The next day, we ran into Narnie in the driveway. "Hey Jake, how's the pi?" she asked.

"Good. I haven't memorized anymore, though. Mom says it's a waste of time."

I had, because it was. Jake could keep going and going until the end of time -- but why? The synesthetic autistic savant Daniel Tammet memorized pi out to fifty thousand digits and recited it to raise money for an autism charity, which was a wonderful thing. (Ultimately, the recitation took him more than 5 hours. He used chocolate to get through it. That, at least, I could relate to.) But even Daniel Tammet talked more in his book about the challenges of managing his social anxiety and the physical difficulties of the recitation than any particular intellectual challenge.

Narnie came right back at Jake, with the world's most innocent look. "What?" she said. "No, silly. I was talking about cherry pie."

Jake cracked up, shaking his head as he got into the car. There's no chance of him getting a fat head as long as Narnie's around.

I laughed, too, but something was nagging at me. Halfway down to the university, I looked at Jake in the backseat in my rearview mirror. He was playing Angry Birds on his iPad.

"Hey, Jake," I said. "Why did you stop memorizing pi at forty digits?"

"I didn't stop at forty. I stopped at two hundred."

"But before. Why did you stop at forty?"

"It was forty including the three. Thirty-nine decimal digits, actually."

"Okay, but why did you stop there?"

"Because with thirty-nine decimal places, you can estimate the circumference of the observable universe down to a hydrogen atom. I figured that was all I'd ever really need."

-- The Spark, A Mother's Story of Nurturing, Genius and Autism 

O.O Reading about genius is mindblowing.

it's been a wonderfully busy break

How do we achieve sustainable development?

'Ilmu with akhlak.
'Amal with ikhlas.

---

this! is awesome.

passion is your greatest love.

great friend, great spouse,
great parent, great career.

Are they not one package?
How can you be one without the other?

This came along with my exploration of my current non-fiction read: The Spark, a story of a boy diagnosed with moderate-severe autism at 2 years, but whose Mother pulled him out of special ed so that he could continue learning in his own way. And now this boy is a 14-year-old Masters student and an apparent genius in physics and astronomy. This is phenomenal and makes me want to do probably-unacceptable things in my therapy sessions!

and here is Jacob Barnett -- he still has some brushing up to do with respect to his social skills (adorable boy), but if he's truly autistic, this is amazing. Amazing, amazing, amazing.

The basic message is this: that if we only allow ourselves to pursue our natural inclinations and passions, we will be capable of doing great things. 

Motivation is key.

And love really makes the world go round.

My mind has been sufficiently blown as I contemplate my thoughts in recent days.

I wonder if life is actually about discovering the truth of the platitudes we hear.

---

 on the k-drama front -- Healer is finished! I have so much love for it -- my drama love-list has been thoroughly scrambled, thank you. I need some time before I can decide what's at the top now. I'm actually spending the last night of this CNY break listening to a Healer-related podcast -- what the heck, I ask you. Didn't I use to do this with JE? What is happening! guh.

How do I summarise what I love about Healer -- god. I think dramabeans said it best: it's like a drama for drama-watchers. Like, you've watched a gazillion dramas and you think you know how this is going to go but, but, but! It surprises you! In such unexpectedly, wonderful ways! It made me wide-eyed with giddiness -- there were bits that made me go, For real?? Is this for real? Did that just happen in this drama -- they are not going to agonize over this plot point??? I felt like it brought k-drama to amazing, unchartered frontiers.

I think my favorite thing about Healer is that it never actually goes where I’m afraid it’s going to go. Jung-hoo has had plenty of opportunities to go full noble idiot on us, but he never takes the leap. Similarly, Young-shin has had numerous chances to believe the worst of Jung-hoo, but she never does. Past dramas have taught me to expect misunderstandings at every possible turn, but they never seem to come to fruition in Healer.

And yes, fantastic chemistry all round; not just between our leads! LOVE the whole team, seriously. 

Currently struggling through another new clinic at work, dealing with kids with sensory issues:

Also, I've been hit by another idea for a future venture -- and feeling super-excited, hehe. It trumps all the previous talks I've had with friends regarding opening of schools/bookstores/mobile speech therapy clinics with strict 3-day work-week/cafes/Muslim-casket-companies. I will probably regale S with it first when I see her this coming week.

I have too many ideas and not enough discipline.

If we consider men and women generally, and apart from the professions or occupations, there is only one situation I can think of in which they almost pull themselves up by their bootstraps, making an effort to read better than they usually do. When they are in love and are reading a love letter, they read between the lines and in the margins; they read the whole in terms of the parts, and each part in terms of the whole; they grow sensitive to context and ambiguity, to insinuation and implication; they perceive the colour of words, the odour of phrases, and the weight of sentences. They may even take the punctuation into account. Then, if never before or after, they read.

-- Mortimer Adler, How to Read a Book

Completely random this wee hour of the morning,

but this is such a beautiful cover of Taeyang's Eyes Nose Lips,

I couldn't not keep it.

I am totally sucked into k-fandom these days, I know.

Still so totally in love with this drama and this pairing!

And here paired with the super-addictive Maroon 5 song, Sugar:

If I was younger, this would have totally gone into my top 10 OTP list. But now that I'm far too grown (I do not want to say old), life does not allow me to dwell. Daylight hours steal my brain.

As a whole -- this show is doing superbly. At the start, I did feel lukewarm about it -- like, eh, it's compelling enough but the main plot was too convoluted to hook me in properly. This turned out well in the end though, because its slow unraveling is what's keeping audiences riveted now. It's so frakking exciting, I almost squealed on the bus home while watching today.

And the pairing! GOSH. I have harped on enough, but this is like the most functional hero-OTP pairing I've come across. They are so functional and workable and amazing, despite how screwed up their individual situations are -- you know how typical hero characters rarely ever get together, not until the very end? Because either the hero or both the girl and the hero have terrible issues to work out? Well, this pairing works them out. Waaay early. And it's so satisfying. So instead of getting the whole, extended pain-melodrama, how each is bad for the other, we get to see these two confront each other instead, and cry and say amazing, tear-jerking things -- and then they decide to be together. AND IT IS AWESOME. Because on top of everything, girl is helping hero with the missions, and their working together is super duper fun to watch. (KBS drama does not allow embedding of the episode clips, eesh. I wish I could keep them here.)

Healer: Okay, run!

Young Shin.: Okay -- wait, where?

Healer: *almost does a headdesk* Where you were heading!

Young Shin: Oh, right. *dashes off*

Ohmygod, seriously, so cute.

I may blog about real life the next time round -- hahh.