礼冠 - 梦想家

89. Closure

2008-12-30T00:31:00.001+11:00

I've decided to close this blog. Forever.

Thanks for visiting! Please do not return!

梦 - 执行

2008-07-15T12:12:00.002+10:00

Actually, all the posts previously boils down to this. This was the reason why I revived my blog, needed somewhere to vent this out. The background is weird, but bear with me.

Setting: Home back in Malaysia.

Characters: Mom, Dad, me
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"Why? Why does it have to be you? The new regime is f***ed up!"

"Kuan! Watch your language!"

"Sorry mom, but still." Turning to dad. "You are the president of Russia (why Russia? I don't know) can't you do something about it? Don't you have the KGB or whatever crap they call them nowadays? Make an escape! Runaway!"

"Boy ah, it's not so easy. The new government has the hold on everything. Plus, my sentence has been given out. All I want is to spend my last few moments with my family" (now that I think about it... what family?)

Mom reaches out for Dad's hand and squeezes it tightly. I turned away from them and thought, 'And here I thought all the while I'm indifferent about this guy, maybe I do love him as a father after all.'

A series on the TV caught my eye. It was about this HK police drama where the police captain is giving last minute orders to his team on how to rescue the hostages.

"Why does it appear so easy on TV?" I said, while looking outside and seeing the men in black guarding the entrance. Or exit.

"That's why it's a series with a happily ever after, but this is real" Mom replied. (not so real now...)

"I don't get it though, what did you do...?"

Question was never answered, as I woke up, feeling the fear and anxiousness of losing someone.

88. New home!

2008-07-15T11:52:00.012+10:00

I've moved! To Packard! At last! This happened after my trip to Brisbane + Gold Coast, which hopefully one of my links will post about the trip instead, cause I'm too lazy to do it.

However, thanks must be given out to Diong, Kar How, Sze Huey, and Xin for the 6 months belated birthday present! Although I still haven worn the jacket in public yet. And I love that silver I won for frisbee! Frisbee, who would've thought huh?

Can't even tell you how great that feels to be a member of the Independant Republic of Packard. Packard is just ... indescribable. It's my fourth day in now, and I still marvel about it.

When I first came into my new room, everything looks so great. The room so much bigger, the carpet smoother, floor cleaner, light brighter, even the walls are whiter! (of course, now that it's the fourth day, and I'm no longer going crazy over it and feeling every corner of the room, only one statement of the above description is still true)

Oh, yeah, picture... picture... All camera phone picture, so not that brilliant. Picture also not meant to be aesthetically pleasing.

Ah, picture of dessert in Brisbane.

'Dining table'. Or whatever it can be used for. And that's the balcony.

Place where I spend most of my waking hours. There's suppose to be a com in the middle, but it's doing stuff in some other room. See that silver in the middle? Heh. And before anybody asks, the dog is mine, won from a fair 3 years big, named Sparky (forced to name him).

Uh... wardrobe? And next to place where food is stored, not the best idea to place clothes next to microwave oven, but I don't mind here.

Kitchen(ette). With electrical stove.

Uh, place where I place biological wastes. Directly opposite the kitchen.

And place where I spend my non-waking hours. Mostly.

Cool leh, cool leh. Studio room, and cheaper rent. Brilliant indeed.

87. Law

2008-07-15T11:37:00.002+10:00

Maybe it's time to revive my blog. Have been absent for too long. Anyway, I shall complete this post first, since I wanted to since a while back.

So, what's law from a science student's perspective. Correction, my perspective. Remember moral? With all the stupid memorizing and application?

Yeap, that's what I think it is. Only 100, heck, make it 200 times harder. Even though the exam is open book (which can be seen as worse or better, since one spends unnecessary time looking up for stuff), the application question and such is really murderous.

One of the law exam questions goes like this (not exact quote):

You are a scientist working on a new strain of rice which is more drought tolerant, and grows faster. You intend to spread this strain for free as a means to help countries with food problems (oh, how noble). After a long period of research, you finally obtained a major breakthrough. As you and your team are preparing to submit a paper in Nature, you were informed of a pending patent of a rice strain very similar to yours by a commercial biotechnology company. You suspect there was a leak of information, the prime suspect being a student who helps as a lab assistant to you as he also works part time in the biotechnology company. Above all, you did not get him to sign a confidentiality agreement (what a foolish 'you'). Can you still achieve your aim of spreading the strain for free? Can you stop the patent from being granted? Your university wants you to obtain IP protection for the strain and commercialize it. Can you do that as well?

I ran outta time and couldn't complete it, heh. 75 mins for 15 questions. Not very doable indeed.

86. Winter exams

2008-06-25T12:30:00.000+10:00

Back again for the occasional rant.

Or rather cause I'm bored. There's a limit to how many times one can play Solitaire until one roughly grasp the strategies to win it (but too lazy to apply them). I usually play until I reach -$260, then I give up. Cause anything more than -$260, even though you win the entire hand, you still end up with a negative amount.

3 exams down, 1 more to go. And the last one is law. Gosh how I hate law. But never mind. If I feel like it, I'll blog about it tomorrow. A law course in the perspective of a science student.

Otherwise... Let's talk about exams shall we? Cause no one wants to hear me rant, so might as well rant here.

First exam... Genomics. Was... moderately okay. Rushed through and thank God there was no major worm questions.

Next, Immunology. Need to learn that there is such a thing as gloves, and that it is a necessity to have them! Not that I'm gonna have another winter exam anymore. Yay? And need to learn that staring at the ceiling too long is bad for your neck. And the lecturers need to learn that maybe, just maybe, short answer questions mean a few lines? And not a few pages to write? (Or maybe the students should learn that short answer really does mean few lines)

And thirdly, the one today. Medicinal Chem. I actually found this exam fun to do. Weird? Maybe cause I like chem more than bio. And I threw away 10 easy marks... Well, I'm recovering from berating myself on the stupidity of throwing it away, but 10 marks... And, maybe some people need to learn not to test the efficiency of the fire alarm during exam periods?

Law's tomorrow. Wonder how's it gonna turn out. But I'm aiming for a pass only. Seems pretty difficult. I thought was pretty easy since I did attend all the classes... Oh, need to learn, not to piss law lecturer off or do stupid things to law lecturer. Not that I'm gonna see him ever again, hopefully. Heh, now that I think of it, was pretty funny.

Oh well, that's it for studies. Let's talk about life, shall we? Life's... a giant chocolate chip cookie. You eat it bit by bit, until at one point, you reach the chocolate chip, then you're happy, savoring the taste. But the chocolate chip is small, and you either quickly finish it, or take it for granted that there's maybe another one nearby. Also, due to manufacturing problems, the cookie can have holes too, where there's nothing, not even cookie crumbs. Also, sometimes, there's no chocolate chip, but there's a chocolate layer at the bottom!

Okay, stupid analogy. Anyway, I sign off la. Cyaz!

85. Organic chemistry irony

2008-04-05T16:30:00.003+11:00

Busy period. 5 reports due next week, and I've no idea what to do regarding one of the mechanisms of one of my chem report. The title is Synthesis of Barbituric Acid.

There was this other experiment, Synthesis of Knorr's Pyrrole, which synthesis I was going crazy about few days back. But after some tricks, I found the entire mechanism synthesis in the Named Reactions book. Worth my 4 hours plus of researching.

So, back to this dumb synthesis. I've no idea where to start, so I was started with wikipedia. As usual, it wasn't there, so I started branching out, using their references, Googling, and e-journals. And all came to naught.

Then, I was thinking, maybe whoever invented barbituric acid, put his name onto it! Then it'll be in the Named Reactions book! So, back to the Chemistry Library (which apparently boasts as the best chem lib in Aus).

Unfortunately... it wasn't there... But nevamind, I'm in the chem lib, I'm surrounded by thousands and thousands of chem books, surely the mechanism of the synthesis is there. So, I started with simple ones, Organic Chemistry (surprising how many books have this name), and as expected, there's none. On to Advanced Organic Chemistry (authors have no book title creativity).

None as well. So, do some library search database, and yields... nothing! I decided to analyse the molecule myself. Okay... got nitrogen, and oxygen and ring, and called pyrimidione, whatever, I forgot already. So it's off to Heterocyclic Nitrogen Compounds. And as expected none.

Okay... barbituric acid... it's a hypnotic drug, under medicinal chem maybe? And I was off to the medicinal chem section, looking under hypnotic drugs, anti-depressants, and a whole lot more of other crap. And then I came across... Wednesday Night In The Chemistry Laboratory. Wah, seems like some authors do have that streak of horror creativity. The contents are just chem stuff though.

Anyway, I've cleared most sections already and I still can't find the mechanism. Then I was searching through the most tedious part of the research - looking through journal articles after journal articles. From Organic Synthesis, Collection Volume, to German journals, to Heiseishu, and even onto Advanced Heterocyclic Journal. From 1900s to 1980s, all nothing.

Zero, nada, all that crap resulted nothing. I was gonna go find the original article when this compound was published in 1880s when the chem lib librarian decided to offer her help. And she directed me to a book back in the general science library - Hancock (and I'm not interested to hear any more jokes about Hancock). All this was Friday, after 3 or 4 hours.

I decided to give internet a try again, a chance to show it's usefulness in chem again. So, I started off with google, expanding my search terms. This time, going for Sigma Aldrich, Uni of Albama and a whole lot of other unis. And they only give the general step, not the whole mechanism. Damn it. Doesn't anyone in the world publish the whole thing?

And just now, I went to Hancock, and looked through the book. Another Organic Chemistry book. Nothing again. Looking around, I see alot of Organic Chemistry books, so I went through them, from 1950s to 2000s. Nothing as well.

What I got out of all the whole thing was nucleophilic acyl substitution and base-catalysed condensation reaction, which I already knew! So, I decided to go back to the start, the textbook. The Organic Chemistry. Since the book was in the reserve section, I made my way there. On the way, seeing another Organic Chemistry book which I've never touched before, I took it with me.

So I sat there, looking through ester synthesis, diethyl malonate synthesis, nucleophilic acyl substitution, base-condensation reaction, ester reactions, acidity, and a whole lot more crap. Finally giving up, I closed both books, and sat down, looking at the shelf in front of me. And I saw it. A book that says Student Solution Manual for one of the Organic Chemistry surrounded by Introduction to Organic Chemistry books. Who knows, it's may have what I want.

Not putting much hope on it, I reached for it, opening it... and nothing. Looking around, the only books I have not touched are those Introduction to Organic Chemistry. Oh well, why not? So I took them, and search under barbituric acid at the index pages.

Well, there's barbiturates, close enough, and I used that alot in all my previous searches. And it was a question. Design the synthesis for this barbiturate. And I'm like wootz! I found it! Now, where's the bloody Student Solution Manual for this Introduction to Organic Chemistry? Grabbing it, I turned to the solution page, and voila! The whole mechanism was there, in front of my eyes. It was as though I found gold!

After 7 hours of searching, I found the mechanism, at a Introduction to Organic Chemistry book. A first year uni book.

梦 - 化学和面

2008-04-03T22:43:00.005+11:00

Well, after a period of hiatus, I'm back. Probably for a one post before I go on hiatus again. Ah... just a side note, my Facebook account is on hiatus as well until... further notice I guess.

Anyway, since it's been a while, let's start with last night's dream. I'll add my own self interpretation as well, since I know myself best, right?
___________________________________________________________________________

In the chem lab...

I was doing experiments as usual. The recent chem labs I have are all by myself, cause no one wants to take the same time as me, so it's go lab, do stuff, speak to myself, do stuff, go home.

Anyway, I was doing stuff on the hot plate (the electric plate same as the type used for cooking, except this is portable), boiling some stuff.

Then, feeling hungry, I took out a pack of instant noodles from my bag, took out a transparent container, emptied the contents of the pack into the bowl. Then, I took the wash bottle (which contains distilled water), unscrew it, and pour water inside.

Pushing the experimental beaker to one corner, I placed the transparent container on the hot plate to run both 'experiments' so to speak.

Then after cook already, then eat lor, using stirring rods.

It's a sad life.
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Interpretation:

Simple. The instant noodles represent my hunger. Hall food sucks, and I do not want to leech on others, so... most of the time I go to bed hungry. And I ran out of instant noodles as well, what a bummer.

The whole chem setup is what I have in mind 99% of the time these days. One would too, when one has 4 reports all due next Friday. Which is why I'm blogging again I guess. Procrastinating.

And the container is Eli's property. Two reasons it appeared I guess... First is cause I need to return to her, last thought before bed. Second is cause I got soup from her. And today too! Ah, happy.

梦 - 痛

2008-01-27T12:22:00.000+11:00

It's the same posh office again. I've dreamt about this office twice already. The first time was about the moving into office event. The second time was a normal daily life in the office.

I'm standing in the middle of the office. The office looks empty. I wonder what am I doing here.

A figure then approaches me, he/she/it doesn't say anything. It just walks up to me and proceeds to strangle me! As I started choking, my mind started screaming, "Stop!"

...and I wake up choking, as though I've been holding my breath for a long while.

After a gulp of water, I went back to sleep.

Once again, I found myself in the same office. However, it did not look as grim as before. Once again, the same figure comes forward. It says something, but I can't hear its words. I do not know it's purpose, except that it's sinister.

What do I do? I stand there and let him come close, not out of fear, but out of curiosity. Then, it pinches me.

I screamed. Once again, my mind screams, "****, get me out of here! Unplug! Unplug!". As though my mind realizes this is not real.

...and I wake up, feeling an excruciating pain in the place where I was pinched.

84. Constant Dreaming

2008-01-26T00:33:00.000+11:00

If anyone noticed, there's about one dream post everyday. This is equivalent to about one dream which I remember every time I sleep.

I forgot where did I read about it, but an average person dreams two or three times a night. It depends how much of it one remembers. I guess I reached the stage where I can recall one everyday.

There's some fear on how this will affect my normal life actually, and whether I'll get the fear to sleep. After all, there's a noticeable trend on the normality of the dream. (What is normal? Is it just merely following the crowd?) It seems to be getting more and more ominous.

It is actually quite difficult to blog about dreams, cause most of the time, what one remember is fragments of the dream. That coupled with my not-so-great vocabulary makes my post look like a Standard Five thousand word essay. Plus, when the dream is in another language, translating is pretty difficult.

Because of this... 'achievement' of having to recall a dream daily, a few question arises:

1. What happens if one dies in the dream? Does it affect reality? After all, which is the real one?

2. I know that feelings can cross the dream/reality barrier, but how much of it really affects reality? (Everyone should be able to feel this, after all, there is such a thing as wet dreams)

Look forward to my next post to get what my number 2 means.

梦 - 蜡烛

2008-01-25T22:44:00.000+11:00

Time: Evening, of an ancient China era

Location: Home

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"I'm sorry that there's nothing much to serve you with in this home." I said, bowing.

My guests were a father and daughter. After performing some insane tasks, I happen to rescue the daughter from somewhere. Shortly after the self-proclaimed heroic rescue, I was leading her back to my own home for her to recuperate her powers before she goes home. The father came down from *up there* shortly before we reached my house. Yes, this would mean that the two of them are of divine descend.

"Really. You're right." The father said, scrutinizing every single corner of the living room and finding everything not to his liking.

"Yes. Nii-family* apologizes." I said, while trying to restrain myself to disagree with her father. After all, who knows what can happen when you disagree with a god, right?

After a short tour around the house and the rooms they will be occupying tonight (why the heck the father did not bring her home himself is beyond me), we had dinner.

During dinner...

"It has come to my knowledge that you happen to like my girl, is it true?" The father said.

"Father, how-"

"Yes, it is true." I interrupted.

"I suggest you take your hands off my daughter, you hear me? Toad trying to eat swan**."

Then... I do not recall what happened next. Next scene was in a dream within a dream.

"Wow... that's amazing." I said, staring at something... amazing in the distance. "But that's a bit cruel. Who could have done such a thing?"

The land beside me then exploded, throwing me on the ground.

"Can it be Wu Ming***? It can't be, even he would not stoop so low."

"No, if it's him, it's possible." The daughter-goddess said.

"What are you doing here?!"

"I entered your dream!" she said, smiling sweetly. "Anyway, we've got to make preparations to against Wu Ming. You wouldn't want him to get me, do you?" (Wha? A romantic dream?)

The next morning...

We were on the road, making so called preparations. I was pushing my family donkey, carrying what little I have while the divine beings were in front of me talking in some holy language.

After some distance, every few steps we take, red candles about 2 meters tall started falling from the sky. Soon there were two long lines of red candles as though indicating where we were going.

As night approached, we settled down to make camp. The father then summoned another 17 or 18 tall white candles from the sky. One by one, all the candles started to light up, except one of the candles. I saw that the daughter-goddess's face was pale, and I asked her what was amiss.

She then explained that the only candle that did not light up indicated me. And the fact that it did not light up would mean that my lifespan would extinguish sometime in the near future. Like... poof!

Panicking, I took my candle and tried to light it up using another candle's flame. But no matter how hard I tried, it simply would not light up.

____________________________________________________________

The whole dream was in a mix of chinese and japanese, therefore translating it is actually quite difficult.

A few points:

*In Japan, brothers are referred to as onii-(suffix). Nii-(suffix) for short occasionally.

*The family part is like saying the whole family apologizes for the inconvenience.

**Direct translation from 癞蛤蟆想吃天鹅肉 indicating the impossible. Chinese phrase.

***Another direct translation from 无名. Means no name.

梦 - 黑猫

2008-01-23T13:52:00.000+11:00

Along the corridors of MC...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Why the hell is this line so long?" I complained.

"It can't be helped, it's lunch hour after all" he said. (I forgot his name, I remember his face though, one of the new transfers in form 4 in our class)

"Ya, but it's kinda irritating that the line has to extend from the canteen to here."

"You're probably not used to it, you disappeared for one year after all."

"What disappear? I had cancer la, can't move nuts." (I had? Or going to have?)

"Ah, yalor, and you still end up same form with us. You so lucky la."

As I peer into the labs, something struck me.

"Hey, hey, do we have lab today?"

"What you mean?"

"I mean like lab la, bio ke, chem ke, or whatever? Cause like labs gotta prepare a long before lab stuff or something wan?"

"Haha, ya, today got lab, after lunch."

"Oh shit, can borrow ar? This is the part of college that I hate the most.......... Wait. I'm in uni! I'm not in college. What the hell am I doing here?" (Not bad, reality kicks in, I'm getting some control here)

At this point, brain flashbacks to a briefing I got before I entered school.

"What? What? You ok ar?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm good." I replied, waking up from my dazed state.

The line slowly moves while we make small talk. Soon we reach the pole and chain area. The one that forms the line, I don't know the exact term for it.

I looked towards the teacher's table and saw it. The target. I broke away from the line and rush towards... holy crap... Selva and snatched the black cat from her.

I don't recall the next few scenes, but somehow we happen to have a duel, Street Figher style, with the counter as background. Me holding the black cat, and she in Honda's stance. (Honda's the fat ass sumo wrestler, go wikipedia for more information)

梦 - Hell Arena

2008-01-17T23:22:00.000+11:00

3 week old dream, finally decided to blog it, cause after thinking through and through, I can't convert the title to chinese.
____________________________________________________________
Deep beneath the crust of the planet humans live in, lies Hell, the place of eternal flame and suffering. There people who failed the Judgement of God were sent to pay for their sins.

The native denizens of Hell have a sport for entertainment. It simply involved throwing in the eternally punished and either a random challenger from Hell or simply another victim from above.

Up above on Earth, people go about the business, ignorant of the pains and screams of the tortured going on beneath them.

However, the inhabitants are starting to get bored of the same sounds the dead make. They long to hear the cries of the living. Thus, Hellblazer, the Master of the Arena, ordered the abductions of the ignorant living.

I was walking around the city block into a narrow alley when I heard it. The shrill scream which pierce through the night. Then I see her, running through the dark alley. I was about to run towards her when it turned and looked at me. Those fiery red eyes seem to burn my very soul.

That one look made my legs weak. My knees gave way, and I knew, I was next. It was inevitable that soon, I found myself running away from it, screaming, not realizing that it was the sound that it wanted to hear most.
____________________________________________________________
Short, not so sweet.

Btw, Hellblazer was the original title of the Hellboy comics if I'm not mistaken.

83. Nineteen - Year of Running

2008-01-17T23:05:00.000+11:00

Running, denial, whatever you wanna call it. Basically it's just mentally avoiding matters at hand which may harm self.

I'm officially no longer a teen. Now, I miss my youth. Oh the so long ago times, when we skip college just to headshot a couple of n00bs.

Relationship:

Nothing much, I admit I distanced myself from the 1st year people. So I don't really know these people, though I manage to make some nice friends.

Academic:

Well... My average gone up. I'm happy. People around me thinks I'm some HD king or some study geek. And uh... I do empathize with the people around me. I remember the days when I go around school hoping no one asks me about my marks.

Romance:

None. I thought there was someone I like, but nope. And Yang, I DO NOT owe you dinner.

Knowledge:

My bullshit skills went up! And I started thinking in loops, like logic stuff? Where stuff goes round and round cause of the 1 or 0.

Spiritual:

I hate my pastor. I like my church though. Living as a Christian is so difficult, I'm putting it on hold till... maybe double my age.

Overall, a 7.5/10 year. Oh, and the frequency of my dreams increased... Still trying to control my dreams. I learned a couple of Life Skills. =P

Sadly, this year no celebration though, it was like Cinderella without the ball and prince.

梦 - 给我一次机会！

2008-01-11T13:44:00.000+11:00

It was 2.20 pm. I entered the room only to find all my friends rushing to finish a Geography homework. Looking up at the blackboard, I see that the dateline for this piece of work is at 2.30 pm.

'No wonder everyone's rushing', I thought to myself.

I walked to my seat located right in front of the class TV and started daydreaming. Someone came to me to ask for help, afterall Geography used to be my strongest subject when it was still being studied.

Rrriiinnggg!!

And the bell goes, I had a mental vision (mental vision in a dream, wth?) of a person on a motorcycle coming in through the gates. Shortly after, a man carrying his helmet came in and demanded for everyone's homework.

After collecting, I then realize that I have not handed in nor done mine! And I even had the time to help others! Turning around, I consulted the few people around my table: Andrew, Yang and Boon (quite obviously adaptations from reality).

A quick check showed that that 40 multiple-choice-questions piece of work is worth 30% if I wanted to go on with the Geography course (adaptation of MC + Uni...). The final exam is worth 50% and another minor test is worth 20%. A hurried discussion ensued with Andrew and Yang chiding me and me trying to defend myself with stupid reasons.

Slamming the table, I ran outta the class, stopping shortly to turn around and look at the people (dramatic camera effect, which I always thought looks stupid...). I dashed out through the gate, ran through a commercial area, and stopped at in front of a yellow coloured shop lot.

Pushing open the glass doors, I entered and looked around for the motorcycle guy, believing that I could actually beat a motorcycle even if I left late. I spotted the guy passing the stack of homework to the teacher. As I walked to her, I concocted my story, running through my head a few times even.

It would appear it's the first time I'm seeing her. She's an Indian teacher wearing a office blouse, slightly shorter than me, and had her hair tied up in a bunch at the back.

"Excuse me, madam... Are you the teacher teaching the Geography course?"

"Yes I am. What is the matter?"

"I'm actually one of your students in the Geography course. I want to say that I'm very sorry that I did not actually complete the homework we were suppose to do" (First, always apologize)

"Oh? Wh-"

"But I was hoping you can give me another chance! Please let me retake the homework!" (Second, ask for a chance, but since this never goes through, prepare an explanation)

"Why? Do you have a reason why you failed to hand up this piece of assessment?"

'Failed? I didn't fail, you *****', I thought to self (of course, keep all thoughts to self). "Actually it's complicated. At the start I found that I was struggling in this class, I couldn't bring myself to remember all the facts. I was even considering dropping this course altogether, which was why I did not complete the homework. However, I realized that I wasn't really studying it right, and after all the effort I put in to study, I do want to score well in this course. Please, pleae give me a chance!" (Third, explain, of course, and humble thyself, and don't let the other person interrupt, and keep eye contact at all times!)

"But the fact remains that *you* did not finish the work on time"

"I know! That's why I'm asking for another chance, all I need is one hour, one hour to complete it and I'll leave the rest up to you, no matter the marks." Okay, at this point I'm starting to lose hope, this felt a bit familiar... (near missing that final exam comes to mind...). So, have to use final strat, look the pathetic little kid who's dying to pass or else the world crumbles on top of him, squashing him to smitherins.

"*sigh* Okay, when do you want to do it? You have to do it under my supervision though."

The clock behind her tells me it's 5 minutes to 3 pm.

"Anytime madam, even now will do." (If given a chance, must show sincerity)

Taken aback, she said, " Oh, okay. But I'll have to fetch some people back home first. We'll do it after that, say... 3.15 or 3.30 maybe?"

"Sure, anytime's fine by me."

"Fine, follow me then."

And so I followed her round the corner, taking my time to look at the inverted L-shaped office, as well as looking out for any tables which happen to be empty. Who knows, I may be doing my work on that table. Best to observe and know where most things are. Especially toilets. Can't stress on the importance of knowing where the toilet is.

She stopped me at the exit on the other side of the office, telling me to wait there. She then announced to the couple of guys who look like uni students that she was gonna have to stay behind and observe a students of hers complete her work. She then said that they were gonna leave instantly for home.

Was there a choreographer or something? Cause the 4 guys nodded at the same time each time she finished one sentence.

"Right! So you understand. Wait her, I'll get my stuff."

She then exited the shop lot, turned right and walked up the stairs to the upper floor. I turned around and observe the four guys at the computers. The computers are placed like slanted parking lots, the type where you curve almsot 45 degrees to enter it. So this gives me a good view of what all four of them are doing.

And surprisingly, all four of them are playing the same game, although at different stages. The game had Sylvester the cat as the main character. Controls are simple, using the up down left right buttons and spacebar for action. Tap spacebar multiple times for a combo move.

Game screen was divided into half, with the top half plus a bit more being the 2-D game screen. Beneath it is a where there's a BBQ grill on it. Beneath the grill, there's the usual stats, like life, heart points, and score.

