desserts

In case you can't see, there are pieces of rockmelons, apples, kiwis, bananas, strawberries, pineapples, corn flakes. And there's also whipped cream, puddings, chocolate cake, ice cream... This dessert is, like, so "wow" right? ... :p It's found at Jurong Point. Anybody want to challenge this with me?



I had a new haircut. I didn't thought that i could have any more different haircuts due to my short hair but my hairdresser surprised me with her idea. I was quite reluctant at the start but i persuaded myself to go ahead with it, to try it at least once. And it's nice :o

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.


I don't think i'll have any chance to try this hairstyle again... :/ see how ba.. :p

You don't really need special occasions or festivals to give yourself reasons to do something special for your friends, loved ones or families. It's when you do it for no reason, that will surprise them, and, these surprises will mean a lot more to them.

sucks......... I am using my laptop at Sun Plaza's Macdonald's now... :/ It's due to some problem with my internet connection... :/ Hope the Starhub technicians can help me solve it through the phone tommorow.

thought of the month

For any kind of relationships ( either between friends, families or lovers.. ) to last, we need to accept each other for who they are, for who we are, and yet, make compromises for each other.

To be able to reach this stage, you must have patience. This cannot be achieved in a mere few days or weeks. Just take the examples of you and your good friends and families... there must be some thing or things that you cannot stand about them, But you guys still chose to stick together...

g.r.o.w.

dan came up with the idea of having this picnic cum gift exchange and the theme for this gathering is G.R.O.W. , green red or white. The photos were taken yesterday.







My adam's apple made me seem like i have a super sharp chin :s





We have to remember to bring a bigger mat next time, and to bring half the amount of food we brought for this round :s

The action of ignoring me, is still something that bothers me... :/

PCP = politically correctness politburo

I just read this article in the Sunday Times. The writer was saying that there's an increasing number of people who "waits to pounce and censure anyone who exhibits behavior or uses words that may upset women, ethnic minorities, gays, the disabled, the stupid, the overweight, the ugly, and even the environment." And that "people have became so paranoid about upsetting others that they started to tiptoe around words and ideas," "When you know you mean no malice and harbour no prejudice, you should be able to say exactly what you want."

ways to handle negative emotions without destroying the r/s

Being a Nice Guy Gets You Nowhere

• such persons can not only develop a host of psychological problems, but can also have clogged up relationships.
• but popularity is not synonymous with intimacy, and this man who is superficially liked by everyone is rarely loved fiercely by anyone.
• he is never perceived as open. There is something about the chronically cheerful person that does not quite ring true.
• He is dull. The nice guy is pleasant to be around at first, but in the long run most of us prefer the company of people with passion.
• If he cannot show anger, he is inept at showing love as well. His emotions are so tightly controlled that he has no range.
• Passively hostile people are much harder to get along with than those who express themselves with honest, direct anger.
• When he loses his temper and become unreasonable, it is usually because anger has been building up for a long time and has built up a powerful head of steam. Finally, the teakettle ruptures.
• When passively hostile people blow, their expression of anger is disproportionate to the complaint because they are ventilating a lot of past grievances all at once. The result is that communication shorts out.
• Another danger in swallowing our irritation is that our anger, when it finally erupts, is often displaced.
• if the two of you agree early in the friendship that occasional negativity will be welcomed, it can help enormously.
• The healthy relationship stays healthy not only because you let your negative feelings out when they occur, but also because you let your beloved do the same.
• The trick is learn to listen without making judgements about the emotions.
• One of the surest ways to break down communication is to use the phrase often heard in serious conversation: "Please don't be so upset."
• The fact of the matter is that people have a right to feel bad at times. And if we love them, we will not be hasty in trying to talk them out of their negative emotions. We'll simply give them the freedom to feel.
• when one's anger is directed at you.. : Do not stifle your response; Do not assign permanence to emotions; Remember that you can love and be angry at the same time.
• There is a certain clean feeling about restored love after a good airing of grievances. Frequently, feelings are deeper and more tender than before.

Six Techniques To Help You Get Angry without Becoming Destructive

• 1) Talk about your feelings, not your friend's faults
• It doesn't hurt to employ a little ingenuity in your negative expressions.
• 2) Stick to one topic.
• The resolution of one problem at a time is difficult enough without pulling in old grievances.
• 3) Allow your friend to respond.
• If you are unhappy with someone, you have a right to express it, but you also have the responsibility to stay and hear the other side.
• 4) Aim for ventilation and resolution, not conquest
• the point is to ventilate our feelings, and hopefully search for some resolution, not to force the other to surrender.
• 5) Avoid chemicals as a lubricant
• 6) Balance criticism with lots of affection
• You can get away with many expressions of anger if you balance them with lots of expressions of love.

