I was chatting with someone earlier, she said:
"...Lecturer lecturing the lecture..."

It struck me kinda interesting. like:

"...Worker working at work..."

or

"...Janitor janitoring his janitals..."

lotsa work to do! taking breaks by putting up mindless blog entries like these and the last few, forgive me. At least you know i'm alive and well. Though it's all taking a toll on me, i feel like i've aged 40 years.



still young at heart lah, dun worry.


I read this in the papers, i liked this article very much. I tracked it down online and it turns out i need to pay $2.20 to view the electronic version! coz it can be reproduced.... so here it is, PLS read it, i found it very meaningful. It explained alot abt some things, and i'm sure you'll find it's the same for you too:

Love is blind
Author: Amy Cooper
Date: 21/08/2005
Words: 1370
Source: SHD
Publication: Sun Herald
Section: Sunday Life
Page: 22

Scientists studying the laws of attraction have discovered that love's rose-tinted glasses can lead to blissful happiness. The catch? You have to idealise your partner and ignore their every fault. By Amy Cooper.
When clinical psychologist Norm O'Rourke set out to study the mechanics of long-term marriages, he was expecting love's autumnal phase to contrast strongly with its spring. After all, if love is blind, so the joke goes, then marriage restores its sight. The magic of that initial, mind-bending euphoria - when a loved one is perfection itself and can do no wrong - is followed by a huge reality check when we topple from our pedestals and confront each other's flaws.

But Vancouver-based O'Rourke made an intriguing discovery: long-term happiness, just like short-term passion, feeds on fantasy. His research shows that established couples are bound together by a self-created fairy dust, which is, in its way, as persuasive as love's first flush.

Over the past decade, O'Rourke has conducted various studies on couples married for 20 years and more. His investigations, aimed at illuminating the psychological processes at work in these unions, focus on ways in which couples reflect upon their shared past. He found that the happiest couples displayed "marital aggrandisement" - the tendency to idealise their spouses.

Those who reported the highest satisfaction levels with their partners also tend to practise "selective recall" - ignoring negative memories and agreeing with extreme statements such as, "If my spouse has faults, I am not aware of them" and "My spouse has never made me angry."

This unconscious spin, explains O'Rourke, leads to happier marriages and healthier individuals. "It seems that these genuinely held 'positivity biases' are beneficial," he says. "Recent research suggests that not only are these spouses in better mental health - for example, they have higher life satisfaction, absence of psychiatric distress - they're in better physical health as well."

The health of these spouses, who were all over 50, was measured by the number of chronic diseases with which they had been diagnosed. They suffered from fewer instances of conditions such as arthritis, type 2 diabetes and heart disease. O'Rourke's discoveries indicate that the "blindness" we associate with falling in love exists far beyond the initial courtship stages. It may also be part of the glue that binds us for life.

His work is one of the latest pieces in a scientific jigsaw that for decades has been striving to explain love's irrationality. As experts learn more about our brains and biology, they're realising that nearly all our love decisions - whether good or bad, happy or sad - are governed by nature's agenda. And while nature can be a powerful force, she's often woefully out of touch with what constitutes a sensible

21st-century partner choice.

The same type of distorted perception that makes for happiness in those long-term couples can be disastrous for some. One Australian sports physiotherapist knows the dark side of love's blindness well. "I look back on one relationship in particular with complete disbelief," says the 35-year-old. "He was so unsuitable, with a value system, politics and even a personality I couldn't respect.

But despite our lack of compatibility, something strange kicked in. It was one of the strongest feelings I had ever experienced. For a long time, that one person was all I could think about. I was glued to the phone, constantly brooding."

This type of irrational behaviour, says Dr Craig Hassed, a senior lecturer in the department of general practice at Melbourne's Monash University, occurs early on in a relationship and resembles addiction. "You experience a roller-coaster ride of elation and depression. Your mind keeps returning to the treasured object." During this time, he says, "a person is very selective in what they see and don't see."

