Sakinah Abdul Aziz

The great thing about residing in a place for about one and a half decades together with some others, you really see how people have grown. You enter the lift, and you start to observe. Like you've always known how this person would turn out totally gorgeous when she hits the peak of her youth. Or like, you sorta draw some links between smoking and weight loss because the girl who was always seen smoking has gotten really skinny. Or you learnt how hormones did not seem very fair to some teenage growing boys, because look how those young lanky boys outgrown you and how presentable and tall they've become. Or, like how you used to wonder which grade the other uniform-clad neighbours are in and now you are wondering what are their occupation. And you also realize, how those white hair is slowly peeking out among the black strands, how their shoulders tend to slouch and how small their frames have become. You notice how some are accompanied by their other halves and how som...

Of course nobody likes the flu bug. We groan and sigh because we just have that too many things to do that we cannot afford to fall sick. And then we blame the "bug", or the people whom we have come in contact with 24 hours prior to experiencing the first onset of flu (normally would be a terrible sore throat for me). But of course at the end of the day, we blame ourselves for failing to immunize ourselves against these viruses and bacteria floating around in the hot, humid Singapore air. To have come to this point, I am aghast at how we tend respond to falling sick. Sometime back, I was down with a mild fever (and probably a diarrhea that did not really manifest itself very well, thankfully) after my weekend trip in Bintan, and what I suspected, after savouring the delectable street food. On Monday, I went to see the doctor and I was given a 2-days MC as he was afraid I had dengue. But of course, I had too many things to do, I stubbornly went back to work on Tuesday, an...

I found myself walking towards the regional library after one tiring day at work. Not only just because I wanted to escape from the crowd and the noise, but rather, to be in a place where I could re-connect with myself, especially when my job requires me to connect a lot with others. That was when I started evaluating the places I would go, the very few people I tend to gravitate towards, the things I enjoy doing, and the conversation topics I tend to make, whenever I feel I needed to unleash myself. They actually reflect who we really are and provide insights into our true nature. And when we pay more attention to these things, we have found ourselves clues to our core self. Regardless of how we tend to appear in front of everyone else. Because sometimes, at the end of the day, you just want to be  you , at the fullest, all stripped and bare. No more layers of masks to peel. You want to be the real you , who you feel most alive. No more residual energy trapped within ...

It is in our very nature, as human beings, to have desires. We yearn for so many things, it is impossible to list down all the possible wants of mankind. Generally, we yearn for and we aspire towards perfection and beauty, we love the notion of eternity, we want to experience eternal bliss, and to be in a state of tranquility, free of internal turbulence and worries. We want good things to last forever and we want to be free of hardships. These desires, I believe, are inherent within us. Look at how we naturally gravitate towards things or people which/who we think can fulfill these desires. Indeed sometimes, we are lucky to have found the providers for our wants and needs, but sometimes, it is either we are never completely satisfied, or we are always wanting more and something better, or we never learnt how to appreciate with what we have. We are always on this slippery slope where we either fall into the pits of disappointments or we struggle to trek on this uphill slope to fulfil...

The one bitter truth about life is, it does not stop to wait for anyone. The world is spinning, people are moving on, and you still find yourself stuck somewhere. And you watch as the world passes by without you, leaving you behind. And it's not because you cannot keep up, you don't want to. It's because you need to be stationary for awhile. You need to stop, to rest your feet, to rejuvenate yourself, and most importantly, to stabilize yourself. In this process, it is only easy to be lured into moving forward because that is what everyone else is doing. "Why am I still here?". You peer out. The world is still the same without you. The world goes on. People are walking, people are passing you by, people are moving on. Block all the external noise out and focus on yourself. And look inward. Look within yourself. That's where you need to go. Tell yourself, that this journey is yours, and yours alone. And it never should have been measured against the external...

We seldom really experience some moments in their entirety until we are being pushed to be subjected to them and to face them head-on. These are the moments where we find ourselves struggling to escape but there are no exit signs in sight. Like not really knowing what a heavy rain means until we've experienced being caught in a heavy downpour in the middle of nowhere, with no nearby shelter and no cabs that would stop for us. And to feel extremely drenched to the point where our clothes stick to our skin. Or like not really knowing how much misery loves company, until we land ourselves in some stupid mess or problems which may require us to start all over again to clean them up. Or like not really knowing how long 5 minutes can be, until we were told at the very last minute, to do a presentation in front of so many people, unprepared. Or like not really knowing what fear is, until we are eye-to-eye with whatever it is that we are scared to death for. We seldom really exp...

