Shocking?

Exams are over so it's time to party! *throws confetti* Actually, not really completely over. I'm done with all the core subjects and this Friday's paper is just my elective. I'll have plenty of time to study for that so, it won't hurt to have a little early celebration for being done with most of my subjects.

Anyways, I was adopted (i have tell you i'm not kidding about this because sometimes, i joke around too much till people tend to disbelief what i say, even when it is actually true and this is true). i just got to know this a couple of months back. At first, I was left a little puzzled when I heard the news but now it has finally settled on me. Of course it feels different with them around now. I'm going to miss my adopted parents when i go back this summer. They've been so caring, and during special occasions like Christmas and Easter, they would make sure that i don't feel left out and would invite me over to their home to celebrate together with them.

Now how many of you have actually thought that I was adopted- as in adopted since birth when you read that first sentence on the paragraph above? the sentence was rather ambiguous i must say. when an ambiguous topic like this is thrown to the crowd, most would tend to think that it implied the more dramatic and interesting outcome of two possibilities. most of the time, the other boring possibility won't even occur to them. the brain loves drama and sometimes this love for drama may inflict some governance over the way we filter and process information, causing us to make biased judgement as we tend to choose to believe things which are more interesting. Like in the light  (or lack of it) of our recent 13th General Election, so many dramatic things happened but only a handful events have some credibility to be true. still, all the other quite dubious happenings are still spread around the social media like wild fire. who doesn't love drama?

Bargain

I've just read the news about the tragic demise of Irene Ong Ai Siam. Her daughter, Hui Wei, who was with her at that time, watched the whole ordeal of her mother being stabbed by those criminals.

Traumatising.

Death can come ever so unexpected but when you do know that the Grim Reaper is just lurking by the corner, you'll tend to try bargaining with him for more time.

I did that, when she was half comatose. I was rather selfish though, and wasn't inclined to offer much of my life in exchange for hers. thinking back, i'm wondering if i had added more to the stack, would she still be alive today?

may think i'm silly to actually think that i could bargain life for life but when one is faced with a situation where one will have no control over, one will start to use all sorts of senseless methods to try to gain some control over the situation.

Drizzly morning

the weather is a little bit like our emotions. at times, we would just try to hold it in, like a silent drizzle. sometimes, we would want the whole world to know and there would be shuddering thunder and blinding, intermittent display of lightning streaks in the sky. sometimes, it's pretty cloudy but the sun would still peek out once in a while to shine through the grey clouds, giving a little warmth and mellowly spot-lighting the otherwise gloomy earth. sometimes, the sun is wholly exposed with it's scorching fiery heat filtered only by the thinning ozone layer in the atmosphere and this is when we know a comfortable warmth can turn into a painfully scalding heat.

penned down my thoughts, now's the time to fill up my brain.

My purpose

I'm not studying just to pass,
I don't want my patients to just survive.
And neither am I studying just for first class honours.
As for my patients to be more than just alive,
but also to be able to live their lives to the fullest,
Knowledge alone isn't enough.
Knowledge alone is never enough.

Wisdom, I beseech thee to help me understand what is needed.

orange

i don't know if it's just me or if everyone else does it too but i tend to reminiscence very often when i catch certain scents in the air. for reasons unknown, the neuronal pathway for the sense of smell is different from the other four senses which goes to the thalamus first before being redirected to respective areas on the cortex. the wiring for the sense of smell bypasses the thalamus and goes straight to the area of the cortex that are associated with smell. I don't know why but this very difference makes it more difficult to forget a scent than a sight, touch, taste or sound. To put it simply, it's hard to forget a scent, pleasant and unpleasant ones alike, unfortunately.

coming back to the title, orange- 

cheerful colour. 

pock-marked skin. 

sweet and sour. 

quiet. 

smells like happiness to me.

just the other day in class during the lecture, i could hear my classmate next to me rummaging around in her bag. i continued to pay attention to the lecture, giving no notice to what my classmate was actually doing. less than a minute after that, my nose picked up that distinct cistrusy smell, accompanied with a subtle hint of sweetness- characteristics of mandarin orange, not sunkist as sunkist will have a stronger sourish acidic smell to it. immediately my thoughts swayed to all those years of Chinese New Year celebrations I've had with my family as we would always have these mandarin oranges in abundance and my living room would smell like an orange orchard!  my reverie was broken when i felt a light nudge on my shoulders "do you want one?". Gratefully, i accepted a slice of happiness.