More on the BBQ grill. The monster patties on the grill all do a synchronize dance of jumping on the grill, like how one with a flat body would if one were being cooked alive. The guy nearest to me had his BBQ grill almost full. It seems that whenever Sylvester kills a monster or whatever those enemies are, it goes down to the BBQ grill and gets burned in hell, I guess? There's 16 slots on the grill, so at one time, there can be no more than 16 monsters being cooked.

Watching on, the guy then encountered a boss, who was purplish white in colour and had 2 sharp claws, poking his character. Even after depleting the boss's health, the boss can't die, cause there was no space in his BBQ grill!

I then looked to the guy opposite him and see that he's at a lower level, and such a bad player he's getting killed by normal monsters and there's nothing on his BBQ grill.

At this point, teacher returned and ordered us to follow her. The four of them stand up at once and followed her. Are those clones? It seems that even their footsteps are even. Anyway, I followed her out, go round the corner, and enter the office from the other entrance.

'What's this for,' I wondered. She then went to talk with some colleague while we stand by the walls like people facing the gunmen, cept we were facing the other side.

___________________________________________________________________

Then I woke up. I hate vivid dreams.

82. Godzilla

2008-01-09T23:20:00.000+11:00

Okay, I'm getting lost by one stupid website called facebook. Call me ignorant, but navigating that site is worse than navigating in a graveyard. Plus, that site somehow makes me feel uncomfortable. Blogging still suits me, cause, heck, I dunno if anyone reads this, I can type any crap I want!

Anyway, recently, on one of my wiki-ing sprees, I've decided to wiki a very famous kaiju (ridiculously gigantic monster)! This guy even has his print on Hollywood's Walk of Fame. I'm talking about Godzilla! Do people who actually visit this blog even know who/what Godzilla is?

If you don't know, then look at this picture below.

Adapted from Google Images.

This is a promotional image for the latest movie, released in 2004. The first time I watched the nuclear reptile movie was when I was 4 or 5? And they are still releasing movies for this guy?

If you're wondering who would like this guy, I'll say I do. I mean who wouldn't like a kaiju that is half good, half bad; a walking nuclear bomb and only goes for Tokyo and no other city in the world?

梦 - 不是我开枪的！

2008-01-05T20:26:00.000+11:00

In court.

"... (bla bla bla) guilty!"

Outside the door, a gun barrel is seen moving up and down the door crack...

15 minutes later.

"... (bla bla bla) congratulations!" The woman said while shaking the guy in the grey suit's hand.

Meanwhile, I was leaving the court room along with the other people. As we pass by the doors, we see a guy squatting outside with a gun, he looks like he was trying very hard to aim at the guy in grey.

"What're you doing?" I asked.

"I can't stabilize my aim! Damn it!"

So, deciding to lend a hand, I squat down, ignorant of the people passing us. I reached out and held his hands, aimed and... "Now... you shoot."

And he fired the gun.

*View changed to the bullet zooming in towards the guy*

*Bullet passes by the people leaving... And... misses the guy in grey right under his armpit*

"Oh... Too bad.... Security! There's a shooter here!"

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Another 2 weeks later, after the shooter was found guilty and sentenced. (I'm wondering the same thing... Why wasn't I charged as well? Cuz it's my dream! Heh.)

81. Random Images from HP

2008-01-02T23:22:00.000+11:00

First time I'm putting up pictures. Hopefully I'll put up more later. Uh, and that's my name, in mahjong tiles.

80. Happy New Year 2008!

2008-01-01T22:53:00.000+11:00

Let's talk about what usually comes along with the annual New Year's Day. In my opinion, people generally don't bother with it, but it seems pretty popular for celebs and such people. I'm talking about New Year resolutions.

I don't make any. At all. Cause most likely I'll forget it by the 2nd day of this New Year. Maybe I should resolve to not forget my New Year resolutions, assuming I make any in the first place.

But then since I'm blogging it, at least there's a reference point! So! I'll make a few, ridiculous as it may be.

Resolutions:

1. Hmm... Eat more veges.

Ok? For those of you laughing out, enough already, I *am* already eating them! Just more!

2. Get more in touch with the world.

Or stop leaving my head in the clouds.

3. Get that desired scholarship.

I'm not interested in hearing *any* comments about this from MC-ians. Exceptions apply. And YW and MH, you guys are not exceptions.

4. Oh, the world famous, lose weight!

Yes, I'm overweight, and yes I'll do my best to lose weight.

5. Get a gf.

Hey, no one said one must fulfill their resolutions right? Plus, I think I should include this, or else I'm gonna get a lecture from someone.

6. And of course, to resolve to not forget my resolutions.

梦 - 油起价！

2008-01-01T16:00:00.000+11:00

Bad dream.

I went to the petrol station, and saw that the friggin petrol price rose to RM2.50 per liter! I got so mad, I was kicking the thingy... kiosk? Kicking until it broke and then got a fountain of petrol bursting out of it.

79. Christmas Present

2007-12-27T23:09:00.000+11:00

About... 3 and a half weeks back, I came back from Singapore. The sick but happy me did not realize the wallet was missing from his back pocket.

So the few days later unhappy me went and remake his I.C., incurring the stupid RM150 fine. Also had to remake the license which cost RM20.

I've decided to inform the Australian people about the loss only when I return. No point telling them so soon. Hell, there may be good people around!

Today, I received a mail. Well, not snail mail, it was hand delivered by some delivery boy. Envelop was from AmBank. With my name and address written on it.

From what my mom told me, and with the heavy modification of my imagination, this is what happened:

Some wanker took my wallet, opened it, saw the cash, started drooling.

Then wanker then took the wallet back to his office, and initiated a battle between Good and Evil in his brain. I've no idea how long this battle took, but the final result is Evil won.

So, woosh, wanker became 100+ richer. Now, what to do with the remains? I mean, when u pick a pearl outta the shellfish kinda thing, one has to consider what to do with the shell right?

So battle 2 is initiated. To be nice guy, and return the remains, or not. Guess what? Good and Evil won! Why? Cause wanker decided, 'I give you your wallet contents back, be grateful, as a reward for returning it, I'd take your wallet!' Tada!

Feeling happy, wanker takes up the nearest envelop to him, pours all the remaining contents of the wallet, including grocery receipts, into the envelop, attached a 30c stamp, copied down the address from my I.C. onto the envelop and sent it!

However! Wanker, who has become 100+ richer doesn't know that sending something so heavy and bulky needs more than 30c for postage. So, post office boy looks at envelop, classified it as 'Enggan Terima /Refused (Kekurangan Setem)' and resend it back.

Back to where? Now, let me describe the envelop. At the front, it has a large red logo, saying AmBank. So, wanker works for a bank! (and wanker has ugly handwriting) Turn the envelop around, and you get AmBank Berhad address! Envelop get resent back to AmBank Berhad.

One day, a secretary leaves his/her house and goes to work. Once at work, she resumes her regular morning routine, collect mail, read mail, leave mail at boss's table, etc. Then she sees a rejected mail. Thinking there must be a mistake, she decides to open it, and sees... my personal data. Wondering what the hell was it, she writes off 'Urgent!!! and Important!' on the top of the envelop, put everything back inside and put it on the boss's table.

Boss, feeling bossy, comes in to work one day, orders sec to serve him a cup of coffee, and goes into his office. Entering the office, he seems the funky bulky envelop.

"Secretary! What's the meaning of this!"

"A random envelop from the today's mail, sir?"

"I can see that! I mean, what's inside!"

"Cards and stuff about this guy named Lee Kuan."

"Really. Do we have such a employee? No? Customer? No? Then why the hell is it doing on my table?"

"It's a returned mail to this office, Sir"

"Ha! Which wanker used our office's envelop! ...So? What to do with this... thing?"

"We can put up and ad for it at the Star, and hope this person reads it, or deliver it back to him."

"I like your suggestion! I knew there was a reason you're my secretary! We'll go with the second suggestion. The first one costs too much money! Now, go handle it! And bring me my coffee!"

And so, the envelop was stapled back, and found it's way into the delivery boy's hands, and later into my mom's hands, and finally into mine. Soon, it's going into the rubbish bin. It's a good Christmas present though, albeit the only one I received, haha.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
P.S.: The story's a bit bizarre. And I don't know how to include the paper photostated with my I.C. and driving license into the story. It's stapled to it for the delivery fella to confirm my identification when he locates me.

78. Another pasar malam day

2007-12-18T23:59:00.000+11:00

Taking a walk in the pasar malam area is really tiring. Narrow roads, packed people, even jams.

But then, there's the fun part of it. One gets to see all sorts of people. Of course, you'd get the normal people: sellers, buyers, families.

And then there's the very common couples walking around hand in hand (making singles like me, quite envious of their position, even more envious when the girl whose hand their fingers are intertwined in is quite pretty). On top of that, there's also those females who from the way their dressed, it's like they are male bait.

Now, onto specific people. There's one which attracted my attention. This guy about mid teens was twirling the hair of the pre-teen girl in front of him. The first thing that came into my mind was, 'This guy has a younger sister complex!'. Okay, I'm being evil. Then I looked on some more (shit, now I'm a stalker) and yeah, sister complex, since both of them calls the same person mother (Okay, I'm jumping to conclusions here, but the image struck me as very very wrong).

Beggars are also common sightings in such a place, yes? Usually, they have some sort of disability. Which reminds me. There's this 'beggar' or whatever, he's been there since I was... 6? And the last time I saw him was last year, at the same spot he occupied all this time! Nowadays, the disabled beggars usually have some sort of performance as well. There's this guy, singing, in the middle of the street! He's missing a leg, but pushing a trolley which has his amp, a tiny handheld TV thingy, and power generator.

I was thinking, if he can afford these, why not sell it, and whatever money he gets, do something with it? Anyway, there was this couple passing by at the same time, and they were laughing at him! Poor guy! Until I paid attention to his singing. And, damn, it was bad. I confess, I found it amusing.

Oh, and there was an auction going on as well! There's this guy selling fengshui stuff, and there were actually people listening to him. He was going on like a machine gun on how good his crystals are (as usual) and the price of it. And at the rate he was going, he was increasing his bargain, like one crystal RM30, next half-second, 1 set of crystal for RM30, next half-second, 2 sets of crystals for RM30.

And that's it la, this time. Uneventful trip.

77. Adapted sex articles

2007-12-07T16:31:00.000+11:00

There was this article on the Star yesterday regarding virginity and its link to health risks. Anyone read it? Who would've thought that being a virgin can also lead to health problems, eh?

To summarize. people who have sex at a younger and older than average age appears to be at greater risk of developing sexual health problems later in life. For those younger ones, more likely to have risk of STD, possibly due to the associated factor of possibly having more sexual partners and bla. The usual social stuff.

For the older ones, there's health risks by 'impeding development of the emotional, cognitive, and interpersonal skills that are crucial to satisfactory sexual functioning and general well-being'. Which can be translated to one would be a not so sociable, emo person?

On the age side, the average is 17 to 18. And from the article, young means 14 or so. Late starters are around 22. That's quite young isn't it? So much for the 40 year old virgin fella.

Does this explain why the older generation people of a few hundreds to thousands of years back like in ancient China who practiced arranged marriage don't have this sort of problems? Like cause they get married young, and presumably they have sex young too! So no sexual problems, cept for those who lost *it* to enter the palace.

On the other hand, in this month's edition of Reader's Digest, there's this tiny article on the exercise and sex. According to some other random research, how they did this research is beyond me though, having vigorous sex can burn off 130 calories per half hour! That's 2 kilo's per year with 135 lovemaking sessions, equivalent to about 2.6 times a week. But what would be their definition of vigorous? Wall-banging, bed-jumping, floor-thumping vigorous?

Worth it? Maybe. Since considering from one point of view, it's more fun than heading for the gym. Oh, there's also mention that frequent ejaculation (for males, duh) may help lower risk of prostrate cancer! It can also somehow help the heart, not stated how though.

So, with that many benefits, go forth and have sex, I'd say!

梦 - 又吃豆腐？！

2007-12-02T12:08:00.000+11:00

Location: Home

Status: Married (the heck?)

Anyway, it starts off rather easily, I'm at home reading a book or something. Then my so-called-wife (or some random female who comes to my home and cook for me... a live-in chef?) comes in cheerfully, back from the market. She happily places her groceries on the table and proudly declared that we were gonna have 豆腐 (tofu) with 肉碎 (err... tiny meat pieces) for dinner.

Scene jumps to dinner, and we have tofu cooked with meat pieces and fried vege. Right...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The next morning, I'm at home reading another book and the same girl happily comes back home and showed me her groceries. And... we're gonna have tofu with shredded meat for dinner... again.

And we do have it for dinner.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And the following morning, same place, and I'm reading another book yet again. And the same scene repeats!

Once again, we have tofu with shredded meat and fried vege for dinner.
_______________________________________________________________

I finally got bored of the dream and woke up.

Didn't someone say that dreams can sometimes foretell the future? And wasn't there a paper on some female hormone effect production from eating tofu? I'm so screwed.

76. Blind Fury

2007-11-30T18:42:00.000+11:00

Wasn't there a phrase or something like that that goes along the lines of blind with rage or blind with fury or something like that?

I don't really understand the origin of this, but I think I finally get what it means. I had a post earlier as well regarding the zodiac rabbit. Slow to anger eh? Coupled with the Fire element, it becomes quick to anger or something like that.

There is some truth in that. I entered this sort of fury/rage today. The burst of emotion and passion is great and indeed quite hard to restrain. I've been suppressing it since yesterday, so I guess that accounts for the slow to anger part.

However, today, I reached my limit and I burst. Amazingly, I did not stutter for words, like I use to, and my vision did blurred a bit to white. It was kinda scary actually, heh. No violence, no, no. But still, the passionate feeling is really something.

How to describe it... It's like having a balloon constantly filled with air or something, then at one point, it bursts, right? But then the air doesn't linger around for long, it quickly dissipates into the surroundings.

Something like that, except it did not dissipate, I kinda pushed it back down. Heh, scary, scary. I frighten myself sometimes.

75. Anime genre

2007-11-30T17:23:00.000+11:00

Something has been bothering me for quite a while, albeit a minor irritant.

Every watchable program can be classified to their categories and genres. The same goes for animes. So, if a category says shoujo (female), does it mean males shouldn't watch it? Vice versa, in a shounen (male) category, does it mean females aren't allowed to watch it?

And let's say, the program goes such that its target audience is of a particular sex, if someone of the opposite sex watches it, does it mean that person is having some sort of mental problem?

There's many scenarios is this world where this situation can apply to, so what's the public's opinion on this? I wonder...

74. Free time

2007-11-24T13:03:00.000+11:00

I do not get it. This is such a boring holiday. Can someone share with me how they spend their holidays? Before this period, I was dying for this. Now that I have it, I dunno what to do with it.

I'm so bored, I'm playing Harvest Moon. Harvest Moon is this not-s0-new type RPG where the main character is a farmer. And guess what? You have a farm! And so you plant stuff, grow stuff, harvest them, sell them, and be rich. On top of that, you have a line of females waiting for you to pursue them. One of the most boring and repetitive games in the history of RPG, I'd say.

The fact that I'm playing such a boring game goes to show how bored I am. Which is why I'm blogging now as well. I really, really, really need some new entertainment, or at least something to do, doesn't have to be entertaining.

I've even done housework and everything. Even cooking. But cooking is restricted to certain hours of the day, and even housework has limits. How many times can you clean the same patch of tiles la. And with my current culinary skills, there's a limit to how many egg type dishes I can cook too.

The thing to look forward to is my trip to Singapore next week I guess. Shall spend time exploring Facebook there. And hopefully play mahjong everyday.

PS: Let's not talk about results, shall we?

74. Another Semester's Result

2007-11-24T02:10:00.000+11:00

Ya, results out. Go check it. Well, although it's out, the official results will be on Monday.

So go check it! There may be tears and rain.

73. Seed analogy

2007-11-23T12:50:00.000+11:00

Bored, so decided to write a story of sorts.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How to start...

I shall start by saying that in this analogy of sorts, people are carriers of what I term as seed, or whatever plant growth stage made in reference below.

A seed (or whatever starting growth stage) is sown on the ground. Being a seed as it is, it can lie dormant for a long time. Given the right conditions, which are usually external factors, the seed can germinate.

Once the seed germinates, it is a weak thing, easily swayed by external factors. The wind can simply blow it away. If the plantling (small plant, any better ideas?) is weak, and the carrier of the plant makes a move, there's the potential it can be squashed till only a dead squashed plant is left.

The plantling can be nurtured carefully as well, moving into the next growth stage. Given the appropriate treatment, it can grow bigger and taller. Of course, with the full treatment of whatever a plant needs, it can blossom into a nice strong tree.

However, the journey to being a strong tree is long and endeavouring. Occassionally there's external factors such as bugs, or even a competing plant! What does the carrier do? There's the option to remove the competing plant to prevent competition, or if the competing plant is too strong, remove the original plant?

Let's see... I would like to use the word fertilizer, as a synonym to the physical intimacy. Cause, for example, bees are fertilizers of flowers, heh. So, it is usually after the plant reaches a certain growth stage that fertilizers are provided. So being fertilizers, they can have the uber-boosting effect on the plant growth. Possibly?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I've no idea why I put this up.

Anyone wanna call my bluff?

72. True Dilemma

2007-11-22T12:35:00.000+11:00

What does one do when facing with an event which potentially can change your life forever the negative way?

At the same time, how do you want to balance your unstable emotions with everything that is going on around you?

And with people's expectation on you is great, what then?

Be strong, for that's all I can do for now.

*Curses*

71. 火兔

2007-11-21T20:03:00.000+11:00

Animes can inspire one to do stupid stuff. There was this anime called Fruits Basket, which used the idea of the Chinese Zodiac animals as a background story. Interesting anime, but dumb.

Anyway, I then decided to see what rabbit I am. Each animal has 5 elements, following the feng shui elements: fire, water, earth, metal, wood. And guess what? I'm a fire rabbit! *Blows fire*

Attributes of rabbit (summarized from many sites):

Luckiest of all animals
Cautious
Conservative
Bright
Affectionate
Shy
Friendly
Good listener
Ambitious
Sensitive
Artistic
Good at negotiations

Fire attributes added onto rabbit attributes:

Extrovert leader (from Fire)
Intuitive
Manipulative
Can be a snob
Can be hot tempered

Therefore... I'm somewhere in between I guess?

70. Facebook

2007-11-20T02:47:00.002+11:00

After much thought, I've decided to join Facebook.

Now that I've joined... What do I do with it? Can I delete the account?

For some screwed up reason, my name's Lee. That program needs to learn Asian names.

Shall learn to navigate later when I have the time. Too tired to think at the moment.

69. Le Retour

2007-11-17T23:40:00.000+11:00

This post is gonna be very long. I'm going to type out of mostly what I've done throughout the second semester. Unfortunately I do not remember very well actually.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The most anticipated (in a way) event of the year was the end of my term as a Committee member of MSO 2007. Hurray! No more tiring nights, no more long meetings, no more crazy events! Everything has been passed on to the next generation of sufferers! Cept for whoever is gonna take over the MSO website. It's still in my jurisdiction. Where the heck is the successor!?

Anyway, after that, I ran for the position of Social and Welfare Officer or Director, I forgot which, for Malaysian's Students Council of Australia (MASCA). And I got it. Beng chided me on it when I announced that I was gonna run for that position. He said, "I told you if you're gonna run, for anything else but that, and you simply have to run for it." Yeap, I do. No idea why, I simply thought it was fun. So... welcome back tiring nights, welcome back long meetings, welcome back crazier events...
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Then... there was the exam period, and a few close friends' graduation (which of course, I'm not attending). Exam was nuts, I can't begin to tell how crazy it was. All the exams required so much stuff written that it was nearly enough to break my wrist. Gah!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yesterday was my day of return back to M'sia. The bus trip from Canberra to Sydney was uneventful. At Sydney Airport, after I checked in and all, fortunately, they had a power outage. An airport. Having a power outage. How stupid can that airport be!? They dun even have a backup power generator or anything similar. Electricity was simply out for 10 minutes.

Thus for 10 minutes, noone could go anywhere, everyone was just stuck where they were. That 10 minutes was enough to cause havoc in the airport. When the electricity came on, some idiot was clapping loudly, and cheering. For what?! The airport workers then had to retype the data and all the stuff that was lost in that 10 minutes. That was just so excellent.

As a result, my flight was delayed for 2 hours. I'm sure other people had worst, but can they please be so kind as to tell us before we're boarding? Getting glued to a seat in a stationary plane isn't one of my favourite past times. Neither is talking to a Sri Lankan dude who, I think, is lying on his stories.

He was talking on him knowing Howard and that SG dude who has my name as well. And having a 4.5m house with a tennis court, basketball court, a home theatre entertainment system. Oh, and he apparently did helluvalot of charity work, like assisting in implementing a legal system in Israel, having a hand in South Africa and other stuffs. Good on him if it's true.

There's no other time I was more thankful to those lousy entertainment systems in the plane then yesterday. And there's the usual bastard who declined his/her chair so far back that the screen is practically next to your face.
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And that's it. I'm home, and not enjoying the heat. But definitely enjoying the no-flies situation in M'sia. The flies in Canberra are suicidal, they love nothing more then bury themselves in your ear or your mouth.

68. Clothesline

2007-10-06T16:38:00.000+10:00

This post would actually be one on daily life. I should veer away from academic topics liao. Plus, Voon said he's gonna boycott my blog if I dun post a picture soon. Not like this one is gonna have... Maybe another post, k?

One of the bad points of living in a hall is that one would have to fight with other people for the machines when doing laundry. Our hall has 4 washing machines and 10 driers.

This week, the driers decide to go amok or something. 6 of them are out of order and has been since the middle of the week. Makes you think what does the maintenance guy do, besides the fact that he's apparently involved in one of the more famous Aus rock bands... Heh...

So, six of them are out of order, but I was lucky, I got 1 all for myself. Set the time to 99 minutes to dry, which usually works. However, I totally forgotten all about it until six hours later. Naturally, some other person had kindly removed my load from the dryer and placed it in a nearby basket.

To my dismay, every single piece of clothing was still wet. But then, the four remaining driers were occupied, so I was left with no choice but to bring the load back to my room. Just my luck, when I had an extraordinarily large load as well.

Went back to my room, stare at the pile for a while, then decided to just hang as many articles as I can. That's when I turned around and saw this stick lying in my room. I dun actually remember where I got that stick from, cept it's thick, hard and long. The material feels like the center of a roll of tissue paper, cept it's reinforced with several more layers, and it's at least one meter long.

So, I took it, set it up between two cupboard doors, and voila! My one meter clothesline. Which was not enough, but it'll do for now. Expected drying time would be... 6 hours? With the heater on, hopefully, it'll be accelerated by at least 3 fold. The smell of wet clothes is starting to get to me.

67. A Monster Without A Name

2007-09-16T14:23:00.000+10:00

Once upon a time, there lived a monster without a name.

The monster wanted a name so badly he couldn't stand it.

So the monster decided to go off on a journey to find himself a name.

But because the world was so big, the monster split in two and went on two seperate journeys.

One went east... and the other went west...

The one that went east found a village.

There was a blacksmith at the village entrance.

"Mr.Blacksmith, please give me your name."

"I can't give you my name."

"If you give me your name, I will jump inside you and make you stronger in return."

"Really? I'll give you my name if you can make me stronger."

The monster jumped inside the blacksmith.

The monster became Otto the blacksmith.

Otto the blacksmith was the strongest man in the village.

But one day... "Look at me! Look at me! The monster inside me has grown this big!"

Chomp. Munch. Crunch. Gulp.

The hungry monster ate Otto from the inside out.

He went back to being a monster without a name.

Even though he jumped inside Hans the shoemaker...

Chomp. Munch. Crunch. Gulp.

He went back to being a monster without a name again.

Even though he jumped inside Thomas the hunter...

Chomp. Munch. Crunch. Gulp.

He still went back to being a monster without a name.

The monster went to the castle to find a wonderful name.

Inside the castle, there was a very sick boy.

"I'll make you stronger if you give me your name."

"I'll give you my name if you can cure my illness and make me stronger."

The monster jumped inside the boy.

The boy became very healthy.

The king was delighted.

"The prince is well! The prince is well!"

The monster became fond of the boy's name.

He also grew fond of his life inside the castle.

That's why he endured even when he became hungry.

Everyday, even when his stomach became very empty, he endured.

But because he became so hungry...

"Look at me! Look at me! The monster inside me has grown this big!"

The boy ate his father, his servants, and everyone.

Chomp. Munch. Crunch. Gulp.

Because everyone was gone, the boy left on a journey.

He walked and walked for days.

One day, the boy met the monster that went west.

"I have a name. It's a wonderful name.

And then the monster that went west said, "I don't need a name. I'm happy even if I don't have a name. Because we're monster without names"

The boy ate the monster that went west.

Even though he now had a name, there was no one left to call him by his name...

Johan.

It's a wonderful name.

Adapted from Monster Ep.37

=)

66. Apparent girlfriend

2007-09-15T23:08:00.000+10:00

I think I can conclude my 'studies'. If they can be called such.

Let's start with an intro. On my MSN, I've put this: 'Apparently I have a girlfriend. Apparently'

Well, obviously this would be the type of news which would create a strong reaction from my friends. For starters, the sentence is completely true. Not a word is false.

That's where the problem starts. No-one reads the start and the end. People seem to read it as: ---------- I have a girlfriend. ----------.

Thus, comes in the congratulations, and who's the girl, and a few made a few guesses. Most of it was congratulations though. Only one asked, what I meant by apparently. MH put who's apparently, as though apparently is someone's name. Heh, I chide you here, MH.

Here's the truth anyway:

Two days back, I entered the dining hall for lunch. Normal day. Normal people around. Normal lousy food. Normal ever-present-bicce. Then as I settled down to consume (yes, consume, I take no joy in eating plain white rice with chicken schnitzel) the food, a first year at the table told me, 'I heard you got a girlfriend.'

'I do?'

It wasn't even a question! It was a friggin statement! Nonetheless, I started bombarding him with questions, only to find out he heard it from someone else. And he's not revealing his source. Everyone else at the table started questioning me instead.

Meh, just because I've disappeared for a while, doesn't mean I've gotten a girlfriend, ya know? Just means the crazy lab report was killing me.

