笑, 不代表开心, 也不代表快乐. 它只是用来掩盖心里的悲伤.
笑, 是做给别人看. 给身边的人一种安慰, 不让他们为我们操心.
笑, 只是一种心理作用. 它能带给人们一时的喜悦.

哭, 不代表脆弱, 也不代表软弱. 它是一种吸引别人注意的方式.
哭, 不代表伤心, 也不代表痛苦. 它是因为开心,而流出.
哭, 只是一种发泄情绪的方式.
不哭, 不代表坚强, 也不代表勇敢. 那是因为眼泪已经哭干了.

..counting down 1 more day to 7 December 2008..

Are you busy studying exams and sometimes you feel that you really need to take a break? Why not play a little game?

1. Pencil Rebel is created by Grzegorz Kozakiewicz using mixed media and adobe flash. I got to play this Point’n'Click adventure game and find that it’s really engaging. I’m so eager to play the next version.
   Visit http://www.pencilrebel.com/.
2. Book Game from Facebook
   This one is quite fun to do. Post it here in the comments section or at your own blog.
   Rules:
   * Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
   * Turn to page 57.
   * Find the fifth sentence.
   * Post that sentence along with these instructions in a note to your wall, and post your sentence in a comment here as well. Include the title of book and author.
   • Jassy’s book – Pandora’s clock by John J.Nance
   • Jassy’s page 57 Line 5 – She had fretted and worried all the way to Frankfurt, and refused to leav a pay phone at the airport for nearly two hours until her mother had returned with the kids from a simple evening excursion.

Last Saturday, went to Singapore Botanical Garden with my family. Singapore Botanical Garden is the only botanical garden in the world that opens from 5 a.m. to 12 midnight every single day of the year, and does not charge an admission fee. The garden is bordered by Holland & Napier Road in the South, Cluny Road on the East, Tyersall Ave & Cluny Park Road on its West and Bukit Timah Road in the North.

Initially, we intended to have our breakfast at Prata Cafe located at Evan’s street. But on a second thought of the price, we decided to have breakfast in the food court at Botanical Garden. We ordered Roti Prata, Tissue Roti John, Chicken Mutabak, The Tissue Roti John is seriously huge.

Tissue Roti John
Ratings: (out of 5 stars)

Plain Roti Prata
Ratings: (out of 5 stars)

Chicken Mutabak
Ratings: (out of 5 stars)

After breakfast, we walked around Botanical Garden. It has been a “thousand” years ever since the last time I went there for my photo shoot. Botanical Garden is really a nice place for photographers to catch a nice shot. For a day, I became a freelance photographer and took a lot of photos of the different varieties of flowers, plants and trees.

Enjoy the photos.

The Botanic Gardens has three lakes, namely Symphony Lake, Eco-Lake and Swan Lake. We went to the Swan Lake. At the lake, there was this scuplture. It was named the “Flight of Swans” and was installed in May 2006.

We went to Ginger Garden and National Orchid Garden. We wandered outside the National Orchid Garden cause there’s S$5 entrance fee for adults. So, we went to the Orchid Souvenier shop. Daddy bought me a nice necklace with real flowers in the silicon case and it costs S$15.

Then, we continued our walk.

Do you see the below familiar? It is Tembusu tree (Faraea fragrans), featured in our Singapore five- dollar bill.

Took this photo when this little boy was feeding the fishes.

After our walk, we left Botanical Garden and headed to Seletar Reservior. According to dadd, there are monkeys along the quiet road down from the main road to Seletar Reservior.Bu when we were there, we could only spot 3-4 of them. We sat by the reservoir and enjoyed the nice breeze. This is a good place for a picnic in the morning as the air there is fresh.

Looking forward to another day of “Close to the Nature”

Taking the MRT everyday has allowed me to see the ugly side of people. They are said to be Kiasi (afraid to die) and Kiasu (afriad to lose).

Why Kiasi? Why Kiasu?

People on the platform (into the cabin)

If you are in the MRT cabin and ready to go out(since you are alighting there), you would see people crowding  at the doorway and anxiously waiting to rush into the MRT as if there’s a GREAT SINGAPORE SALE of 90% off! Even though lines are drawn clearly that passengers waiting to board the train to stand behind the two diagonal lines, people just dont follow. Instead of waiting to rest to leave the cabin, people from the outside RUSH into the MRT. OH MY GOD!

Or when the cabin was already packed, some people just dont care and join the squezzing with you.

People in the cabin (alighting at the station)

Even say a simple “Excuse me” is so difficult from them. These people stand behind you and when they want to alight, they just try their means to get through – squezzing, pushing. If you really couldnt alight on time, just wait and alight the next one. Why is so difficult for this?