--- quoted from "The Friendship Factor" by Alan Loy Mcginnis.

barrage

ck started off this silly silly wide smile thingy and so we followed.







Hmmm... If there were lesser clouds and more blue sky today, the scenery would be better over there.

I was reading the papers today about this climate change performance index. Singapore was ranked 38th this year, up from last year's 49th. I was wondering why was the report giving an impression that we should be happy over this. I don't think ranking is an indication of how well we've done. It just compares each others' results... :s ... Anyway, i'm just referring to the ranking of everything in general.

If people know what i want without me telling them, i would be really happy. But if, somehow, i were to say out, i'll not be happy if they were to do it. Is this weird? :s

five guidelines for cultivating intimacy (Part 2)

How to Improve Your Conversational Skills

• the secret of being interesting is to be interested
• People come to counseling offices like ours because they know so few people who will genuinely listen to what they are saying.
• Good listeners listen with their eyes.
  
• When you talk to him he seems to shut out all other interests and hang on every word you utter. It is flattering to have people give you that much of their attention.
• prolonged eye contact to be the most important gesture of all.
• Good listeners dispense advice sparingly.
• When people bring you problems, they may appear to want your opinion. They may even say they need advice. But more often than not, they will thank you for simply listening. Because you help them get the problem outside themselves and on the table between you, the issues get back into perspective, and they are able to arrive at their own decision.
• Good listeners never break a confidence.
• Learn to zipper your lip. Nothing causes people to clam up and to abandon your friendship more quickly than to discover that you have revealed a private matter.
• So the way to be a confidant is: Let no one know that you are a confidant to others.
• Good listeners complete the loop.
• Silence can be described as negative feedback.
• So we need to get into the habit of completing the loop.
• Person A makes a statement. Person B acknowledges the statement. Person A confirms the acknowledgment.
• Good listeners are honored when someone lets down their guard.
• It is a great gift when others trust you enough to convey information with which you could hurt them, for they took that into consideration before telling you. If you freely show your gratitude, you will open the way for even more closeness.
• Learn to listen

When Tears Are a Gift from God

• Conversation with your longtime friends will indeed get sparse if you restrict yourselves to facts, as that couple evidently did. But when you and your mate get together in the evening and you talk about your feelings, there will always be plenty to discuss, for everyone of us has a hundred different emotions during the day.
• Conversation can be divided into three categories: facts, opinions, and emotions.
• New acquaintances usually restrict their conversation to facts. Then they begin to trust each other with their opinions, and finally, if they become genuine friends, emotions begin to emerge.
• Studies show, to one's surprise, that newly married couples talk to each other more than twice as much as couples married for years. But the content of their talk is even more telling than the amount. At first, it is the sort of talk that close friends enjoy - the subjective exploring and mutual revealing of beliefs and feelings, likes and dislikes, and the trading and comparing of ideas about aesthetic subjects, sex, beliefs, and plans for the future. Later the talk is more mundane - decisions about money, household matters, problems with the children.
• Talk freely about your feelings.
• Sometimes we develop the habit of wearing an emotional disguise because early experiences gave us the wrong start.
• Self-reliance is a valuable commodity and is much woven into the fabric of the American dream. But it can be carried so far that it not only makes people strong, it makes them hard. It can turn into stoicism, causing people to be isolated or appear arrogant.
• has found that men alcoholics outnumber women in part because men do not cry so spontaneously. As boys they are told to dry up their tears and be little men. Consequently they turn to alcohol as an aid. A few drinks provides them the license to express anger or sadness.
• Crying need not be a sign of weakness or an imposition on the person who witnesses it. Rather, we honor the person with whom we cry.
• Moreover, they can be the means by which our relationships deepen.
• "Shared joy is double joy, and shared sorrow is half-sorrow.

--- quoted from "The Friendship Factor" by Alan Loy Mcginnis.

