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Friday, October 31, 2008

For the latest Mr and Mrs Toh


Thank you for being friend as well as family, top marks on both counts.

Thank you for being more than I could have wished for or imagined in a cousin-in-law, not to mention a spectacular friend.

Thank you both for all the fun, and even more to come.

Congratulations. It's going to be an exciting, energetic ride.

Bukit Mertajam, April 2007, some indecent hour of night when crankiness comes upon all unrested Tohs.
Not like this.

More like this...

Petaling Jaya, October 2007. We like happy times.

... and even better. Love you both!

Friday, October 24, 2008

Continued briefly from here.

The girl stayed at Orange Tree, and many things happened after the Chief Elf's news was first heard.

She had much of the story to tell, but it won't be today, because the girl has CDs to shop for and gardens to walk through and a seminar to attend before the sun sets.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

All About Anger

In the process of preparing my class presentation on the State-Trait Anger Inventory 2 I realised it would be easier to put all the links in my reference list up here in case my classmates want to look them up. This way they can just click, instead of typing in these very long web addresses.

So here they are.

List of References
  • Raymond Novaco's (author of the Novaco Anger Scale and Provocation Inventory, NAS-PI) biodata
  • Publisher's description of the STAXI-2
  • Graeme Senior of the University of Southern Queensland's report on the original STAXI
  • Douglas Smith of the University of Hawaii at Manoa's write-up on the Multidimensional School Anger Inventory, published on the Violence Institute of New Jersey at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey website
  • STAXI-2 author Charles Spielberger's curriculum vitae
Further Reading
  • The American Psychological Association's anger control page
  • Anger control for children, from KidsHealth.org
  • Abstract of Thor Johansen of the Adler School of Professional Psychology's dissertation on anger management treatment outcomes (restricted to those with access to ProQuest Journals; full paper available for download on ProQuest)
  • Free book download (conditions apply, see website for details) of You Can Choose To Be Happy by Tom G Stevens, Faculty Emeritus at California State University Long Beach
Happy reading!

Monday, October 20, 2008

Happy

"Cake" successful. Ren happy.

Whales up close. Ren happy.

Kookaburra nearby. Ren happy.

Mangoes cheap. Ren happy.

Tanks on city street. Ren h... Ren puzzled.
But still happy.

Cute peg line installed. Ren happy.

Peace restored. Ren very happy.

Sunday, October 05, 2008

Hope is...

Someday, a child will ask, "What does hope look like?"

And you might dig this picture up and say, "Like this."

"But why does hope look like beans, cauliflower, rice and stringy green things in a pot?" she will ask.

"Because one day, a girl was hungry. She had nothing ready to eat that would fill her stomach while nourishing her body, and she knew one should not live on a diet of chocolate and crackers. So, she chopped up the cauliflower that had been taking up her meagre refrigerator space, soaked up some soup beans, and threw them into a pot with some rice.

"It looked dreadfully insipid, but after she chopped up some fresh herbs that a distant relative had given her and threw them in, it wasn't so bad: only terribly insipid, rather than dreadfully.

"And, as she gave the potful a quick stir before putting it on to cook, she asked herself, 'Do you really think this cauliflower-bean-rice concoction is going to be something you can stomach eating for at least four meals?'

"And the girl answered herself, 'I hope so,' as the late-afternoon sunlight glanced off the pot cover and images floated into her mind of other unlikely triumphs of the impossible, like the flight of the bumblebee, the formation of a rainbow's multicoloured beauty from something as prosaic as refracted light rays, and her own grace while dancing despite sometimes being unable to walk in a straight line without falling over.


"And in due time it was cooked, and she ate and was glad, for hope had won yet again, and now she could say from experience that hope was full of beans."

Friday, October 03, 2008

If you wake up with a ringing in your ears...

It might be tinnitus, for which there is help (if not a fail-safe cure).

Or it could be you're like me and fell asleep with earphones on while listening to music on the phone.
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