So, apparently, I have a girlfriend. Apparently. And trust me on this, if I have a girlfriend, I think I won't put apparently.

PS: That means no dinner, Yang.

梦 - 杀老师的故事

2007-09-03T12:22:00.000+10:00

(Dreams are hard to come by for some reason... oh well)

I find myself in an examination hall, in the 6th last seat of the last row at the right. The exam hall looked a bit similar to the one in MC when the barriers are removed. Big hall, slightly narrow to the sides and extremely long. Brown parquet, tall ceiling with crisscrossing beams which actually resembles the inside ceiling of a theater or auditorium instead of a normal hall.

And I'm doing a Chemistry exam! How cool is that? My favourite subject! And the paper has 14 questions, oddly similar to the number of questions in my mid semester exam. I skimmed through the whole paper, and settled down on question 7. After completing that question, I moved on to question 8 which had a table and some other data. Then I jumped to question 12 to 14.

Then I found myself on top of the ceiling, looking down at all the students doing the paper. At this point, I remember wondering how the hell did I get up there?! I seem to have some foreign knowledge as well that I'm suppose to kill the head invigilator. I never stop to wonder why, just went 'Oh, ok'. I turned over to check the bag of stuff I had, and saw some random girl passing me the bag.

'What the hell are you doing here?!' I whispered.

'I saw you leve your seat and thought you may be starting your job'

'What? My job is public knowledge now?'

'Mm hmm'

I sighed and took the bag from her and planted all the traps in the bag. (How the heck did I come about knowledge to plant traps?) But the traps are very... cheap. Mouse traps, bear traps, glue traps, the simple ridiculous ones which I wonder how can these kill an invigilator. At this point, I wondered why am I suppose to kill the invigilator.

Searching those foreign knowledge which just seems to pop into my head, I realized that the head invigilator is an alien from some far away land with a green body and many tentacles. (Doesn't this sound like a mix of a friggin low grade Hollywood movie mixed with some East Asian drama?) How the hell does a mouse trap kill an alien!?

After all the hard work, I checked my watch. It's only half an hour after the exam started. I sat on one of the beams supporting the ceiling and watched the students scribbling away hurriedly. Then I saw the 'target' walking down the middle. He reached the end of the aisle and turned back up the way he came. Wait... why am I not doing my own exam? And how the hell is he suppose to come up to the ceiling?!

I was about to go down when the girl restrained me. So, I sat back down and looked at her this time. Korean/Japanese girl, long hair, no specs, my age or older, wearing school uniform... Wait, school uniform? I'm in a school uniform too! And so is everyone else! I'm in some secondary school exam?! The ugly yellow shirt of MC but the superbly ugly brown pants of some other school with warped sense of fashion.

I looked around to find her seat and found the only empty seat was the one directly behind me. I prodded her and pointed at that direction. She nodded. Then I went back to watching the hall. I realized then that there were rows and rows of benches at the front, where there were many teachers sitting down. Those benches resembles the ones they used in churches for sermons. I could not tell what they were doing except that they were sitting quite still, almost entranced.

After one hour of waiting there, I got tired of waiting. I gestured to the girl that I want to go back down, but she restrained me again. I insisted forcefully and she relented. I ran back down, went to my seat, and continued with the exam, starting from question 1. There I entered my own world of chemistry and zoned out...

... until I heard the words 'Pens down!'. I had not completed the paper and I was mentally screaming my head off. Then everyone just stood up and started leaving the hall. The exam scripts were not collected, nothing was and everyone's leaving? So I went to grab my stuff too. On the way, another foreign knowledge came onto my mind, that the alien had been exterminated.

I had no reason to do it, but I jumped for joy and balloons came floating down. Then another foreign knowledge came in, telling me that one of the teacher on the benches offered him a drink when the head invigilator said he was thirsty. He then died on the spot. And the girl congratulated me on a work well done.
_________________________________________________________________

This is a totally warped dream of which I made no sense of. I'm posting it cause I find it totally ridiculous and out of this world. Heh.

65. Longest week(s)

2007-08-20T22:13:00.000+10:00

Here I am, blogging away, while my lab partner is busy typing up our lab proposal. I'm such a great lab partner eh? =P

But anyway, I'm seriously bored and need a change of thoughts. Hence, my mind goes back to the stack of work ahead of me. Gosh, just thinking of it kills me. The first time I came to realize the amount of work I'm gonna have to do, I got insomnia, simply cause it was that worrying. This explains the BUSY on my MSN too, heh.

Anyway, let's list down what I have to do from... today (which is over) till the 30th of August.

20/08/07 - Mon - Tutorial test - 15%

22/08/07 - Wed - Lab proposal - 10%

24/08/07 - Fri - Lab report - 5%

27/08/07 - Mon - Tutorial test - 5%

27/08/07 - Mon - Mid semester - 35%

29/08/07 - Wed - Lab report - 10%

30/08/07 - Thurs - Lab report - 20%

Wootz. Everytime I think of it, I feel so empowered. Why? Cuz if you calculate all the assessment marks, it reached 100%. It's like I just finished one entire course in 2 weeks! How cool is that?! On the pessimistic side... I'm so dead.

Anyway, this shall be the shortest post I eva wrote. Time to get back to work. Damn S.thermophile and L.bulgaricus.

64. Crystals grower

2007-08-10T16:59:00.000+10:00

This is gonna be another 'education post'. So if you are not inclined to read such things, do not read beyond this line. This disclaimer is especially directed to the bugger who has been saying I get HDs. The truth is, I get one only, and for chem, so let it go.

Let's begin with an explanation of my schedule: today is Friday, and I have chem labs on Friday. At the moment we're dealing with organic chemistry, so we get to grow crystals! For those of you who dunno, crystals by definition is just a solid body having a characteristic internal structure and enclosed by symmetrically arranged plane surfaces, intersecting at definite and characteristic angles. Heh, as usual adapted from dictionary.com. In simple terms, it's just blocks of solids with nice-to-look-at surfaces.

Let me be honest. I'm a sarky grower. Since last year, my highest crystal yield was around 70%, when everyone else was getting close to 90+%. My lowest is from last week. It's a all new low of slightly more than 10%. Can you belive how bad a crystal grower I am? So, my expectation of the crystals I grow are so low, it's a wonder why I still do chemistry.

Today was a usual day, well more or less. I went to lab feeling stoned, start my experiment feeling stoned. Looked around, wonder why they need so much ice. Then realize instructions say perform on ice... Although I was feeling pretty stoned, my voice sounded chirpy. Yeah, chirpy, amazing.

So, it came to a step where we had to solidify our product, the first time we can see our product in solid form. I looked at it and I froze. It looked so nice and complete and needle like and fits snugly at the bottom of the beaker. I felt like jumping for joy then. It looks perfectly nice and it's possible I'm gonna get a good yield!

Oh, slight explanation. Crystals we grow are generally in needle like forms. Or I would call them ice spear forms, cause the thickness gradually decreases from one end to the other. Usually it starts from one point of the beaker and spread out from that point of origin. Imagine those crystals in the caves, something like that, except in a 1/10000000000 scale.

There was once, in my recrystallization step, it simply started snowing in the beaker. Snowing as in the 'crystals' (it didn't look like much of a crystal anymore, thus the inverted commas) started dropping from the top layer of the liquid to the bottom. And since the 'crystals' were white, I call it snowing.

But I digress. We shall now proceed to the recrystallization step. It gets more interesting there. Recrystallization is simply dissolving the solid in a solvent, then cooling it. In the cooling process, crystals will form. After dissolving the yellow solid, the solution turned bright yellow. Since I've nothing to do, I stared at it. The formation of crystals always amazes me.

If one looks carefully into the beaker, there are some sort of wiggly lines floating around in the beaker. I was guessing that those are the start of the formation of crystals. After about 3 minutes, one side of the beaker started turning murky. 'Yay, looks good, looks good'. Then the... I shall call it 'cloud', for I dunno what is it exactly. The 'cloud' started pulsing. 'Oh my goodness, I'm growing some new alien force! S***!' The 'cloud' expanded then shrunk a bit, expand, shrink, expand, shrink. Then the 'cloud' branched out, like a tree, cept it has no roots or bark, just branches with the white stuff as leaves.

A demonstrator happen to pass by at that time and peered into it and said, 'Oo... that's new. I've never seen any other crystals like this.' I was stunned. 'It's like the molecules are lining up for crystal formation.'

'Ah... I see...okay...'

Then she left. By then the 'cloud' had envelop the entire beaker and stopped pulsing. Note that I'm looking from the top, so I can't see the bottom what's going on. Then from the same point where the 'cloud' originated, the crystals started forming! It's a brilliant wonderful sight to behold. The ice spears just grew from that point and spread through the entire beaker until the entire solution was solidified. You only see these stuff in CGs, I thought. But anyway, it was so beautiful, I didn't mind doing the experiment again and again.

The next step in recrys involves drying. I turned the beaker around, made a few scratches by the side to peel the piece of crystal off, and plop, the whole thing came out. I was so amazed and happy and joyful and... whatever. Then it occurred to me. I dissolved this in 5 ml ethanol. Where did the ethanol go?! Gah! It's a piece of ethanol??

Anyway, from the colour it did not appear so. Thus, I continued with the filtering, and weighed it... and it seems I have a very good yield! I haven't calculated it yet though. Too lazy and happy. I shall know on Monday what have I created when I do an IR on it. Erk...

Alot of people won't understand the significance of crystal growing and why such a small thing can make me so happy. It's like putting time and effort into something, or investing into something, and you get the yield/profit/product at the end of the day. Of course, I'm talking positive yields. It's that sort of joy and happiness. And of course, relieve that I'm gonna get my few marks for product accuracy. ^^

63. Just another day

2007-07-25T17:39:00.000+10:00

First lecture started. I wasn't paying much attention. First, because the lecturer had a sore throat, so no one could hear anything, and second I was SMS-ing A regarding a request. Then A mentioned A has the tickets. I was cursing under my breath that I did not check when I closed the MSO booth the day before that I was missing all the event tickets. So, oklor, A will meet me at the booth area to pass me the tickets.

One hour later, the lecture ended. Looking forward to the one hour break because of extreme sleepiness.

So, in a melancholic mood, I walked back to my room. Then realized I had to pass some MSO stuff to the people on duty one hour later. A is gonna meet me to pass me the tickets, so I'm fine in that factor. I then recalled that I have to prepare for lab in the afternoon. Looks like it won't be such an enjoyable one hour break after all.

After going through antiseptic techniques and heat fixation and boredom, I left my room 20 minutes before lecture and strolled the 250 meters to the booth area. I reached the area 15 minutes later. By calculation, 5 minutes was more than enough to walk to my lecture theater. Chances of me being late with that planning was quite low, since there was the usual 5 minutes of 'Please settle down!' and 'Quiet please!'.

A wasn't there yet, so I contacted A.

'Hello...' The hello was so sleepy and draggy, I knew immediately I was gonna be late for class. I passed the stuff to the people on duty, borrowed a bike, and rushed to A's home.

People on my contact list on MSN may have seen my personal message being 'Fell down - hit self on knee - quite pain.' 2 minutes into cycling on that super tall bike of my friend's, I could feel my left leg throbbing.

'Ah... Shit... All the recovery work yesterday... Gone...'

Rushed to A's place, with left leg throbbing.

Reminder to self: Never overexert self when injured.

Yeap, so rush there to A's place, obtain tickets, rush back, while cursing under breath along the way. Then return bike, and bought ham and cheese pastry, and limped the way back to class.

The rest of the day proceeded as normal, cept for the limping of course, or semi-limping, or improper walking... Whatever. And cept for the accidental self-contamination in lab. Oops... (Btw, microorganisms go 'Sss....' when getting burned too! I thought they would be too small to make any sound.)

The only good thing out of the entire event was the ham and cheese pastry. Excellent, excellent stuff. ANU people should really at least ate that stuff once. Cept for vegetarians. Cuz they're weird. I'm weird too, cuz I'm carnivorous.

6 hours later, I met up with a close friend, and finally had a chance to vent out my frustration. While talking, I realized that if I was gonna go to court against A for 'permanent leg damage' if there gonna be such a thing (pray... no), I may be counter-sued for 'negligence'.

The law is some funny thing. Why negligence? Cause if I did not neglect to check my bag properly before closing the booth the day before, I would not have this hassle in the first place!

The story may seem as though I am targeting and blaming A. (Mental image of me gunning A down). But no, I'm not, A is just a scape goat for the progress of the story. Okay, maybe I am, I'm still a bit pissed, though knowing full well that I have no right to. Oh, there's full of self-pity too, to make me look like a victim. Sorry.

PS: Bruce Hall having academic awards formal dinner. Too lazy to dressed up for formal dinner. Gonna be berated tomorrow on how it's actually not formal, it's actually smart casual, why you so anti-social etc etc etc. Too lazy to indulge in PR stuff at the moment. Shall enjoy my instant noodles later.

PPS: Congrats to Ai Lin for award! I think.

62. Scoleciphobia

2007-07-19T09:28:00.001+10:00

In my life, there are only two things which I can't handle. Handle as in face alone without fear. Yes, I'm talking about phobias or as some view it, weakness. Phobia is irrational fear of something. I know it's irrational, okay?

http://www.fearintofreedom.com/phobialist/

This site has some good description of phobias actually. There's even a phobia of Helminths!

(WARNING: Graphic description ahead. Actually not very graphic... But go ahead and read as you wish)
___________________________________________________________________

Once again the new semester comes around, and everyone goes about wondering what courses to take, where the lectures are, how's the lecturers. Common questions, faced by students every semester.

My course layout for this semester is relatively interesting: Chem, 3 Biols. My problem only lies with 1 of the courses.

Before I start, what do people know of parasites? What comes to mind when one mentions parasite? I'm guessing something like... mosquitoes? That's the macroorganism. For the microorganism, I'm guessing, people will think of viruses? How about worms? The different classes of worms such as roundworm, tapeworm. Of course, fleas and ticks and those shit on your pets can also be considered parasites.

So, we know what are parasites. But what does parasite actually mean? I'm sure for bio people, they would know. Actually, I think everyone knows. But, just for the sake of completion, I shall include it. Parasite: an organism that lives on or in an organism of another species, known as the host, from the body of which it obtains nutriment. (as adapted from dictionary.com)

Okay, introduction over. Back to the topic. BIOL C42 - Parasitology (Actually it's another code, but I do not want my post to come up when someone googles the code, I found my post when I was googling something else that day >.>). This course explores the different diversity of parasites, potential cures, physiology of the parasites, the complex and dynamic relationships between host and parasite and natural and drug resistance.

So, sounds cool and all. I went for first lecture, and found out what a fool I was. I still have the course outline with me, so I shall refer from there. First lecture was talking about alot of terms, a few diagrams on people infected with parasites. It was quite scary. Actually, quite is an understatement. Most people at some point would have come across one of such pictures, and go 'erk!' or 'yer!' or 'bleah!' or the rare 'oo....'. I would love to put one of the pictures up, but I shall spare people the horror.

Doctors/interns would probably be more acceptable of such images. Every year interns or upcoming doctors stop at the point where actual surgery had to be done. After the first lecture of this course, my respect for doctors went up quite a bit. Can one imagine the psychological torment such images would do to a doctor? Cadavers, worms, blotches, patients practically force doctors to watch horror movies everyday. Cool eh? Of course, doctors/interns are welcomed to refute me.

Week 8 of the course (which would place it sometime in September 2007) would see students performing a practical on Helminths. Helminth is a broad class of worms, usually small, in humans, almost always present (surprising eh? at least that's what the lecturer said, I still don't believe her). Lecturer said it with such gung-ho-ness and enthusiasm and with the sparkle in her eye, one would wonder if she borders on crazy scientist. Of course, I'm guessing anyone who goes 'oo...' when seeing parasite images is in the same class as she is. Am I discriminating? Maybe.

So, how is the practical performed? Students are given a mouse, and then students will disect the mouse. Oh, the mouse is dead, sure. But hell, the worm inside isn't. Students are to disect the mouse, extract the worm, put it on a slide, then view the morphological aspect and physiological aspect of the worm. Draw the worm, show what the student has seen. Do all this while the worm is squirming and struggling on the glass slide of the microscope. Bad enough we're seeing the worm squiggling, we need to see it enlarged?! I'm not sure where the student is gonna find the worm in the mouse; intestine, heart, brain?

'Hey worm, looky here... That's a good worm. Hey now, stop moving! Stop moving I tell you! Grr... Now you piss me off! *Press down on slide* *Worm is squished* See? Now I've overdone it! Lec! Another mouse please! On the double!'

Cause of death of mouse: Helminth

Even the image of it at this moment feels like putting a needle in my brain. Anyway, when I heard that in class, I felt my blood leaving my face. Here comes part two.

Week 13 is the wildlife practical. Apparently this is the all famous practical of the BaMBi (Biochemistry and Molecular Biology) faculty. So, on week 8 is mouse. Week 13, students get everything else. What do I mean by everything else? I mean all other animals in the wild. The all famous practical cause it stinks up the whole faculty. Week 13 is the last week of school, so generally students don't have any more labs, but this one does! Yay!

When I mean animals in the wild, I mean chickens, and whatever crap the supplier supplied. One year, they happen to obtain a fox. Oh btw, all the animals are dead, dunno how though.

Cause of death of wildlife: Presumable parasites

So, dead fox lying on the ground. Take dead fox, put on table. Disect. Wow! Great discovery! There's a cyst of a Echinococcus granulosus! Cyst is a sac of ... animal fluid crap. And so this cyst, has about a gazillion baby worms! Yay! Oo... Look at all this cute little itsy bitsy worms squirming in the fox! Now, let's see what animal to open up next... Hmm... How about this joey here?

Cause of death of fox: E. granulosus

When I'm telling my friends about this course and what students are bound to do, I always leave out the second part. Sorry, worms do not make good dining table discussion. Not especially when noodles are served.

The final question remains. Am I going to take this course?

61. End of Sem 1 2007

2007-06-21T12:56:00.000+10:00

OMG, IT'S OVER!!! IT'S FINALLY OVER!! THE FRIGGIN EXAM AND THE ENTIRE SEMESTER IS FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY OVER!!!

Okay, that should tell you exactly how happy I am. If it doesn't you deserve a knock on your head. IT'S OVER!! I can never get enough of this sort of happiness.

On to the summary of exams. Chem 2202 was as the last post. Biochem was nonsensical. Genes was easy peasy.

Spectro. Now that is an interesting one. For this stupid physics-chemistry-maths exam, I studied only the theory of spec and molecular symmetry. Screw crystallography. So, I crammed 4 past years in my brain, hoping everything would be sufficient to get a pass.

And lo and behold, my wish/prayer came true! 60% was pass year questions! With my not so fabulous memory, I can definitely pass! Whee!!! So, I finished everything I knew in 1 hour 50 minutes. Then I literally shake leg there for another 10 mins, going 'la, la, la...'. I pity my neighbours at this point, they surely hate me by now.

After that, I was debating to go out, or to stay. So I decided to stay and have a look at question 1 of crys. Big mistake. I was stuck there for the next one hour. >.<>

60. CHEM 2202

2007-06-14T12:04:00.001+10:00

You should figure from the title it's a rant post, so if you dun like academic rant posts, please move on...

Finally! I found a time where I can use the *word* as freely as I can! The exam was divided to 2 questions, 50 marks each, and of course many sub questions. The examined section is Inorganic Chemistry.

Anyway, it started off quite cool, I can answer most of Q1. Then I turned to Q2. And I stared. One word kept jumping up at me. CISPLATIN. CISPLATIN. CISPLATIN. For the ignorant masses, it's the newest (well, not exactly newest) miracle tumour drug. It's unbiased and affects both normal and tumour cells.

So, this... CISPLATIN. is some funky platinum in cis conformation to chlorine and ammonia. And so, by trans effect, the chlorine should be of greater coordination effect than ammonia (I think? I'm still not sure). So, it hydrolyzed and does it's crap? I dunno! How the *word* will I know?! Originally isn't chlorine and ammonia friggin close to each other already on the trans order?

Now, the lecturer mentioned this periodically in class, so I'm cool with it. But he did not have to allocate 20 marks for that question!! First he asked how to make it. I'm like... err...? Then the mechanism of it? Hydrolyzed in cell, binds to DNA, bla bla bla...

Then the remaining of Q2 was manageable, except the last 1. So, I'm given like 3 bidentate ligands. Isomerism? Piece of cake. The problem? They ask on isomerism which exists using any combination possible. I'm like huh...? That's like what? 10++? You think I have the time to draw 10 platinum complexes with that many bidentate ligands?

Oh, then there was this question in Q1 regarding the spectrochemical series. Cool, we all know it, and we all memorize it. That's it! Generally, people do not know how it's derived, ya know? Probably it's polarity probably it's something else... I dunno! And what's with the focus of the year being polarity? I know the polar caps are having problems, mentioning polarity ten and ten times over won't help resolve the polar problems!

Anyway, academic rant over, now onto environmental rant. Shit, that was a friggin cold morning. Bad idea to drink tea. Needed to go toilet half way. That costs me at most 4 minutes of valuable time, since I din have the time to finish the paper already. Okay, the temperature was like single digit? I din even bother wearing my jacket when going to toilet, wearing it would prolly cost me 10 more seconds or something. So when I came back, it was like friggin cold and I was shaking all over. For the remaining 1 hour, I shook and shook and shook like some possessed dude. Oh, I guess I must've freaked a few people out when I did my neck crack thingy... Hehz.

At the end of the paper I put this post script: Sorry for the handwriting, too cold, and too difficult. =P

I would've put more, but I din have the time to do all the questions already. My handwriting was like Eli's spider expression, hehz.

PS: I just read it thru and I dun understand what I wrote, if you've read this far, congrats! You get a cookie. *Gives virtual cookie* Enjoy!

PPS: I know I've been getting 'But you're smart!' comments. Maybe I'm, maybe I'm not, maybe you're just dumb, maybe the birds just like that tree, maybe the sun decide to rose from the west today. Get it? I'm human too, I can find things difficult too. Even though I can do most of it, it's still beyond me, and mostly shooting skillz (I'm a CS player, doinks).

59. Dining Hall Drama

2007-06-08T19:10:00.000+10:00

So, here I am, after ages, with another update. I wanted to post this story like 2 months ago, so here goes...
Life update: boring, studying for exams.

Once upon a time, in a far far away land of peace and quiet (a bit too much) where noise reigns at night (by those blardy drunkards), there is this hall (or college or residence). This fabulous hall, called Bruce Hall has all these fabulous facilities, too much beyond what I can tell today. However, today we shall concentrate on this one location - the Dining Hall.

This dining hall is huge, with excellent lighting with a exhibition of pictures depicting Creation. This is where the residents of this great college have their food or drinks or basic entertainment. However strict Regulations govern this territory, a story to be left for later, although it has some relevance to this tale.

Back to this wondrous place. One year ago, this place showed promises of being a place to spend time. For, eventhough it was under the iron grip of a Duchess, she was still in check. The Duchess however was biased to the locals and did not look upon the aliens with favor.

As the year was coming to an end, the ignorant and docile King hired another Duchess. Now, forgive me for being rude, but this Duchess was one helluva two-faced bitch. At the start of her employment, she showed kindness and showered false niceties upon the residents. And, some of us made a grave mistake and looked upon her with favor. We thought of her as a nice balance to the tyrant.

Let's give them names, for identification purposes, shall we? Let's see... let's call the first Duchess, Duchess P, for she was power hungry; and the second one Duchess B, for she was simply a bitch or since it apparently is too vulgar of a word, we shall use bicce which was apparently the same.

One fine day, half a year back, Duchess B simply showed her true colours, and oh, shock were we of her attitude. The surprised residents had an audience with the higher authorities, and it apparently, under the direct orders of the King, she was to be bicce-y to enforce the Regulations, whereas she was originally highly reluctant to do so.

Some of the naive residents bought the story. However, the few observant aliens reported seeing Duchess P tutoring the new Duchess!

This news undoubtedly spread like wildfire, and soon the entire community hold no liking in their hearts for the new Duchess. The year simply ended after that.

The new year came, and the migratory residents return to find both the Duchesses ruling with an iron grip. The Regulations were changed without the residents' knowledge. For this, the ever-present-but-mostly-idle democratic revolutionists held council with the King to find a solution.

However, in the state of our absence, it seems the Duchesses forged a strong bond with the Prime Minister. Any strict instructions the King handed down were filtered, and the instructions became more like worthless advises.

While the revolutionists were looking for a solution, the residents suffered under their tyranny. We were roughly and harshly removed of our comfort places before the due time. Food, for some reason, had a proportional effect to the Duchesses attitude. It reached a new low and at one point, even repulsive.

Usually, at this point, we would simply utilize the resources available and make ourselves this fabulous meal called Sandwich. When Duchess B found out, she decided to cut us off this new food supply chain by simply closing off access to the resources early. Her attitude was not longer bicce-y, it was simply, intolerably, horrendously, pissing-off-ly bicce-y.

The most oppressed were the aliens, and I being one of them can affirm this. A few of us came up with plots to 'remove' this scum from the society, but the backlash would simply be too great.

From our ranks, rose a democratic Knight, who simply could tolerate the bicce no more. He went forth and confronted the Head of Hall. Now, in this government system, the H-o-H held more power than anyone else.

The H-o-H had a 'talk' with the Duchess and subsequently Duchess B became simply, bitchy again. At this point, Duchess P replaced Duchess B in attitude, almost as though taking turns oppressing us.

The only saving grace now lies with the little band of revolutionists. Through democratic discussions, they achieved a stricter time rule on the access to our resources and access to the Dining Hall.

At this point of time, the battle continues, with the Duchesses being warned not to aggravates the residents during this period of EXAMINATION. Thus, their presence has not been felt much, and her harsh words less heard of. And, the food is getting better! Mm... wonder why...

And oh, what a big word this EXAMINATION is... For I too have to now resume preparing for this unavoidable day of reckoning.

PS: 90% of the above story is the truth. Thank you for supporting the aliens.
PPS: I would have prefered to use garce, french for bitch, but it's not B...

梦 - 世界的末端

2007-04-07T22:21:00.000+10:00

...and I find myself at a petrol station. What the hell I'm doing there, I don't know. Then a flash of light streaks across the sky. I ducked for cover and watch the light fly across the hills.

