my triangle.

if you have some time to kill...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2Z6tDSb6c8

yay sesame street. =P

doodles.

it's the last week of classes for my first term at the u of o. wow.

they were playing disney songs at work today, and i was hit by a wave of childhood nostalgia.

as much as i complain about the decisions i have to make, and as frustrated as i am about how difficult making those decisions are, i have realized that i wouldn't have it any other way (from a discussion with bryan).

relationships (whether platonic or romantic) can only last if both parties are willing to share the changes in themselves, and embrace the changes in the other, and to accept that they are different and always will be (from a discussion with sean/sean's family).

advent begins next week - it's gonna be my first christmas in my 19 years on earth that i'll be spending without the pushparatnams.

the temperature has dropped below freezing already.

every tuesday and thursday i drag myself out of bed in the wee hours of the morning and wish i didn't have to go to work... but the kids always do something that bring a smile to my face and make it worthwhile.

i've been getting random flashbacks about home.

i've been listening to piano pieces on itunes lately... it's soothing.

i haven't talked to my friends back home in a long while.

a wave of work is looming behind me (i still have my back turned on it) and is gonna crash over me pretty soon. and it's not gonna be pretty.

i'm glad i'm doing psychology.

i don't think winter break will be as bad as i thought it would be.

i bumped into joon while i was having lunch today, and we were talking, i guess with a malaysian accent but with good grammar and no lahs... and the friends he was with went, "we didn't understand a word you said! were you speaking english?" haha.

samy vellu in "the star" today: "In this country (malaysia), we are very open ... I have never seen a government which is more open."
hmm. it'll be interesting to see where this goes.

maybe.

"and all the roads we have to walk are winding,
and all the lights that light the way are blinding..."

-wonderwall, oasis.

sloth.

it's been a good break. a lazy break, but a good one nonetheless.

thanksgiving was awesome... it was really nice of sean to invite me to spend thanksgiving with his family. the food was great - we had turkey, squash soup, mashed potatoes, sweet potato rolls, salad, apple pie and my favorite - french beans with shrimp that tasted like home. the vegetables were actually crunchy! =P

but what i liked best was just being in a family atmosphere again after so long. and especially after hearing so many depressing statistics about how many marriages end in divorce, and how many children grow up in single parent homes, and how many children are abused and neglected, and after capturing the friedmans, it was nice to be in a loving and respectful home environment. reassuring. yeah, so thanks sean. =)

i've also watched a whole load of movies over the past few days, it's pretty unbelievable. on wednesday i watched "the bourne identity" and part of "the bourne supremacy", on thursday i finished "the bourne supremacy" and watched "lost in translation" at sean's. then on friday i watched my first ever movie at the cinema here in america with yayoi and sean - we watched "beowulf", which i happen to be reading for my lit class at the moment, and that night i watched "ocean's 11" online. and today i watched "gone with the wind". hehe. of all the movies i have to say... "beowulf" was the best. especially if you've read the epic. in fact, i encourage you to read the epic first before watching the movie - it's the first good adaptation i've seen from book to screen. i think the plot twists that have been added on are amazing... they add so much more depth to the story. go watch.

thankfully, i've done more than just watch movies and eat this holiday - i went shooting today! with like real firearms! i tried... a rifle and a shotgun. i think. i'm not sure if i got the names right. but it was a lot of fun! sean, david, akiko and i went up into the hills and shot empty "apple cider" cans. turns out i've got better aim than i thought i did, so don't piss me off. especially when i have a gun. =P

that's been my long weekend so far - got one day left tomorrow. one more day til all my work comes crashing down on me again. it's so bad that i've barely done anything over the past four days... i think the problem is that this break kinda gives me the illusion that i have a whole lotta time to get everything done, when in fact i don't. it's hard to get motivated when deadlines are more than 24 hours away. >.<

anyway. it's been fun. good, mindless fun. =)

capturing the friedmans.

we watched "capturing the friedmans" in cognitive development today... man, was it disturbing. the movie/documentary was about a father and son (arnold and jesse friedman) who were accused of sodomizing and abusing boys who took computer and piano classes under arnold. arnold and jesse repeatedly maintained their innocence, and there was a lot of ambiguity about whether or not the children were giving accurate information or if their stories were false memories.

the thing is, it's really easy to lead a child into believing something really happened when it didn't, which was something we studied in class. apparently the children were asked a lot of leading questions - there's a difference between saying "did jesse do anything to you?" versus "jesse touched you, didn't he?". and a few of the children later admitted that they said they were sodomized because they felt pressured to do so, and that they wanted the questioning to end. parents said that investigators pressed children into saying they were abused - when a child said nothing had happened the investigators said they knew something did happen and they wanted the children to tell them the details. one child was sent to therapy by his parents and underwent hypnosis, which has been found to sometimes plant memories, and through hypnosis the boy remembered or "remembered" a repressed memory of being sodomized - his first memory of anything of that sort.

on the other hand, arnold was found to have stacks and stacks of paedophilic material. he admitted to being a paedophile, and said he had his first sexual encounter when he was 13 and his brother was 8. his brother doesn't remember anything about it, but his brother is now gay. i don't know if there is a connection between the two. arnold's mother divorced his father when he was really young, and his mother shared a room with him and his brother. and she used to bring her boyfriends into the room and have sex with her sons present. it's so messed up.

in the end, both arnold and jesse pleaded guilty - arnold pleaded guilty because he hoped to save jesse, and jesse pleaded guilty later because he didn't think he had a chance of being found innocent against the public hysteria, so he was hoping for a lighter sentence by pleading guilty. he was 19. arnold later committed suicide.

oh, and arnold's son/jesse's older brother is the best birthday clown in new york.

