but I learnt to like her by the end! :O Because she'd learnt to suffer the consequences of her actions gracefully and transformed into a better person, albeit with the guidance of Deronda, who she'd pinned her hopes on but lost anyway. Character-driven stories always appeal to me. It surprised me how much I liked her in the end.



"I've always thought I was the best of gamblers, now it seems I've lost in every way."

Speech Language Pathologists need to:

1) Be aware of their clients as individuals
2) Have critical thinking and clinical reasoning skills for differential diagnosis and choice of treatment
3) Be familiar with formal assessments, procedures, and equipment for diagnosis and planning intervention
4) Have clinical skills in assessment and intervention
5) Know about clinical research findings and integration of research principles in practice to allow EBP
6) Acquire diverse clinical practicum experience
7) Adhere to standards of ethical conduct
8) Have an understanding of current contemporary professional issues

---

Rasulullah s.a.w. is the greatest blessing; the ones closest to him are closest to Allah, and the ones most ignorant of him are furthest from Allah. 

:)

I really am going to try to keep to the Monday + Thursday weekly fast, every time I can. There was a study I'd read, showing that depriving oneself of food twice a week correlated with fewer neuro-related diseases in old age! So then I started copying Saj (our awesome senior and also PBL facilitator) and started the weekly fasts.

Be less worldly and the world will be a better place for all of us, I think. Seriously.



Have hope in the Prophet s.a.w. for he will never betray you. He will stand by you.

<3

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Emily Dickinson

Reality, Philip K. Dick had once said, is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.

The beauty of any object is measured by its capacity to point to the Real.

- Imam Abdul Latif Finch

When I have time at my disposal (to study, actually, and to keep up with my research work, because it's reading week), I start to return to a version of my self that is quite different from who I am when I'm busy. And I become this.. I don't know, a more distracted child. Haha! I return to my loves, basically. My reading, and digging up stuff because I am simply curious. I also become more of a philosophical nut. Really, give me a tower of books and I will simply be quite happy. What's with me trying to make my way in the world with this clinician stuff huh.

But yes, I remind myself that this world is not a dream.

Lead me where You will; my heart on a platter.

---

I get extremely irritated every time I realise that there are virtually ZERO youtube videos of Arashi or any JE group anymore. Johnny and all the higher-ups need to be smacked over the head with a pan, or something equally violent. I can't find a single version of Arashi's WISH PV anywhere online. I was listening to it randomly tonight and missed the PV and wanted to have a rewatch, but failed to find it. If this had happened four years ago... I wouldn't have been able to love JE.

One day, Kpop will seriously take over ALL of the JE star power, even in Japan, and it will be entirely the management's fault.

This was the best I could find: (and, gah, this was 7 years ago now???? Dear god, Arashi is old. I am old.)


Wish by Arashi by saryoma

WISH <3 <3 <3

"SO THAT'S HOW THE COMED-TEA WORKS! Of course! The spell doesn't force funny events to happen, it just makes you feel an impulse to drink right before funny things are going to happen anyway! I'm such a fool, I should have realized when I felt the impulse to drink the Comed-Tea before Dumbledore's second speech, didn't drink it, and then choked on my own saliva instead - drinking the Comed-Tea doesn't cause the comedy, the comedy causes you to drink the Comed-Tea! I saw the two events were correlated and assumed the Comed-Tea had to be the cause and the comedy had to be the effect because I thought temporal order restrained causation and causal graphs had to be acyclic BUT IT ALL MAKES SENSE ONCE YOU DRAW THE CAUSAL ARROWS GOING BACKWARDS IN TIME!"  (Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, Chapter 14)

The author is really quite genius. Ah, gems of fanfiction.

:OOOO

Intelligence is the ornament of every serious woman.

- Arabic proverb

That this is of arabic origin is astounding to me. Haha. Perceptions of my ancestral heritage (separate from religion) are quite prejudiced, sorreh, my Arab blood.

Also saw this:

There are many who love in this world, but very few who commit.

- Arabic proverb.

We all fail at this, to some extent.

