Essentielle Elegance

no. 1 killer

2008-03-16T22:47:00.002-04:00

one of my programmate's father was diagnosed with acute leukemia.... and a very famous Canadian celebrity was also diagnosed with another kind of leukemia, CML if i'm not wrong. i just can hardly imagine how this seldomly-heard disease become this popular.

one of my uncles on my father's side had nose cancer around 10 years ago. that was a very hard period of time for his family. he was at the last stage of the cancer and he chose not to proceed with chemotherapy because it would be no use and a waste of money. his condition worsened and worsened until he lost all the memories about us, his family, his friends....

maybe i've read too many love stories, i just can't imagine how people can bear with being forgotten by the most loved one. i'm sure my aunty-in-law must be very depressed, to witness the whole process of he losing memories of everything, including herself and himself. the one who's forgetting isn't really suffering. it is the one who's being forgotten suffered most.

cancer, which is a rarely heard disease 50 years ago, how did it grab its ground and infiltrate into so many people's lives... my shallow understanding is, using big words and big concepts, mankind is to be blamed. if the air and water are not polluted, if the trees are not cut down, if fewer non-disintegratable materials are produced, everything could be better.

mankind, worst and best thing God has ever created.

2008-03-13T17:29:00.002-04:00

i'm very satisfied with the template look right now. my 1 hour effort paid off.
gonna brainstorm on my essay.
will write some for my new chapter as well.

this place is deserted

2008-03-13T01:46:00.002-04:00

i kinda give up on the template editing. since when blogspot changed to such a weird html code system which causes so much hassle for me. well, i admit that it could be my insufficiency in this knowledge.

i'm supposed to write an essay for an award application. it's due the end of march, but i haven't touched on a single word. just simply don't have the mood to write ENGLISH stuff.

i've been writing a chinese novel, and quite diligent in updating it online. everytime i say to myself that this time slot should be assigned to writing the application essay, in the end i'll sit there brainstorm my stories for my next novel chapter.

besides i haven't been writing for eons, so i decided to come back to this deserted area for some writing practice, so that i won't be so flustered when the time comes i.e. march 31st.

i went for a performance by the toronto symphony ochestra. nice, enchanting, but some pieces were just way too long and relaxing. well, it's good enough. you know it could be more hypnotising...

tmr i might post something about it. today i'm just too tired, can't wait to climb onto my dearest beddie...

Grad school again

2007-05-15T20:55:00.000-04:00

grades were posted up on rosi. expected a higher grade for 473 but it came to me as a huge disappointment. didn't do well for 471. flunked 426.

now i realise signalling is really a stupid course. i took it cos it's said to be easy. apparently it's not the case at all. i would've even gotten much better marks if i took those hated protein courses! not easy at all. damn. don't get fooled by what ppl say.

so i begin to think, even if i come back for grad school i shouldn't take biochem or maybe even science. i'm not planning to further studies in this area, why bothering taking so much trouble for nothing? i should choose sth i like or useful for my future. my friend suggested management, um, that may not be a bad idea at all, if i'm qualified for it.

Grad school

2007-03-08T15:09:00.000-05:00

I think i probably won't be accepted into biochem. my midterm marks were out and they suck. not a little bit. right now i'm very depressed. i understand the reason of not doing well, but it's still hard to accept the fact. i never did that badly before. i decided not to go to MSSU formal. i seriously need time for my finals. if i can't do well on finals, i don't know how i should face my potential grad school PI anymore. i don't want the marks to ruin the possibility of me going to grad school either. my mind's so messed up right now. i need some rest. this thought makes me scared, my bad marks were a result of too much playing and resting. i think the next thing i should do is to reschedule my timetable and restart from the beginning.

Firefox vs IE

2007-03-07T19:15:00.000-05:00

i heeded my friend's advice and switched my internet browser to firefox. honestly speaking it is much more user friendly than IE7, besides there are cute and useful add-ons optional for firefox. but i found firefox reloads webpages every now and then. i don't really like this feature since the place i'm living at now has bandwidth limit. if i have 10 pages opened and they reload once per minute and if i leave them open for one day i guess at least 25 megabites will be used up. i wish i could disable that feature.

zhu decided to go to vancouver after graduation. well, at least she has sth in her mind. i'll probably go back to china and look for some intern jobs to kill time, provided that everything's settled here before june. Cross fingers...!

boxing day

2006-12-27T00:25:00.000-05:00

the boxing day is supposed to be the shopping day, but i found out just to be the opposite. i went to eaton center today and it's just way too crowded everywhere, i accidentally but frequently walked over clothes on the floor, and i saw ppl throwing over stuff cos they were blocked from walking... just a total chaos.

well, i decided to go shopping again on saturday, before the boxing week ends. and hope not everything has sold out yet by that time. my planned route is dufferin walmart -> yorkdale shopping mall in the morning, come back for lunch and go eaton center in the afternoon and drop by the college park dollar shop when coming back. haha. i can buy a day pass and share with my friend on that day, to save some travelling money.

minxing bought a pair of shoes finally, over months after months' agony over leaking problems of her old shoes in rainy days. i was supposed to find her in eaton and shop together, but the sucky rogers failed in cell phone connections. i didn't even manage to call her up there. maybe it's because of too many ppl there, but still, how can the reception be so bad there. my calls were turned to voice mail automatically. rogers sucks.

minxing was asking me why didn't i go shopping earlier if i have sth in mind to buy. well, one thing is items on sale during the boxing week are generally cheaper, and secondly, i was too busy over last week. actually my schedule for next few days until 8th of jan is fully planned out too:
i finished exams on dec 18th
-in the lab from dec 19th to 21st
-spent time together with wash since he left on saturday, took me 22nd and 23rd off
-celebration with friends here on 24th and 25th
-boxing day shopping on 26th
-in the lab from dec 27th to 29th
-planned shopping on 30th
-plan to write lab reports from dec 31st to jan 3rd
-wash is back on 3rd, may spend jan 4th with him
-plan to write letters of intents from jan 5th to 7th
-school starts on 8th

see how packed my schedule is. i still have other stuff to do like make bookings, review bch471 and talk to profs over next week. ahhh, i'm so &^%$*@ up!

gui's bf bought her an ipod nano as his x'mas gift. why my bf doesn't buy me anything... jealous!

Jamie said...

2006-12-23T22:40:00.000-05:00

can't believe jamie's comments on our course coordinator's another bioinformatics course--"the course was a total mess, complete chaos, but i learnt more things than in any other courses." is that really sth commendable? hmmm... and "he talked through his tenure."

treat myself as a computer

2006-12-14T17:42:00.000-05:00

i thought biochemistry is a solid experiment-based discipline. at least before the 4th year everything i learnt is somewhat related to experiments--microarray, DNA sequencing, footprinting and ELISA. bioinformatics has just overthrown my normal thinking logic. what you have to do is to learn various online tools, how to sieve and extract essence from an information overload, and of course, sit there and THINK. i was stuck on several questions on today's exam, and was habitually thinking along the line of how to show proof of the theory by experiments. while i was busily racking my brain harddrive recalling any details we learnt in class, i suddenly realised that we learnt none... so what to do? sit there and keep thinking, think as if i'm a computer with thousands of databases integrated and ready to use...

btw, exams at 9 in the morning are really not so pleasant. i almost fell asleep several times, not mentioning my brain was not even at the right mode to think. anyway, although dr. steipe is not a good course coordinator, he responds to students willingly and fast. i was still asking him questions online last night by sending emails. and today when i signed the attendance sheet he recognised my name and said good luck to me. hehe. quite a nice person.

tooth ache

2006-12-03T17:20:00.000-05:00

i'm seriously considering the possibility of my tooth genes being defective. i had one molar extracted and several filled. i'm saying several, cos i can't even remember exactly how many had tooth decays. a rough estimation would be >6.

i don't think i've been brushing my teeth in such an abnormal way that does not help cleaning my teeth over years. i've been following the most standard brushing way in fact.

years ago my upper left incisor had a decay. the dentist drilled a hole on the tooth and filled it up with weird stuff. i was then safe for 1 or 2 years if i'm not wrong. later i went to singapore. and one day the fillings dropped when i brushed my teeth--see, i brush hard enough. i desperately looked for a dentist there, regardless of the possibly non-reimbursable dental charges. meanwhile, i dared not laugh out loud to show my teeth, cos one can obviously pointed out the hole on my front tooth--that just made me look extremely funny. so i had a tooth filling again. the dentist was skillful, but quite intimidating. she told me that if i can't keep the tooth intact from decaying then i may have to face a tooth canal surgery. well, obviously i didn't get what she meant by "tooth canal" which i learnt yesterday from washington. it means that a part of the tooth will be grinded away, showing the tooth cavity inside. and the dentist will extract the nerves branching into the cavity then fill up the grinded part at last. i kinda trembled when i heard the exact meaning. no wonder the singaporean dentist sounded like threatening me that day... the surgery does sound very threatening. i can even imagine the facial anaesthesia done before the surgery, cos i've done that before when one of my tooth debris had to be cleaned when i was young. i was lucky that time that the debris fell itself just on time. i can still feel the fear when the tooth drill was approaching my widely opened, helpless mouth. even the dentist looked like a demon. when i had my incisor filled again, that was 4 years ago.

early this year, that incisor began to ache when i ate very cold or sour stuff. i realised that its inevitable hour was coming. 4 years, that is already very very long. i can't help admiring the dentist's excellent skills. lucky the pain only showed intermittently. i went back to china this summer to have an annual dental check and took an X-ray for the incisor. it was found to be fine. the nerve was still intact in the cavity and the filling was still sitting there, adhering tightly to prevent further tooth decay. well, it is surprising that i can even have my incisor decayed. that's pretty rare.

yesterday it began to ache, quite heavily. i can't even focus on other things. strangely i can feel the pulse in the tooth. then i was like, damn, the nerve's gonna be damaged... (since the nerves and blood capillaries are interwined in the cavity, the fact that i can feel the pulse shows that the nerves may be very exposed already) in the end i had to take an aspirin pill to kill the pain. wash told me that it might be the weather turning cold drastically yesterday. i dubitated about his words, especially about his comment on when i can recover from the pain--he said never. stupid guy.

and this morning i woke up finding the pain was getting better, but my gum and upper lip felt weird. later i found out that they were swollen. my lower face was slightly distorted from the swelling. i was thinking of taking some anti-inflammatory drugs, but decided to see a doctor if the swelling isn't getting better tmr. washington's words were partially right. afterall i may really have to blame the weather. hope tmr i can get better. i don't want to see a dentist.

stressed

2006-11-30T21:29:00.000-05:00

my bf said to me days ago: "i'd rather you slack at home doing nothing, than you get so stressed and turn everything to me."

i have to admit that i really suck at dealing with stress T_T. i seriously began to work but i'm so worried about and overwhelmed by everything. i've begun grad school applications, and so far i'm still left with one more referee. i don't know anybody to ask. i got to figure it out before end of december.

here's what i've to do in january:
finish letters of intent;
book slots in new college writing center and career center to correct the letters;
finish up and send away all the application packages;
begin to talk to profs in diff departments, asking about possible positions in the lab;
start volunteering;
revise BCH471;
continue job searching;
continue with BCH473

my goodness... life's so shitty. no choice, i have to go on.

time to work

2006-11-26T12:28:00.000-05:00

i think i've been slacking for too long, so long that i almost forgot how to work, so long that i almost forgot the purpose of being here. i can feel that my ambition has been gradually eroded away, my body and mind have been rotting in the comfort of living. the more i enjoy the comfort, the deeper my escapism becomes and the harder for me to pull myself out.

so now i've to change it. it seems that i've been saying that over and over again so many times, hypnosis's going to follow. but it is not only about saying, it's also doing. i don't want to waste my time reminding myself, that's just useless. that's it now, no more complaining. i hope to see a fruitful 2007, and now it's time to plant.

live as if this is the last day

2006-11-16T10:36:00.000-05:00

somehow i was reminded of this saying, its appearance in my mind is possibly due to my constant wasting of time recently. days ago when i was enjoying my time playing vedio games at wash's place, he talked to daisy about my lethargy--i spent 10 hours sleeping everyday, 3 hrs eating, 1 hr showering, 2 hrs having classes, 5 hrs surfing the net and the left 4 hrs daydreaming. how vivid the description is. tho not really that true cos i spent a lot of time in the lab as well. but i have to admit that that is my current life--relaxing and meaningless. the lack of motivation can be blamed for this, but the ultimate reason should be my laziness. i'm just too reluctant to begin any new matter, to initiate any new activity. i knew that it's not going to work for me this way, but i'm just unwilling to change anything. i'm satisfied with my current life--this relaxing and meaningless life.

i knew i have to change it, my future somehow depends on my attitude towards life. i don't want to enjoy now and regret later, it's hard to go through the copouts. that's just painful. so i decided to reduce my sleeping time, cutting it down to 7-8 hours, although i knew that my brain functions best after 10 hours of sleep, but never mind. there are things more important than sleep. wash lent me his most recent time magazines, and i finished them all yesterday, feeling very accomplished (haha). this week i've been getting up around 9 everyday, afterall it's not that difficult to climb out the warm quilt. in fact the morning time can be effectively utilised. i think i'll continue this life style. it's good for me.

my suite mate F started looking for jobs later than me, yet she got an interview already. honestly speaking, i'm a little bit jealous about it. but i have to admit that she has her advantages. she got her first master's degree already, and finishing her second now; she has work experience in china; she is a P.R. here now; her GPA is higher than mine; the job market she's searching in is the chemistry industry, which gives broader choices than the biochemistry job market. she's better than me in every aspect, no wonder i can't find any job so far. can't really blame anybody.

