how can history be a month ahead????

Okay, I have successfully added two "ON THIS DAY" links. Each new entry I post gets linked to the websites of the History Channel and that of the New York Times which, when you open, detail important historical events on that same day. You can find them right beside the dates above.

But how come the History Channel is a month ahead???? Someone help me please!

While you're at it, enjoy this addition to my blog. :-)

The Fine Art of Procrastination

Annually The New Zealand Herald, one of my company's publications and the product I used to sell advertising for, publishes several issues of THE COLLEGE HERALD. This is a supplement that comes with the main daily newspaper where all the editorials are written by highschool students ("college" here refers to "highschool" and it's "uni" for university schooling, obviously) around the country. They invite write-ups of all sorts of subject matters and whichever the editor finds worth publishing gets to be printed in The College Herald.

There was one article that seized my attention. It was in fact stamped "the editor's choice". I so related to it I felt like I was reading my own diary. I thought I'd share it here...

THE FINE ART OF PROCRASTINATION

by Maya Shino

Year 13 student

IMPORTANT: DO NOT READ.

I have been intending to write this article for weeks. Why am I finally doing it? Something more important came up.

This concept has formed the basis of a method recognized by Stanford philosophy professor John Perry as structured procrastination. Structured procrastination allows procrastinators to adeptly put off arduous tasks by focusing their attention on tasks of a less pressing nature.

Many procrastinators acquire the reputation for getting a lot done. How so? They succeed in completing difficult and important tasks, as long as these tasks are a way of postponing work on something more important. With this sort of appropriate task structure, the procrastinator becomes a useful citizen.

Procrastinators are busy types. They don't want to waste time wasting time. They want the most effective means of wasting time, and structuring their procrastination is the key.

A popular misconception is that procrastinating means doing absolutely nothing, when it is in fact almost the opposite. Procrastinating is doing everything one can to avoid working on a more urgent task. Procrastinators are not guilty of wasting their time. They are guilty of misusing it.

Procrastinators seldom do nothing; they engage in a series of displacement activities which distract them from their principal task. Popular displacement activities include pencil sharpening, baking and devising your own Dewey Decimal System for arranging the books on your bedroom bookshelf. Or maybe that's just me.

Professor Perry believes many would-be procrastinators are being led astray. Some try to minimise their commitments, assuming that if they have only a few things to do, they will quit procrastinating and get them done. This is fair logic, but goes contrary to the basic nature of the procrastinator and destroys their most important source of motivation. The few tasks on their list will be, by definition, the most important, and the only way to avoid doing them will be to do nothing. This is a way to become a couch potato and such specimens will not be getting my vote for ProcrastinIdol 05.

The successful candidate will exemplify the efficient procrastinator. That's right, procrastinators are efficient. They don't do things by halves. That is, of course, assuming they get around to doing the said thing at all.

A well-practised procrastinator will manage to avoid doing something important for prolonged amounts of time. The better can put off a tedious task indefinitely. The best can evoke in those around them a standard of frustrated impatience so great that they offer to undertake the task themselves. I'm thinking of entering, but I've got far less important matters to attend to.

R-E-A-D

Cerise has just recently learned phonetics. Thanks to the two Leap Frog DVDs I bought from the States. I knew that was good investment. A little more practice with mum and now she's reading words! She's loving it so much she won't stop reading. She has found a new appreciation of her books. It's like every book is brand new, she looks at them and reads them like she's never had them before. Of course this is another proud moment but on nights when I'm exhausted and need sleep so bad, I start to wish the "Professor" (Leap Frog) hadn't been so damn good.

This is a cycle that we go through each time Cerise learns a new skill. She can get really zealous and engrossed. Much like when she learned to draw, she used up the entire ring of A4 paper in two days. And only recently have I discovered, to my horror, huge colourful drawings under our dining table and tiny discreet one tone drawings behind the leather couch and on the sides of the TV (chrome)! Well, i guess they will be reminders of those beautiful moments.

She learned to use the computer, only using the mouse but for some strange reason (presumably, a bold attempt to trial typing), the keyboard got broken. We knew we simply had to show her ALL the ropes instead of leaving some to her imagination. So now she can turn the computer on and off, type and use the mouse without causing us to buy a new laptop.

Writing her own name became a serious addiction. And she just had a fix writing my name as often as she writes her own. So that all her paper work at kindy has both her name and mine. Our names meaning one and the same does come in handy now.

