This one's in Paris, France.
I would totally plan a round-the-world holiday to visit awesome bookstores around the world! If I had $$$$ and my mum wasn't such a traditionalist.
Monday, May 28, 2012
Saturday, May 26, 2012
It's true isn't it: God tests your patience to see if you're deserving of the reward. So ask for patience and await eagerly for the unimaginable love and bounty awaiting you. I feel this truth finally became clear to me tonight. Masha Allah.
“When somebody spills tea on your carpet, don’t be like ‘Do you know how much that cost me? Look at what you just did’, you should be like ‘Oh, no-no-no don’t worry about it, I love tea on my carpet.” (Shaykh Hamza Yusuf)
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
cutesy tumblr!
Finished our oral vivas today, and while we were stuck in the holding room, we played old games like heart attack and polar bear! Nostalgic, and so so fun. Oh man, Mini is right. It will be depressing to leave this class.
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SPOILERS!
On the drama front:
Still watching Love Rain, though my infatuation has waned a little. I also have to confess that JGS's prettiness probably has got something to do with my sustained viewing, oops. The plot has started to go a little bit in circles, and there are predictable character moves as well. Also, I'd learnt that step-siblings are totally halal for marriage in the purview of Islam (because really, no blood relation whatsoever) and that made me a bit tired of the elaborate melodrama and pain -- because I kept thinking: OMG BOTH YOU COUPLES JUST GET MARRIED ALREADY! It's okay and totally halal, get over it.
Yesterday, finally sat down to watch the first episode of Papadoru! and omg, it is insane. Jdrama crack, I have missed you? The drama is basically about an entertainer/idol playing HIMSELF (i.e. Ryo as Ryo, godddd) and he falls in love and marries a widow with kids, to the chagrin and horror of the rest of the industry and country. It's as real as you can get with a drama -- cause Ryo is still part of Kanjani and he is still part of Johnny's and Associates, and gah, Arashi and OTHER JE stars feature. I mean, I would watch the drama just for that even if the plot goes to hell.
Basically, I have theorised that they've made this drama to do one or both of two things:
1) To make people think kinder of the recent what-Jin-got-married-when bombshell
2) To pull fans back to JE and counter the super-power-korean wave
And this adorable little girl is to die for. I didn't want to spoil Duckie for this but I couldn't help it. XD Almost died from the laughing/shrieking.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
I can't quite decide if I like this story - One Day by David Nicholls.
But I'd say it still works better as a book.
There's something about this bit that makes me want to keep it:
"And they did have fun, though it was of a different kind now. All that yearning and anguish and passion had been replaced by a steady pulse of pleasure and satisfaction and occasional irritation, and this seemed to be a happy exchange; if there had been moments in her life when she had been more elated, there had never been a time when things had been more constant.
Sometimes, she thought, she missed the intensity, not just of their romance, but of the early days of their friendship. She remembered writing ten-page letters late into the night; insane, passionate things full of dopey sentiment and barely hidden meanings, exclamation marks and underlining. For a while she had written daily postcards too, on top of the hour-long phonecalls just before bed. That time in the flat in Dalston when they had stayed up talking and listening to records, only stopping when the sun began to rise, or at his parents' house, swimming in the river on New Year's Day, or that afternoon drinking absinthe in the secret bar in Chinatown; all of these moments and more were recorded and stored in notebooks and letters and wads of photographs, endless photographs. There was a time, it must have been in the early nineties, when they were barely able to pass a photo-booth without cramming inside it, because they had yet to take each other's permanent presence for granted.
But to just look at someone, to just sit and look and talk and then realise that it's morning? Who had the time or inclination or energy these days to stay up talking all night? What would you talk about? Property prices? She used to long for those midnight phone-calls; these days if a phone rang late at night it was because there had been an accident, and did they really need more photographs when they knew each other's faces so well, when they had shoeboxes full of that stuff, an archive of nearly twenty years? Who writes long letters in this day and age, and what is there to care so much about?
