Quote

It rained last night and Olivia told me,

Quick! Close the windows! Wait the hamsters get wet!

on MSN

yz: steph!
me: hey
me: what
me: you're attached huh?
yz: ya la ya la
me: OMG
I WAS JUST KIDDING
REALLY AH
REALLY REALLY
yz: no la.
I meant "ya la ya la"
me: -_-'''

Damn, she called me so enthusiastically can...

I'm quiet

Me: I'm a very quiet person.
NTT: No you are not!

That "dear"

Arzhou has "dear =)" as his gchat nick. After teasing him about it over a week or so, I have reduced to saying,

dear
hahahaha

Which kind of sounds wrong.

Sometimes I am unbelievably childish.

That level-5000 module

I have a male cousin who's doing his Master studies in Psychology at NUS. Today I SMSed him about the textbook for a level 5000 statistics course, thinking that perhaps he had taken it in previous semesters before or something so I could borrow the book because the book is horrendously expensive.

He gave me the most horrific answer I have heard today,

I'm taking the same module as you this semester. Hee.

*points to sidebar* Me is undergraduate, and a very lousy one. He is Master student. I need to do some revision before going to class.

Falling In Love

From Ximin, a fellow friend/ringer in Ministry of Bellz, on MSN,

How do guys fall in love?

I don't know. How do guys fall in love?

Predator

Yanwei says I'm a predator.

All unsuspecting cute boys watch out! Steph is on the prowl! Get out before you
get "crushed"!

-_-''' Thanks, Yanwei.

Quote

Thomas Alva Edison:

Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.

My ulcers' names

Meet my 2 ulcers. The bigger one is named "Elsa", the smaller one is "Baby Joey".

"Joey" also happens to be chaosdingo's name and it is all daphnemaia's fault. Last night as some of us were trying to name the small ulcer (I mean the bigger one has already been named and it doesn't seem very fair to the smaller ulcer) on ping.sg's shoutbox,

chaosdingo: how does bala sound?
daphnemaia: how about "joey"? i think joey is a nice androgynous name. perfect for a sexless ulcer.
tstar: chaos: what the heck is bala?! daph: joey sounds nice!
chaosdingo: tstar, i suggest you not choose joey. bala is a person's name lor.
daphnemaia: hehehehe!! joey. i think we shd settle for joey!
chaosdingo: joey's a bad name. very bad. give you bad luck only

daphnemaia: tstar: yes? joey? ok? faster say yes..

tstar: but joey sounds nice leh... bala sounds like pizza hut's delivery number...
chaosdingo: the last i checked, 2353535 does not sound like 'bala'
tstar: everyone, meet elsa and joey! *sticks tongue out and spits saliva all over the place*

Then just as I was very happy with the name "Joey", daphne happily announces,

daphnemaia: BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA tstar's ulcer is named Joey, after chaosdingo!

chaosdingo: HO MY GOD!............
tstar: daph: WHAT!!!!
chaosdingo: -____-
chaosdingo: i told u already....

So yar, my small ulcer is named Joey, after chaosdingo. -_-''' Thanks daph.

Quote

From book the namesake,

I didn't know a thing back then.

Life - a blank canvas to be drawn on.

Quote

Daphnemaia, on ping.sg's shoutbox,

... I think tampons are great for nose bleeds btw. haha. I used it on my friend once.. haha he was damn grossed out

Quotes

Father, telling me to put plants at my desk,

... If you don't put ah, then you will be very short-tempered then you won't be able to find husband then cham ah (something like "die" or "very bad" in English)!

I started laughing because he can link from plants to finding a husband. Olivia came in and told me she thought I was crying.

-----------------
Olivia, singing campfire songs from her Red Cross file,

Pizza Hut, pizza hut
Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut.
McDonald, McDonald,
Kentucky Fried Chicken and a pizza Hut.

Me, laughing after she has sung it at least twice,

Last time our campfire songs no "McDonalds" or "Pizza Hut" or "KFC", you know!

Quote - A full circle

Professor Goh, in last lecture of math,

... I have even made it a point to wear the same shirt I wore on the first day of lecture, so that we have really come one full circle...

