Hey, You

A lil thank you to the lovely Ms. Madeleine Teh; yes, I am awesome. Take it, sis.

Okay, so what do we have? Ah yes... prom.

So. After... what, a week? A week of getting ready for this gig, decorations, buying ink, fiddling around with strips of aluminium foil... and so on. Hey, it was cool coz Maddie was there, yeah. She even offered her place as the decor's base of operations.

It was like a philharmonic concert there, folks, the brother practices the piano for hours. I got the Nutcracker and other musical pieces replaying in my head all the time now. Wickeddddd.

I watched Tron: Legacy a few days ago. It was awesome, and amazingly awesome. I'm watching the original Tron now. I gotta say... in T:L, the discs battles are waaaaaaayyy better. In Tron... it looked like they were playing catch with glowing Frisbee discs which could slice you. In T:L, these discs could still cut you, but it would cut you in slo-mo.

Yeah. Just like that. Ouch.

But the light cycle scenes in the original are more intense, no doubt. Ah, just watch it folks! Truly a must see this jolly Christmas season!

I have my suit. I have my camera. I have my printer (it's Sarah's actually) and I'm all set to go. Tomorrow morning I'm off to One World hotel, to check out the place for prom one last time. Then maybe register for driving lessons.

Yes, I already went for the theory talk for 5 hours... but haven't paid or registered yet. Whoops.

The talk was nuts. And bull. And balls. What the hell.

Almost there, Madeleine. Almost. Then you can enjoy your holidays. We all can enjoy our holidays.

Merry Christmas and a happy new year to everyone! See ya, folks!

That lil thing you do -- lying -- I can bloody well see it!

I woke up late today. Usually my time's at 5.00am but I got around at 6.15am. Of course, after a quick shower and that treasure hunt for my under-- I mean neck tie, I started the walk from home to school carrying around 15 SPBT textbooks which I was supposed to return (yes, I'm missing two textbooks; don't blame me, I'm only human!).

Then this happened.

''Dude, your class (5C) has its book-returning session tomorrow. Today is 5B's turn.''

See, no one actually told me that.

Well, that out of the way, it turned out to be quite an interesting day. No class, some noobs had their Accounts exams, free period all day. Class-hopping joy, what fun.

''Uh can we borrow Bob for a moment?''

''Sure,'' *raises eyebrow in a very suggestive way* ''what for?''

Ah, and there was that little fight in which I got roped into; some relationship crisis. I didn't ask to be a part of it, I never wanted to, but fate's just mean sometimes, and before you know it, the boyfriend wants to pull my guts out through my nostrils and the girlfriend wants me to be her output for tears.
I was nice, too nice, like someone pointed out, and went along with it.
And this is the part where it got cool. I mean, really cool. Really cool. Let me try that in Italic and Bold. Really cool. Well, in my opinion anyway.

''Is he mad?''

''No, he's not!'' *eyes looking down, nodding while saying otherwise, raised voice pitch*

''You're lying.''

''Look, he is not mad and I am not lying!'' *repitition of statement* ''Look, I thought you wanted to help me!'' *changes subject, classic deflection*

''If you're lying to me, I can't do squat. I need to know what exactly happened.''

*sighs* ''Okay... this--''

Whoa, spoilers there, and there's that confidentiality agreement. I helped the girl out, but she was trying to cheat me by trying to cut me from the whole truth. I got everything out in the end, using that simple technique of just looking into the face. Face-reading, a deception expert would call it.

Deception expert is a real occupation. The science of FACS (Facial Action Coding System) is applied here. Discovered by Dr. Paul Ekman in 1970s, the good doctor theorised that every face that showed emotion, any particular emotion, joy, hate, contempt, surprise; all of these emotions had their own specific features formed by the facial muscles, and it's the same for all humans. Yes, it's universal. If Obama and Clinton had something to hide, they'd have the same look on their faces, eyebrows joined together, upper eyelids raised while lower eyelids tensioned and the muscles around the mouth tightened. The look of fear of that secret to be found out.

Spawned a TV-series too. Season 3 up this October.


I'm not saying I'm as good as that bloke up there, or any of those scientists. But I love learning the technique. True scientist say this is BS, since psychology plays a large part in FACS and psychology has been acknowledged as ''soft science''.

I'd like to think I saved someone's relationship today. But since I did play a part in destabilising that relationship somewhere in the past, I'm too ashamed to say it out loud.

There's another technique in detecting a lie, that is by body movement. The scientists call it ''gestural emblems''. A gestural emblem is something the body does involuntarily because of the loss of synch between mind and body when the person lies. This lost synchronisation however can be overcome if the person is a pathological liar, someone who has full control over his muscles, thus disallowing any involuntary movement.

An example of a gestural emblem is the defensive posture. When a person lies, and the lie is opposed by the listener, the liar will go into a stance called the defensive posture, crossed arms, chest in and usually followed by a few steps back. These movements show the need to reinforce the lie, withdraw and defend. We have President Obama for a demonstration.

Though we can say Obama is just being defensive in this picture; I mean, it is a talk with the opposition.

The involuntary muscle movement on the face is harder to catch, according to deception expert Dr. Ekman since usually the liars are betrayed by their emotions within a 1/5 of a second. A hidden smile, a look of contempt, a flash of fear, or the dilation of the pupils. A quick and sharp eye can catch these looks.

