I miss learning Chinese

This is a random thought.
Learning Thai makes me miss learning Chinese. I feel quite sad that I stop learning Chinese and one day I'll also forget all the Thai words that I am currently learning once I stop taking the module. :(:(:(

hikzzzz...

sweet...so sweet :):)

Dear my blog,
in the midst of my hectic deadlines and despite the fact that I only slept for 4 hours last night, this afternoon I was tempted to search "Crazy Little Thing Called Love", a Thai movie that my best friends watched last week.
First, I listened to the songs coz Nic posted them on Pril's wall. I was like.."wow..sounds good"
Second, I asked the title to Pril and Pril said, "Must watch!!!"
Third, I watched the trailer! Aahhh..so cuteee!! The movie reminds me of the secondary school "puppy love" aka "monkey love" in Indonesian (cinta monyet :P)
The storyline was soo simple. A girl fell in love with her senior and the senior's best friend loved this girl.. But, I dunno why, the movie could touch me till I sacrificed my sleeping time in this afternoon. Hahahaha. It's totally simple, but I really recalled my secondary school years :) Screaming over a handsome guy, trying to come up with 'theories' and 'methods' to attract that guy, feeling your heart beating like mad!! Hahahaha.. Well, at the end there were quite a lot of crying part too, but it was realistic, not exaggerating, and felt "so Indo". Hahahaha. I dunno how to describe this, but when I watched this movie, I remembered typical Indo-scene: people write on each others' uniform on graduation day, guys fight at the back of the school (well, not my school :P), junior high school girls look at senior high school guys :):)

I cried a bit when the four girls crying... :( and this movie really reminds me of Pril, Nic, and Nyz.. I wish I watched with you all at home!!!!!!! :):)
This movie also reminds me of the first teens movie that I watched:
Ada Apa DEngan Cinta

I watch it again and again and again (Thanks to Youtube), I listen to the soundtracks again and again and again, but every time I finish watching, I talk to myself, "Actually what's so special about this movie?" Hehehe. Simple story line too, but I find it's sooo sweet and beautiful :)

Well, I'm looking forward for this kind of movie again, not the typical horror-plus-almost-porn movies that spread in Indo now, not the only-comedy-without-meaning- movie. A simple story of love and friendship is enough for me, anything about the simple little thing called love :)

haizzz..let's move the Valentine's day to today!! :):)

after 150 krajang taa oi bai thet

i'm supposed to draw 50 krajang per day this week..but today I got midterm at 2pm so I have not drawn krajang for 2 days. So here I am..finishing the last eight krajang..hehehe

krajang ta oi

let me talk about sth that is lingering in my mind during my choir practice today..
Next Sat, 12 March will be my last time singing with Eusoff Choir..
Soon, it'll be the last time for me coming to Salvation Army to give tuition to the little boy.
Time to give up stuff that I used to do has come. I feel sad on one hand, but also relieved. I actually still want to give tuition, but I remember my workload next year and I don't think I can cope with it. Choir has been a great family for me. Well, it's time to say good bye.

Hhh...
Sometimes I am wondering whether it's the right choice or not. Eusoff has been a great family for me, but it's time to move on. I can't believe I'll reach this stage (again) soon, a stage when I really need to focus for my final year. It's still 4months, but the thing is CCAs will end this month, so that's why tonight I started to recall how I have spent my 3 years in Eusoff. Is there any regret? Since now I realize that I don't have so much psychology-related-experience, partly because I have a lot of other commitments in hall and outside hall. I hope it's not too late to do it in my 4th year. And at this moment, I really start asking myself, "Is it what I want to do? Is it what I'm called to do?"

Good morning, everyone :) Enjoy March!

ga ada apa-apa

Aku hanya sedikit menyayangkan kenapa enggak ada apa-apa..

flowers

I've just realized that the combination of the color of red roses and white orchid is very beautiful... :)

:):)

another piece from my childhood - dance :)

 Another piece from my childhood...
I'm a little bit bored reading an article on Dissociative Identity Disorder (or Multiple Personality Disorder or Split Personalities), so I've decided to write another post (esp. after I noticed that I only wrote 4 blog posts in January).

