in thoughts...

heh. check out the movie poster above my blog title.

hiak hiak hiak.

Ab 13. Mai im Kino = 13 May in cinema

can hardly wait. :)

heh. i've not been doing recounts of the few swaps events we had cos others have been writing about them (go click on my links to other swappies under "bloggies"! haha..)

but seems that more outings coming up (from June's blog):
1. Watch Beautiful Boxer - 4 May
2. Ice skating - 13 May

Anyone wanna watch Troy? I think it's gonna be good. and i'm not just thinking of the cute guys. REALLY. i'm serious. ;) of cos it doesn't HURT to have Orlando Bloom and Brad Pitt in it. and Eric Bana too. I'M SURE they have some damn pretty gal in it also lar.. my point is: the story's good... any takers? :)

haha.. was just listening to power 98... caught 3 out of 4 tips for guys when they bring girls out to dinner for a first date:

Tip #2 (missed the first one sorry.. haha)
Let the lady take the seat facing the rest of the restaurant while you should take the seat facing the wall. This is to prevent you from looking at other girls when the lady is telling you about herself.

Tip #3
If your food tastes good, offer the lady some.

Tip #4
This one's tough, but if you manage to do it, you'll earn her respect (not my words, the deejay's... haha..)
Don't keep looking at her chest.

haha... and after the commercial, some guy smsed to tell the deejay that Tip #4's easier said than done. Her answer? "You can do anything you want - just as long as you don't get caught."

;)

something i got thru email:

***

One day a fisherman was lying on a beautiful beach, with his fishing pole propped up in the sand and his solitary line cast out into the sparkling blue surf. He was enjoying the warmth of the afternoon sun and the prospect of catching a fish.

About that time, a businessman came walking down the beach, trying to relieve some of the stress of his workday. He noticed the fisherman sitting on the beach and decided to find out why this fisherman was fishing instead of working harder to make a living for himself and his family.

"You aren't going to catch many fish that way," said the businessman to the fisherman, "you should be working rather than lying on the beach!"

The fisherman looked up at the businessman, smiled and replied, "And what will my reward be?" "Well, you can get bigger nets and catch more fish!" was the businessman's answer.

"And then what will my reward be?" asked the fisherman, still smiling. The businessman replied, "You will make money and you'll be able to buy a boat, which will then result in larger catches of fish!"

"And then what will my reward be?" asked the fisherman again. The businessman was beginning to get a little irritated with the fisherman's questions. "You can buy a bigger boat, and hire some people to work for you!" he said.

"And then what will my reward be?" repeated the fisherman. The businessman was getting angry. "Don't you understand? You can build up a fleet of fishing boats, sail all over the world, and let all your employees catch fish for you!"

Once again the fisherman asked, "And then what will my reward be?" The businessman was red with rage and shouted at the fisherman, "Don't you understand that you can become so rich that you will never have to work for your living again! You can spend all the rest of your days sitting on this beach, looking at the sunset. You won't have a care in the world!"

The fisherman, still smiling, looked up and said, "And what do you think I'm doing right now?"

Contentment is a difficult attitude to learn, but so important. It's easy to get caught in the world's trap of working harder and harder to earn more and more, when we may well already have what can provide us with the greatest possible happiness.

are you what you eat? munch munch..

You have confidence in your ability to get things done. You are a leader among friends, and a good one too. You are responsible and like to challenge yourself by taking up difficult tasks - and you usually succeed.

You're very careful and circumspect in all matters but you won't face any problems until they actually happen. Also you're a kind and sensitive person.

You are vigorous yet gentle. You appear to be mysterious to those who don't know you very well because you don't often reveal your feelings. You like to socialize and are popular among your peers.