A series of unfortunate events

the first part is based on a true story which took place roughly four years ago in SMK St Teresa, Kuching. Very recently, a sequel to this story had happened in University College Dublin, Ireland.

there, at the end of a long shadowy corridor of a school block, stood a tall girl with her right hand placed against the wall, as if to help her to stand upright. she seemed to be frozen to that spot with her face displaying a blended expression of shock and amusement.

just a couple of minutes ago, the atmosphere in the classrooms along that corridor was buzzing with cheerfulness and excitement as the students chat  away among themselves while waiting for the teachers for the next period to come into their classrooms. then suddenly, all the lights went out and the fans in each of the classrooms slowed down with each turn, giving eerie screeches before they came to a silent halt. the students were all silenced too- confused by the heavy strangeness in the air that had replaced the earlier light, carefree atmosphere. the silence only lasted a quarter of a second before the students erupt with anger, frustration and irritation clearly heard in their booming voices. the tall girl, after noticing the negativity in their voices quickly disappeared from the corridor as fast as how the silence dissipated earlier. she knew, she was the cause of what had just happened and she knew, most importantly of all, that she had a power- the power of destruction.

fast-forward to four years later, that tall girl has moved overseas to continue her studies- leaving her dark past tied to the strange occurrence that one morning in her high school behind her. in those four years, there were once-in-a-while emergence of her power but nothing too serious had resulted from them. ever since that day she knew with that power, comes responsibilities. hence she had trained herself ways to control the power, to prevent it from controlling her life.

11th April 2013, 1530 hour, room C114, UCD Health Science Building, Dublin, Ireland. 

"okay, lets do this!" Jv enthusiastically said to the rest of her group members as she pulled out a chair and sat down unceremoniously. Sc was on her computer, doing last minute adjustments to the powerpoint slides. Kw and Sa were in disscussion about the possible questions that the judges may ask them at the end of the presentation. Busy with their own tasks and thoughts, none of them was aware of what was going to unfold soon. none of them had the power to receive premonitions but one of them had a power of another kind.

the presentation was about to start. the projector shone onto the irregular surface of the wall as the screen wasn't pulled down yet. Sa automatically got up from her chair and pulled the string attached to the screen to bring down it down. when she was done, she turned to walk back to her seat and noticed the expression of shock on both Jv and Kw faces, whose eyes were focused on Sc. She was in front of the room, just next to the screen, typing into her computer, oblivious to what was going on. 

Sa could hear a rotating sound behind her and as she turned her back towards the screen, time seemed to have slowed down. she could see from the corner of her eyes, the screen rolling upwards slowly, but gaining in momentum. in actual reality, it was rolling really quickly and getting even faster. the lower end of the screen hit the top part with a loud bang, causing the metal casing of the screen to fall off on one side and it then swung across the room, like a wrecking ball which was used to demolish buildings in the past. 

Sc was just standing in the direction of the metal casing. she was still unaware of it swinging towards hers. I could not do anything once my powers have been unleashed so i just stood there and hoped with every sinew in my body that the metal casing would just stop in mid-swing but i knew deep down, i can't stop it. I was Sa, i was that tall girl, and i have a power to cause but not to stop this. i closed my eyes as the metal casing neared Sc as i was afraid to see what was going to happen.

it was the same silence again, like the other time when something like this happened 4 years ago. i was waiting with my eyes closed for the ensuing chaos that would follow, just like the last time. then, i heard a loud heavy sigh. i opened my eyes and saw that Sc was still on her computer typing away, with the metal casing hung idly just next to her. i looked at Jv and Kw and their eyes were just wide with bewildered shock. Sc let out another sigh, this time more subtly. "huh, i thought it was going to hit my computer!"

