People often say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I say that the most liberating thing about beauty is realizing you are the beholder. Salma Hayek

You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection. Buddha

There is no cosmetic for beauty like happiness. Maria Mitchell

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. Marianne Williamson

Girls of all kinds can be beautiful – from the thin, plus-sized, short, very tall, ebony to porcelain-skinned; the quirky, clumsy, shy, outgoing and all in between. It’s not easy though because many people still put beauty into a confining, narrow box…Think outside of the box…Pledge that you will look in the mirror and find the unique beauty in you. Tyra Banks

I am so beautiful, sometimes people weep when they see me. And it has nothing to do with what I look like really, it is just that I gave myself the power to say that I am beautiful, and if I could do that, maybe there is hope for them too. And the great divide between the beautiful and the ugly will cease to be. Because we are all what we choose. Margaret Cho

Let me ask you something, in all the years that you have…undressed in front of a gentleman has he ever asked you to leave? Has he ever walked out and left? No? It’s because he doesn’t care! He’s in a room with a naked girl, he just won the lottery. I am so tired of saying no, waking up in the morning and recalling every single thing I ate the day before, counting every calorie I consumed so I know just how much self loathing to take into the shower. I’m going for it. I have no interest in being obese, I’m just through with the guilt. So this is what I’m going to do, I’m going to finish this pizza, and then we are going to go watch the soccer game, and tomorrow we are going to go on a little date and buy ourselves some bigger jeans. Elizabeth Gilbert

Is fat really the worst thing a human being can be? Is fat worse than vindictive, jealous, shallow, vain, boring, evil, or cruel? Not to me. JK Rowling

You are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold. That is how important you are! Eckhart Tolle

The only person who acts sensibly is my tailor. He takes my measure anew every time he sees me. Everyone else goes by their old measurements. George Bernard Shaw

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not. Ralph Waldo Emerson

You are not a mistake. You are not a problem to be solved. But you won’t discover this until you are willing to stop banging your head against the wall of shaming and caging and fearing yourself. Geneen Roth

The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express. Francis Bacon

Just keep moving forward and don’t give a shit about what anybody thinks. Do what you have to do, for you. Johnny Depp

I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that. Lauren Bacall

Nature didn’t need an operation to be beautiful. It just was. Scott WesterfeldI’ve never seen a smiling face that was not beautiful. Unknown

I wrote “Bootylicious” because, at the time, I’d gained some weight and the pressure that people put you under, the pressure to be thin, is unbelievable. I was just 18 and you shouldn’t be thinking about that.You should be thinking about building up your character and having fun, and the song was just telling everyone to forget what people are saying, you’re bootylicious. That’s all. It’s a celebration of curves and a celebration of women’s bodies. Beyonce

A woman who cannot be ugly is not beautiful. Karl Kraus

If you look closely at a tree you’ll notice it’s knots and dead branches, just like our bodies. What we learn is that beauty and imperfection go together wonderfully. Matthew Fox

Healthy emotions come in all sizes. Healthy minds come in all sizes. And healthy bodies come in all sizes. Cheri K. Erdman

God made a very obvious choice when he made me voluptuous; why would I go against what he decided for me? My limbs work, so I’m not going to complain about the way my body is shaped. Drew Barrymore

Beauty isn’t worth thinking about; what’s important is your mind. You don’t want a fifty-dollar haircut on a fifty-cent head. Garrison Keillor

It’s true, the scale can only give you a numerical reflection of your relationship with gravity. That’s it. It cannot measure beauty, talent, purpose, life force, possibility, strength, or love. Don’t give the scale more power than it has earned. Take note of the number, then get off the scale and live your life. You are beautiful! Steve Maraboli

I don’t take good pictures ’cause I have the kind of beauty that moves. Ani DiFranco

I’m pretty comfortable with my body. I’m imperfect. The imperfections are there. People are going to see them, but I take the view you only live once. Kate Hudson

To love yourself right now, just as you are, is to give yourself heaven. Don’t wait until you die. If you wait, you die now. If you love, you live now. Alan Cohen

Sex appeal is fifty percent what you’ve got and fifty percent what people think you’ve got. Sophia Loren

One day I had to sit down with myself and decide that I loved myself no matter what my body looked like and what other people thought about my body. I got tired of hating myself. Gabourey Sidibe

There is nothing more rare, nor more beautiful, than a woman being unapologetically herself; comfortable in her perfect imperfection. To me, that is the true essence of beauty. Steve Maraboli

Beauty is variable, ugliness is constant. Douglas Horton

What would be ugly in a garden constitutes beauty in a mountain. Victor Hugo

I have a crumble baby belly, boobs are worse for wear after two kids…I’m doing all right. I’m 33. I don’t look in the mirror and go, “Oh, I look fantastic!”. Of course I don’t. Nobody is perfect. I just don’t believe in perfection. But I do believe in saying, “This is who I am and look at me not being perfect!”. I’m proud of that. Kate Winslet

