Everything Happens for a Reason

Everyone's got their bundle of regrets. It's time to get that regret off your mind and move on. Whether you're still kicking yourself up for messing up a great friendship or relationship, or maybe for not going to the holiday you and your mates had planned for ages, this should not be continually raved about.
Regret, by definition, is sadness associated with an error or disappointment. It's a process in which we spin out the various alternate endings a situation we could've had. Meaning to say, we keep busting out the "What If". What if I I'd done the work earlier? What if I apologized to her? What if I hadn't ordered the prawns? And who do you think would love to answer all your What Ifs? The things already happened and we could do nothing to turn back the time and change everything.

At best, regret is a constructive tool taht gives us a sting when we've messed up, ensuring that we learn our lesson and don't repeat the same mistakes. At worst,  regret becomes an endless, torturous game of "what if". Everyone has regrets. But does everyone dwell on them 100 percent of the time? No. That's where resilience comes in. Some people are naturally strong minded and bounce back from anything, and some people need help to learn how to do that.
So how to deal with regret(s)?

• Write down your regrets, this will clarifies them in your mind.
• Examine them, understand the reasons behind your decisions.
• Change your toxic thought patterns, reinforce the good thoughts rather than focusing on the bad ones.
• Make amends, apologise for something you've done.
• Develop compassion, understand other people points of view and emphatize.
• Grieve losses that you have suffered. Acknowledge that you feel angry or sad about the situation.

Dealing with regret and disappointment is like coming to a fork in the road - one way leads downwards to rumination and guilt, the other way leads upwards to a better version of yourself.

The Things They Do

Child habits can somewhat be downright annoying. There are several habits that bother the parents and cause them to worry. Yes I'm speaking from experience, as a BIG sister *not literally big, mind you* to three younger siblings. I saw my mom had been worrying over her children's habits and it actually took a long time to lose those habits naturally. The most common ones would be ;

• Nail picking
• Thumb sucking
• Hair twirling, and
• Nose picking

But this is nothing to worry about, as it is just a common phenomenal in their developmental process.

NAIL BITING

Some studies estimate that around 30% to 60% of kids and teens actually chew on one or more fingernails. And a child may also bite his or her toenails occasionally. In the beginning, boys and girls are equally prone to bite their fingers but as they grow up, boys are more likely to be nail biters

. 

 Watch how I do it

THUMB SUCKING

The popularity of the thumb as compared to the other digits appears to be an accidental choice, mostly resulting from the thumb coming into contact with the mouth during random movements made at the stage of infancy. And many believe that it is because the thumb is more flavorful. Come to think of it again, wouldn't it be weird if children suck lets say, the middle finger? the index finger? That would be weird, seriously.

 Good thing she actually sucks her thumb *crickets*

HAIR TWIRLING

Hair twirling most probably appear during the early childhood as a precursor to hair pulling. And this habit is the easiest one to get rid of. A simple modification will do. Majority who twist, twirl, pull and stroke their hair are girls.

 A little girl twirling her hair

 And a big girl, who might think she's cute doing the hair-twirling. 

No, I have nothing against Jennifer Aniston.

NOSE PICKING

Although nose picking usually begins in childhood, it may actually linger into adulthood. A 1995 study of adults found that 91% picked their noses regularly, and about 8% are reported to eat what they picked. Okay, that's just gross.

How can picking nose be this cute?

It's okay Jake,we still love you.
GOTCHA! XD

Tie The Tongue

Tie the tongue. Hey it's an alliteration. I am sure many have heard of the game tongue twister. When most people think of tongue twisters, a childhood image comes to mind. We can picture a group of children attempt to recite those tongue-tying phrases or sentences as fast as possible without tripping over the verbal challenges.

 Well, this is tongue-tying, literally.

