Beauty - JustForThoughts

I've always found dark skin charming and very attractive. Different people find different things beautiful. It's sad to see that some people tend to set some 'definition' to the beauty, and as a result, allow one to be 'un-beautiful'.

Since young, I've silently been taught to think that fair skin is beautiful; smooth, hairless skin is beautiful; long, silken hair is beautiful. There have been numerous times when I was asked, 'Why have you become darker?' or told, 'Your skin became fairer in these years!' whenever I visit relatives. These subtle 'brainwashing' had gotten me to think that being beautiful means adhering to certain qualities, and 'Fair & Lovely' is anyone's best friend. I don't blame the people from previous generation to preach that; they grew up being taught that as well.

But remember, humans are able to perceive things and think for themselves. Please don't restrict yourself to think that only a subset of qualities are beautiful; broaden your mind and heart. Allow yourself to find the beauty in myriad of things. Please educate the younger generation to appreciate who they are and find their inner beauty. Allow them to go out under the sun once in a while (not too often for the fear of harmful UV rays :P ). Make them spend those hours spent on trying to make them 'beautiful' to be spent on something they might truly love doing. Teach them to be random and imperfect. Make them watch Lupita Nyong'o's amazing speech on beauty. :)

A Random Update

It's been quite a while since I last blogged. To those of you who still visit this page, I present my humble thanks for you.

Now, many things have happened in my life till today. I guess I could say 2013 wasn't a smooth ride after all. It ended with me tasting the tip (perhaps slightly more than the tip) of the failure. Anything becomes rusty if not taken care of properly. Perhaps I should be more aware of myself and my journey.

2014 has been okay so far. I've already been procrastinating. A month has passed, and I could feel the overwhelming workload that's been sneaking up on me. Time to polish up my time-management skills.

I would say after all these years of staying away from family, I've finally realised how much I miss them. It's been a year and a half ever since I felt my parents' hugs. I definitely look forward to seeing them and revisiting a little of my past again.

This year, I gotta apply for internship jobs. *sigh* I think I'm going to have a tough time in getting a job, seeing that there are many competitors out there who are more well-prepared compared to me. However, I'm going to take this as a learning process, and just try my best to get a job. I guess there is no failure, only learning experiences.

Despite the job applications, procrastination, and longing for home and family, I hope I could become stronger and a happier person this year. I want to make people I love happy, and I guess I can't do that without making myself happy. I cry; I laugh. I can't avoid either, and I want to lose neither. My weaknesses make me stronger, and so I just gotta look forward in life. Life is short anyways, and so it's up to me whether I make the time I have significant or insignificant.

I'll try to post regularly in this blog from now on, so keep on checking the blog for more updates! Have a good day, folks!

Signing off,
Deepa.

Just an Outburst.

I feel so embarrassed of myself yesterday. I had an amazing day yesterday, but it felt as if my ability to appreciate was stripped off. My negative emotions clouded the amazing formal I had with my friends. My negative emotions clouded the efforts that my friends put to connect with me.

I started to get emotional over something very small: not having the right attire to wear to the formal. It shouldn't have been a big issue, but my usual emotional tantrum started to take place. I was in tears the whole day, draining energy from my body and soul. I was even unable to appreciate the one friend that is always there to console me. Now, to think back about it, I feel extremely embarrassed over what I've done.

Sometimes, I wonder why I behave like this. I try to avoid myself from behaving like this, but it just happens sometimes, you see. I was thinking of putting the blame on either PMS or bipolar disorder. Actually, bipolar disorder seems legit to me since I usually feel the extremeness of both happy and sad feelings for no reason or for very irrelevant reasons. However, I realise that if I do that, I'm just escaping from my own weaknesses.

I would love to correct what I've done, but too bad time is irreversible. I would love to correct myself in the future, but I am sort of unable to predict when I'm getting the elevated distress. I guess all I can do is try to slap myself to reality whenever the feeling hits me. Just kidding. :P All I can do is to try to avoid having the feeling as much as possible,as I still haven't figured out how to control the feelings once I have it, and I end up hurting everyone around me. :(

P.S I'm so sorry to those whom I ended up hurting till now.

First World Problem: Me No Mood to Eat...