And ooooohhhh the puzzles. Putting puzzles together is probably my most favourite skill of hers. For the simple reason that it keeps her preoccupied for a long period of time I can actually start and finish a chore. But long period of time means a puzzle of at least 200 pieces. Anything less than that is easy peasy. So much so that when we travelled to America, I had with me several sets of small puzzles which were my salvation at Los Angeles airport during our 5 hour wait for our connecting flight to San Francisco. It also provided entertainment to other bored passengers enduring the same plight.

Playing Nintendo is probably one of those things I didn't expect her to muster at this stage. But believe it or not, she even had to teach me how to undo a command! With a competition like her, Mario Kart isn't as much fun as it used to be when I'd danced my way to the finish line. This has also unveiled a new challenge for me and Edwin ---- how do you teach a child that it is okay to lose in a game, but also instill in her the value of winning? How do you make sure she doesn't cry when she doesn't reach the finish line first? Telling her it's okay, it's part of the game, you can win next time... only causes her to cry more. I notice though that when I ignore her emotional outcry, she stops and gets on with life, most times she would ask for another game. That may stop the dramas and prevent noise pollution but is that really addressing the problem?

Though Cerise ditched her ballet classes (too humdrum for her liking supposedly), I'd like to think that swimming, on the other hand, is turning into a real passion. She has now moved on to a more advanced class. This is something I can't share with her in two ways though. One, I'm not a swimmer so I don't have a full appreciation of this skill to even relate to her or maybe even motivate her. Two, she gets really distracted when I'm around so I don't usually watch her at swim class anymore. She gets so excited by my presence she can't focus on the task at hand. So I'm semi-banned from her swim class. But Daddy always gives me a full progress report.

We've only ever expose Cerise to things she takes interest in. And for ages now, I know she has the making of a gymnast. She is excellent on bars, poles, ropes (okay this is not sounding very wholesome now), balance beams, nets, cart wheels, obstacle courses, bungy trampoline. She even dared to rock climb last month and got a certificate for it. She's not afraid of heights. She loves the thrill of it. But Daddy and Papa are against enrolling her for gymnastics. I'm working on it though.

Cerise, you really make daddy and mummy proud and we love you so much. Now, stop sucking your thumb!

Smack the Slack

Okay, I'll take one. Even two. I know I deserve it. Geez, I can never get on top of things. That's the one goal I have every single waking moment... "get on top of things". And it's the one thing I can never achieve. I'm as hopeless as this blog.

I had the flu this week (uy, hoping to gain some sympathy). Went to see my doctor , this time with the mission of staying in his clinic for more than 5 minutes, making the most of my $50 fee. So I went from describing to him what I thought might be symptoms of brain tumor (for dramatic effect) to discussing my iron deficiency which led me to the laboratory for another blood test (that wasn't part of my plan), to discussing my blood disorder, thalasaemia (the spelling of which I still haven't mustered), to getting tips on figuring out my ovulation period (I was running out of things to talk about here, you see), to sneakily enquiring why Edwin requires a second blood test that will last for 2 hours but due to doctor-patient confidentiality, I didn't get any answer (doctor knew I was pushing it).

As it turns out, I did have the flu. Two days of missing work would have been an ideal way of finally "getting on top of things" at home. But when you have the fever and you can't eat anything, holding a pen to write down your list of things to do already poses a huge hurdle. So I still haven't done the paper work for claiming our medical expenses. The one thing I have been meaning to do in the last 11 months!

My blood test results reveal that my blood count is fine and while my iron deficiency improved ever so slightly from level 4 to 6, doctor remains unsatisfied with this progress and is now coming up with a brilliant idea to ameliorate this situation. Watch this space. And now that I have recovered, craving for salmon steak, and typing this new entry, I am itching all over my legs and arms, possible allergy from Jack n Jill Chippy! Could I be more unfortunate? Yes, this is one of those days when I crave for products from our homeland. Had one sampaloc and shared Chippy with Cerise. And now it seems I'll have to suffer the consequences of finally eating after a day and a half of starvation.

Next week I return to work with plenty of things to accomplish. I haven't been particularly happy with work lately. It's just wonderful how management showed concern about my unhappiness. Had serious talks with my boss who explicitly admitted management was worried I was unhappy and they didn't want that so they wanted to know how to make me happy rather than see me bid the company goodbye. Now that's comforting and can be flattering but also a play of reverse psychology, don't you think? Coz now, I feel more obliged. Instead of demanding for things that will make me happy, I find myself feeling guilty at how management looks after me so I focus more on what I should and can do for them and not the other way around. I suppose it's the right thing to do because in all honesty, I haven't been self-motivated lately to perform my best. They know and I know I can do better, I can do more. But for some reason, I don't. I'll stop rambling on this coz I really don't know what's going on here.

Guess I deserve 3 smacks after all.