Twitter-vomit

Not enough time to study = no time to bathe = no time to blog

Don't tell others I have not bathed.

There were so many times today I wanted to log in to twitter to twit using my phone then I realized I don't have an account anymore so I put my phone down again and laughed at myself - HAHAHA!

Ok, that was for fun.

Anyway my day was so much cleaner without twitter. Cleaner as in no interruptions (I mean besides the TV). My brother fell ill with fever so he did not return to camp tonight, instead he's going back tomorrow. His platoon is now 5 people short because 5 others called in sick as well - 3 truly ill, 2 chao-geng.

He came back and said he fired a gun and it was damn shiok (feels satisfying), then I murmured under my breath that Freud would say something like "that shows you unconsciously want to kill" and then retorted to myself, "Yar, right, whatever, Freud, haha!" All in public, while queuing outside Suki Sushi. Then he demonstrated all the positions, cocking and what to do when the bullet got stuck... In public too, outside Suki Sushi. Oh he also said the firing was loud.

By right tomorrow he would be throwing grenades around but now I guess alternate arrangements will be made. I told him he's sick, then wait he go back blur blur hold on to the grenade.

When Brother went down to fetch his girlfriend this afternoon, I asked Olivia at the dining table, why can't the girlfriend just come up himself, why must he go fetch her? She replied,

Because she is his (mouths silently) darling,

Then she giggled. I told her because then he can hold her hand and kiss her with none of our family present.

Oh yar, cousin Junxiang and his finacee, Shandy, are going to the Registry of Marriage this coming Tuesday. So exciting!

The reason why this post sounds weird is because I read Edmund's post first and his style influenced me.

Then I thought about it, how often when you see people walk towards the lift, then u faster press press press the close button press many many time!! then the lift close, you safely have the lift to yourself as you sing nonsense and repeat i fark u lah 1001 times and say i going to kill u ah your whole family all die i gangster i tell you etc. oh yah when the lift close fully then u point middle finger at the person who was running toward the lift (butcan no longer see you). Maybe I have mild OCD. Maybe. Sometimes I wish the person running towards the lift was a guy and he happened to have an erection then when I close the lift doors then his lan jiao will gana stuck and he will scream AHHHHHHHH!!!! NOOO!!!!! then if the lift move up can see his lan jiao moving from the middle of the doors, moving downwards then I can point finger and HA HA HA HA!! Ok no, I never thought of that before.

I'm his paparazzi.
For a moment I forgot my victim's name.

And this is what happens when I am deprived of twitting for 2 days - "twitter-vomit". It sounds more interesting than "twitter-diarrhea".

Quote

Father, filling out a survey,

Do hamsters count as pets?

Processes and Results

During Social Work review lecture today, our lecturer was talking about our Reflection Papers and how some of us might be disappointed with our grades. She said this one line,

You can say you have spent a lot of time on the paper, but in the end, it's the final product (that counts).

The first emotion I felt was anger and absurdity. The essence of that seemed to imply that whatever you do, the process don't matter, however hard you work it don't matter because it is the end product that matters. Then cognition sets in and I realize that that is how reality is. In this world, it don't matter what you do as long as you produce results.

On one hand, we say that the process of learning, of failing and experience gained is more important than the end product. The best students don't always get the best grades. Famous mathematicians and scientists were never necessarily the top in their classes. We talk about them, use them as examples, yet on the other hand, we are rewarded based on the end products, whether in our academic life or work life. I refer here, to DK's post on our fear of Making Mistakes.

[He asked why do we fear making mistakes? I believe it is because of socialization - from teachers, parents and the government. They have socialized into us the idea that we must be the best and must have something tangible to show for your achievement, be it a raise, a promotion or that First Class Honours degree from University.

If we do not attain any of these, they tsk at us, say "see lah!", make us feel bad about ourselves, sometimes talk behind our back or (in the case of parents) might tell us we are stupid. All of this make us feel bad about ourselves, so we try to do better, in order to be accepted, to take away that bad feeling.