Monkeys in the train 

Worst still, there are people behaving like  MONKEYS in the MRT. Children can be forgiveable for behaving like a monkey. But there are some adults, behaving like monkeys. Let me give you a better illustration so that you have an idea why I used the word “MONKEY“. 

Of what I’ve observed, there are two different types of monkey.

1) These are people who cling to the whole pole to themselves – either leaning the pole as if they are doing pole dancing or hugging the pole as if the pole is their bolster. This is extremely sickening especially when the whole train is packed like sardines and the train is extremely jerky and we need to grab something to maintain our balance. These type of people just couldnt sense that their act has caused inconvenience to many people. Worst still, when your hands are already there, they pretend not to see it and lean on your hands. Where are these thick-skinned people still live on this earth?
 
2) Another type of monkey is people who grab two handgrips to themselves and doing some stationary Monkey-bar exercise. Their arms are swinging here and there, their body swaying left to right (like nobody business). Are they missing their childhood? I remember Monkey Bar infrastructure locates in primary school.

Really wish that these commuters can WAKE UP..! We should put up this sign beside the “No Eating and Drinking”, “No carrying of flammable objects”.

NO MONKEY IS ALLOWED ON TRAINS.

Many people argue for and against drinking of distilled water. So, is drinking of distilled water good or bad for our health?

Here, is a mini research I did when surfing informations in the net. (If you see this, it is the counter agrument of the statement in black. )

IT IS BAD!
Drinking distilled water is unhealthy.

Distilled water does not contains oxygen. (Pure water, H2O, contains two molecules of hydrogen and one molecule of oxygen. If distilled water does not contain oxygen, water will not exist as water. It would be simply two molecules of hydrogen.)

Distilled water dissolves the useful minerals in your body. It gets acidified after absorbing carbon dioxide from the air. The more purified water a person drinks, the higher the body acidity becomes. (Drinking something acidic will not cause the body to be acidic. Rest assured that by having minerals with other alkaline food can help to alkalize the body and bring balance.)

(According to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency)When you drink distilled water, it will “extract” minerals – sodium, potassium, chloride and trace minerals like magnesium, from your body and released out when you pee. Drinking distilled water once in a while is okay. Drinking it too often can affect your health. You will need to get mineral supplements to replenish the loss of minerals. Lack of minerals may cause heart beat irregularities and high blood pressure. Cooking foods in distilled water pulls the minerals out of them and lowers their nutrient value. (Cooking any food will lower its nutrients value especially when cooking and draining of water. Distilled water is not particularly more “leaching” than any other type of water. )

The more mineral loss, the greater the risk for osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, hypothyroidism, coronary artery disease, high blood pressure and a long list of degenerative diseases generally associated with premature aging.

IT IS GOOD!
Distilled water is free of dissolved minerals. Because of this, it can absorb toxic substances from the body and eliminate them. Studies have shown that drinking distilled water can help one cleanse or detoxify the system for short periods of time.

One month ago, I conducted this survey and these are the questions I asked in the survey.

What water do you normally drink?
1) Distilled water
2) Tap water
3) Tap water (after boiling it)

Which type of water do you think is the safest?
1) Distilled water
2) Tap water
3) Tap water (after boiling it)

Do you think distilled water is bad for health?
1) Yes
2) No

And here is the results:

Qn 1: What water do you normally drink?

Qn 2: Which type of water do you think is the safest?

Qn 3: Do you think distilled water is bad for health?

From the survey, you can see that majority believes that distilled water is healthy. It also shows that very few people know that distilled water in unhealthy. One day, my cousin showed me a medical write-up about Cancer. Cancer cells are known to grow in an acidic environment.

1. Every person has cancer cells in the body. These cancer cells do not show up in the standard tests until they have multiplied to a few billion. When doctors tell cancer patients that there are no more cancer cells in their bodies after treatment, it just means the tests are unable to detect the cancer cells because they have not reached the detectable size.

2. Cancer cells occur between 6 to more than 10 times in a person’s lifetime.

3. When the person’s immune system is strong the cancer cells will be destroyed and prevented from multiplying and forming tumours.

4. When a person has cancer it indicates the person has multiple nutritional deficiencies. These could be due to genetic, environmental, food and lifestyle factors.

5. To overcome the multiple nutritional deficiencies, changing diet and including supplements will strengthen the immune system.

6. Chemotherapy involves poisoning the rapidly-growing cancer cells and also destroys rapidly-growing healthy cells in the bone marrow, gastro-intestinal tract etc, and can cause organ damage, like liver, kidneys, heart, lungs etc.

7. Radiation while destroying cancer cells also burns, scars and damages healthy cells, tissues and organs.

8. Initial treatment with chemotherapy and radiation will often reduce tumor size. However prolonged use of chemotherapy and radiation do not result in more tumor destruction.