----------oOo----------

somethings i've seen recently triggered some thinking. my suitemate A's bf came over to visit her from singapore. he planned to stay for one week but extended to 2 weeks after he found out he had extra free time. suitemate A informed everyone about his one week stay before her bf came over. they were very careful and her bf rarely came out from her room, didn't cause any inconvenience in the suite at all.

yesterday the managers of tartu came to our suite, asking suitemate A's bf to move out immediately, saying this is not allowed in the regulation. and they warned A that if she does that again she'll have to leave tartu. dur... everyone knows that but who follows the rule? the rules are there to break, who cares? then A found out that it's C who reported his stay. she's very upset about it. when she talked to C, telling her that she didn't have to bring the managers up. C could just have told A that she didn't feel comfortable living with a guy, and A would move out immediately. then C replied: this is not the point, you broke the rule, that's the point. faint... honestly speaking, who cares... C didn't even think about it, because of her uncomfort (which wasn't an uncomfort at all, i bet she saw the guy less than 2 times over the past one week), how much trouble she has caused A. sigh...

lab reports

2006-11-08T22:34:00.000-05:00

i started the two lab reports last tuesday, continued on thursday, then did on the weekend, and the following monday. honestly speaking i wasn't among the early ppl, but also not a late starter. i thought 5 days for 2 lab reports should be just nice, but i wondered how some ppl who started earlier than i did ended up having to take the 5% penalty to postpone the submission onto the second day after the deadline. i'm such a slow worker yet i can still manage to finish within time. i don't think other ppl can work more slower than i do yet there are such ppl around...

in the lab at 8pm

2006-10-26T19:53:00.000-04:00

stuck in the lab right now. not that i'm hardworking, i just can't finish my experiment early and i haven't looked at tmr's lab somemore. sometimes i really wonder if i work that slow. usheer was surprised at how slow i worked this tuesday. honestly speaking i don't consider myself as a slow worker, but somehow i gave others impressions that i tend to take my "sweet ass" time (described by clara once) to do things more carefully (slowly).

well, since i'm the one taking my "sweet ass" time, i should be responsible for any inconvenience it would bring to me. somehow this time jamie was dragged along into my slowliness. i'm really sorry about making jamie do extra work. he's my mentor that's right, but he doesn't have to help me do experiments. he could've left me alone "live and die by myself" as suggested in Chinese. he's graduating with a PHD degree in several months time and should spend time on his thesis. but he comes to the lab at least 2 days a week just to help me out. i can't get dialysis of my proteins done today, and jamie volunteered to do it for me tmr. i feel so touched (and guilty) about it. he doesn't have to do it. his kindness makes me more dependent. i'm thinking after he's gone i'll be on my own and it'll be hard for me. :"( i know how important jamie is for my project course and for my research life so far. i decided to buy him a gift when he's about to leave. T_T i wish he could stay for another year so he can help me finish my project course. ahhh, so selfish.

price paid for being a procrasinator

2006-10-23T20:51:00.000-04:00

i wasn't in the mood of studying last weekend, so i ended up doing my bioinformatics assignment until 3am this morning. if it's not cos the due time for it is 10am this morning, i wouldn't have touched it i bet. anyway, this assignment is damn tedious: 10 marks in total (=10% of total course marks), 7 sections, in which there can be up to 6 questions and each question requires a great amount of work. i think i've spent at least 16 hours on this assignment, really crazy. some really hardworking ppl began to post questions up on the forum one week earlier, one of the forum's settings is, whenever someone posts a thread up or follows up a thread, what he writes will be automatically forwarded to all the forum members' email accounts. so my inbox was flooded by 100+ emails from the "hot" discussions... i have to manually mass delete them after the assignment was submitted... it is surprising that some ppl can be so keen about assignment and stuff. the person called daniella, stood out in the forum just cos in that 100+ chunk he contributed to at least 50...

bought some figs back. i always love to eat figs, the history of me loving figs can be dated back to primary 1. i stopped having figs as snacks right after i went to singapore. somehow the greek figs i bought today are not same as what i had years ago in china. sad. but nevertherless they are good. :)

i noticed this long time ago, but i really want to share it here now: the sparrows in toronto are sooooooooooo faaaaaaaaaat...... cuties cuties. i want to have a pet bird someday, i wish i don't have to cage it so it can sits on my shoulder. i know it sounds rather impractical. only if i could find such a smart bird. i always have weird thoughts on animal's intelligence. i was telling my friends some other day that i wish i could have a dog, who knows the necessity of going to the bathroom and picking up its dropping hair. but again, my friends just laughed their heads off at my extraordinary ambition.

no mood

2006-10-21T18:16:00.000-04:00

no mood doing any work. sigh... a natural procrasinator.

bloody slow

2006-10-18T22:05:00.000-04:00

i'm fed up with Live Space's bloody slowness. i was thinking msn space actually has its advantages, since some features require special html codes, without which the features can't be displayed properly in blogger.com. but now everything just doesn't matter anymore. just now i spent half an hour for nothing on msn space. the window kept on freezing itself. it can be a real nuisance for ppl lacking patience, and i'm one of them.

well, i'm not going to waste my time on that space anymore. live.space should make it work better and faster, and more user-friendly. however its lousy work has lead just to the opposite, instead of benefiting the users, we are actually accommodating its overloaded system now. that's just ridiculous. if live.space keeps up work of this standard, it'll lose more bloggers for sure.

sometimes sophistication may not be a better thing. after seeing several times of live.space system updating, it is obvious that its designers want everything flowery, organised and fixed. it doesn't give users room for creativity. if the user wants to make changes to the space for it to look unique, he has to do it at a price--the changes will (80% chance) slow down the system. i once made the background transparent, and everything was slowed down, even typing a sentence cost me triple of the time. blogger.com, with simple templates, attracts no fewer ppl to blog here. this is really something live.space should look up to.

we may have to wait for quite long for live.space's next revolution. meanwhile, (in my case) its "main blog" status is usurped by blogger.com. i'll just blog here for my convenience.

bits and pieces

2006-10-18T00:43:00.000-04:00

i saw rodents in the kitchen just now, a black ball-like thing sort of flew underneath the oven. i was quite shocked. well, i'm not scared of them at all, coz i suppose they are lovely cute creatures, other than the fact that they may bring infectious parasites with them, they can be just as obedient as cats and dogs.

today's bian's birthday. i would have almost forgotten it if zirong hadn't reminded me on msn. now i miss the time wang was around, he always has a good memory of ppl's birthdays, he's such a walking reminder. stereotypically girls are good at remembering nitty gritty stuff. actually this has nothing to do with gender.

i had my first/last/only mid term for this semester today. not good. now i realise one thing, some ppl were born to be smart, some were born to be stupid; some with more assets, some with fewer. no matter how hard you prepare for the test, how many practise tests you have done, if your IQ's not up to standard, you'll just make mistakes here and there and be unable to solve problems. we can't control it. we just have to accept. from the time when 13 of us went to singapore "for a better education", i have already realised that i was the weaker one. I've done well for all the important exams in singapore, but look at how much effort i put in. to get the same A, i had to put in 150% effort whilst others just need 100%, or even 50%, by ppl like wang. i know i'm not among the very smart ones, but i'm not stupid either. however when i think about ppl who have to struggle for a pass i just feel sorry for them, and sometimes for myself as well, for why i can't be smarter.

as i mentioned, i'm not among the smart ones. as a result my gpa's not that great. i'm just stepping on the borderline for grad schools. i'm not even sure if i'm going to get it. wash analysed my current situation, concluded that i only have 30% chance getting in. so i was quite worried about my future. i don't plan to go back to china after graduation. partly because wash's here, partly coz i've been here for 3 years, with 1 more working year i can settle my status. i don't want to just go back with nothing. i planned to look for jobs asap. then suddenly i realised it might be too early to act now, it's only october... anyway, early birds get the worms. i'll keep an eye on job postings.

i thought career center would be helpful but it turned out to be quite a contrary. biochemistry related companies normally don't post up jobs in university websites. career center website is always infested with excessive ads from engineering/commerce/economics/accounting/finance companies, the long list of irrelevant postings can be a nuisance in the eyes of a biochemist. only at this time i wish i was an engineering/commerce student, considering how broad the job prospective is. i would be laughing my head off if i see 100+ pages of biotech company job postings. i heard the commerce ppl even have their separate career center webpage, with organised career info sessions and everything. how fortunate. biochemists, we are the minority, an ignored population. think how much extra effort we have to pay to search for jobs. don't mention how demoralising the job hunting can be.

actually i'm pretty sure i will be admitted to non-biochem (or equivalent) related grad schools. (biochem's too hardcore) but i don't want to go for grad school just for the sake of going. grad school is not meant for trying, it's for determination, passion and ability. that's why i think working would be a better option for me.

i was quite disappointed by wash's acts today. he forcefully slammed papers onto the table in the exam hall, in the name of "expressing fury of not having solved a question that's meant to be solved in less than X mins". susanna was quite shocked by his actions, and noted "washington has a big temper..." whatever. childish acts. what's the point of expressing anger in public, it only shows the lack of self-control and self-tolerance, shows how immature a person is, regardless of whatever valid reason is behind. such a boy. so not grown up. i had to educate him on this matter later afterwards. honestly speaking when he did the stupid PDA (public display of anger) i really want to declare to the world that i don't know this person at all. such a shame of doing this kind of stupid things in public.

idiot idiot, i am

2006-10-11T23:21:00.000-04:00

i'm really gonna kill myself... whole day's work's gone. i was inoculating four day cultures, supposed to take the flasks out from the incubator before i left the lab today. but i forgot. the cells are growing madly now, must be. by the time i get them out tmr they will be almost dying. sigh... means i have to go early to the lab on friday, redo the day cultures and come on saturday for the mass induction. i'm an idiot.

Psalteria--the medieval ladies' band

2006-10-09T16:55:00.000-04:00

i was playing a small computer game "styrateg", found the background music very very nice. so i checked the "credits" section of the game and browsed briefly online. so it's from a medieval ladies' band--Psalteria. the band's website is very comprehensive, in it i managed to download some sample music and lyrics for the songs. ppl who are interested, pls take a look at the site here: http://www.psalteria.cz/english/set-en.htm

here is the lyrics for the game song. altho i don't get the meaning...

Como poden

Como poden per sas culpas
os omes seer contreitos,
assi poden pela Virgen
depois seer saos feitos.

Ond' avo a un ome,
por pecados que fezera,
que foi tolleito dos nenbros
da door que ouvera,
e durou assi cinc' anos
que mover-se non podera,
assi avia os nenbros
todos do corpo maltreitos.

Como poden per sas culpas os omes seer contreitos...

Con esta enfermidade
atan grande que avia
prometeu que, se guarisse,
a Salas logo irya
e ha livra de cera
cad' ano ll' ofereria;
e atan toste foi sao,
que non ouv' y outros preitos.

Como poden per sas culpas os omes seer contreitos...

Daquest' a Santa Maria
deron graças e loores,
porque livra os doentes
de maes e de doores
e demais está rogando
senpre por nos pecadores;
e poren devemos todos
sempre seer seus sogeitos.

Como poden per sas culpas os omes seer contreitos...

another medieval band: http://www.krless.cz/cz/vstupte.htm
this website is purely unrecognisable due to its usage of a non-english language, but i still managed to download its sample music in its CD section. the song style is parallel to that of Psalteria's. very nice, with a dense medieval air.

decided to study hard

2006-10-02T16:45:00.000-04:00

this is the last year of my university, and i've been seriously thinking about my future plans recently. the conclusion reached so far: getting a master's degree after graduation is the route meant for me, since i'm still unsure about so many things. but looking at my grades, sigh... so i decided to study hard for the last year. i deleted pplive and some movies in the process of downloading to show my determination. but this "determination" didn't last for long... now i'm updating my blog, and before that i spend hours getting, designing a new template, since i want a fresh start. it's so contradictory. i wanted a life of hard-working from now on, yet i'm doing something totally unrelated just to pacify or motivate or persuade myself psychologically. i think i shall stop here today.

Frog leap ---- a funny IQ test

2006-07-24T22:09:00.000-04:00

guys, this is a very funny IQ test
reference table: based on your first try ^_^
time -- IQ
<30 -- >140
30 sec~1 min -- 135~140
1~3 min -- 130~135
3~10 min -- 120~130
10~20 min -- 115~120
20~45 min -- 100~115
>45 min -- <100

Resolved

2006-07-23T19:33:00.000-04:00

finally i've decided to go to the insulin lab for my 4th year project. tmr i'm going to tell my current boss about my belated decision. whenever i think about it i just feel scared and recoiled, at the same time i know exactly no matter what i have to inform him asap. i'm pretty sure tmr's going to be a hard day for me. sigh. i've no choice but go for it. i should learn to be more decisive next time.

my bf drove for 5 hours from ottawa to "seek peace" with me on friday. i was so shocked (and touched at the same time) to see him at my door, before today he never mentioned a word about his visit. he just got his G1 lisence weeks ago, it's quite dangerous for a beginner to concentrate on driving on the highway for over 5 hours. i never know he cares about me so much. although he said sth i didn't like during our fight, afterall it was me who started the fight...

Mind swing

2006-07-20T21:14:00.000-04:00

it's about my problem of leaving or staying in the current lab. as many seniors said, talk to ppl when you have undecisive minds on certain issues. so i followed the advice, but i got totally different responses from different ppl. my mind is in a very regular two-way-switch state: one moment i decide to stay in this lab, the next moment i convince myself to leave. i'm torn between the two sides, leave or stay. to be honest it's just a 4th year project, i don't really have to be so careful on the choice. besides either lab is good, i shouldn't dwell too much on the thought of which one is better. i'm just being greedy. i really hate hate hate decision making......

