One of the things that I do not like about myself is my inability to speak fluently. Sometimes (less than 5% of my sentences) when I want to speak (usually it would be asking a question or telling some kind of story), I tend to stutter at the start of the sentence. For example, I tend to have a kind of mental block before saying the word ‘What’ or ‘Why’. For some reason, my brain has already sent the signals to my larynx (vocal cord) to speak the word that follows those words. Therefore, the next word gets jumbled up with the 1st word and I cannot start the sentence properly. My problem is that I can’t seem to find the problem that causes this. Usually when I stutter, I do not feel nervous at all so we can rule that out. (in fact when I feel nervous, I tend to speak more fluently). Also I do not have stress, fear, or anxiety so we can rule those out too (again I tend to speak more fluently under those situations). It always seem to catch me when I think I’m ‘under control’ with my conversations.
The other time that this would happen is if I try to relate a story (usually something that I have seen with my eyes a few days ago). So my brain plays the story in my head so I can relate that to other people. I think my problem is that the story in my head goes too quickly for me to speak it and so sometimes I get caught in a situation where the story in my head goes too far ahead and I get confused. Therefore, I start stuttering.
However, I know that this problem is only localized to when I’m speaking by forming sentences in my head (a conversation). It doesn’t occur when I imitate people, read out loud, or sing a song.
Hmm I just found an awesome article about stuttering and I think it pretty much explains what I’m going to say more clearly than I can. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttering Check it out when you have time. It is a good read. (No in fact, please do read it. Maybe if you just read the 1st part until the part before ‘Treatments’. That can help you understand this problem that I have if you really want to know)
So I think, this ‘disability’ causes me to be more reserved than I like to be. One of the frustrating things for me is that sometimes when I have something to say, I usually think too much about it, as I want to start the sentence as fluent as possible. The time that I take usually is too long and so the conversation shifts to another topic.
Maybe after writing this article down, I finally realize the problem that I have and try to improve it so I don’t stutter anymore. (note I used the word ‘improve’ as according to that website stuttering doesn’t have a cure. People who suffer from it can only improve their conditions)

PS I actually wanted to write about this for a long time. So if you thought that your comments made me write this then its not true. I wrote this purely cause I noticed this was a problem for quite a while already. Also, I realized that I can’t actually remember stuttering while I was still in Malaysia. Maybe could someone from Malaysia remind me if I did.

The effects of stress and fast food on facial complexion.
(This article is based on my shallow knowledge of the stress response and shouldn’t be taken to the a true scientific fact. In fact this is just my hypothesis)

Over the past few months, I’ve been going through a lot of stress and at the same time eating fast food at least 3 meals per week. (This usually happens at the end of the week, so essentially it would be 3 meals of fast food like burgers or pizza in back to back days). I usually have lunch at some fast food chain on Thursday, then dinner would be a takeaway from a fast food chain as well, and end it on Friday by going out for lunch with my friends at a fast food chain. That’s just the minimum, sometimes on the weekends; I sometimes take fast food as well. Fast food is low on vitamins and high on sodium and unsaturated fats.

The past few months have been probably 1 of the most stressful periods of my life. For some reason, I’ve been stressing about ‘stuff’ which if you look at it from a third party’s perspective, its really nothing. But when I’m down, I’m really down, like really really down, but when I’m feeling good its really really good. But anyway, 1 of the things Humanbio 142 thought me was that the body releases specific hormones during stressful situations (Cortisol, Norepinephrine and Epinephrine). A stressor will stimulate the hypothalamus to release CRH (Corticotrophin Releasing Hormone) and that travels down to the anterior pituitary via the hypophyseal portal vein. CRH then stimulates the pituitary to release ACTH (Adrenocorticotropic Hormone). ACTH then travels through the blood vessels and eventually ends up in the adrenal glands. Here, it stimulates the adrenal cortex to release cortisol. Some of the effects of cortisol are breaking down of glycogen/fatty acids to glucose, gluconeogenesis, protein catabolism, immune depression, an increased resistance to stress and a decreased inflammatory response.So how do these factors tie up with facial complexion? Well I think that the high levels of cortisol in my blood when I’m stressed out depresses my immune system, hence when a pimple forms, my immune system cannot flush out the bacteria quickly enough. Soon more and more pimple forms and the face become scarred. Add the fast food to this, a low vitamin diet (vitamin C especially which is good for skin repair) means that my skin cells don’t have the supplies to heal those scars fast enough. Therefore, the end result is bad facial complexion. To try to verify this article, I’ll stop stressing (after the exams) and eat healthier foods. If my face complexion improves, then I can convince myself that my hypothesis is true.

However, since this is an observational study, it cannot reliably establish causation, so I cannot say that too much fast food and stress causes bad facial complexion. There are too many unknown variables that have yet to be accounted for (air cleanliness, hygiene etc).

Its funny how time rules supreme. It has no beginning or end. It has no mass, takes any form or shape and yet it commands the lives of everyone. The world and pretty much the lives of every living thing in this world revolve around time.

One of the things you can count on in life is that time never waits. Time never waits, yet it can suddenly change how fast it moves. Have you ever waited for someone who was late? Every time you looked at your watch it somehow always read the same time… as though time had stopped. Or when you are having the time of your life, an hour gone would only have felt like 5 minutes.

