Remember when...The September 11, 2001 attacks (often referred to as 9/11—pronounced "nine eleven") consisted of a series of coordinated suicide terrorist attacks upon the United States, predominantly targeting civilians, carried out on Tuesday, September 11, 2001.

That morning, 19 men affiliated with al-Qaeda^[1] hijacked four commercial passenger jet airliners. Each team of hijackers included a trained pilot. Two planes (United Airlines Flight 175 and American Airlines Flight 11) crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City, one plane into each tower (One and Two). Both towers collapsed within two hours. The pilot of the third team crashed a plane into the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia. Passengers and members of the flight crew on the fourth aircraft attempted to retake control of their plane from the hijackers; that plane crashed into a field near the town of Shanksville in rural Somerset County, Pennsylvania. Excluding the 19 hijackers, a confirmed 2,973 people died and another 24 remain missing as a result of these attacks.

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I wouldnt say its been a long time since ive blogged as ive been posting new things in a weekly basis at least. Though i couldn help but realize that i hvn been really posting journal entries since.... whoa beginning of this year?

Its funny how this year is coming to an end. If u happen 2 think its 2 soon 2 say so, well i think ur wrong. It IS comin 2 an end as trials are starting ths week and spm is onli amonth or so away.

If u ask me, i don really hv a prob in leaving high school and i don see the point of ppl being all end of the world about it. With the aid of modern technology, if u relly have d heart to keep in touch with someone, u r bound to do it through e-mails and even perhaps friendster? Pls don take this as an insult guys, but when i was given all ur "journals" 2 put in personal information for remembrance, i just somehow find it quite childish bcause i thought onli primary kiddos do so. Then again i took it back immediately as most of those friends of mine were indeed sincere, sincere enough to ask for a simple autograph or number or something. Many added their entries with colourful artwork but mine was solely black and blue with some red underlines 2 stress some points haha. To make it meaningful and not so baby crap, ive been adding famous quotes for each n every friend of mine to make it... lesss cliche like "friends forever" "all the best" "....." etc.Still, ppl hv been askin me 2 start 1 scrap bok on my own but i guess, im jus not da kind of person u noe.

On the other hand there's trials n exams 2 worry about which i should be pouring myself in books rite now. Yet, here i am adding an entry talking about... practically nothing. This is also y ive chosen this title for my entry 2day. I am jus sooo fucked up.Seriously, i cant believe its really gonna b over. in another 2months plus i'll b off 2 UK (which is supposedly nased on my forecast results which im so fucked from). Friends moving in to colleges, ppl takin off for the YES, some even 1 year YP programs. It'll b so interesting to see where will all of us be 3 months from now. Imagine one year from now...... where will everybody be and what will we be doing.

Thats y i find graduating interesting. Unlike some ppl who i shall not name do not wish 2 move on and grudge on to the glorious moments of high school life. Be it from winning competitions, successful high committes, or patrolling down the halls as a member of d discipline board or even those who shut up n do nothing but don wanna move. Its time to stick d fact in ur heads la... hahaha.

ANYWAY, once again ive made a successful entry thats full of crap-jus talkin bout god noes wat which fankly i don even noe wat i wrote in d first paragraph... All i noe is rite now, i jus feel like im screwed. Simple as that.

After all the studying. I've been thinking what i've learnt so far. Sadly, it was all silent in my reigns of thoughts. But what i do know is what I've learnt from one tree hill..................

"Sometimes people play hard to get to know that the other person's feelings are real”

“As happens sometimes a moment settled and hovered and remained for much more than a moment. And sound stopped and movement stopped for much, much more than a moment. And then the moment was gone.”

“Here's my philosophy on dating. It's important to have somebody that can make you laugh, somebody you can trust, somebody that turns you on... And it's really, really important that these three people don't know each other.”

“Trust is a lie.”

“At this moment, there are 6,470,818,671 people in the world. Some are running scared. Some are coming home. Some tell lies to make it through the day. Others are just now facing the truth. Some are evil men, that war with good. And some are good, struggling with evil. 6 billion people in the world. 6 billion souls. And sometimes, all you need is one.”

“Do not look back and grieve over the past, for it is gone; and do not be troubled about the future, for it has not yet come. Live in the present, and make it so beautiful that it will be worth remembering.”

“Every song has a CODA, a final movement. Whether it fades out or crashes away. Every song ends. Is that any reason not to enjoy the music? The truth is, there is nothing to be afraid of. It's just life”

“Always & Forever”

“It's been said that there's one word that will free us from the weight and the pain of life. And that word is love. And I believe that. That doesn't mean that it hasn't been hard, or that it won't be. It just means that I've found a stillness and a bravery in myself when I'm with you. You make me brave. And I will love you until the end of time.”

"At this moment there are six billion, five-hundred and two million, eight hundred and sixty seven thousand one hundred and twenty people in the world-give or take a few. And sometimes all you need is one. For better or for worse."

“Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.”

“Change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like a stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass”

"Nobody has all the answers, but we do have all our whys”

"Does this darkness have a name? This cruelty, this hatred, how did it find us? Did it steal into our lives or did we seek it out and embrace it? What happened to us that we now send our children into the world like we send young men to war, hoping for their safe return, but knowing that some would be lost along the way. When did we lose our way? Consumed by the shadows. Swallowed whole by the darkness. Does this darkness have a name? Is it your name?"

"So don't be afraid to make mistakes, to stumble and fall, because most of the time the greatest rewards come from doing the things that scare you the most. Maybe you'll get everything you wish for. Maybe you'll get more than you ever could have imagined. Who knows where life will take you. The road is long and in the end, the journey is the destination."

"Looking back on what I said all those years ago, all the hopes and dreams I had, I've come to the conclusion that if having things turn out the way you wanted them to is a measure of a successful life, then some would say I'm a failure. The important thing is not to be bitter over life's disappointments. Learn to let go of the past, and recognize that every day won't be sunny. And when you find yourself lost in the darkness of despair remember, it's only in the black of night that you see the stars, and those stars lead you back home.”

“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting”

“Relax. Destiny has a way of finding you”

“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.”

“Many people die with their music still in them. Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live…Before they know it…time runs out.”

“Why do bad guys lie to get into your bed, and good guys lie to get into your heart”

“When so many are lonely…as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish…to be lonely alone.”

“Your reason and your passion are your rudder and sails of your seafaring soul. If either be broken, you could but toss and drift or else be held at a standstill amid seas. For reason, running alone, is a force confining. And passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction”

“Do not look back and grieve over the past, for it is gone; and do not be troubled about the future, for it has not yet come. Live in the present, and make it so beautiful that it will be worth remembering.”

“the SOONER you realize it's never going to go back
to the way it wasthe sooner you will move on."

I gave you my heart and that's all I can give you, and if that's not enough, then I'm not enough.

once you get what you want..you got something to lose”

“you wouldn't want life to be s m o o t h
its the BUMPS that make it interesting..”

“I may not always know what im doing but ill try to make things better - i promise ill ask for your help, i cant do this alone, but if you'll take a chance on me we can do great things together, i promise if you believe in me ill find the courage to reach for your every dream”

“I just want to be healthy and happy. I don't want to hurt anybody or make them mad. If that's a philosophy then that's my philosophy”

“Okay, guy in need of a clue. Here's one. Women send signals. That was a brush off. Before you dip into your shallow pool of wit let me paint us a picture and save us both the trouble. Here's your evening. You are going to slink back off to your buddies, laugh this off, get wasted, go home, and make nice with yourself. But don't be thinking of me, because even your fantasy of me, isn't interested in you.”

“Most of our life is a series of images. They pass us by like towns on the highway. But sometimes a moment stuns us as it happens. And we know that this instant is more than a fleeting image. We know that this moment, every part of it, will live on forever

You know that feeling you get on a Sunday? When you just have the whole day to yourself, and it's been great, but then you remember you have to go to school the next day, and it ruins the whole rest of the night. I have to go home tomorrow, and I just have that feeling. It's like Sunday night”

“Life is just a long journey that is made up a million little road trips”

“Life’s funny sometimes it can push pretty hard like when u fall in love with someone but they forget to love you back”

“Every once in a while people step up, they rise above themselves, sometimes they surprise you. Sometimes they fall short. Life is funny sometimes it can push pretty hard, but if you look close enough you find hope, in the words of children and the bars of a song, and in the eyes of someone you love, and if your lucky, an if your the luckiest person on this entire planet, the person you love decides to love you back!”

Pornography is ubiquitous, more profitable, more acceptable than ever. We argue about the effects on women participants but scant attention is given to the millions of mainly male users. What does porn do to men? Edward Marriott investigates

There’s an episode of Friends - The One With The Free Porn - in which Chandler and Joey discover they have tuned into a porn channel. And it’s free. They leave the TV on, afraid switching off will mean no more pornography. By the end of the episode, Chandler is seeing the world through porn-tinted spectacles. "I was just at the bank,” he complains, "and the teller didn’t ask me to go do it with her in the vault.” Joey, bewildered, reports a similar reaction from the pizza-delivery girl. "You know what,” decides Chandler, "we have to turn off the porn.”

As a society, however, we are further from turning off the porn than we have ever been. Pornography is everywhere - it masquerades as "gentlemen’s entertainment” in the form of clubs such as Spearmint Rhino, it infiltrates advertising and it will soon be available in our back pockets, thanks to a deal by adult entertainment giant Private Media Group to beam porn to UK mobile phones.