------oOo------

i've been fighting with my bf through the phone quite frequently recently. the last fight was started on a very stupid comment and we haven't reconsiled yet. i sensed that this time our fight marked something different.

when i fought with my bf before, i would regret letting my horrible temper go freely soon after. i can be really impulsive and insane when i'm angry. then when he called me we would just reconsile. i admit it was my fault this time, but i just feel indifferent towards resolving the problem and i'm just sick of any more talking. communication is important but communication in excess just can't do any help, in fact it exacerbates the already existed tension. maybe this is because he's not physically around me--long distance relationship is just not gonna work. he hopes that i can be more dependent on him in daily life and emotion-wise. but i feel my individualism/independence just floods over my brain when he's away. i just feel that i'm as well comfortable with myself alone comparing to being together with him. i just can't feel the necessity of him being with me. is he really that essential in my life? is this feeling just an illusion produced when he's away? it's beyond my reckon. when i was young i innocently thought there's true love in this world, love that cannot be separated by distance, death, age, race, family background and culture. now i can really give a laugh at my silliness.

i told my lab mentor, jamie, about my uneasiness, and he thinks the reason why long distance relationship always fails being insecurity. i agree with him very much. i told him that my bf might go US for grad school and asked him to comment on the possibility of us continue the relationship. and he gave a quite negative comment. according to jamie's experience, insecurity causes frequent quarrels and fights. plus i'm a very pessimisstic person, whenever i have a fight with my bf i just think about giving up. strangely when we started our relationship i never thought like that. maybe i'm getting more pessimisstic over the years in canada. my wrong attitude just doesn't help resolving any problem we may have. nowadays when we begin a fight i just feel tired of it and just want to ignore it. worsestill i have a very very bad habbit: when i want to ignore the problem, i just refuse to talk to him, and he always tries to address the question, and i hang up the phone if we talk through the phone, or i sign off the msnger. i not only hung up the phone at the last fight but also plugged out the phone cord so he would be cut off from reaching me totally. jamie was laughing like hell at my immaturity and silliness. but i think that's the only way to finish the fight that night. otherwise we would have kept talking until 4 or 5am and most probably ended up the fighting nowhere. that may be my "escapism theory". but i'm convinced more and more that it's difficult to change a person, especially when two of you have totally diverged upbringing and cultural background. talking/communication doesn't work here at all. no matter how hard you try one just won't be convinced by another. i am such a person, i hold certain strong beliefs, no matter how thorough your argument is i just adhere to my doctrine tightly, if not tighter. the wise way of dealing with my "stubborness" is better to just go with my way of thinking. i may be accused of being too self-centered/stubborn, if you see it in a negative way; but i think it is more of a manifestation of my individualism. i don't need others to teach me how to live my life, i'm already fully prepared for it and even if i'm not, i will still go my own way. i will heed other ppl's suggestions and recommendations but never ever expect me to change myself to accommodate for certain principles held by others just because of that.

i do feel insecure when he's away. insecure as in, i don't feel the necessity of his existance in my life. i don't mean i'm afraid of him cheating on me, so far that's not what i'm concerned about. i told him that if he goes to US in one year, i may want a breakup. honestly speaking i would try, see how far we can go. but i'm really not confident at all. i've experienced long distance relationship once before with my ex-bf, and that was a horrible horrible experience. from the time i realised that he didn't love me, or he hadn't loved me at all, my principle of love, which has been held in my mind from the time when i was still a teenage girl, when i first understood what the word "love" means, was totally shattered. i understand my breakup with him may not be solely due to long distance. but the phrase "long distance" has just left a hole in my mind. i should say, if i can have everything start all over again, i wish i had never become that guy's girlfriend. if so i may have less "stubborness" and "escapism" in my personality; i may have a better time with my bf now, fewer fights, more sweet time.

so my bf hasn't called me in two days. i feel more at peace and relaxed than unhappy. it's time for a break.

------oOo------

my bf is younger than me. this is the saddest thing ever that i can imagine in a relationship. not that i don't care other aspects of love life, it just happens that i like older guys, better 5-10 years older. "older" means more life experience, more mature personalities, more established, and more caring. i hate guys with really silly minds, uncaring for ppl and knowing less than i do buzzing around like flies. i wish some guy can treat me like a little sister and shower me with love. being together with a younger guy is very stressful. i have to worry this and that, like what if i grow old, what if i look older when standing with him, what if ppl think i'm his older sister, what if he's not mature enough to take care of me. what if he doesn't want to get married before i turn to 30? whole lots of damned shitty questions. whatever i've made up my mind already. if i'm not engaged by 26 and married by 28 i'll look for someone else. girls can't wait. and dare him give a shit on how old/fat/bad i look i will try my best to make his life difficult. i'm a tough one, so don't mess up with me.

Leave or stay

2006-07-15T00:23:00.000-04:00

for god's sake i'm getting insane. the prof i'm working with now, suddenly told me he's willing to take me for my 4th year project course. before i came to his lab in early summer he was telling me he can't promise a project to me, because he thought my marks weren't up to his standard. well, that's actually equivalent to a soft turning down. so i looked for another prof in the department, with his office and lab in the toronto general hospital. now i have to make a choice. i really hate making choices, i wish someone could make for me.

there are pros and cons for staying and leaving. i'm already familiar with the working environment here and my 4th year project will probably be a continuation of what i'm doing now if i stay. no transition needed, everything will just go on smoothly. besides most classes i have next year will be in the building i'm working in now, so i don't have to walk around between classtime. if i leave for another lab, that means i have to start everything anew... but the prof in the TGH is really nice to me. moreover if i work with him then i'll be able to get 2 reference letters from 2 different supervisors in the future. i approached the TGH prof first and now if i'm thinking of withdrawl... it's just not right....

actually i prefer working on genetics instead of proteins. but since i'm in biochem, all the biochem labs and projects will just be focusing on proteins. i've no choice... who can give me some suggestions?????

Gaming

2006-07-14T23:48:00.000-04:00

i think i've just lost the interest of blogging or should i put it, i'm getting much lazier day by day. everytime i want to write sth down, i just don't feel like putting my hands on the keyboard and lifting my fingers to type words out. i know girls shouldn't be lazy but i just can't help.

so my days go by as usual. my project went well and the cloning part is almost done. the upcoming experiments are all related to proteins. sigh, god knows why i chose biochem as my undergrad program. i really hate proteins, hate them from head to toes. i don't like any protein courses and i would do anything to avoid the two protein courses in my 4th year required course list. to me, genes are the coolest thing.

my labmates have been trying to brainwash me about the importance of proteins. but i really think genes are the master of everything although it just sits there doing nothing, waiting for proteins to transcribe and translate. genes control every single protein expression in the cells, in the human body. since i'm working in a lab, i just came up with a very funny analogy: genes are like PIs, they just sit in their office and give out commands, and all the undergrad and grad students are like proteins, recieving commands and put them into action.

i got a video game from sherry, it's called "the longest journey". it's a game like those online escape series--collecting all essential information from a limited space and put them together to finish the quest. but this game's way more complicated, and there's no way of solving the puzzles unless one reads the online walkthrough. well, maybe that's just because i'm not smart enough to decipher the hints in the game. sometimes it really makes me feel stupid. i'm sure some ppl can get the hints by themselves. i just can't. anyway the game's quite fun, but i encountered some technical problems just now and it's very serious--i can't save the games... that means i have to finish it at one go, which is impossible or i quit the game right now. seems that the later option is more appealing. then i can switch to sth more productive...

i borrowed a book from susana, called "my utmost for his highest". there are problems regarding christianity addressed in this book. since i want to know more about God and christianity, i may just go ahead finish this book first. see whether the doubts i hold for so long can be clarified in this book.

trip or work

2006-06-21T20:04:00.000-04:00

i can't believe how long i haven't blogged.

yesterday i accidentally smashed my thumb with the shower door. it was damn painful, until now i still can't press anything hard using my thumb. this made my work today inevitably slow and troublesome. i couldn't pipette solution, i couldn't close tube lids, i couldn't write properly. even when i'm typing, i have to use the index finger to do the job of that of the thumb's.

due to the long period of standing in the lab each day, my back began to protest. years ago i injured my back by lifting a box full of heavy books when helping my friend moving. i remember in a physics lecture not long before that incident, we were trying to calculate the force exerted on the spine if lifting a heavy box by lowering the upper body without squating down. the number was huge. yet i still made that stupid mistake. so i went to see some doctors. and two of them warned me of the possibility of developing slip disc if i don't take care of my back anymore. the second accident followed weeks after i injured my back, when i flew back to my hometown from singapore that year. i slipped from the upper steps in the stairs in my home, and my lower spine was fractured. it was impossible to make a plaster cast for my spine, so i had to wait for it to heal in a "natual" way, which took me three months. meanwhile i couldn't ride a bike, couldn't sleep on my back, couldn't sit long. the most difficult thing for me was that i couldn't sleep on my back. because the lower part of the spine (near the hip) was fractured, those few spine bones were arched. if i sleep face-up that means i put the whole lot weight of my body on that fracture, which gave me great pains. ok, enough old stories. so i decided to sit as much as i can to alleviate the pain.

july 1st is the canada day. we will be having a long weekend. washington and i plan to go for a 3-day trip organised by university of ottawa. then i recieved his letter just now telling me that the trip isn't starting on july 1st, yet one day ahead. this news made me worried a lot. it's rather bad to skip one day's work for my own enjoyment, besides i couldn't find any excuse to convince my prof to give me one day off. he's paying me to stay, and i shouldn't get paid for nothing. but there are quite a lot of places to visit for this trip, i'm very looking forward to it. sigh... what shall i do...

Muhahaha, today's my lucky day!

2006-05-29T20:15:00.000-04:00

i made a mistake in my last blog entry. the third language spoken in "da vinci code" shouldn't be Latin. the reason is simple--Latin is a dead language now, that no one speaks Latin nowadays. so it might be Greek? that they were talking in? anyways...

when i opened my eyes this morning it was already 910. i should be in the lab by 845 everyday and now i'm late. i always remember what wash has told me about being punctual. being late once is more than enough to leave a bad impression on your labmates and your boss. i was racking my brain for a proper excuse on the way to MSB, hoping to make up for the damage i've already done to myself... however... there's no one in the lab and i met asad on my way to the conference room, checking if there's a group meeting this morning. then asad told me, there's a TTC strike today and most of the lab ppl are unable to come, including the professor himself. how happy i was to hear this news!!! i would definitely take my time having my breakfast and walking here slowly should i know there's such a thing happening. just pray tmr the TTC can still be down, so i will have the excuse of not going to the research fair and stay back at home.. :P

i just found out that jamie's wife is an asian, it almost gave me a heartattack... not that i'm a racist or what. i always thought she was a little white girl with nice brown/blonde hair... asad is getting engaged this weekend. he's only 21 now and he'll probably get married after he graduates from med school, that'll be another 5 years. last week he went shopping with his girl friend's mother alone... i thought that would be awkward... getting engaged, getting married, shopping with mother-in-law, sounds so faraway from me...

Bacteria infection? Hopefully not...

2006-05-29T00:08:00.000-04:00

toronto's weather's really weird. these days it has been keeping a decent 20ish but it's gonna be a sudden jump to 30ish tmr. i guess the real summer is on its way.

nowadays i'm so sick of doing extra stuff, which are things other than cooking, working and sleeping. cooking is for my self-existence and sleeping is to sustain myself from the daily weariness. i've been mild sick for the whole weekend sadly, most probably because of the past two weeks' "hard work"... despite which there's another reason which i shall come back later. susana was asking me to go for a trip on an island. it sounds really good and zhu, sherry are going for that next week. yet i can't find any motivation for that. i'm just too lazy, weak and tired for any extra activity other than the essentials. how sad it is.

i can't imagine i'll spend the rest of my life like this. think about it, what i'm doing now is just what i'll be surely doing after i enter the workforce, more or less the same. wake up earlier than 8, get a breakfast quickly and go to work, go back home after 5, sometimes even later. cooking, eating and showering will take up to 2 hours, some procrasination and then, after one day's tiredness, going to bed. how boring it is. i'm sure life is more exciting in school than in working.

so here comes another reason why i got sick. i got a paper cut on my palm last tuesday, a very small wound. i've been loose with lab regulations all the time, cos i don't really get how serious it can go with violations of the rules, like handling with bacteria strains without gloves blah. i can touch EtBr contaminated taps, equipment even i'm aware of it. now i really have to face the seriousness. i MUST be careful and alert with details from now on. i handled E. coli strains without gloves on that day, when my wound was still healing. two days later i got a sore throat. so far i still think that i'm overworried. cos the lab strains of E.coli are mutated to reduce its potency, thus they do not really pose a threat to the ppl working in labs. however we still need to be careful with them. so due to my careless nature i did the stupid stuff no one would agree on. and i've been sick for the whole weekend. i took some drugs to suppress the syndrome, assuming that it's a flu virus that's inflicting the pain on my throat. but i really hold the doubt in mind that there's a possibility of bacteria infection through the wound on my palm. moral of the story: MUST MUST MUST open your eyes wild and be alert with the surroundings when in a lab, wear necessary protections.

i managed to download "da vinci code" on DC++ which is a mass sharing software for ppl living in residence. actually it's kinda illegal to use it but who cares. so, some comments about the movie. i heard from ppl who read the book before that the movie sucks. it has reduced loads of details. and the pace's hectic. well, that can't be blamed cos the book's so thick. it's already pushing the limit to condense everything in 3 hours, just like harry potter. i'd rather the producer split the last harry potter movie into two parts, 3 hours for each one. cos the goblet of fire is the most interesting one out of the 6 books so far. many details could be included. anyway...

so i patiently sat through 3 hours this afternoon to finish the movie and sadly speaking i didn't get most of the movie. the movie's in three languages, English, French and Latin/Greek. i'm not sure about the last one, but it should be latin most probably. the movie i downloaded is without English/Chinese subtitle, but with Latin subtitle when someone speaks Latin. my French is only at the beginner's level, so i only managed to understand simple phrases like please, did you... and greetings and numbers. the most complete French sentence i happened to understand in the movie is "go to the door that's on the right". well, i'm already proud of myself... anyways, there's only a pathetic 30% English part. for the whole afternoon i managed to get myself more and more frustrated and confused. i'll read the novel from tmr onwards to make up for it.

now time for bed... have to get up early again tmr. T_T i miss my bed...

Three more days then the weekend comes

2006-05-23T20:35:00.000-04:00

i just deleted the previous post, thinking that it's too cliche... it's like a daily weather report, besides i'm recording everything down on paper. so why bother putting up these boring stuff again.

today all the summer students went for a safety day seminar, which took us the whole morning to go through stuff like radioactivity protection, WHMIS and fire hazards etc. quite boring and i fell asleep midway. anyway i should be thankful to this crappy seminar cos i didn't get enough sleep last night, and it backed up and added on to my night time sleeping hours. hoho.

there were much more ppl than i expected. the summer students occupied the whole big lecture room. anyway... i don't think i've learnt much from the seminar, but to become overworried about some nitty gritty things. i got a paper cut this morning on my right palm and the idea of E.coli cells penetrating my wound and managing to get me sick have been swhirling in my mind for the whole afternoon. the stories told in the seminars can be exaggerated although some are really scary. we were told that years ago a research lady was mercury poisoned when she handled Hg. Hg just dripped from her reaction tube onto her gloves and by the time she realised it it was already over 10 seconds which is a duration enough for Hg atoms to pass through her glove and skin. 5 months later when she started to feel dizzy and went for a blood test, the Hg level in her blood was 80 times higher than a normal person. within 2 weeks she died.

such a sad story. no wonder my family is worried a lot about my safety in the lab. my parents have a reason. i got a cold burn last friday when getting the microfuge tubes from the -88 degrees freezer. i found that i'm very casual with poisonous chemicals like EtBr as well. i should pay more attention next time. afterall i'm the person responsible for myself.

daily-work-wise i'm getting on the right track. i'm doing mostly wet labs, like streak plating, PCR and RE digestion. these stuff involves a lot of brain work tho. sometimes i've to rack my brain to vomit some protocols or plans for what kind of experiment should be carried out. shaliny is doing dry labs mostly. she's helping usheer with all the bioinformatics. poor her...

tmr's wednesday. since monday is a holiday, we only have 4 working days this week. happy happy... hohoho(should give us more long weekends tho)...

Tired...

