Quality VS Quantity

Quality beats Quantity's ass a 1000 times over.

Hell yeah! Or maybe I am not so sure either.......?

This age old debate just like Nature VS Nurture goes on and on and on....

It seems like a simple debate. On the surface, most of us would have easily chosen a side.

But if you delve deeper, there is more than meets the eye. 

Some things just need a little more time and patience to grow, to flourish. 

Sometimes, people too just need more time and experience to understand, to learn.

This is when 'quantity' comes into play.

(Quantity = Time) -> this shall be the equation that I will use in relation to this post. Many things, even with quality, need time to show how long the quality can last. 

If something is good but it only lasts for a short while, would you still say that the quality is good then?

What if instead of something, it is someone.

If someone you knew was really nice at the start but starts to turn unpleasant after a while, would you still say that this someone is a good person? 

I vote for Quality. That is only because life is unexpected. 

Nothing stays the same forever or more accurately put, you can never be a 100% sure if anything would stay the same forever. The only things that last forever are hope and faith.

Those two things would then determine the fate of whatever we hope to last forever. I hope so....

Reasons for why I chose and still choose Quality:

Romance

I guess now I realized that a short relationship shouldn't be undermined because despite its short 'life expectancy', a short relationship could be as meaningful and genuine as a long term one.

In fact, if impactful enough, a short time spent with someone special could mean a lot more than a lifetime spent with someone ordinary...

Someone who is not so very special.

Well, to incorporate facts and personal experience into this debate......

I miss someone whom i spent a couple of months with way more than I miss someone whom I spent a whole year with.

I felt more connected, learnt and grew more in a few months than I did in 'that' particular year.

Bottom line:

you could love and care for someone you knew for a shorter time more than someone you had been with for a while.

Maybe the reason why you stayed so long in the wrong relationship was because you (it really is me I'm talking about actually :/) were afraid of change and not because the relationship was a good one.   

The quality of a relationship or the 'experience with the other half' largely depends on the quality of the other person too. The quality of his/her character and his/her attitude towards life and others.

See, there is a difference being in love with a person for who he/she really is and then being in love with the idea of a person you want your other half to be. 

And sometimes, just sometimes, you don't need a whole lot of time to sass a person out, to figure out whether he/she has a good heart. It's instinct. 

Friendship

Hey hey hey! ( I don't know why but the song 'Blurry Lines" by Robin Thicke just came to my mind HAHA :D )

Okay, to be fair.

Quantity also comes to play here when it comes to friendships.

Friendships that I have made and sustained over my young life.

Why?

Because all my best friends come from the time when I was in school, some of which are friends I made back in primary school. When it comes to friends. I like to think of them as wine. The friendship gets better with time and age. My best friends are those who have seen me through puberty and my first love.

How awesome is that?

People that I do not need to recount my adolescent stories or embarrassing histories to. 

Unlike relationships (or boyfriends), friendships are not exclusive and do not come and go (as often). Usually, 'the more the merrier' applies in friendships.

So I add on new friends as I go along in life but I always remember the old ones.

For me, the older the friendships, the more memorable and special they are because unlike relationships, I can have as many 'partners' I want.

Furthermore, friends can go for months without contact but when you hear that familiar voice again, you could yak away like it was only a minute ago when the school bell rang, indicating it was time to head home. 

However, quantity could mean another thing when it comes to friendships. 

Quantity=Number. The number of friends (or should I say Facebook friends) you have.

Now, here is when quantity takes a backseat. It doesn't matter how many friends you have, it only matters how many are there for you when you need them. How many whom you really feel at ease with and can have a good time with....if you think hard enough...there probably isn't that many friends you could really call friends now hey?

That is when Quality wins the race. Quality of your friends sure beats the quantity of them. 

That is why friendship is like wine. The longer you have kept them, the more you can trust and enjoy them. 

Family

This is pretty straight forward.

Okay imagine this scenario:

you have been living with your parents and maybe your siblings and for some, a very adorable grandmother for a long time.

For way too long.

You start to grow up.

You become your own person.

But your parents always see you as their 'child',  someone who belongs to them.

Things get a little more tensed at home, you stop communicating much with your family.

Sometimes you guys greet one another but that is it.

No more chit chats, no more movie nights.

You come home and go straight to your room.

They get on your nerves easily.

Your family members seem more like room mates than family.

Then what?

