A stranger you were once,
Strangers we would remain as be.
But the love storm came along,
And swept you along with me
I wrote your name in the stars,
But the days hid it away.
I wrote your name in the skies,
Still, the winds blew it away.
So I wrote your name in my heart,
And prayed and wished,
You'll be fine everyday
And then forever it stays.
No matter how the story went,
Or how it had come to end,
Know that when I was with you,
Eternity was only a step away.
Once in awhile,
Underneath the stars,
I will lie on the ground,
Staring into empty space.
When the stars start to move,
Into the shape of your face,
I'll remember the girl,
And smile and say,
Nothing with a silent gaze.
Labels: About Extraversion-Introversion
The more powerful and original a mind, the more
it will incline towards the religion of solitude.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963),
British author.
Solitude, though it may be silent as
light, is like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to
man. All men come into this world alone and leave it alone.
Thomas de Quincey
(1785-1859),
British author and intellectual. Introduction
There is a special group of talented individuals whose needs are often inadequately addressed. Because of the innate tendency to hide their inner worlds, few people had the chance to fully understand their thoughts, which, in turn, may lead to erroneous decisions about them and their needs. This explains why gregarious attempts to encourage them to mingle with crowds sometimes end up a disaster.
Such is the introvert, a minority in the regular population but a majority in the gifted population. And that difference from the 'norm' is the reason this factor needs to be considered when developing educational programs and parenting strategies for the gifted students whose main focus is in the internal world of ideas and concepts. This is essential, as we will soon cover in later sections, that personality traits do impact many other elements such as perception, learning style, judgement, and sociological preferences.
Some Characteristics of Introverts:
• Are territorial - desire private space and time• Are happy to be alone - they can be lonely in a crowd• Become drained around large groups of people; dislike attending parties• Need time alone to recharge• Prefer to work on own rather than do group work• Act cautiously in meeting people• Are reserved, quiet and deliberate• Do not enjoy being the center of attention• Do not share private thoughts with just anyone• Form a few deep attachments• Think carefully before speaking (practice in my head before I speak)• See reflection as very important• Concentrate well and deeply• Become absorbed in thoughts and ideas• Limit their interests but explore deeply• Communicate best one-on-one• Get agitated and irritated without enough time alone or undisturbed• Select activities carefully and thoughtfully
Introverts are identified as belonging to two distinct groups:
Group A: Self-sufficient, confident, hardworking, with firm goals, self-actualizing, reserved, preferring activities that involve inner experience and introspection; and
Group B: Shy, timid, withdrawn with low self-concept, lacking in communication skills, demonstrating fear of people, dread of doing things in front of others, who prefer being left alone.School and the
Introvert
Once the teacher has identified the introverted student, he/she need to be able to tell if the character trait is dysfunctional, but introverted students don't need to be changed to match other students. If social skills are lacking, teach them.
Instruction for the introvert should differ from that provided for the extravert. Methods should utilize that internal reflective focus and honour the need for structure, quiet, and small groups.
Many of these students like lectures and expository and deductive modes of instruction. Most introverts need wait time, warning about what they are expected to do, activities with minimal noise and stimulation, down time built into the schedule, and moderate amounts of small group work.
These approaches, however, have to be combined with ones appropriate for the extravert who needs high stimulation, movement and activity throughout the classroom, lots of contact with others, and open spaces for working. Most extraverted students prefer open discussions and discovery activities.
We talk frequently about differentiating the curriculum for multiple diverse learners. This means that things such as assignments, grouping patterns, activity levels, assessment options, wait time, and expectations all need to be modified for this special group of students. I am not advocating separate classes but rather an increased awareness of and willingness to work with their different needs.
The home can either be a place of refuge or attack. Typically students see their bedroom as their haven; however it may not be that way depending upon the rest of the family and the general order in the household.Home and the Introvert
The following are some suggestions to parents and siblings for supporting and protecting introverts:
Provide private space: A private bedroom is nice, but if not possible, at least a private area in the house that can serve that purpose.