You are logical, smart and inventive. Sometimes you are too cold and selfish.

watched passion of the christ yesterday.

used a couple of yizhen's tissues. thanks girl.

not many thoughts ran through my mind during the show, except:
1. Fucking humans, how sick can you get?
2. Ouch
3. why? why? just why does it have to be this way?

oh wow.
I just caught the crucial 10 minutes that separates a "dark" sky from a "lit" sky.

went up to 8th floor to put clothes in dryer and then happened to see a bit of the nice sky near the lift, so went to the small balcony area.

beautiful. just 10 minutes. you can't tell at which point it really starts to get bright, but it does.

cool. just nice that i caught it a few days before moving out. I'd be back for a few more of these. :)

running last nite was good... i'd switched to the track during the last couple of runs - because wanted to be within close proximity to hall... exam time, din wanna stress myself too much, wanted to just run leisurely and come back to study when i wanted to...

today ran the A2 route again. a bit faster than the last time i did it. and the distance did feel a bit longer than what i do on the track - though it could have been because of the slopes. but it felt good. :) remembered why i prefer the round-the-school path rather than the tracks -

more.. interesting (saw this luminous blue light thingy shining from grass patch at area between back of PGP and NUH, dunno what it is though..)

more.. motivating (i die die have to reach Ext A - if i walk, i'm gonna take longer, might as well run... for the tracks can just stop anytime i want, and just cross the road)

more.. satisfying (just went I feel VERY tired and feel like stopping, I'd remind myself that there's a nice downward slope coming.. and i love the feeling of running downslope.. so that keeps me going... and the A2 route is just nice.. when i tire out from one part, the next part lets me regain some energy - flatter ground or downslope)

oh and i saw a very cute and small snail on the slope that leads down to the SRC running tracks. :)

i wonder..
if people who sell alarm clocks (those stores where the alarms go off ALL DAY) become habituated to the sound of alarm clocks - do their own alarm clocks still have any effect on them? wonder what specially personalized alarm clocks they might need.

i wonder..
what goes through an insect's mind when it lands on the mirror.

i wonder..
if there is a limit to how much blood mosquitoes can suck out of you before something drastic happens. like fainting or too much loss of blood.

i wonder..
if you could dream of operating a car if you've never driven one before.

i wonder..
why it is so easy to stay up when you don't have to study.

i wonder..
what i can find to eat now.

i wonder..
why i prefer sad songs.

i wonder..
if folks who die in their sleep kinda have an inkling that they're about to go.

think i should go and sleep. my dark eye rings have obtained PR status. dang. :(

Db asked me just now. i din really know how to answer. what is my greatest fear?

i think there are many fears. and i can think of one now. greatest? i dunno.

fear of not having someone who understands.
not so much fear of being misunderstood - but fear of not being understood.
and fear of not being given the chance to try to understand.



apparently i'm in a comics mood. ;)

shiyun slapped herself.
on the face.
to hit a mosquito.

and *piak*

there you have it. one down. many more to go.

i think my record's about 15 liao. within 2 hours of sitting here, killed 4. best.

papers are finished...
so am i... i'm finished... dead...

but who cares? haha..

had german food with debz after the stupid bio psych paper.. nice... sandwich and wurst and Erdinger.

hang in there if you haven't finished exams! soon it'll be over!

oh man i just slacked the last one and a half hour away online...

*pulls hair for all the bio stuff that hasn't gone into the brain*

but it was fun talking to my fren... got totally cracked up by how "cold" and "lame" my fren has become... haha...

oh man... i'm gonna get "slaughtered" for bio paper tmr! argh! argh! argh!

just saw this line on someone's blog:

"There can not be more infinities than one; for one of them would limit the other."
Sir W. Raleigh

- infeeneetee ;) yay!

woah. just killed ONE BIG MOSQUITO.

i've been, on average, murdering one mosquito a day.

today's victim was BIG, BLACK and FAT. *smack* ewww.. very dark blood - must be a combi of sy's and mine.

oh, was reading my text for animal behaviour that day, and it seems that mosquitoes respond to certain frequencies - the female's wings beat at a certain frequency different from the males, so a particular frequency will attract the males to come and have some fun at creating the next generation.