Even if you spend many hours a day in the same house, there isn't much connection or a relationship. The close proximity and quantity of time spent together is too much to bear that you start taking your family for granted.

Maybe they too are taking you for granted.

Scenario 2:

You can't take it.

You move out.

You carve your own life out of the values your parents have instilled in you and make a living out of the opportunities and resources your family has given you.

You experience the harsh reality of not having your loved ones around you.

You miss them.

You call them to say hi, to ask how they are doing (something that never happened when you were staying with them).

You stop taking your family for granted.

You make an effort to visit or check up on them.

Yeah, those times might be few what with your busy schedule and distance barrier.

But hey, at least the times you actually speak to your family feel sincere and meaningful, unlike the old routine greetings that were more of a formality than real concern. 

Haven't you heard, absence makes the heart grow fonder? 

It isn't really about the time spent with your loved ones, it is about how the time is being spent. 

But ALL in ALL: Quality and quantity go hand in hand most of the time. One cannot really live without the other for too long. They are like a married couple. One could be stronger by itself for a while but after some time, it needs support from its other half.

Just like with Romance: it might not take very long to like someone and eventually for in love with them. But it takes time and patience to stay in love and to really understand that someone.

So I guess this is a tough one. The debate goes on. Guess it takes two hands to clap.

Disclaimer: (Yeah I am very bias, so don't just accept everything I wrote. No one experiences the exact same thing anyway. Tsk Tsk.)

in which I ponder about friendships

I was recently reading an article on the very humourous and entertaining Thought Catalog about the types of female relationships and I thought most of it was very apt. I went on to reflect on the various "types" of friends I had, and pondered on the relationships with my frenemies...

and then I decided it was too tiring and too much effort. Then I went to sleep.

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I'm so sorry for the lack of posts. I was back in Singapore for my summer holiday, and whilst doing a correspondence Ethics unit (which meant assignments and more assignments), I also took a trip with my family to Taiwan and Bangkok, which was all very awesome and I did not want to leave my family and friends, and home, after being away for a year.

Coping with homesicky feelings and some bouts of "i-wanna-go-home"s but I am a lot better now, and will soon get back into routine.. I guess. Dread the start of the formal school term, but we will get there.

Many warm wishes (albeit belated) for the new year to all of you internet-folk.. (interfolk?) Happy new year! May more random things come our way so we have more random posts to post about. 

and um, 

Here's Little Britain Live to watch, it used to be one of Becky's and my favourite shows, and it's quite slapstick sometimes...

taa!

post-doomsday confusion (perhaps?) & season greetings

It has been approximately 3 days since Doomsday, so here's a very belated Happy Doomsday Everyone to all you merry folk. To all that bought into such deceit, I think a swim would be quite apt for now as that was some major BURN!

Christmas is just around the corner! So kind folk of the internet, here's wishing you a very blessed Merry Christmas, and an exciting, fruitful, and astounding upcoming year!!
May your new year be filled with all good things like peace, happiness, joy and love, with strength, goodness and wisdom, to carry you through curveballs life hurls you. May it bring new things and blessings, with warm fuzzy feelings and the love and comfort of both friends and family, and may you cherish those whom you love and bless the ones you don't.

Love you guys!

love, becky and rach

if we were words we would rhyme

-Sophie Madeline, Jocelyn Mackenzie & Emily Hope Price; Bei Mir Bist Du Schon (Cover)

 
-Sophie Madeline; Must Be Love (Cover)

What I'm listening to on this dreadful rainy day: Check out her playlist, she's this awesome English chick that plays the ukulele! She did 30 covers in 30 days some time ago. She does pretty amazing numbers, it makes me nostalgic, and it's quite amazing rainy day music; it's so chirpy that when it's sad, it makes me quite melancholic haha. So cute!

sight. but not... foresight?

I'm back where the air is dense, the wind is warm and heavy, and the perspiration pools. I'm back in the land in which I was born, where my family and some friends reside. Strangely, what the inhabitants chase after in this land - what we call "progress", has made changes in the places I have known... changes in the familiar. I get lost in malls, subway stations... much less so on the streets, but all around me, the changes are apparent. Where the land was barren in this concrete jungle, new buildings have sprouted, weeds or crops - it is not yet clear to me. Where familiar and old buildings have been, they stand now as a heap of rubble, or behind blue nets and aluminium-sheet fences, their expiration dates drawing nearer with each passing day.