Guarantee quiet time: A child who needs to recharge his batteries cannot do it in a loud crazy house.
Model "alone" not "lonely" talk: If the child continually hears that being away from people makes one lonely, it sends a very strong message to them about what they should feel. Most introverts are not lonely when alone and that message needs to be verbally shared modelled.
Protect their right to say "enough": This statement of 'enough' refers to people, activities, and noise. If they are not 'party animals,’ let them slack off after awhile. We don't want them to associate such get-togethers with distress and unhappiness.
Discuss books that feature introverts: Bibliotherapy is an appropriate strategy for home as well as school. Discuss the actions of the characters and their consequences, alternate actions, their feelings, and how your own experiences can relate to the story. It is always so much easier to talk about a character in a book than about oneself, especially for introverts who are even less likely to share such private thoughts and feeling.
Many introverts can learn to put on the mask of extraversion when the need arises. This is critical especially for the gifted as they are often called on to perform in front of others or with large groups. Such training can come through practice in public speaking, debate, drama, music, social skills, dance, and mentoring.Developing Introverts
Thus, awareness and support are half the battle in protecting gifted introverts from the stigma attached to the character trait. Finding a sense of understanding and empathy in one's family and friends, developing useful strategies and suggestions for making it through a school or work day, and gaining knowledge of why others do what they do helps make the world a more comfortable place for the introvert.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Labels: Songs
暗恋 - 张智成
四目交接的时候 不要停留太久
适可而止的问候 关心不能太过
好奇也别去探索 妒嫉只能深锁
如果忍不住寂寞 也不能对你说
啊 好朋友 啊 我的好朋友
不小心的沉默 不想让你太难过
我们就站在落地窗的两边
就算触碰也有了界限
如果跨越过彼此那道边界
是靠近还是更遥远
相信我们走到另一个境界
搭肩高唱友谊万万岁
要是我爱你变成了语言
什么会多一些 什么会少一些
就让别人去猜测 我们清白的很
就让自己去承受 那种清白的闷
就算我只是朋友 能不能有要求
如果会发生什么 也是我想太多
啊 好朋友 就只是好朋友
不小心说出口 微笑中藏着难过
我们就站在落地窗的两边
就算触碰也有了界限
如果跨越过彼此那道边界
是靠近还是更遥远
你会不会也曾闪过这感觉
一念之间就要差一点
要是我爱你 变成了利剑
什么会被消灭 什么才会复原
那是我的底线 继续将你暗恋
Song preview. Don't bother watching the MV though..
Friday, August 14, 2009
word of the day
NUA: Net Unrealized Appreciation
Definition:(from Investopedia)
The difference in value between the average cost basis of shares and the current market value of the shares held in a tax-deferred account.
(preferred alternate explanation)
The difference in value between too little activity and too much time on hand. A subconscious form of acknowledgement/tribute to the free time you got.
Synonyms:
slack, laze, soft,inactive, feeble, flabby, flaccid, flexible, flimsy, inert, laggard, lax, leisurely, limp, passive, quaggy, quiet, relaxed, sloppy, slow, sluggish, soft, supine, unsteady, weak
Antonyms:
rigid, stiff, taut, tight
Another week slipped past without event as I quietly nua-ed through the same old routine day in and day out. I found it strange that my energy levels seem to have increased over the past years. As I grew older, I found it more and more difficult to enjoy the silence of life. The peace and tranquility away from the noises of backstabbing, betrayal, playacting, prejudice, anger, crazy hours. I seem to have started to take peace for granted. In the marathon spanning the distance of a lifetime, apparently the mental age hasn't caught up with the physical age yet. But I hope that mental age hasn't been running away in the opposite direction!