In its hardcore form, pornography is now accessed in the UK by an estimated 33% of all internet users. Since the British Board of Film Classification relaxed its guidelines in 2000, hardcore video pornography now makes up between 13% and 17% of censors’ viewing, compared with just 1% three years ago, a rate of growth that is being cited as a causal factor in the recent bankruptcy of Penthouse, at one time the very apotheosis of porno chic but in recent years little more risqué than Loaded. In the US, with the pornography industry bringing in up to $15bn (£8.9bn) annually, people spend more on porn every year than they do on movie tickets and all the performing arts combined. Each year, in Los Angeles alone, more than 10,000 hardcore pornographic films are made, against an annual Hollywood average of just 400 movies.

Pornography is not only bigger business than ever before, it is also more acceptable, more fashionable, more of a statement of cool. From pieces "in praise of porn” in the normally sober Prospect magazine, to such programmes as Pornography: The Musical on Channel 4 last month, to Victoria Coren and Charlie Skelton’s book, published last year, about making a porn film, to the news that Val Kilmer is to play the part of pornography actor John Holmes in a new mainstream movie, there is a widespread sense that anyone who suggests pornography might have any kind of adverse effect is laughably out of touch. Coren and Skelton, former Erotic Review film critics, focus on their flip comic narrative, scarcely troubling themselves with any deeper issues. "In all our years of watching porn,” they write, in a rare moment of analysis that doesn’t get developed any further, "we have never properly resolved what we think about how, why and whether it is degrading to women. We suspect that it might be. We suspect that pornography might be degrading to everybody.”

With pornography, it seems as if the sheer scale of the phenomenon has, in time-honoured capitalist fashion, conferred its own respectability; as a result, serious analysis is hard to come by. Only occasionally, amid porn-disguised-as-documentary that distinguishes much of Channel 5’s late-night output, is there broadcasting that gives any kind of insight. Channel 4’s documentary Hardcore, shown two years ago, told the story of Felicity, a single mother from Essex who travelled to Los Angeles hoping to make a career in pornography. Arriving excited, and clear about what she would not do - anal sex, double-vaginal penetration - she ended up being coerced into playing a submissive role and agreeing to anal sex. Felicity - the vicissitudes of whose own troubled relationship with her father were mirrored by the cruelty of the men with whom she ended up working - eventually escaped back to the UK.

Hardcore offered a rare, unadorned look at the inside of the industry, as did Pornography: The Musical, albeit in a more surreal form, with actors interrupting sex to break into song. Yet what about the millions who consume pornography, the men - for they are, despite pornographers’ claims about growing numbers of female fans, mostly men - who habitually use it? How are they affected? Is pornography, as most these days claim, a harmless masturbatory diversion? That episode of Friends, albeit with tongue in cheek, suggested a heavy diet of porn might encourage men inappropriately to expect sex. Is that true? And what about more profound effects? How does it affect relationships? Is it addictive? Does it encourage rape, paedophilia, sexual murder? Surely tough questions need to be asked.

First, though, some definitions. According to the Shorter Oxford Dictionary, the word "pornography” dates to 1864, when it described "the life, manners, etc of prostitutes or their patrons”. More recently, it has come to signify material, in the words of Chambers, „intended to arouse sexual excitement”. Its most common themes, however, are power and submission. By contrast, "erotica”, which is pretty hard to find now, carries additional connotations of "amorousness” and is far less concerned with control and domination. No, it is pornography plain and simple, from teen magazines such as Front to venerable "wrist mags” such as Playboy, to the almost daily bombardment of teaser pornographic emails, that confronts all of us on a ceaseless basis.

The received wisdom, pushed hard by such mass-market magazines as Loaded and FHM, is that men derive a pretty uncomplicated enjoyment from pornography. That, certainly, is the argument put forward by such proponents as David Baddiel, AA Gill, who has directed his own pornographic film, and the musician Moby, who once said in an interview, "I like pornography - who doesn’t? I don’t really trust men who claim to not be interested in porn. We’re biologically programmed to respond to the sight of people having sex.” Danny Plunkett, then features editor of Loaded, takes an equally relaxed view: „We know that a lot of people enjoy it and take it with a pinch of salt. We certainly don’t view it as dangerous.”

But is it as simple as this? One of my best friends is a man for whom pornography has apparently never held even the slimmest interest. Moby may choose to distrust him, but his sex life otherwise has always seemed to me perfectly robust. He is, however, so much in the minority as to seem almost an oddity.

I must say, it was indeed disappointing when I was told the cover of my novel could not be completed on time. Well, don't blame you la Lawrence, with all the robotics competition and all. So in the end, i had to get it done myself. Turns out, not bad after all hahaha.... I had quite alot of fun doin it. So heres the official front cover that i'll be sending off to the printers. Done by moi Andre Lim hehehe....Sure hope you guys will like it.

Btw, in case you guys didn noe, click on the pic to see larger view if u want to. All pics in my site can b seen clearer this way.

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