Let's talk about dance..
This semester bruises are my friends. The ones on my knees and ankle areas are from contemporary dance and the ones on my thigh are from Saman Dance, a traditional dance from Aceh. I remembered there was one time my manager in Yahoo! msg me then I told him to come to Eusoff Dance Production. Then, he replied, "Stop dancing and find real job." Hehehe. I guess dancing is not a real job for him :P

Ironically, if I were not in Spore, I would not continue dancing traditional dance (I think). The university that I was admitted into in Indonesia didn't have traditional dance CCA. Sometimes I wonder when I will stop dancing, whether one day I will give up dancing (or sacrifice? whatever it is), just like now when I give up my piano lesson. Playing piano was something important for me, then I stopped learning. I even stopped playing for fun (or maybe I only played piano for my lesson?not for fun)

Well, let's go back to dance. My first time dancing Hip Hop and Contemporary was here, in Eusoff Hall, in NUS. Back in high school, I never ever thought of doing modern dance. It was just "not Ferninda" hahaha.. But yeah..I always love traditional dance, but it's very hard to learn classical dance in Tangerang, my hometown. You have 'Sanggar' (the 'club' to take arts lesson), but either no teacher or no students. My only proper dance lesson was when I was in kindergarten, when 30-40 girls were trained in a big hall and we took exam every year (and I got D for 2 consecutive years! HAHAHAHAHA)

Tari Yapong from Jakarta, I was 5 years old, in my kindergarten :)

So I stopped dancing.. Then in Primary 4, I moved to Tangerang where I met new friends who also liked dancing. Vivi (the name of the friend) encouraged me to join traditional dance as CCA. So I started dancing again :) In primary 5 and 6, even though it was ONLY a CCA, the teachers were very strict. They always made sure that our postures were right and one of them liked to yell at us, "Mendak!! Mendak!!" (means: the lower position with the bended knees which makes ur legs ache after dancing). The nicest thing was we always performed twice a year.

Tari Merak (Peacock Dance), Yogyakarta version, primary school :)

Junior High School..
I continued taking traditional dance as CCA in my 3 years in Junior High School (except in the second year, coz there was no teacher that time). However, there were not any performances. Here I met another senior, she's very small (smaller than me, hahahaha), but well, that's not the point, she danced VERY WELL! and I learnt a lot from her. When I entered senior high school, she encouraged me to join again and of course I did :) In my first high school year, there was a school open house where they exhibited the CCAs (sth like Matriculation Fair in NUS). Apparently the traditional dance CCA didn't have enough people (as usual =.= ) so they wanted to choose some first year students. Guess what the dance was? SAMAN!!! yeah! (actually now I just realized that it means I've been dancing Saman Dance for 6 years with different versions hahaha)

Saman Dance (not the proper costume), with my seniors in high school

However, I didn't really like my dance teacher in high school. He always said, "Some of you do sth wrong. The position should be like A, but you do B. But I don't want to tell you who it is." I was like, "WHAT??" The problem with his style was most of the times, we are not conscious of our movements, so we need feedback. Hhh.. and somehow he taught the same dance for different years.
Well, but I still feel grateful coz he was the one who taught my batch "Tari Ngarojeng"(a dance from Betawi) and "Tari Piring" (Plate dance, from West Sumatra), the dance that I performed in NUANSA'09: Sitti Nurbaya.

OHhh..let me tell u sth..my junior high school dance teacher (a lady, different with high school teacher) was involved in her parish and she often asked me and my friends to dance for church events. The last dance that I did with here was for Christmas CHILDREN Liturgy. Why did I use capital letter? coz that time we tied our hair to two and wear ribbons etc with "Sleighride" song. Anyway, I was 'already' high school by that time and up to now, my senior in that parish often asked me, "Are you going back for Chirstmas and dance again?" and I said, "No....I am too 'old' to wear ribbons again.." hahaha..

Dunno..really dunno..will I stop dancing? Let's see... :)
Nitez and Happy Valentine's Day :):)
ps.my Valentine's Day event = presentation meeting in a psychology lab for Thursday presentation!! JIAYOU!!

Tari Ngarojeng, from Jakarta. We were in a dance competition organized by the Diocese. Guess what? The competition was in GUYS SCHOOL. (Edbert's school!)