Then it exploded.

I opened my eyes from the blinding light to see some fires in the distance. Instantly, a thought came to mind. 'This is like the War of the Worlds!'

Looking around, I saw people running away from the fires. I also see many people dressed in black robes with a simple emotionless white mask walking in the other direction. (Doomsayers?) But most importantly, I see many red sports cars around. It is as though someone drove to the middle of the road and stopped there and left the car on the road.

I rushed to the nearest car and entered the driving seat (I can drive man, hehz). Then *poof* my mom was beside me.

'Okay, what the hell?' I asked.
'Let's get away from here, son!'

Err... okay. This is weird. Then I noticed this car has ran outta gas. Good thing the petrol station is nearby eh? Meanwhile, mom was happily chatting with one of those guys in black robes. Seems he's from our church or something...

I grabbed a container and ran towards the nearest pump, filled it and poured into the petrol tank. I made a few trips until the tank was full. Then I entered the driver's seat, and started the car.

'Oh yes, let's hear this baby purr' I said.

Then I floored the accelerator... and nothing. Seems there's something too heavy in the trunk? I got out, opened the trunk, and find a box of MSO cooking utensils... The ones which were entrusted to me.

And I woke up...
___________________________________________________________________

I told my frenz here this, and they say that I have bizarre dreams. Okla, makes sense. Cuz I dun get what it's telling me either. And then I woke up, and when I went back to sleep, I had another dream, but I dun recall it...

58. Minor update

2007-04-07T22:12:00.000+10:00

Wootz, after ages, I've finally returned... Cuz I'm having holidays and I'm bored shitless, and I just drank some cheap beer on an empty stomach... The effect is dreadful. Curse this crap. And I heard some damn many people have changed their blogs or something similar. Moving on things.

So let's rewind and see what's been happening. Since my last post, I've been going to uni, and doing all sorts of shit uni students do. Well, guess there are some interesting things happening.

First of, there was this major hail, of which I planned to put up pictures, but then I got too lazy, and hence they remain in my comp. So what's so great about a hail? I mean, after some loupek research, it seems it occurs almost everywhere. But then those hails did not go on for half an hour! And it was like major. So very damaging. We has 3 days holiday, cuz uni sustained major damages. Apparently 70 buildings were konked. Even now, some buildings remained konked.

Next, there was... hmm, my first MSO event. Nothing much, overnight cooking, lack of sleep, self torture for some reason which I'm still thinking of... I think if anyone from the committee happen to read this, they're gonna propose my resignation, hehz.

Then came the mid sems. I somehow think there was a interesting story somewhere in between, but I just dun recall at the moment, so I guess this will have to do for now. Until next time la... Oh, and I'm getting some vestiges of idiocy and desperation. Environmental effects, hehz.

57. Eighteen - Year of Decision

2007-01-17T01:02:00.000+11:00

Whee... It's time to change the number again. Thus, from 8, it becomes a 9. Brings me closer to the 'real world'. Lotsa nostalgic thoughts. Feel older. Let's review how 18 has been! Ah, it's... a yearly thing for me to name the years I've been through.

All in all, it was a good year. I had some of the greatest fun of my life this year thanks to a few reasons. First, is of course the great bunch of friends. Second, is the great year I have academically.

Relationship:
Brilliant! They said uni's where you make life lasting friendships. I'll second that.

Academic:
After ages, I'm seeing the first letter of the alphabet again! Well, since Aus used the HD/D/CR/P system, it's the same la...

Emotional:
Well... Let's move on.

Knowledge:
I feel smarter =)
And I know the course of my future, decided at last.
Although I know I'm not. Most of my questions are still not answered, hehe.

Spiritual:
Let's plot a graph. Then it'll be somewhere near zero.
Currently, I would call myself a fallen Christian. Not very good for my spiritual life eh?
But it's expected, as I learn more about Science, the other portion falls... Quite drastically.

Well, aside from the minor stage of depression near the end of the year, it can be graded as somewhere at 8/10 =)

梦 - Deja vu

2006-12-02T02:11:00.000+11:00

I'm having lunch in the dining hall studying for my exam. Of course, I'm referring to our dear beloved Bruce Hall dining hall. Happily eating lunch while studying for my next exam.

Not keeping track of the time, unknowingly, it suddenly became 7.30 pm! Remembering that my exam starts at 7:00 pm (this is a dream, okay?). I freaked out, colelcted my stuff and ran out of the dining hall. Then I saw a car leaving Bruce Hall.

Desperate, I requested (more like emphasized, demanded) the driver to give me a trip to (heh?) Moran. So this driver, along with his fren, drove slowly down Daley Road, to the main road, into the turning leading into Toad Hall, and turned right into Toad Hall!

I nearly fainted, then, and asked the fella, "What the hell?"

"Oh, we have to fetch a friend from Toad Hall, it won't take long, still faster than you running down Uni Ave." the friend said.

So being the fool I was, I waited in the car. Time ticked by slowly. My patience was wearing thin (I think I was getting a bit superbly impatient, cuz I woke up with this major build up of impatience later). I looked at my watch, 1.40pm! And we're still waiting!

Dashing outta the car without saying thanks, I ran the rest of the way to Moran. Reaching the building, I saw a sign outside the door, saying: BIOL1600 1:00-8:00pm.

"@#$%!@#$%!@#$%!@#$%!" as I went into the hall. As I opened the door, a bell rang in my mind. I peered inside, and it was indeed BIOL1600. 'Heh? Wasn't my exam time 7:00 pm?'

I closed the door quietly and opened my bag. And saw that my exam was yesterday! 'Heh? Then what exam is this? Wait, was there even a BIOL1600 course? Then... what the hell am I doing here?'
____________________________________________________________________

Then I woke up, as I said, feeling damn impatient. And feeling a rush of different emotions. Then sleepyness prevailed, and I went back to sleep, this time dreamless.

Why deja vu, one may ask. Well, most of Bruce Hall people will know the following story which happened on the 14th of November, 2006:

9 am: I was having breakfast, thinking my exam is at 2 pm. Meanwhile, my handphone in my room rang. Call by Xin and later Tenzin.

9.10 am: Went back room and resume studying for exam.

10 am: Decide to take a break. Check phone. 2 miss calls. Thinking Tenzin's one is most probably questions on exam, that one's gonna be long. Deal with the other, shorter one first.
Call Xin.

Xin: Eh? Your exam over liao?
Me: Shit. What exam? (Checks timetable online) OMG @#$%! @#$%! @#$%! @#$%! (For the person who rarely curses, this is something, I tell you)
Xin: Okay, okay, go, go, go, byebye, byebye, byebye.

Rushes out of room, shaking with fear.

10.10 am: Arrives at JD (the exam venue), requests to meet with invigilator. Plead with invigilator (imagine me, with one single emotion: fear, and a damn pathetic and frightened face, and can almost be begging to sit for exam)

Invi: Well, you can't take the exam, it's 40 minutes past. We only allow up to 30 minutes late.
Me: Please, please... (yeah, imagine pathetic, real pathetic)
Invi: (Takes handphone) (Sloooooowwwwly scrolls down, MESSAGE bla bla bla, GAMES, EXTRA, SERVICES, OPTUS)
Me (thinking to self): Omg, my life is on the line here, do you need me to teach you to use the damn phone????
Invi: (presses CANCEL, then presses the call button twice) C***** (forgot the fella's name), Brandon here, I've got a student who is 45....
Me: 40.
Invi: ....minutes late, can he enter the exam hall? ...Mm hmm... Okay. (Offs phone, gives me instructions)

10.20: I rush to lecturer, request lecturer to mediate for me. Then went to faculty office, take in form, fill up form. On the reason page (which is one whole friggin page long), wrote one sentence: Honestly, I got the time wrong, I thought it was 2 pm, when it was actually 9 pm.

10.30: Rush back to lecturer, pass the form. Lecturer calls down dept Head. Plead further.

And finally...

10.45: Sits for exam. Whee....

梦 - 逃忙得我

2006-11-11T08:56:00.000+11:00

First person view dream! And a very... thrilling one at that, for me. This is a typical Hong Kong drama Police vs. Triad style.
________________________________________________________________

I'm a typical computer technician who works at a large company. Given my own laptop by the company, I modified it so that it would suit my style (btw, I canNOT do that, nor am I a com wiz).

On someday, I found out that the company was dealing with 黑社会. So, being the idiot I am, I happily downloaded the entire data into my laptop, and jolly went my way.

I reached my apartment area (now, this became S'pore style apartments, the one where ground floor is all pillars, yeah yeah, the only style I know or like) and was reaching my staircase when I was fired at. I was not hit, but it definitely gave me the fright of my life. I hid behind the nearest pillar and panted the life outta me.

When the shooting stopped, presumable for my pursuers to reload, I peeked out to see who were they? Maybe they got the wrong person? There were three of them. I realized I know the guns they were using, (side-effects from playing too much CS) MAC-10s.

Then they saw me peeking out and hasten their reload and started the barrage of bullets. Then I calculated my choices. If I were to be a hero, I need a weapon. My laptop? It's in my backpack, heavy, and could probably knock one unconscious. Then what? There's still 2 more to put dozens of hard bullets into my body.

Well, so I chose to be the coward, or the run-now-fight-again-another-day person (fight another day? I dun wanna encounter these guys again!). I made a dash to the nearest pillar to my right, holding my laptop as a shield.

-Cutscene-

(Drama or not?)
Big boss: Is the Cheetah back yet?
Aide: Yes, boss.
Big boss: Send him out.
Aide: But, boss...
Big boss: You do not question me, understand?
Aide: ..... Yes boss....

-End of cutscene-

So, here I was running from pillar to pillar and amazingly not hit by any bullets. Then I realized, I'm running in circles! If i keep choosing the nearest pillar to the right, I'll end up where I started from!

Then the shooting stopped. The three of them started talking in very rapid Cantonese. Then, I heard, 'The Cheetah?!!?'. With that, all three scampered away.

I started counting my lucky stars, and slumped to the floor. Shortly after, some young guy came along from the right. He was wearing a cap and had this cool looking sunglasses (your typical badboy, I guess). And slung over his left shoulder was some bigass gun. A sniper. Why the hell would anyone call a sniper the cheetah is beyond me, but I'll find out soon. I did not recognize the gun, so I have no idea about the firing power of that thing.

And the chase is on. I ran to the left. Two seconds later he was running ahead of me to my left. 'Oo... so that's why he's called the cheetah...'

I pull backed and ran to the right, running from pillar to pillar. Suddenly, there was this very loud bang from the front. And... nothing.

So, being exhausted of the chasing, I sat down again, unsure if the danger was over. Then, I heard footsteps. More like a woman, because of the high heels.

Unsure if it's friend or foe, I took up my laptop. As the footsteps grew closer, I started timing it, and the direction it was coming from. When I assumed she was 1 meter behind me, I jumped out, in hopes to surprise her and swung my laptop... and I missed... by at least another 5 meters.

So there I was, holding my laptop, and there she was, holding a pistol. Having no time to lose, I swung again, and again, and again, until someone restrained me.
'What? You wanna kill your saviour now?'

I turned around in surprise and see this big guy, pure muscle I'm guessing, and wearing the typical police uniform. Then I turn around and saw this whole setting of equipment, radio, computers, all sort of high tech gadgets.

Big guy: Well, we're deployed here now. We heard you've got some info we want, is that correct?
Me: *Looks from man to woman to man* Wha...?
Woman: *Points at laptop*
-Another guy comes along-
Guy in white suit: So who's doing protection?
Big guy: I'll have my team support and protect him.
GiWS: But you have a limited manpower, and you still have to do regular patrols right? We, the customs shall do it.
Big guy: No way, he's under our protection and we will handle it.
-Fist fight ensues-
_________________________________________________________________

梦 - 小孩的梦

2006-11-02T17:00:00.000+11:00

Something not so gory this time. I dream alot, dun I, but... it's a good thing, hehe.

Anyway, I dun remember the major first part of it, haha.
_________________________________________________________________

I or maybe a young kid. Should be a young kid, since it was a third person view style. Anyway, he was in a forest. Not the typical dangerous one. The mild, tame one with many tame animals and where all the animals are friends or something like that.

He was squatting down drawing pictures (why the hell he does not sit is beyond me). Then comes a long line of animals to watch him draw.

-cut-

...and he was guiding this rabbit to draw on the paper. After the rabbit completed it's picture, it went on it's own merry way. Next in line was a squirrel, the kid guided the squirrel's hand and (somehow) drew what the squirrel intended to draw.

After the drawing was completed, the squirrel went on it's way as well. There was only three more in line, a middle aged woman, a white rabbit and a... furry little dude. He looked back in line, then squat down and decided to draw a portrait of the middle age woman.

Now, the woman looked weird, having a head unproportional to the size of the body. The head was simply too big! (Anyone watched Spirited Away? Yeah, the old hag there) The kid then proceeded to draw without looking up (he's that pro).

Meanwhile the woman, who had been looking downward all this while, began to grow old, very quickly. She soon aged into a old lady. Then her degeneration stopped, but she began turning brown then black, then soon faded away altogether...

_________________________________________________________________

Lee Kuan's note:
>.>
说过是小孩的梦。。。可是也满奇怪的呢。。。
But good one, good relaxation for the day of exam. If it was a nightmare, sure fail liao exam, not that I'm so sure I won't fail now...

梦 - 对狗残忍

2006-10-27T08:39:00.000+10:00

To dog lovers and whoever who may find violence offensive, it is strongly advised to not proceed beyond this point.
_________________________________________________________________

The auditorium was buzzing with noise. This is not one's normal auditorium with a nice design with one's expectations of expecting a lecture or music performance. It has the general layout of a semi-circle style of seats but instead of a stage in front, there were bars, giving the image of spectators watching a jail cell. A guard of some sort was patrolling inside the 'cage' around a few prison-cell-like structure. Those cells can be seen as an island in the cage. It could be clearly seen from my position as a spectator that there were dogs in those cells. One in each cell.

The cell on the left kept a small dog (I'm not familiar with dog breeds, but it's the hotdog style dog), the cell in the middle some sort of husky, and the cell in the right, a german shepherd.

Okay, enough of descriptions, back to the story.

First of, I can't tell if this is a dream or not, because I think I was in a state of semi-conscious. The first thing I realized that I had a girlfriend next to me, which is a pretty strong enough evidence that this is a dream or some sort of imagination. Her features were not visible to me, which probably meant that she was not or will not be playing a prominent role in the story. Everyone else had black features and were anxious anticipating something.

The story started off with the first cell from the left opening up. The guard seemed to freak out in surprise and ran out of the cage via the nearest door. Everyone quieted down immediately. There was not a sound in the arena (yes, I can feel that this is an arena of some sort) other than heavy breathing.

The dog walked out of the cage tentatively. It looked at us with those cute puppy eyes which makes most people waver in their decision. The sound of heavy bars of a cell opening echoed in the arena.

Whatever which is coming next, it was clear that is was dangerous. The air grew tense. The dog looked around in fear in it's eyes. Then we heard it. Strong, heavy footsteps running from a distance. Everything that happened next occured in like... 10 seconds or something, it was very damn fast.

The creature came around the corner with hunger in it's eyes. I dunno how to name this fearsome creature. It has the body of a baboon. However it differs in the sense that it has the legs of a normal dog or wolf and the snout of a dog as well. This creature, which I estimate to be at least 8 feet tall, bend round the corner, ran to the dog... and engulfed the top half of the dog.

In it's attempt to bite the top half off, it swung the dog to the left and right. As a result, the dog was ripped apart and the blood of the dog splattered unto the spectators of the front row. The creature swallowed down that part and stepped on the lower half of the dog, squeezing all the blood out. It then ate the remains and slowly left the scene.

All the while this was happening, the other 2 dogs were cowering in the corner of their cages. The spectators were still quiet. It was hard to tell if they were happy or excited or anything at all. My girlfriend, I realized, closed her eyes with the appearance of the creature and now slowly opened her eyes. She glanced at me and then turn her eyes back to the blood splattered arena.

Next, the middle cage opened, and with it, the same sound of a far away cage opening as well. What appeared next could only be described as a giant grey wolf. Similar in size as the creature before, it bared it's fangs and snarled at the husky. The husky let out a loud whimper and ran. The wolf gave chase. The chase went round and round the 'island of cells'. It was later clear that the wolf was obviously playing with the husky... before letting it meet the same fate as the dog before.

After a while, the wolf landed a giant paw on the husky, squeezing the life out of it. It then chewed off the tail of the husky. Following the tail were each individual limb of the dog.

At this point, I felt that I had enough. Grabbing my girlfriend's hand, I stood up and walked out of the arena. We walked out of the arena and found ourselves on a plateau. A city can be seen just about 10 kilometers in front of us.

The last thing that went through my mind before I regained consciousness was this: Why the hell is there such an arena so near the city?!

Author's note:
Gory sport... Closest similarity of such a sport is probably cock fighting...? I'm writing this in a psychology lecture on adult development, so it kinda sarks, not that I write very well even in my own room...

56. Animal story

2006-08-10T09:44:00.000+10:00

Once upon a time, there was this black goat. This goat was not your ordinary normal goat, he is pretty active and a bit anti-social.

The black goat undergo many many trials, and he finally reached a place where he thought he could start life anew, away from his old friends while still maintaining contact with them. So in this place, he met alot of people, alot of new personalities, new chains of thoughts, and a white pure goat.

The black goat like this white goat almost instantaneously. He decided to consult a very close friend, and got a rather encouraging reply. He this decided to see what happens as time goes on.

As time passes and he learns more about this white goat, he began creating a shell around himself. This shell named anti-social caused him great distress. He started shunning his new friends and started creating false lives. His only joy is when he manages to find an activity that completely removes all other thought from his mind.

Then he learnt that the white goat was encountering some problems of her own. He wanted to help but did not know how to approach the white goat. This created a major tension and depression within himself. Unconsciously however, he still realizes the need to uphold the image he created, whatever the image it is.

As more time passes, he realizes the futility of his actions. He decided to get it over with. He knew he had no chance. The white goat was simply too pure, beyond his reach. And definitely beyond his standard. So he spent lotsa time devising a plan which could bring him to the conclusion he seeks. When he extended the invitation, it was left on the grass. He stared at it and was stunned for a while. He did not know whether he shud continue or not.
He went back to his world and explored the situation. The black goat realized that he was in a cage, called 'the pure white goat'. He needed an answer so that he could be set free from the cage, though it would cause great pain and distress. He came up with another plan, using part of the original plan. He also ensured that there was no escape, there would definitely be a confrontation.

The day arrived. The black goat made preparations and confronted the pure white goat. And pang! The black goat got the answer. It was exactly within his expectations. He got a flat out rejection answer. He had braced himself for the pain, but as the words were spoken, his eyes blurred and his mind when thru a short period of blank. He felt a great wave of chaos rushing thru him, an endless wave of chaos. He forcibly pushed all thoughts away (and fails) to concentrate on the white goat. They talked for quite a bit, and he understood more of the white goat. He also noted some words she used were to set limits and he knows that he has to play within the limits if he were to maintain the connection.

After that event, they maintained a mutual friendship, very mutual one. He consulted a few seafood, and a few farm animals he was close to and a centaur. They were all sympathetic of him, but it was not what he wanted. He did not know what he wanted, however. He got the release he wanted and started work on the relief he desired at the end of it. Thus he swore the few of them, including the pure white goat to secrecy, keeping up his image, however bad it is.

Three weeks past, the black goat is wandering around his turf, feeling the occasional despair. However, he has a new purpose. The black goat has found a new self in him and wants to avoid such emotions. The pure white goat eroded his emotional wall too quickly, he wanted to ensure the wall he builds now will last, to eternity if need be.

Note from author:
Very biased and self pity story, kick my ass, someone.
=>Seafoods, the ladies, the centaur, and the farm animal

55. Psychology research

2006-07-28T08:55:00.000+10:00

First off, I must explain how I come about to this research. I'm doing a psyc course for this semester, an elective (an a helluva expensive one at that which has zero relevance with my degree). We have to obtain 5% of course credit through research participation of a total of 3 hours. Oh yeah... therefore is anyone is doing psyc in ANU, plz do not read further. SPOILERS ahead.

So this one is regarding a Group Crime Study. It says group, but u get thrown into an online forum to discuss ur stuff. Given a case and find out who's the murderer. The psyc is placing u in the place of the jury. This is relatively easy I guess. Read, answer three long list of questionnaires and then get my half hour course credit. It started off easy. There were two groups basically. The inductive group and the deductive group. Being placed in the deductive group, I was ask about how I feel being in a deductive group, how I like being in a deductive group. The weirdest ones were how I feel about my jury partners before I met them.

Then, I was thrown into a discussion room where there were about 5-6 other colours (codenames, I'm Red, anyone remember Pokemon?). Brown was being the idiot and saying, 'Let's choose Chris as the murderer and see how it goes!'. Well, Brown, to begin with, Chris is a blardy witness. He has zero evidence against him, why the hell would anyone choose him in the first place?? Then after the discussion, how I feel about my jury partners again, and the same questions of how I feel being in a deductive group.

Sample questions: (Scores ranging from 1-7 where 1 is strongly disagree, followed by disagree, somewhat disagree, neither agree nor disagree, somewhat agree, agree, strongly agree)

I like being in the deductive group.

I'm pleased to be in the deductive group.

I feel a bond with my partners.

I feel a bond with the researcher.

I feel as though I'm the researcher. (whoever put strongly agree to this is a total retard)

I feel that what my partners say will affect what the public thinks of the deductive group.

Basically, it's all similar to that, except the words change a bit, and it's another question. After the test, I was given a debriefing by the researcher. I was like 'WTH??'. It's all very interesting and all. The debrief explains about how this test is a lie. The online forum is basically computer generated. Everyone was put into the deductive group. The test is using a method called 'false feedback' of which the participants 'kena con' into thinking they're really conversing with a group of people. Brown was programmed to be the retard and try to drag people along into agreeing with his crap. 'This is to test on the social -something- of humans. To agree with Brown would indicate helpfulness and -something- , a very important aspect of society. To not choose to go with Brown suggests -something- and disharmony. -A super long something about how not going with Brown crap. It also suggests disobedience -something- and criminal -something-.' At this point, I was like stunned. Wait a sec... criminal? oO

But then again, I should have trusted my instincts. My instincts were ringing like bells during the entire research. I wanna point out a few points.

1. Time slot. The chosen time slot for me was 11 am to 12 pm on a Thursday. This was the period where most classes were held. There could not possibly have enough people to have participated in this research. Plus, it's a Thursday, not that many people would pay attention to this crap, even though non-psyc students get paid $5.

2. The briefing of the study was emphasizing alot on how some things are kept from the participants and will only be told at the first moment of notice after the experiment.

3. When entering the room. There were 2 researches going on, one is this, the other is some world issue thingy. And there was close to noone on this side of the room. Although the coms are in individual rooms, there would not have been enough rooms to have 7 people!

4. The program was running on IE. There's this auto-complete function of IE. Surely everyone has seen it? I noticed that it's all Red. No other colours. All Red. But some idiot has put in Rambicious. >.>

5. In the discussion forum, everyone was using formal language, perfect punctuation, perfect grammar. This was the largest bell liao, and i ignored it. The only person I know who does that online is Heng Lin. And even he is beginning to soften up.

6. When I entered the discussion forum, there was blue. And in 30 seconds, 4-5 other people filled the room. And I was already speed reading through the first two questionnaires. How the hell did 4-5 other people enter that fast?

7. One of the colours said 'My room is dusty'. This is a research lab, doink (referring to me), how can any room be dusty??

After the debrief, and running through my mind again and again on how dumb I was, I decided to be more alert. Conclusion: people taking psyc/comm can con ur money like hell. =)
Irrelevant, but should be added.

54. Melbourne - Day 10 & 11

2006-07-17T07:18:00.000+10:00

Day 10

Today those guys have their Great Ocean Trip. Din have a camera, so din bother going, I need a camera… Zz…

So the day is up to me to spend! I woke up close to noon (so rare of me to do that… I must be friggin tired) and had BBQ chicken for… breakfast. I dun give a shit to the existence of brunch. Then went back to hotel to read some chick flick book (I’m lame). MH called sometime close to 2 to register for his courses or something littat, can’t remember (I was prioritizing chick flick, I was losing my mind).

His interruption brought me to my senses, of which I went out for hot chocolate. But the shop was damn full, so no space, so I left to find souvenirs for a friend in Canberra, the person who din not go anywhere for holidays.

Whee… I had a haircut. Okay, I have zero experience with the hairdresser, so I dun think I have a right to comment on the haircut. But nonetheless, I think it’s pretty damn good. Cept for a pull he did back there. I can’t see my back, so I dunno if he made a hole there or not. For $14.50, I think quite okay right? Dunnoz…

80% of the day was spent waiting for their return and on the chick flick book actually… Finished it pretty fast, and IMO pretty stupid, but I finish books when I start them. It’s 5.55 now… and they are coming back at approx. 7.45. I need something to do…

And then... I delayed this post for 2 weeks, and I can't remember what happened next... >.>

Day 11

I also dun remember what happened today. Cept this was the day we returned back to Canberra. We missed our original flight sadly. Due to some external disturbances, sucha as late taxi and others, we missed the 1st flight and had to take a second 1 back. And then... I dun remember liao...

As I said, I'm typing this 2 weeks late, when it's time for uni again.

53. Melbourne - Day 8 & 9

2006-07-17T07:17:00.000+10:00

Day 8

Woke up at 6.30. Prep for everything since suppose to checkout at 9.30. Received MH’s sms at around 7.45. Morning plans screwed up, so Xin and I have to had breakfast ourselves and finally meet them for lunch.

We met with the gang from M’sia and Adelaide around 12.30 or so. Yeap, Yew Horng And Ming Hong came down to Mlebourne! Think everyone knows that by now so screw it… haha. Anyway, Justin came from Adelaide as well. We checked out of our old hotel and checked in with those guys at that time.

We then have helluva fun time, of which I can’t remember 99.99% of the conversation cuz if remembered correctly; it consisted of mainly MH’s 30 minute crap and his still ever present stomach ache. There’s also slight occasional mention on the desire toc rap summore. Main thing was we had a fun time, and it was a damn funny occasion.