2006-05-17T19:49:00.000-04:00

my third day... was dismissed at 6pm again. keith was really helpful today, i should say he's a very good teacher too, much better than stupid edwards in mgy311. edwards shouldn't teach. that's a bit digressed. these ppl take turns to train me these days. i'm very grateful about this. usheer was saying i've already become an expert in running gels and everything, cos i got to see most stuff today and yesterday.

jamie finally finished his presentation, before which he was so nervous. but he didn't show his anxiety in front of us. some ppl are just like him, appearing very calm right before exams or presentations but that doesn't mean they don't care about things they gonna do. he's expecting to complete his PhD in one year i think, cos i remember someone told me if one gets to do a presentation in front of department profs in a seminar, that means he's gonna get his degree soon if everything's going fine. pulleyblank the you-knew-all was absent today, and this made jamie a little bit happier i guess. since pulleyblank always asks very very smart questions. jamie joked right before the presentation that he wished that pulleyblank could tell him what RavA does. moran asked some questions in and after the presentation and my prof was thinking moran's really annoying, cos he kept on asking about bioinformatics which are not thoroughly researched due to the nature of the project. my prof was like, "i really want to beat him up to stop him from asking so many irrelevant questions." that's funny. i'm still quite scared of houry, cos everytime i see him i just feel so quilty about me not getting the life sci award, so that he got to pay me from his funding. i was unhappy about his reluctancy before, but now i just feel that i should have done better to avoid this problem. anyway, what i can do now is to work hard to reciprocate.

asad failed his G2 test, i think it's normal. wash failed his G1 three times. i can't believe it. stupid guy. asad got into med school and everyone's congratulating him, so G2 test failure wasn't gonna matter anymore. he was still happy and chipper.

ok, here comes what i did today.

poured three agarose gels... almost became an expert now.
did RE digestion of plasmids. RE must be kept on ice and added the latest.
ran gels with keith. the tip should be strait into the well and hands steady during gel loading.
get a cool picture of my gel, finally grasped how to take gel pics using the machine.
helped asad with BamHI digestion. ran a gel but didn't get good results. apparently the plasmids weren't cut. they still ran as one whole band.
learnt to make LB media. this's recipe: 1 litre of distilled distilled water (DDS), 5g of yeast extracts, 10g of salts, 10g of casein(?) amino acid nutrients. mix these up but ensure the volume of water should be 1 litre. i.e. take out some water before adding the threesome. then add back some water to make up to 1 litre after the threesome's added.
autoclaved LB in flasks with autoclaving tapes

i made some really stupid mistakes when following keith. the gloves on my hands were too big, so when i tried to close the microcentrifuge tubes the gloves always got stuck under the cap. and i accidentally slipped one tube away from my hand. lucky the tube's tightly closed. but keith was like, never mind, it's just a diagnostic one. and he actually planned to re-do one round later. i felt very embarrassed and ashamed. i could do better actually. when it came to gel loading, which is my favourite cos i consider myself good at it, i still sort of screwed it. or, i should say, keith's too good at it. anyway i don't want to find an excuse for myself. but lucky lucky the gel turned out to be quite good, and apparently keith was quite excited about it. haha. it's not that bad.

so my homework's reading cloning paper... jamie's back to normal, that means he's gonna be my real boss from tmr onwards and he's gonna make me do real stuff soon enough. so my suffering has just started. gonna skip the stupid house meeting and read the primary paper later.

did a funny test:

You Belong in Dublin

Friendly and down to earth, you want to enjoy Europe without snobbery or pretensions.
You're the perfect person to go wild on a pub crawl... or enjoy a quiet bike ride through the old part of town.

What European City Do You Belong In?

Legs hurt, brain dizzy

2006-05-16T22:12:00.000-04:00

from now on the blog entries are gonna get a bit boring. i'll focus on the summary of what i did everyday.

so this was my day 2.

jamie made me to spin down keeth's samples. i learnt to use the centrifuge machine, both the big and small ones. haven't touched the super big ones, hope can get to use it sooner.
forgot to mention yesterday asad taught me what's autoclaving. boxes with tapes with black bands should only be opened with a flame on.
jamie taught me to sterilize everything potentially contaminated by bacteria after use with ethanol. ethanol's really handy. lalala. good stuff.
small plastic tubes are in the cupboard under usheer's bench.
jamie's bench is a dustbin. dump everything there. (joking) btw jamie's really strict. i was wondering if he's a post doc in houry's lab. i always thought he's just a grad student.
asad taught me how to do miniprep. got to learn all the essential steps for DNA purification protocols. just follow the protocol everything will be fine. Elution buffer is just tris buffer.
asad taught me how to pour an agarose gel. 1% gel needs 0.5 gram of agarose powders, 50ml 1*TEA buffer, mix well, microwave 1 min, stop when boiling is seen, cool it under tap water, add EtBr which is very carcinogenic, then pour into the grid with combs in already.
dye addition can be done on parafilm. learnt to take a pic of the gel.
learnt to use different freezers and fridges.

that's basically what i've learnt for the whole day. sounds interesting right... sigh... houry's lab's really hard-working. i stayed back until 6. i didn't manage to sit down for the whole afternoon, my legs hurt so much and my brain's so packed and filled up with information. very very tired. i bet i'd be aging faster during this summer. i got to do some more self-study on cloning. jamie's gonna get back to me after tmr, after he finishes with his RavA presentation.

i almost fell asleep again this morning during the group meeting. goodness me i should always sleep as early as possible. this time i was gonna fall asleep right under the prof's nose! T_T but the meeting was really boring. the prof and guillaume went for a 2-day conference, so they were reporting to us the current useful info on chaperones. that was just boring... maybe it's cos i'm not really doing any related stuff, so i wouldn't be able to appreciate the info...

i appreciate asad's kindness very much. without him i wouldn't be able to learn so much stuff in just a few days. will thank him in person when i leave the lab. thanks a lot...

Moodiness

2006-05-15T22:32:00.000-04:00

it's getting rainier and colder these days. this makes my shopping plan infeasible before the weekend. by right it's already summer and it should be rather hot so far. moody weather.

just like a moody man.

i was disappointed by a close friend recently. i never know he can treat friends so differently before and after. now even the tone he speaks, the way he acts appear no longer comfortable in my eyes. i wonder that aren't we good friends? he changed his attitude towards me gradually over the year. I know exactly why the hell this happened. our relation sours and becomes too awkward to recognise. i'm just chilled and disappointed. this is not the person i used to know before. the environment has corrupted him and moulded a new way of thinking into him. well, if that's what he wants, go ahead. and i'm not even in the right position to give a shoot. i've seen the reason of his repeated failures and just wish him all the best.

My first day

2006-05-15T17:56:00.000-04:00

So this was my first day.

i was woken up by the horrible drilling sound outside my window by some construction work, unable to fall asleep afterwards. i hurried to the lab at 905am, and realised that i forgot to bring my labcoat. i chose this time cos i thought the prof's gonna be there by 9 and would spend some time talking to the grad students, so at 905 he should have time to attend to me. well, i'm totally wrong... the prof came at 930 and only his grad students were there. but they received me warmly and explained to me what we are gonna do for the whole summer.

so i'm working with this indian girl, shaliny. she had lab experience before in the department of botany. when the grad students asked her about autocalating, agar plating blah she could answer most of the questions, while i just stood there listening, appearing rather silly. i felt quite embarrassed since this is my first lab job and i'm ignorant of everything. but i guess it's better this way, so if i've any question i can check out with her.

so we listened attentively to usheer, who explained to us the project they finished and the prospective areas that we'll be working on. he gathered a bunch of papers for us to read. before we really sat down and read, he took us for a floor tour and showed us all the weird equipment i thought i'd never get to see in person.

so for the rest of the morning and the whole afternoon we were reading primary papers. i think my body lacks lactase, my stomach began to ache hours after i had milk with cereals for breakfast. besides i was so sleepy, considering the fact that today is the only day i got up before 12 except exam days in the past one month. i kept dosing off several times. then sherry and daisy came along to look for me for lunch. i thought after the break i'd be refreshed but i fell aleep again in the afternoon during jamie's presentation rehearsal... =.=

they turned off the lights in the conference room during the 40-min long presentation, making the room very cozy for sleeping. i shifted here and there once a while in a state of semi-consciousness to pretend that i was listening. so basically i was dozing off once or twice in one position and once or twice in another. i must look funny but i doubt anyone noticed, cos i saw usheer dozing off as well. muhahahaa.

finally we got to do some hands-on before we left for good. asad taught us some basic stuff with plasmids, both of us felt good about it. now i'm back recording everything down, cos there's gonna be a 15-min presonal presentation in the early august on what we've done in the lab by each summer student, and it's open for everyone who's interested to see how we make a fool of ourselves. i think i'll have to update my blog more often from now on.

so that was my first day, afterall it's not as bad as i expected.

Starting tmr

2006-05-14T14:35:00.000-04:00

i'll start working for my prof tmr. last time i mentioned that something unpleasant happened days before my exams. what i meant was i didn't get the funding my prof wanted me to apply, then he got pissed off and reluctant to take me for the summer research and the 4th year project. in the end he agreed to have me in his lab for summer only. anyway that's better than none, i should still be grateful to him. that's why i dread so much for tmr... i don't know what's waiting for me. but i'm sure i'll have to work extra hard to prove to him my capability. altho today's the last day for me to enjoy freedom, i'll still have to do some preparation work for tmr. i'll be working on RavA, gonna search pubmed for articles related.

sometimes i think, i don't want to have kids after i get married. i don't enjoy life right now, and i don't think i have really enjoyed life before. when i think that my daughter or son may have to follow my footsteps, facing the same problems i'm having now and making decisions every once a while, what a painstaking life it would be. life is like an imprisonment, i'm restricted in everyway. i'm a lazy person, sometimes i'm just too lazy to think of anything. i wish someone can plan my life out for me and what i need do is just to follow the plans. isn't that easy.

i moved to my new room yesterday. the room is facing north, the direction i like the least since i'll never be able to see the warm sunlight in my room for the whole summer. but that may not be a bad thing cos toronto can be very hot in this season.

Intermission

2006-04-29T19:15:00.000-04:00

so far i've done 2 exams out of 5. i flunked both.

sometimes, no matter how well-prepared you are, you're still not going to ace the test. now i realised. i remember what i've learnt in ANT100 last year about competence and performance. i think i've some serious problems with "performance". i'm not saying i'm 100% ready before exams, i think i'm just not meant for biochem. there are always ppl who are exceptional smart, who study horribly hard, who are far more interested in the subject we are learning around me in my program. i lacked behind by too much.

something really unpleasant happened days before the exams. i've sort of recovered by now already. but i began to dread the upcoming holiday, suddenly wish if the exam period can last longer. still 3 more to go.

Rosi sucks big time!

2006-04-17T06:15:00.000-04:00

what the &^%$! i stupidly set my alarm clock to 605am to get up early for summer course selection, without realising that my clock is 10 mins faster than the actual time. but the thing really annoying me is----ROSI SUCKS! the system's been having a heavy load of info so it breaks down intermittently. this happens EVERY time we do course selection. so now here i am, staring blankly at the computer screen for more than 20 mins, without any successful login. ROSI is the wost computer system i've ever seen! i can't believe over the years, over all the complaints the university has not mounted a single effort to make it run more efficiently. now i don't want to go back to sleep since i've already got up, i want to at least finish the damned thing before laying back again. otherwise what's the point of getting up so early (for nothing)?

-------------oOo-------------

628am sharp--successful login, finally i made into the system.
630am sharp--finished adding my course.
dizzy with tearing eyes, i'm really frustrated with the system. what can be done in 2 mins has taken me almost half an hour! what a super waste of time!

Running out of time

2006-04-16T12:48:00.000-04:00

i'm seriously running short of time for revisions. there's just too much to cram into 9 days. i got back my mgy311 essay marks, lower than i expected. considering how much effort i've put into, i really feel sorry for myself. i flunked my bch340 just because i spent most of the reading week doing this damned essay that i didn't have enough time to revise biochem. i'm definitly gonna argue for marks.

this week's schedule is fully packed. i just wish i could sleep for a shorter period of time to squeeze out some more time for other more impt stuff. why some ppl just need 6 hours of sleep while if i were to be like that, my brain would definitely malfunction. (for your info: i need at least 10 hours for good brain performance)

yesterday i was looking at the summer course timetable, thinking which ones are easy to get As... I desperately need As now to pull up my GPA. so in the end i'm still debating between GLG205(confronting global challenge) and AST210(great moments in astronomy). both have strengths and weaknesses. initially i wanted to choose both, then i can go for classes to see for myself which one's better, and drop the unfavourible one. then i realised i don't have enough money in my bank account to pay the tuition fees for both courses!!! so i still have to make a decision today. tmr i've to get up at 6am to do course selection. sigh...

but anyway, this is the last week before exams. what can be done to improve my exam performance should be done this week. i don't want any regrets.

Christianity?

2006-04-14T14:17:00.000-04:00

for so long i've doubted the existence of God, i told ppl that i'm a free thinker whenever asked about reigious believes. honestly speaking i don't understand exactly what is a "free thinker". i do believe in supernatural things cos there do exist certain forces that are beyond human being's reach and which can't be explained in any scientific way.

in my junior college GP classes, we talked about ppl believing in God are those weak minded. i do always have this opinion in mind, cos those ppl can't resolve things on their own, they have to seek ways to lighten their souls' burdens. i don't think there is anything wrong in this. in fact i do hope when i have serious troubles and tough decisions await ahead, i can have someone leading me to the right road. if i'm a boat lost in the vast sea, i can have a rock to cling on to rest.

i had a talk with a christian girl on my floor. she told me about her story of getting to be a christian. we found extreme similarity in our thinking. i always think i should clear any doubt in mind about this religion then i'll have enough faith to join the christianity. she told me when she had this thought, her teacher said to her, "you want to find your own way to the God, or you want the God to lead you there?" after she became baptised, she then realised that after the father-daughter relationship has been built, those doubts became no longer important. it's a feeling, that God will help you in everyway.

i'll talk to my christian friends in biochem further, see what they really think. the interest in a religion can't be forced upon, it has to be discovered by oneself, or be lead by others.

Pls help! What shall I do!

