On loyal, strong-minded women

A friend shared this article on Facebook. Though I feel the article could be better written, I like the message it is trying to send.

The title itself is misleading; it says "Why do all men cheat on loyal women?" The article also starts by misleading us. It tells us that men do cheat, and tells us the reason why (or so it seems). It also tells us what loyal women do when they are cheated on (which it retracts later by its definition of a loyal woman). But that's okay, because then it turns around and gives us some proper, down-to-earth truths. And that is what I would like to share.

a Loyal, Strong Minded Woman will speak her mind, regardless of what anyone thinks. Tell us the TRUTH. Tell us when we are WRONG. A Loyal woman will not allow us to hurt her multiple times & still accept us. That is NOT loyalty. Not at all. That is Pacifying. Babying. Appeasing.

A Loyal Woman will be loyal to your MANHOOD, not loyal to your EGO. A Loyal Woman will tell us the TRUTH, even if that means she might LOSE us. A Loyal Woman will tell us when our shitstinks, even if it makes us mad. A mentally mature man does not want a YES woman. Trust me. We don’t want a girl who will LET us hurt you and abuse you over & over & still accept us back, simply because you keep being told [...] that real love must be suffered through and fought for. If she still stays with us after we prove to her time and time again that we genuinely aren’t strong enough as a man to keep her consistently happy in a relationship, it means she doesn’t really care about us as a man. She only cares about how we make her feel sexually. [...]

When a Woman truly LOVES a man, she loves him at his BEST, not settling for his worst. She wants us to BE the MAN who we were destined to be by the Holy Spirit. A man who can speak life into a woman, erase her insecurities, and shower her with loyalty and consistence. A loyal woman will tell her man to get his lazy ass up, get a job & pursue his dreams. A Loyal Woman will not allow a man to live off her. A Loyal Woman will not baby a man by working a job herself, while he sits his lazy ass in her house all day[...].

A Loyal Woman will not allow a man to talk down to her & disrespect her like she’s any girl, because she knows a mentally mature man DESERVES a Strong Minded Woman. A Loyal Woman will not allow a man to refer to her as a Bitch, [...] because she knows we deserve a Queen who has integrity.

A Loyal Woman will not allow a male to FORCE her to get an abortion, or let him off the hook for abandoning her after getting her pregnant, because she knows we DESERVE to be a Father, not a Baby Daddy. A Loyal Woman will not tell a man what he wants to hear, she will feed him wisdom he NEEDS to hear and not be scared to do to it, because she is Loyal to his inner king, which is his spirit. A Loyal Woman will not allow a man to cheat on her over & over, leave her, then come crawling [...] back [...]. No, because she knows her worth.

At the end of the article we find this line, in an image:

Show a girl you don't care and she'll chase you; show a woman you don't care and she'll replace you.

Not sure who wrote that, whether it was the author of the article or not. I'm not sure I fully agree with it, though. Maybe here it is trying to say that a girl is immature, whereas a woman has grown up and knows her worth. I would prefer to replace "girl" with "weak woman" and "woman" with "strong woman", to be consistent with the article. Oh well, no big deal.

In any case, this is food for thought.

I'm a logophile!

I just learned a new word.

log·o·phile n. a lover of words.

Discovered from this article.

A two-liner

He offered her the world,
She said she had her own.
-Monique Duval

A friend shared this on Facebook. A two-line sad story. Just wanted to keep it here, to be able to read it again in future.

The morning is wiser than the evening

I had a story book when I was small, with several short stories. (fables, I think) I never knew the provenance of the tales, but earlier today I suddenly thought of this phrase from the book: The morning is wiser than the evening. You know how when you worry about something at night, and wonder what to do? Sometimes a good night's sleep will make things better. In the morning light things don't seem so bad any more.

This phrase is from a story called Vasilisa the Beautiful by Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev. (you can read it at the link, though I think it was better-written in my book. It was translated from Russian, after all.) Actually I didn't remember the story's title, I just remembered Baba-Yaga. :P It turns out that the phrase is actually a common Russian proverb.