She sometimes wondered what her twenty-two-year-old self would think of today's Emma Mayhew. Would she consider her self-centred? Compromised? A bourgeois sell-out, with her appetite for home ownership and foreign travel, clothes from Paris and expensive haircuts? Would she find her conventional, with her new surname and hopes for a family life? Maybe, but then the twenty-two-ear-old Emma Morley wasn't such a paragon either: pretentious, petulant, lazy, speechifying, judgmental. Self-pitying, self-righteous, self-important, all the selfs except self-confident, the quality that she had always needed the most.
No, this, she felt, was real life and if she wasn't as curious or passionate as she once had been, that was only to be expected. It would be inappropriate, undignified, at thirty-eight, to conduct friendships or love affairs with the ardour and intensity of a twenty-two-year-old. Falling in love like that? Writing poetry, crying at pop songs? Dragging people into photo booths, taking a whole day to make a compilation tape, asking people if they wanted to share your bed, just for company? If you quoted Bob Dylan or T.S. Eliot or, God forbid, Brecht at someone these days they would smile politely and step quietly backwards, and who would blame them? Ridiculous, at thirty-eight, to expect a song or book or film to change your life. No, everything had evened out and settled down and life was lived against a general background hum of comfort, satisfaction and familiarity. There would be no more of those nerve-jangling highs and lows. The friends they had now would be the friends they had in five, ten, twenty years' time. They expected to get neither dramatically richer nor poorer; they expected to stay healthy for a while yet. Caught in the middle; middle class, middle-aged; happy in that they were not over happy.
Finally, she loved someone and felt fairly confident that she was loved in return. If someone asked Emma, as they sometimes did at parties, how she and her husband had met, she told them:
'We grew up together.'"
But I'd say it still works better as a book.
There's something about this bit that makes me want to keep it:
"And they did have fun, though it was of a different kind now. All that yearning and anguish and passion had been replaced by a steady pulse of pleasure and satisfaction and occasional irritation, and this seemed to be a happy exchange; if there had been moments in her life when she had been more elated, there had never been a time when things had been more constant.
Sometimes, she thought, she missed the intensity, not just of their romance, but of the early days of their friendship. She remembered writing ten-page letters late into the night; insane, passionate things full of dopey sentiment and barely hidden meanings, exclamation marks and underlining. For a while she had written daily postcards too, on top of the hour-long phonecalls just before bed. That time in the flat in Dalston when they had stayed up talking and listening to records, only stopping when the sun began to rise, or at his parents' house, swimming in the river on New Year's Day, or that afternoon drinking absinthe in the secret bar in Chinatown; all of these moments and more were recorded and stored in notebooks and letters and wads of photographs, endless photographs. There was a time, it must have been in the early nineties, when they were barely able to pass a photo-booth without cramming inside it, because they had yet to take each other's permanent presence for granted.
But to just look at someone, to just sit and look and talk and then realise that it's morning? Who had the time or inclination or energy these days to stay up talking all night? What would you talk about? Property prices? She used to long for those midnight phone-calls; these days if a phone rang late at night it was because there had been an accident, and did they really need more photographs when they knew each other's faces so well, when they had shoeboxes full of that stuff, an archive of nearly twenty years? Who writes long letters in this day and age, and what is there to care so much about?
She sometimes wondered what her twenty-two-year-old self would think of today's Emma Mayhew. Would she consider her self-centred? Compromised? A bourgeois sell-out, with her appetite for home ownership and foreign travel, clothes from Paris and expensive haircuts? Would she find her conventional, with her new surname and hopes for a family life? Maybe, but then the twenty-two-ear-old Emma Morley wasn't such a paragon either: pretentious, petulant, lazy, speechifying, judgmental. Self-pitying, self-righteous, self-important, all the selfs except self-confident, the quality that she had always needed the most.