4 years ago, i caused the whole school to black-out for hours when i went to flip the corridor lights' off. the moment i switch off the lights, the electricity went out as well. to this day, i have no idea how i caused that to happen!

recently, my destructive hands just proved to me that they are still as destructive as ever if not even more when i damaged the LCD screen and almost nearly killed my groupmate in the process. 

Passion harvests love- and the seeds of love will grow more passion.

i'll make this post short because i'm running out of time! it's just exactly four weeks left to the start of my end of Spring semester exams. Right now, my study speed is still rather slow. actually it has always been slow, even when i was in secondary school. however, i realise what's more important isn't how fast i can go through a chapter but how much i actually enjoy reading something that are of interest to me. It's the passion in the things that you study which will make you hungry for more knowledge. 

Be passionate about what you do and you'll happily do it with all your attention. I said be passionate because sometimes, we may be faced with no choice but to do something that we do not like. Nurture the passion for it and it will become less unpleasant and hence easier to get it done. This is better than always having a resentful thought while doing whatever it is that one do not like to do aye? Surely that'll sap your energy away and make you feel stressed out!

we can't just do only the things that we like all the time. but we can enjoy the things we have to do all the time and maybe, just maybe discover that we actually like doing them after all.

 

PS: what i meant about "things-you-do-not-like-to-do" here are not those things that go against your principles or are morally wrong. 

There are referring to petty things like studying for a boring module, doing a complicated assignment on a topic of zero interest to you, organizing an event because no one else is willing to do it, etc. 

Photos

The sight of pigeons in a row. Brings back the memories of the smell of their poop.

taking photographs is actually a very good way to log memories. sometimes, blogging can get too time-consuming that it's easier to just snap a few photographs to represent the moment. i have thousands of photos carrying treasured memories in my old laptop which sadly, had died
on me last year during my study break (talk about the perfect timing!).

there are photos that will conjure thoughts and feelings, and stimulate your senses- just like the way they are stimulated the moment you press that shutter button. the stimulus- the sight, smell, sound, feel and maybe the taste of that moment will come back, flooding your senses, when you see a certain photograph from long ago that represents a significant moment.

hence, whenever i felt a moment which is worth remembering and would bring me cherished memories of it when i reminiscent back , i would find a nice frame in the setting that i am in at that moment to capture a photo of it. then with the press of a button and an almost silent click that follows, that moment will have a physical connection to it in the form of a photograph and will somewhat be less likely to be forgotten. it's not going to be immortalised, no- as we will still lose bits and pieces of the memories linked to the moment because it's just a normal thing, as a normal human being, to forget certain things.

I can smell the sea and feel the fading warmth from the setting sun.

PS: The final exam for my Spring semester is coming up in less than a month's time. I will have 6 exams out of the 7 modules i am doing this semester and this just means that i'll have less than a week to prepare for each module! Hah, currently, i'm just barely surviving for most of my modules in the continous assessments so i really have to pull my weight in studying for the finals to bump my grades up! i have started (sort of) serious studying today though my speed is kind of slow and my breaks are kind of too long (from lunch time to dinner time but that's because i squeezed a nap in between and time to blog here so that explains.)

hihihi, i feel excited to be really studying with focus once again! when i prepared for the continuous assessments, i was always rushing through to get as much revision done and didn't fully understand the content of what i'm studying. i was just blindly memorising and didn't get my head around the concept. it didn't feel fulfilling. today was a great start though i need to do it faster and with less dilly dallying around.

i will still blog once in a while as i feel that it really helps me to put things into perspectives. i feel that i think more structurally when i put my thoughts down to words that i can read back to myself. =)