2006-04-02T00:16:00.000-05:00

today i encountered an incident which really scared me out of wits, so i put it up and hope to gather some suggestions from friends who read my blog. T_T

i met a guy when i was on my way to wash's place for dinner. he was looking for sth in New College and approached me for help. i could not understand him most of the time due to his strong accent, but managed to catch some key words. he was looking for a computer lab to do his paper. apparently new college computer center was closed already, so i told him he could find one in the new college library. so i showed him the way and was ready to leave him. he thanked me many times and kissed me on the back of my hand! gosh... i don't know... i've never been treated this way so i was quite stunned at first. then i thought, ok, this might be his culture and tradition, so i didn't really care about it.

when i just turned away i heard him swearing back at the library entrance. too bad it was closed too. i was quite sorry for him. he appeared aggitated so i surmised that it must be very urgent to use a computer. it was really a bad decision but i decided to show him the way to Gerstein Library which is 10 minutes away. well, so we were on the way. i didn't know what i was thinking at that time, i just shouldn't be that nice to a stranger at all!!! he appeared very enthusiastic when i answered him where i'm from, and began to tell me some weird stuff. his strong accent made the communicatio very difficult. i could only catch a bit, furthermore i was totally uninterested at the stuff he was telling me, like he's a russian, there are bad and good russians, he can shoot ppl he dislikes, but he can be very nice to ppl he likes... i thought it was funny at first, then realised things were not so simple later.

i pointed to him the way to gerstein, but he expressed the wish that if i could take him there. so i took him there and was ready to leave again. then he started saying things like "pls, don't go, i don't want to lose you. i'll wait for you here, one hour, two hours, pls come back.." by then i begin to realise the severity of what i've done. i shouldn't be too nice to a stranger. showing him the way was ok, but taking him there might be too much. but seriously, a normal person wouldn't say these things to a girl met for less than half an hour. so i told him repeatedly that sorry i must go now blah. then he forced me to note down his phone number and said "call me, anytime, i'll wait for you. otherwise i'll go and find you. promise." i was quite scared by his words and he just kept on making me promise to call him (more than 5 times at least). gosh, what i've done! i should just leave him at the new college library!

so when i met wash i was half an hour late. i was so scared cos i couldn't stop making connection between his words of shooting someone if he wanted and coming to find me if i don't call him. wash told me not to call. but what i'm afraid is, if i don't call him and he really comes to find me, what can happen??? guys, what shall i do???

Science is cruel

2006-03-30T21:00:00.000-05:00

there's this scientist, who wanted to prove that his discovery was indeed right, delibrately drank pathogen-infested-water to induce gastric ulcer in himself. he contracted the disease (as what he wanted) but he won the nobel prize for his work on demystifying the role of bacteria on gastric ulcer and cancer development. the news came to me as a shock. i can understand his depression when his idea was turned down by seniors in his field and ignored by the public, but it's really ridiculous to use himself as a guinea pig for that kind of life-threatening experiment. i doubt one should applaud for his considerable contributions to the medical world.

i still remember the story of the discovery of vaccine 200 years ago. Jenner, the pioneer in immunology, injected cow serum into his servant's son to induce the production of a specific kind of antibodies that can later be used to combat smallpox pathogens. then he infected the boy with smallpox pathogens to observe his body response. the child survived and he discovered the first vaccine. the event was a milestone in the history of immunology, it marked the evolving of a new branch of science. but the ethics involved is still open for debate nowadays. if a person's sacrifice can save the whole population, shall we disregard his rights and unwillingness and make him to sacrifice?

Mrs. B's retiring

2006-03-29T21:29:00.000-05:00

zirong went for a montreal trip with her program-mates in commerce and ended up returning with a brand new hp laptop. i can't believe it when she told me. apparently someone entered her name for the lucky draw and she won the laptop. what kind of luck she had... last year i won an ipod through the arts and science survey and i considered it "blind luck" already. then amazingly this year zirong beat me for it...

bch371 coordinator mrs bronskill's retiring next year. when i first heard the news, i was like "oh great, then she can enjoy her life do whatever she wants." since i heard her dreamt life is travelling around and bird-watching. think how busy a person is before retirement: first is studying then is getting a good job, working hard to get promotion, raising children etc. life is nonstop and hectic all the time. sometimes i don't even know why i'm this busy, i seriously want to slow down my pace to have a break, to do something i long to do e.g travelling around to see how wonderful the world is. sadly most of the time i can't afford this luxury.

in contrary, when my classmate mike heard the news he was silenced for a while, then came up with such a reply: "shit, then how about my bch471?" well, mrs b is the course coordinator for 471, so her leaving might cause a structural change in the teaching team for this course which can in turn affect our performance next year. i never thought in that depth tho. maybe i'm just superficial. this difference in thinking can reflect at least two things: mike and i have really divergent thinking pathways, and i don't care that much about grades as he does. anyway still good luck to mrs b. she's really kind and helpful in every way!

Quite a procrasinator

2006-03-28T21:54:00.000-05:00

i did nothing but watched a korean drama series (22 episodes) over the weekend, feeling quite guilty right now. my mom urged me on the phone to do revision after each class and revise my bch test paper, and i was just nodding nonchalantly at her words, trying to suppress my impatience at times. what kind of daughter am i!!! ahhh, i can't stand myself anymore...

i was thinking of going back to china this summer, but i really hope i can stay in toronto for the summer research job. so i'm in the dilemma. on the one hand, i miss my family and desperately want to go back enjoy my holiday (hoho cheap goods shopping!!!); on the other hand, i don't want houry to kick me out of his lab, then i'll be hopeless for the 4th year project and probably it'll affect my postgrad as well... headache... i'd just leave it there. it'll be solved when the time comes (sounds so fatalistic).

i revisited the movie, queen of the damned on saturday, after reading jeremy's sentimental entry on aaliyah, the actress who starred as the blood-thirsty queen in the movie. when i first watched it almost three years ago, i was quite stunned by the eery atmosphere created in the film, but nevertheless it impressed me to the same extent. i didn't really finish it that time tho, cos the quality of the pirated cd was really bad (i guess it's because it isn't made in china ;P). anyway, it's a great movie, especially to those vampire fans. hehe, i'm one of them. i've read about anne rice's serial books on vampires, they are just fabulous. aaliyah's amazing in that film, it's such a pity that we lost her forever. i'm sure she could produce more fascinating films and albums if she was still alive.

I'm not sociable and I'm passive

2006-03-25T17:43:00.000-05:00

the winter in toronto this year's so long, it's already near the end of march but the soccer field with yellow dead grass in the central campus still shows no sign of spring. i suddenly remember last year was like that too, the spring came shortly for a poor fortnight and the summer followed closely behind that. toronto, a city without spring.

i've realised a long time ago that i'm not a sociable person at all. as long as it's not sth that interests me or attracts me i won't take the initiative to do it unless forced to. my rez life last year was really remarkable with my roomy. this year i'm living in a single room and there's no one like jess who drags me around participating in varous events. besides i'm not planning to come back next year so i've kinda lost the driving force and motivation in socialising with floormates, living within a shell of seclusion. personally i'm perfectly ok with it, since i'm not a keen person in socialising, without which i can still survive, and even live more happily. too bad for me in a sense that a bigger social network may work for one better in the future. i fully understand that but i just don't bother to establish one or expand if there's already one.

ppl say that i appear shy and timid at first sight, but they'll soon find it deceiving when they start to know more about me. i can be crazy at times, in different ways for different reasons. it's sth inbuilt in my characters and i think there's nothing wrong with it. every person has his/her two sides, guess freud has speculated that well enough. i found myself more comfortable with some ppl but not with others. i know wash's friends think that i'm indifferent. i'm really sorry to give them such an impression, which is not true honestly speaking. but i just don't feel like talking to them as much as to laurina, jess, clara, xander blah. i have a feeling that his friends are in a different "world" from mine. they are too westernised compared with all my close friends. but i do like them and they are really nice to me. i should say it's my bad that i haven't taken any step to bridge that difference, but i'm just too passive to do anything.

one more thing about passiveness, is that i think guys should never be passive in doing anything. that's just not so manly. i often encounter unfamiliar guys on dining tables and most of the time we just eat our meals quietly. well, i wouldn't care at all if they are random guys, but most of them are friends of my floormates and are introduced to me by my floormates. it's damn awkward to eat together without a word. sometimes i can become flustered and frustrated about it, racking my brain to keep some conversations going on, if not some wise ones. but when i thought through it, i just began to laugh at myself. they were at the same situation as me and why didn't they take the initiative to start a conversation? after this revelation, i never started to speak first. wise decision.

Corpse bride

2006-03-25T15:55:00.000-05:00

i watched a very nice movie last night, tim burton's corpse bride. paste some screen shots here:

johnny depp suits the role very much and the character victor's prototype must be him. they two look alike so much. (depp's sleepy hollows has a very similar background)
the official website http://corpsebridemovie.warnerbros.com/ has a very cute and excellent design.

Reunion with Jess

2006-03-23T23:09:00.000-05:00

i found blogskin designing's really addictive. this afternoon when i was staring at my cramming blog, i was like, 'no, gonna make a new one that's more organised' and so here it goes. last time when i proudly showed my blog to one of my engineering friends, he went like, 'god, you are too free.' yeah guess he was right. how nice life would be without all the tests and exams. i wish study could be a process without all these nitty things.

so the semester is approaching the end. how time flies. i can't believe another school year is passing by so quickly, one month later i'll be sitting for my finals. how 'exciting'. with one more year's suffering i'll be graduating from this university, expecting a postgraduate degree if everything goes fine. people always say, every person's life path is different, it depends how one lives his or her life. to me, everybody follows the same route: infancy; a bunch of schooling periods: kindergarten, primary school, secondary school, high school, university; entrance into the workforce; retirement; waiting to die. nothing special. the process differs, but the end result is the same.

---------------oOo---------------

my french teacher's really cute. she's good looking, (with very nice golden hair) and very much like a french movie star. why do i emphasize french, not cos she's teaching the subject but there's that kind of aura makes her very romantic and humorous like a typical french person. she was talking to us about her history once or twice in the class and that was entertaining. she shared with us last time about her journey of canoeing in a lake when she was 18, with her friend who appeared rather dumb in her recollection. she was rowing for the whole time since her friend didn't know how, she accidentally mistook canoeing as those automated boats for you to pedal for fun. their canoe began to sink half way in the lake when they was returning. they hilariously ended up swimming back. that's around 2000 meters... well, i'd for sure die in the lake since so far i could only muster a good 50 meters. that's an interesting teen-hood, i wish i had such a fun one. so when the rescue team came to salvage the canoe, the team leader said to them in french: Un échee n'est qu'un détour sur la route de réussite. which means, a failure is only a detour taken to approach success. how wise the saying is. our french average was the highest among all the classes this year. part of the reason must be her good teaching skills.

---------------oOo---------------

jess came back from cornell for her spring break this weekend. we met this afternoon for some chatting and went for dinner with 5 other friends in a korean restaurant. i was only planning for a rather much simpler reunion, but it turned out to be so cool. we really enjoyed ourselves tonight. remember that time when i knew no one in toronto and just came to new college residence, i was so afraid and flustered. i even cried over the life i would lead alone in the residence. i was assigned a double room since the residence council mistook me as a first year student. i still remember that i was so envious of those people living in a single room yet later i realised i was so wrong and jess's really a gift to me in this new environment. she's outgoing, amiable, understanding and sociable. she helped me quickly adapt to the western culture. we went for house events together, went for working out in athletic center every thursday. retrospectively speaking she was really the bridge between my inner self and this new place. i believe that because she and wash, my first year was so fulfilling and enriching. i'm a rather passive person, so i need someone to lead me in every aspect. i'm glad that i had my parents around when i was in china, i had my friends nearby when i was in singapore, and i'm having wash and jess now.

---------------oOo---------------

Salvador Dali (1904-1989) -- the representitive of Surrealism

2006-03-22T22:08:00.000-05:00

.:Early Life:.

Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dali was born May 11, 1904 in the small Spanish town of Figueras in the province of Catalunya.

The name 'Salvador' had been given to an older brother who died in infancy. When Dali was born the name was passed on to him. No one could have known just how revolutionary and important this name would become to the art world.

Growing up, Dali was a difficult child and refused to conform to family or community customs. Dali's father, a respected notary, his mother and younger sister all encouraged Dali's early interest in art. In fact, a room in the family home was the young artist's first studio.

Early on, Dali's talent was already refined beyond his years, and with each year his talent only grew, as did his interests.

.:Art Education:.

After receiving private art lessons in Figueras for some time, Dali enrolled at the Escuela de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid in 1921. There he joined an avant-garde circle of students that included film-maker Luis Bunuel and poet-dramatist Federico Garcia Lorca.

Although Dali excelled in his academic pursuits, he never took final examinations, deeming that he had no need for the type of education offered by formal schooling. He was expelled and reinstated, yet it mattered little to him. Salvador Dali's passion for the arts and his need to experience life on his own terms could not be met within the confines of school. He left.

This did not sit well with Dali's father however, and Salvador was subsequently disowned. With no true home left to him, Dali moved into a fisherman's shack in the small village of Port Lligat, two miles from Cadaques and not far from the French border. Port Lligat would become the site of Dali's future mansion home where he would spend many years of his life.

.:Freud & Surrealism:.

It was at this time that Dali came under the influence of two forces that shaped his philosophy and his art. The first was Sigmund Freud's theory of the unconscious, introduced to Dali in Freud's book The Interpretation of Dreams.

The second was his association with the French surrealists, a group of artists and writers led by the French poet Andre Breton. When Dali visited Paris for the first time, he was introduced to the leading surrealists in the movement, but because of his lack of interest in politics, he was eventually shunned by this group.

.:Gala's Influence:.

It was also around this time that Dali met the woman who was to become one the most important people in his life... his wife and soul mate, Gala.

Gala was a Russian ÁmigrÁ Dali met following her marriage to the French poet Paul Eluard. She served as a stabilizing force through most of the remainder of Salvador Dali's life. Gala saved him from serious nervous disorientation and took charge of every aspect of his existence: financial, artistic and sexual.

With Gala's help, Dali became established as a notable painter in Paris. During the 1930's his paintings were exhibited in surrealist shows in most major European cities and in the United States.

.:Dali's Style & Significance:.

Under the influence of the surrealist movement, Dali's artistic style crystalized into the disturbing blend of precise realism and dreamlike fantasy that became his trademark. His paintings combined meticulous draftsmanship and detail with a unique and stimulating imagination.

Dali often described his pictures as `hand-painted dream photographs,' and had certain favorite and recurring images, such as the human figure with half-open drawers protruding from it, burning giraffes, and watches bent and flowing as if made from melting wax.

Dali moved to the U.S. in 1940, where he remained until 1948. His later paintings, often on religious themes, are more classical in style. They include Crucifixion (1954, Metropolitan Museum, New York City) and The Sacrament of the Last Supper (1955, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.).

Dali truly created a new movement in art, but it was his own unique brand. Along with his other pursuits in the art realm -- which included jewelry design, film production and clothing -- it is his paintings and graphic works which remain the pinnacle of his sweeping importance and mystifying genius. To this day, they hang in museums all over the world.

