Not So Frustrating As I learning Japanese for my programme, I often practice another ways to improve my skill and to improve the process of learning. You can’t say we could master in language by just reading the grammar and comprehensive books all the time. This entry is not about the efficient ways to improve language but I’m going to share my sad story. Wait, it is not a sad story but a frustrating story. Yes, it is kind of frustrating story. I actually had no passion about Japanese dramas before I entered this programme but things seemed changed a lot when suddenly I became interested in it. I knew it could help me. I watch the Japanese dramas during the weekends and my free time. The frustrating thing is at the first hour I watched the drama I would hear carefully the audio while reading the subtitles and tried to catch the Japanese words. But when the story become more and more interesting, I just barely read the subtitles without giving any attention to the audio. So, do you think this method will help me?

Nightmare Recently, I went through a period of having nightly dreams that were so vivid and frightening that I will think hardly about the dream during the day and eagerly want to know the meaning behind it. Having a nightmare is so not fun. Based on research, it is said that spicy or fatty foods can give you nightmares, but the link between food and sleep goes beyond that. Vivid dreams are a symptom of a vitamin B6 (pyridoxine) excess in the body. Besides, low blood sugar is another cause of vivid dreams. When the brain senses that glucose levels are low, it will do strange things to get stored glucose into the blood stream. One way it does so is through adrenaline spurts. Anxiety and stress, often as the result of a traumatic life event, are another cause of nightmares and bad dreams. Illnesses that include fever, such as the flu, also can trigger nightmares. Though it is a common thing nightmares and bad dreams happen throughout life, but is there anything we can do to prevent the bad things from creeping into our sleep? Firstly, try to avoid the things in the causes stated before and to stop thinking negatively before going to sleep. And for us, a Muslim, we believed that praying before going to sleep is the best method to avoid nightmares.

Fish Rain This morning, when I woke up from my sleep, my friend suddenly told me that there was a rain fish in Australia. I was like, “Seriously? Was that true?” I used to hear about the stone rain but for fish rain, it is kind of weird. So, this is what I found from the internet. “A waterspout can sometimes successfully suck small objects like fish out of the water and all the way up into the cloud. Even if the waterspout stops spinning, the fish in the cloud can be carried over land, buffeted up and down and around with the cloud’s winds until its currents no longer keep the flying fish in the atmosphere. It’s like the fish are swimming in the cloud, says Renno. Depending on how far they travel and how high they are taken into the atmosphere, the fish are sometimes dead by the time they rain down. People as far as 100 miles inland have experienced raining fish, he explains. Fish can also be sucked up from rivers. The Henniges’ condo is just one mile above Lake Natoma and the Nimbus fish hatchery, where they think the fish came from. Carl Hennige writes in an e-mail that there was “an enormous windstorm” just before the fish fell. “ So, the fishes actually have been sucked out from the lakes during the hurricane and after that all of the fishes fall down to another place and people call it fish rain. So, if frogs, prawns or another small animals fall down , does we call it the same as fish rain ?

My unresolved problem I am now struggling for my final semester examination which will start on this Monday. My friends and I are all trying our best to recover all the topics that we have learnt. There are many chapters and topics to recover and I feel tense. I know I shouldn't but I just afraid to be dismiss from my programme. The pass mark is very high that is 60 percents. And the problem is, no matter how many topics I have recovered, I tend to forget all of them. When I recover about lesson 3, I forgot about lesson 1 and 2 and the process keep continuing. Anyone can help me to resolve my problems? That's all. I have to study now. Bye.

Memory of Childhood I have lot of memories during my childhood that I would like to share here. When I think back about my childhood, many vivid memories spring to my mind. Some are pleasurable while some are painful. The most vivid memory that I have is about the time I was warded for 2 days. I suffered from G6PD during my childhood. G6PD is actually an inherited condition in which the body doesn't have enough of the enzyme glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase, or G6PD, which helps red blood cells (RBCs) function normally. This deficiency can cause hemolytic anemia, usually after exposure to certain medications, foods, or even infections. Most people with G6PD deficiency don't have any symptoms, while others develop symptoms of anemia only after RBCs have been destroyed, a condition called hemolysis. In these cases, the symptoms disappear once the cause, or trigger, is removed. In rare cases, G6PD deficiency leads to chronic anemia and fortunately, I have free from this disease. Thanks God. One day, my mom heard from a station in radio that mushroom can increase the number of red blood cells. So without hesitated, my mom asked me to eat the mushroom soup she made because in my case, the number of red blood cells were very least. I ate it a lot because I believed in my mom. Well, she is my everything. :) On the next day, in class, I vomited, diarrhea and I felt dizzy. Luckily, I was in the same school with my father. He brought me to the hospital. I was warded. The doctor said that mushrooms were not suitable for the G6PD’s patients although it can increase the number of Red Blood Cells. My mother felt very guilty. She had trying her best to me so I whispered to her, ‘’It’s okay mom.’’ And from that day onwards, my mom never cooked any mushrooms dishes and my whole family never eat mushrooms although I am the only one who really can’t it mushrooms and I feel bad about it. :( p/s: mushroom is delicious.