Recently, I've lost my motivation to eat. I do feel hungry, probably hungrier than ever. But, I have no clue why I don't feel like cook for myself and eat. When I think about it, it feels like I've lost the inspiration to cook, especially after a few fail attempts. Now, every time I think about cooking, I can only think about how bad it is going to taste.

One might ask, "Why not buy and eat then?" I can easily do that, except that I don't really have the motivation to go by myself to a restaurant and eat. Not only that, I'm kind of bored of the food served in the restaurant. None of the food can excite my tastebuds anymore.

This is a first world problem. I know I'm slowly losing energy. I know without proper meal, I'm looking more tired than ever. I just couldn't help it. I don't know how to break out of the circle. Probably the only form of motivation I had for cooking is slowly decreasing. How I wish human race don't have to depend on food to survive.. If only..

"You haven't changed at all!"

"You haven't changed at all!" 

Those were the words from my friend whom I met two years ago. Little did he realised how much those words meant to me. Thank you. :)

A flower.

Today,

I bloom again.

I bloomed yesterday, and the day before.

I will bloom again tomorrow too.

But, something has changed.

I couldn't find my old petals anymore.

The traces of them slowly fade away into nothingness.

They've always been there, but now they are fading.

Noodles and tea.

I have been trying to get my tea and noodles right for more than a week now. After some experimenting, I realised that it's not my method that's going wrong, but it's the tea and the noodles I don't favour. The tea is just blant and tastes almost like water no matter which proportion of water, milk and sugar I add. Meanwhile, the noodles has this strong smell of egg which I hate (should've realised that when my friends said that it smelled good when it didn't for me last week =.= ). I'll at least try to finish up the tea, but for the noodles: "Sayonara! You are going into the rubbish bin".

To shop or not to shop?

Lately, I have the urge of stocking up my room with furniture and apparels. Boots, jackets, cabinet, bed, etc. I'll be planning to go and buy these stuff during every first lecture. Sadly, as the day advances, that urge of buying stuffs is slowly replaced by the sense of unworthiness due to extreme lag in studies. Oh well, dear shopping urge, you gotta wait for a very looooooong time indeed.

The Tale of My Boring Self

A few things my mom told me unconsciously made me realise how much I've been missing out lately. 

She told me that she was checking Facebook to see if I have uploaded any photos by any chance. I realised that I take less pictures this year compared to last year. That might be probably because it's my second year in Canada, and I'm not so excited as I used to be anymore. Also, there hasn't been many photo-taking opportunity for me lately. I barely go out for a random walk nowadays, and this year I have less opportunity to hang out with people. So, I guess naturally I won't have many (if not any) photos to be uploaded. 

Secondly, she was talking about Deepavali preparation for this year, when I asked her when is Deepavali. She was kind of shocked and asked me, "Deepa! It's your day! How could you not know?". Oh well, I guess ever since I came to Canada, I stopped getting excited about those annual festivals, including Deepavali. After all, what are festivals without family?

Then, she asked me whether there's any Tamil movie showing in cinemas here, in Toronto. I told her that she's asking the wrong person. I never kept myself updated with any entertainment news. I think the last time I watched a Tamil movie in theatre was more than a year ago. Not only Kollywood, but I dont even know what's going on in Hollywood. I even stopped watching television shows for a long time now.

Oh well. I guess I'm appearing more and more boring to myself as I age. Hopefully I won't have a hard(er) time to fit in with my Malaysian friends and family the next time I go back to Malaysia.

Reason.

Probably there's none.

What's your motivating factor?

Once I asked my Facebook friends to name that one thing that motivates them the most to push themselves to their limit. I got very interesting and inspiring comments. I just thought I could share the post here.

A random post.

I found it in Facebook. It's quite long, but it definitely worth a read.

"Wanna kill yourself? Imagine this. You come home from school one day. You’ve had yet another horrible day. You’re just ready to give up. So you go to your room, close the door, and take out that suicide note you've written and rewritten over and over and over. You take out those razor blades, and cut for the very last time. You grab that bottle of pills and take them all. Laying down, holding the letter to your chest, you close your eyes for the very last time. A few hours later, your little brother knocks on your door to come tell you dinners ready. You don’t answer, so he walks in. All he sees is you laying on your bed, so he thinks you’re asleep. He tells your mom this. Your mom goes to your room to wake you up. She notices something is odd. She grabs the paper in your hand and reads it. Sobbing, she tries to wake you up. She’s screaming your name.