Since the phrase comprises of the repetition of sounds (alliteration), particularly of similar sounds but non-identical, it is made very easy to slip and hence, provide us with fun and laughter. If you notice, the term 'tongue twisters' itself can be slightly complicated to utter because it uses the repetition of the consonant T. Speaking of it, tongue twister does not only carry fun and laughter on set, but actually serves a practical purpose in practising the right pronunciation. What are we waiting for? Lets start the tongue-tying game!

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked.
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?

I saw Susie sitting in a shoe shine shop.
Where she sits she shines, and where she shines she sits.

How can a clam cram in a clean cream can?

Denise sees the fleece,
Denise sees the fleas.
At least Denise could sneeze
and feed and freeze the fleas.

Sheena leads, Sheila needs.

Can you can a can as a canner can can a can?

Six sick hicks nick six slick bricks with picks and sticks.

Luke Luck likes lakes.
Luke's duck likes lakes.
Luke Luck licks lakes.
Luck's duck licks lakes.
Duck takes licks in lakes Luke Luck likes.
Luke Luck takes licks in lakes duck likes.

and this is from a commercial

Picky people pick Peter Pan Peanut-Butter, 'tis the peanut-butter picky people pick.

and you're so gonna love this, it is harder than it seems 

Flash message!

 Try it yourself and see how you rock it ^o^

Disease that Pops

I am certain all of you ever heard of the term measles, right? Well basically measles is the most serious of the common childhood viral illnesses.Infants younger than one year age and malnourished children are prone to getting serious and even fatal measles.

So what are the causes of measles?

It is mainly caused by the measles virus, which occurs in almost each and everyone of us in the world, except for those who have been vaccinated. The virus is spread in form of droplets from the nose and throat of people who already got affected with measles. Another person who breathes in these droplets will collect the virus which then infects the surface cells of that person's upper airways. A person will be affected for from about three days before the rash appears and for up to five days after its appearance.Measles is one deadly contagious disease and everyone will highly get into contact with infected people unless they've been vaccinated or have had measles before.
And what are the symptoms?

• High fever, (ranging between 39 - 40.5 degree Celcius)
• Runny nose
• Harsh, dry cough
• Red, inflamed eyes (conjunctivitis) and aversion to bright light
• After all the symptoms above, small white spots on a red base can be seen upon careful examination of the inside of the mouth, usually opposite the molar teeth on the inside of the cheeks.
• The rash start to show up along the neck, from behind the ears, to the entire face, upper arms and chest, then spreads over the back, stomach and thighs and eventually reaching the feet

How to cure it?

Yes you shall go to the doctor for further treatment, but many did not know that measles can be managed at home. Simple remedies such as paracetamol or mefenamic acid. Regular cleaning of the eyes with warm salty water and cotton wool help prevent bacterial infection. The mouth should also be rinsed with warm salty water. But if there is any complication occurs, such as diarrhea or pneumonia, the person needs to be admitted to the hospital.

Many claimed that measles and chicken pox are the same. Well, they both are similar in may ways more or less but still they are two different diseases. How do we tell the differences between measles and chickenpox?
First, they originate from two separate viruses. Both diseases have rashes, but the rash is totally dissimilar in terms of appearance and behaviour. Measles is much more difficult to handle as compared to chickenpox. Most people are sicker with measles as they tend to have higher fever, and a greater risk for complications.And typically, pox rashes are way itchier than measles. Chicken pox rash does not flow together meanwhile measles rash typically begins on the upper part of the body. In fact, measles rash can last for a longer portion of time.
If you feel you have the early symptoms of both, a doctor's consultation is advised. Take a good care of yourself everyone :)

Fantasy in Reality

People can actually fantasize while they're awake, do you know that? Yes peeps, these people are daydreamers. And please don't make fun of those because you are one of them. Everyone is a daydreamer. Don't go and deem yourself as a healthy and normal person just because you don't dream during the day. Alliteration, again. Girls, I know we are all the same, keep thinking about our crush, be it celebrity or your very own classmate in class. And boys, I have nothing against you just show up already and admit that you guys did the same, or maybe, even worse.*gasp*