so if you have a tuning fork that vibrates at the lucky frequency, you might just find a male mosquito going horny over it. I'm not kidding.

heh heh. was reading my bio psych - wah see i'm so hardworking! *winks*

anyway we have this vestibular system located in our middle ears to help tell us the position of our body in relation to gravity, and also to signal changes in the direction and speed of our movements (copied wholesale from textbook, will internalize later... haha...)

so without it, our movements will have very destablizing influence on us - for instance taking a bus (i'm not even talking about a jerky bus ride, just a normal one) each slight movement of the bus could affect your balance - you could potentially fall down many times. or even when we walk - constantly shifting of our weight, we really could be tumbling instead of walking if we din have this system.

heh. try this:
hold your hand in front of you and shake it, your hand should appear blurry.
hold your hand in front of you - hold it still, but shake your head, your hand should remain in focus.

cool eh? it's to illustrate the role of vestibular receptors in helping you compensate for your own movements.

fun... haha... shake head shake hand shake head shake hand shake leg... haha...

oh man. I wanna watch A.I.

haven watched it tho i have it... haii... AFTER EXAMS!! YEAH!!

hmm... i dun even know where this rachel robot is from. but i'm bored lah. so anything will do. *bleargh*

wah. I just finished dinner, when i intended to finish by 830...

this couple on my floor near my cluster (have to share kitchen with them cos the girl lives like next to the kitchen).. they every meal like cook some great feast like that. they used like 3 or 4 pots just now... piang eh... and we only have 2 heating plates, so i was standing at the other side, SLOWLY squeezing out my instant noodle seasoning... and they cooked and they cooked and they cooked...

then finally i asked the girl, "erm, how long more do you need?"
she looked at my instant noodles (the packet type, not the cup type) and asked, "oh you need to use is it?"
mental tot, half amused: yeah, I din look like i was gonna eat them raw, was i?
replied, "yeah.. how long more do you need?"
she said 15min, so yeah. I gave them 20 min before i went back again.

can really kowtow to them. i think they cook so much almost everyday. best.

anyway i was cooking my noodles in peace finally when this girl came into the kitchen with a big big big bag, and started putting stuff into the fridge. then she suddenly asked me if i wanted an egg to go with my food. she held out 2 to me in fact. haha... quite nice of her... her mom gave her like half a carton of eggs to bring to hall.. ;) but hmm, i had a hard-boiled egg just before my noodles - managed to used the heating pan to cook an egg before the couple came, so yeah, din take the egg from her..

i'm really quite anti-social in hall. but what the hell, that's why i'm in ext a and not like other halls rite? haha.. but it's still nice to know people like this... thru small little interactions, occasional smile of recognition...

back to bio. I've been staring at the structure of the neuron. and it's finally starting to look familiar. haha. but i'm progressing damn slowly tho...

"Too Much To Ask" - Avril Lavigne

It's the first time I ever felt this lonely
I wish someone could cure this pain
It's funny when you think it's gonna work out
Till you chose weed over me, you're so lame
I thought you were cool until the point
But up until the point you didn't call me
When you said you would
I finally figured out you're all the same
Always coming up with some kind of story

Everytime I try to make you smile
You're always feeling sorry for yourself
Everytime I try to make you laugh
You can't
Youre too tough
You think you're loveless
Is that too much that I'm asking for?

I thought you'd come around when I ignored you
So I thought you'd have the decency to change
But babe, I guess you didn't take that warning
'Cause I'm not about to look at your face again

Can't you see that you lie to yourself
You can't see the world through a mirror
It wont be too late when the smoke clears
'Cause I, I am still here

But everytime I try to make you smile
You'd always grow up feeling sorry for yourself
Everytime I try to make you laugh
You stand like a stone
Alone in your zone
Is that too much that I'm asking for?