Salvador Dali died January 23, 1989. He is the only artist in history to have two separate museums dedicated exclusively to his works erected during his lifetime... The Salvador Dali Museum in Florida and Theatre Museo Dali in Spain.

review by http://www.scotty.com.au/

Persistence of memory (iconical melting clocks)

Fruit dish

Refreshed

2006-03-21T16:21:00.000-05:00

muhaha, i just had a good 2-hour nap--my salvation from dizziness and improper brain functioning. poor zhu must be still struggling with her lab report which is an ultimate suffering for her. the funny thing is, zhu knows her lateness puts her repeatedly in this kind of situation when she has to give up sleeping and eating to finish work before deadline, she just doesn't have the intention to be a little bit early everytime. my ear's growing callus after hearing her saying "i'll start early next time" over five times in the past few weeks. everyone does that i guess.

i'm invited to the music sharing blog--the ukulele ensemble. well, i'm supposed to share something but i found my taste is so different from all the other members. they are quite pro-jap and the previous blogs were all about jap-pops. in contrary, my interest lies mostly in the area of chinese drama OST, instrumentals and game background music. i'm just afraid that if i share these stuff up there no one would read... maybe i should just stay observing for now.

houry's assignment is due tmr. i haven't started. ppl say that it can be done in half an hour, so i'm not worrying about it too much. but the thing really bothers me is this course in general. i seriously think i'm gonna flunk this course in the end and disappoint houry. i don't have the confidence at all, since the stuff taught now is so out of my favour. i understand that complaining isn't going to make it any better, i just hope some sort of miracle can happen on the exam day... i continuously did badly for bch courses, this makes me think again about my choice of being a bch specialist and further study in this area. maybe bch isn't my cup of tea at all, maybe there's sth out there suits me better, like computer repair, at least about which i feel more interested in doing. anyway, these are all gibberish. i know i have to do the master's first, regardless of i want or i don't want. life's like that. no one has a choice.

There's nothing a man can do that a woman can't do

2006-03-18T00:44:00.000-05:00

as you can see from the title, basically that's what i want to say. there's sth wrong with the lid of my humidifier water tank, i guess wash lost its rubber band when he was using it. or some water got trapped in the closure and the adhesion didn't let the lid go when i tried to open it for refilling.

i got so frustrated when i couldn't open it for several tries, and sought help from two guys but they all failed! can you imagine that guys can't even open a lid!!! anyway that's not their fault since the lid was really really tightly adhered onto the tank. i tried to borrow tools from meiji, since she's an engineer and engineers are supposed to have all kinds of weird tools with them... but anyway, she didn't manage to find one with compatible size or structure to fit the lid... so finally we gave up. and she suggested submerging the whole tank in hot water to make the rubber go loose.

so i was on my way with the tank to the washroom to collect hot water and met jean. she took a look at my tank and began to screw the lid. i was like, "it's ok jean, two guys have tried it but they all failed." meaning, "you won't be able to open it, just give up, don't worry." but she was like, "well, you know sometimes i can do things guys can't even manage to do" then shockingly the lid opened. oh my god. who said guys can do better in every aspect than girls? that's just nonsense! jean, i love you!

Independence/dependence

2006-03-15T15:07:00.000-05:00

i overslept yesterday afternoon and missed my french lecture. this is the first time i overslept this sememster/school year. lucky my two french tests are on thursday, otherwise i would be dead.

i wrote about canadian's inefficiency in my msn blog long time ago, then wash told me his laptop was done repairing just now. quite surprised. maybe canadians are not that lethargic as i imagined.

wash was asking me to accompany him to collect his laptop, but i just felt lazy to go. i always think that if you can do something alone, you'd better do it alone. it's not necessary to drag another person along, wasting his/her time just for the sake of being alongside with you. wash always says that i'm too independent in certain sense. that is true. i became independent at the age of 15 and i'm used to this kind of life already. i don't want to trouble others if i don't have to. that's just opposite wash's way of living. i quarreled with him on this matter several times and so far still no concensus reached. but never mind.

houry's really a serious person. i'm only hoping that he won't kick me out cos of my poor performance in the last test, which really embarrassed me a lot.

health-wise i'm not so good recently. pimples growing, neck lymphs swelling, ulcers in my mouth and blisters on my tougue. my lower jaw is soaring due to the lymph swelling. minxing was joking that "you are functioning well"... seems there's a mess going on in my immune system... i guess that's cos of the huge disruption of my bioclock a week ago. after that one sleepless night i didn't really rest well. now i really feel uncomfortable and sleepy. i really need to take care of myself, afterall i'm the person who's responsible for myself.

Trip to Pacific Mall

2006-03-12T02:16:00.000-05:00

i'm in a very romantic mood today, cos i spent a very romantic day with wash. what is said in the drama is right, when two people are in love, whatever they do and wherever they go, they'll always be embraced in happiness. so i happily redesigned my blog skin, which quite reflects my mood right now. i really hope we can be like this all the time. cos i understand how suffering it can be when we quarrel and fight.

pacific mall is really faraway, 2 hours by bus. actually i was already quite drained when we just reached there. i'm motion-sick, which can be an "add-on" to my already energy drained body. but it was really fun to go around shopping with wash. he's really a pig--sleep so much everyday and eat so much. the first shop he visited was a food shop... and he excitedly bought two sausages... unbelievable. guys are weird. haha. and i ransacked the store for sweets--the soft kind i like most, that i used to buy regularly each week in singapore.

we were planning to have congee as our dinner, but wash couldn't find the store he went 4 years ago. we guessed that it either moved, or closed down. how sad it would be for the latter case. things really change fast. 4 years, which doesn't seem long to me, can be a store's lifetime. i wish everything wouldn't change. everything stays as what it should be. how nice it would be.

when we were about to leave, we spotted a panel of pair rings in a jewellery store. i always wanted to buy pair rings for two of us, but i wasn't sure about wash's finger size. so the plan was unlimitedly postponed. my friend told us to go together, so we could buy rings that suit us the best. so we found the pair rings we liked most. i really like that pair but they cost over a hundred bucks. i think we'll come back after summer, when both of us have some money, afterall we are not that rich. i believe though it is necessary to buy each other some stuff sometimes cos they can somehow bring two ppl closer and tighten up the relationship, however the gifts are only symbolic and not really a life-or-death matter. we can buy them when we can afford. i just hope when we come back they are still there. i really like the design...

The Divine Comedy

2006-03-10T20:47:00.000-05:00

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Divine Comedy (Italian: Commedia, later christened "Divina" by Giovanni Boccaccio), written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321, is widely considered the central epic poem of Italian literature, the last great work of literature of the Middle Ages and the first great work of the Renaissance, and one of the greatest of world literature. Its influence is so great that it affects the Western Christian view of the afterlife to this day.

Structure and story

The Divine Comedy is composed of three canticas (or "cantiche"), Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory), and Paradiso (Paradise), composed respectively of 34, 33, and 33 cantos. The first cantica, Inferno, is by far the most famous of the three, and is often published separately under the title Dante's Inferno. As a part of the whole literary work, the first canto serves as an introduction to the entire Divine Comedy, making each of the canticas 33 cantos long. The number 3 is prominent in the work, represented here by the length of each cantica. Also, that they add up to 100 cantos is not accidental. The verse scheme used, terza rima, is the hendecasyllable (line of eleven syllables), with the lines composing tercets according to the rhyme scheme ABA BCB CDC . . . YZY Z.

The poet tells in the first person his travel through the three realms of the dead, lasting during Holy Week in the spring of 1300. His guide through Hell and Purgatory is the Latin poet Virgil, author of The Aeneid, and the guide through Paradise is Beatrice, Dante's ideal of a perfect woman. Beatrice was a real Florentine woman whom he met in childhood and admired from afar in the tradition of the then-fashionable courtly love tradition.

The last word in each of the three parts of The Divine Comedy is "stars".

Inferno

The poem begins on Holy Thursday of the year 1300, a significant holiday, "In the middle of our life's journey" (Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita), and so opens in medias res. Dante is thirty-five years old, half of the biblically alloted age of 70 (Psalm 90:10), lost in a dark wood (perhaps allegorically, contemplating suicide--as "wood" is figured in canto XIII), assailed by beasts (a lion, leopard, and a she-wolf; allegorical depictions of temptations towards sin) he cannot evade, and unable to find the "straight way" (diritta via) to salvation (symbolized by the sun behind the mountain). Conscious that he is ruining himself, that he is falling into a "deep place" (basso loco) where the sun is silent ('l sol tace), Dante is at last rescued by Virgil after his love Beatrice intercedes on his behalf (Canto II), and he and Virgil begin their journey to the underworld.

Before entering Hell, Dante and his guide see the Opportunists, souls of people who in life did nothing, neither for good or evil. Mixed with them are the outcasts, who took no side in the Rebellion of Angels (among these Dante recognizes either Pope Celestine V, or Pontius Pilate; it is deliberately ambiguous). These souls are neither in Hell nor out of it, but reside on the shores of the Acheron, their punishment to eternally pursue a white banner (no cause), and be pursued by wasps and hornets that continually sting them and drink their blood and tears.

Here they reach the ferry that will take them across the Acheron and to the Gate of Hell. The ferry is driven by Charon, who does not want to let Dante enter, for he is a living being and weighs down the boat. Their passage across is unknown since Virgil forces him to let them across, but Dante faints and does not awake until he is on the other side and approaches the Gate of Hell, on which is inscribed the famous phrase, "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate" or "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here". Dante and Virgil enter.

Virgil guides Dante through the nine circles of Hell. The circles are concentric, each new one representing further and further evil, culminating in the center of the earth, where Satan is held, bound. Each circle's sin is punished in an appropriately revengeful way to fit the crime. The nine circles are:

1. First Circle. Limbo — the unbaptized and virtuous pagans, who, though not sinful, did not accept Christ. They are not punished in an active sense; it is a somewhat pleasant place, with fields and a castle. However, they are merely unable to reach Heaven and denied God's presence for eternity (Canto IV).

All of the condemned sinners are judged by Minos, who sentences each soul to one of the lower eight circles. These are structured according to the classical (Aristotelian) conception of virtue and vice, so that they are grouped into the sins of incontinence, violence, and fraud (which for many commentators are represented by the she-wolf, lion, and leopard respectively). The sins of incontinence — weakness in controlling one's desires and natural urges — are the mildest among them, and, correspondingly, appear first:

2. Second Circle. Those overcome by lust, trapped in a violent storm, never to touch each other again, featuring Francesca da Rimini and her lover Paolo (Canto V).

3. Third Circle. Gluttons, forced by Cerberus to lie in the mud under continual cold rain and hail. Ciacco, a Florentine contemporary of Dante, known as The Hog makes an appearance. (Canto VI).

4. Fourth Circle. The greedy, who hoarded possessions, and the indulgent, who squandered them, forced to push giant rocks in opposite directions (Canto VII).

5. Fifth Circle. The wrathful, fighting each other in the swamp-like water of the river Styx, and the slothful, trapped beneath the water (Canto VII).

The lower parts of hell are contained within the walls of the city of Dis, which is itself surrounded by the river Styx (Canto VIII-IX). These are the active (rather than passive) sins; first are the sins of violence. It is unclear whether the city of Dis encompases just the sixth circle or circles 6-9.

6. Sixth Circle. Heretics, trapped in flaming tombs (Cantos X and XI).

7. Seventh Circle. The violent (Cantos XII through XVII). These are divided into three rings:

* Outer ring: The violent against people and property, in a river of boiling blood (Canto XII).
* Middle ring: The violent against themselves—suicides —turned into thorny black trees. Uniquely amongst the dead, they will not be bodily reincarnated after the final judgment. Where others will continue to occupy Hell (and Heaven) in corporeal (rather than merely spiritual) form, suicides—because they alienated themselves from their own bodies—spend eternity in the body of a tree, their own corpses hanging from the limbs. Also punished in this circle are profligates, chased perpetually through the trees by ferocious dogs (Canto XIII). They are held here with the suicides because, during Dante's time, one's property is seen as an extension of one's physical body. Hence, doing violence to one's property is kin to suicide.
* Inner ring: The violent against God, nature, and art—blasphemers, sodomites, and usurers—in a desert of flaming sand where fire rains from the sky (Cantos XIV through XVII).

The last two circles of Hell punish sins of malice, or sins of the intellect; that is, sins involving conscious fraud or treachery, and can only be reached by descending a vast cliff into the "pit" of Hell:

8. Eighth Circle. The fraudulent—those guilty of deliberate, knowing evil—are located in a circle named Malebolge (Cantos XVIII through XXX). This is divided into ten ditches:

* Ditch 1: Panderers and seducers, running forever in opposite directions, whipped by demons (Canto XVIII).
* Ditch 2: Flatterers, steeped in human excrement (Canto XVIII).
* Ditch 3: Those who committed simony, placed head-first in holes, flames burning on the soles of their feet (Canto XIX).
* Ditch 4: Sorcerers and false prophets, their heads put on their bodies backward, so they can only see what is behind them (Canto XX).
* Ditch 5: Corrupt politicians (barrators), trapped in a lake of burning pitch (Cantos XXI and XXII).
* Ditch 6: Hypocrites, made to wear brightly painted lead cloaks (Canto XXIII).
* Ditch 7: Thieves, chased by venomous snakes and who, after being bitten by the venomous snakes, turn into snakes themselves and chase the other thieves in turn (Cantos XXIV and XXV).
* Ditch 8: Fraudulent advisors, trapped in flames. Dante includes Ulysses and Diomedes here, for their role in the Trojan War. (Cantos XXVI and XXVII).
* Ditch 9: Sowers of discord, whose bodies are ripped apart, then healed, only to be attacked again. Dante chose to include Mohammed and his son-in-law Ali here. (Cantos XXVIII and XXIX).
* Ditch 10: Falsifiers, i.e. alchemists, counterfeiters, perjurers, and impersonators. Each group is punished by being afflicted with a different type of disease (Cantos XXIX and XXX).

The passage to the ninth circle contains classical and Biblical giants (Canto 31). Dante and Virgil are lowered into the pit by Antaeus.

