Post something that made you HAPPY today.

Post Reply New Topic

Watching Doctor Who for the first time in months. It brought a smile to my face.

in my education class today we talked about the cronulla riots and education and i disagreed with the way they characterised education as being an important thing in combating racism. i agree that to an extent it can have an effect but racism comes from above not just from the people around you so you have to fight the racism coming from the top anyway not my point.
point is that my education classmate, in discussion about ethnicity and education, said we were both australian and awknowledged im lebanese. usually white people dont see me as being a "real" australian if they know im an arab. or if i say i am australian to people who ask where i come from they will then think i am white no matter how ethnic they thought i looked before i said that. i cant be both at the same time to them. just felt nice to have it acknowledged is all. also he started talking about science and politics at the same time and it was like hot. more so because he is apolitical. and watching him get excited at the fact that somebody in my class is korean(he speaks it) was cute.

Seeing the sunlight this morning.

I was having an icky day... then I picked up my guitar and practiced for about 45 minutes.

It was good practice because I accidentally stumbled on a way to make my sweep picking sound 10x better

i am so proud of myself. i made labneh. i mean all i really did was add salt and strain the yoghurt but still... i have never done it alone. i feel all grown up now. i ate some on my manouche with tomato and it was yum.
not mine but this:

with this:

One less 6-hour homework in my pile. Booyah!
No bugs, it is running just as expected. .
I love the high I get after successfully completing one of those exercises~

My truck. I parked it in the back yard nearly two years ago and it works almost as good as the day I drove it home, 14 years and over 360,000 miles ago. All I had to do to get it running again was connect a battery and turn the key once. It started on the first try. The other amazing thing is that it has nary a squeak nor a rattle and the only thing that does not work on it is the A/C. All I had to do to recommission it was replace the water pump, front brake pads and rotors and the TPS sensor, for a total cost of around $130. Well... that and pressure washing all of the mold and algae off of the body! I was going to sell it after I got my Metro back on the road but now I am having second thoughts. It works too well and needs only a few little things to be absolutely perfect. Plus, I have owned it since new and don't think I can get much more than $1500 for it, too little money for the quality of vehicle it actually is. It may sound silly to some people, but I love my little truck. I always have and always will.

Stuff...

Music :D Even though i'm nervous for today because i'm meeting my new therapist :x

i sort of had an epiphany today. i was at parramatta for a palestine rally. we decided to have it there because the arab population is bigger and more likely to sympathise with the issue and i went to ask for directions to our meeting place from a random shop owner. he noticed my shirt which in arabic says "revolution: the liberation of egypt" and in arabic asks me if i am from egypt. i reply no, im lebanese. he responds very enthusiastically(ahlan wu sahlan!) because we're always happy to find somebody from our own country and then guessed i must be here for the palestine rally and very happily gave me directions. i never understood why but it just clicked with me why it made me happy too to find people who speak my language even though i mightnt necessarily like the person. its something we learned in my education class about ethnic identity and what shapes it: symbols, values and narratives. i dont really have any symbols and i never felt i shared the values of the middle class conservatives i was around but with ordinary arabs i guess i do share some values but more than that, we share history or stories- we get where the other came from. thats why people are happy to see people like them. this was important because i have been worried about loosing my culture since i moved away from home and outside of my family and family friends there are no arabs i am close to(not that i was close to my family). i was worried my culture would become eating our food.

also i went to woolworths today and they were selling 1.25 litres of pepsi for $1 which, in my sleep deprived state, i need to pull an all nighter. not as exciting as my epiphany.

I went to the psychiatrist today about Asperger's. After some pretty intense questioning of me, my mother and my auntie who came with me he told us that. in his mind, he is pretty certain I have Asperger's but still wants to test me to be certain and so that the diagnosis carries proper weight for purposes of getting support and stuffs. I am *so* relieved and happy

I was thinking about you last night, invisiblesilent...because it was one of those invisible and silent moments. I am glad to hear you are getting testing. That's great!
Maybe I can get proper testing too? I've never had modern testing and I've been wondering lately what it would show.

My happy news is that my computer admin was hit by a hacker in January and even after having been "fixed" once it has continually had issues and errors and malfunctioning security software, and I have spent the past several weeks struggling with problems on it installed by another person...and finally...*zero errors*! I did have to (ahem...) ask for help with the last bit though. He was very patient, taught me a little bit, and potentially helped me solve another problem too! I have been pretty obsessive about getting this under control, and the funny thing is that normally (aside from the past couple of months) I don't spend that much time online.

I feel a little flattered that somebody was thinking about me even if it isbecause of the name and probably the distinctive avatar ^_^ Yes it is great, I think I may go through a period of go-get-yourself-diagnosed evangelism because, even without a proper diagnosis at this point, the fact that a consultant psychiatrist with apparent experience of autism pretty much agrees I have AS means that I am at least not just crazy and neurotic and convincing myself of something that is totally not true. That's a really nice feeling. I think if/when a proper diagnosis happens (and he says he wants to do the testing ASAP) then I will probably feel even more relieved and at peace with myself which was the whole point of the endeavour. Incidentally he also says my obsessive tendencies go way beyond Asperger's and that I also have OCD which is something I've also suspected for ages. So yes the point of this monologue is that, if you have insurance or the money to cover it, you should totally get tested if your symptoms are causing insurmountable difficulties and especially if they are making you constantly feel guilt and self-dislike and other such things because you blame yourself for everything like I do (did soon I hope ).



It would have driven me crazy if somebody installed things on my computer... grrr! I hope you sufficiently berated the person in question. Computer problem obsessions are important obsessions to have! As for why these obsessions are important, for example, using conservative estimates: Imagine that our hypothetical person Jane uses her computer daily for 2 hours and performs approximately 1 "operation" per minute (I'll define operation as opening a program or file, opening a new webpage; that sort of thing. Spyware and other problems can cause slowdowns with nearly every aspect of the computer usage so nearly everything could fall into this category for the purposes of this). So, Jane performs 120 operations per day. Lets say that Jane's poorly configured or spyware/virus infested computer causes each of her operations to take just 1.5 seconds longer than they would with a clean, well configured and maintained computer. 1.5*120=180. So, Jane wastes 3 minutes per day due to her computer being slow (for many people this could be much higher due to more usage or worse computer problems). 3*365=1095. That's 1095 minutes or 18.25 hours per year - the better part of an entire day and, if Jane happens to be using her computer to work, then close to 3 days working productivity lost!

If Jane's problem caused operations to take 2 seconds more and she used her computer for 4 hours a day then she wastes 48.66... hours per year. Two whole days! And if you assume that she gets 7 hours of actual work done in a day then she wastes 6.95 working days a year! This kind of stuff could break somebody's business and, that aside, it's incredibly depressing to think of all that wasted time just staring at a screen waiting for something to happen for no good reason whatsoever.

Sorry for the crazy monologue lol.

Your gonna love me I'm thinking of going to Burma I want an out their experience , well away from the drunken Aussies

That rules out much of Sth East Asia

A couple of early reviews are in for Frankenweenie: (click)

One critic called it "the finest, freshest Tim Burton movie in ages".

Now I'm more excited than ever to see this movie!

Got a text from one of my close buddies.