No, this, she felt, was real life and if she wasn't as curious or passionate as she once had been, that was only to be expected. It would be inappropriate, undignified, at thirty-eight, to conduct friendships or love affairs with the ardour and intensity of a twenty-two-year-old. Falling in love like that? Writing poetry, crying at pop songs? Dragging people into photo booths, taking a whole day to make a compilation tape, asking people if they wanted to share your bed, just for company? If you quoted Bob Dylan or T.S. Eliot or, God forbid, Brecht at someone these days they would smile politely and step quietly backwards, and who would blame them? Ridiculous, at thirty-eight, to expect a song or book or film to change your life. No, everything had evened out and settled down and life was lived against a general background hum of comfort, satisfaction and familiarity. There would be no more of those nerve-jangling highs and lows. The friends they had now would be the friends they had in five, ten, twenty years' time. They expected to get neither dramatically richer nor poorer; they expected to stay healthy for a while yet. Caught in the middle; middle class, middle-aged; happy in that they were not over happy.
Finally, she loved someone and felt fairly confident that she was loved in return. If someone asked Emma, as they sometimes did at parties, how she and her husband had met, she told them:
'We grew up together.'"
Monday, May 21, 2012
I've been recalling this poem lately:
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 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
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Monday, May 14, 2012
I had an emo moment and now it's over. ahah. well. I am human, am I not.
Anyway, I am behind on a lot of work as usual, because I have a crazy family that never rests and I also do an additional number of things myself -- blogging here and being emo included.
But I also went for APEX, okay! This past weekend, after weeks away from Irsyad because of exhaustion and so much stuff to do, I decided I should return to helping the kids, and my god, after that last session, I vowed to keep returning for the remaining 15 sessions. I felt sad and guilty that they'd been kinda neglected with the rapidly-changing mentors who are so busy etc etc. These kids need help, and sincere help too. :( Besides, it's almost a guarantee I won't be doing this anymore next year so I shall give my last hurrah.
And today, I finished up my last bit of data collection i.e. I went over to a kid's house to make him do English composition -- haha, sounds evil, right! I chatted with his mum though and it's conversations with such people that make me feel I'm glad I'm doing this and that I'm striving to be in a position to help people some day, iA. Parents who are looking for assistance and help and are like, what are the gahmen doing!
Anyway, I am behind on a lot of work as usual, because I have a crazy family that never rests and I also do an additional number of things myself -- blogging here and being emo included.
But I also went for APEX, okay! This past weekend, after weeks away from Irsyad because of exhaustion and so much stuff to do, I decided I should return to helping the kids, and my god, after that last session, I vowed to keep returning for the remaining 15 sessions. I felt sad and guilty that they'd been kinda neglected with the rapidly-changing mentors who are so busy etc etc. These kids need help, and sincere help too. :( Besides, it's almost a guarantee I won't be doing this anymore next year so I shall give my last hurrah.
And today, I finished up my last bit of data collection i.e. I went over to a kid's house to make him do English composition -- haha, sounds evil, right! I chatted with his mum though and it's conversations with such people that make me feel I'm glad I'm doing this and that I'm striving to be in a position to help people some day, iA. Parents who are looking for assistance and help and are like, what are the gahmen doing!
I think I still have loads of things I'd like to talk about here but don't anymore -- because, partly, life calls? There's work and being responsible and realistic and adult. What am I saying right, I fangirl all the time -- but fangirling is different and easy; it's surface stuff.
I'm not usually despondent; despite appearances, I do think I'm quite tenacious deep inside (haha, I have never used that word on myself!). I have a great knack of seeing the wonder in everything and anything, though not in the conventional forever-bubbly sort of way people expect, but more in a reflective, contemplative, maybe serene, I'll-get-how-this-sucky-thing-fits-in-some-day attitude.
I don't know where I'm going with this whining post; but it feels a little like my resources for tenacity are being chipped away. It's a little irritating.
