What a weekend??!! I didn’t go to school on thursday and friday. I don’t regret it at all because I’ve done a lot of revision in this short span of time. Short, yet productive. I’ve managed to realise my weakpoints in Math and Chem. Just Bio and Phy to go. I’ll finish them this week. And the week before prelims will be dedicated to turning my weakpoints into strengths. Nayway, i’m not that worried about my end results for prelims. I just want to do my best. My aim in this prelims is to learn my weakpoints and strengths. And most importantly, to recognise whatever mistakes I will make. And so, during A’levels, I can be very sure of what i’m doing.

I’m really happy to say that finally my parents are appreciating the path ive chosen for my career. At first they wanted me to do engineering, something professional. But again, what’s the point?? I hate physics. Really hate it. I don’t even know why i’m doing it now. I like it when I can understand the concepts and be amazed at it. But when it comes to applying what i’ve learned, it’s very boring. But biology and chemistry are different. Just thinking about the DNA, the reactions that happen in the molecular level in our body. It’s just amazing. I visualize them everytime i learn about them. And they never fail to amaze me.

Kasturi, Kalpana… I have something to tell you people. Thanks for being there for me. You guys are pillars of strength to me. I’ve got something else to tell you guys. But tmr…

List the names of 20 people right off the top of your head. Do not read ahead!

Okay, here goes…

1. Kasturi, 2. Kalpana, 3. Shu hui, 4. Bing Hui, 5. Sriram, 6. Kenneth, 7. Chareli, 8. Petrina, 9. Bei Shi, 10. Logitha, 11. Haritha, 12. Dev Anand, 13. Saturn, 14. Sekar, 15. Arjunan, 16. Archana, 17. Selvi, 18. Ammu, 19. Penny, 20. Philip

QUESTIONS

How did you meet 14? -> He’s my uncle. I’ve known him since young. We lived in the same house at one time.

What would u do if u never met 1? -> I think there would have been no meaning in my life. I would have regretted it so much.

What would u do if 20 and 9 dated? -> Impossible. But I would really get jealous!! ha ha…

Did u ever like 19? -> Yes, I like her. She is a nice friend.

Would 6 and 17 make a good couple? -> More like a mother and son really. Because Selvi is my aunt!!!

Do u think 8 is attractive? -> Well, you can say so.

Tell me something about 7. -> She is a really good artist, draws very well. She is also a humourous person…

Do u know any of 12’s family? -> He’s my nephew. I love him a lot. His family is my uncle’s family. So of course I know everything about his family.

What is 11’s favourite sport? -> Basketball

What would u do if 18 confesses that she/he likes you? -> That’s unlikely. She already likes me as a friends. U mean like, like you like you? No, NEVER. nothing doing…

What language does 15 speak? -> English and Tamil

Who is 9 going out with? -> I know she is going out with someone. But I don’t know who it is…

How old is 16 now? -> 23

What was the last time u talked to 13? -> Wednesday 19th July

What is 2’s favourite band/singer? -> I honestly don’t know (sorry kalpana jaan). I must ask her!!

Would u date 5?-> What??? He’s my friend! Certainly not. And if we do go out, it won’t be a date.

Is 6 single? -> Yes. But i think he’s crushing on someone.

What is 10’s last name? -> Gowriswaran

Would u ever be in a serious relationship with 11? -> She’s my beloved sister. Is is serious enough??

What school does 4 go to? -> She goes to Singapore Polytechnic

Where does 6 live? -> I don’t know…

What is ur favourite thing bout 3? -> She is cheerful and very thoughtful.

Well, that’s the end of the quiz… Sorry about that Kalpana jaan. I really don’t know who your dav band/singer is.

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This is a really nice song. I love the movie…

As the days near by for the prelims, I feel more and more nervous. Today, I thought a lot about the choice of course in Uni, and it gets more and more difficult each day. I want to go into research. I like Biology and chemistry very much. I don’t mind doing math, but i don’t want physics. Eventhough, engineering is a professional degree, I don’t have much interest in it.

And eventhough life sciences in NUS is a general degree, I like it a lot. What’s wrong in following a general degree? I don’t see anything wrong. I want to take Life sciences, and specialise into two areas at least, then do honours and at last pave the way to get my PhD. I want to work in the field of cancer research. That’s my ambition.