If time had consciousness, then it would be very confused indeed. Take John for an example (all characters are purely fictional). He is being interviewed for a job. So the interviewee bombards him with questions and he answers all of them one by one while saying ‘Man I wish time would fly by quicker so I can get out of this interview’. Finally after what seems like hours, he comes out of the room and checks the time, and found out that only 20 minutes has passed. John then goes for a date with this beautiful girl. He takes her out to a romantic dinner, then to the movies and then drove her back home. After they kissed goodbye he looked at the clock and said ‘I spent 4 hours with her in what seemed like 10 minutes only, Man I wish I had more time with her’
If you were ‘time’ and you had to power to grant people’s wishes, what will you do? Will you say ‘ok since u asked for time to pass quicker I’ll let time pass quicker. No wait, you asked time to pass slower… ARGHHHH CAN YOU MAKE UP YOUR MIND?’ So that’s why time doesn’t have consciousness, it would be crazy otherwise. So the rate time goes is made relative depending on each individual's needs. However, humans cannot make up their minds of how fast we want time to go, yet it has been ‘decided’ that we decide how fast time goes ourselves (pretty contradictory you might say).
Apparently older people find that time pass more quickly than younger people. Older people experience time like this (very very rough approximate) ‘like a snap of a finger, we are 20, still young and free…SNAP, we are 30, our children still depend on us for food, shelter etc…SNAP, we are 40 our children are leaving the house…SNAP, 50, SNAP, 60 etc. I’m sure you have heard the comment ‘Look at how fast our kids have grown’ many times on tv. Young people (children) however experience time like this ‘SNAP, Monday, 1st day of school. I hate school, I don’t want to go to school…SNAP, Tuesday, 2nd day of school, I hate school, I don’t want to go to school…SNAP, Wednesday, 3rd day….bla bla bla…SNAP Saturday, yay weekends SNAP Monday, 1st day of school. I hate school, I don’t want to go to school.
My theory is that children tend to focus on what they want to do everyday, eg a tv program or computer time after school. Older people tend to focus on plans for the weekends or summer holidays/vacations so relatively time would pass faster for old people than for young people because if you focus on something, time passes relatively fast until you reach your goal (ie to tend not to notice our week fly by etc)
Bad side of time: What time has passed cannot be retrieved. What has been done, cannot be undone. Cause time, being the impatient entity that it is, never waits and being incapable of going in reverse. So it is up to us to catch up whether we like it or not. Also we have to plan our actions properly as we cannot just erase the things we have done

Quote (Robert Jordan, Wheel of time) “The wheel of time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend…….There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of time’ For full quote, read the book =)

Random stuff going through my head at the moment:

….what is my purpose in life? Do we all have a sole purpose in life, for example maybe to give some advise to ‘the one’? or brighten up ‘the one’ day by smiling at him/her? OR do we all have a ‘fixed script’ life going on and everything that you think happened by sheer luck or coincidence has all already been written down somewhere; like everything that happened has a reason for it happening? OR it could be that fixed script thing except that only the ends are fixed but how to get to that end is not. OR it’s a fixed script but the ‘wild card’ would be luck itself, hence you are all given a certain fate but only through luck you can alter it slightly. These matters are too tough for me to handle at this time and age. I’ll deal with them later…

…what if I didn’t pass that test. The test that ultimately changed my life. Here’s the summary of what happened. I was in standard 3 (that’s about 9 to 10 years ago) and the test was called PTS. It was basically an experiment held by the ministry of education. It was sort of like an IQ test with an essay at the end, which tested your language. If a student passed the test with flying colours, he would qualify to skip standard 4 and move on to standard 5. So my teacher was reading out the results (ie who got in) to the class and guess what guys, my name was the last one read. I remember me saying ‘Hope its not me, hope its not me’ and my teacher smiled to me and said, ‘you passed’. I can honestly say that I don’t know how I did it. I cannot imagine what would happen if that name was not mine. All the people that I know would be different. My friends would be different. All the people I would have met in the future would be different. My personality might be different (mixing with people 1 year older than you can have a significant impact on personality and behaviour)… basically that I wouldn’t be who I am now if it wasn’t for it. In fact I wouldn’t be writing this if that name weren’t me (ooo paradox). I would not change it for the world though. I love my friends and my life that I have now…

… the science of attraction, something that I would not mind studying or researching when I grow up. What I know so far is that females generally prefer men who are taller than they are. Treat it like a cut off point before they look at other things I think. (this is only a general assumptions and probably would not be true as I lack the evidence to back this statement up). Females also tend to look at personality more than looks compared to men, but of course physical attraction must be there as well. For example, if a girl would to pick a date from 5 men (all of them are not as ‘hot’ as 1 another) and she is also given about 3 mins to find out about that person, she might pick the 1 which was not the hottest if he has a better personality than the hotter guy. Guys however tend to go for the hottest 1 almost automatically. I read this ages ago and I’m not sure if its true or just a hypothesis but apparently a person would be attracted to the person with the same skin shade (not implying race as there can be dark Caucasians or white Asians or fair Indians) and face texture as the person who delivered them. (I think its because the 1st person we see would be that person, then only our mother next and father and etc.) But of course, in life anything can happen so this would change a lot, also depending on how you were brought up…

… the ONLY class for the whole year that I went to (that is in the afternoon stream) I met Lara. Haha another funny coincidence. But I mite jinx our relationship so I would not dwell on this anymore…

Quotes of the day: 'Actions speaks louder than words.' Words not deeds its like a garden full of weeds'