'nuff said.

more psychocology.

i had my daycare debate today! which was cool for two reasons:

1. my professor decided to divide the class into groups and have us research particular topics intensively and then debate and write a paper on it, instead of having a final. so i'm glad it's done! (the debate, not the paper... if only.) and i think it went well. =)
2. i haven't done debate in such a long time... i can't believe it's been over 2 years! gosh. working with my daycare team was fun, but it was nowhere near debating with yin and val. those were the days.

oh, and i got my draft for my paper back today too... the one i was working on all night. turns out not sleeping to work on it has it's adverse effects too - in my references section i italicized the titles of the journal articles, which weren't supposed to be italicized, and didn't italicize the titles of the journals, which were supposed to be italicized.
and i didn't just do it for one reference - i did it for ALL of them. lol.
but i got a good score on it, so no harm done, thankfully.

next up:
1. my lit paper due next monday. i'm probably gonna do a comparative analysis of the didactic roles of gilgamesh and rama... which is as much fun as it sounds. it's not too bad, really.
2. i have to watch and write a short paper on beowulf cos we're reading it in class now... anyone seen it? is it any good? and...
3. my first thanksgiving ever! i'm looking forward to it. =)

psych(o)ed me.

i just conducted my first ever experiment on a kid! muahahaha.
i messed up a little here and there, but i think it went pretty well overall... i'm learning. the kid warmed up pretty quick and wasn't traumatized or anything. hehe.
basically the experiments are to find out if the kid has what's called theory of mind, which in layman terms is whether or not the kid understands that other people may have desires and beliefs that may differ from their own, and that these desires and beliefs may or may not affect behavior.
so we just play games with the kids and tell them stories and then ask them questions... good stuff.
getting involved in this is great for me cause i'm pretty interested in doing research as part of my future career, so hands-on experience is valuable.

i was talking to the grad student whose research study this is, and i realized that i've actually done quite a lot in the two months i've been here - i've gotten a major-related job, gotten an internship that actually gives me a chance to run experimental sessions, which is rare, and completed two 400-level psych courses. i think i've started out pretty well. =)

now i just have to keep the momentum going.
and study quantum mechanics for tomorrow. (boooo...)

transition.

so i haven't been updating my blog as frequently as i used to... i don't think it's a sign of its impending doom - not just yet anyway. i think it's just cos i've been getting more settled here, and the more settled i get the more i sink into a kinda routine and so everything doesn't seem as novel or as blog-worthy as it used to. routine gives things a sense of familiarity. it's pretty amazing to think that i've only been here for a little over two months - it seems like way, way longer.

and i can't decide if this is a good or bad thing, but i'm gonna have to abandon my familiar rhythm and get used to a different beat pretty soon. term's almost over! in two weeks i'll be having my finals, and after finals it'll be winter break for about a month, and then i'll be on to my second term here. so i feel like i've been faced with a lot of (relatively) big decisions over the past week or so. short-term decisions, like whether and where to travel, where to stay, whether to get a job, what subjects to take next term, how many credits to take on... and then there are the long -term decisions, like whether or not to change my academic plan, looking into grad schools, narrowing my career focus, deciding which psych lab i should affiliate myself with, what my honors thesis could be about, thinking about whether i should do a post grad in psych or now maybe education... so many choices. it's making me feel all grown up. kinda.

one thing i am grateful for tho, is that i'm 100% sure that psychology is the major for me. i'm doing two psych classes, a lit class and a chem class and i'm enjoying my psych classes so much better and doing really well in them. chem's the worst for me this term - we started on quantum mechanics this week and my professor covered the whole chapter in just three lectures. he was just speeding through the material and it all went straight over my head. swoosh. it's crazy. i wouldn't be stretching the truth by saying it's all greek to me, because it really is! with psi and sigma and nu and lambda... and planck's constant and eigenfunctions and bohr models... ugh. i have a quiz on it on monday.

anyhow. i just got back from brunch, and i really enjoyed the walk back. i was reminded me really strongly about subang (that's home to me, all you american people... that's right, up in the trees.)... it's like there was a storm from about 1-4pm, with lots of lightning and thunder. i'd have stayed home, probably curled up on the sofa in my living room with a book, and then probably taken a nap. and it's now about 6pm and i go out for a walk... the sky's still all gloomy and the ground is strewn with leaves cos the wind was blowing through the trees pretty hard. but it's still now, with the occasional breeze. and it's cold (well "cold", now that i'm here). and i go to one of the parks nearby just to sit on a bench for while... breathing in the moisture in the air and feeling the humidity on my skin.

but... it's nice here too. i like how there's always something pretty to look at. =) it's been sorta cleaned up now, but at one point there were piles of leaves everywhere. it looked really messy, but i liked it - it was kinda like having my room with me wherever i went. haha.

that was quite an aimless ramble huh?

YAY! =D

I JUST FOUND MY RING!
it was in the honors college lounge, in front of the computer i used last wednesday... why i took it off and put in on the table to use the com i'll never know.
laugh at me all you want but i don't care because I HAVE IT BACK!
you were right melmel. =)

and i just found out i did brilliant (that's british for awesome, sean and bryan) in my second cognitive development midterm - even better than i did in my first, which i didn't think possible.

i'm happy.
in case you haven't noticed.
=D