Why taking time-off from work on Monday is a good thing: 1) There is no such thing as Monday blues. 2) I could sit in and take my time to have breakfast. Hotcakes from Macs. Super yums.

'Cause there is nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline no matter how many times it's sent away.  - Sarah Kay - The stars almost never shine, and the sky is always bright here. But the best way to chill after work is to spend a couple of days in a week to really lie down and gaze at the night sky despite all that. To distance yourself away from the crowd and to embrace silence and quietude. With the best of company. To walk to a nice park and lay down the mat by the lake, and to eat rich chocolatey cakes and oily, soggy fries. To fill the silence with basic catching up, to deeper conversations about life, to spazzing about the favourite lines and scenes from The Notebook, and back to comfortable silences. To feel the breeze seep into the bones and to enjoy the moment of tranquility with just the wind, the water, and to feel the body so close to nature, while lying on the ground. To watch the silhouette of the trees against the re...

I was told by numerous colleagues to "enjoy this honeymoon period" and I decided that I should make the best out of the free time that I have now. The last time I stayed in the office just about 30 minutes more than my supposedly knock-off time, I was shoo-ed away by my colleagues. Fancy being kicked out somewhat because I have "lots of opportunities in the future to stay back". So since I'm under probation (if you know what my job is, you'd find this pretty pun-y and funny really), I find myself having lots of energy and so I thought of channeling this excess energy into constructive things rather than just bumming and sleeping all the time. And so I decided to run. I used to jog pretty regularly before I entered uni. I run whenever I feel stressed, I run whenever I feel sad, I run whenever I feel ok, I run whenever I feel triumphant, I run because it was part of my CCA, I run as an excuse to go outside and see the world in a flash, I run to clear my mind...

I felt very inspired a few nights ago after I met up with a very close friend who had shared a great deal about her life journey. Her life journey, although cannot be identical to my own, somehow resonates with me. And to see how this person grows after having experienced from one ordeal to another, and now has attained so much joy and peace, only confirm my outlook in life. There will be times when we will be afflicted with trials and tribulations, and that the world may seem bleak, but only through these times, we can actually find strength. Although intuitively, we all know how it really feels when life sucks. We feel we are plummeting into this deep, dark, black hole and everything else will be a downward spiral just when we think that that is the end of it all. The most re-assuring thing is, there is no other way to go because that's the bottomest kiddo. We can only head towards that one direction, and that is to keep going up. And the next re-assuring thing is, only through...

Was looking through the old blog, all the way back in 2008 and I came across a list of things I'd like to accomplish. I must admit how naive and silly I was OMG! Can't help stifling giggles, especially number 6 HAHAHAHAHAHA. Here's some sneak peek, hmm but not a sneak peak really. Lists of things I wanna accomplish before I die: (not in any particular order) 1) Get my bachelor's degree (and honours too hopefully) 2) Get Masters 3) Learn French (on the way on the way!), Spanish, Latin, Mandarin and Korean. 4) See a kickass concert (and I wanna do crowd surfing) 5) Own an entire collection of my favourite movies and music! 6) Be kissed in the rain (or rather have my first special kiss) 7) Skinny-dip 8) Climb a mountain (beginning with the highest mountain in Asia) 9) Be passionately and deeply in love  10) Get married to the soulmate 11) Own a home of my own with the beautiful kids  12) If I stay in Singapore I'd wanna stay in the West...

So for the sake of some quick updates, I've been having about a month of bumming. I had officially graduated after 4 years, which now felt very much like 4 months instead when I look back. It's amazing how time flies. I'll talk more about school as I intend to dedicate a blog entry for this particular milestone since school has been a significant part of my life and it deserves a proper closure in writing. I spent about 3 months doing an internship soon after and ever since it ended, I've been clinging to my 4 weeks of freedom very dearly before the start of my first official job. While I planned my last few days, the first realization I had was the very fact that I had almost no memory of the last time I could spend my days freely and doing whatever I wanted to. The last was probably the period of time after the A's, but most of it was spent doing a part-time job. This week has been refreshing. For one, I notice how beautiful the afternoons are. While the majorit...