Of memories

A few days back I wasn't in that good a mood, and I was going to click on "Feeling Lucky" (there on the sidebar) but I stopped myself, thinking that my mood might worsen if I were to stumble onto a depressing post. At that time I posted this on Facebook:

Some memories are best stuffed away in a shoebox, never opened.

Then today I was using that link, browsing through random old posts. A number of them made me smile or chuckle.

So today the observation (also posted on Facebook) is:

And some memories are like little buried treasures, when unearthed will bring a smile back to your face.

 What would we do without memories?

Someone else in your shoes

A little twist from walking in someone else's shoes.

Daphne shared this on her Facebook today. She had come across this question: "If I were to give YOUR life to someone else for a month, give them your boss, your job, your sleep schedule, all your work, how would they feel at the end of that month?"

For me, I think they'd be thankful for my sleep schedule, but that would probably be all. Maybe they could still handle my life for a month, if they didn't have to handle my past.

After her observation about her own life, she said, "The question made me re-think we all have struggles others know not of, and really, it's never easy to be just you. So don't be too hard on yourself."

I guess that's true.

Yep, I need a pick-me-up. Thanks Daphne. :)

Blast from the past

I came across some drafts that I had written a few years back. Stuff that happened, that I thought noteworthy but didn't want to post on my blog. Maybe I was a little embarrassed by the sentimentalism? Or did I just feel that it was too early for them to come and read about themselves on my blog? I don't know now, but when I read it back, I got all warm and fuzzy inside...good memories are like that.

I hesitated about posting them up here, though. It happened so long ago, after all. And in a way, we've drifted apart. I don't think he remembers doing all that stuff. Even I had forgotten all about it, until I read about it again.

Then (since I was browsing old posts) I came across this quote that I had found in 2010:
Friends come and go, but it doesn't make any of them less valuable while they were with you. -Philip Wang
(I got this off his blog, but the link doesn't work any more, so I guess it's pointless to put it here)

True. So why not? Why not share a little fuzzy feeling, a little smile, a little good news? So here goes:


Wednesday, 15th June 2011

At that time, I was playing badminton every Wednesday after work. We get off at six o'clock, and badminton starts at seven. I would usually leave at around six-thirty.

That day, we couldn't finish something (I can't remember what we were working on). Here's what I jotted down the next day:

Yesterday, past 6pm.

"I don't think we can finish this today. You go and play badminton lah."

After I came back from changing clothes:

He tells me about the problem...partly?? Then: "I'll tell you tomorrow lah."

Kena halau... I ♥ my senior.

He kicked me out to play badminton.


Tuesday, 21st June 2011

Jamie shared some links, saying "so cute", followed by the links.

I copied the whole block of text to a notepad file to look at it later. But later I moved to Jonathan's computer to test out the serial connection, while he moved over to mine. He had to restart my computer to use it...and he saved my notepad file. Not just once, but twice! He saved a first one under the name "so cute". But there was a blank space (a file I'd just deleted) on the desktop, so the icon went there and I guess he didn't see it. So he saved it again, under the name "socute".

I found all this when I came back to my computer. And that really made me laugh. :D

Introducing Debbie Gibson

I heard this song on the radio when I was in the car, and the chorus was really catchy. Catchy and happy. So I searched it up later when I got home, and here it is! We Could Be Together by Debbie Gibson. I've definitely never heard of her before.

German war tactics

I got this from MentalFloss:

"Create a small sack like a fire-arrow. If you would like to get at a town or castle, seek to obtain a cat from that place. And bind the sack to the back of the cat, ignite it, let it glow well and thereafter let the cat go, so it runs to the nearest castle or town, and out of fear it thinks to hide itself where it ends up in barn hay or straw it will be ignited."

So reads the translation of a German manual on artillery and siege warfare written by Franz Helm of Cologne in the mid-1500s, when gunpowder was revolutionizing battle tactics. The text accompanies a series of peculiar drawings that depict cats and birds with flaming, rocket-like objects strapped to their backs.