Yeah yeah yeah yeah
Can't find where I am
Lying here
Alone I fear
Afraid of the dark
No one to claim
Alone again

Can't you see that you lie to yourself
You can't see the world through a mirror
It wont be too late when the smoke clears
'Cause I, I am still here

Everytime I try to make you smile
You're always feeling sorry for yourself
Everytime I try to make you laugh
You can't
You're too tough
You think you're loveless
It was too much that I asked him for

***
just have the line "You can't see the world through a mirror" stuck in my head.

just finished Personality Psych. haii.

went to Macs with Aud and June b4 coming back to room to start work on Bio. oh well. just a while more. :P

quite bad.. yesterday had Developmental Psych paper (I think my answers were damn crappy and anyway for the last question there were 2 parts and I effectively only answered one part. damn.) no time to finish. argh.

then had Animal behaviour. TOTAL opposite of Developmental Psych. Had TOO MUCH time. had time to SLOWLY plan what I was going to write. write halfway still got time to leisurely stone for a few seconds before continuing. and i had all my points cos it happened one essay question was on social groups of animals - and it was the only chapter i actually went to do a summary and extra notes for (heh, the first chapter i attacked, was a bit more enthu then..) and i could remember all my points.. wah... feels damn good to just write and write and know what you're writing... the other question i chose was on learning behaviour.. whole chunk of stuff that i learned thru psychology also just throw in la.. then add some more relevant stuff that i learned from this module (actually quite some overlap with psych).. so leisurely... but heck la, I put this module as satisfactory/unsatisfactory.. dun score well also dun care liao...

then had to prepare for personality psych paper, which was this morning. my goodness. cannot make it. the points were just NOT going in.. but dun care liao...

I have exactly 3 days to bio paper. 3 days and 2 hours to freedom.

my developmental psych paper is tomorrow. i can so die for it. but feel like blogging about something i read while studying for it - eh, it was one of the assigned tutorial readings but erm i think i missed it... somehow.. HAHA..

anyway... developmental psych... basically starts off with forming of a new life, newborn, infant, toddler, child, adolescent, adult, old adult... yak yak yak.. so supposedly we're all supposed to mature as we grow... adults are supposed to be more mature than a young child for instance.

yeah, like duh, I hear you say.

hah.

The article was about how children are not as egocentric as Piaget thought - egocentric basically means, they see the world from their point of view and can't see it from others' point of view. His 3 mountains task basically asks children to tell him the view of the 3 mountains as seen by someone sitting in another position.




so supposedly, humans progress in these cognitive developmental stages... yet sometimes... we're not much better than kids in our thinking.. ;)

I found this bit of the reading very interesting. gonna just type excerpts here - but even then it's still quite long.. haha.. but finish it.. the end is good...

***

Adults are capable of more complex mental operations than children, but we do not always operate at the highest level. We may beg traffic lights to change when we are in a hurry and curse and kick machines that refuse to work.

Like little chidren, adults often at some gut level do not believe in chance. The gambler believes he can influence the dice or roulette wheel...

...As mature rational adults, we scoff at superstition and magic, but we may walk around ladders, "knock on wood", and feel uncomfortable if we break a mirror. Baseball pitchers and other athletes are notorious for using good luck charms and special gestures to help them win games.

...we are always in danger of failing to differentiate our own point of view from another person's. If I do not like a certain movie, or if I feel very cold in a room, I am likely to feel that the movie simply is a bad movie, and that the room is cold. If you come along and tell me you like the movie, and feel too warm, I may have trouble understanding how you can possibly misperceive reality that way. And you are likely to feel the same about my reactions.

Sometimes it is a lack of knowledge or experience that makes us egocentric. It is hard for a white middle-class person to know what it is like to grow up poor or black, or for men to know what it is like to be a woman, and vice versa. It is hard for adults in the prime of life to remember what the world looks like through the eyes of a child, or to imagine what it looks like to an 80-year-old. It is possible to overcome the barriers of class, race, nationality, gender, age - good fiction helps us do this - but we never truly escape from the prison of our own experience. At the end of life, egocentrism is total: as someone once observed, the death of any single person ends a whole world.