Baby Throwing Ritual Last week, I have done a presentation in my class. A presentation which we have to talk about anything we want to. So, I would like to share what I presented in my class. I chose a topic that is rarely known by my friend. It was about a ritual in India which I found very interesting. When I first time watched the video, I was speechless. I was so shocked because I have never imagined such ritual in our life nowadays. The ritual was named as baby throwing ritual. The Muslim in the Western India has been following this ritual for more than 500 years. The birth of a child is always an occasion in India. In this ritual, the babies are throwing off from 15-meter high building with intentions to make them healthier and stronger. And of course, there are group of people waiting down holding a piece of white cloth where the babies are dropped. The babies are bounced once on the cloth and must be caught before the second bounce. For my opinion, this ritual is quite dangerous for the baby. As we all know, babies are so delicate, they have very soft bones. By throwing them off from 15-meter high building, their bones might break easily and their legs, neck or hands might sprained. But still, who we are to challenge the people’s belief? And surprisingly, until this date, no accident or injury was reported. Very amazing, is not it? So, this is the link of the Baby Throwing Ritual just in case if you are interested to watch it. www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SBHKozS-sA

Facebook vs Twitter I have various hobbies and one of my hobbies is surfing the internet. I am an addict tweeter and I love facebooking. I am a blog walker and also a blogger but I keep my blog private. As I said in my previous entry, I don’t share my secret with others. I wrote everything in my blog but end up, I am the only one who read them. Weird, am I? But recently, my interest is more toward Twitter. Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service that allows you answer the question, "What are you doing?" by sending short text messages 140 characters in length, called "tweets", to your friends, or "followers." I signed up to Twitter last March but only now I’m starting to actively using it when I found that Twitter is actually very fun. There are some things in Twitter that Facebook doesn’t have. However, I do admit that Facebook has more applications than Twitter such as games, picture tagging and chat. Here are the reasons why I said that I prefer Twitter than Facebook. Firstly, we are able to get other’s updates easily just by following them in twitter. But in Facebook we must add the person as a friend to get their updates. Next, Twitter has less privacy settings when compared to Facebook which lets us to get more online exposure especially when we want to know about our idols because most of the famous people in the world are using Twitter to update about what they are currently doing. In addition to that, in Twitter, we don’t have to waste our worth time like playing online games, meaningless pokes and tags from friends in twitter. There are just my opinion. People have rights to choose what they like and didn’t. Although I prefer Twitter than Facebook and recently actively using Twitter, but still, I have some time using Facebook. Both have advantages and disadvantages

Funny or Touching ? When I was alone, my mind kept refreshing this old memory. It was when I was 10 years old. I came back from school and on the way back, I entered a small convenient store. I can’t remember what did I buy but surely after I bought something, my eyes caught many toys at the back of the store. I decided to have one so I bought a black-spider toy and it looked like a Black Widow Spider, looked like a real one. I was happy as I could have the world’s most dangerous spider in the world although it was fake. At home, I kept teasing my sisters as they were very afraid of spiders. I was very happy back then. And when I slept on that night, I just left the spider on the floor of my room. Surprisingly, in the next morning, when I woke up, I saw my father was trying to kill the spider by using a long stick. I tried not to laugh but I cannot resist it and ended up burst into laugh. Then I said, “father, that is just a toy.” He looked confusing for a moment before he joined me laughing. I kept remembering that sweet memory whenever I miss him. That was so sweet of him. Although it was a bit funny but at least I know that he loves me. Thanks father. (:

A hope This is a story when I was in year 2. It was in year 2001 so it is a decade ago. I came back from school when suddenly my parent told me that we were going to a place. I keep asking them what the place was but they chose to keep it secret from me. So I just followed them. We went by car and I did not bring anything as we gonna back home in the same day. The journey took an hour and my mind was totally stuck with a lot of questions. As soon as I arrived there. I had no idea. There were so many people there. It looked like a big gathering and this eight-years-old girl knew nothing of what to do. So I asked again my parent what it was. Finally, they answered me. "You're going to see your idol today." I was like, "Seriously? Dr. Mahathir?" My mother nodded her head. Actually since I was 6 years old, I admired The Forth Malaysia Prime Minister (PM), Tun Dr Mahathir Muhammad so much. I once said to my mother that I wanted to be her second wife. However, I was insane during that time. It was many times that I was asking them to bring me seeing him so that I can see him in person. So that day it was an event which the prime minister came to see their nation and by chance it was quite near to my home. As the PM arrived there, the crowds were all running towards him to shake hand with him and I wanted to do so too. My father and I then penetrated the crowds. He tried his best in order to make my dream came true until when we were about to reach The PM, my father realized that he had been pick-pocketed. So we went back to our car and fortunately there was a police station nearby. We went there, made a report and back home. I was totally dissapointed as the day that I thought could bring a happiness to me turned out to be an unlucky day. My dad lost his wallet and I couldn't shake hand with the PM. :(