What is this drive to be thinner, prettier, better dressed, other? Who exactly is this other and what does she look like beyond the jacket she’s wearing or the food she’s not eating? What might we be doing, thinking, feeling about if we didn’t think about body image, ever? Caroline Knapp

The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Why worry? If you’ve done the very best you can, worrying won’t make it any better. Walt Disney

I naturally have an athletic build, thick legs yet a lean upper body. I filled out much later than all my classmates, and I thank God for it now. I had to learn to fix what I can and accept what I cannot fix…That’s probably the hardest thing. Keri Hilson

BY FARHIRA FARUDIN

I personally am a fan of Ella Yelich-O’Connor aka Lorde. She reached her worldwide success at the age of 17, and it doesn’t get any more inspiring than that. Her song writing skills matures beyond her age, and because she shows maturity in a world where teenagers care more about Instagram filters instead of involving one’s self in the strange world of teenage conflicts, many people thought she was born decades ago. Many in fact strongly believed in this theory, that’s just how progressive Lorde is as a teenager. But no, she is Lorde who’s now merely 20 years old.

After her astonishing debut ‘Pure Heroine’ was released in 2013, it was only a matter of time for her fans and critics to anticipate the release of her sophomore album. Everyone wanted more of her. And after what it felt like a long decade (it has only been four years but in our world, but we're talking about Lorde here) she finally released the title of her sophomore album, called ‘Melodrama’, alongside the first single ‘Green Light’.

Green Light, to put this in the simplest way, is safe. It’s a coming-of-age pop with repeatable beats you’ve heard many times before in other Top 40 songs. It doesn’t even come close to sounding like her debut single ‘Royals’. But it’s fascinating. It’s mesmerizing. It’s addicting, but Green Light takes time for you to be addicted to it. It takes time because the process it required for listeners to understand that Lorde perhaps will never go back to her Pure Heroine days. Green Light is still Lorde, just more upbeat and catchier. And like good ol’ Ella, she tries to make people dance along to the jumpy beats, and in the midst of the crowd jumping joyfully, they start to realize the way she sings in this stunning and obviously-shaped-to-rule-the-charts song is rather poignant. But how could she not? Green Light is about her first major heartbreak, and suddenly the crowd is no longer dancing. If this is what she aimed for, then she did a good job. An impressive one, to be exact.

Watch the music video below:

Setelah kempen pilihanraya MPP yang berlangsung selama seminggu dijalankan di sekitar kampus UNISEL Shah Alam, hari yang dinantikan oleh calon-calon MPP telah tiba.

Pada 28 Februari 2017 yang lalu, hari pengundian MPP Unisel bagi tahun 2017 telah pun berlangsung di Dewan Pro Chancellor dan para pelajar daripada pelbagai fakulti telah turun mengundi pada sekitar 9 pagi sehingga 4 petang bagi menunjukkan sokongan mereka kepada calon-calon MPP yang bertanding.

Bagi tahun 2017, UNISEL menyaksikan peningkatan sebanyak 0.68% daripada 13% pada tahun 2016 dalam jumlah pelajar yang turun mengundi pada hari tersebut.

Sebanyak 12 calon bertanding untuk kerusi umum manakala lapan calon untuk kerusi Fakulti Perniagaan dan Perakaunan dan lima calon bertanding untuk kerusi Fakulti Komunikasi, Seni Visual dan Pengkomputeran. Tahun ini juga menyaksikan calon-calon yang bertanding ternyata terdiri daripada pelbagai kaum berbanding dengan calon-calon pada tahun lepas. 

Pada pukul 4:30 petang, saat yang dinantikan oleh orang ramai telah tiba untuk mengumumkan calon-calon yang memenangi kerusi umum dan kerusi fakulti yang dipertandingkan pada hari tersebut. 

Tahun 2017 menyaksikan enam calon kerusi umum memenangi pilihanraya kali ini manakala tiga daripada lima calon daripada FCVAC memenangi kerusi fakulti mereka dan daripada lapan calon yang bertanding untuk kerusi fakulti FB, hanya lima yang terpilih untuk menjadi calon MPP.

Tahniah kami ucapkan kepada calon-calon yang memenangi kerusi umum dan kerusi fakulti yang dipertandingkan.

The photos taken within my first attempt with a disposable cameras are rather satisfying, even if most of them are sadly underexposed. It brings back the nostalgia of old cameras, and I can absolutely see myself capturing more great moments with disposable cameras in the future. 

I’ve always known I wanted to be a novelist, and when I graduated, full of hubris and ambition, from college, I figured it was time to get moving. I wrote three novels over the next few years, each one more complicated and convoluted than the last. It perhaps should have been a red flag that my then-literary agent and I spent more time talking about who would star in the movie adaptation than we did about the book itself, but I was 22! What did I care? I was going to be an overnight success.

I was not an overnight success.