We met up with Sam Lim later and of which we went for lunch together. Lunch was damn friggin good weh… Hehe, thanks Sam. She then brought us around. As in literally, cuz we went one big round and went back to our hostel. 1st, we went for dessert at some ice cream shop. Damn friggin good as well. Next she guide us around Melbourne Uni. For Xin Yi who has come here 2 times before, this was nothing new, but to us, this place looks damn pretty kewl. I kinda like the environment as well, if it weren’t for the packed surroundings and buildings all clumped together. There even have a swimming pool!! Argh… But I guess I shud be pretty grateful for ANU’s badminton courts.

I shud make a comment on the event in the ice cream shop. The proprietor was very… talkative? We told her where we came from. Adelaide got a ‘boring place’ comment. Canberra got a ‘that must be even worse’ comment. M’sia got a ‘oo…overseas comment’. She then asks MH if he met Johnnie in the airport. MH sed no, then turn to me and ask, who’s Johnnie, was it some football player? Okay, I excuse him, since he may not know, so I replied, “John Howard la.”
“Oh right, I knew that, so who’s he?” … No comment…
“The prime minister of Australia?”
The proprietor proceeded to call MH Johnnie, after he got his ice cream, he walked out the shop (in embarrassment?), haha.

Dinner was… some Italian food. Not exactly into Italian cuisine, but it was good nonetheless. That’s for me, who knows nothing about food. We then had hot chocolate at Max Brenner. It’s all food, and I’m not one to describe food. =)

Most of the time was filled with playing cards. Sad to say, I lost around 2 bucks in poker. >.>

Day 9

Fantastic start of the day… Woke JC who then woke the rest of the entourage up for soccer. The Italy Germany match. And apparently Italy won! Not to my delight of course. The opening was typed the moment those guys returned and made helluva noise. Dunned sleep liao. The original plan was that they would go to the Great Ocean Road (note: they, me is not going) after the match, but apparently not enuff seats so we spent the day together.

We had yum cha again! Or rather the people who went before, me included, had yum cha again! This time we really stuffed ourselves… Not like the last time we din, but this time, walking was difficult. >.>

After lunch, we went to St Kilda’s Beach. The one where those girls went the week before and I din, cuz I figured the rain is a bit interfering with the enjoyment of it. The beach is pretty damn nice. From the 1st statue we saw, which commemorates some civil officer for something he did, we could see the waterfront to the right and the pier in front of us. There was also remnant of a shipwreck to the left. Seriously… the things we did here is not really worth mentioning. Remember the shit stuff Yew Horng and Ming Hong and Justin conjure up when they come together? Yeap, somehow the idea of making an album out of it arose.

And what did we do? Started posing in various sort of ways in almost every single posable location. In posable location, I mean the places where most models pose, like the steps, some railing (actually a lot of railings), rocks, sand, poles, etc etc. I think this part is better described in pictures… wait till I obtain them 1st… And we decided to name ourselves BSB… Backside Boys I think? Or something… Zz…

I’ll try to describe some of the pictures a bit… There’s one where we *appear* to be raising the shipwreck, the sort of illusion which is pretty common one… Cept I dun think we did a very good job. The posing part was… simple, look anywhere except the camera, joy right? Ming Hong looks like some natural poser. IMO, I look like I should not be there, can’t pose to save my life.

Dinner was Korean, a bit the pricey for me, since I decided to tie a tight knot around my budget liao. No night events, or rather there was, but centring around trying to pinch each other’s chest front protrusions isn’t what I like to call an event. >.>

*Sigh* I tried to tell Xin something today again, but I think she thought I was trying to bring up some taboo subject. Twice liao le… I give up…

52. Melbourne - Day 6 & 7

2006-07-17T07:16:00.000+10:00

Day 6

Whee, city air. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Day 6 was… boring. Actually fun for me, boring for others. After brunch (which is always brunch when one is with Xin…), I went to NGV (anyone remembers what that is? National Gallery of Victoria) I spent… 4 and a half hours there. Like I said before, art is in the eye of the beholder. All that’s left in the gallery that wanted to observe is the mid 16-17 century European art collection.

And so Day 6 ends. Very boring city day life. 3 or 4 blackouts…

Day 7

Most of what happened in the morning is written in the brackets around Day 6. But I must make a mention. The custard apple… tastes interesting. Anyway, Kelly has forbidden me to describe her expression when she came back the room from the kitchen from cutting the custard apple. Then they went to the balcony and did something, which Kelly considered stupid things since somehow they end up smelling superbly strongly of incense.

We had yum cha for brunch. In Australia, yum cha basically means dim sum. So for Boon, who thought yum cha means literally drink tea or like how we used to go mamak back in M’sia, he had breakfast. I’m not one to describe food, but I think the food was well worth my $16.80.

After that, we split, I went with Boon to check out our lodgings. I had this misunderstanding that the apartments they booked were Docklands Serviced Apartments. We took a free tram down to Docklands and looked around for the place. Docklands, I could see, was a relatively young area. It’s a pretty nice waterfront, so I’d expect the prices of apartments to be pretty high. Anyway, it says the apartments were in the land in between Aquitania Way and Saint Mangos Lane. That’s the horizontal roads. The vertical roads were Docklands Drive and Caravel Lane. We walked round and round and up and down that plot of land. Then I looked at Boon,

“This is the correct place right?” Indicating to the plot of land next to us.
“Erm… yeah…?”
“So why the hell is this an open parking lot?”
“Erm… haha”
“Even if this is a parking lot, why the hell is this even on the tourist map?? This is screwy”

Then we smsed Ming Hong, and… oops? The booking they made was apparently Elizabeth Hostel, on Elizabeth Street. Here I applaud his or their, since it may be a group that decided, wisdom. Elizabeth Street is smack right in the city center, damn kao convenient.

We took the free tram back to Elizabeth Street where we proceeded uptown to find the place. After a short walk from the free tram stop, we found it. We din exactly manage to view to interior of the hotel, but I guess it’s pretty kewl. The signboard itself was quite an amazement to me. It says Elizabeth Hostel in Korean, Japanese and Chinese besides English. Well, I can’t read Korean and Japanese, but if the Chinese one says so, I presume the other 2 will say so as well.

The entrance was… unique, shall I say? The paper at the entrance says: Reception is at the cashier of the supermarket next door. Boon and I went like, wow, this is damn kewl. Inside the supermarket, the counter was divided into two, one for the cashier one for the reception. And both were managed by this one guy. We confirmed there was a booking under the name Yew Horng See and got myself a Powerade (man, I love this stuff) and left.

There we parted, cuz we were pretty tired. I went back to my room and slept the whole afternoon away, till 5 pm. Then I waited, since was suppose to see Kelly off. She’s leaving to Sydney on a 6.45 pm flight. And so the waiting began. Kelly and Xin came rushing in at around 5.50, and I was like, “you guys are pretty late…” So the rush began, Kelly zipped her bag, Xin… I wasn’t looking, haha, then we rush downstairs to a waiting cab (I din even take my jacket) where her luggage bag was… dumped somewhere? And the cab driver zoomed off, practically.

After that, Xin told me about the cab driver story on how he zoomed and how nice he was, but that’s not my story =) 1 blackout today.

51. Melbourne - Day 5

2006-07-17T07:14:00.000+10:00

Day 5

It was a relatively boring morning to begin with. Or was there a morning to begin with? I can’t remember… I’m writing this on Day 7, haha.

The main event for this day is the day trip to Phillip Island to watch penguins. It costs each of us $76.50. Was it worth it? Well… I guess one can say that. I’m sure as hell the girls enjoyed themselves. Myself? I’m not quite sure… There were 6 of us, Kelly, Xin, Phoebe (which I left out majorly in all my blog posts, haha), Mabel (now only I do character introductions, Mabel was the one from MC! Mabel Tan something something), Lily (Phoebe and Mabel’s friend) and me.

We left the Day Tour booking office at around 1.30 pm, of which an hour’s drive would bring us to a farm in the outskirts of Victoria (city = Melbourne, state = Victoria). I tell you, the bus driver was damn pro. He was talking from the start of the trip all the way till the end of the trip. And he was driving and… Well, basically he did all the tour guiding and driver duties himself. Damn kewl weh, listen to him talk, cept he talk crap.

The farm or Warrook Farm is like a few acres of land of conservation of individual animal species. The wombat there was either dead or sleeping as though it’s dead. The kangaroos were more friendly though, eating out of any visitor’s hand. The ducks were the noisiest, yet shy away when visitors offer them food. IMO though, the cutest of them all was the… lamb? Someone gave me a lecture on what is what and now I’m confused liao. I’m pretty sure it’s lamb though, haha. It wasn’t exactly white, but from it’s legs, it looked so fragile one would just wanna carry it instead of allowing him to walk. Yes, I kinda like protecting fragile weak things, chui ar?

From here, we left the farm for a koala conservation area. But I must describe the scenery along the way. From the start I slept till we reach the farm, but now that I’m awake, I started observing the surroundings and listening to the fella talk. When we left the farm it still looked a bit dessertish, with patches and mounds of sand littered everywhere. Then as we proceeded, the view started to change. The view changed from a dessertish one to lush green plains and meadows, rolling hills, perfectly formed trees, no pollution, totally green. Your typical countryside view I guess. Oh btw, the driver mentioned that in the dessertish place, one can find the largest earthworm on earth, which is 3 meters long…
Along the greens, cows and horses are seen grazing peacefully, undisturbed by our noisy vehicle. It was truly a peaceful scenery.

Back to koalas. They weren’t exactly the friendliest things on earth since all they did was sleep and sleep and sleep. But since I guess we already knew this, we din really care, all we wanted was to see them. They are pretty cuddly actually, if one would wanna cuddle them, which is not really suggested. Though sleepy and lazy and all, they’ll probably swipe your head off is u try touching them. When we arrive most koalas are sleeping. However as we were about to leave (and here Xin Yi is moaning and groaning like every other morning, I’m typing this in the morning of Day 7 after all…), some started to wake up and have some activity! This includes feeding and moving from one branch to another to sleep.

We reached Phillip Island. The driver took us to the cliffy side of Phillip Island. The view was gorgeous, I tell you. It was getting high tide, so the waves rolling in were getting higher. As the waves hit the rocks, the splash and sound was simply amazing. It’s almost like listening to an orchestra of nature (and here Xin Yi realizes why slept so sarkily last night, cuz she forgot to remove her earrings… the wisdom of it…).

We arrived 20 minutes before the arrival of the 1st penguin. Actually 10 cuz there was this renegade penguin which arrived earlier than all the others. Actually this is a daily ritual. Penguins go to sea, hunt for food, then return back to their burrows on land. And this penguins are friggin small. Like some soft toy littat, cept they’re damn wet and they move. Whenever they come back home, it’s always in groups, ‘safety in numbers’ (a theory which I still find wrong, there’s NO safety in numbers). The tour guide says this is like some sort of ancient ritual, but I see it as a more happy event, a homecoming. Anyway, I guess some penguin realized that there’s no safety in numbers, or it realized it was living in a conservation park with no predators, or it was just dead set on getting back home earlier than the others.

It was kinda cute to see them wiggle about on their bodies. It was also kinda funny to see them struggle to come ashore, then get washed back in by the waves and this repeats till one of them decides it was enough and pushed with all his might to come ashore and the rest follows. We also observed how they live and how they interact with their neighbours.

The conservation park stresses on how one must not take pictures at all. The flash blinds the penguins. And was I to say I was in luck? Or in total bad luck? I was one of the few observers watching a penguin get blinded. I saw a camera beside my left feet, and *flash*. The penguin we all were observing went blind instantly. I mean it, went blind. We din exactly see the eye go black and die or anything dramatic like that. What we did see was the penguin shakes its head, like how we humans shake our head when there’s a sudden bright flash. Then walk of course and bang into a tree. There, confirm blind liao. The culprit was not caught though. Other picture takers were smarter, using camera phones or offed their flash. But if one observed carefully, almost every other penguin has a red light shining on them.

Anyway, that’s it for today, it was overall pretty interesting. And I dunno how to write an ending anyway. Back to the city! (And here Kelly has cut her custard apple into half and does not know what to do with it. It so resembles a shellfish. >.>). Came back so late, so dunno got blackout or not, but take it as zero.

50. Melbourne - Day 4

2006-07-17T07:12:00.000+10:00

Day 4

Whee… Today was pretty fun. We all went our separate ways pretty early. For the morning, I followed Kelly and her friend (whose name I’m not very clear… Su lin or Su… something… or something lin) to some chocolate place in Melbourne – Max Brenner (Xin left slightly earlier before, and I din see her again till night).

I ordered the Italian… something something and a Brownie. Kelly ordered hot chocolate and a Brownie and erm… her friend, whom I shall call SL from this point, ordered some hot chocolate drink with a peel of orange and a Dome. I tell you ah… looks can be damn deceiving. What I got served looks 99.99% Horlicks but the taste was simply exquisite. Actually all the chocolate servings are exquisite. Simply unique. Indescribable.

After the chocolate event, which I promised myself I shall return here again to sample more of its delights, I split from them. My next destination was the Victoria Market which was visited yesterday, this time my purpose is to get some Imperial Mandarins. Small, hopefully sweet, and close to seedless. Along the way, I went into this State Library. It’s pretty big, and looks out of place with the surrounding commercial buildings. Heck half the buildings in Melbourne look out of place, making the other half looking out of place as well. Din do much here, din visit or see anything due to the stupid sign: You bag must not be larger than this: Picture of a bag of measurements 40 cm X 30 cm.

On the way to the Victoria Market, I met this crying youthful girl. My heart reached out to her immediately, but I shall leave this topic for a later date. Suffice to say, although I felt for her, I did not do anything in anyway to assist her. The fruits in Melbourne are dirt cheap, I tell you. And then again, it’s damn expensive. The mandarins I bought are 99c per kilo. Bought them cuz they’re the cheapest. ^^

The most expensive ones, one would expect to be around 1.50 or maybe 2 dollars, for competition sake. But nooo, it’s 12 biji per 2 dollars. And 12 biji of these small little mandarins is less than 300 grams!! But then it may be guaranteed sweet. Oh well, I dunno, I’m pretty happy with my 99c mandarins.

I left Victoria Market for Smith Street. From Max Brenner to VM is like from Taylor’s to Rafi’s. From VM to Smith Street is like… from Taylor’s to… Taipan maybe…? Not sure. The only thing sure is that it’s friggin far, and I was too cheapskate to take a tram. It was off the Melbourne City map, so I had to locate it from another map.

To begin with what I saw along the 1 hour and 20 minutes walk, I passed into the city, exit from the other side of the city, came to the Parliament building (isn’t the capital Canberra…? Why the hell is there a parliament in Melbourne then?) From there I passed by St Paul’s, St Vincent’s, a synagogue (1st time seeing one, though have read about it many times from the Holy Book) and a few hospitals. All these buildings are passed by, not entered and observed. The architecture of St Paul was amazing, very delicately carved (if it was carved) and places, though it started showing signs of wear. There was this St Vincent’s private hospital along Victoria Parade. It’s all okay it’s a hospital and all, but black in colour? And emitting what I see as red fumes (may be light, but I doubt it)? How in the world can a patient rest in peace there? Or maybe they are meant to.

Anyway, Victoria Parade is the main road which leads to Smith Street. Somewhere along there I got lost and went further than intended. But I realized it pretty soon and turned back and found the street. But even so, the street is damn blardy long. Heck, all the streets in Melbourne are damn blardy long. It has to be at least 750 meters or it’s called Lt (Street Name). So I actually arrived at Smith Street at 1 something. I only found the shop which I walked all the way for after 20 minutes on a straight road. I came all the way here for Nike, the Factory Outlet. Apparently it’s cheaper, and proven by the amount of people carrying Nike shopping bags coming from that direction. There was this one family carrying about 6/7 such bags, all bulging with stuffs.

But, I came here for 1 sole shop for 1 sole item. I’ve been looking for 3 years for a sling backpack. It was pretty common a while back. Sling backpacks are the single strap bags, but is in the shape of a backpack. And I found it here, I was damn kao happy at that moment. And friggin cheap at that, only 12 bucks! Even after conversion, you cannot get such a price on an original Nike bag! The whole store was on discount anyway.

Being totally exhausted from the journey to Smith Street, I decided to burn the 3.20 needed for the tram ride back to City, where I had lunch at some Singaporean restaurant. Which reminds me… How the hell did Singaporean style noodles come about? I thought Singaporean style cooking are just combinations of other countries styles?

After lunch, I went back to NGV. Art, like beauty is in the eye of the beholder. So I shall not bore my readers with how fantastic the art pieces were and how some looked almost alive. The whole 1 and a half hours I was there, I only managed to cover ¾ of European art pieces, the Pre-Columbian and the minute Egyptian collection they have.

Boon called me sometime after that for dinner. At first he said he would meet me in Federation Square. But I was like, what the heck, and hiked up to his friend’s place instead, since he bunking there for the night. This is another long hike from west to east, cutting through the City for possibly the 4th time of the day to reach his friend’s place. And what do I see when I came into the apartment? Someone WoWing. Rox la weh. Next hour was spent watching someone WoWing.

We had dinner at some near secluded area of Chinatown. Some place where his church friends always go to. Ahh… It’s good to hang out with people you know and can speak pretty freely again. I can’t really speak freely to the girls or their friends weh… Mental block I guess, hehe.

Day concluded by doing laundry. 5 bucks for the entire process of washing and drying. It’s not so bad if the machines were actually inside the building, and not outside in the cold weather… No. of blackouts today = 3

49. Melbourne - Day 3

2006-07-17T07:09:00.000+10:00

Day 3

Here, I became better, so I can start typing normally. When I woke up in the morning again, I had another ‘attack’ which I called those events by this time. By the way, this day post is pretty disgusting due to lots of mentions on my lower body conditions.

Nonetheless, I followed Xin and Kelly to Victoria Market. The place was great, but cuz I was feeling damn weak and everything, my brain was being overloaded by the amazing array of colours of fruits and vegetables. So all throughout the trip, besides controlling my bowels, I was going “Too much information, discard information”. So all I remembered from the tip was the doughnuts which I ate and the fruits which they bought. Oh yeah, I also remembered the hot chocolate I had, the 1st of many I’m going to be having in Melbourne and one of the worst.
When we went back to our hotel, I had another attack. Deciding this was the last one, and cuz my mind was going “If symptoms persist, consult a doctor” I went out to the nearest pharmacy to look for a cure for diarrhoea. I suspected I had dysentery since I had fever and vomited as well, but at this stage I think that was the only problem had.

At the pharmacy, all the products said the same thing, “Take two pills initially and one after every lao sai (they used some word, like loose stool or something littat). If lao sai continues after 48 hours, consult a doctor.” All of them also mentioned something about dehydration as well (oo… so that’s why I felt weak… understand, understand…). So what to do? I took the cheapest one and went back. After having my “initial two pills”, we left to meet Kelly’s SAM (SAM for South Australian Matriculation not Surface to Air Missile) classmates. All the way there, the two girls are like 10 meters in front of me, except for at the traffic lights. There was one point, where they were crossing half way and it suddenly turned red and started blinking. I sped up to catch up and could almost feel my legs give way.

We finally met up with her classmates in Chinatown. Here we had Japanese of which after that we split. Kelly with her SAM classmates apparently are going to visit Melbourne Uni (more like she’s the one going to visit since the other 3 are from there), Xin’s off with her SAM classmate as well and me off to exploring on my own. At this point, the stomach ache has gotten pretty bad. Nonetheless, I wanted to get away from them ASAP, dowan to be a burden anymore. I went to the nearest public toilet (note: public, it’s damn hard to find public toilets in Melbourne) and cleared my… pundi kencing, not my bowels. Anyway I felt better after that, and decided I can start my own exploration (which also means this is the last time there is a mention on the lower part of my body)

After my toilet break, I crossed the road into Federation Square. It’s nothing much, just a wide open area with a few steps and all, but nonetheless, it was a pretty nice area. I took note of the McD’s across the street. I continued further down the path to a bridge overlooking a train parking area. Here, I turned back and entered the ACMI (Australia Centre of Moving Images). When they said moving images, the 1st thing that usually comes to mind is the black box we all have in our living room (or in some of our cases, a sleek, platinum coloured cuboid).

So I went in, and acting like a backpacker, since I’m supposed to be one, I look around for anything that says free entrance (or so is my concept of a low budget backpacker). I was in luck! There was an exhibition held on the history of TV in Australia. At the entrance to the stairs leading to the exhibition hall, there was a sign saying (I actually dun remember much of it, but I shall say what I seem to recall), “Please let your eyes adjust to the surroundings as you descend the stairs.” Half way down the stairs, there was another one of those signs. As I descend further, I realize why this was necessary. At the bottom of the stairs, and stretching from one end of the exhibition hall to another, were 747 TVs (I din bother counting, heck I din bother looking at the TV other than throwing a few glances once in a while, I got the number from a signboard). I was stunned, amazed, stupefied by the number of TVs. Ignoring the flashing images to my left, I went on with the exhibition pictures. Yeap, pictures, non-moving images. They described on everything such as the genre of TV. For example, news, documentary, comedy, games, adult, etc etc etc. Here are a few quotes I remembered, not the exact words, but the rough idea…

“(Name) 1st swore on TV and no one complained”
“The only purpose of the TV is for games and nothing else”
“If it never happened on TV, it never happened”
“That seems like a bit too serious topic for today, (Name)”

There were also some statistical data on the number of TV owned by the Australians form what year to what year. Much to my curiosity, some old woman was glued to the ‘sample’ of adult film. So yeah, dirty Lee Kuan has no chance of viewing adult film. :/

After that, I crossed the bridge into a more arty district. Here, one can find NGV (National Gallery of Victoria), the Arts Centre, and the Victoria Parks. Since time was limited, I went into NGV and took whatever brochures they had to offer and promised to come back the next day for a view on the present exhibition – Picasso’s Love and War. The 1st impression on NGV was that it looked like a china wall gate, the ancient types where it was tall and with bricks lining the architecture. The entrance did not look very grand, with a small opening with the words PICASSO. Not even the word IN or OUT ot WELCOME. One would find a near similar design of the NGV in Battlefield 2, one of the maps.

I din bother with the Arts Centre, though the architecture was pretty kewl (my vocab sarks). Okay, to be descriptive, it has a circular shape, with a tall spire from the centre, looking more like a broadcasting tower than a spire. It has 2-3 floors, with a grand entrance and a few hidden side entrances. The steps leading to the entrance are as grand as those one would see in the Putra Stadium of our own country. I would like to enter, but then since it said Arts Centre; it was more like a performing hall for musicians. And when did musicians perform at 4 pm in the evening?

I left the buildings for the greener side of the district. At the entrance, I discovered it was divided into several sections. Deciding that I do not have enough time, since I planned to watch the sunset of the city from the river, I chose to explore the Queen Victoria’s Park for the moment.

Slightly beyond the main road leading to the entrance, there is this amazing floral clock. The three hands are made out of copper, but the background is made from an amazing display of flowers of many types. The numbers 3, 6, 9 and 12 are delicately planted by the same type of flower. The diameter of the clock is approximately 2.5 to 3 meters long, donated by the city’s clockmaker or something like that. As I took in the kewlness of the clock, a crow came along and walked across the entire clock, ‘stampeding’ across the flowers.

Further from the floral clock, a statue of… King… George VII, if memory serves, is found. It depicts him riding a horse in his (presumably) commanding military outfit. Looking from below, the horse is clearly a male, though his er-hem has been sawn off, leaving his other 2 er-hem. The King looks towards the South, what I see as protecting the country of Australia (maybe?).

To the west of the statue of the King, a statue called “The Pathfinder” is found. This male is depicted as grasping his right thumb and looking upwards into the sky, in the position of throwing something it seems. Dunno how this becomes the pathfinder. The interesting thing about this statue is the words on the plaque “loaned to the cooperation of the City of Melbourne”. Loaned? So how the hell to return the statue later?

Near a fountain, there was this copper statue called “The Phoenix”. In chinese mythology, the phoenix either describes the legendary bird or the empress. This statue depicts a male (should be a male, cuz has no front chest protrusions) with a flowing robe over him. Amazingly symmetrical statue. Carved by a… baroness... These people have too much time lar…

Then there was this “Water Nymph” statue which is just a female statue bathing. I couldn’t find anything particularly interesting about it to describe here. Note that all this statues are done in the last century.

Further up, there is this white marble statue depicting the life of Queen Victoria. The front is the reign of the Queen which is from 1837-1910. The female statue is seen as holding a few leaves… Dunno what type, the type that Caesar wears. The one to the right is the one depicting her birth. A female holding a flame, presumable the flame of life. She was born in 1819, if memory serves. To the left of the reigning statue is the statue depicting her death. The statue reaches out her left hand and holds a sword in her right hand. The one facing the south, presuming the one of her reign faces the north, is Queen Victoria in her full glory of her attire – her sceptre, her crown and her robes.

After this, I went back to city for some food at McD and returned back to the other side of the river just in time to see the rise of the crescent. The background of the twilight sky with the crescent moon overhead the city building is simply splendid. My only regret is that I lack a simple thing called the camera to take down this simply gorgeous view.

To conclude this day’s event’s post, I shall thank Kelly and Xin Yi for the caretaking given while I was ill. Thank You. No. of blackouts today = 7

48. Melbourne - Day 1 & 2

2006-07-10T19:24:00.000+10:00

Day 1 and 2 are in point forms cuz for starters I din remember much, and I was suffering a bit from some sort of illness…

Day 1

Arrived in Melbourne.
Checked in Hotel Spencer, took the upper bunk, slept
Awaken and met Mabel Tan (who apparently was a girl from MC, and when I met her, I was partially awake so I went like, “Hi, I’m Felix” Then after a while, after I got my specs, it became, “Okay, you look familiar…”)
Went Chinatown, had porridge for lunch.
Signs appeared, felt feverish.
Went back to the hotel and slept the whole day with periodic wakenings due to sounds and stupid hard springy bed.
Finished Xin’s chips when she returned. Finished all my panadols by this time as well.
Some arrangement was made and Kelly was to be staying with us.
Vomited sometime in the wee hours of the morning.
Oh and I’ve taken to counting how many times our backpackers hotel blackout per day. Today was 5.