Friday, May 11, 2012
!!!!!! omg what!!!! Love Rain Episode 14 is descending to ultra soap opera level. I hate In Ha now!!! Also, seriously, once I'm done with this drama, I will vow to stay away. Until I forget how insane kdramas are and come back for another round of addiction.
On more important real life events: insya Allah, I will complete placement in 5 days! :D yay.
OH OH OH, and according to my sister who quite suddenly worked through Cassandra Clare's City of Bones within a couple of days, said book is being made into a movie production! @.@ There is a strange surreality to this -- because uh, she used to be a fanfiction writer we were all pretty much obsessed about in our teen years, and now she might become a... very, very rich woman with a book-cum-movie franchise a'la Twilight???? I am just imagining future interviews or stg where the Draco Trilogy gets mentioned somewhere. O.o
oh my, my brain needs rest.
On more important real life events: insya Allah, I will complete placement in 5 days! :D yay.
OH OH OH, and according to my sister who quite suddenly worked through Cassandra Clare's City of Bones within a couple of days, said book is being made into a movie production! @.@ There is a strange surreality to this -- because uh, she used to be a fanfiction writer we were all pretty much obsessed about in our teen years, and now she might become a... very, very rich woman with a book-cum-movie franchise a'la Twilight???? I am just imagining future interviews or stg where the Draco Trilogy gets mentioned somewhere. O.o
oh my, my brain needs rest.
Wednesday, May 09, 2012
Love Rain. This story is building up so prettily. It's accompanying my placement days like a faithful friend. I am afraid they'll not be able to wrap it up nicely though, because as I've witnessed numerous times, the Kdrama weakness lies in the closing. They'll get you so high and addicted with the plot and characters, but then disappoint you with an anticlimactic finish.
Essentially, the story is pitting one beautiful romance against an equally beautiful love: the old couple that has waited years to finally decide to be together, and the young couple who just discovered each other (Jang Geun Suk and Yoona are so cute in this drama, I could not stop grinning at their cutesy parts). How can you make me choose between OTPs, drama writers? :'( So cruel. All OTPs deserve a happy ending, at least in fiction. In fact, that's why we have fiction, no?
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I actually had something else on my mind but then... I don't want to be so incongruous within one entry. My blog should attempt to be neater than my actual thoughts, right?
Essentially, the story is pitting one beautiful romance against an equally beautiful love: the old couple that has waited years to finally decide to be together, and the young couple who just discovered each other (Jang Geun Suk and Yoona are so cute in this drama, I could not stop grinning at their cutesy parts). How can you make me choose between OTPs, drama writers? :'( So cruel. All OTPs deserve a happy ending, at least in fiction. In fact, that's why we have fiction, no?
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I actually had something else on my mind but then... I don't want to be so incongruous within one entry. My blog should attempt to be neater than my actual thoughts, right?
follow your heart, they say. Which is fine. I can certainly relate. But now I also think, at the same time, don't forget this:
O Turner-over of hearts! Keep my heart firm on Your deen, and in obedience of You, and in the love of Your Prophet.
O Turner-over of hearts! Keep my heart firm on Your deen, and in obedience of You, and in the love of Your Prophet.
Monday, May 07, 2012
This week hasn't been particularly good; I need to buck up. Moments when you're disappointed with yourself are the worst. :(
This weekend, we talked about one of the Prophet's many famous sahabahs, called Sayidina Saad bin Abi Waqas. He is most famously known as the man who would forgive everyone who'd ever hurt him and mention them by name in prayer every night, and held no ill will towards anyone. And because of that, though he did nothing much else that made him stand out, he was guaranteed jannah. He was also the one Nabi s.a.w. said whose prayer would always be answered. We then also learnt he was the same man who went over to China to spread Islam, and was known by all to be the best archer. There's apparently his tomb somewhere in China too, as well as a mosque.
How is it that even the relatively less known sahabahs are this awesome?
I wish...
