Vocabulary (4)

1. Cathect
    -to invest emotion or feeling in (an idea, object, or another person).


2. Nubilous
   -cloudy or foggy.
   -obscure or vague; indefinite.


3. Amiable
   -having or displaying a friendly and pleasant manner.


4. Pertinent
   -relevant or applicable to a particular matter; apposite.


5. Opulence
   -wealth; affluence.
   -great abundance; profusion.


6. Ludicrous
   -so foolish, unreasonable, or out of place as to be amusing.

7. Imbibe
   -drink (alcohol).
   -absorb or assimilate (ideas or knowledge)


8. Bungle
   -carry out (a task) clumsily or incompetently, leading to failure or an unsatisfactory        outcome.


9. Verbigeration
   -obsessive repetition of meaningless words and phrases, especially as a symptom of mental        illness.


10. Self immolation
     -a suicide by fire, often committed for political or moral reasons as a form of protest..

Shape Poem

What is a shape poem? For a person who has never heard about that, like me, would google it about the definition. And yes, many people would know that it is a type of poem which is in various shapes. I was informed that we were going to write a shape poem, it was the first experience for me so i think i was quite excited about that. Ms Sheba first showed us some of the examples and taught us how to start a poem. She showed us The Sonnet 18, by Shakespeare, the poem was really beautiful and creatively described the beauty of the lover of the persona. I have learnt Sonnet 18 since high school, until now, i still think that it is the best poem that i have ever seen. There were also some shape poems that her students have done, they were really creative and beautiful. Then, i was thinking that am i capable of doing this too?

After some ice breaking games, Ms Sheba let us paired up to do a shape poem, i was in the same group with Emerlyn. At first, we did not know what should be our theme of the poem, after some discussions, we decided to do a love poem, which is a marriage proposal poem. We thought that it would be so sweet and romantic if a guy would create a poem to a girl, which is like the Sonnet 18. So the shape of the poem definitely would be a ring, a large diamond ring. In the end, we came up with this!

I wonder would there be a guy willing to do this to me one day? =) 

I will be so touched and marry to him right away! <3

Vocabulary (3)

1. Conjecture

    -An opinion or conclusion formed on the basis of incomplete information.

2. Virulent

   -(of a disease or poison) Extremely severe or harmful in its effects.

3. Insidious

  -Proceeding in a gradual, subtle way, but with harmful effects.

4. Relegate

  -Consign or dismiss to an inferior rank or position.

5. Incessant

  -(of something regarded as unpleasant) Continuing without pause or interruption

6. Disparage

  -Regard or represent as being of little worth.

7. Incorrigible

  -(of a person or their tendencies) Not able to be corrected, improved, or reformed.

8. Palpable

  -Able to be touched or felt.

9. Redundant

  -No longer needed or useful; superfluous.

10. Judicious

     -Having, showing, or done with good judgment or sense.

Vocabulary (2)

1. Onslaught
    -an especially fierce attack.


2. Ailing
   -to feel ill or have pain / to cause physical or mental pain or uneasiness to.


3. Overzealous
  -describes someone who gets too excited about something.


4. Perdicament
  -an unpleasent situation.


5. Deteriorate
 -become progressively worse.


6. Paucity
 -the presence of something only in small or insufficient quantities or amounts; scarcity.

7. Pervicacious   -stubborn, willful, obstinate, refractory.

8. Depreciate

  -diminish in value over a period of time.

9. Frolicking

  -(of an animal or person) play and move about cheerfully, excitedly, or energetically.

10. Evading

  -escape or avoid, esp. by cleverness or trickery.

Film review on 'Buddha collapsed out of shame'

"Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame” is a movie directed by Hana Makhmalbaf which takes place in modern Afghanistan following the removal of the Taliban. The story describes the war in Afghanistan and consequences toward the local children. This movie centres on a six-year-old girl, Bakhtay, who is eagerly seeking for an education. After seeing her neighbour, Abbas with a schoolbook, Bakhtay becomes so determined to go to school. She claims that she wants to go to school to hear funny stories. Unfortunately, she is asked to take care of her little brother, but she ended up ties her brother so that he can’t escape and she heads out for schooling. However, she can’t find her mother to buy her a book and pencil for school. She has to take four eggs of the family’s chicken to sell at the market to earn money. Sadly, she only manage to sell two eggs and afford a notebook. Then she takes her mother’s lipstick as writing instrument and follow Abbas to go to school after dressing up with a scarf. At first, she arrives Abbas’s school but she gets rejected for staying there as it is a boy’s school. On the way to the girl’s school that locates across the river, she meets and gets bullied by a group of boys playing a game in which they’re Talibans fighting Americans. The boys throw stones at the Buddha statues and it shows the destruction of the Buddha statues of Bamiyan and their destruction by the Taliban. They terrorise Bakhtay because she carries a lipstick with her, and they make her to become the victim of the war game. It shows the inequality of gender that female will get punished if they wear lipstick. They rip pages from her book and fold them into paper aeroplanes, cover her face in a paper bag and tend to bury her in a hole that they make and stone her to death. They don’t let her go even if Bakhtay begs for so many times, 'In God's name, let me go to school,' she begs. Eventually Bakhtay escapes from them and arrives the girl’s school. On her way back home, she meets the gang of boys again and she and Abbas are surrounded by them with their ‘weapons’. The boys are shooting them and in the way to get rid of them, Abbas decides to ‘die’. While Bakhtay is still alive and running away from them, Abbas yells ‘Lie down!’ at Bakhtay and tell her that ‘If you want to be free, you must die!’ In the end, Bakhtay pretends to die so that she can find peace. This movie ends with the shocking 2001 newsreel scene of the Taliban blowing up the gigantic statues of the Buddha in Bamyan, it gives spaces for the audience to think. ‘Buddha collapsed out of shame’ shows the saddening truth on how war affects children’s thinking from the different perspectives. I was also impressed by the acting of the main characters, it is so simple yet they manage to convey the theme and message of this movie so perfectly at such a young age. On the other hand, the tempo of this movie is quite slow and I would not recommend this movie to youngster because this movie might be boring and pointless for them. However, I personally think that this is a brilliant movie that it succeeds in showing the audience the damages that wars can bring, not only death or economy loss, but it will also bring bad influence on our leaders of tomorrow, children. I feel so lucky and blessed to live in a war free country and given an opportunity to have my education.

Vocabulary (1)

1.  SMUG
    -contentedly confident of one's ability, superiority, or correctness; complacent.

2. DEBACLE
   -a general breakup or dispersion; sudden downfall or rout.


3. INQUISITIVE
  -given to inquiry, research, or asking questions; eager for knowledge; intellectually curious.

4. DINKY
  -informal. small, unimportant, unimpressive or shabby.

5. ERADICATE
  -to remove or destroy utterly / to erase by rubbing or by means of a chemical solvent.

6. INFATUATE
  -to inspire or possess with a foolish or unreasoning passion, as of love.

7. ODIOUS
  -deserving or causing hatred; hateful; detestable / highly offensive.

8. VINDICTIVE
  -disposed or inclined to revenge; vengeful / proceeding from or showing a revengeful spirit.

9. IMPERIOUS
  -domineering in a haughty manner; dictatorial / urgent; imperative

10. LUDICROUS
  -causing laughter because of adsurdity; provoking or deserving derision; ridiculous; laughable

Do you speak English?

“English” has taken the world by storming. It has entitled as an “international language” and it has been recognized by many people from all over the world since early century. Learning English is an important and inevitable process in everyone’s life. Many people would have been learning something through books or simply ask their lecturers or parents but to learn English effectively can only be done through practicing.

I was originally from Singapore, which is a country where most of the people communicate to each other using English. However, all of my family members are chinese speakers, so mandarin had eventually become my dominant language. I only communicated in English in some circumstances such as when I was in kindergarden in Singapore.

Unfortunately, things were getting from bad to worse when my parents decided to migrate to Malaysia due to less stressful life, where even less people speak English. Hokkien, mandarin and malay are languages that often used to communicate to each other in this country. No longer, I found out that I was so afraid to speak English and I started to avoid communicating with people who speaks English. 

Fortunately, when I proceeded to the next stage of my education in Disted College in Penang, I met a lot of new friends with different cultural-backgrounds. Most of them were English educated so English was the mother tongue for them. My friends had greatly influenced me to communicate in English. They never criticized or boycotted me after they knew that I’m poor not only in writing skill, but speaking too. They often encouraged and corrected me when I misused some of the words. The efforts that they had put on me and those real-life practices had helped me to overcome my fear to English. Although I had overcome the fear of speaking loudly in English, I found out that there are huge spaces of improvement in some parts of my English such as in the field of vocabulary, grammars and etc.

Speaking skill is one of the most common and required skills for a pharmacist. So I chose English Composition Skills as one of my alternative modules in this semester. I’m looking forward to this ECS programme to improve my weakness in English especially the public speaking and debate. I hope that through this programme, it would be a huge turning point for my English. I believe that practice makes perfect, I need to pratice it every day to polish up my English.