Daydreaming is a fairly common phenomenon, but still, it should not be indulged in excessively though it is not harmful. You are not in touch with the reality, and you can be distracted from all the fantasies. But we tend to focus on the bad side. Try to look for the silver lining in the cloud. as for a child, daydreaming fosters a child imagination, and enhances creativity. Daydreaming is looked upon negatively because it represents 'non-doing' in a society that emphasizes productivity. Well the truth is, even most of the famous people have been daydreamers and obviously the have brought something into the world, so we cannot simply claim all daydreamers are non-productive and only lazing around. The best of all, daydreaming allows you a range of possibilities which, in the hard cold light of reality, aren't possible.

Specifically, daydreaming helps you relax your mind and body, curb anxiety as well as to manage personal conflict, maintain relationships and boost productivity. Fact says that daydreaming aids people to gain more energy and be more productive in a long run. So, don't be scared to daydream.

Microwave Trick

Hello people. I was home for a week *a week that felt like only a day long* and I got the chance to watch this educational programme on channel TVIQ called Clever!. It is an adaptation from an English show just like what Roda Impian and Who Wants to be A Millionaire have come up with. The show is overall informative and jam-packed with many hands-on activities and lab experiments. And I was really keen in one of the experiments conducted in that episode, in which they talked about how to make a soap floats in the water. Interesting right? :) There are three options given, whether you are to rub the soap with sea salt, make a hole out of the soap bar or maybe you can cook the soap in the microwave.

Basically, everything is related to density. Density is the measure of the mass of the substance divided by its volume. As we all know, water is less dense than soap, and as a result, the soap will sink. The chemical composition of soap in general is what causes it to have its particular density. Ivory soap in particular, is known for it can float in the water. In other words, its density is lesser compared to water (H2O).

Let's take a look at the package of Ivory Soap

So this is how it looks like. I'm not sure if there is any in Malaysia. I guess there is.

*edit : yes, there is.

When we rub salt onto the soap, it still sinks down under. Same goes to the second option. Even if we make a deep hole out of it, the soap will eventually sink. So, how does an ivory soap float in the water? Lets grab our lab coats and safety goggles and yeah, we are scientists now. Wannabe scientists. *cough* Time to hit the lab! These are the materials we need ; a bar of Ivory soap, various bars of another brand soap, deep bowl of water, paper towel and last but not least, a microwave oven.

1. First thing first, fill the bowl with water. Drop the bars of soap into the water and notice all the other brands sink but Ivory soap. Why?

2. Take the ivory soap out of the water and break it half to see if there is any pockets of air hiding in the middle of the bar.

3. Place the Ivory soap bar in the middle of a piece of paper towel and place the whole thing in the center of the microwave oven.

4. Cook the bar for 2 minutes long. Dont take your eyes off the bar as it begins to expand and erupt into beautiful puffy clouds. Be careful not to overcook it.

5. Allow the soap to cool for a minute or so. The soap looks puffy on the outside but it is rigid when you touch it. 

Soap souffle - the result of the cooked soap

Dont waste it. Use it when you're taking shower and it will still float. How does it work actually? Ivory soap floats because it has air pumped into it during manufacturing process. In 1890, the air-filled soap accidentally happened when one of the workers forgot to turn off the mixing machine which then caused so much air to be whipped into the soap. Procter & Gamble then chose to capitalize on the mistake by marketing a brand new product of floating soaps, which gets favoured by the public.

Let's Talk Science

Okay lets see.So far, we have come upon some haircare tips, Grammar, and Facebook. I've been thinking for some time to share these interesting facts on human body. Shall we start? *grins*

Do you know?

• Babies have more bones than we do

Newborn babies have 300 bones in their body. When they reach adulthood, they are left with only 206 bones. This is because the smaller bones eventually join together to form stronger single bones.
Fun fact(s) : 1/4 of the bones in your body are in your feet. Try drop a hammer or lesung batu whatsoever to see if your feet bones crack hard. Ha.

