So what's on my mind?

There's just so much stuff on my mind these days. Wanted to blog about it but its just plain laziness that got in the way! LOL!

First off, one of my girlfriend in London had a revelation when she turn 30; to stay single for a little while longer. Well I truly support her decision on that coz I too feel that being single is not a bad thing as a lot of people might think. I've enjoyed my time being single and most of the time alone as well. Its not that I don't have many friends, just that I like the quiet, the ability to think things through myself and most of all the freedom to be selfish!

Some people think that (especially hubs) going to the movies, shop and dine alone is horrible and sad. But contrary to popular believes, its not. When you think about it, its really quite liberating in the sense that you don't need to please the others by compromising what you want to do, see and or eat. Being alone besides being liberating, its gives me time to feel my own self worth, to recollect self esteem and basically have a little breather from having people around me all the time.

Second, due to recent events that spur the rage, the sadness and most of all the need to urge to protect the someone close to my heart that got me thinking: what is LOVE in the first place? Does LOVE really lasts a life time? If it does, what happens after that? See, Ive seen people going lovey dovey when they first met and after a couple of months (or years) down the road, they split up! I know, it happens but why do people say it when they don't mean it? Did the person say it in the spur of the moment?

Love makes all of us makes mistakes as when it happens, all logic and reason will be thrown out of the window. That is why I think some people will take the vicious cycle of loving the wrong person and making the same mistake all over again and again and again. I'm not saying that I didn't make this mistake once a upon a time, I did in fact but I learnt not to do it twice.

To the persons I hold dear to my heart: I do hope that you'll take time off to reflect on your past mistakes as you've paid dearly for the lessons. Take time off to be single, time to be alone to think about what will be your next step, time to love yourself, to re-evaluate your self esteem, and self worth - as no one will give you those unless you give it to yourself.

To end this, I give you the song Love Hurts written by Bryant and Boudleaux, as I feel that there are some truth if not all in it. However, I'm not saying here that we shouldn't love but we must learn from what we get or give from it, for them we'll be strong enough.

Love hurts, love scars

Love wounds, and marks

Any heart, not tough

Or strong enough

To take a lot of pain

Take a lot of pain

Love is like a cloud

Holds a lot of rain

Love hurts

Love hurts

I'm young, I know

But even so

I know a thing or two

I learned, from you

I really learned a lot

Really learned a lot

Love is like a flame

It burns you when it's hot

Love hurts

Love hurts

Some fools think of happiness

Blissfulness, togetherness

Some fools fool themselves I guess

They're not foolin' me

I know it isn't true

I know it isn't true

Love is just a lie

Made to make you blue

Love hurts

Love hurts

Love hurts

I know it isn't true

I know it isn't true

Love is just a lie

Made to make you blue

Love hurts

Love hurts

Love hurts

Curtains

this is a back dated post

I've finally finished my kitchen curtains! This has been an on going thing from WAAAAYYYYYY back - last year! LOL! The cross stitching section has taken me some months to do instead of a few weeks. Yes, yes, its partly due to things that seems to pop up but mostly due to plain laziness...

Its my wonky kitchen curtain! lol!

Took me about the whole night just to tack, sew, frog and re-sew the voile. I didn't know voile is such a difficult material to handle for my 1st time. Luckily, I've adjusted the thread tension and changed the needle (for light material) before I start. Otherwise it would have snag and ruined the fabric...

The XSed motif taken from Fil en Aiguille mag - forgot which issue!

But then again, I don't mind if the fabric is ruined.. hehehehe.... See since I'm into recycling, I don't see why I have to buy new fabric when I could just reuse my old curtain (it was pre-made from our last apartment) that is sitting in my fabric box. Besides, I felt that its great that we get to re-use stuff that is still in good shape instead of buying new ones. At times like these it feels good to be stingy! LOL!

Giant snake fossils found!!

This is just beyond any words. That goes to show global warming has its trends. And yes I do believe that there are big or even gigantic creatures out there in the deep. We may not believe that they exists as we've not seen them... yet!


Scientists find world's biggest snake
'Titanic' boa fossils provide clues to past tropical climate.
Roberta Kwok - Nature News (www.nature.com)

An artist's reconsturction of Titianoboa cerrejonensis - Jason Bourque

Researchers have found fossils of the biggest known snake in the world, a discovery that could shed light on the climate of the tropics in the past.

The scientists estimate the snake lived 58 to 60 million years ago and was around 13 metres long. The giant, found in northeastern Colombia, dwarfs modern pythons and anacondas which usually don't exceed 6-6.5 metres and are thought to be the largest living snakes.

Since snakes are poikilotherms that, unlike humans, need heat from their environment to power their metabolism, the researchers suggest that at the time the region would have had to be 30 to 34 degrees Celsius for the snake to have survived. Most large snakes alive today live in the South American and southeast Asian tropics, where the high temperatures allow them to grow to impressive sizes.

A vertebra of a modern Anaconda (left) and (right) a vertebra from the Titanoboa.Ray Carson - UF Photography

"We've taken the snake and turned it into a giant thermometer," says lead author and vertebrate palaeontologist Jason Head of the University of Toronto in Canada, who says he "just about screamed" when he first saw the size of the fossils.
“We've taken the snake and turned it into a giant thermometer.”
Jason Head University of Toronto in Canada, who says he "just about screamed" when he first saw the size of the fossils.

Head's colleagues discovered fossilized vertebrae and ribs from 28 individual snakes in an open-pit coal mine at Cerrejón. The vertebrae's structure suggests the snake is closely related to the boa constrictor, leading the team to name the species Titanoboa cerrejonensis, or 'titanic boa from Cerrejon'. By comparing the shapes and sizes of the two best-preserved vertebrae to those of living snakes, the researchers calculated that the snake was 12.8 metres long and weighed 1,135 kilograms.

King of snakes
"It is hands-down the largest snake ever confirmed," says Harry Greene, an evolutionary biologist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who was not involved in the work. "I think it's really spectacular."

Using models1 based on the largest modern-day snakes and their estimate of the Titanoboa's size, the team calculated how hot the tropics must have been 58 to 60 million years ago, a period known as the Palaeocene. The mean annual temperature would need to be at least 30-34 degrees Celsius to support the snake's metabolism, the researchers report in Nature2. This range matches previous estimates from Palaeocene climate models that assume high atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations3.

The results support the idea that the temperature difference between the Palaeocene tropics and higher-latitude regions was as large as it is today, even though the higher latitudes were much warmer during that time. This counters the so-called 'thermostat' hypothesis, which predicts that tropical temperatures would stay fairly stable even as other parts of the world heated up.

The study offers a "really big piece of evidence" to researchers trying to estimate Palaeocene climates, says Lisa Sloan, a climate scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. But Greene cautions that the team based their temperature calculations partially on the largest known size of an anaconda today, which the study pegs at 7 metres. This number is "very conservative" and could be as high as 11 metres, Greene says, which would lower the corresponding temperature estimate for the Palaeocene tropics.

References

1. Makarieva, A. M. , Gorshkov, V. G. , & Li, B.-L. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. 272, 2325-2328 (2005).
2. Head, J. J. et al. Nature 457, 715-717 (2009).
3. Shellito, C. J. , Sloan, L. C. & Huber, M. Palaeogeogr. Palaeoclimatol. Palaeoecol. 193, 113-123 (2003).