Change, well, change is good, I suppose. Standards of living improve with this "progress" you speak of, new technology, new devices, new places with fancy gadgets... But more and more, we do not realise the increasing individuation that takes place in society. Sure, we are increasingly able to keep in contact with the world, through the means of social networking platforms through our really high tech communication devices, but more and more though, is it our gadgets we interact with, instead of the world?

5 Reasons why "That 70's Show" is the most awesome sit-com of all time.

I do enjoy other sit-coms too. I like Fraiser, Everybody Loves Raymond, Dharma and Greg, Scrubs, South Park...just to name a few.

But the only sit-com that managed to grab my attention for the long run was That 70's Show. I couldn't stop watching after the first episode and before I knew it, I was at the end of the 8th Season (which was also the last season)... I was devastated. How can That 70's Show end its run without consulting me, I lived for that show (okay, alright..I am being dramatic here, but I did live for that show....for a few months), I was practically the ambassador for that show!

10 Reasons why That 70's Show kicks ass:

1. Mila Kunia, Ashton Kutcher, Laura Prepon, Topher Grace, Danny Masterson, Wilmer Valderrama, Debra Jo Rupp, Kurtwood Smith, Don Stark, Tanya Roberts and the old great Tommy Chong.

The main cast: Steven Hyde, Michael Kelso, Donna Pinciotti, Eric Forman, Jackie Burkhart, & Fez

The names above are good enough reasons for anyone to watch the show.
Yeah the teenage cast of the show were nobodies when they first starred in this show. But that's what makes That 70's Show ever more awesome, the show was the stepping stone if not the break through for many of these young actors we have come to know as super stars today.

Mila Kunis - with a list of movies such as Black Swan, Friends with Benefits and Forgetting Sarah Marshall, she is one of the biggest Hollywood stars of this generation.

Mr Kutcher - a.k.a the ex-husband of Demi Moore is not just a Hollywood hunk, but also a budding comedy veteran (in my opinion anyways, he is too young to be a 'veteran' but what can I say... He started out young. AND I also added 'budding', so he is not there yet but he will be.)  He was the other Sean Willian Scout or Neil Patrick Harris of my generation. Dude Where's My Car? wouldn't have been the same awesome without Ashton.

Topher Grace - One word: VENOM. Yeah and that is enough, he was in Spider Man. Case closed.

The other actors/actresses are amazing too and have great resumes to offer, but I shan't bore you with the details.

And BTW, I love Kurtwood Smith a.k.a Red Foreman! He is HILARIOUS.

2. The Circle

Okay for those of you who watch the show, you know what I mean. THE CIRCLE. THE DOPE CIRCLE. Dope as in cool and dope as in its literal meaning.

Well, during each episode, the guys (only referring to the teens here) would sit in a circle in Eric's (Topher Grace's character) basement and smoke some weed/ other undisclosed drug. They would then engage in random but interestingly significant conversations while being high. Yes you can imagine now, The Circle scenes are always hilarious and unexpected.

So unexpected that finally, the girls and even the parents were also introduced into The Circle. That's when the fun begins...imagine your strict dad (Red Foreman) and the wholesome, loving mom (Kitty) getting high on 'special' brownies and talking about nonsense in a circle with their equally inebriated neighbours. Yeah I know, that's a dream most of us have that'll never be fulfilled.

The Circle is the one unique feature in the show that no other sit-coms ever had.

3. The Fashion

Fez

Hello. Anyone grew up in the 70's here?
Yeah maybe the show did not showcase the most accurate or best fashion of the 70's, but the fashion was still awesome. I love the 70's fashion personally (I'm all for retro), even the weird rainbow-coloured sweaters and hideous bell-bottoms that most Singaporeans who grew up in the 90's and 2000's would associate with  as 'Ah Beng' fashion. I love them all.

I'm always torn between Donna and Jackie. I love what they both wear in the show. I think I am more of a Donna with a sprinkle of Jackie. (Well, to be more exact, I feel like a Donna during my Secondary school days and more of a Jackie now - I'm referring to the fashion here btw.) A combination of them would be the best of both worlds.
Okay this is for the retro chicks: Donna has the cool, old school thing going for her. She could wear a pair of corduroy pants and a sweater and look fabulous with her plaited red hair while Jackie looks super sweet with her little floral dresses, vintage accessories and boots! (Have you girls seen her accessories?? They are to die for. They look like stuff you could get at some boutique from Arab Street. Yeah those boutiques that over-price their goods.)