Well but too much of a good thing is bad. The solitude and freedom I once valued has turned poison. It's slowly killing my passion for life and corrupting my mind. Cause there seems to be a lack of discipline which I assumed will build a wall around my chain of thoughts, limiting and constraining the creativity and what I dare to do. But at the moment, I feel demotivated to push myself to do anything that I don't like. Which includes studying. When was the last time I really mugged? Probably 10 years ago.
But when I wasn't mugging, I still wasn't asleep. Perhaps I had been used to staying awake for long hours, till I found it difficult to fall asleep at 10pm. And I allowed my thoughts to wander. And it's always the silence of the night that evokes the strongest feelings in me. Where I derive my random ideas from. And each time some entangled wires seem to connect properly up there, and causes the light bulb to light up, even if it's only a little flicker.. I get excited.
And I think I should stop faking it. I am not excited nor easily excitable by many tiny whiny external factors. It was just because the circumstances required me to do so. And truly, I need a second boost. Let's try to find that with soccer first. My fitness is horrible. Maybe the drink (which I'm trying hard to abstain from due to potential health concerns) that gives you "wings" can help. But it's just a maybe. It's really all in the mind.. all in the mind...
Sunday, August 02, 2009
Labels: Endless Blabbers
I'm pretty tired. Slept don't know how many hours. And in my dreams, I had reflected over what happened over the past 20 years. As though I've come face to face with the flashbacks one normally gets when facing death. Unfortunately and fortunately, I had a few of these flashbacks and was still able to write here. I can't remember when was the first, but the earliest remembered was in primary 3. I had the longest fall I could remember in my life. I was playing soccer, and I was tripped and fell backward. It seemed as though time had paused for a full minute and my body was perpetually suspended in midair, horizontally. I can't remember what came to my mind at that moment. I only know I fell back, real hard.
There were a few accidents I encountered. One other vivid one was not too long ago in year 2006 I think. I was literally thrown off my bike after a collision with an oncoming car. And again flashbacks came to me. I was lucky to escape with minor injuries, and the fall shook me up, as physical pain took over emotional pain. I was undergoing a tough period of my life then. Still trying to come to terms with a bad breakup coupled with a few other personal issues.
Just yesterday, a visibly unfit me, struggled to play in a match yesterday. I didn't know why I went in for the challenge, but I still went in and only at the last moment I realised that I had to retract my boots or I'll hit the keeper's head. I was mentally and physically drained by too many things, which happened to occur at the same period of time. I saved a potential head injury but couldn't save my own skin. I was kicked hard in the gut in the collision. Breathless for sometime and it pained to breathe. I lay there for a moment and the keeper's swearing and everything else seemed to fade away.
I was sure I whited out for a moment. Later on, I was criticised for committing a dangerous act by my own teammates. To them, it was stupid and unneccessary. To me, it was a 50-50 chance. We were already down 2-0 at that moment. And desperation clouded my judgement. And more than once the opponent came over to ask for my well-being. I, again, escaped with only a bruise and my ribs did not suffer the same injury I got before.
I am somewhat consoled and convinced that my teammates scolded me for my own good. And the opponents were friendly enough.
But this incident and other flashbacks, I'm pretty much neglected for all the efforts I put in. I can give my 101% and still not being recognised. To some, it was more of a being taken for granted thing. It was not easy to be unselfish. And I began to wonder, given the high frequency of flashbacks I get, when would the last one come? It's a taboo to talk about it especially now. But all these while, I've been living for others. And playing the quiet supportive role that I've always been. Maybe it's the image I projected for myself. No one takes me seriously. Even when I'm doing my best, no one knows.
I know my own values and I am strictly bounded to them. It's a matter of self-pride. I have more than once, compromised them to help satisfy others but making myself unhappy in the process. And I have my self-interests too. I know of many who put this first before everything else. But for now, I prolly keep it at 2nd place. Even if no one remembers me after everything, I just want to be proud of myself.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Labels: Discussion Articles
first published: 13/12/07 at xaxarulz.blogspot.com
"Boredom: the desire for desire."