Triple science people are expected to take medicine, or other professional courses. What’s wrong in following your interest? If I end up in engineering, I might do it grudgingly and struggle to get a good grade. Whereas, if I work in a field in which i’m interested in, I will end p doing very well in it and get my honours.

Enough of all the blah blah…about my future and all. Let’s get to the present. Here i am struggling to finish all my revision by the next week or so. And the days of making important decisions are far-away. I feel so stressed and nothing seems to relieve them. God help me.

Hey, here are some word puns that i found interesting. But some are quite lame…

Those who jump off a bridge in Paris are in Seine.

A man’s home is his castle, in a manor of speaking.

Dijonvu – the same mustard as before.

Practice safe eating – always use condiments.

Shotgun wedding: A case of wife or death.

A hangover is the wrath of grapes.

Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?

Reading while sunbathing makes you well red.

When two egotists meet, it’s an I for an I.

A bicycle can’t stand on its own because it is two tired.

Definition of a will: A dead give away.

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

In democracy your vote counts. In feudalism your count votes.

She was engaged to a boyfriend with a wooden leg but broke it off.

A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.

If you don’t pay your exorcist, you get repossessed.

With her marriage, she got a new name and a dress.

When a clock is hungry, it goes back four seconds.

The man who fell into an upholstery machine is fully recovered.

You feel stuck with your debt if you can’t budge it.

Local Area Network in Australia: the LAN down under.

Every calendar’s days are numbered.

A lot of money is tainted – it taint yours and it taint mine.

A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat.

A midget fortune-teller who escapes from prison is a small medium at large.

Those who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end.

Once you’ve seen one shopping center, you’ve seen a mall.

Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead-to-know basis.

Santa’s helpers are subordinate clauses.

Acupuncture is a jab well done.

Ha ha… see ya for now. I don’t knwo how often i’ll post now that i will be quite busy studying for prelims. I’ll try to be regular:)

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Raising a child can be very difficult. We sometimes forget that children need to learn how to become adults from us and that they are not little adults. We have to teach them. In my opinion, there are certain characteristics a “good” parent should have. I also think that this applies to elder sisters and brothers and how they treat their younger siblings… The information below is taken from a website about the characteristics of a good parent. I think that all the below point are absolutely true.

A good listener:
As parents, we sometimes are quick to judge our child’s actions or choice of words, that we do not hear their cries for love, attention, or help. We should listen to their feelings, reactions, and opinions. Try to understand their point of view. Look at them when they are talking to show that you are hearing their every word. Put down that book, turn off that television, stop what you are doing and listen!

A good example:
We should treat our kids as our equals and not as subordinates. The “do as I say and not as I do” mentality doesn’t work. Teach your child how to be responsible, caring, a hard worker, patient, etc by exhibiting those characteristics within yourself. It’s not too late for you to do so.

Makes time for the family:
It’s true that many of us have to work to provide our family with the essentials. In doing so, remember that material things cannot substitute love and quality time from a parent. Your child should know that they are important to you. They should not have to compete against your job. The position and title that you hold and your job cannot be passed on, but the love, the traditions, and time put into your family can be carried throughout generations.

Get involved in your child’s life.
Respect their interests, do not down play them as mediocre. Share in some of the activities you enjoy. Become familiar with the current trends. It may be a little different than what you’re used to, but that doesn’t mean you can’t learn to at least respect it.

Displays unconditional love:
Love your child no matter what. Never allow them to have a doubt in their minds of your love for them. At times they may disappoint you, anger you, or even disrespect you, but even during those times they should know that they are loved by you. No one is perfect, we’ve all made mistakes and will continue to. Shower those imperfections with love. It’s not much! Simple things that we, as parents, can do everyday.

I say this because I was very upset about what my dad said to my sister today. In his advice to her, he mentioned that if she did not try harder and get band 1, she will become useless, and in his words, like a cartoon.

That infuriated me a lot. It was certainly a bad example of parenting. I certainly wouldn’t advice my son or daughter like that in the future. Would you? What’s wrong in not getting a band 1? Nothing will happen if you don’t get band 1. But instead, let’s try phrasing the consequence in a different way: “if you try harder and get band 1, won’t you be happy? And also you will gain more confidence and even do much better next time. Everyone will like you and praise you.”

