VULTURIUS
Halt, who goes there?

TURKEYIUS
It is I. I have observed you now of late
Thou hast the look
Of a depressed bird. 
Share your worries with
A friend that loves you.

VULTURIUS
Oh, Turkeyius.
Vexed I am 
By the words of a matchmaker.
He spoke of turnips and blond hair...

TURKEYIUS
A matchmaker!
Oh worry not, my sister.
He speaks of nothing but lies.
'Open your heart', he tells me
'Love might strikest unknowingly
Like lightning'.
I think it's bullcrap.
Pardon my language.

Poem 8 by Tito Mukhopadhyay (An excerpt from Portia Iversen's Strange Son)

In a place called Somewhere there lived happiness
Somewhere was a place of Paradise
But one day from Nowhere
Came Sorrow from the place called Nowhere
Happiness asked Sorrow to leave
The place called Somewhere
Sorrow went back to Nowhere
And then occupied the hearts of people
Who are kind and compassionate
As they never refused anybody a place to stay
So if you feel the pain
Which a person who lost his mind bears
If your heart aches when you see a tear in someone's eyes
If you are ready to accept such a person and help him
You can be sure
You have sheltered Sorrow in your heart.


This made me cry, and all the more because Tito is severely autistic (i.e. negligible speech, no control over behaviour, arm flapping etc) and who could ever dream such a mind existed under the autistic shell. How can it be true that autistic persons know no empathy and lack theory of mind when this poem exists??? I am boggled.

Have a look at Tito on a documentary. I've yet to finish the book, but I am getting increasingly fascinated.

Danger, danger da yo! especially when I desperately need to be practical and on-task. And likely the reason I always go for epic-level stories.

Many INFPs depend on and come to expect a certain level of emotional intensity. For better or worse, they feel they are not fully alive without a stiff emotional cocktail in hand. They may seek out, even if largely unconsciously, experiences that arouse or intensify feelings of passion or inspiration. They may turn to drugs, relationships, novels, poetry, music, or movies–whatever it takes to jump-start their emotions and achieve their desired level of intensity.When feeling inspired, INFPs may disappear for hours on end, immersing themselves in painting, poetry, music, and the like.

personality junkie

This is too lovely.



And how obvious is it that I'm distracting myself with all of these instead of putting my nose to the grindstone and finishing this dastardly research work?

omg, this is so beautiful, you have to listen. This is a musical prodigy! I see people calling him a guitar ninja on youtube.




If you need something more familiar instead:



O.O This is just so amazing. I'm already contemplating getting his album. And this boy is only what? 16? He looks really young.

---

And this is my favourite variety show right now! <3

This is my current favourite! (Although Haru Haru comes a close second -- I don't ever tire of Haru Haru for some reason.) I've been digging through their previous albums for the less popular tracks as well, and this one got me.



GD, underneath that almost-Gaga-level fashion madness, is an uber-romantic heart, because he's the one who comes up with the story and the music and it's always these tragic, beautiful things. Creativity, idealism and romance do tend to go hand in hand.

My only masterpice is our love tragedy
My heart is an art gallery filled with you


Only the white chair that you sat in
Has your scent on it
You left leaving only a heartless silence
Waiting for you, this little cafe

This is bad translation, I bet. I wish I could understand Korean a bit more, like I do Japanese at least. It's come to the point where I would watch entire Japanese shows unsubbed to watch Big Bang, and it's totally improving my Jap, haha. Right now, I can make out few Korean words but the syntax still evades me.

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay;
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee;
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company;
I gazed - and gazed - but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft on my couch I lie,
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

- William Wordsworth

I was listening to a cute little story about passion:

There was this little sparrow sitting on top of Prophet Sulaiman's (a.s.) place of worship, and he was trying to convince a female sparrow that he was a worthy mate, but she wasn't paying much attention. He said, "You know, if I wanted, I would turn this dome right over on the head of Sulaiman for you." And then, the Prophet who of course knew the language of all creatures overheard him and called him over, and the poor sparrow had to go over, shaking in fear.

The Prophet asked him, while the sparrow's heart beat thunderously in his little breast, "What made you say that ridiculous remark?"

And the sparrow said, "Oh, Prophet of Allah! Don't you know lovers are never taken into account for what they say in the presence of their beloved?"

Smart aleck little sparrow.

They have such crazy theme parks in Japan! Oh godddd, I want to go to Nihon. :( It's been almost 4 years since.

I feel really compelled to read this book.

The Winter of Our Disconnect: 

How Three Totally Wired Teenagers 

(and a Mother Who Slept with Her iPhone) 

Pulled the Plug on Their Technology and Lived to Tell the Tale 

The irony is that in the first place, I know of this book because of social media. There are all these bad addictive things about social media, and we all know it. But there are some really great things too! Like sharing great ideas, and giving support, and raising money, and political opposition, and power to the people etc etc. The answer, I suppose, will always be: moderation. And discussing what moderation is can be a debate all on its own.