A question.

I never knew my head could actually almost explode. A few days back, I was thinking about something random, and the next moment I realised that I was clutching my head so tightly, wanting to scream out the word, "Stop!!!". It was an interesting experience for me because I've never felt a feeling of that immensity before.

Should I explore more of that feeling or should I just stay away? I'm still considering my option.

The XX - Shelter

I am addicted to a song for 6 months now. No matter how many times I listened to the song, I never get bored of it. I'm not exactly sure why, but it might be because of the serene vocal, mesmerising music, lyrics that could touch one's soul or maybe it's all of the reasons. I guess it's one of those songs I'll never forget in my life. Here is the lyrics for the song:

Shelter (The XX)

I find shelter, in this way

Under cover, hide away

Can you hear, when I say?

I have never felt this way

Cincai Cooking

I cooked for the first time today! Okay, not exactly first time, but this is the first official time I'm cooking without any guidance. Or probably the second time, if the 'seaweed fried rice' I made during the winter break is counted.

First attempts are never perfect. Same goes to my cooking. First of all, I didn't know how much rice I should put in the rice cooker, so I simply put one and a half cup. Little did I realised at that time that that is actually the amount of rice my mom cooks for a meal for my whole family! Oh well. At least I poured in the right amount of water.

Then, I started to realise that the vegetable I put in the frying pan were cooked faster than I thought. Dang, I totally forgot to control the burner level! I quickly corrected the mistake, although I was almost done cooking by then.

Scribbles

I couldn't sleep because the room was (too) hot, switched on the light overnight for the fear of bugs n other beings, woke up wayyy early to realise that I couldn't fall asleep anymore, and now I couldn't find my toothbrush and toothpaste.

Happy first day to SKULE to myself.

R.I.P Mr Michel De Lottinville.

Sometimes, the widest grin might be hiding the deepest grief within.

There was a man I knew that could never be spotted without  wide smile on his face and some motivating words to be heard. Seeing him had always made my day brighter.

I am sad that that man is no longer on this Earth to brighten another person's day.

It saddens me to hear that he took away his life on his own will.

I hope he never stops smiling in his afterlife.

R.I.P Mr Michel De Lottinville.

The Blue Moon.

31st August 2012 is not only special because of the national day celebration of my beloved country, Malaysia. This year, it's even more special due to the appearance of the 'Blue Moon'.

When I first heard about it a few weeks ago, I actually thought that the moon will appear blue on that night because of some extraordinary space event. My excitement was short-lived; it was crashed by the Google within a few hours.

The 'blue moon' is actually a phenomenon in which the full moon appears for the second time within a month's duration. This is because the moon usually completes an orbit around the Earth in 29.5 days, but a month is usually 30 or 31 days except for the month of February. So, full moon appears twice a month every two and a half years on average according to NASA.

A picture of the moon taken using blue filter
Source:  http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/watchtheskies/07jul_bluemoon.html 

Me and my stuck car.

I had my car stuck when I was trying to park the car today. I thought I was totally screwed when the car wouldn't move an inch.

It all started when I couldn't find a shady place to park my car near my auntie's house. So I decided to park on the pavement of my auntie's neighbour's house, which was shady because of the bamboo trees. I had parked my car there before, so I was confident that I could do it again smoothly. As I drove towards the pavement, a motorcycle that was parked by the side of the pavement caught my eyes, but I didn't give in to the internal alarm that rang in my brain. I just accelerated my way up to the pavement. As my sister, who was sitting next to me, started to tell me that I shouldn't be parking there, I heard a screeching sound. The first thought that came to my mind was, "Sh*t, I'm in deeeeeeeeep trouble".

Summer 2012

Summer break's gonna end soon. That was fast. Long, but fast. In these four months, I think I've spent most of the time looking at my laptop screen (as usual). My brain's a bit too rusty, but I'm ready to reverse the redox reaction during the second year (I think). I heard it's gonna be a killer year. I barely survived the first year (due to my own mistakes), but I'm gonna try really hard to do my best this year.

The summer break was not too bad. I..

1. learned how to swim (barely)
2. burned my skin numerous times (it's still healing)
3. tried various Malaysian food for the first time (notably nasi kandar and char koey teow)