 

Eusoff Dance Production 2011 :) my first and Last DP :)

Dementia

Hello! I promised you to write about dementia, didn't I?
Here it is... :)
Dementia actually means a syndrome of acquired cognitive impairment due to brain dysfunction that is of sufficient severity to interfere with usual social or occupational functioning. In the lecture yesterday, the group mentioned that there are two types of dementia: cortical or subcortical. Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is associated with cortical dementia, while Parkinson's Disease (PD) is associated with subcortical dementia. 
Maybe you are wondering, what are the differences between dementia and normal aging? How about the difference between dementia in AD and PD?

In normal older adults, their ability to do tasks that involve immediate recall of a large number of items (eg 7 or more words or digits) is lower than younger adult. However, when the older adults were asked to learn a list of 15 words over five trials and then recall them 30 minutes later, their result is comparable with younger adults, while patients with dementia cannot do delayed recall task. 
In normal older adults, vocabulary levels remain stable, while it is impaired in patients with dementia. Abstract reasoning also declines in normal older adults, but it is not obvious in daily life because they can compensate by experience and acumen over a lifetime, while in patients with dementia, you can see the abstract reasoning skill is impaired even in daily life.

Next, how about the difference between AD and PD? First of all, let's study the definition of these two disorders. AD is a progressive degenerative brain disorder characterized by neuronal atrophy, synapse loss, and the abnormal accumulation of diffuse and neuritic plaqes and neurofibrillary tangles. PD is a neurodegenerative disorder consisting of symptoms of parkinsonism ( a cluster of motor symptoms consisting of slowness of movement, difficulty initiating movement, hypokinetic speech, masked facies, muscular rigidity, a shuffling or unsteady gait, abnormal posture, and disturbances in equilibrium) PLUS a pill-rolling type of resting tremor. Second, if you remember, I mentioned that AD and PD were associated with dementia, BUT... dementia is a condition that is much wider than AD and PD. AD and PD are causes of dementia, but there are other kinds of dementia and not all PD patient has dementia. As I said, AD is correlated with cortical dementia, while PD is correlated with subcortical dementia. This correlation can be seen from the different features of both disorders.

First, in general, memory disorder is more prominent in AD rather than in PD, while frontal lobe related-tasks (planning, sequencing multiple steps, set-shifting) is more prominent in PD than in AD. Why?? pls remember this : cortical dementia --> AD --> changes in medial lemboral limbic structures (entorhinal cortex, hipocampus) then the association cortices of the frontal, temporal, and parietal lobes. MOST SUBCORTICAL STRUCTURES and primary motor and sensory cortices are intact. 

Second, in terms of language ability, during the early onset of AD, phonemic fluency is intact in AD. AD patients are severely impaired in word finding ability, language comprehension, and naming, while PD patients have dysarthic speech and their semantic and phonemic fluency are impaired. Dysarthic speech is characterized by poor articulation (this is not the case in AD perhaps because primary motor and sensory cortices are not affected).

Third, attention is not affected in AD, while in PD there is a fluctuation of alertness. Fourth, even though memory disorder is more prominent in AD, in both AD and PD, memory is affected. However, AD patient is still poorer on delayed recall and recognition or retrieval test. Last but not least, the visuospatial ability is intact in both disorder, but in PD, it's more affected earlier compared with AD.

fiuhh... Hope you are not confused by this post. Just as an extra, there are other types of dementia..(let me know if you want to know about this too..hehehe)

:):) HAPPY SUNDAY!!
recommended book: The Notebook. Allison, the main female character, has Alzheimer's Disease. It can reach a point when someone cannot remember the family. The book describes the disease better than the movie (coz when I watched the movie, I didn't realize that Alison had hallucination, it is part of the symptom of AD)
to know more about parkinsonism, u can watch the movie: Awakenings.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FURflBxeTyI
The Notebook and AWakenings movies are very inspiring and touching. At the end of the day, it's all about human dignity. That's why we learn psychology. We might not be able to cure the patient (just like what Oliver Sacks experienced in Awakenings) *oops sorry spoiler*, but at the end of the day, how do we treat other people as fully human with heart and soul? :):)