Skolnick, A. Psychology of Human Development.

***
"Maturity means reacquiring the seriousness one had as a child at play."
Friedrich Nietzche

yeah man, I need the seriousness to study!! haha...

just came back from my jog.

saw a Pizza Hut delivery guy stopping his bike opposite Ext A.

with, of cos, the back stuffed with you-know-wat and i-can-imagine-wat.

OF COS I'M NOT HUNGRY.

haha...

went downstairs for a while just now...

saw 3 flashes of lightning within 5 min.

stared in awe all 3 times.

then turned and saw over at SRC fields, there were a lot of people - playing soccer, tennis and so on.

though the lightning was still some distance away, thought it was quite scary. I mean, just within this year alone I think there have been a few cases of people being struck dead by lightning in Singapore already.

but it's still nice to look at.

serious nerd.
a serious nerd who's still cool.


You are Donatello...You are highly intelligent and
industrious, and considered the
"brains" of the operation. You're a
serious nerd, but you're still cool!


Which Ninja Turtle Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

heh.
yesterday was very pig.
slept for a good 9 hours, woke up, tried to study, within one hour fell asleep on bed again. and slept for ONE whole hour.
HAD to get out of the room.

Today.
good good.
din sleep very long last night but hey, feeling quite awake today.
and anyway I've placed all the nice warm clean laundry on the bed.
supposed to let it cool before I fold them, but heh, just using them to block my bed so I wun be tempted to jump unto the bed to, erm, study, and then erm, accidentally fall asleep. haha.

from my Personality textbook.. :) my personality textbook is like a good coffee table book - nice to read leisurely and get stuff like those below, but I'm not absorbing it much like academic material.. haha...

***

"To maintain/increase your level of trait happiness:

1. Spend time with other people, particularly friends, family and loved ones.
The one characteristic common to most happy people is a disposition to be sociable,to draw satisfaction from being with other people. Cultivate an interest in other people. Go out of your way to spend time with friends and loved ones. Try to get to know those around you.

2. Seek challenge and meaning in work.
Happy people enjoy their work and work hard at what they do. Work that is challenging, but within your skill level, is usually the most satisfying.

3. Look for ways to be helpful to others.
Helping others can make you feel good about yourself and give you the feeling that your life is meaningful. Helping others thereby provides a boost in self-esteem. Helping has a second benefit as well; helping someone else can take your mind off your own problems or can make your problems seem little by comparison.

4. Take time out for yourself; enjoy the activities that give you pleasure.
Don't wait to find time for your favorite hobby or activity. Instead, make time. Think about what gives you pleasure, and build time into your busy schedule for those activities.

5. Stay in shape.
Exercise is positively associated with emotional well-being. Exercise need not be intense or all that frequent to provide the emotional benefit.

6. Have a plan, but be open to new experiences.
Having an organized life allows a person to accomplish much. However, sometimes the most fun moments in life are unplanned. Be open to trying different things or having different experiences - try going somewhere you have never been, trying doing a routine activity a little differently, or try doing something on the spur of the moment. Be flexible, rather than rigid, and try to avoid getting stuck in any ruts.

7. Be optimistic.
Put on a smiling face, whistle a happy tune, look for the silver lining in every cloud. Sure, it sounds too good to be true, but acting happy and trying to look on the bright side of things can go a long way toward making you feel happy. Try to avoid negative thinking. Don't make pessimistic statements, even to yourself. Convince yourself that the cup really is half full.

8. Don't let things get blown out of proportion.
Sometimes when something bad happens, it seems like the end of the world. Happy people have the ability to step back and see things in perspective. Happy people think about their options and about the other things in their lives that are going well. They think about what they can do to work on their problems or what to avoid in the future. But they don't think it is the end of the world. Often asking yourself "What's the worst that can come out of this?" will help put things in perspective.

