Nowadays, all I feel like having in the way of entertainment is funny material. Which is why watching Running Man is such a destress-er because it always succeeds in making me laugh out loud.

Such that even when I feel like having a bite of fanfic, I start revisiting one of the funniest fanfiction ever written (honest): Draco Malfoy, The Amazing Bouncing Rat, is so hilarious, I remember the first time I read it, I would fall off my seat and stay laughing on the floor.



A few lines in, and it already wins, hehe:

Draco reviewed the thoughts he had just had and realised he was in dire need of caffeine. Preferably injected straight into the vein. 

I'm a Malfoy, he thought. A creature of the night. This early in the morning is just not on. 


Yes, early morning is not on for me either. I always feel I would function a lot better if we didn't have to wake up so early and drag our feet to work...

ZZZZZZzzzz.

I'm dreading Mondays even more these days because, I'm sure you already realise, there's blasted inpatient training to get through. And it's making life 10 times less enjoyable for me -- because seriously, I know I didn't enter this profession for dysphagia. I wish it wasn't one of the things we did, dang it.

And if I really wanted to rush around in the wards, read through illegible handwriting while figuring out a gazillion acronyms in record speed, and prevent people from dying, I would have become a doctor. This medical scene -- not what I want. Really, really, really. I love language. I love the brain. But I do not love dysphagia -- if some day, I end up actually enjoying any of this, I will be surprised. Specifically, I really do not enjoy the speediness of things. Having to do everything chop-chop. Eeeesh. I'm a slow thinker, I chew on things, I ruminate. This is not my ideal style of work.

Dear God, help me through this period of my life, towards a brighter future. Ganbarou!

Let's tahan a while more, S, because this is just part of paying back a debt and building up a resume.



Also, it's true -- when your days are full of stress and frustration, all you want to do when you finally get time for yourself, is barely anything productive. I honestly hate that -- because I actually have so many ambitions outside of my career, and how do I progress at all if I exhaust myself like this and I don't do anything decent like organize my clutter, progress through Arabic, cultivate a healthy lifestyle, build on my spirituality, or socialise beyond my comfort zone?

I totally had a Running Man binge this weekend -- 3 episodes or thereabouts. I blame it on stress. And of course, my lack of discipline.



My favourite Monday couple vids!

Sloth

One of the seven deadly sins.

Not mere laziness, but a spiritual indifference. A falling out of love with God. That when someone mentions God, you yawn, or you go: Uh, why are we talking about this? Sorry, don't think He's important.

"You can have a person who's busy in the world, but if they're neglectful of God then they're slothful in a spiritual sense. It's a spiritual laziness, it's never thinking about the spiritual path."

-- Shaykh Hamza in the Sonnets

Which is the case with a lot of people and situations, right? Most people don't talk about God.

I realise I love so many of the movies that Robin Williams was ever in, but if I had to choose a favourite, it's Good Will Hunting (although Dead Poet's Society also awesome beyond awesome, how to choose).




Ohmygosh, this scene! I have to cry everytime I watch this:






This may seem incongruous, but my thoughts have been running on:

"Expecto Patronum!" cried Harry.

Nothing happened.

Not a single flicker of light.

When Harry looked up, Remus Lupin was still studying the wand, a rather troubled look on his faintly scarred face.

Finally Remus shook his head. "I'm sorry, Harry," the man said quietly. "Your wandwork was exactly right."

And there wasn't a flicker of light anywhere else, either, because all the other first-years who were supposed to be practicing their Patronus Charms had been glancing out of the corners of their eyes at Harry instead.

The tears were threatening to come back into Harry's eyes, and they weren't happy tears. Of all the things, of all the things, Harry had never expected this.

There was something horribly humiliating about being informed that you weren't happy enough.

-- Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

I would like to defy this pervasive belief that being sad is shameful, which is how really-sad people become ever isolated and marginalised. I was once very sad, and sometimes I get really sad still, and I'm proud of it. I believe that you cannot feel extreme joy and gratitude, without having felt pain and despair. Seriously, being happy is commonplace; but sadness and tragedy is grand -- because it cultivates the best qualities in humans. Heroes never grow in the lap of luxury, I guarantee you (I can't think of a single instance from my knowledge of fictional heroes, or otherwise). Struggle is an absolute necessity in the making of anything great.

So all those people who get sad, depressed, or struggle in life -- why contemplate exiting life early, when God Is only providing you the circumstances for greatness?

On reflection of previous whiny posts, a reminder from Lymond:

“Today,’ said Lymond, ‘if you must know, I don’t like living at all. But that’s just immaturity boggling at the sad face of failure. Tomorrow I’ll be bright as a bedbug again.” 

― Dorothy Dunnett, The Disorderly Knights

Training going at a slow, steady pace, and I'm living one day at a time. Yoshi!



Ridiculous and random thought maybe -- but I wish I had an older sister. In more recent years, I've come to have slightly older ladies as friends, and I realise of how much value they are. I've never had older girls I really admired until recently; it's silly. I should have befriended more of my seniors back in school.

I came across a book, that ended up feeling like a korean drama series -- because it gripped me through all of its plot meanderings, until it threw me disappointingly off a cliff at the end. So anti-climactic! Ah, it annoys the heck out of me when something isn't wrapped up nicely, and especially when everything that went before was beautiful and moving.