Moderation is a relative concept, isn't it? What's moderate to you, might not be moderate to me. My sis and I were having a somewhat deep discussion just last night: someone might think going to a rock concert is not immoral, but someone else might think it is. One of my classmates was telling me about how her used-to-be-fashionable tudung friend totally started wearing drabber clothes because her Tarim-graduate fiance opposed the ostentatiousness; it wasn't like she wasn't covering up, she was just being all runwayproject about it. And here we are, buying colourful scarves by the dozen. There are really a lot of layers and variations to this. Ultimately, we all know that intentions and the heart are what matter, and it is down to the individual. So it's a case of tepuk dada, tanya niat, and if you feel your heart is pure while you're jumping in a moshpit to Lady Gaga's music, then by all means? (An aside: Recently, Gaga decided to put a cage of roaches on her head or something? O.O Please stop trying to pass stupidity as art; this is really pushing it.)

With something less extreme than a moshpit with Lady Gaga's controversially satanic music, like facebook or twitter, moderation is even more ambiguous, right? While it's not difficult to think that your intentions aren't pure if you're playing around in a foam party, it's not that easy to judge your intentions as you scroll down your news feed or tweeting. And then you start to wonder, those clarity-moments perhaps, What the heck am I doing here??? And is it just better if I disconnect completely, or am I being extreme?

At this point, I'd say it's extreme to just suddenly up and disconnect; all those friends I have :( and connections, and nice quotes, and great books. But if you're on the path of struggle and purification (on which we all technically should be!), maybe it is the right thing to do. Tepuk dada.

I tried to hold out against this. But I can't anymore, so I confess -- I love Big Bang to pieces now. And I know I'm starting to annoy my sis with my sudden spurt of love and obsession. I can't believe just how so so so awesome they are. A boy band that is actually really talented. For a long time, I've always thought they were different and their songs tended to be amazing (I have posted sporadically about them over the past few years, haven't I?); but I held out against the Kpop wave and all, you know, because more often these K-artists are just shiny veneers. But THIS; these five guys who are each so freaking talented and then they actually combine forces to work at something so unique and addictive. I never thought there'd come a day I'd appreciate rap, but my god, when it's love, there's no explanation.

I mean, I still love Arashi and all, but you'd never hear me bragging what great musicians they are. Haha, JW and I even joked that we've kind of put aside the music - acknowledging that the music is not the point - because the boys are just so entertaining.

Big Bang is a different league and story. They have made me appreciate this music of theirs that I am now so insanely addicted to, I worry for my health and iman. But really though, excellence in any field is always a sight to behold.



And here's GD, my favourite of the lot because he's the creative genius behind the music. He's so surprisingly normal and endearing in person compared to his intense persona when he's doing his music, I melt. There's a fascinating gap between his performing self and his real self. Here he talks about how he usually writes music (the show asks guests to come and show off their talents as part of the programme, it's a bit nutty):

research woes.

It's not an easy thing to work on something with a linguist, a clinician and a research professor all at the same time! They're saying quite different things and as a result my brain feels like it's being torn at least three ways. And what makes all of this extra difficult is because the time we're given is insanely little -- and I am especially miffed when I am rushed to come up with beautiful theses and writing. I have lamented numerous times that creativity and deep reflection and thought requires time, frak it, not deadlines!

On an upside, Prof L as much said that I could write well; I should apparently make use of it to angle my thesis so that the data becomes meaningful. And I do agree with her that everything about this research has been subpar because of essentially the lack of time (and lack of good instruction!), and I just haven't had the luxury to really mull over this thoroughly. The word I hear is that our batch has been dubbed the whiny ones, but seriously -- how is it humane that since the start of the year, we have had consecutive weeks of lectures followed by exams followed by placement followed by vivas and interviews, and on top of that we have to juggle this crazy frak of a research topic that we pluck out of thin air because sorry, we're forced to?

This is supposed to be our four week break, okay. And when Prof L asked what's the program right now for us, I said, "It's our supposed break now." She quickly picked up on the "supposed" and we had a laugh over it. It's been crazy, and actually sad because this course has not turned out very good for some of my classmates; but dear God, let us all emerge from this together as determined therapists who will do great nonetheless.

Tomorrow I'll have to return to my research work, but tonight, I am so happpeeeee. (:

The Batam class trip was fun fun fun, and a great success.

And then I got this message tonight! The cherry atop my A&W waffle ice-cream (haha!).

I am on such a general high tonight, I keep wanting to dance. To Big Bang and 2NE1's old Lollipop song.

----------

Ahhhh, some of the best stuff from Nobuta all in one place! <3 I love my first dramas (i.e. the ones that sucked me into fandom) so much.

I was looking for stuff to put into my phone and came across this. And the subs are awesome! I think I need to download fansubs because I didn't ever know that the first scene of Shuji and Akira together, crazy Akira was talking about Nietszche???







And... Am off for a class trip tomorrow! Yays, a little break for us STs.

A moo point.

The phrase "the guy who got a girl after Sheldon Cooper" will probably be a classic. Haha, poor Raj!



Also, my sis downloaded the Whip iPhone app as used by Leonard here, and it is hilariously fun.