Just wishing for happiness is not likely to make it so. Psychologists agree that people have to work at being happy; they have to work at overcoming the unpleasant events of life, the losses and failures that happen to everyone. The strategies in the previous list can be though of as a personal program for working on happiness."

Larsen, R. J. & Buss D. M. (2002). Personality Psychology. New York: McGraw Hill.

***

hmm.
was fiddling with blog design again.
hee.
now can put picture on the right.
hiak hiak.
time for dinner.
yum.

very bored.
a few straight days of good studying.
now I'm bored.
but still behind time.
bored.

oh well.

was flipping my calendar again. hah. I do it when I'm bored.

"Love brings much happiness. Much more so than pining for someone brings pain."
Albert Einstein

interesting. right. back to my booooooooring boooooooooks.

boo.

dunno what to expect sometimes.
but things just go on and off, on and off, on and off.
Sometimes you think there's enough "evidence" for you to have expectations, anticipation, hope,
then suddenly,
NOPE, not gonna happen.

was reading my text (my gosh... when can I frigging finish??!!)
and William James was saying that in life, to achieve happiness, you gotta either achieve more in life, or lower your aspirations.

haii.
i don't like to lower my expectations leh.
so hard to please myself.
dang.

muahaha.
it has actually been fruitful - staying up for 2 nights, sneaking in some sleep during the day.
not touching the laptop - good... less distraction.
tehchinno - good... quite amazed when I saw the guy making the drink - it MAINLY contains MILK, which should make me wanna sleep, but no, the little bit of tea and therefore the little bit of caffeine keeps me up..
textbooks are finally seeming a bit more interesting - but developmental psych textbook organization is SUPER bad...

came back to hall wanting to sleep, but hmm, went past the sleepy stage, so went to read blogs... very awake now... haha...

talked bread.

Friend sent me a link:

Article: Ask Before You Answer

Quite interesting... still musing over it... the writer's right for this point: "As long as we are on the defensive, the questioners are not really wrestling with issues. They're just watching us squirm."

I just kinda switch off when some people try to tell me stuff as if they KNOW it's a fact. And it's true that when you tell me stuff like that, I just dunno HOW to accept it. I just don't.

His tactic of answering questions with another question... hmm... very smart... but just don't do it to me when I'm in a bad mood.. it can get QUITE irritating.. haha..

finally finished the presentation... no more headaches, no more frustration, no more last minute surprises...

were supposed to meet up to do the powerpoint on Mon... in the end, not everyone had their points, one girl was late, one girl at tutorial so had to meet us later, one girl finished her part and wanted to go first... oh man... what kinda meeting? anyway i just did up my part and chop chop put my part, and the part of the girl who finished hers, into a simple powerpoint, did up the colour scheme, then emailed them to check, asking the other 2 girls to slot in their parts when they were done... specifically told them i wun have access to laptop till super late at night, cos would be studying outside... and tai-chi-ed the handout to them to do...

hah. was studying late with Aud, YZ, SM and Ben over at area near Biz Lib... it was about 1+am one of the girls who din finish her part suddenly told me that Ms-Didn't-Listen's part was very messy and kinda wrong, and the other girl who finished first needed editing in some parts too... dang... anyway she offered to do the corrections.. think she stayed up real late to finish it... sigh...

anyway the day of presentation (wed) we were supposed to meet up early - Ms-Didn't-Listen was complaining that the corrected slides now not clear, blah blah, she dunno where is what, blah blah... oh well...

but the presentation was okie.. the 3 of them just read off the slides... foolproof i guess...

was just damn GLAD IT'S OVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

now now...time to start mugging... went for the research talk by Graham with June and Des... quite interesting... but think i should really mug for Bio psych... haha... or else also paiseh to go for the research thingy... cos everyone else will SOOO know what they're talking about...