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Not entirely unrelated to the above, this movie is epic epic epic, and I am an epic-junkie, yes. This is archery like nothing else I've seen on screen, and Legolas is an amateur in comparison. Also, it stars my lovely heroine from Princess Man, Moon Chae Won! And she's kick-ass as always; any lady who wields a sword immediately enters my favourites list.
This weekend, we talked about one of the Prophet's many famous sahabahs, called Sayidina Saad bin Abi Waqas. He is most famously known as the man who would forgive everyone who'd ever hurt him and mention them by name in prayer every night, and held no ill will towards anyone. And because of that, though he did nothing much else that made him stand out, he was guaranteed jannah. He was also the one Nabi s.a.w. said whose prayer would always be answered. We then also learnt he was the same man who went over to China to spread Islam, and was known by all to be the best archer. There's apparently his tomb somewhere in China too, as well as a mosque.
How is it that even the relatively less known sahabahs are this awesome?
I wish...
---
Not entirely unrelated to the above, this movie is epic epic epic, and I am an epic-junkie, yes. This is archery like nothing else I've seen on screen, and Legolas is an amateur in comparison. Also, it stars my lovely heroine from Princess Man, Moon Chae Won! And she's kick-ass as always; any lady who wields a sword immediately enters my favourites list.
Sunday, May 06, 2012
I watched The Avengers this weekend - the movie to watch this year, probably. It was pretty good stuff, and expectedly entertaining. When I walked out of the theater though, what I thought was, "I really want to watch Sherlock Holmes again!" Because Robert Downey = awesome.
So I finally watched the Graham Norton episode with both Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law (and if you've known me long enough, yes - Jude was totally one of my phases). I love them and their great chemistry. I need to get my hands on the Sherlock Holmes movies again.
Full episode here!
So I finally watched the Graham Norton episode with both Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law (and if you've known me long enough, yes - Jude was totally one of my phases). I love them and their great chemistry. I need to get my hands on the Sherlock Holmes movies again.
Full episode here!
Tuesday, May 01, 2012
I had such a lovely evening, Praise God.
Met up with my classmates to trash out about Mid-Placement Evaluation, and trash out we did. We laughed so hard, I'm sure we chased at least half the stress away. We complained incessantly about how we couldn't feel anything via digital palpation (for swallowing assessment) and we confessed to each other we're just faking our way through half the time. It's hilarious. And all our silly escapades: like banging the poor patient's head against the headboard, spilling tea, milo and hot water while attempting to feed patients, and shining the torch into the patient's mouth only to have the poor guy's head light up like a lantern, because he was sans hard palate, soft palate and also maxilla. It's such a wonderful comfort to know that at least we're all struggling together. Therapists are surely some of the most amazing people in the world? Haha! I think so.
And then, nearer the end of our meal, music came over the system and everyone in the restaurant paused, and THEN! Mini walked out with a cake -- as usual, I was blur and like, "Eh, who? Why?" And then! It sunk in. Ah, so embarrassing. I haven't had a surprise in a while.
Such lovely, lovely people.
Met up with my classmates to trash out about Mid-Placement Evaluation, and trash out we did. We laughed so hard, I'm sure we chased at least half the stress away. We complained incessantly about how we couldn't feel anything via digital palpation (for swallowing assessment) and we confessed to each other we're just faking our way through half the time. It's hilarious. And all our silly escapades: like banging the poor patient's head against the headboard, spilling tea, milo and hot water while attempting to feed patients, and shining the torch into the patient's mouth only to have the poor guy's head light up like a lantern, because he was sans hard palate, soft palate and also maxilla. It's such a wonderful comfort to know that at least we're all struggling together. Therapists are surely some of the most amazing people in the world? Haha! I think so.
And then, nearer the end of our meal, music came over the system and everyone in the restaurant paused, and THEN! Mini walked out with a cake -- as usual, I was blur and like, "Eh, who? Why?" And then! It sunk in. Ah, so embarrassing. I haven't had a surprise in a while.
Such lovely, lovely people.