So we try REALLY hard, but then we do something wrong and the information gets out to others. They tsk at us again, say "aiyo, why like that!", compare us to some sibling or other, compare us to your friend or other, compare us to a character in a TV drama or other. We might feel ostracized when others ask you (during Chinese New Year or other family gatherings) when are you getting a job, when are you getting a promotion or how are the grades and you give a less-than-expected response. They give an ugly face, say "is it? Aiyo! Why?! Must be never try hard enough, right!" then turn away (metaphorically).

We remember the first time round people also treat us in this similar way. We learn that failing leads to these bad things happening to us and being viewed differently in a negative light. So we work very hard and try not to fail (or fail too badly) in order to be accepted (or not to feel the bad feeling again). When we succeed, people crowd around us, tell us how smart we are, praise us constantly. Now, instead of you being compared with some greater being, others are being compared to you, the greater being, instead. It's a wonderful feeling.

Good feeling (and stuff) when succeed.
Bad feeling (and stuff) when fail.

You want to fail or succeed?

Ok, I think I used the concept of Learning in Psychology here... unintentionally.]

I just find it incredibly ironic that a lecturer should speak of that because isn't it the goal of education to inculcate in students the joy of the learning process, to emphasize the journey instead of the end? Isn't that why a % of examination marks have been reallocated and split up to consist of term papers and class participation? Is this not to encourage us to be aware of the process and not just the results?

I think the lecturer did not intentionally say it in that way, but she did not correct herself so I do not know if she really means it in that manner. My disappointment with the department just got larger.

Even more ironically, I found myself upset at the grade (a result) I had gotten because I fully believe my paper was worth at least 5 or 10 marks more than what it got. Based on what I have said above, shouldn't I be focusing on the process of my writing the paper? I don't know, I just think that they should acknowledge the work I had put into writing the paper. Furthermore, there are some things I have learned from the agency visit (which is the point of the paper) that I could never have put down in words. In the end, what are they judging? Our writing skills, that's all.

I was very hyped up and confident this semester because I have again experienced the joy of learning. I really thought the process was important, really wanted to learn how to learn. When she said this line, I once again started to doubt myself and the importance of the process. Was I going to fail again? I asked myself. I have so much on the line, put so much of my confidence in the concept of learning, on where I was going to try and place my sense of self-worth. She had to go and question me on that when I have not even tested out if the process is really as important, or even more important, as the results.

Of course ultimately the results are still important. It is an acknowledgment that you have a certain standard. For us Singaporeans and probably a lot of others, results will always be important. It is the first thing we see. I just wonder, have we placed too much importance on it? So much so that my lecturer actually said those lines?

Lecturer's words made me very scared, doubt myself and plunge me into that feared darkness again.

Random Quote

Too many term papers, projects, presentations due. Very sorry, no time to blog, so here's a completely random quote,

friend: ...but half of arts is virgin...
me: suddenly I don't feel alone

Now you know.

Applying statistical concepts

From cousin surfslayer's blog,

Few days ago,I was (again) complaining to Mum about my lousy results. I always believe that having distractions will screw my results even further.

But Mum said:

"How come your friends who have boyfriends got good results then?"

Ok..I was stunned that I don't know to reply till a few days later...

I replied,

"Mum...Correlation does not equal to causation."

Ar...The wonders of statistics.. ^-^

Coversations with Olivia

On the weather,

me: Do you know why it has been so cold and so wet recently?
Olivia: *thinks* Because China is snowing?
me: Nooo! Why you say because China is snowing??
Olivia: Don't know. Anyhow say one. hehe.

On her going to after-school-care,

me: So do you like Child Care Centre?
Olivia: It's not "Child Care Centre"! It's "Student Care Centre"!
me: oops...

Lend me a bag

Olivia, to me, sheepishly,

jie, do you have any bags? Because mine very lame...

She needed to bring a bag to Student Care Centre tomorrow and didn't want to bring her schoolbag (which she would then need to unpack) her barbie-doll sling bag, or any of the other bags which have some sort of prints on them (which are lame). This 9-year-old girl is growing up!

In the end I lent her my Nightmare before Christmas bag which I haven't been using nor intend to use in the near future. Kind of funny, exchange one type of print for another type of print.