Both the consequences, negative and positive, are almost the same. If you lose confidence, if no one praises you or likes you, you will become useless. But instead of telling the children about the negative consequences, why not tell them the positive ones instead??? Isn’t it much better? A negative consequence might seem like it’s the better way to discipline a child to study harder. But let’s say the child really doesn’t get band 1, he or she might start thinking that they are really useless, like their parents told them so many times. Wouldn’t it?? Then the child will have a low self-esteem and refuse to try harder next time.

Being positive is very important, especially to a child while he or she is going through a phase of life, in which the child can be molded like a clay. I believe that children are like what their parents are like. Parents might not know, but they observe their higher role-models constantly and come to their own decisions. For example, if parents are very sociable people, keep their houses clean and read a lot of books, the children of the family would also follow the same examples. When I say higher role-models, I also refer to elder siblings. My sister reads a lot of story books, after observing me reading novels constantly.

That is why, by setting a good example, you can teach your younger siblings or your kids a lot of things, which are non-verbal. And I will certainly be a good role-model to my sister and my kids in the future.

There are lots of people in this world, especially kids, who just refuse to eat vegetables and fruits. Even I myself refused to eat onions, carrots, brinjal and other green vegetables when I was young. But I notice that now I eat these vegies with no complain whatsoever at all. Amazing, isn’t it? How our taste buds become accomodated to various kinds of tastes?

While kalpana, kasturi and me were talking while walking towards the mrt station, we were discussing about how the man’s and the woman’s bodies detect each ohers’ signals during pregnancy. Men also experience all the symptoms of the pregnancy (weight gain, morning sickness, appetite changes), that a woman goes through. This is called the Couvade Syndrome.

Today during Bio lecture, we saw a video about the after-events of the fusion of the sperm and the egg. When this happens, the mother experiences some of the symptoms of pregnancy. And so does the father, sometimes.

No one really knows why men get these symptoms but there are lots of theories. The first is that as men, we’re programmed (socially or biologically, take your pick) to try to protect our families and shield them from harm. Since we can’t really do much to minimize the discomfort and pain our wives experience during pregnancy, our brains come up with the unique idea of trying to ease their pain by taking some of it on ourselves. This is particularly true for expectant dads who feel somehow responsible for having “gotten her into this in the first place.”

Another theory is that some expectant dads who develop couvade are feeling jealous and left out and are subconsciously trying to get people to pay a little attention to them. It’s also possible that expectant dads’ physical symptoms are a kind of way announcing to the world that they’re the father.

Some recent research has shown that there may actually be some hormonal reasons for men’s pregnancy symptoms. You know all about how expectant mothers’ hormones change over the course of the pregnancy, right?

Well, one fascinating study found that pregnant women’s husbands’ levels of the same hormones (which men have too, but in smaller amounts) move, rise and fall parallel with their wives’ levels. This may explain why most expectant dads find themselves paying more attention to children in the months before their own are born.

Some psychologists have also speculated that couvade symptoms may be the expectant dad’s subconscious way of showing his wife that he’s serious about being with her. After all, it’s easy to lie about loving her and wanting to be a good dad, but it’s a lot harder to fake a cyst or a nosebleed.

Very interesting isn’t it? So afterall, the fact that men also feel mutual emotions together with their wives show how much they are in love and how much committed they are. However, not every men go through this, and this doesn’t mean that they lack love or commitment in their relationship.

I’m going to mug a lot tomorrow and enjoy a family outing on Sunday… See ya…

Oh my God!! What the heck lah? I tried to correct and make my new layout perfect. But I could not and it still looked ugly. The sidebar contents were arranged chaotically and i didn’t know what to do. I messaged Ken and asked him for help. But anyway, i changed my blog to the original one, which looks way decent and nice. Anyway >Ken, thanks for offering to help. I like your blog, very nice. How do you add those things like “I’m waiting…” and About Me stuff??