Day 2

Morning, felt superbly hungry, due to lack of food since din eat anything for close to 18 hours.
Went out to find food, failed, sarky explorer.
Left the task to Xin, she got breakfast.
Went to Smith’s Street. Signs getting stronger, feeling extremely weak.
At 1 something, left to fetch Kelly.
Went back to Hotel, Kelly left with Xin.
Slept as well, with periodic awakenings. Sometime during the evening, had my 1st… okay screw it, I’ll use my term, lao sai event.
Had another 4 or 5 lao sai events after that. Think may have bled, unsure.
The girls came back, with dinner for me, yay!
No. of blackouts = 2

47. Black Mountain

2006-07-08T16:59:00.000+10:00

This post is actually 2 weeks late. >.> My friends and I went up this mountain behind our uni. Suffice to say I was the organizer and somehow managed to drag a few friends along. So Veng Hoong and Eu Gene kena dragged along with me.

For starters, thank God for the wonderful weather blessed upon us on that day. It has been cloudy a few days back, but finally it cleared up on the day of our trip. In preparation for our trip, I made a double cheese sandwich for everyone. We left Bruce Hall at around 9.50 am. Cutting through CSIRO, we headed straight for the dirt path to Black Mountain.

At the gate entrance to the dirt path. We had a warm up session. Well, basic warm ups basically, and not the appropriate 20 minutes warm up one is supposed to do. So we did what we know such as stretching our limbs, twisting here, twisting there, the usual stuff. Then Veng said, “The most important one…” and sat down and stretched his legs somehow, I dunno how to describe it, but it seems as like a crossed leg sitting style except that the legs were outstretched. Gene followed suit while I just continued with mine. Half way they were doing, a car came down from the dirt path... Both of them scurried out of the path and we burst out laughing. Damn potong stim, the car...

We followed the dirt path till we reached a junction. Here, being confused on where to go, we decided to head for the left path. Along the way we found a sign saying: WARNING NO ENTRY. Ignoring the sign, we proceed up ahead. Why, one may ask. Cause the gate was thrown wide open and the sign looked a little old. Plus, if one were to close the gates, the sign would face inside.We continued along the NO ENTRY path till we reached a couple of low buildings that looked like they were in used for research.

“Erm... I think we took the wrong way” I said
“Err... I think so too lor” Veng replied
“It’s probably the other path, but just in case let’s go up and have a look… If Seng Beng was with us, he’d prolly kill us by now” (Originally there were 4 of us, but then SB pulled out due to assorted reasons)
“Okay, this is not the right path, let’s turn back” Gene said

(Note, my memory of this event is not that good, since quite a time has passed since the event, but one can expect the content of the conversation to be more Malaysian and more crude.)

Turning back, we took the muddier, wider, dirtier path. Basing it on memory, we followed the path upwards till halfway those two decided to burst up. I was kinda exhausted by that time, so I din bother racing up with them, just walked up at my own pace. After a short while, we reach a rest spot where we stopped for a while and enjoy the view. But cuz the weather a few days before sarked, Canberra is partially covered in mist.

Shortly after, we continued our journey, of which those two idiots (I must say idiots, cuz already from the 1st sprint, they were near exhaustion) sprinted again and this time along the steeper part of the hike. Deciding not to be left out, I increased my pace… Prolly by 0.1 km/h. =P Only during the final few steps I sprinted up. Since this is our second time up, we din exactly bother with the view from the top of the mountain, cuz we know it’s covered by trees and branches. So we just lay down panting on the benches. Bet the people passing by must have thought us retards or something.

We had our sandwich at the top and enjoyed the wind for a few minutes, until it became freezingly cold as our blood flow returned to normal. Shortly after, we decided it was time to leave. Gene said vehemently that we have to go down using another path. So we decided to return back to the hall using the road path (all this while, we were using the dirt path). After a few minutes along the road path...

“Hey... Doesn’t this look like we’re going to the other side of Canberra?” I said.

Looking further down the mountain, it does seem so.

“Hey... Don’t walk until we reach Mount Ainslie or something, or else we seifo liao” Gene said.

Nonetheless, I pushed them further down the path, till we realize that any further would endanger ourselves as the road became superbly narrow, just sufficient for 2 cars to drive pass. So, much to Gene’s irritation, we had to return back using the dirt path. 2 reasons, we din wanna get lost, and it was close to lunch time, and who the hell wants to miss lunch, right?

Overall time was around 1 hour 20 minutes. Pretty short we think cuz the previous trip took like superbly long, if memory serves the whole morning. We vowed to be able to jog up the mountain in 3 years time. =)

46. Exams over!

2006-06-21T20:04:00.000+10:00

And thus, the exams end, it was pretty okay overall, hopefully can score something of HD or the like... Hehe, pretty ambitious I am...

Well, the holidays just started for me and I feel extremely bored... I guess it's due to some hyperactive genes or something like that... Let's see... I have plans for Melbourne, which is from the 27th of June to the 7th of July... No plans what to do when I'm there yet though...

For the meantime, life sarks, other than the usual badminton, so I'm gonna start on a personal project... I'll post it up when I'm done or when I like... Wish me luck!

45. Sign on Door

2006-06-03T17:58:00.000+10:00

Seen on every entrance to wings in Bruce Hall and due to the exams... Words and comments in brackets are made by me and they will be in the usual font of Trebuchet.

NO NOISE DURING EXAM AND STUDY WEEKS

FROM 7 PM SUNDAY 4TH JUNE TO 2 PM FRIDAY 23RD OF JUNE 2006

During this period residents will be restricted from producing any sound waves in the corridors or residential rooms at all hours of the day. To assist students during this time, the Hall has established sound lockdown:

GROUPS can meet in rooms, including study bedrooms PROVIDING NO SOUND IS PRODUCED AT ALL. Stereos and computers will be compulsorily acquired from rooms and ALL CONVERSATIONS AND VOCAL SEX WILL BE PROHIBITED (oO). Please use the gags provided from the front office if your partner is naturally loud.

If you wish to speak or make noise, the Hall has established designated rooms for you to produce sound. the W.P.PACKARD Dining Hall and Foyer are the ONLY areas where sound is allowed. If you wish to have sex without a gag, due to OH&S, you MAY ONLY HAVE SEX IN THE FOYER.

Due to housekeeping no longer 'cleaning' your rooms during this time, they will be cleaning the dining hall more frequently (wth for??). Thus the W.P.PACKARD Dining Hall will be additionally closed from 7.30am - 10.30am, 11am - 3pm & 3.30pm - 7pm (breakfast is from 8-10, lunch, 12-2 and dinner 5-7, usually). Members who wish to eat during these times MUST COMPLETE A FUNCTION BOOKING FORM (we have this rule of having to book special rooms for events we, the residents organize) five (5) working days prior to desired mealtime.

Maintanence and housekeeping, including cleaning of toilets will not occur at all during the study and exam period.

This period will be a very sensitive time for residents under pressure from sound lockdown, let alone exams. It is understandable you may feel like a deaf mute. If you wish to make a formal suggestion, please forward your ideas, IN SIGN LANGUAGE to XXX.XXXX@anu.edu.au

XXX XXXXXX

Head of Hall

44. Incoming finals

2006-05-30T21:43:00.000+10:00

Whee... The time has come again. Well, first time in uni, but overall, so many times I lost count. Being an unprepared person, naturally I'm scared outta my wits for this event. It's called the finals exam. And ANU has this policy that if you fail, you retake or something along that lines.

The exam period is next month, covering about 3 weeks or so. CHEM1101 is on the 9th, followed by BIOL1007 on the 13th, BIOL1003 on the 16th and STAT1003 on the 20th. Just a rough idea on what these courses are, and before someone starts asking me why the hell I take stats (though I think I explained on the post regarding the failure of my mid sem...). Chem is basic chem, so basic, I bet smart A-levels people can score without studying. The 2 biols is generally about the whole A-levels biology plus stem cells, further depth of ecology and evolution. The fact that I'm doing these courses make me envy those doing pharmacy who are doing stuff like drug profiling, body systems, drug usage and all... Stats, is an elective, basically about T-test and whatever statistical tecniques (and the course name is this...) a 'scientist' might need (and here I thought you put stuff into computers and they do everything for you...).

Preparation for the finals is underway (just started yesterday only >.>). Several things have to be restricted in order to score. I do plan to get HDs for all of them, no exceptions (want and can are two totally different things, one lives in the fantasy world, another in the real world [Martin, 2006]). Badminton will be off due to sports hall being utilized for exams...

I'm sure those 'juice-squeezers' like the chibi in that island, will remember that I mentioned about some girl I like. And recently I realized how this... emotion is interfering with my studies (yeah, I sark at emotion control), so I shall take a drastic action. Well, pretty drastic in my opinion... I decided not to... well... see her, at least until the exams are over. It's just a crush and already I'm this bad off, hehe.

Well, that in mind (or out of the mind, however one looks at it), I shall get started on the next component of my chem. ^^

43. Churchy politics

2006-05-29T18:01:00.000+10:00

At first I wanted to post about my birds-of-paradise assignment and how screwy it was (maybe I would after this, depends on how hardworking I am =P). But then I changed my mind. I was told this story which I find is blatantly wrong. In addition, being the busybody I am, I want to somehow try to remedy the situation... Please note that this story is from one person alone, therefore it may/can/mostly be biased. Naturally, by posting this in the open, I'm declaring myself vulnerable to attacks from both sides and may lose certain friendships, but I shall take it alone.

First, I begin off with the introduction of the two rivals. The first is OCF. If I am not wrong, they're based in whaddaya know, Bruce Hall itself. I come to this conclusion due to the service always being held in Bruce Hall... I have not attended this service before, but from what I see, it is practically South East Asia dominated.The second is the youth group of CCLC, a local church. The youth group is called FUSE, I think... I went to the church once before, and the worship was superbly lively, but being a person who can't take sermons, sleep beckoned to me with open arms.

The current situation is that the timings of both services (or meetings... since it's a youth gathering on both sides) overlap. Thus, certain people are in a dilemma constantly as to where to go every Friday night. As such, their loyalties plays a major role here. Do they choose the one which is nearer, and has more SEA-ic environment (OCF)? Or do they choose the one which is further, bigger, less community one (FUSE)? From this point of view, it seems that FUSE is at a disadvantage. But then, the church which they attend on Sundays is CCLC, as OCF is a gathering of sorts, thus not having a proper church ground and all, but still counts as a worship.

With the rise of this problem, it seems that OCF was under verbal attack from FUSE (note: this is from my informant's lips, therefore the truth is unknown). The attack was such: OCF should not exist under the basis that it's not exactly a proper organisation. It can be said that this attack was very direct and with the intention to cause mental harm. There was no counter from OCF that I know of. From my informant's perspective, it seems that FUSE thinks that OCF is stealing their members. Why does members play such an important role I do not know. My guess is that the more members, FUSE gets additional budgetting. My secondary guess is that, with more members, the declaration of growth of church would be higher and thus, getting more fame or maybe more recognition. Maybe to rival bigger churches?

My argument for this is simple. Both are Christ worshipping communties. Why the hell should they argue in the first place? Isn't the argument based on an earthbound reason? How each person worships the Lord is up to their own speciality. Take me for an example, I dun attend any churches here at all. My form of worship is simple, remembrance and prayers and occasional singing by myself. Thus mine is a sort of solo worship. Am I wrong? Is there a specific way to worship the Lord? No! It is entirely up to the individual! In addition to that, Australia is a free speech country (well, so it says, though the truth is...) each individual to their own I say! Give them their freedom. This political argument is wrong in the first place.

Due to the current situation, my friend is put into a major fix, as he does not know how to face both parties. Therefore, I, being the foolish one who puts his hand into a matter where he is not supposed to shall attempt to reason out with a CG leader of FUSE...

Update:

The matter was apparently more complicated. Thus, according the to informant, it was settled like 'a legal issue' (wth?)... He said something about status quo and private meeting of both leaders and what other crap. And my informant feels unsafe (expectedly, who would anyway? I dun feel safe myself typing this). And I stress that this is all from one person's point of view, status unknown. =P

42. Malam Kenduri!

2006-05-21T09:22:00.000+10:00

I'm kinda feeling a bit lazy to type this out, so I'll be using short and lousy and erm... whatever other ways possible to shorten it. Note: this is a personal journal style of post, in short, no matter how short i try to make it to be, it's gonna be long and possibly boring. If you have Xin Yi's syndrome, which is phobic to posts longer than 5 scrolls in the middle mouse button, stay away (I'm giving everyone syndrome names... I currently have XY's syndrome and AFP's syndrome, who's next?)

Malam Kenduri is basically *another* MSO event of which the main purpose is to entertain people *again*. So it's basically food, games etc etc etc, usual stuff u'll usually find at a semi-formal food night. Yeap, I sed usual, so most prolly I'm gonna get a lecture on how it's not usual by *er-hem*. It's held in Bruce Hall dining room. Oh, and I'm the volunteer again.

Performance preparation:
I shall start with the performance part. Note that in all this, I have no role in it at all. I was also too damn lazy to bother watching the whole thing though I was sure it was pretty damn good. There's quite a few performances, the joget melayu, some indian dance, kung fu (oO) and the 2nd years performance.

Joget melayu - I din see the preparations so I dunno, but I think it was very the nice, quite in sync.
Indian dance - preparatons consisted mainly of 'like that, like that, like that and then like that ....'; overall quite in tune to music I think, it attracted quite a bit of cheers with the ass shakes. Huda kept saying. "Felix u're dead" I wonder why.. =P
Kung fu - A bit out... but they sed it was good, cuz at this time, I have no idea where I was. 2nd years performance - For something which is done in such a blardy short time it was very good; pretty the lame, but very the nice indeed. Have I missed out any...? Oh yeah, there was the vocals and guitar performances by a few ppl (too lazy to name); blardy potential singers and guitarist, make ppl jealous only. =P

Cooking:
Aihz... the longest part... But if I dun get started I won't finish. Boss is Kelly... Let's see... there's chicken rice, lontong (which I still have no idea wth is this), dessert*2, taugeh, tauhu sumbat, prawn crackers and air bandung. I think I missed out something, but it doesn't come to mind at the moment, so dun care la. The ingredients buying and testing and all were done by them, and to quite a last minute extend I must say.

Well, I think I was doing this the most, pretty much cuz I wasn't performing and I was too damn lazy to do anything else and.... Anyway, we (sudden change of reference, in hereof is in reference to the working committee members and volunteers) started on Friday night. It was a pretty damn lame event, apparently not much to be done, so we took the security bus to Fenner Hall, but just the next stop after we got on, Phoebe went "OMG, I forgot the knives" and off she and Xin went to get the knives while Sui Hann And I continued our trip. And the irony? They arrived there before us... Wth?

The events were pretty much a blur but I'll do my best. We started with waiting, for food to arrive (I did say last minute din I?). Not exactly waiting, we were cutting garlic, onions and ginger, hehe. Gosh, the work was just damn blardy tiring and made worse with Rachel and Siddiq almost threatening each other with garlic. I think it all started with Rachel's entrance and Siddiq going 'I hate u la!' (I think).

Then when food arrived (I had to go scout for a trolley to bring all the food in) we started with frying fried tauhu (Note: taufu, tauhu, tofu, same thing, I prefer the chinese 1, 豆腐). Hmm... not that sensible, but I din wanna think about it, save energy. Frying tauhu was pretty fun. Phoebe was going 'oh whee' and 'wah..' and all with the oil. I was like stoning there and making incisions in the fried fried tauhu. It was pretty tiring with all the amount of oil flowing out and the hardness of it. All the time we were frying tauhu, the problem of 'how to keep to tommorow' arrived. And then we had Fadli sms-ing his mom and calling ppl and all. I called Roy who sed tauhu will go sour if left the next day, of which I agreed. But then we did nothing to stop the frying cuz the weather different from M'sia so it won't affect it that greatly (like the ppl we contacted din know that). All the while this was going on in Fenner Hall, Ai Lin and Hong Yin were making dessert no.1 (I'm sad, I dunno the dessert names) in Bruce Hall.

After that, we did something of which I dun remember. Either we did something or we sat waiting for Chern to come back so we could get on with frying prawn crackers. And come back he did, by that time we got bored of waiting and started first. They bought 6 boxes and the label says large. Guess how much time we have to take to fry them all! And then we open the box... then we stun a bit. The pieces were about the size of a M'sia 50 cents coin and red in colour and feels plastic. And the box was around 11 cm* 6 cm*8 cm. Guess how much prawn crackers are inside 1 box? The stupid thing is, when fried, the thingy 'blossoms' into a 'prawn cracker' which is red in colour and tastes nothing like prawn cracker and is the size of a fist, on average. This job was pretty routine with someone frying, then drying excess oil then throwing it inside the box. I was the drier and QC (at this point of typing, I remember Y-S again, and I need to get that done ASAP, Zz..). At the end of frying, my hate for oil intensified 10-20 fold.

By the time we were done, it was close to 12 midnight. We said our greetings to Rachel who is 20 on the 20th of May. I dun remember what happened after that, cept everyone left and I was there with a few other ppl who were dealing with table arrangements and table numbering and guest numbering and guest placements. None of which concerns me but it was kinda clear everyone was pretty much climbing up their stress limit scale exponentially. And the stupidest thing was I stayed there till 5.30 am without doing anything. Or prolly I was, I remember cooking soup at around 2-3 and then playing 1 round of pool, but I have no idea what I did from 12-2. After being a nuisance to them for that length of time, I decided to go back Bruce. Not a very sane move, but I din really care, I needed a bed and badly at that point.

Thus ends cooking part one. I reached Bruce at around 5.50 and slept till 7.50, of which I did my daily brushing and all before going for dinner. The next cooking session supposedly starts at 9. And I enter the dining hall to see ppl who stayed up all night (insane ppl, in short). Anyway, long story short, I ended up walking back to Fenner while Ai Lin and Hong Yin dealt with their dessert and Kelly and Sui Hann going to buy/collect more stuffs (last minute due to chicken kenot keep long, common sense right?). Oh right, before then, I had to bang on ppl's door asking if their volunteer job is still valid. Only Seng Beng gave a positive answer of which he'll go for the 2nd shift instead.

So I arrive there at around 10, and woke Phoebe up, cuz I had no access to Fenner. But I got in somehow, without her help, when someone went in. Minor details, but dun care la. And then the waiting resumed. Someone suggested we dealt with the taugeh 1st by soaking them and slicing the ginger and something else to do of which I forgotten. Sometime during soaking, the chicken came. I din really touch the chicken till later. I was more of washing boxes and stuffs. At one point, I took a pot which I din know still had oil and pour over myself and the floor (yes I'm that stupid)．So, I had to mop the floor and borrow a shirt from Willy. I caused a potential disaster in the kitchen area (feeling remorseful, but I can't do anything about it).

Cleaning up over, I emptied the taugeh into another pot. Mostly it was transferring stuffs from one place to another to conserve the usage of valuable boxes and to maximise empty spaces. I dun remember much from this point on. Suffice to say Ai Lin got the term 'Chicken Massager' (shud be masseur, or however u spell it), Jia Ying, I dubbed 'Soup Girl', and everyone else, having fun, I would like to think so. Some of the committee members were dealing with Raffles Draw stuffs.

The making of the chicken rice sauce was helluva difficult and salty process. Following the M'sian cookbook recipe, the 1st tryout turned out helluva salty. I might as well have drunk black salted water. Using the same stuffs, Wen Sern and Brandell added rock sugar, fine sugar, black pepper and chicken soup. All in all, we took about 6/7 tastings to make it taste as at least 95% similar (some may ask why I use the 95% thingy... anyone remember Student's t-test distribution? yeah, that 95%).

Sometime along then Kelly sed that we shud have removed the 'green and black stuff' from the taugeh (whee... more work). So Wen Sern and I got to work on this. Overall, we took 2 and a half hours removing the 'green and black stuff' from 15 kg of taugehs, whew... Sometime in between Seng Beng came to help. The 3 of us were all peeling taugehs. Phoebe came and ask us to give her hand of sumbat-ing tauhus. After trying with a few tauhus and finding out the amount of oil is trememdous, I gave up. Plus at this point I was feeling a little light headed, prolly from the lack of sleep the night before. Looking around I see everyone so energetic, so I said to myself, "I gotta do better, ppl who din sleep the night before are doing better than me!"

After we were done with that, if I remember correctly, it was close to 4 already. So from hereon, everything was gonna be a bit rush work. I have zero idea how they cook the rice after the sauce was made, cuz I was peeling taugehs and feeling light headed. After taugeh was done, I feel my energy levels amazingly rising steadily. Next up the line was cooking rice, one of the hardest tasks there. The procedure was relatively simple take the... yellow rice (however they made it) put into rice pot, add soup of an estimated of 2:1 ratio and 1 tablespoon of... yellow powder? The problem lies in the amount. There were 4 rice cookers, 3 of which can put 8-10 cups of rice and the other one, 25. So imagine the amount of soup to add.

Long story short, finish rice at around 6.45, rush back for prep at 7, putting food on table and prepare everything by 7.45. A little over time, but all in all, relatively good, other than the oil on me.

Waitering:
No rest for the wicked. I just felt that it was a pretty good thing to put in here... haha. So, event when the event was going on, I dun really get to rest, or rather I want others to be happy, satisfied and full. Jia Ying was in charge of this one. The pre-event was chaotic to say the least... At one point there were not enough plates for everyone. Anyway, this one is pretty simple, not as complicated as Heng Boon's waitering (and saying ma'am to ur head who is a male!). Hehe, I had to shower to remove the oil smell and oil on me. And I had to 'donate' my room chair as well, due to lack of chairs... Why can't they lack other more available stuffs like lack of oxygen, lack of water...

Job is simple, anyone with empty plates of chicken and rice and air bandung, refill. My experience in the canteen of MC comes to use, very minimal, but still got some use.

Event:
The performances are damn blardy good.The description is long and boring and tiresome, so I'm cutting that part out. I din exactly participated in the lucky draw cuz I dun think I did the registration by the front table, mainly enter from the side doors and do waitering. Fore the Raffles Draw, I myself bought 4 tickets: Red B 3-6. And one of the draws hit Red B 2. So sui one me...

Cleaning up:
This is the worst, if not for the amount of volunteers. This task is monumental. The entire dining hall had to be rearranged to it's original postions, chairs returned to the respective places, trash thrown and everything else washed. The hall was like this:

------------------------
l***********************l
l***********************=
l***********************l-----------------
l***********************l****************l
l***********************l****************l
l***********************l****************l
l***********************l****************l
l***********************l****************l
l***********************l****************=
----------===----------------------------

My ASCII sarks...but people get the idea... = are entrances. And this is like an estimate of 1000000000 to 1 ratio. What I did was carry chairs back to the original rooms and transferring stuffs to be washed in south kitchen (remember south kitchen? the place I cooked porridge ^^). 1st batch was 14 chairs to south kitchen. Together with Alex and Jonathan, 10 chairs were split between us and carried there. The chairs are friggin heavy, I tell you, I'm looking at my bruises caused by the chairs even as I type. Plus, we had to carry them up a flight of stairs to the kitchen.

The next batch was to the tutorial room. This is the worst I tell you. The tutorial room is like 150 meters away from the dining hall, across a narrow passageway. Wen Sern went with me for this one. All through the journey we were cursing Bruce Hall and the chairs (I was told later someone sed,“Aus damn sad weh, no plastic chairs one"). Halfway there we rest and I turned and guess what I saw? Wen Sern carried the wrong coloured chairs! So he had to turn back and carry another set of chairs. Off we go again, carrying and cursing. Every single curse word you have ever heard was used here, cept for the F word, which I'm refraining to use.

After the dining hall was done, I went to the south kitchen to see what I could do. And I was given the task to shower the trays... Stupid task and... gay. But seriously, the trays and I had a great time in the bathroom, wished people could join us, but noone walked in... Aww... how sad...

That's the end of the story of my part as I know it. Apparently after the event, the washing up took up to 3 am. Explains why everyone looked so dead today, hehe. Ini bukan Malam Kenduri lah, lebih macam Malam Keletihan.

PS: Apparently there was a The Sun newspaper journalist there. If you people in M'sia happen to see a newspaper article on it, please save it for me? Thanks.

41. n00b cook

2006-05-19T02:24:00.000+10:00

Almost everyone remembered Xin's birthday was last Sunday. If memory serves, the MSO committee planned a surprise for her. And surprisingly, it was a surprise, not other type of leakage type of surprise. I myself, planned my own gift for her. My own surprise.

We were talking that day on how we miss porridge, so me being simple minded, simply adopted the idea from the conversation. I decided to make porridge for her (and Seng Beng!) in secret. Being a n00b cook, I gotten the recipe from my mother. Yeah, it doesn't sound original and all but I given myself quite a limited time.

I can cook simple dishes like fry vege (I dun eat them, but I know how to fry them, weird huh?), fry eggs, the usual day to day commoners' food (must stress commoners, or else ppl think otherwise). Actually I forgotten how to do all those stuff liao, it was during the waiting period only the 'insight' returned. Everything simply rushed back to memory. The recipe was simple, rice, chicken breast meat, chicken bones, peanuts, century eggs, salted eggs, and the usual salt. So I thought, sounds easy, and as long as I stick to the recipe it would be pretty easy, no? But I needed to discuss this with someone, in short I needed help. Thus, I consulted Kelly, and she raised an interesting point, century eggs... Not many people like century eggs. Flustered, I checked with Xin and Seng, and true enough, both would prefer without century eggs. Thus, century eggs was removed from the recipe.

Decided on this, we went shopping for ingredients. Not that easy especially since I was dumbdumb at choosing 'raw food'. The shopping trip ended, and stupid me realized I forgotten the salted eggs! But then Kelly said she was going to some shopping place again and I asked her to get for me. Shopping done, all I had to do was wait for the cooking day. Oh, forgot to mention this... Bruce Hall has this policy of having to book a kitchen for usage since it's fully catered, so I booked for 4 pm to 8 pm. Prolly not enuff but I'll make do with what I can.