9. When the body has too much toxic burden from chemotherapy and radiation the immune system is either compromised or destroyed, hence the person can succumb to various kinds of infections and complications.

10. Chemotherapy and radiation can cause cancer cells to mutate and become resistant and difficult to destroy. Surgery can also cause cancer cells to spread to other sites.

11. An effective way to battle cancer is to starve the cancer cells by not feeding it with the foods it needs to multiply.

• a. Sugar is a cancer-feeder. By cutting off sugar it cuts off one important food supply to the cancer cells. A better natural substitute would be Manuka honey or molasses but only in very small amounts. Table salt has a chemical added to make it white in colour.
• b. Milk causes the body to produce mucus, especially in the gastro-intestinal tract. Cancer feeds on mucus. By cutting off milk and substituting with unsweetened soy milk cancer cells are being starved.
• c. Cancer cells thrive in an acid environment. A meat-based diet is acidic and it is best to eat fish, and a little chicken rather than beef or pork. Meat also contains livestock antibiotics, growth hormones and parasites, which are all harmful,especially to people with cancer.
• e. Avoid coffee, tea, and chocolate, which have high caffeine.Green tea is a better alternative and has cancer fighting properties. Water-best to drink purified water, or filtered, to avoid known toxins and heavy metals in tap water. Distilled water is acidic, avoid it.

12. Meat protein is difficult to digest and requires a lot of digestive enzymes. Undigested meat remaining in the intestines becomes putrified and leads to more toxic buildup.

13. Cancer cell walls have a tough protein covering. By refraining from or eating less meat it frees more enzymes to attack the protein walls of cancer cells and allows the body’s killer cells to destroy the cancer cells.

14. Some supplements build up the immune system (IP6, Flor-ssence, Essiac, anti-oxidants, vitamins, minerals, EFAs etc.) to enable the body’s own killer cells to destroy cancer cells. Other supplements like vitamin E are known to cause apoptosis, or programmed cell death, the body’s normal method of disposing of damaged, unwanted, or unneeded cells.

15. Cancer is a disease of the mind, body, and spirit. A proactive and positive spirit will help the cancer warrior be a survivor. Anger, unforgiveness and bitterness put the body into a stressful and acidic environment. Learn to have a loving and forgiving spirit. Learn to relax and enjoy life.

16. Cancer cells cannot thrive in an oxygenated environment. Exercising daily, therapy is another means employed to destroy cancer cells. and deep breathing help to get more oxygen down to the cellular level.

-Extracted from http://informativehealth.com/?cat=3

So, where’s your stand? Is distilled water good or bad? For me, prevention is better than cure. I shall drink less distilled water.

Yesterday after work, I went for a seminar talking about Healthy Relationships Essentials.

Life is about relationships – with God, with others, and with us. This seminar consists of 3 sessions (monday, wednesday, friday), and I managed to go for the last session which talks about Identifying character traits and behaviours that reflect unsafe and unhealthy relationships in ourselves and others, and Learning how to manage such relationships.

The two most important aspect I look for in a friendship
I dont care whether he/she is plump/short/ugly.. As long as he/she is:

1) Trustworthy: Someone who can be a confidante, someone who is willing to listen to me and give me suggestions to get away from the situation, someone who will not spread my secrets to other people.

2) Supportive (Petrol Kiosk): Encourage me to do what I want, instead of giving cold shoulder. Unless I’m doing something that is immoral, I would apppreciate friend to be there for me, supporting me. A pillar for me when I feel tired.

The world of victims

Not everyone in this world is nice. There are always people who victimised the “weak” ones and took advantage of them. I was once a victim when I was in primary school. I was bullied by those ah bengs in my class. Events like using pencil to poke me, use water bottle to hit me. In the end, my parents had to write a letter to the form teacher and confronted those ah bengs’ parents. This is not a healthy relationship. Healthy relationship comes when my protection is not at risk. Since then, I told myself to be strong and to protect myself from the evil.

Preventing others to become the victim

As I was once a victim of such abuser, I tried to protect people around me to become the next victim. When others see us “weak and soft“, they will make use of this opportunity to make us be their slaves. (in school, at home, at the workplace) In this society, when we meet these scheming people, we have to play SMART.

I really hate people who pester me to do their things and claiming that it is urgent. Then when I ask them to do things for me, they will come out with different kind of excuses to drag my time or even, best, ignore me.

My thoughts

I like this seminar because it really teaches me how to create better relationships with people around me, and how not to become a victim of unhealthy relationships. Like a Libra balance, there must be a balance point between you and your friends. No one should take advantage of each other. It’s a mutual give-and-take between you and your friends.