learning to breathe.

it's really nice to laugh again.

a long lunch with mr. v, mr. d, mr. j and ms. c led to 2 hours of laughing and getting-to-know-one-another and just chatting about life.

watching my favorite shows online again.
b&s offered great lines for rob lowe's character, sally field and calista flockhart.
heroes set up a series of big arcs for the next 9 episodes in the first volume of the season - yay more flash forwards and new powers.
grey's anatomy continued its soapy opera, which is my guilty pleasure.
house continues to make me laugh and intrigued by the cases (which is amazing: the endless supply of amazing radical out-of-this-world medical mysteries).
private practice is something i'm watching 'cos of addison the character and tim daly the actor. (:

i miss lost.

and the thing that makes me laugh these days: tina fe*y as sarah pa*lin. tina fe*y has the best and most spot-on impersonation of the veep candidate and she's hilarious! watching her exaggerate every wink, silly, dumb-"blonde", incoherent, incompetent, answer-evading move of sarah pa*lin is hilarious. she even talks like her and has the same twang. which i find the most annoying. tina fe*y is so gifted she totally deserves her Emmy.

***

well school is turning into madness. i'm trying to stay afloat in the midst of all of it. i am consciously reminding myself that my strength is not enough and not perfect for this, and by His grace and love, that my weakness is made perfect in HIS strength. and that wisdom is more important now than ever.

strength and wisdom. the subject of my prayers of late.

i just finished writing an article on Trust for the ypg website, and i'm very glad i did it. through the writing, i find myself even more convicted in my trust in the Lord that He will see me through my days. and these days are times i need it more than ever.

next week is madness week. i have something due EVERY DAY of the week. be it presentationS/teaching/assignmentS. and i know the only way to go through it and do it well is to keep my eyes, ears, heart and mind on the Lord and His Word. (:

mel shared this verse with me and i truly found it encouraging, so it shall be my verse of the week.

"I would have lost heart,
unless I had believed
That I would see the goodness of the LORD
In the land of the living.

Wait on the LORD;
Be of good courage,
And He shall strengthen your heart;
Wait, I say, on the LORD!"
- Psalm 27:13-14

shall i compare thee to a summer's day?

the fading of a summer's day
coastline of santa barbara, california

as i was browsing around and searching for a poem to read and present in communication skills class, i came across several that left me pondering about literature and the use of poems to convey emotions and ideas and knowledge.

in the opening episode of this season of heroes, mohinder suresh narrates his usual epilogue consisting entirely the poem "the second coming" by yeats. and the poem is SO deep and full of meaning that i'm sure the average viewer will not bother to dissect. besides i have trouble relating the plot arcs that are set up in the episode to the poem.

anyway, the poem was way too scary and depressing so i didn't want to read that in class (although one classmate read something along the same lines). i went for the other extreme - love poems. (: and after looking through several by blake and all, i chose a sonnet by william shakespeare.

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date;

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."

- Sonnet XVIII, William Shakespeare

it's a beautiful poem and i really like it. (: it makes me feel happy and warm.

***

the many lessons on metacognition, constructivism, educational psychology, philosophy of science and etc. have been leaving me with so many thoughts lately. sometimes i don't even know where to start. having thoughts is one thing, collecting them to put in a coherent manner is another.

let me sort out my life first.

thanksgiving.

it's thanksgiving in the US. and yesterday night as i was studying, i thought about what a coincidence it was. that i was feeling immensely thankful to many things and it happened to be the season of thanksgiving. not in my country but does that matter in our globalized world?

i think the funniest thing about thanksgiving, which is something i learnt from the west wing, where in season 2's thanksgiving episode, 2 turkeys were set loose in CJ's the press secretary's office and it turns out she had to choose the more photogenic and people-friendly of the 2 to receive a presidential pardon. now when i watch that episode again i can't help but laugh nonstop 'cos the entire idea is just quite silly. and CJ was so funny, she went all soft-hearted on the other turkey who didn't receive the pardon 'cos it means he ends up on someone's dinner table at thanksgiving. and insisted the president pardon him too. (:

well with a little googling i learnt that the president does pardon a turkey at every thanksgiving. and the backup turkey and the pardoned one gets sent off to disneyland and live a long long life. apparently its a tradition in the white house. you can go see hilarious pictures of bush pardoning his turkey.

p.s. in the west wing, the president did save the life of the other turkey, by writing a cheque for it for the original owners. whom i'm sure framed the cheque anyway.

so anyway, i was saying that thanksgiving came at a special moment in my own life. and not just individually, but as i looked onto the world torn asunder by war, genocide, civil unrest, political unrest, strikes in france and US, climate change/global warming, nuclear power, cyclones, ongoing terrorism, children with no access to healthcare, the growing divide between the rich and the poor. where people are split down 10 different sides and perspectives on urgent issues, where no compromise and consensus can be reached, i keep wondering if the end times as written in Revelations is drawing near.

so where's the things to be thankful for? sometimes it's hard to think about problems of the world and still see things we can be thankful for. but i've seemed to learn an important lesson through these years of growing up.

patience. and waiting on the Lord. and sometimes, we can be thankful for those little steps that have been taken to solve the bigger problem. i'm glad that now when i refuse a shopping bag for my packet of sweets, the auntie smiles at me, says thank you and says to me, saving the environment right?

well, there's also the matter of looking around you and being thankful for what you have. i've had 4 terror papers in the past 1 week and so many people have made this one week more bearable. and most importantly, i wouldn't have made it, really, without the Lord. it's hard to admit your weaknesses. but this kind of pressure, well self-inflicted pressure really, really leaves you short of breath and on the verge of freaking out. having the Lord just a prayer away makes everything smoother. like sandpapered wood.

yeah, we can't exactly travel through time and space. saying "save the cheerleader, save the world" and history can be rewritten, and perhaps, the mistakes made would be rectified and the world would have a lighter burden to bear on its already broken back. as mr. kaito nakamura says, "we have been given the power of gods, but that doesn't mean we can play God." wise words from the father indeed.

p.s. i really don't know how my post ended up with heroes lines. but the latest episode was just so wonderfully written and shot and executed. i was amazed at its beauty really.

anyway i could wax lyrical about more thanksgiving ramblings, but i just have a blog to recommend on the Huffington Post. a website i discovered that is so info-laden and thought-provoking. the blog by jon robin baitz, creator and exec producer of brothers and sisters writes about issues close to his heart. and i love his take on thanksgiving. click.

oh yes. and some new pictures of my vegas trip (a continuation from a long time ago) can be found here. click.

happy thanksgiving/holidays/studying. (:

edit: i just read this hilarious but really quite true blog entry on the huffington post by bill maher, a political/social/religious satirist (is there such a word) and commentator and comedian. this sets a great contrast to the blog post by jon robin baitz. click.