Journey to find the real me

These few weeks has been and will continue to be a whirlpool of presentations, assignments, projects and exams. I feel faint just thinking about them. *world spins in front of my eyes* BUT… I will survive. I must survive, so that I can go back to spore to have my satays, fried kuey tiao, curry fish head, mee soto etc etc etc. I’m salivating just thinking about them. Hehehe…











I just finished writing an essay for one of my modules called Stress and Disability. (Hmm.. actually, I don’t know why it’s called Stress and Disability. It should just be called Disability, because nothing is mentioned about stress at all!) Anyway, we are supposed to use an article about this man call Jim MacLaren and we are supposed to apply all the theories of disability that we learnt to write this essay. The essay was a killer to write and I have many nights of splitting headaches trying to complete it. You would think that I’ll gladly and eagerly throw everything about MacLaren away. However, I’m so inspired by this amazing man that I want to share his story with everyone. I admire his optimism, determination and perseverance. He met with an accident and had his leg amputated at 22, but fought back to become a champion triathlete. At 30, a second accident caused him to become a quadriplegic that is constantly in pain, yet he still manages to lead an independent life and feel blessed through his ordeals. His life story can be found on http://www.jimmaclaren.com/about.php. I find some of the things MacLaren said really thought-provoking.














1. “We are not in charge of what happens to us in this lifetime. We are in charge only of how we perceive what happens to us in this lifetime.”








2. “I started looking around and seeing people everywhere – especially successful middle-class American men – walking around in complete denial, smugly thinking to themselves, I sure am doing a good job running my life here. But I could see now that their sense of control was nothing but a mirage. Safety, entitlement, power – these are all fantasies. We don’t drive our destinies. Not in that way.”








3. “You have only one task as a human being: to know yourself.”








4. “Success can be measured in a multitude of ways. Do we love and are we loved? Now that is truly success! Appreciate the gifts in our lives. They may seem difficult to see....yet they are there.”














It really makes me reflect back on my own life. Aren’t I just like the middle-class American men holding on to a false sense of security? If all the impermanent things are taken away from me, can I deal with it with peace and calmness? Do I know the true, real me?















I should start on the journey of knowing myself and stop living in denial. I must learn to live in the present moment.

Tulips of my favourite colour

Me at the Floriade. Did i grow fatter? According to some people, i did. *sob sob*

Canberra

I’m having a 1 week mid-semester break currently. Very fast. Now already in the middle of the sem. Very soon, I’ll be home! YEAH!



Anyway, I just came back from a 2 day-1 nite Canberra tour. Went with 8 other friends. It was a pretty nice trip. Seen & learnt a lot about Australia during the trip.



Canberra is the capital of Australia and it’s a very unique capital. Because it’s a planned capital. It’s designed to be the capital, not developed over time like other capitals of the world. Therefore, it’s v organized and orderly. All the major government offices are there and all the high commissions and embassies are all allocated places at a specific part of Canberra.



I visited the Australia Museum, Parliament House, War Memorial and the Floriade in Canberra. Shall give a brief summary of each.



1. Australia Museum: It’s really huge and different from most museums that I visited before. It’s referred by our guide (who happens to be a very knowledgeable 80+ yr old ex-university professor) as a social museum. And it’s easy to see why. The design of the museum is very modern and lots of high tech stuff are used in the museum. The exhibits in the museum focus a lot on individuals (outstanding and normal people) who help to shape modern Australia. I liked the museum, though we only managed to tour a very small part of it which is a pity.

2. Parliament House: The parliament house that we visited is the new parliament house. It’s not only the place where the nominated senates meet. It also contain a huge ballroom, offices of all the senates and ministers, a gallery of all the important people in Australia history and a exhibition hall which changes exhibitions once in a while. So you should be able to figure out how big the whole ground is.

3. War Memorial: Located at the foot of a hill that is about 1.5km away from the parliament house but directly facing the parliament house. So from the entrance of the parliament house, you can clearly see the war memorial. The reason for this is to constantly remind the members of the parliament the devastations that war will bring to the country and people. I thought this was a really significant arrangement. There’s another gigantic exhibition hall inside the war memorial which stores articles, pictures and stories about all the wars the ANZAC (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps) was involved in, which includes the 1st and 2nd world war, the Vietnam and Korea war. Objectively, I should say this is a very informative and well-equipped museum but personally, I don’t really like this place because I feel very sad seeing the pictures of how war inflict sufferings and injuries on people and the senseless loss of lives.

4. The Floriade!!! My favourite part of the trip. The Floriade (flower festival) is actually a display of lots of flowers to celebrate the arrival of spring. The highlight of the display is the fields after fields of tulips (one of my favourite flowers) of different colours. Imagine my joy at seeing so many many many many flowers! Ha…. Absolutely adore the festival.


To see the pictures of my Canberra trip, can visit my online album at http://weimei.shutterfly.com/action/



And to those of you who complained that my weekly blog is becoming a monthly blog, sorry lah. My life here is not really that interesting and I don’t want to end up writing about the same old boring stuff about school, grocery shopping and cooking all the time. And ok ok…. I admit it. I’m lazy too. Hehe…. So I decided to change it from a weekly update to an event/emotion/impulse based kind of update. Apologies to my faithful readers. But oh well, good things are worth waiting for right? :p