One moment, this state of oblivion seems very settling and the next moment, life grabs and takes you to places you never thought you'd be. Or places you never thought you'd be so soon. And soon enough you need to face up to the complexities of the world and accept the fact that the world is this colossal place, full of infinite ideologies and knowledge, and more that are waiting to be discovered. It makes you feel small, knowing that you only know this much, when there are actually so much more out there, much more than you can possibly imagine. Scientists have discovered the amount of brain usage a human can possibly employ and that the average amount we actually employ is not maximized to its fullest potential. Thus, it is daunting to know that on top of what we already do not know, there are more unknowns that are beyond our comprehension. And so it is the duty of us to seek the best that we can. And the hardest part is to seek with an open mind knowing the vastness of the i...

Often we hear of the challenges in the pursuit of happiness. But I think the difficulty lies in the pursuit of inner peace, not the pursuit of happiness. If your heart and mind is at rest, there lies contentment, and ultimately, you will naturally feel the glow of happiness. Seek for inner peace. If something is troubling you and it is disrupting your state of tranquility, there is then very little room for happiness. Happiness will not be possible if the body, mind and soul is not at rest. Seek for inner peace and find balance. Only then you'll find happiness.

I'm beginning to value my weekends more than ever. You see, when you jump straight from school and do an internship (which pays you just enough to cover your lunch) and experience the time constraints as a result, you really need to hold dear to your weekends. I love the weekends. It's about the only time you can catch up with your loved ones properly and give undivided attention. And most importantly, you can catch up with yourself. It doesn't really have to be anything remarkably adventurous or exciting. It could be a similar itinerary every week but what's important is you love and enjoy every moment spent with whoever you're spending your weekend with. It could be sitting in front of the tv watching Sheldon Cooper's pesky antics. It could be discovering how your sibling has similar music taste as you. It could be jogging around a nice park in attempts to burn some calories to get back in shape. It could be picking up a book that was put away and trying to...

There are reasons why certain people are so special and that you can immediately set them apart from the rest. Of course there are the good times; they bring joy, warmth and comfort, but it's also these same people who make you vulnerable/feel vulnerable in many bittersweet ways. It is these few people who can really surprise you with your capacity to allow yourselves to bask in this vulnerability despite knowing the associated risks that may come along. It's like scraping the different epidermal layers of your skin, and exposing them bit by bit until you've arrived at the innermost layer where you are most vulnerable to pathogens. It is with these people you can be completely yourself with and through being comfortable, you gradually expose some flaws, weaknesses, habits, weird tendencies and silly antics along the way. Other people can easily shoot you down, some may leave you, criticize you, bring you down but these people acknowledge and embrace them and perhaps shoot y...

There are days when you feel like crawling into a deep hole, to stay there and to never leave. And you just want to let the world spin without you and you'd be more than happy to be missing out on it. I think this phenomenon is worth investigating; the one-week, delayed PMS. If there is such a thing, really. I have been having half-written entries stuck in my postings. I also realised that my blogging style has been pretty cryptic most of the time (or I try to be as much as I could). And if you don't think that my entries have been cryptic in nature, then I've failed to be a cryptic blogger as I aspired to be when I first started this. So anyway, it's about time I should publish something and not let this be stuck, halfway-written like some others. So anyway, I had a pretty good but tiring start to the semester last week, and perhaps there were just so many things that I feel so damn tired right now. It's as if school never really ended, you forgot that it actually ...

I would think that most of the chapters of our lives have their very special or unique or tragic or ordinary, rightful endings, like the end of secondary school, the end of a beautiful trip, the end of a suffering. I think that closure is a very important notion in our lives. Often we think of closure as something negative when it actually forms the very process of life. If we don't have closure, then we're not really moving on with that particular phase in our lives, like how we're still holding onto the book without being able to turn the pages because we're still stuck on that chapter. Because closure indicates a new beginning. And typically I started analyzing back upon which there could have been a closure. So could it be that the story hasn't ended yet?