Poor cats... but you've got to admire the ingenuity.

I should give my car more credit

I always thought it was a "smart" feature of my car that when I started the car, it would put the side mirrors back in their proper position after someone knocked them out of place. Well, I was right about it being smart... I just didn't know exactly how smart it was.

Yesterday morning, when I started my car, the side mirrors moved to the closed position (I mean "closed" as in folded against the car). So I slid down the windows and pushed them back into place.

The same thing happened as I was leaving work. (yesterday) I was thinking, what are the chances that someone would knock my side mirrors twice in a row?

It happened again this morning. But this time, as I pushed (manually) the mirrors back to the "open" position, I noticed something: There was no click to hold them in place. Which was why each time they automatically folded back in the next time I started the car.

I was looking at the mirror controls wondering whether there was something I could do there... then I pressed a button. And the mirrors clicked into position (I had already pushed them open, you see). Then that light bulb went off in my head, and I tried pushing the button again. The mirrors closed in. Another push. Open. Ohhhhhh....

How stupid was I? Very. Such a useful feature that I never knew to use. The thing is, I always thought that this feature was only available in expensive cars. "Smart" cars. But hey, my car's smart too. It's "full spec", for goodness' sake! I should give it more credit.

It's been a long time since I've written a post like this. And you know what? This is definitely going to make me smile (if not laugh) when I read it back a few years from now. :D

Edit: Oh yeah, I must have hit the button by mistake one day, making the mirrors close in.

Paula Abdul

A few days ago I heard someone request the song Straight Up by Paula Abdul on the radio. (Lite.fm, if you must know) I've always heard that song without knowing either the title or the singer.



As I was searching for the song on Youtube, I found another one of her songs. I've heard this song, a duet called Opposites Attract, many times on the radio, but never knew who sang it either.

The video is quite nice; check it out (it's the same as the link):

Unhyphenated is unhyphenated

I am currently subscribed to Mental Floss's Watercooler Ammo newsletter (it comes to your e-mail; you can sign up on their website if you want). Sometimes the stuff is rather interesting, sometimes not so much, and sometimes I come across this kind of thing that I really like.

Yup, words! They sent us sixteen words that describe themselves. Check them out:

,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_ .-:*'``'*:-.,_

Most words have a rather abstract connection to the things they describe. The word "yellow" is not actually yellow. The word "square" is not a square. Nor do we expect them to be. But some words do embody the properties they denote. We call them autological words, and they are a self-centered, self-referential bunch. Here are 16 of them.

1. Word

Yup, that's what it is.

2. English

Well, it ain't French.

3. Erudite

It is a very scholarly word, this word that means scholarly.

4. Noun

Verb, adjective, and adverb are nouns too.

5. Buzzword

Been hearing this everywhere.

6. Cutesy

Barfsy.

7. Polysyllabic

Lots of syllables in this one.

8. Sesquipedalian

A term for "long word" from the Latin for "a foot and a half long."

9. Unhyphenated

And should remain so.

10. Magniloquent

Grandiose and pompous indeed.

11. Recherché

Rarified? Affected? Pretentious? Mais, bien sûr, my dear.

12. Proparoxytone

Meaning stressed on the antepenultimate, or third-to-last syllable. Pronounced pro-par-OX-y-tone

13. Hellenic

Of Greek origin. From ancient Greek (ellhnikos).

14. Obfuscatory

Do you want to be straightforward and easy to understand? Then don't use this obfuscatory word.

15. Suffixed

Now that you mention it, "prefix" works too.

And what's that word to describe a one-word sentence? Oh right!

16. Monepic.

For more word nerdery, check out this one: 14 Words That Are Their Own Opposites.

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That was what I got in the e-mail. I can't find a direct link to those sixteen words, though. The fourteen words which are their own opposites is interesting, too, but I don't like it as much...because sometimes it isn't the complete opposite, it's just a different meaning if used in a totally different context. It still helps your vocabulary to know all that, though.