• Human's hair is almost indestructible

Yes you heard it right. Your hair, my hair, no, everyone's hair decays at such a low rate that it is almost impossible to get rid of. If you still remember watching those documentaries on Egypt, pyramid and Mummies, the Mummies are all left with no flesh. Nothing but bones and yes, hair. Be it change of climate, weather, or other natural forces, the hair is hardly bothered or destroyed and it is resistant to many acids and corrosive chemicals.
Fun fact(s) : Next to bone marrow, hair is the fastest growing tissue in the human body. On average, redheads have 90000 hairs while people with black hair have about 110000 hairs. Imma go count my hair after this.

• Sleep no, food yes.

We can survive without food but not without sleep. Yes both are essential in our daily lives, we need food to produce energy and sleeping helps in retaining the energy. But many neglect the fact that humans can actually survive longer without food than without sleep.An average person could survive a month to two without food, with water alone. But a few sleepless night will cause the person to experience radical personality and physical changes such as having panda eyes dark circles.
Fun fact(s) : Average person fall asleep in seven minutes. The average human will eat an average of 8 spiders while sleeping :O

• There are about 9,000 taste buds on the surface of the tongue, in the throat, and on the roof of the mouth. taste buds contain chemoreceptors that responds to chemicals from food and other substances that are dissolved by the saliva in the mouth.

Fun fact(s) : 85% of the population can curl their tongue into a cube.

• Go remove a large part of our internal organs and we survive

The human body may appear fragile, but our body is stronger than we could imagine. Even after removing the stomach, one kidney, one lung, 75% of the liver, 80% of the intestines and almost every organ on the pelvic, it is still possible to survive.
Fun fact(s) : The small intestine in teh humanm body is about 2 inches around, 22 feet long.

• The eyeball of a human weighs approximately 28 grams.
• We blink over 10,000,000 times a year.
• When we sneeze, all bodily functions stop, even our heart.
• If we yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days we could possibly produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.
• If we farted consistently for 6 years and 9 months, enough gas is produced to create the energy of an atomic bomb. Whoa.
• In a month, a fingernail grows an eight of an inch.

Face The Fact

Lets share some facts I got from Varsity Voice.

• In 2003, Mark Zuckerberg created Facemash, where he placed photos of undergraduates side by side so viewers could rank which one was 'hotter'. He then recreated Facemash into the now ubiquitous Facebook. Ever heard of Facemash somewhere? Yes, it's The Social Network everyone. Hands down.
• Facebook has over 600 million active users with more than 35 million users update their status each day.
• The average Facebook user has 130 friends and sends eight friend requests per month.
• More than 2.5 billion pictures are uploaded on Facebook each month. That's no surprise, for the fact that Facebook-ers love marketing themselves.
• Facebook was ranked third in the top 100 searches of 2009, just behind Youtube and Google. Sex and porn rounded out the top five searches. The survey was conducted among the children under 18.
• Not only beating MySpace traffic, Facebook also managed to swap the second-ranked site overall in the US behind Google.
• Americans spend 13.9 billion minutes a year on Facebook. I'm pretty sure we'll be catching up to them in no time. Soon fellas, soon.
• If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest country in the world, after China and India.I guess the population would revolve around us. Ha.
• The head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales warned that Facebook and Myspace can lead children to commit suicide because such sites encourage teens to build transient relationships and dehumanise community life.

Source : http://facts.randomhistory.com?interesting-facebook-facts.html

We Speak Multiple Languages

And we are proud to be Malaysians indeed, aren't we? Everywhere we go, we use Bahasa Melayu(BM) as our medium of communication. Be the conversation verbal or non verbal, BM will always be our ultimate option to be used - well at least for most of us. Because we are heavily influenced by our first language, we are not aware of the large amount of misuse of English in our country. Lets take a look at this one.

The line at the bottom of the board says ‘ALL ARE WELCOME’, when it 

is supposed to be written as ‘ALL ARE WELCOMED’.