9. Ninth Circle. Traitors, distinguished from the "merely" fraudulent, in that their acts involve knowingly and deliberately betraying others, are frozen in a lake of ice known as Cocytus (Cantos XXXII through XXXIV). Each group of traitors is encased in ice to a different height, ranging from only the waist down to complete immersion. This is divided into four concentric zones:

* Outer zone 1 (Caïna): Traitors to their kindred (Canto XXXII). Named for Cain.
* Zone 2 (Antenora): Traitors to political entities, such as party, city, or country (Cantos XXXII and XXXIII), such as Count Ugolino. Named for Antenor of Troy, who, according to medieval tradition, betrayed his city to the Greeks.
* Zone 3 (Ptolomæa): Traitors to their guests (Canto XXXIII). Named (probably) for Ptolemy, captain of Jericho, who invited Simon the High Priest and his sons to a banquet and there killed them. One of its inhabitants, Friar Alberigo, explains that sometimes a soul falls here before the time that Atropos (the Fate who cuts the thread of life) should send it. Their bodies on Earth are immediately possessed by a fiend.
* Zone 4 (Judecca): Traitors to their lords and benefactors (Canto XXXIV). This is the harshest section of Hell, containing Satan, waist deep in ice, who is eternally consuming the bodies of Brutus and Cassius for assassinating Julius Caesar, and the head of Judas Iscariot (the namesake of this zone) for betraying Jesus.

Satan is depicted with three heads, each chewing one of the former. His six wings beat as if he is trying to escape, but the icy wind that emanates only further ensures his imprisonment as well as all the others in the ring.

The two poets escape by climbing the ragged fur of Lucifer, passing through the center of the earth, emerging in the southern hemisphere just before dawn on Easter Sunday beneath a sky, studded with stars.

Purgatorio

Having survived the depths of Hell, Dante and Virgil ascend out of the undergloom, to the Mountain of Purgatory on the far side of the world (in Dante's time, it was believed that Hell existed underneath Jerusalem). The initial parts of the book describe the shore of Purgatory (Cantos I and II) and its slopes, where those who were excommunicated, those too lazy to repent until shortly before death, and those who suffered violent deaths await their turn to ascend the mountain (Cantos III through VI). Finally, there is a valley housing European rulers and others whose devotion to public and private duties hampered their faith (Cantos VII and VIII). From this valley Dante is carried (while asleep) up to the gates of Purgatory proper (Canto IX).

From there, Virgil guides Dante Pilgrim through the seven terraces of Purgatory. These correspond to the seven deadly sins, each terrace causing the purging of a particular sin in an appropriate manner:

1. First Terrace: Pride, by carrying a heavy weight on their backs. The wearer is unable to stand up straight (Cantos X through XII).

2. Second Terrace: Envy, by having one's eyes sewn shut, and wearing clothing that makes the soul indistinguishable from the ground (Cantos XIII through XV).

3. Third Terrace: Wrath, by walking around in acrid smoke (Cantos XV through XVII).

4. Fourth Terrace: Sloth, by continually running (Cantos XVIII and XIX).

5. Fifth Terrace: Avarice, by lying face-down on the ground (Cantos XIX through XXI).

6. Sixth Terrace: Gluttony, by abstaining from any food or drink (Cantos XXII through XXIV).

7. Seventh Terrace: Lust, by burning in an immense wall of flames (Cantos XXV through XXVII).

The ascension of terraces culminates at the summit, which is the Garden of Eden (Cantos XXVIII through XXXIII). Virgil, as a pagan, is a permanent denizen of Limbo, the first circle of Hell; thus, he may not enter Paradise. Beatrice then becomes the second guide (accompanied by an extravagant procession), as well as a redemptrix and mediatrix. Beatrice is modeled after Beatrice Portinari, a woman Dante loved in childhood, and who passed away in 1290, leaving him grief-stricken. She is exemplified in La Vita Nuova ("The New Life") and is further beatified.

Paradiso

After an initial ascension (Canto I), Beatrice guides Dante Pilgrim through the nine spheres of Heaven. These are concentric and spherical, similar to Aristotelian and Ptolemaic cosmology. The addition of a moral dimension means that a soul that has reached Paradise stops at the level applicable to it. The nine spheres are:

1. First Sphere: The moon - those who abandoned their vows (Cantos II through V).

2. Second Sphere: Mercury - those who did good out of a desire for fame (Cantos V through VII).

3. Third Sphere: Venus - those who did good out of love (Cantos VIII and XIX).

4. Fourth Sphere: The sun - souls of the wise (Cantos X through XIV).

5. Fifth Sphere: Mars - those who fought for Christianity (Cantos XIV through XVIII).

6. Sixth Sphere: Jupiter - those who personified justice (Cantos XVIII through XX).

7. Seventh Sphere: Saturn - the contemplative (Cantos XXI and XXII).

8. Eighth Sphere: The fixed stars - the blessed (Cantos XXII through XXVII). Here, Dante is tested on faith by Saint Peter, hope by Saint James, and love by Saint John the Evangelist.

9. Ninth Sphere: The Primum Mobile ("Prime Mover") - angels (Cantos XXVII through XXIX).

Beatrice leaves Dante with Saint Bernard who prays to Mary on behalf of Dante and Dante is allowed to see both Jesus and Mary. From here, Dante ascends to a substance beyond physical existence, called the Empyrean Heaven (Cantos XXX through XXXIII). Here he comes face-to-face with God Himself, and is granted understanding of the Divine and of human nature.

Thematic Concern

The Divine Comedy can be described simply as an allegory: Each canto, and the episodes therein, can contain many alternate meanings. Dante's allegory, however, is more complex, and, in explaining how to read the poem (see the "Letter to Can Grande della Scala"), he outlines other levels of meaning besides the allegory (the historical, the moral, the literal, and the anagogical).

The structure of the poem, likewise, is quite complex, with mathematical and numerological patterns arching throughout the work, particularly threes and nines. What has made the poem as great as it is are its particularly human qualities: Dante's skillful delineation of the characters he encounters in Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise; his bitter denunciations of Florentine and Italian politics; and his powerful poetic imagination. The fact that he uses real characters, according to Dorothy Sayers in her introduction to her translation of "L'Inferno", allows Dante the freedom of not having to involve the reader in description, and allows him to "[make] room in his poem for the discussion of a great many subjects of the utmost importance, thus widening its range and increasing its variety."

Dante called the poem "Comedy" (the adjective "Divine" added later in the 16th century) because poems in the ancient world were classified as High ("Tragedy") or Low ("Comedy"). Low poems had happy endings and were of everyday or vulgar subjects, while High poems were for more serious matters. Dante was one of the first in the Middle Ages to write of a serious subject, the Redemption of man, in the low and vulgar language of Italian, not Latin as one might expect for such a serious topic.

Response and criticism

The work was not always so well-regarded. After being recognized as a masterpiece in the first centuries after its publication, the work was largely ignored during the Enlightenment, only to be "rediscovered" by the romantic writers of the nineteenth century. Later authors as disparate as William Blake, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Samuel Beckett, and James Joyce have drawn on it for inspiration, while modern poets, including Seamus Heaney, Robert Pinsky, and William Merwin, have given translations of all or parts of the book. William Blake illustrated the Comedy and the engravings of Gustave Doré are widely used in modern editions. Salvador Dalí also composed a cycle of paintings from each section of the Commedia.

Original copies

Only two known copies of the original manuscript still remain. One is in Milan, and the other is owned by the Asiatic Society of Bombay. In 1930, Mussolini offered the society one million pounds sterling for the book, but was flatly refused.

According to the Società Dantesca Italiana, no original manuscript written by Dante survived; there are many manuscript copies from the 14th and 15th centuries.

My future?

2006-03-08T23:44:00.000-05:00

i got back my bch test paper back today. horribly done. i can't believe that i'm among the bottom few but somehow it's within expectation, since i never succeed in any bch test before. think about it, i'm in bch specialist, yet i keep on getting poor marks. i shouldn't have followed others to study this discipline in the first place. i can't see myself in a labcoat doing experiment for graduate study in one year's time, and somemore i may not even get into it. very depressed today. wash didn't do well. but at least he's above average. i'm really worried about my summer job. what if houry picks on me and says, see, i anyhow pick a student in bch class, he or she's better than you. that'll be catastrophic. i can't allow it to happen. this test is 38%, i have to do exceptionally well in the final to pull the overall marks up. i'm quite pessimistic about it. if i can score above 85, pigs would fly. furthermore there are so many smart and hardworking ppl in my class, they'll for sure get higher than i do. there's a girl obtaining 33/33 for one section. hard-core diligent student. i might be above average in the student ranking in the whole university population, yet i must be below average in my bch class. i've persuaded my juniors not to choose bch as the post. but some of them are really keen in it. well, i can't force them not to choose, so, bonne chance to them.

personally, i really feel defeated. there is a chinese saying, everytime defeated, combat again. well, it's no use for me to cry over spilled milk. mourning does not help the situation at all. keep on studying, that's the only way. about the question of going for graduate school, i still have to wait and see. tho i don't like any bch course i'm learning right now, i guess graduate study is different from undergrad. and i can't get to anywhere with just an undergrad degree. so i'll still go ahead with the old plan.

this week's experience is really unforgetable. i slept at 7am on tuesday to complete my lab report due that day. i'll never do that next time. i was totally blanked out the whole day, dizzy and improper functioning of my brain. that's so bad for my health and the report's quality can't be guaranteed as well.

MGY essay

2006-03-01T15:02:00.000-05:00

slept at 5 this morning, trying to finish mgy essay before the appointment i booked with new college writing centre. i don't want to go empty-handed. it's necessary that i fully utilise the 1 hour in the morning. i don't want to get up so early just for nothing. so i'm feeling damn dizzy now. i was trying to take a nap at noon, yet i tossed and turned on my bed, couldn't shut off my brain for a while. i had this kind of experience before that i couldn't fall asleep even tho i'm dog-tired.

so many ppl didn't come for bch340 today. i was wondering maybe some have dropped this course since the test on monday's really scaring ppl away. or they might be working hard on mgy essay as well. i'm quite sure that i must be among the first few who have finished the essay already by far. i just need to do some more edition. wash was asking me what motivation drives me to finish the essay. to be honest i didn't really feel an adversity or willingness in starting the topic, i just felt that it's not good for me to go and see an essay writing councellor with nothing prepared beforehand. that just doesn't look great. even i couldn't finish it, i should bring with me a decent length of paragraphs. that may be counted as my motivation. it may not be the right type of motivation, but it's motivation anyway.

wash was saying it's not good to rush the essay like this, since the quality may be affected. i agree. it may be harder to revise it since i've already fall in the trap of fixed styles of writing, paraphrasing and language composition. my thinking process is much restricted once there is a cap put on it. it's just like the monkey king's headring. haha, what a metaphor. i'm sure it'll be better if one already has something to say in mind and writing would be the final process to verbalize his thinking. but i just couldn't manage to do it. it's a compromise, i have my essay looked over by a professional anyway. gonna nap a bit.

p.s. msn8.0 is upgraded again. i like the outlook quite much, better than the original 8.0 skin.

Picture of the week

2006-02-27T13:46:00.000-05:00

Original picture can be found at:
http://img466.imageshack.us/img466/7941/405bw.jpg

Sleepy

2006-02-27T13:26:00.000-05:00

damn sleepy now. i woke up at normal hour, 1100 as i did for the whole reading week. but i think i need more. i always sleep like a pig. my floormates were shocked to learn i need at least 9 hours for proper brain functioning everyday. anyway... i'm having my bch340 term test this evening, from 6-8, yet i'm still not ready for it. well, i don't think i'm ready for any test/exam since i entered university. it just makes me afraid (and sleepy). maybe i should slap myself once on each side of my face, to make me more awake. i'd better do so. i'm left with around 4 hours before the test, if i don't study now, when shall i study.

recently i feel a conundrum of lacking of words to express myself. maybe i should stop writing for a few days and post only when i feel like to say something.

No title

2006-02-24T14:11:00.000-05:00

finally i'm done with my mgy essay draft. so happy. i worked till 3 in the morning in the past two days, haven't really had a good sleep. but all my efforts paid off! it's really good to think i'm done with it. tho my essay for sure still needs some more brush-ups. new college writing centre's really helpful. should book some more appointment sif possible, since it's too popular that one has to book a month beforehand, otherwise the booking's always full.

another happy thing is i found my biochem notes which were stuck in a pile of notes of other subjects. i was worried a lot since i wouldn't be able to revise for that specific part of monday's test without relevant notes. so now i have to begin my revision on french and biochem. sigh, i haven't really started. really afraid if i flunk the test. the course coordinator of bch340 will be my boss in summer. i don't want to disappoint him. well, i guess i shouldn't go for the test cos of this, the intention isn't right. last time i went for bch242 with this kind of thoughts in mind and totally flunked it. so this time i should change my mindset a bit, and do it for myself. good or bad there will be nothing to do with my coordinator. that's my own business.

i'm thinking of taking a nap. i can't believe that in the past two days i read 8 primary papers plus reviews. that's double the amount of what i read in the past 20 years. i hope i'm not sick of primary papers, since i'll be reading more for sure in my future...

Aujourd'hui

2006-02-22T01:16:00.000-05:00

just thought the title 'today' is rather too plain and uninteresting, so i put it in the french way.

well, woken up by a call from aunty huang at 8 this morning, asking about zhu's whereabouts. this woman, she doesn't re-fill her cell phone money balance and doesn't get online at all these days. no wonder her parents lost track of her. my parents were as worried as they were once before when i was in singapore. called everyone possible around me to ensure my safety. parents are like that. i'm sure if i have a girl living alone outside i would be like our parents as well. well, too faraway...

i went for a shadow program today, came back dog-tired. i never knew watching and listening would be this tiring before. basically i just stayed with the graduate student, followed her around and asked questions whenever i didn't understand. well, to me, i'm not that academically strong, so i didn't find a lot of questions related to her lab work to ask. i simply bombed her with loads of administrative questions, like how to find a 4th year project topic, when to look for a prof blah blah. she's very nice and explained to me everything. i was lost in the max bell research centre, and she even brought me out of that labyrinth. really touched.

shockingly she's the only graduate student in dr. volchuk's lab. since the doctor is very new, he has only been here for two years. so not a lot of ppl know him. what's even more pathetic that there are only five ppl in total in his lab. two technicians, one graduate student, one fourth year research lab student and himself... it's such a huge contrast from those famous profs, who normally have over 10 ppl each in their labs. and some of them may have more than one labs. tree's boss's friend (if i didn't remember wrongly) got the whole floor as his lab.

so i walked back and forth four times, including lunch time when i actually came back to rez. i felt like sitting on a wheel chair and being pushed around so i didn't have to move after i got back.

bian, zirong, wash, jin xiao and me went for karaoke tonight. i wasn't in the singing mode, so even not half way through my throat sored and i couldn't sing high-pitched notes... whatever, my singing skills aren't good at all even with this excuse. and after i came back i finally aced hamster ball. really happy. i'm left only with two arenas to be unlocked. quite bothered by their hidden location of secret spots. really hope someone knows can give me a helping hand. anyway, it's a wonderful night and i should have an orange and go to bed soon.