5 guidelines for cultivating intimacy (Part 1)

Please Touch

• Proper stimulation of the skin is essential for organic and behavioral development.
• Universal longing to be touched
• almost every animal enjoys being stroked or otherwise having its skin pleasurably stimulated.
• We now know that small children become irritable and hyperactive without adequate body contact. In various experiments with normal and sub-normal youngsters, those who had the most physical contact with parents or attendants learned to walk and talk the earliest and had the highest IQs.
• Both men and women confide often that the thing they long for most is to be able to go to their mate and be held for a while.
• Physical gushing is as offensive as verbal gushing, but when it is a genuine expression of your affection, touch can bring you closer than a thousand of words.
• In the passion of making love, many of us are able to communicate a profundity of love that words cannot carry. But it is a mistake to limit our physical contact to basic sexual intercourse.
• In our work with couples who have some sexual dysfunction - most commonly now a decrease in libido in one or both of the partners - my colleagues and i almost always find that the husband and the wife are literally "out of touch" with each other. That is, the caressing, fondling, embracing, and kissing that once were central to the bond between them have gradually diminished.
• Use your body to demonstrate warmth

The Art of Affirmation

• Be liberal with your praise.
  
• Children will increase whatever behavior gets them attention, even if it is negative attention.
• Lincoln often repeated the saying, "A drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall."
• So-called intellectuals have had lots of fun attacking such techniques as dishonest and manipulative.
• But what's simpleminded or manipulative about tellign people something you like about them? Affirmation merely for the sake of making another person happy can be a most pleasant activity.
• If you train your mind to search for the positive aspects in other people, you will be surprised at how many good things you can observe in them and comment upon.
• The art of affirmation is enhanced if we learn to express praise when it is not expected.
• "Applaud a man's speech at the moment when he sits down and he will take your compliment as exacted by the demands of common civility; but let some space intervene, and then show him that the merits of his speech have dwelt with you when you might have been expected to have forgotten them, and he will remember your compliment for a much longer time than you have remembered his speech."
• regular messages of acceptance and love are highly important in establishing a child's self image.
• Most of us have been fortunate enough to have someone early in our lives - a teacher, a grandparent, a friend - who took a particular interest in us, passing over our foolish weak aspects and drawing into the light those strong aspects that no one else had looked quite far enough to find. If you affirm others around you in that way, you will put them forever in your debt, and you will linger in their minds long after you are gone.

A Coffee-Cup Concept of Marriage

• For reasons that are not altogether clear, many of us have a tendency to stop talking to those we love the longer we have known them.
• "loneliness," says Germaine Greer,"is never more cruel than when it is felt in close propinquity with someone who has ceased to communicate.
• Talk is cheap, they say, but it is an essential ingredient in the best relationships.
• There are many kinds of talk, and the mere flow of words between two people does not guarantee intimacy. Nevertheless, there can be no intimacy without conversation.
• Schedule leisurely breaks for conversation.
• Time for talk is equally important with your children.
• One reason we avoid regular periods of sustained conversation with our intimates is that it sometimes requires a great deal of energy.
• If we get so busy with our sewing projects or corporate meetings that we do not have time to visit with our children, we are too busy.

--- Quoted from "The Friendship Factor" by Alan Loy Mcginnis.

squeeze, bounce, hop

On saturday, i met up with jr to have dinner and to go Mustafa centre. These 2 girls just cut in after their work briefing... :p

miss j spacing out :p

Not everything at Mustafa is cheaper. We found out that some items actually cost twice the normal amount. For example, there was this body foam that was selling for $6 at Mustafa but for only $3 at other shops :/ Thanks to them for stopping me from buying more stuff. Anyway, it was damn crowded.. I think it's due to us going on a weekend...

On Sunday, i met up with dayv and dan to go ECP. And we tried the Kangoo Jumps, the bouncing thingy. It was a mistake to try to run from the rental place to the pier which is nearer to the hawker centre. It was just as tough as running, but i think the main difference is that there was less impact, but, it was still super tiring.






And today, i went to watch this hip hop dance performance at Singapore Poly, by the students and instructors at O' school. Wow, i can only say it's quite fantastic. I really like their music remixes. Too bad for me that i only have an interest but no talent in dancing :/ Anyway.. from their performance, i realized something. If you focus on specific details, you'll not notice the other details. Some or most people might think that it's not really good that you're missing out on other details. But i think, this might be good for some people because, ignorance is bliss or that everyone is imperfect, and you will miss out the imperfections and can just be happy with that person. ( I think this can be applied to families, friends and lovers. )

for get

Walking on tarmac for 20 plus minutes gives you blisters :s

"Something that you treasure and care about, it will definitely affect you.. and if you're not affected, the bond is not strong" quoted from someone on friday.

It's all in the mind... Everything, is all in the mind..

I don't think a numbing button is good.. I think it just suppresses everything..

Can i have the Haitian's power?