First and foremost, this is an example of a passive voice.  The sentence above is in a simple present tense form, and as for the passive of the simple present tense, we have to use verb-to-be (am/is/are) + past participle. In the sentence 'ALL ARE WELCOME', are is the verb with welcome supposedly functioning as the past participle. What can be pointed out here is the tense form of the word welcome. It is a MUST to use past participle whenever it comes to passives. The past participle for the word welcome is welcomed. Hence, the right way to write the sentence would be 'ALL ARE WELCOMED'.The active voice would sound like this ; The church welcomes everyone. In addition, welcomed is categorized as bound inflectional, since the suffix -ed is used rather to indicate the changes in tense form. 
On top of that, in terms of agreement, the verb are agrees with the subject all, mind the plural form. In fact, the form of the verb can also be described in terms of tense as well. This would be much interesting since we are playing with the verbs. Well, the verb welcome here plays the role in changing the tense form. In this case, welcomed has become the past participle, but if we change it into the active voice as in the church welcomes everyone, then of course welcomes will be in simple present tense. Sentence structure-wise, the sentence does not agree with the SVO at first, but if it changes into all are welcomed, then all will become the subject, are will be the linking verb and welcomed functions as the complement.

*SVO : Subject Verb Object

There are many other mistakes spotted on the signboards, free advertisements, and even label on the goodies. Learning the right way to use English brings no pain. As we showered much love for our mother language, we should respect others too.

Coffee break now :)

Snow-Flakes-Not

It's the scalp flakes people.

                                      

This is you, feeling dejected and dispirited

And now you're suffering from psychological depression. 

crap I forgot to bring along my towel.what to do now?

Eventually you blamed yourself for what you've been going through.

girl please, go comb your hair at least. hey, she's a left-handed-interesting.

 

Dandruff sure tires one out. Almost everyone has suffered from dandruff. There are various advertisements on TV, promoting the shampoo brand and the shampoo girl and stuff, that is the power of marketing. They keep saying the product is proven to be effective by the experts, but still no excellent result can we expect upon - well at least for me. I've tried several products and it only heals for a while. I'm not surprised at the final result by any means. Note that it could be the wrong way of using the products. Of course the blame is to be put on one self at the very end of the day. Dandruff is considered as a disease when the scaling is noticeable and the scalp gets itchy, despite the fact that it is a normal psychological process.

How to get rid of dandruff

These are the do's of dandruff care.

• Let the hair dry naturally after bath, that is no blow drying right after. Make sure you have toweled off the excess water properly.
• Wash your hair daily - with shampoo used on alternate days in the beginning, and once or twice weekly as to maintain the progress.
• Take dandruff-fighting dietary supplements. Eat a well-balanced food, avoid snacks, get enough sleep and exercise regularly.
• Brush the scalp hair firmly with a soft natural bristle brush. The hair should be brushed from scalp outwards for it will prevent the oil from remaining on the scalp where yeast likely to multiply.
• Be sure to rinse thoroughly after washing, as the shampoo residue can lead to dandruff forming and skin problems.
• For mild cases, shampoo powder with camillea seeds is recommended.

Moving on to the don'ts 

• Do not wash hair intensively, for it will irritate the scalp.
• Do not use ordinary soap to wash your hair. It does not function to cleanse the scalp and hair. It will only aggravate the situation.
• Do not consume alcohols, fried and oily food.
• Use anti-dandruff shampoos once or twice a week. Excessive use will be too harsh on scalp care.
• Avoid dyes on scalp hair as well. The normal resident bacteria of the scalp which keeps away the yeasts will be destroyed by dyes and harsh shampoos.

 Lets take a good care of our hair and scalp from now on. One Americano here :)

A Sip of Coffee

Hello people. I'm still new to blogging. This blog is specially created for educational purposes. LAME I know. I may ramble a little, because I'm cool like that because I'm no better at learning, but sharing information won't do any harm right? Feel free to have a coffee break with me. Sorry we don't have tea here :)