The day finally arrived. I woke up bright and early, pulled open the curtains and inhaled the fresh air. Not. I did wake up early but spent the whole morning debating if I should go for tutorial, of which in the end I went. So academics began. I ended with lab (of which we had a wine tasting period, Riesling is pretty good, Voignier sarks) and rushed back to begin the long process. I still din have my eggs by then, cuz Kelly was going only on that hour or something along that line. Thus begins the long process of boiling and re-boiling and then re-boiling and then re-boiling. Yeah, I sark, so I boil that many times, okay?

During the boiling period, I went down for dinner (weird huh?) and to steal salt cuz I dun have any. >.> The initial process ended, leaving me with almost boiled rice with peanuts. I left it boiling until it became tasteless porridge with peanuts. Since Kelly was also busy with MSO stuff, the egg was pretty much delayed. So I got my result at around 6.30. And thus the waiting process began. How did I spend my waiting time? I paced up and down from dining hall back to kitchen back to dining hall - repeat (dining hall's about 2 mins walk from kitchen). Well, I shall not bore my readers with waiting events. The next point of interest was that egg arrived at 8 pm. Whee...

MSO was having the rehearsal for Malam Kenduri that night as well. Well aware of the crash, I curse my stupidity. Since there was so much waiting time, and so little kitchen time, I modified the recipe to speed up the process. Using chem knowledge, dice the meat and boil, instead of boil then dice (area increases, thus heat absorbed is more, volume decreases, Q needed to cook meat is less on an individual piece basis). So back to the egg (all the while, when I say egg, it means salted egg). Egg boiled till hardened, diced, add into cold porridge with meat. Re-heat, and wait. And add stolen salt. And it's done! I tasted it and I gotta say it's pretty damn good for a n00b cook.

So, now to get people to eat. What a problem this is. The rehearsal had too many people. I can't purposely select individual people only. Eu Gene was included (though in the end he din had any, see? go Dolly's somemore la!) cuz he saw me cooking. So being a bit blur after the long hours waiting and boiling and reheating, I left the who-to-eat problem to Kelly (i'm sorry!!). The matter was finally decided at 11 pm, well pass my booking time. It was to be given to the MSO committee! Actually it crossed my mind before, but at that time I din think it would be enough for 13 people (assuming all 13 eats, which is untrue). As long as the food is eaten, I'm happy.

This story got no chronology of events and all. My mind is a bit addled at the time of typing and I'm damn tired from the events of the day. I drank a bit before I typed this post, so everything is out, hehe. Anyway, when I was delivering food, everyone seem to give me a weird look, prolly was just me. I'm tired anyway... Oh, for whoever who ate, I want feedback weh, I din exactly get to try out my own food, although it was suppose to be my dinner. =/

Acknowledgements:

Kelly: For without her, no ingredients would be obtained. There would be no start to this event at all. And many others...

Eu Gene: For the small firm support given. The sentence 'I can finish the whole pot myself' was very much enough.

Xin & Seng Beng： For without these people, there wouldn't be any event for me in the first place.

PS: n00b in gaming terms is a arrogant newbie. In this context, it is used as totally newbie and inexperienced.

Xin - 14th May - Happy belated birthday!

Seng Beng - 19th May - Happy birthday!

40. Hall on fire

2006-05-15T18:23:00.000+10:00

Not exactly, but it was close to in my opinion. Plus it was a more catchy title than microwave oven almost on fire.

The event was simple. It was another dinner of which I decided to skip again. But then I still decided to have something light. A cheese sandwich! Well not that light I guess... So I went over to the salad bar and what I see? No cheese... And there was a long line at the grill, so, bread in hand, I decided to just eat it plain.

First piece I ate with pepper. It sarked. Horribly. Second one I gotten a little smarter and decided to go with butter. But the butter was frozen solid. And the grill had a line still. The impatience in me build up to a level where it went over the scale. So I decided to microwave the bread with butter. Time set as 1 and a half minutes.

Feeling happy with myself, I went back to join my frens, keeping an eye on the oven for the 1st minute, then I got absorbed in my drink. I look back again, and there it was! Smoke billowing from the oven (white ones, not the black ones). I push back my chair and took a slow walk to the oven, opened it, with the entire dining hall looking at me. The Senior Resident there opened the door and window near the oven to prevent the smoke alarm from going off. I have no idea why I was acting so calm holding a saucer with a totally blackened smoking bread. I took a couple of tissue papers and transfered the saucer out of the dining hall.

When I returned, everyone was still looking at the great cloud of smoke and me (yeah, yeah I'm the one who caused it). Everyone who knew me ask me what the hell I did. And the answer is still the same: Butter on bread, microwave for 1.5 minutes. Then someone pointed out my error... What's the temperature? Uh-oh... Well, screw it, it's passed. Luckily the fire alarm din go off. Once again, I'm gonna be blacklisted in the dining hall. I hope the oven survives.

Even as I type this, I still smell smoke from my clothes. Everyone who came into the dining hall after the 'event' smelled smoke and wonders what the hell happened, but I can't very well tell them the answer right... Either way, it's gonna be a bad day tommorow... I can feel it coming. Let's consider the possible situations.

1. Kicked out of hall for being a 'potential danger to all the residents'.

2. Banned from the oven for the next few generations.

3. A poll came up and decided that I was better off not seen in the dining hall.

4. A special general meeting was organised to discuss this event and they decided to kick the oven instead of me.

5. I have to compensate for the distress I caused to Bruce Hall and its residents under the 'blablabla' code.

6. I have to buy a new oven.

7. Bruce Hall has decided to get a insurance policy for fire caused by act of food.

8. Last of all... Nothing happens! Other than ppl giving me weird looks almost at every corner and whenever I approach the oven.

39. Shopping experience

2006-05-13T23:28:00.000+10:00

I think I kinda had almost the worst shopping experience ever since I came to uni today. It was IMO, a 99% waste of time...

I left my hall at 10.20 and started the 1/2 and hour walk to Canberra Centre. Yeah well, in case anyone does not know, in Canberra, the main transportation for uni students is their legs (a.k.a. bus 11, but I really really dun like this term). I kinda take it to the extreme such as walking to Xin's house which is around... 45 minutes? Sometimes 50 depending on the traffic lights... I went shopping alone, since everyone was either preparing for paintball, or studying, or sleeping. So the march began.

Along the way, I spent time watching leaves fall, shivering in the autumn cold, watching humans pass by, shivering, looking around, and shivering. Half way day, I really got bored outta my mind and started memorizing the multiplication table, the one where we had to remember in like Standard 2 or something, except I did in chinese >.> . By the time I finished, I reached Canberra Centre! Yay!

I reviewed my purpose of shopping again. Buy candles, Xin's present and to ask a question to someone who happens to be there. So all in all, shud not take me longer than 30 mins. I went to meet the someone, but saw that the person was busy, so I went and to buy candles. Naturally, one would try to get the cheapest candles. So I head for the supermarket (called Supabarn, worse name I ever heard) at the end of Canberra Centre hoping that they'd sell some. And they do! But not the type that I was looking for. Those which were on the shelves were more of the kiddy type and not exactly the ones I'm looking for (I'm such a 'semi-perfectionist', someone must've rubbed off on me). I ended up buying chocolate cookies >.> .

I made a trip back to the other end of the 'mall' (more like a collection of shops than a mall). There, I dealt with the question and resumed my search for candles. Long story short, this is a chronology of the places I went in search of candles after that. Hot dollar -> Lincraft -> Target -> Michel's -> Candleman -> Cardeaux -> Supabarn -> Hot dollar -> Target -> Socrates -> Home!. Let's see... Hot Dollar, Lincraft and Candleman were at one end of the mall, the others the other end. All in all, I walked across the mall about... 6/7 times? Time consumed... around one and a half hours. Somewhere in between I reloaded my phone as well. Somewhere in between as well, I called Ai Lin for help and got a helpful response, but not so helpful response from the stores.

Yeah, boring post, cuz I feel like boring the crap outta ppl at the moment, share my boredom ^^. Oh, and I din get any candles in the end. I couldn't find any standard, suitable, normal, birthday candles.

38. Humour

2006-05-11T19:22:00.000+10:00

Whee... haven blog for ages... Many damn things happened such in this 1 and a half week, but I was too lazy to write anything. Side effects of having so many assignments and too damn lazy to lift my hand to touch them, and since too damn lazy to touch my com, my blog was dormant for that long.

There's this 1 thing I would like to question though... The degree of humour of the Chinese-Chinese and the Chinese-English people. Well... I'm sure alot of people has encountered such ppl. Chinese-chinese refers to the type of Chinese that's pretty much full-blooded Chinese. And Chinese-English refers to people like.... MC people! Simple analogy. ^^

I think previously MC we said before on how the Chinese-Chinese (too damn long, hereby referred to as CC and the other CE) dun understand about CE's lameness and all. And how it works vice versa as well. CC's type of jokes are basicllay pretty fast, and twisted around the pronunciation of words. CE's ones are the type that pretty much leaves one stunned and 99.999% of the time thinking 'What the hell?' with laughter included.

After A-levels, I pretty much became a recluse, there was a period of about a week or so where I din leave a step outta my house. And since it was pretty much holidays and all, I had the chance to interact more with my relatives than the CE people (other than the daily *major* dosage of DotA and the pre-talks before DotA where all sorts of lameness spill onto the chat room). In that period of time, (reality time, not virtual DotA time) I was very in touch with my chinese side. As a result, I think it kinda made a permanent impact on me where it stayed.

So that leaves me somewhere in between CC and CE. Recently someone made a mention about the MTV movie awards spinoffs? Or whatever the hell it's called. The type where it was meant to be funny. They were talking about it like it was the only funny thing in the world and everything else was dull in comparison. So being the curious one, I decided to try as well. So the movie clip began. And I stoned there. For the length of the movie (which was pretty short) I stoned there looking for the places where it was supposed to be amusing.

Thus I arrived to this question: Have I changed so much during the holidays that such western jokes do not affect me anymore? I dunno, but there's another comedy coming up of which I'm gonna try. If I stoned throughout the entire movie, I think I pretty much lost it.

Side note: Animes are still pretty damn funny. School Rumble 2nd Term rox. ^^

37. Jonah and the fish

2006-04-30T23:33:00.000+10:00

Well, well, whaddaya know? 3 posts in one day... I can almost hear Andrew saying complusive blogger in one end liao. Anyway, this is a biblical argument, topic contributed by Boon from CG, another inconclusive one, with bio stuff and chem stuff inside, so Andrew, you know what to do. Oh btw, this post is gonna be damn long, close to Andrew's standard post length, so if anyone is phobic to long posts, dun read as well.

Eto... I'm not very familiar with the story, but the summary goes something like this:

Jonah was running away from the Lord. In his journey on a boat, there was a storm, of which the cause was found to Jonah, and he was threw overboard. But the Lord provided a great fish to swallow Jonah and Jonah was inside the fish three days and three nights. (Jonah 1:17) Then Jonah prayed to the Lord. And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land. (Jonah 2:10)

This argument was relatively short and simple, with only me, Yang and Boon as debaters. So, for starters, how can one survive inside a fish? I know Pinocchio did, but if memory serves I think it's a whale, no? First we talked about where the sea is expected to be. It was figured out to be the Mediterranean Sea (from here on there of, known as Med Sea, it's too damn friggin long), but I have my small doubts. Either way, the bible passage states en route for Tarshish, wherever that is. So, assuming it's the Med Sea, we researched on what sort of fishes are there (or rather gave the site).

Then the issue of fish size came up. The biggest fish is the whale shark, capable of 30+ meters long. But then, it's mouth cavity is 1.4 meters and Whale sharks are found worldwide in the warm oceans from the equator. They are not, however, found in the Mediterranean Sea (copied from some site). There, not in Med Sea. 2nd in line for fish size is the basking shark, which has a large mouth, and about 23 meters, other stats values not given. Hmm... how leh? At this point, Yang came up with a site saying about what fishies reside in Med Sea. And the largest? Some 481 cm shark. The human's gotta occupy 1/2 of the shark! This shark's gotta be pretty empty and balloony for it to fir a human. Plus it also has to have all its internal organs squished to the walls while maintaining it's frame, kewl right?

The argument went back to Pinocchio and the whale. Thus we made another assumption, that it's gotta be a whale. How did we arrive at that point? It definitely ain't a blue whale, it can't fit into the Med Sea. If it's a whale, it explains plenty of stuff, he could have gotten water source from the small spout hole when the whale resurfaces for air and it so happens to be raining, and the rain trickles into the hole. He also could have gotten oxygen that way as well. But how could it be a whale, when it's written, the Lord provided a great fish? It has to be a fish dammit! Then I argued that it can't possibly be classified as a fish yet. I mean, everything in the sea at that era is assumed to be fish. Let's say one is in that era, you see something swimming, and you go, "Oo... fish!", you dun go, "Oo... sea mammal!". Okay, whale = fish in that era. Done, settled for that point.

So, what whales were there? The internet is damn powderful I tell you. We came up with the answer of the beluga sperm whale! What's so great about this whale? For starters it stays in the Med Sea. At this point while I'm typing this, I went to check it's validity. I came up with Beluga living in the Artic ocean. Then I came up with sperm whale living in Med Sea. Wth? Further research leads to sperm whales to be categorized under beluga. Whatever la, I guess it's correct if the site says so. So this whale is slightly smaller then the biggest fishies, but it's still long, around 14 meters long. It has a large mouth and has teeth. Well, well, whaddya know, whales have sharp teeth too. And Yang, for goodness sake, they do not hunt whales in that era. You see such a big creature, you either go, "Ahh!!!! Monster!!!" or "Byebye world..." of which nothing happens cuz whales dun anyhow go sink boats. And Boon, at the 0% chance that they hunt whales, they dun use it for oil lamps! Oil lamps either din exist then or they used kerosene, me thinks they use fire, api, 火.

With the fish size settled, I made a point that if the whale can open mouth, why can't Jonah blardy well swim out? Yang stresses that he has to fight the water rushing in to do that and Boon made the point that if the whale opens it's mouth, Jonah drowns (good point weh, we din actually think of the fella drowning). Yang says that the water rushes in with the boost of the whale's swimming speed, different from river currents (heard of ppl swimming against river currents? I have) and it's damn strong apparently. But then I still think that, when a fish/whale open it's mouth, the water flows in and then becomes 'stagnant' as in stays there, doesn't slosh around.[Question 1]How the hell did the fish and Jonah lived together for 3 days and 3 nights?

Then it's also stated that he was spat out. And I was thinking what sort of fish could even spit things out? Yang: archerfish. Wth is an archerfish? And Wikipedia says: The archerfishes (or archer fishes) are a family (Toxotidae) of fish notable for their habit of preying on insects and other small animals by shooting them down with water "pellets" from their specialized mouths. Fine, got something that can actually shoot things down. Maybe with some genetic engineering it can even shoot like Pokemon's hydro pump...? Anyway, assuming the whale can spit things out, I guess Jonah can be spat out onto dry land, that is, if it could go onto dry land. [Question 2] Can whales actually go back on land and spit things out?

I sed that the whale could possibly just lie dormant under the command of the Lord and do nothing (of which came the point of fishermen hunting whales). Yang says that it has to go around and still survive and eat and all. Boon says that it could be miles under the sea. Thus whatever way that Jonah could 'escape' he would thus die by either drowning or water pressure. When the whale open it's mouth to eat Yang says that since it has teeth, it bites then swallow, no time for escape (prolly could explain how Jonah gets his food too, whale eat, he eat also). Apparently whales dun open their mouth much, according to Yang's National Geographical knowledge. The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head. (Jonah 2:5) Okay, so it's damn deep, not at surface, if even got seaweed. Hey, he could even eat sea weed for food![Question 3] Location of whale? Could Jonah have anyhow escaped at any time?

Now to basic neccesities. Food? This problem ain't that difficult actually, the whale eat, he dines, or he can eat the seaweed on his head, or pluck whatever from the whale's spout ^^. Water? This is a bit difficult. He's in the sea, so if he drink sea water, definitely GG liao, become salt statue. So how leh? Yang says the gills (whales have gills?) filters water for Jonah. Aww... how kind, *for Jonah*. I still stick to my concept of it having to rise for oxygen once in a while and have rain trickle in water from there. I mean, it's only 3 days and 3 nights, humans can survive on water alone for a week and without water for 2 days. [Question 4] The water problem.

Where's Jonah gonna sit/stand/lie in the fish anyway? Boon thinks that the tongue would make an excellent mattress to lie on with all its movable parts. At this point, I apologize for my stupidity, apparently fishes have tongues and I din know that. He's definitely in the buccal cavity, cuz if he went to the stomach he would be GG-fied. The stomach I think has a pH of 1-2. And the saliva does *not* dissolve him, try licking yourself and see if you dissolve yourself or not. Saliva contains of amylase and the pH of that is pretty neutral weh (7.4). With the dilution of water, it would be almost a totally neutral pH liao. Salts do not affect the water pH, but with the sodium acetate salt, it may create a buffer solution of which the pH will almost definitely be neutral (thanks to Boon's chemistry knowledge, mine sarks, remember?). [Question 5] How would Jonah be positioned in the fish?

The final argument: Comparing the whales of now and then. I say that the whales may have evolved through time and become smaller. It may have really been very big at that time, and as time passes it became small to the ones we find nowadays. Boon then points out that it has only been 2k-3k years only, evolution can't act that fast (someone confirm this... was it only that short?). But then I say that it may have just shrunk by prolyl 15-20 cm, just enuff for it to seem like it's not enough to fit a human anymore! Boon gave a good example of this with Goliath. We dun see people that strong and that tall anymore do we? Besides the basketball fella who is... 8 feet? I dunno. [Question 6] Could evolution have act on whales such that they shrunk in size that as depicted, no human can fit in nowadays (unless it's Mh's height...)?

And thus ends another inconclusive argument. It actually ended with Yang complaining about his KFC making him feel not so good. I was thinking, "Maybe the KFC you had may have some 'human' in it getting sloshed around by the stomach acid." Whee... any other topics to discuss would be welcomed!

36. Steamboat!

2006-04-30T09:38:00.000+10:00

Whee... two posts in one day, how rare is that? Well actually pretty common, but screw it lar.... Anyway... We had steamboat! I dunno whose idea was it originally to have a steamboat 'party' but it was pretty damn good. Although we get our supply of Asian food with our Malaysian chef, steamboat was still pretty damn good...

Oh, did I ever mention our hall chef? He pwns all the other halls flat and single handedly. It was worth coming to Bruce Hall. He goes by the name of Phillip Kong. Apparently, he worked in Shangri-la before he came to Aus (here, ppl are suppose to go 'Wow...'). He came to Aus due to family reasons, of which at this point, it is not wise to push the topic of conversation unless I'm crazy, hehe. With him around, lunch (he works only lunch time T_T) must not ever be missed. We have had char siew, tom yam and many more others of which if it weren't for time constrain for writing this post, I'll list everything out... Well the taste of food is a bit different from the one we have in M'sia, but it's still the best around. So, if he leaves, I think Bruce Hall's treasury's gonna hit rock bottom, not that it hasn't (think, treasury's increasing again cuz there's a increment of ppl buying food vouchers liao since he was chef, but apprarently still in debt)...

Anyway, I'm straying from the topic. Let's see... we had about participants: Me, Phoebe, Hong Yin, Ai Lin, Kelly, Veng Hoong, Vicky (I still dunno if she's a postgrad or a undergrad...), Brandall, Xin, Jonathan and the come and go participant Wen Sern (spelling errors are to be expected, cuz introductions dun include spelling ur name out... like, Hi, I'm Felix, F-E-L-I-X"). And the food was basically what one would expect in steamboat, other than all the balls. Yeap, for this steamboat, we had no balls to eat (plz do not misinterprete, I know it sounds disgusting, but let it be, okay?). And the reason? I damn well do not know, all I know is 4/5 done eating then I see what food was left, and then I thought "Eh, pork balls weh... How come no1 put in 1?" The food that everyone seemed to compliment the most was... Some sort of fish thingy with mushrooms inside, I dunno wth one would call it. That may be the speciality, but I just enjoyed everything thrown into my bowl. ^^

When having food like this, although our parents tell us not to, we still talk with our mouths full, hehe. That's besides the point, in our conversation, a very very very interesting topic came up (hontoni totemo omoshiroi). The topic of porn came up. I have no idea how it lead to this. The topic was very brief, we were talking about who definitely would not watch porn. And guess what? The winner is Justin Chai Seng Yew! He got 100%! Even I got 99.9% only... I dunno about the others though. After the conversation ended... I went listing down in my head everyone and their possibility of watching porn. And I was like... "Wth? For some reason everyone's either 100% or close to 100%!" Oh, btw, Brandall made a very interesting point, I think it was made in cantonese + chinese + english : I dun mind guys watching porn, it's those who dun watch that are weird. (My mind went: Wth? Pent up sexual frustration ar?)

Whee... Feedback on the topic on whether guys watch porn or not would be much appreciated... It seems no one likes to give feedback... I din get any for my Noah's 1, and the lying for whatever reasons 1, and Yang din get for his grandma one, heck he din even give feedback to mine. >.>

35. Marriage vows

2006-04-30T09:12:00.000+10:00

There's this new anime I obtained from my network. It's pretty damn good with the Count of Monte Cristo as background story. Anyway.. that's besides the point other than to advertise the new anime. =)

In the anime, somewhere in between, there was this marriage vow that struck me as pretty... aristocrat-ical. The common individual vows we all know goes something like this:

I, (Bride/Groom), take you (Groom/Bride), to be my (wife/husband), to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; from this day forward until death do us part.

But, I personally like this one better:

I, (name), take you, (name), to be my partner, loving what I know of you, and trusting what I do not yet know. I eagerly anticipate the chance to grow together, getting to know the (man/woman) you will become, and falling in love a little more every day. I promise to love and cherish you through whatever life may bring us.

For more marriage vows... ->

http://weddings.about.com/cs/bridesandgrooms/a/vowwording.htm

And then this is the anime version one:

(Said by the priest) To (name), you have no objections to sharing all of your property, bonds, stocks and all other assets with your bride/groom?

Kewl right? At this point the bride trembles and a few minutes later got stolen away by the main character... This vow is so very... political, dun you think? I was thinking "This is damn kewl weh... So very direct about the main purpose of political weddings. The best part is everyone there just watches and agree to the aristocrats". Personally, I think that there are still such marriages around the world. My sympathy to those involved in such a marriage, those who had to sacrifice their lifetimes happiness for the greed/benefit of the family. My eternal condemnation to those who sacrifice their own daughters/sons for the greed/benefit of the family. Well, I guess there are some exceptionally rare cases that after the political marriage, the true love part does bloom... Those are damn lucky people, haha.

34. To do or not to do

2006-04-26T14:04:00.000+10:00

Before I start... Gotta mention this... 1st years MSO meeting which we had yesterday, of which we expected it to be relatively dull with discussions of events for the Malam Kenduri event which, I think, is to be held later. When out 1st year coordinator started the meeting, the dullness was supported with the cawing of crows... (I think people who read comics knows this better... when like someone says somthing dull/'lame' there's this 'coincidental' crow that goes ka...ka...ka...)

Anyway, that was some crap to fill space ^^. I posted a while back concerning my concern of my studies. I dun think I mentioned how I did in my STAT1003. That is a subject of which I'm proud to say, I got a HD... or rather... was. You see... I discovered that there was a calculation error of which I had higher than original marks. So what should I do? Should I tell my lecturer that he has given me a higher mark? But then, he said, "I had a student come to me once and said, 'sir, you gave me an extra mark' and I said to him, 'I'll pretend I did not hear that, now go away'..." (when he sed this sentence, the crow came cawing again... what's wrong with these stupid birds in Canberra?). Naturally, I took the action of which I din have to get my marks minus-ed off. So what should I have done? This scenario is relatively similar to the one where Yang posted about his grandma and how the food tasted...

The point of it being... We, as Christians, are commanded not to lie. Plus, it's not a good thing to lie. Well, the scenario above is not exactly lying. However, the bible does say (or at least I'm 99% sure it says) that concealing the truth is tantamount to lying. This is a good example sort of scenario: Your boss tells you to answer all phone calls with 'The boss is not in', so when a phone call does come, what should you answer?

But the overall result is I still maintain my HD I think...

Hehe...

PS: It's Karen's birthday today! 26th of April and she's 21!

PPS: I think Voon and Yang calls her Karerin... Hmm...

33. The hatred of my life

2006-04-23T00:15:00.000+10:00

Mid sem exams were about 2 weeks ago. Only a few hours back I got the last of my exams' results. From the description, it can be deduced that I did not fare so well. The story below describes the start of my CHEM1101 downfall.

Story:

This semester's classes were all more or less A levels work. So it is quite obvious that I'm majorly disappointed in my performance in the exams. Not to say that I'm a HD freak or whatever, but it's just that when the course is near repetitive, one would expect to score better than the average people. As in, score better than the people who did not take A levels, those who are first time encountering these sort of questions.

A few hours before the exam, I was like freaking out. I realised that my mind was blanking out, as though memory overloaded and whatever stuff put in was being thrown out. I attempted the past year paper again, to see how much I remembered. Having done the paper before, I expected something like near perfect, but no, what I got was like... fail? I was in shock! Then I crammed in whatever I could for the exam and decided to just go for it. For that, I had no appetite for dinner.

Few minutes before the exam, I was panicking already. Being experienced exam takers, students should know that panicking even *before* the exam really sarks. The emotion was carried onwards into the exam hall. As expected as well, I screwed up in the exam. Being the super big fool I am, I even left the exam hall early. Why, one may ask... The answer is simple, when one is in the state of nervousness and blank mind, one could not possibly do anything further other than to confuse oneself with further questions in the exam hall. It was just 15 mins earlier anyway...

~The End~

The story of my downfall due to arrogance and overconfidence... A new resolution was made... I shall restrain myself in many entertainment sectors of my life. My priorities have also be rethought out. I shall really focus on my studies more.

32. Noah's story

2006-04-20T20:12:00.000+10:00

Most of the non-Christians and almost all Christians remember the Noah and his ark's story.

Here's a summary of it:

Noah was commanded by God to build an ark. He was found righteous in God's eyes, and so God decided to spare his family from a flood. God planned the flood so that it would wipe out all evil in the world. So he built the ark and was commanded to get animals into the ark, 7 for every clean animal and 2 for every unclean animal, 7 for every bird. And so the ark was completed, the animals and Noah's family on board and the rain came and after 40 days, the rain stopped and a few days later, it subsided and the world began anew.