FACS is a lovely thing, don't you think? We really should appreciate Dr. Ekman's work. A deception expert is on my list of careers now.

In the end, emotions betray lies. Philosophic, eh?

The Emotional Spectrum!

Hi, people! I've been saving up this post for quite a while. It's an intriguing one; not sure if anyone's going to agree with it.

But hey, if I write a blog that's supposed to please everyone that comes across it, I should work for the government.

I was joking, ISA agents. Really. I love our Prime Minister.

Anyway... my topic for today: the Emotional Spectrum.

Oh, I just love topics about emotions, don't I? I am so gay. Not like Edward or Jacob, though, no matter how immortal or how hairy they are, respectively.

So! Recently, I've read this comic book (while I should've been studying) from the DC comics print, a crossover event which involves all the legendary superheroes coming together for a spectacular team-up against a horde of evil enemies (oh, the cliche) entitled Blackest Night.

Blackest Night was an interesting read, praise-worthy artwork and suspense-filled storyline. I'm not going to give this comic book a review, no, we leave that to the critics. No, I want to elaborate on a plot key that was mentioned in the comic.

Very fictional in some cases, but somehow it reflects upon the reality of our daily mundane lives, which is why modern comic books nowadays are so believable.

The plot key: the emotional spectrum!

Now, a brief description of the emotional colour spectrum and how it fits into the story. Screw spoiler alerts, this comic was out for a while. Our story begins when the dead begin to rise thanks to black rings which suddenly fall from the sky. These rings have like an automatic pilot system and seek any dead fellow's ring finger. Once the ring is placed, the dead dude rises, and begins killing the living, via tearing out their hearts and then eating them. This allows the other black rings to wear themselves on the recently deceased, and we have more ring-powered zombies, and the numbers increase, world wide. These dead fellows are known as the Black Lantern Corps.

There are seven other Lantern Corps, and like the Black LC, they have a specific colour which defines their emotion. Black, is of course for the dead. There's the Green Lantern Corps, and the ring-bearers are bona-fide will-powered beings. Will is their strength. Next, we have the Blue Lantern Corps, and they empower hope into other people in times of despair. Needless to say, hope is their greatest weapon. We then have the Indigo Tribe, powered by their feel of compassion. And at the end of one side of the emotional spectrum is the Star Sapphires, and their power is the violet-themed love. Now, we move to the negative side of the spectrum. On the right of the green power of Will is the yellow light of fear. These folks instill fear in other people, so that's their thing. And then we have avarice, greedy beings which use rings powered by orange greed. And on the end, opposite of love, is the red rage of the crimson-coloured anger-management-issues punks, which are so brutal, if they have their hearts ripped out, it won't matter because their Red Lantern rings serve as their new heart to pump all that rage tainted blood.


From the left we have the emotions of Love (violet), Compassion (indigo), Hope (blue), Will (green), Fear (yellow), Avarice (orange), and Rage (red). The Emotional Spectrum of colours.

If you don't notice it, the emotional spectrum is like a meter, which of course varies in your emotions, each of them different with their own colour. Just imagine a needle pointing to either of those rings. It goes without saying, that the emotion of will is the most balanced of all, as it resides right in the middle. Yes, love is a good emotion, but it strays too far from to the left, thus never achieving equilibrium. Compassion's nice too, and so is hope, but none of these matter if you don't have the will for action.

Oh, I'm loving the colour of green.

On the right side of the emotional spectrum, we have the more negative effects of emotions. Fear? Fear is good, shows that you're human and you are afraid of something, but too much fear and no willpower at all, you'll succumb. Ah. Avarice, or greed. Need I mention more? And there's rage! Never a good emotion, even if the situation demands it. I tell you, those Red Lantern freaks in the comic cough up their own blood to drown their enemies. That's just gruesome.

Just another meaningless post. Next to Hui Jan's two Ramadhan-dedicated blogposts (I feel so guilty, and I'm the one fasting here) this post just sucks.

But I had to post it up anyway. Tell me readers. Which Lantern Corps do you belong in?

Citra Warna was a BLAST!

Hey guys! Sorry late update. Exams you know, those papers on your school desk which somehow challenges your mentality. Studying myself to death. Well, maybe not death, but I have been studying. A bit.

Anyway... Citra Warna. Yeap. Awesome. Terrific. Superb. Amazing. Spectacular. Web of... sorry, getting carried away. I'm mentioning all of Spider-Man's comic series (to those who don't know... it's the Amazing Spider-Man, the Spectacular Spider-Man, and the Web of Spider-Man.)

Alright, off topic there. Yeah, the folks of SAS had a damn good time at Dataran Merdeka that fateful night of 22nd of May 2010. We danced, laughed, cheered, partied like there was no tomorrow, tho there wasn't any drinking, unless you count the mountains of mineral water bottles we downed that night. It was a cool night, but we were sweating and boy, did we smell.

Puan Rema said to us after the event was over: 'now you have that empty feeling in your lives.'

Well, the Form 5s certainly miss those moments. Dancing in front of the Agong and on live national TV! Some Form 4s aren't doing so well. Pity those fellas. You should see their Facebook status updates.

Yeah, Citra Warna was really a fun time in our lives. A good experience for all of us. Look out for Citra Warna 2011, eh?

Thanks for visiting!