This was a wonderful love story, that hid a splat at the end -- but regardless, left a great impression on me. It reminds me of the famous "The Time Traveller's Wife", but maybe even more intriguing. It tells the story of a man called Daniel, whose soul has lived and died and lived again countless times since 520 A.D., and been the only soul who appears to remember all these past lives. And of course, he remembers the same girl through all the hundreds of years -- while regrettably, the girl does not. Talk about pining of epic proportions.



"One thing I can tell you from my unusual perspective is how powerfully our souls reveal themselves in our faces and bodies. Just sit on a train sometime and look at the people around you. Choose a person's face and study it carefully. All the better if they are old and a stranger to you. Ask yourself what you know about that person, and if you open yourself to the information, you will find you know an overwhelming amount. We naturally guard ourselves from the obvious truths of strangers around us, so be warned. You can get overstimulated and uneasy if you really start to look. One of the skills of living is simplifying as you go, so when you let your guard down, the complexity is troubling. There are certain rare people you find -- usually they are healers or poets or people who work with animals -- who live their lives in this state, and I admire them and sympathize with them, but I am not like them anymore. I've done a lot of simplifying in my life."

-- My Name Is Memory, by Ann Brashares

I've been having a terrible work week.

It's only Week 1, but inpatient training is already sucking my energy, self-esteem, confidence, tenacity, and all my happy vibes, leaving it somewhere within the confusing hallways of the hospital. Beyond ridiculous how many things I have going on all at once right now on top of this mind-wrecking training, like department-wide process improvement projects, planning for SLT week for SHAS, worldwide clinical studies I agreed to help with in the way of language assessments (except M left me almost completely in the dark when she had her baby and passed me the helm, that I am close to screaming at the confusing mess) -- and I keep wishing I could go back in time and tell all those people and projects I said yes to, and say no instead. Choose any one of the projects I do, and it is virtually an entire job scope on its own. To think I do all of them on top of clinical contact time (and today I had a full-schedule) -- PLEASE, IT IS RIDICULOUS.

At the end of today, I got home and was ready to just collapse. Sort of did. Burst into tired tears at one point, because on top of all this nightmare work and feeling like a stunted brain, I was alone at home -- a lonely, pitiful, heartbroken woman with no love prospects, and somewhat a weirdo, and realising she's probably always been one, how is now any different. You know how being in a negative place brings out all your negativity? That's what probably happened.

But luckily.

Being alone also allowed me to kind of let it all out instead of keeping it all in -- yes, I'm not one of those girls who cries on Mummy's lap, or anybody's kindly shoulder. I need alone time so I can stop dissembling for a while. So I let it all out; and prayed, and then things started becoming awesome again.

I came across this (which was what I was trying to get to this whole time, ahak). Seriously, this is so brilliant, I am not exaggerating in the least!

This is a lengthy lecture by Jeffrey Lang; it is basically a mathematician's approach to understanding about God and Islam. The way he passionately brings the audience through his philosophical conundrums, and then wrapped it all up into a beautiful, succinct perspective of the meaning of life he thus gained from the Qura'an -- as expected of a mathematician. A beautiful, balanced equation.

He made it so clear -- "Why we do we suffer?", "Why do we have to make difficult choices? Why can't we just be programmed to do good?", "Why is life so difficult!!!"

That my night turned completely around -- life is difficult because God loves us all, and wants us to be awesome. (:

Alhamdulillah.

This is so good!

History should really be examined so that we don't keep doing the same stupidity.

 

The saddest thing about the world today is really the fragmentation of our Muslim community. 

And we can bitch about injustice in the world; the jihad of this time however appears to be not to fight the doubtless present evils, but to first unite amongst ourselves, and to bring love back to this deen.

For me, I have learnt and discovered that we have Muslims, 

and then we have Muslims who truly love the Prophet s.a.w..

The difference between the two can be stark 

-- no way would you harm or disturb an innocent soul
if you have the Prophet s.a.w. in your heart.

Ya Allah, 

I strive to begin every endeavour with You as its destination 

and Your Beloved Rasulullah s.a.w. as its guiding light.

 Selamat Hari Raya!

We stopped over at Qiaonan amidst our jalan raya to take photos! 

before our beloved primary school is gone forever.

This raya has been a bit of a downer -- for clear reasons (really, aren't we being quite terrible with all this celebrating while the bombing in Gaza goes on forever? sigh). But for some other reasons too: like the fact that I have got a bad cold and really don't feel like eating much at all (which is probably a good thing, haha). And that I have inpatient training starting this coming week, which means a steep uphill climb and future stress of passing my paediatric dysphagia competency.

And that I have been feeling more starkly in recent times how much of a weirdo I am. But thank goodness I had Jean, who tried to convince me that you know, it's better to be a weirdo and be made aware of certain things; and that she believes I'm really just different in a good way.

After much mulling over these few days, I've come up with this: 

dear God, if you would make me weird, please make me brave.

Actually --

Please make all the souls fighting for justice and for their lives in Gaza brave and patient and strong. And please let help be at hand.

I'm not sure how much scarier this is supposed to get.