The Truman Show

2006-02-20T20:59:00.000-05:00

i can't believe i watched another movie today. it's written by andrew niccol again, a really talented screen writer. he also directed Gattaca which i introduced in my last blog.

tho the idea of this truman show isn't completely novel, that some overlaps could be found in other movies and some ideas were borrowed from other movies, the whole story is nevertherless wonderful.

Gattaca

2006-02-19T23:19:00.000-05:00

watched this excellent movie yesterday. feel that the guy really got the guts. and the plot is impeccably set, very impressive.
here adapts a review from wikipedia:

Overview:

Gattaca is a 1997 science fiction drama film by director/screenwriter Andrew Niccol, starring Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman and Jude Law.

The film presents a retro-futurist vision of a society driven by liberal eugenics where genetic engineering and in-vitro fertilization have allowed engineering of children (including factors such as gender, intelligence, life expectancy, hair color, height, and the elimination of most genetic diseases). People who are conceived by "traditional" sexual reproduction ("faith love") form a poor underclass with inferior genes, collectively known as "in-valids", who are delegated to the lower ends of the social ladder.

The movie draws on concerns over technological developments which facilitate in vitro fertilization, genetic engineering and diagnosis of genetic disorders, and the possible consequences of such technology for society.

Plot:

In a fictional world where genetic engineering of humans is common and DNA plays the primary role in determining social class, Vincent (Hawke) is conceived and born without the aid of this technology. Suffering from the nearly eradicated physical dysfunctions of nearsightedness and a congenital heart defect, as well as being given a life expectancy of 30 years, Vincent faces extreme discrimination and prejudice. The only way he can achieve his life-long dream of becoming an astronaut is to impersonate someone else. He assumes the identity of paraplegic swimming star Jerome Eugene Morrow (Law) and, using DNA and tissue samples provided by Jerome, gains admittance to the Gattaca Aerospace Corporation, the most prestigious space-flight conglomerate of the day. The plan works perfectly until an agency director is murdered and evidence of Vincent's own DNA is found at the crime scene in the form of an eyelash. Vincent must evade ever-increasing security as his mission launch date approaches and he pursues a relationship with his co-worker Irene Cassini (Thurman).

The story is centred around the irony of the "perfect" Jerome failing to realise the potential of his perfect genes due to his paralysing accident and the "imperfect" Vincent transcending his. A milder version of the disorder which afflicts Vincent prevents Irene from taking part in space flight. This dichotomy shows how the eugenics policy in Gattaca and the world it is set in adversely affect the humanity of both Vincent and Jerome, as well as the "in-valid" and "valid" humans they represent.

The film's themes include personal identity, courage, hope, the burden of perfection, faith, sibling rivalry, fate, genetic determinism, and whether humanity and the human spirit can be defined or limited by our DNA.

Miscellany

1. "Gattaca" is a word made from the abbreviations for the DNA base pair molecules Adenine, Thyamine, Cytosine and Guanine. Not surprisingly, the sequence GATTACA, along with many other short sequences of base pairs, occurs many times throughout the recently-published human genome.
2. The movie's tagline is "There is no gene for the human spirit."
3. Throughout the opening title sequence and closing credits the letters A, T, C and G within words and names are displayed in an alternate typeface.
4. In Greek, "Eugene" means "well-born" and is a root of the word "eugenics".
5. To create an eerie atmosphere of ubiquitous physical perfection, director Andrew Niccol cast fashion models as extras.
6. Although the spiral staircase in Jerome's house is reminiscent of the helical structure of DNA, it does not exhibit DNA's chirality (handedness). Whereas the staircase turns to the left, a furled DNA molecule turns to the right.
7. The movie's score was composed by Michael Nyman, who also wrote the music for The Piano.
8. In the film, people such as Vincent who fake a genetic makeup superior to their own are referred to as "borrowed ladders", a pun alluding both to social climbing and the ladder-like shape DNA exhibits when unfurled.
9. When Vincent blows cigarette smoke into a wine glass to suggest the clouds of Titan, the background music is Nuages (French: Clouds), by Django Reinhardt.
10. People held within large rotating gyroscope-like frameworks, known as Aerotrims, are glimpsed in some scenes. Although Aerotrims have been used for astronaut training, most were used for cardiovascular exercise in gyms during the 1980s.
11. The character Irene Cassini is named for Giovanni Domenico Cassini, a seventeenth-century astronomer who discovered the Cassini Division, the largest gap in Saturn's main rings. Cassini also discovered four of Saturn's largest moons: Dione, Iapetus, Rhea and Tethys. In 1997, the satellite Cassini-Huygens was launched on a mission to study Saturn and its moons. Early in 2005, Huygens, the small probe part of the satellite, landed successfully on Saturn's moon Titan. The space mission that Vincent joins in Gattaca is destined for Titan.
12. The exterior shots of the Gattaca Aerospace Corporation in the movie were of the Marin County Civic Center, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Most of the interior shots were filmed in Hollywood, except for scenes near escalators.
13. The exterior of Vincent and Jerome's apartment was filmed at the CLA (Classrooms, Laboratories and Administration) Building of Cal Poly Pomona, designed by the architect Antoine Predock.
14. In another dual pun, FBI agents are called "Hoovers" in the movie, referring both to former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and the vacuum cleaner company Hoover. The FBI agents use small hand-held vacuum cleaners to gather DNA evidence.
15. American author Gore Vidal is cast as the director of the Gattaca Aerospace Corporation, Director Josef. His first name is given as Eugene.
16. Announcements within the Gattaca building are given in Esperanto, a constructed international language.
17. The piece played by the six-fingered pianist is an embellishment of the Impromptu in G Flat Major, Op.90, No.3 by Franz Schubert. Notes were added to a recording of the piece so that it became, as Irene explains to Vincent, a piece that could "only be played with twelve [fingers]".
18. Gattaca's working title was The Eighth Day, invoking the Biblical creation story of Genesis in which God creates the world in six days before resting on the seventh day. As noted in the DVD deleted scenes, The Eighth Day is the name of the center in the movie where children are engineered.
19. Gattaca's storyline shares parallels with Robert A. Heinlein's sci-fi stories. In Heinlein's 1942 novel Beyond This Horizon doctors would design children by selecting the best of the parents' genes and people without engineered genomes were considered inferior. Furthermore, in Heinlein's 1953 story Starman Jones the protagonist falsifies his identity and memorizes a book on astrogation in order to gain acceptance and employment, as does Vincent in Gattaca.

Busy reading week

2006-02-19T22:54:00.000-05:00

so, reading week has begun. i don't really feel the holiday atmosphere, maybe it's cos i've way too many things to do this week.

university is no mean feat. in china, entry into a university means total liberty, unless you aim for a postgraduate degree. most of my friends in chinese unis have lead a carefree lifestyle. well, maybe i'm wrong, maybe i didn't see the hardship endured behind the scene.

my schedule's been filled up a week ago, i seriously don't want to take one more glance at the computer generated post-it notes, which remind me how many things have been left undone. everytime i think of it i feel like having a headache. no one likes his or her life to be planned out, me neither. but sometimes we just don't have the choice, we have to closely follow whatever the schedule is. how sad life is. i'm not a born optimist, i can't think of it in a positive way. this feeling bothers me so much, that i began to doubt the meaning of living and life a long time ago. why God created adam and eve? to love them? obviously not. He just wanted his image to be sung, to be praised upon by those mortals, whose lives are fully under his intimidating control. yesterday i watched A.I. cried like hell. man creates robots to fulfill their desire of control, and they don't entitle themselves any responsibility over the creatures. poor robots, poor man. worse still if fate exists, just as what's described in chinese legends, that everyone's life path has been planned once he enters the wheel of life.

digressed a bit... anyway, life has to go on. grieves and sighs aren't helpful to the situation. i still remember what my senior said to me once before, a very vulgar saying, but true to the very extent: life is like being raped, if you can't resist, try to enjoy it.

Feeling not so well

2006-02-16T19:25:00.000-05:00

just got back from the sickening french class. it's not the fault of the class i guess, i'm just not feeling well. i got even lower marks for dictation than last time. gosh... i totally give up hope on dictations. i'll just count on my writing component to pull up my marks.

i guess i had too much time spent on immunology revision, and my room's getting more stuffy everyday due to the lack of ventilation. so when i got up from a nap in the afternoon i just had tearing eyes and felt quite dizzy. when i sat in the class i was actually shivering even tho the room's quite hot. my crazy thought: too much immunology that my brain and body are infected as well... plus today's weather is horrible, windy, rainy, snowy and the ground is slippery. i almost fell on the way to the class. but when we walked back just now we found a surprise--surprise given by nature. tree branches are wrapped in a layer of beautiful crystalline ice, shining soothingly in the dimly lit back street. i've never seen such beautiful things before. beauty is everywhere, even in the worst condition nature can give us nice surprise.

Done with Immunology

2006-02-16T14:04:00.000-05:00

finally i'm done with immunology, which has bothered me so much over the past week. wasn't feeling so good tho, since i made some really stupid mistakes. besides i've done past year paper questions on similar topics yesterday! yet i still can't apply the concept to those questions. sigh...

anyway, gonna take a nap now and relax a bit. weirdly i don't feel hungry at all. my subway is left aside. i guess it will become my dinner instead.

Complaint

2006-02-11T23:35:00.000-05:00

kowthar, my don talked to me today, cos 'someone' on my floor made a complaint to her that wash went to the co-ed washroom alone without a female company. so i didn't fulfill my responsibility. i was told to be with him from next time onwards.

right. i know exactly who sold me. the girl i dislike most on my floor. i myself didn't care about this issue at all. i didn't innocently make the mistake. i purposedly didn't accompany wash everytime. i have to admit that part of the reason is cos i'm lazy. i don't want to walk that far till the end of this floor just to wait for wash. it is a co-ed washroom, what do you expect. there will be guys making appearance no matter there are female comanies or not. and to be honest, if you are aware that this is a co-ed washroom, you should prepare yourself ready to see any male in the washroom. you shouldn't walk around in a towel or underwears only.

what a stupid girl she is. last year and the year before, no one made any complaint about males in the co-ed washroom alone at all. i found guys in single sex washroom on my side sometimes as well, but i never think it's a big deal, and never bothered to make a complaint. she has too much time for sure.

actually this is the girl i'm most uncomfortable to stay or talk with. last year when i was having lunch at our house table, she happened to sit beside me. she accidentally poured her juice onto my sweater meanwhile. guess what she did. she mopped off the juice on her shirt, turned her back at me and continued talking to housemates on her side. without a word of apology. she's the most uneducated girl i've seen here.

my friends also have complaints about her. she was very aggressive during exam period. pls, who doesn't have exams. i do see ppl get stressed up, but she's the only one that turns her bad mood onto others and gives ppl around a hard time when she's stressed up.

i'd rather never know such a bitchy person.

A night without studies

2006-02-10T22:36:00.000-05:00

it is a fortune to have some kind of hobbits. was once surprised by zhu's no-day-and-night effort in designing her garnet crow website, actually was quite envious of her. since she has some pursuit in her life, not academically of course, just trivial little things in daily life that can lighten up everyday.

i was spending the whole night yesterday and this whole afternoon in setting up this new blog. and it feels really good, fulfilling. i want something that is mine only, not to show others, not to write for the sake of any other people. this feels so good. in my msn space, i have to mind my language, mind my grammar, mind what kind of languge, chinese or english for each entry. but here i can just anyhow let my thoughts flow just like the stream. i'm so happy about it. makes me feel that i'm living for myself, i'm living to the expectation of no one but myself. this is wonderful.

maybe i shouldn't decide this early to dump my msn space which gave me the first sense of blogging. i'll continue to write there, maybe continue with stories that suit other's taste. from my 'see things in the seeds' blog i can foresee that this blog's future won't be that promising as well, but i don't mind. this is my site. this is going to be my stuff afterall.

just some afterthoughts, to be fair, that msn space is much user-friendly than blogspot. haha. as a trade off one can not be as creative as he can.

---------------oOo---------------

my hair
wanna cut my hair. my long hair is getting more and more annoying. it's wasting my shampoo, it's becoming hard to comb, it's tangling up every morning as well as after shower. it bothers me so much. wanna cut it. but wash would definitely object. besides i don't trust barbar's skills here. to me, barbars in china are the best no matter what. tho i can find chinese barbars here too in chinatown, i doubt their skills. i always think that none of them is professional, and they must be kinda forced into this career to erk a life. i'll just trim it.

---------------oOo---------------

a bad omen
just now when i opened my drawer the frame with the photo of me and wash fell down. a bad omen. i'm superstitious for sure. maybe not as much as the female character in the movie 'serendipity', but quite to an extent. i wrote him a very nasty mail this afternoon when i was furious and refused to pick up his calls. i'm not giving in. i want him to see the mail. i have my reasons. i don't want to fight with him for nothing. i need him to realise how wrong he is.

Malbonheur

2006-02-10T17:17:00.000-05:00

very unhappy today. the unhappiness is a continuation of yesterday's. i don't understand why people can be so careless and oblivious, one just needs to give a little bit attention to small stuff around which can be done nicely and orderly.

i don't get it, why guys don't care so many things. they'd rather play pc games, chatting with friends, joking those stupid jokes. i hate this kind of irresponsible unreliable behaviour. what a pity. this totally reflects the immaturity of a guy's mind.

females are the superior species of humankind, that's undoubted. in terms of ability and mental state we are far more in front of men.

i hate taking care of other ppl. that's so energy consuming. i admit that i'm selfish, cos i want my loved one shower me with attention. but i'm pretty sure if my bf was more concerning about me and more caring more mature, even i have to take lots of care of him in some sense i'd be more than willing. i don't know if i had made the right decision. maybe i should stay single these years and concentrate on my studies. age does have a direct connection with maturity i guess. afterall old ppl are right.

First blog

2006-02-09T22:41:00.000-05:00

Thanks to ZhU, who've shown me numerous sites for blog templates. Finally I decided to use this one, tho I'm still not satisfied with the background. Thinking of re-doing this later on, when I'm freer.

Today's french test's quite ok, and I think I've improved in my dictation. Hopefully I'm not gonna get more disastrous marks than last time.

Haven't touched my biochem assignment yet, quite screwed up. Well, I just don't feel like doing it. Anyway, a woman's got to do what a woman's got to do. So I'll go back now. Shouldn't have crapped all the way through my first blog, but anyway, who cares... I'm gonna be the only one reading it. Bon nouveau blog!