The coming weeks are slowly starting to look occupied and busy. The pace is starting to pick up speed. Exams look really close. My revision is quite bad right now. Let’s see, math -> almost done except for 5 topics, chem -> need to touch up on inorganic and organic, bio -> need to read through all the notes again!! and finally phy -> large areas to cover.

Prelims are really important to me. However, when compared to A’levels, not that important. Grades might slip here and there, but I should not be discouraged from it. Still trying not to give up on physics…

Let’s see how things improve, next week. 4 more weeks to go for prelims…

Greek philosophers have traditionally distinguished 3 notions that can properly called love: agape, eros, and philia. Agape is a kind of love that does not respond to the antecedent value of its object but instead is thought to create value in the beloved. Like the love that God shows on us, and that we show for God and humankind in general. By contrast, eros and philia are responsive to the merits of their objects, i.e. to the beloved’s properties like his goodness or beauty. While eros is a kind of passionate desire for an object, typically sexual in nature, philia is a kind of affectionate regard or friendly feeling towards friends, family members and even business associates.

For this reason love and friendship often gets mixed up, despite them having significant differences between them. Love is an evaluative attitude directed at particular persons as such, an attitude which we might take towards someone whether or not that love is reciprocated and whether or not we have an established relationship with him/her. Whereas friendship, is essentially a kind of relationship grounded in a particular kind of special concern each has for the other as the person she/he is.

Aristotle posited 3 kind of friendships: friendships of pleasure, of utility, and of virtue. Although it is a bit unclear how to understand these distinctions, the basic idea seems to be that pleasure, utility, and virtue are the reasons we have in these various kinds of relationships for loving our friend. That is, I may love my friend because of the pleasure I get out of her, or because of the ways in which she is useful to me, or because I find her to have a virtuous character. Given the involvement of love in each case, all three kinds of friendship seem to involve a concern for your friend for his sake and not for your own.

A friend, is one who (1) wishes and does good (or apparently good) things to a friend, for the friend’s sake, (2) wishes the friend to exist and live, for his own sake, (3) spends time with his friend, (4) makes the same choices as his friend and (5) finds the same things pleasant and painful as his friend.

However, friends do not merely have such similarities antecedent to their friendship as a necessary condition of friendship. Rather, friends can also influence and shape each other’s evaluative outlook, so that the sharing of a sense of value is reinforced through the dynamics of their relationship. One way to make sense of this is through the Aristotelian idea that friends function as a kind of mirror of each other: insofar as friendship rests on similarity of character, and insofar as I can have only imperfect direct knowledge about my own character, I can best come to know myself—both the strengths and weaknesses of my character—by knowing a friend who reflects my qualities of character.

This is a really great article I found is a philosophy website about friendship. I edited here and there. But the general idea is presented here. It is true that friendship and love is often confused. Love is something mutual. There should be a feeling that you cannot be able to live the rest of your life without the person you love. Some possessiveness and some jealousy here and there. But why not friendship? Nothing is wrong with friendship and love growing together mutually, right?

I was really happy yesterday to receive an email from my friend Sriram. He was one of my best friends in Bangalore. The others were Rekha and Srikanth. I wonder how they are.

Remember the previous post, in which I begged God to let me have a friend who would make me forget the one person? I believe that Sriram is that friend that God has sent me. I’m really glad that at last God has answered my prayers.

I have for long put away the discussion about the parting of our friendship with Nive. And now I have found the heart to discuss it in my blog. My firstreaction was denial. But now I have faced the reality.

Let me tell to everyone who knows about this event. Nive accused me of backstabing her. And to my knowledge, I have honestly never done that. I would never talk about anyone behind their backs. Gossiping is not my cup of tea. I was really really hurt when I heard this from Kasturi and Kalpana. They at first didn’t want to tell me what happened, because they know that i would be hurt. Yes I cried… But why should I when that person simply does not deserve to have my friendship.

Nive was a nice person. I was glad I had her as a friend, sometimes I even thought her as my best friend. But not everything in life turns out to be fine. Some things go wrong. This event was one good example of that…

Well, afterall, she chose to tread a different path in her life, and I wish all the best in that path. And I will never turn back towards her. I would rather shower love and concern to my best friends, Kasturi and Kalpana. And I will promise that I will be there for them when they need me. I also promise that I will be there for Sriram…

Our true friendships will survive…