Enjoying Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality while in transit, and I like the fact that it explains bits of stuff like this:

Harry looked up at McGonagall and sighed. "I suppose there's no chance that if I said fundamental attribution error you'd have any idea what that meant."

McGonagall shook her head. "No, but please explain."

"Well..." Harry said, trying to figure out how to describe that particular bit of Muggle science. "Suppose you come into work and see your coworker kicking his desk. You think, 'what an angry person he must be'. Your coworker is thinking about how someone pushed him into a wall on the way to work and then shouted at him. Anyone would be angry at that, he thinks. When we look at others we see personality traits that explain their behavior, but when we look at ourselves we see circumstances that explain our behavior. People's stories make internal sense to them, from the inside, but we don't see people's histories trailing behind them in the air. We only see them in one situation, and we don't see what they would be like in a different situation. So the fundamental attribution error is that we explain by permanent, enduring traits what would be better explained by circumstance and context." 

True, this. Because some things only seem to make sense to you, while the rest of the world may think you mad. I do remember learning about fundamental attribution error in Human Relations class at USP three years back. Interesting stuff.

Also, I concede that the fic is getting quite hilarious at points. Like the fact that Harry wore a headband to cover his scar! XD what the frak! The image of that in my mind cracks me up.


Obnoxious Harry:

"Cor," said the red-haired boy, "are you really Harry Potter?"

Not this again. "I have no logical way of knowing that for certain. My parents raised me to believe that I was Harry Potter, and many people here have told me that I look like my parents, I mean my other parents, but," Harry frowned, realizing, "for all I know, there could easily be spells to polymorph a child into a specified appearance -"

"Er, what, mate?"

Not headed for Ravenclaw, I take it. "Yes, I'm Harry Potter."

I remind myself that everything is as You wish.

Ah, my favourite bits about the heart using kinetic typography!



---

I'm finally getting to the linguistic analysis for our research project and came across this in one of the P5 compos:

"He and his sister opened their room door gently like a smooth criminal."

Haha! You wonder what goes in the minds of these kids.

Also, (on reflection of being cringe-level-emo in previous posts),


daijoubu desu! Truly. If not right now, eventually I will be.

Chill! Take one problem at a time, please.

I think I'm getting more and more cryptic here because I can't seem to afford the time to write at length. I have one-liners stuck on my mind over a few days, and there it goes in an entry. Full reflection on the other hand is a time-consuming process - which many people don't seem to get. Like part of my placement requirement is to keep up with regular journal writing for benefit of the faculty - in a crazy hectic hospital setting, where will I find a moment's reflection? And not only that, to pen it down??? I take back what I said about feeling less apprehensive for adult placement: now that I know where I'm heading in a few weeks, I feel my anxiety level rising.

The good thing about being a therapist is that you learn the very same skills for management of your own problems; so here's my platter of issues, I shall prioritise. Which problem requires my immediate attention? How may I deal with it? And all the time, I keep in mind the benefits to level of functioning and well-being, so the big picture is served. After all that, you leave it to providence.

---

Selawat is magic. To the point where I fear my using of it so recklessly.

Greatness is in the little things, my darling.

It's been aphasia all week! Exhausting to the extreme, but can't say that it wasn't good either. I feel less apprehensive about adult placement now!

The problem with hanging out with people so similar to you is that - while you enjoy the fact that you like similar stuff and can enjoy similar activities - you also reinforce each other's bad habits.

This is a refreshing thought for me; normally I gravitate to people who are similar to me -- comfort zone and all that right. Also birds of a feather flock together. But! How are you going to discover new worlds if you don't mix with people who cover new or different ground?

On Saturday, Mini and I spent close to an hour in a tiny rental bookstore after a failed movie plan, and we were like, "Oh my god! This is so bad! I don't want to go out with you anymore!" Hahaha.

How beautiful it is to stay silent

When someone expects you to be enraged from them.

And how beautiful it is to laugh

When someone thinks you are going to shed tears. 

 - source

how pretty!

Little internal victories keeps me happy with myself.