All three books were rejected. When I say they were rejected, I mean that my literary agents (I had two during this period) sent copies of my books to scores of editors, and every single one said no, over and over. This process lasted approximately four years. Four years is the time it takes to go all the way through high school! Some editors read all three books, rejecting me three times in a row. When I remember this period in my life, I picture those Whac-A-Mole games at carnivals, where a little furry badger pops up out of the board and you swing an oversize hammer at its head, and then it pops up out of a new hole and you whack it again, and again, and again. Every single hammer connected with my little badger head.

I kept popping back up, though. I was bruised and disappointed, but not defeated. What did those editors know? I was confident that I was a hard worker and a good writer, and that I had things to say. I set a deadline for myself—as long as I published a book by the time I was 25, I would be happy. When that didn’t happen, I made it that I just had to sell the book by 25. Then I was 25 and book-deal-less, and nothing bad happened to me. No pianos fell on my head, no witchy old ladies cursed me, I didn’t suddenly die in my sleep. Most important, nothing happened to my drive to write—there was no age limit on my imagination or creativity. This was a revelation.

The actress Susan Lucci became my guiding light. Lucci played Erica Kane on the soap opera All My Children for more than 40 years. I loved Erica Kane, the most powerful woman in all of Pine Valley, and so did the Daytime Emmy voters. For nearly two decades, Susan Lucci was nominated for best actress—but year after year, she lost. Susan Lucci lost that title 18 times before finally winning in 1999. When she finally won, the entire crowd stood and clapped for several minutes. I wanted to be the Susan Lucci of novelists, so dogged in my pursuit of my goal that by the time I got there, everyone would be on their feet and clapping for me. Not necessarily because they loved my book (which would have been wonderful, of course), but because they knew how long I’d been trying and failing, how dedicated I was, how much I wanted it. Because they felt I’d earned it.

Now, of course there is something completely ludicrous about that idea—no one deserves a book deal or a Daytime Emmy; those kinds of things are based not on merit or character but on some equation of popularity and perceived earning potential. But there is something to be said for the long haul. For working your ass off, putting in the hours and the months and the years, for giving something every last ounce of yourself. Because that is how you come to understand why you haven’t been successful so far, and how you learn what you need to know to get there. And this kind of hard-earned success feels bigger than the overnight kind. If Susan Lucci had won the first Emmy she was nominated for, I’m sure it wouldn’t have meant as much to her, and she wouldn’t have gotten that standing O. And if I had sold a book back when I was 22, I would have taken it for granted—back then I thought that I “deserved” success just because I wanted it. I thought that the writing life was going to be easy, like living inside a bouncy castle, with no sharp edges anywhere.

By the time I finally sold my first novel at the ripe old age of 30, five years after my initial deadline, I’d done a lot more living—I’d gone to graduate school to study writing more earnestly, moved in with my boyfriend, married my boyfriend, had a bunch of jobs, made new friends, moved out of New York and then back—and when it happened, it made sense. When I got the call that the book had sold, I felt a tidal wave of joy, gratitude, and relief. I cried for days, more happy tears than I thought were possible. Because I didn’t just feel “lucky”—though of course luck was involved. I felt proud of myself, because I knew everything that had gone into making this moment happen.

When my first book was sold, even though it had taken me years of work and rejection to get there, people acted like I had come out of nowhere, like an “overnight success.” But look closer at any “overnight success” and you’ll invariably find years of hard work. I recently watched Part of Me, the Katy Perry documentary, and was struck by how long it took for her to get to the moment when “I Kissed a Girl” became a hit—there were years of getting rejected by labels, getting dropped from labels, being told over and over that she would never make it, that no one wanted to hear the kind of music she made. Yeah, she was 24 when her first single hit, which is not “late” by anyone’s calendar, but she’d been recording music since she was 17. Or look at Leonard Cohen—he didn’t release his first album until the age of 32. Julia Child didn’t get her famous television show until she was 51. Wallace Stevens didn’t publish any poems until he was 38. A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada founded the Hare Krishna movement when he was 70. Most of us will not be child stars or wunderkinds. Some of us will take a very long time to be successful at what we want to do, or to even know what we want to do. There is time for all of us to figure out what it is we want to do—and to change our minds over and over again, if necessary. No one is timing you.

There’s a saying that I like, which has been attributed to both the Roman philosopher Seneca AND Oprah: “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” Yeah, it’s cheesy, but it also happens to be true. So much of what goes on in your life is beyond your control. All you can do is work as hard as possible to get ready for those moments that might change everything. I don’t believe in God, but I do believe in myself, and in karma, and in having patience, and in working my ass off. Being human is a complicated business, and when one issue in life (WHEN WILL I PUBLISH A NOVEL?!?) is resolved, others spring forward to take its place. It’s important to pause long enough to feel truly grateful for whatever goodness has occurred—and then, yup, get back to work. 

This post was originally published in RookieMag. Posted here by Farhira Farudin for educational purposes only.