Lust is traditionally blamed for such distorted perception but it seems we've framed the wrong culprit. Recent research traces blind passion to another drive altogether. Scientists call this state of mind "limerence" and Connecticut psychologist Dorothy Tennov, who coined the term in 1977, describes it as "an unreasonable, irrational longing characterised by idealisation of the loved one". Her theory back then was that limerence could exist independently from lust but it is only recently that scientists have identified the differences between the chemical profiles of the two states.

Helen Fisher, an anthropologist from Rutgers University in New Jersey, has used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to scan the brains of men and women experiencing various love feelings.

Her images show that lust is triggered by the sex hormone testosterone, while limerence's longings derive from dopamine, the potent potion of obsessive-compulsive behaviour, ecstatic highs, anxiety and fear. It's the same chemical that hooks addicts on alcohol, cocaine or gambling.

Neurobiologists Andreas Bartels and Semir Zeki, from University College London, have used MRI to pinpoint dopamine's mind-altering effects. Their recent scans of subjects experiencing limerence show exactly how love blindness occurs. When people look at their lovers, the neural circuits in the prefrontal cortex - that part associated with critical social assessment of other people and normally our radar for losers, freaks and villains - are suppressed. So are the areas associated with negative emotions such as fear and anger. In short, dopamine sabotages our reasoning with a result akin to temporary madness.

Although it seems bizarre that a mechanism governing such important life decisions should resemble a debilitating psychosis, love's blindness makes perfect biological sense. "We weren't built to be happy; we were built to reproduce," says Fisher.

However, as Norm O'Rourke's research has shown, there's more to love's grand plan than breeding. Humans are designed to retain their mates as support through the struggles of survival and the hazards of childbirth and our brains have a repertoire of tricks to keep us hooked to one person over time.

"There are different processes that go on during love," says Julie Fitness, head of the psychology department at Sydney's Macquarie University. "The mad passion is very different from the chemical signature of long-term love. That enduring, companionate love is associated with high levels of oxytocin and other endorphins, often known as the 'bonding hormones'." These take hold as the ecstatic effects of dopamine wear off, usually after between two and 18 months. This is the time when many relationships end, unable to survive without dopamine's deceptive magic.

"If there is no solid foundation of care or consideration, the bond will fail at this stage," says Craig Hassed. "When trials and tribulations come, there won't be anything to get you through them."

But nature knows this and has another trick up her sleeve. The attachment hormones, oxytocin (in women) and vasopressin (in men), are designed to kick in during sex, creating a deep connection.

"At orgasm," writes Helen Fisher in her book Why We Love: The Nature And Chemistry Of Romantic Love, "levels of oxytocin and vasopressin in the brains of women and men go up." This, she says, can be the next step towards intimacy - or just another misleading chimera. "It can cause you to feel a deep attachment to somebody you don't have any real use for in your life."

"There used to be a lot of social safety rails that helped people not to get too led away by passion," adds Hassed. "Courtship used to be a slower process; people were supervised." This allowed them to assess their compatibility before chemistry kicked in and glued an unsuitable pair together.

While each new study seems to implicate more biological trickery in love, these hidden forces are not all sinister. Norm O'Rourke reports only positive outcomes for his starry-eyed couples. "It would seem that this phenomenon is one related to happiness over the long term in married people," he says. Couples who scored high on the marital aggrandisement scale also fared best in other tests measuring their genuine marital satisfaction levels.

O'Rourke avoids the word "deluded" to describe those sprinkled with his marital fairy dust. The term, he says, implies a break with reality but love's effects - both extreme and gentle - belong to healthy, normal human biology.

And while love may make fools of us all at one time or another, it also gives birth to geniuses. History's tormented lovers, such as Dante, Brahms, Beethoven, Emily Dickinson and Oscar Wilde, says Helen Fisher, have sublimated their ecstasy and despair into the greatest art, music and literature - all fuelled by passion's dopamine high. "Love has adorned the world and brought many of us tremendous joy," she says. "This is an ancient, universal experience."