~Leo Tolstoy
"Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top."
~Virginia Woolf
So, boredom, as we are told, like happiness or interest, can never be fixed directly by the naked eye - let alone pursued as an end, or conceptualized - but only experienced laterally, or as the by-product of something else. When taken as an end in its own right, boredom ceases to be that and imperceptibly transforms itself into something else.. So no boredom's in its own right, only boring activities, or something like a fading effect of boredom after the fact.
In other words, commenting on boredom is actually an escape from boredom, and that persistent boredom stops being boring because it is transformed into pain.
Boredom pursues us: like the celebrated inevitabilities of death and the many types of taxes, no matter how we try to evade it, it'll come along soon enough. And in order to be bored, we require thought, or self-consciousness, and thought is pain. And indeed, what is terrible is to have thought. So boredom inevitably entails pain. The question is whether pain is different from boredom, and if it takes us away from monotony into the realm of intensity.
Then is pain boring? We tend to think of pain as a sharp jolt or a sudden intense experience. Yet at other instances, pain can be chronic, dull, and tedious - as well as being boring to talk about.
And if pain can be boring, can't boredom be painful, or at least bring about intense emotions? In this case, boredom is being defined as a form of discomfort or dissatisfaction with the eversame. Conversely there is also boredom without one being aware of it. You are unwittingly trapped in monotony, and thus boredom becomes the enemy of thought. So, are boredom and pain antonyms or synonyms? Is boredom a feeling or an escape from feeling?
We've talked a lot about boredom as a response to the commonplace, the familiar, and the everyday. But we also get bored when faced with things that perplex us, and with material that is so unfamiliar it is hard to understand. Perhaps the reason why I never fail to fall asleep in lectures and tutorials and at times at my workplace, could most likely be accredited to boredom caused by perplexity rather than familiarity.
We have the most telling reason of all for boredom's elusiveness : it begins in stasis, inertia, and the tepid, yet the very continuation of these things, the very persistence of the eversame, is what drives the bored to suffering, to groans and howls, to a condition like pain - a pain of mind rather than body, maybe, save that we can hardly be sure of the division between those realms, nothing is less certain. The project of boredom, pursued through stasis and calm, is impossible because boredom undoes itself, turns itself into something violent and unendurable, and throws up throes of its own.
In this world of minute change and precise doubt, it is unsurprising that even boredom could be brittle. As though it were on the point of flickering out like a dead star, the delayed news of boredom's violent end has just reached us.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Sian seems to have become my best friend nowadays. Whenever I think of the debt I had to repay after graduation (don't know when), I feel sian. Whenever I felt being taken for granted, I feel sian. Whenever I get pounded for things I can't control, I feel sian. Whenever I see my tutorials, I feel sian. Whenever I see my own depreciating grades, I feel more sian. Whenever someone come to me saying he/she is sian, I feel sian together. Whenever people seem to display signs that they don't like me, I feel sian (who likes to be unliked?). So whenever I feel small, whenever I've reached my limits, I feel sian. And when I see your updates and start to think of you, I also feel sian for 5 minutes.
So in my occasional crazy bouts, I randomly talked to the canteen lady one fine day, that I feel so sian. She then replied, "不要那么咸是吗？加点水咯!" (If you like it less salty, dilute it with water!) with a toothy (golden) grin. And I smiled back in appreciation. I duly took a big gulp of water. Closed my eyes. Stretched my aching back. Let my mind go blank for a moment.
And when I reopened my eyes, I can't find my best friend anymore. He's probably paying a visit to someone else already. It's 22 July, I missed the eclipse and it's midweek. So what? I smiled and went back to my daily routines. The world continues to revolve day in and day out, no matter how I look it, and with or without me.
Purpose with living is living with purpose. Why waste it with sian-ness? So my current purpose in living now is to find a purpose in living. Thus I choose to de-sian-tize myself and go back to fb-ing.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Labels: Video
Monday, July 20, 2009