4./5. The Music and The Era

If you are a rocker like me. As in if you like rock...real rock, like rock and roll with the guitar solos and licks that you don't hear much on the 'Top 40's'  these days, then you are in for a treat.

Okay, just think of post-Motown and post-Beatles and after the Country Music wave. That's the 70's. When the poppy tunes of the 60's died down, you get the psychedelic rock genre with influences from  the blues and rhythms from country music. The music from the 70's was like a mash up of everything good from the decades before. The 70's was the decade of EXPERIMENTS, experiments in music and experiments that challenged the 'Big Brother', the system and the conventional way of thought.

Yeah, the Hippie (a.k.a freedom/counter-culture) Movement, well it started back with its roots stemming from as early as WW2(that's when the 'peace' sign we know today originated) and the Vietnam War. But the movement took on a whole new identity in the 60's when the people united and fought for freedom by creating a whole new world for themselves. A world of spirituality (so they say) and a world of love, not war. The Flower People they were called. And the movement carried on well into the 70's.

Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Cream, The Yardbirds, Creedence Clearwater Revival - just to name a few prominent bands/musicians of the 70's : they were the music heroes (few out of the many other bands not mentioned) of the 70's. They sure rocked it out with spectacular beats and tunes but they added something special to their music - their music echoed the voices of a generation of youngsters, the lyrics told the story of how it was like to be young in the 70's; the desires and wants of a changing generation.
Even the music alone has a bittersweet essence to it. Whenever I listen to bands like those I mentioned above, I always feel like they were going through a struggle but somehow they were enjoying it as their music reflected that, because their music was great.
I believe the people of that generation were struggling to be heard, although it was tough and many of them were ridiculed, they had fun during the process and even if they did not achieve everything they wanted, they were still happy as they were courageous enough to speak out against the masses (thus the bittersweet sounds). I know not everyone is for the Hippie agenda, I myself am on the fence on this one. I definitely do not condemn it, but I would not particularly encourage some of their ideals as well. However, the 70's was interesting because it was different. It was different and that's what makes it amazing.

I'll have to thank the hippies for opening the doors to many things and opportunities we enjoy today.
And the gays (I'm not gay, I'm just saying this as a matter of fact) have to love the 70's. The 70's was a milestone for them, the 70's saw the first ever openly-gay politician (Milk Harvey) to be elected in America. He helped paved the way for legal gay marriages.
So yes, the 70's made a huge difference in the world we live in today.

- To be continued (I'm too sleepy and I'm not going to check for errors this time round...)

waiting....

Carpe Diem. Seize the day. The early bird gets the worm. And much recently, you only live once.
Yeah yeah yeah, so we've heard it all before... But how many of us are still sitting around, waiting for some thing to happen?

Maybe it's really okay to wait, maybe we're not that ready to be go-getters yet. I think it's an intrinsic decision, or at least an arrival of some internal realisation that makes people achieve that drive to go out there and get what they want. Therefore, sometimes, if you haven't really decided that THAT'S what you want, it's okay to stick around and wait.... Right?

Well and sometimes, a situation is not in your control, and therefore you have to wait around for someone's decision, for something to happen.

I'm waiting to hear if I will get accepted into an internship program, I'm waiting to hear if my cousin will come up to study in Melbourne here with me,
and this last one will be the one to hate: I'm waiting for this guy to make his move. (I know it's the 21st century etc etc etc. It's sometimes okay to wait, okay?)

So now, what are you waiting for today

(well besides the comments section to start working... I'm on it!!!!)


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[edit:]
OH NO MY SEA MONKEY JUST DIED!!!
He was the only one. The Only One (that hatched)....
R.I.P. Poseidon, King of the High Seas. You were awesome to watch when procrastinating. You filled my essay writing days with mild gleefulness and amusement.
May you find the light at the end of the murky depths of the deep (Australian plumbing system), and return to the sea as a natural sea spirit. Of some sort. 

Someone yells: YOU FLUSHED IT??!!
Yes I did. Indeed. I did. 
[/edit:]

[new edit:]
I'm so dumb, so I changed everything in order to accommodate the comments section, and tried to keep it as "same" as before as possible (wow my English teacher will be furious at this statement).
It's up and running now. I'm not completely satisfied with how it looks. SIGH. I'll tweak it again soon.
[/new edit:]