So, me and Boon were talking about his new 'pets' and how they seem to be in pairs and I mentioned it looked like Noah's ark. (And then he sed he'd make a log table along with it, refer to post 23). Somehow the topic of Noah getting taunted while building the ark came up. [Question 1] Was Noah taunted while building the ark? I said yes, Boon, no, Yang, no, Andrew, yes, I kinda forgot Teng's answer... Sorry!! Oh, we decided to get more people to try to answer whatever misc questions there might be about Noah and his ark. There was no mention about him and the townspeople in the Bible. (So the current debaters are me, Yang, Boon, Andrew and Teng, of which Andrew keeps DC-ing out and we keep inviting him in, Yang disappeared shortly after, permanently)

Then while we were arguing about that point, I was thinking... His ark was built in his home grounds, frontyard or something like that... Then Boon found the length of the ark, of which it's 140*23 meters. Meters!! So his land area must be like some super big taman? Ownage weh! With a ship that big, and for some unknown reason of which Noah is building it, how can he not have been taunted? How in the world did his family survive la meanwhile? Well this is answerable, cuz it's expected that he's the only one working on the ark, and the rest all farming. Either that or he and his servants were doing it, and the servants weren't allowed on board. So the whole family was farming.[Question 2] The ship was titanic, could it have been kept 'hidden'? [Question 3] How big was Noah's land? [Question 4] If it were kept hidden, how would he have hid it? [Question 5] So for Noah and family to 'go to town' he would have to walk damn friggin far to reach there lor, agree?

With an ark that big, the materials would have been a major problem. Yang suggested that maybe during that time, there may be oak trees that tall, 140 meters tall (accepting this argument for the moment since there's no other alternative). Then I mentioned his accuracy has to be damn good to manage to saw 140 meters worth of trees into perfect wood planks. After all, arks, ships and whatever else floating are made out of wood *planks* right? To connect the planks together, Yang suggested using wooden nails (someone suggested tar too... wth?). I mentioned the possibility of it rotting since it's raining and all, then the ship GG liao la. [Question 6] Are oak trees possible to grow that tall? 140 meters tall? [Question 7] Can anyone saw a tree into 140 meters worth of planks? [Question 8] How would one connect those planks together?

Noah was commanded to bring animals on the ark. The ark's made out of oak wood. So，what if he was commanded to bring termites along (of which we can assume he brought along, since it's a land creature and it exists now)? The ark GG liao, definitely, even with 2 termites, it's practically a food haven for them. Then I mentioned, what if woodpeckers were brought on board? The ship lagi GG, sure sink liao with that many holes. At this point, Yang raised an interesting comment, termites so damn small, keep in Noah's pocket or box la. Then I retorted, "Box?! What box? You want the box to be made out of what?" There this mention of the box being made out of cloth... Wth, isn't that a more of a wrap than a box? So you wrap insects? And for the pocket one, wth? Sure kena squished to death liao lor. If all insects also put in pocket, habis la, the insects wage a insect-al war in his pocket, with most likely the cockroaches emerging as the victor if they can even withstand nuclear fallout. Then the topic of food was raised, but with an ark that big, you can build a few granaries inside la.[Question 9] So what about termites and woodpeckers and other creatures that deal with wood? [Question 10] Insects? Are they included in the ark? If yes, how?

I seriously doubt these questions will be answered, but nvm, I shall make a future reference of it. This topic was seriously funny when we were discussing it. We, as Christians, as I was told, were encouraged to challenge the Bible and find answers ourselves...

PS: GG = Good game, in DotA terms, but in our terms, it is used as something is finished since GG is usually mentioned at the end of the game when DotA has ended...

31. Chinese typings!!

2006-04-19T23:58:00.000+10:00

Finally, I learnt how to type chinese on my com! All thanks to Yang Wei! Full credit to Yang Wei!

And with it, I learnt how to type japanese too!

バンザイ!! I think this is banzai... I tembak only. Oh btw, Firikkusu goes like this: フィリックス, I think...

我很高兴,高兴得好象飞上天。满天高飞。实在很高兴，终于可以用我的‘香蕉‘ 华语了。想来想去，我还需要上多一点话语课程。我真得不认字了。

Give up... I need a translator...

PS: Finally got a picture of myself from a friend's camera... Din know I so fat liao... Fine, I shall work towards VW's size. ^^

30. Kewl Safari

2006-04-19T15:38:00.000+10:00

Safari is like a Windows Explorer in Windows. So it's like a browser where you can access almost everything, internet webpages included. Or so it seems to me, I dun really know about Macs yet.

I was working on my own personal project on List of Pathogenic Bacteria (yes, I'm that bored... I dun watch movies or dramas or whatever else of late). So while I was listing away all sorts of stupid latin names of bacterias and their subspecies, I had another window open watching all sorts of videos concerning movement of various types of bacteria. After a while, I decided to see if Safari had the function of 'alt+arrow key' which in Windows, is used to move forward and backward of webpages using keyboard. Well, since Macs dun have alt, it's 'apple button+arrow key'. And to my amazement, the video rewinds! I was watching a binary fission of E.coli and with the command, the whole colony shrunk back to one bacteria.

Okay, this post is boring, cuz I'm hanging out in the library doing my project which I completed 1% of it and waiting for 4.30 of which I'm supposed to help with cooking for tonight's dinner. One of the rare days where I think that Canberra sarks. Having a fever and sore throat sarks.

29. Semi-useless discovery

2006-04-16T00:58:00.000+10:00

So, tonight I had no dosage of DotA. Apparently the idea of a few continuous of DotA does not appeal to them... Maybe it's because I'm more... of a gamer than I thought...

Well, so I went to Kelly's room and look for Ernest, since he's the host (yeah, I feel the host's pain, but he has a blardy desktop with a more powerful processor). And so I got the reply 'We had two hours yesterday liao, enough liao la!'. I was like... wth... it's 2 hours only weh...

Anyway, I walked out on them in major frustration and anger (I later apologized and gave Phoebe's regards but I dun think they heard me... So screw it...). I went for a walk around Uni Ave in the dead cold night with short pants to cool off my anger. Half way walking, I suddenly realized the cold doesn't sting that much anymore! Thus, I understand how people can go in shorts and slippers in winter and dun feel much about it. I theorize that it's prolly because an isulating layer has been formed on the skin and thus it acts as a 'barrier' to prevent 'further' cold! There's a side effect though... I could feel my heartbeat slowing drastically, even now i can feel some sort of tightness around my chest, hehe.

However, one thing's for sure, one would definitely not find me in slippers and shorts in winter... But I'm considering being sufficient with just a jacket. ^^

28. Experimental event

2006-04-14T21:10:00.000+10:00

Whee... Today is Good Friday. The day Christ died for our sins. He was tortured and humiliated and finally nailed on the cross for death. And when He died, '...the curtain of the temple was torn in tow from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split. The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life.' Matthew 27:51-52.

So to commemorate this event, me, Lee Kuan, has decided to go 'vegetarian' for one day! =P
Actually cuz it seemed like alot of people were doing it, so I wanted to try it out too, and coincidentally it's Good Friday, so I made it an event as well. Maybe I might make this an annual event for me... Hmm...

Anyway, my course of 'vegetarian' is no meat, but got seafood (at least spare me this much of slack...) and no eggs. Therefore, I skipped my favourite morning breakfast of scramble eggs, having only pancakes and hash browns. Lunch was a bit better, pure seafood! I'm glad I made the seafood-allowed decision. Okay, I'm cheating.... maybe.

Then dinner was.... seafood too! But dinner was worse. I had squid (yay! haven had fried squid for... practically ages!) and fish (my 'vegetarian' status forbid me from the oh, so nice chicken lying there). The fish was laced with tomatoes. Raw tomatoes. So, I thought 'Oh well, it shudn't be that bad right? I mean... how bad can cold, raw, wet, slimy tomatoes be, right?'. And so I took my first bite. I'm so damn sure that if I din take it with the fish, I'll be rushing to the toilet liao. The taste to me is just so revolting, it is the worst meal I had since I came to Aus. Then I look down at my plate. I cut up the remaining fish + tomatoes into edible sizes. So, I had one bite, and there's six pieces left on my plate. Hmm... six, I wonder how long is this meal gonna take... Thus, the long, excruciating process of feed, chew, chew, chew, chew, chew, swallow begin. Well, the overall result was I finished it (congrats to me!) and I did it without water!

A few remarks my friends on the dining table made:

"Look at Felix torturing himself." >.>

"You okay ah? (cuz I was unconsciously clenching my fist...)"

"Just skip it and go for dessert."

"You should go for (dunno wazzit called, some look-like-cake thingy). It has cheese and spinach!"

Thus, my 'vegetarian' ordeal ends in 2 and a half hours. But it doesn't really count, since I'm not gonna eat anything liao. Currently considering if I should do it for Easter too...

P.S.: Xin reminded me... Pancakes have eggs... I'm busted... Din know they have eggs.

27. Ehe... My 'romance' update

2006-04-13T20:41:00.000+10:00

I think a while back I posted a while back that I liked someone. I dun think I gave any other details other than it's a she... right? Well, I shall add another point in this post. She is attached. =)

It's not like as what MH says 'play 3rd person'. I'm just being a friend who... does nothing and act dumb? What am I doing also I dunno. I act very foolishly recently. So like this girl that I like has her own problems. And so being someone who likes her, it's semi-natural that I am affected indirectly to a small extend as well (ta hell with me and my 'benefit of doubt' words). And so being the foolish Lee Kuan I am, I stand aside and watch the scenario unfold like a spectator. She's on her own stage and I'm on my own. And from my side, I'm watching her play unfold. I'm sure alot of people knows how this stuffs results in personal emotional turmoil and such.

I shall make a few references here on a few 'scenarios' of friends. But of course, no names mentioned. These scenarios are all the stages I have seen. Yeah, seen, not seeing.

One who tried and got a neutral answer.

One who tried and got rejected.

One who did all one can to assist in any way of the person and got rejected.

One who was in a relationship and ended it.

One who was not in a relationship but circumstances force them together and thus together they are.

One who was in a relationship then ended it then went for another one.

One who never met the other one and is in a relationship with the one.

One who stood by and watch events unfold and decided to pull out.

One who stood around and do nothing and somehow the other party knew about it, thus one pulled out.

Well, that's about it I can think for now, since my mind is affected by the call of DotA. To all guys and girls out there, good luck in your romance lives.

26. Losing faith

2006-04-08T23:14:00.000+10:00

Ever since I came to Aus, I'd gone to church or christian gatherings of sorts, only twice. Very sad I know, I've been officially unfaithful to the Lord as everyone around the hall knows it.

Losing faith in the Lord:

I had a pledge to my pastor that I would find a church here and join them for mass/sermons/worship. However, I think I'm such a betrayal of trust... I haven been doing anything related to my religion at all. Even though I still feel the power of the Lord at work, I do not respond in kind... Have I changed? Have I become totally ignorant of His grace? I dunno, I really dunno... There was a gathering of sorts for OCF. I actually wanted to go for the Friday one... But... I dunno what's wrong with me, I really do not know... The only ties with me and the Lord currently consists of daily prayers.

Recently as well, there was this sort of intrusion of sorts into my religion aspect of my life. As everyone knows, I'm doing science. and as everyone knows as well, science and religion do not exactly go hand in hand. So this conflict which I have been avoiding for ages has finally rearise, and this time, it's here to stay. My sempai has also been trying to talk me out of christianity as well. I kinda understand the contradictions, but I definitely hope to be able to handle both evenly. I could take some advice from other science students, I would like to see how the other people of the same field handle this aspect.

Losing faith in first years:

First years basically means freshmen, same as me, 1st years in uni. I came to realise recently I have been drifting apart from them. Kinda like there's a major gap formed between me and them. One clear factor is because they are doing different courses than me. That much I know, I see them only during meal times. I also dun seem to be joining them for outings as well... Or rather there are outings that I do not know about (not that it matters, I think I've always been ignorant of outings). I do not know whether cuz I'm unsociable? There's this event that occured to a friend of mine. The person was bad-mouthed about in front of her room, and the people doing it did not realize the person was in the room. Then it hit me, we all have flaws, everyone has flaws, no one is exceptional in everything. How one appears to oneself does not always appear to others the same way. The image one *tries* to portray is different from the one portrayed (dunno spelling seems weird...). In other words, I think I'm being misunderstood... Haha.... the irony of it...

Losing faith in myself:

I think from the above, it's kinda obvious I'm in some sort of stage of depression. This time I think it's here to stay. Oh well, I shall be entering another stage of mild depression. Not that it will affect me majorly. I guess I shall still keep up with my routine. I get the feeling I'm being an arrogant bastard in front of my friends, I think I'm one too... The unsociable level in me is rising... the urge to go back to be alone again is pretty strong. Being a lone child and from a weird family background, loneliness is pretty common in my life. But I would be lying to say if loneliness does not hurt. I once again stress noone, noone in this big world/galaxy/universe can say that they are used to loneliness, it just does not exist. Everytime it occurs, it stings and it will continue stinging the same way. Btw, if there's anything wrong with me, I hope people will come out and tell me about it. I do not really mind being bad-mouthed about, because it's me, it's how I appear to others. And the bullshit about me throwing people in the river? Haha, I dun do such stuffs, and I dun either... the worst thing I've done was to wring someone's neck... Well kinda violent but it's a friendly gesture on my behalf so apologies for anyone who feels intimidated. I want to change for the better, I really do, and I can't do that if people do not give feedback to me...

Hehz... all this thinking and spending time outside in the cold weather... I think I'm coming down with a fever... Not sure though... Of all things I lose out to, I lost to nature... The irony of it...

25. Yay! Finish exam & lab report

2006-04-07T10:16:00.000+10:00

Yeap, that kinda explains why I have not been blogging for this extremely long time doesn't it? As AFP puts it, 'compulsive blogger'. The exams are seriously.... screwy... And I was hoping for a HD (Karen's compulsion to score HDs are rubbing onto me)... I think I would be satisfied with a D now...

I had 2 mid semester exams, one is stats and one is chem. Both are 90% of A-Levels content. but then, me being Lee Kuan, who is helluva lazy and only gets the pressure to study from the last few hours of the exam, was heavily under pressure in the exam. My first exam was on Wednesday... Having not taken any exam or enter any examination hall (the enrolement period in the examination hall does not count!) for about 10 months or so, I kinda panicked like hell. So, stats, 1 hour paper, and I was damn nervous and panicky for first half an hour, but then I cooled off eventually and well, finished it. Hurray to me! Chem was yesterday, and at a stupid hour. From 6 PM to 8.15 PM, is the chem department crazy or what? Bad enough that they assigned a lecture at 8 AM on Tuesday, now they put an exam at 6 PM?? Anyway, for the last few hours I was running through past year exam scripts (again... for the umpteenth time) and.... I failed the past year papers. My morale and confidence kinda hit rock bottom at that time. I lost appetite for dinner and was kinda visibly shaking for the last half hour before the exam (probably due to the cold as well, the temperature here is so random). Anyway, enter exam, do exam, blablabla, we all know the crap. And so I came out early... approximately 20 mins early or so (for badminton actually, but then, they decided not to inform me that it was cancelled so left me wandering around SRC for 1/2 hour or so) and kinda felt that I was suffering from a mild case of 'post-exam-depression' (I'm my own doctor ^^).

Went back to hall, obtained my key, and started visiting everyone for fun and to get rid of depression. I think I kinda forget a few people, but it's all good ^^. So, I hereby give gratitude to people who have in one way or another without realising it comforted me. Oh, then they went clubbing while I decided to delete helluva lot of games from my com.

So, lab report... My 'mentor' said that it... is bad? I can't recall her words, but the main conclusion that arrived in my mind was 'It's horrible, you might as well scrape it and start anew.' And thus, I camped out outside Melville Hall for 10 minutes (it was 1.30 AM, I wasn't very sane at that time and more like wanted to greet those clubbers coming back. However all I got was a f*** you from some fella and to see a couple smooching for... I dunno, but it sure felt like an eternity), then found out it was too friggin cold when I could not feel the keyboard anymore. Proceeded to com lab and bla bla bla, all the minor shitty details. Main thing is: lab report completed at 10.07 AM. I'm so proud of myself. I reached 7 pages and 1 full page of references.

Thus, the 1st term of the 1st semester ends today. Not very looking forward to the next 2 weeks of holidays. I guess I'll make do with translations and my assignment (yes assignment, it's singular).

-Thus completes what I want to imply-

24. Losing pretty unfairly (IMO)

2006-04-01T14:55:00.000+11:00

Yeap, the IMO is important, cuz I must give the benefit of the doubt to the umpire and must blame my own skill as well...

Recap... Today we had the MASCA games! It's some sort of sports games for MSO members. I don't really know the purpose, just that it's there and it is a short fun time. I joined badminton (prolly cuz it's the only thing I can play...) singles, men's doubles and mixed doubles. Well, the important one first... Result is lost all, first round.

My first match was singles, against some damn familiar guy (The registry said his name was A, but he introed himself to me as B, so that's why familiar, his name is A B.). The game started off with me rather nervous, cuz a few factors. One is that this was my first time in a sort of competition at any point. And secondly, I just finished watching some damn pro fella play, the sort of fear that you get when you think you get when you think you get the chance of playing against that guy. Okay, 1/2 way into the game I was rather emotionally controlled though still losing a bit. But the final result was that I lost. That's not the point I want to stress here. The point is, in my opinion, I saw 2 'outs' that were not counted! One point somewhere in the middle which can change the result of the game and the second one at the match point, 15. Ah... nvm of that.I shall be a good guy and forgive the umpire (which I did, cuz I lent him my racquet later, and the irony? to beat my doubles partner in a singles match).

My mixed doubles match was immediately after, so me, stupidly, brought my anger from my first game into the mixed doubles game. And so, being someone who's emotionally unstable, the shuttle flies everywhere except where you want it to go. So we lose... 15:6/7 I forgot. I need to apologize so dearly to my partner who joined the game only at my request and because of my mistake I lose part of my self control...

Men's doubles was kinda messy, I don't remember much about it surprisingly, except we lost. If I remember correctly, the game went with me mostly on the back row... Oh well...

So, conclusion, I think I need to control my anger better... And train harder. I now have a new goal, previously was to beat the crap outta YW (^^), now to beat the crap outta that pro fella... a.k.a. badminton club president and ANU rep.

23. Lame chemistry lecturer.

2006-03-29T16:04:00.000+11:00

It has been a while since I heard real good lame jokes since I came to uni. The ones people mention here are ok, of considerable quality, but not the really good ones. And then my chemistry lecturer changed (the uni system works such that each lecturer for science deals with one topic only, thus we have about 4 lecturers for the current chemistry course). The following post has chemistry content, if the reader is suffering from a similar syndrome to the AFP syndrome (which is sensitive to biology topics) please tell me your name so that I can credit you with a new syndrome and stay away. =)

He's good, other than being damn pro at wasting transparencies. Academically wise, he is pretty good at lecturing, although I still do fall asleep in his class.

Okay, back to his lameness. Anyone remembered the formula pH=-log [H] ? Quite easy right? He started off relatively easily, then he came to the exercise part where he asked the pH of this substance and that. Then we reach the last question. Express [Soup] in terms of p. Answer? pSoup. Okay this is relatively simple to get the point. Side track a bit to a pea related story.

Mabel: *Accidentally drops a pea on the table*
Mabel: Okay, classic moment here guys. I peaed on the table. (the family system the M class used in MC...)

Okay, on to today's lecture. Kw = Ka * Kb. Equilibrium constant of water equals to eq of acid times eq of base. Then if one logs everything, it becomes: pKw = pKa + pKb. Considerably easy to understand as well, after the log function, the times changes to plus.

Now for the thing... After 40 days and nights of rain, the flood subsided and Noah's ark 'landed'. When he released the animals, he said, "Go forth and multiply!". Thus all the animals left the ark with their pairs. At the end, the adder snakes came and said, "We can't multiply!". Noah replied, "Oh don't worry, I made you a log table, so you can go forth and multiply as well!"

*Stoned* >.>

Side note: HB's one is pretty cool as well. ^^

Edit: I was wrong about the pea thingy... wrong person said it. And the 'transparent papers' are called transparencies, thanks to HB.

22. Everything feels so bleak...

2006-03-28T20:02:00.000+11:00

It may feel weird that I want to blog when I have such emotions. True, at this moment I'm feeling very very morbid, I dunno what I'm gonna at this unstable moment of emotions. This emotion is good for personal reference in any case that I want to do something stupid.

Thoughts... Yeah well... painful thoughts and memories are rushing through my brain. Thoughts on inflicting pain to others are also coming on to me. Here I apologize for whoever I may hurt at this period of time... Maybe I'm just feeling a period of depression. If I am, this is rather serious

Those who stay in the same hall as me knows that I carry a penknife around. Currently it's open and well, hopefully I dun stab anyone with it.

Anyway, currently morbidity kinda rules in my emotions, so yeah... erm... keep away? I feel deprived, hehz... I wonder why... and I wonder if anyone knows why... Thinking of the person I like kinda makes it worse, sheeze, I shud just do away with everything... Prolly my childish thoughts.

21. Killer mitochondria

2006-03-26T17:18:00.000+11:00

Anyone remembers the game Parasite Eve? Well, I din exactly played the game, I came to know about the storyline from the game scripts (lovely stuff from GameFAQs). The concept was rather interesting, though some may find it preposterous, I like to keep my imagination open and accept ideas.

Well... I guess I should start explaining what's mitochondria (the boring part). Hopefully my bio works well enough for me to do that. Organelles in cells, eukaryote cells that is, that in the general idea, produces energy. It's in symbiosis with the other organelles of the cell. I guess it can be considered the cells' power plant... It was... 'incorporated' into the cell billions of years ago when it was still mainly dominated by unicells. Being an incorporated bacteria (I think it is a bacteria.. I shall check my notes later) it is pretty much self sufficient, having it's own genetic code and could multiply as well.

Okay, enough bio stuff, now the story concept. The story takes on the assumption mitochondria evolved (since they WERE microorganisms and having genetic code, it's kinda possible) and wants to take over the human race. Generally, it takes over the nucleus (I'm sure at least the idea of a nucleus is well known...) and becomes and entire 'mitochondria-ic cell'. It also takes on the assumption all the cells in the body were taken over by the organelle, making the person... erm... not so human anymore? And thus the person has supreme amounts of energy. Now what if this happens in reality...? Interesting thought isn't it?Even better if we could harvest this energy and thus provide energy to weakened people of the world...?

Reality: Isolating the mitochondria of a cell and see if it survives, if it does, culture it and see what happens. Problem is it's too damn small to be isolated without breaking everything apart. Or prolly it's possible...?

Interesting concept if this could be used and incorporate current bacterias with self suicidal organelles with modified genetic codes. Nah, fantasy, fantasy...

20. Whee... I had greens!

2006-03-24T20:37:00.000+11:00

Those who know me and those who sat with me in the dining hall will know how much I hate veggies. But then again, I decided to make today special! I had 6 pieces of greens!! Six!! Yeah well, I sound retarded, I know, but this is a great achievement for me. Besides when the M'sian chef in our hall cooked kuey tiau and I had 2 servings and the kuey tiao had greens in it.

My history of hating greens goes back a long way. Looking back, I was always forced to eat greens. However, my mom tells me that when I was younger, which probably means that when I was real young and conscious mind hasn't kicked in yet, I used to love greens. I still do not know what's the cause of the sudden change from vege-lover to vege-hater. I recall one incident when I was still in nursery, think I was around 5 or 6... The lunch hours were from 12.00 pm to 1.00 pm. And during that period, I was always the slowest eater, due to the fact that I'll just clear the plate leaving the vege there and stone there staring at it (and it staring back and me saying 'Hey, you eating me or not? If you're not replant me!' Yeah right.....). Once in a while, I'll get lucky and manage to either give it to some other kid or put it in my mouth and dump it later or show an innocent face to the kitchen staff and get away with it. However, my refusal to eat vege was quite renown in the nursery.

Okay, back to the topic, I'm diverting quite a bit. Yeah, so there's this one incident. Some koh koh, who was the mistress of the nursery's nephew, kinda strict and around twenty something that time, was monitoring us eat. He knew of my... 'problem' and was keeping an eye on me, correct that, he's always staring into my plate every few minutes and staring into the other kids plates if the amount of vege suddenly doubled or something. So, I just stoned there till 1 pm. I thought I could get away with it and pretend nothing happened, but I can't. Seeing there was still food in my plate, he force-feed me a mouthful of vege and made me chew. "Open your mouth! Chew like this! Drink water! Swallow!" And the command will repeat over and over. But guess what? I always gag at the drink water phase so, I was stuck with the same mouthful of vege from 1.... to 1.05... to 1.10.... to 1.15... to 1.30... and all the way till 2.00. By that time, the entire nursery teachers, caretaker, whoever la, were all there watching the 'show'. So I just went on chewing and chewing and chewing until the greens were... mashed greens? Then the fella got fed up and said "Swallow it and you can go! Since the food is cold already...". Those are like miracle words, the instant he said that, I could complete the entire process! I was like "Whee.....!!!!"

That incident is burned into my memory forever... And when I meet my nursery teachers nowadays, they ask if I am eating well... All the time. And what do I say? "Of course! Except greens". I will change, I will, hopefully in the near future... And by the way... I totally despise cabbage, lettuce, and whatever else from that family, so please, please stop telling me they taste better. I do not wanna pour my stomach out onto my table.

19. Harmony Day

2006-03-21T16:14:00.000+11:00

What is Harmony Day?

Harmony day on the 21st of March is a day to celebrate the diversity of cultures in our community and say "no" to racism. Events are held across Australia in support of diversity and multiculturalism.

(Adapted from Bruce Hall handouts in the dining hall.)

Well, well, harmony day eh? For starters what's up with the colour orange and harmony? I'm asking everyone and the answer I'm getting is cuz there's no other colour available. Cuz like white is for AIDS I think, and the rest for who knows what else.

Anyway, I shall start with the sensitive topic - racism. Being from Malaysia, I, or rather, we have seen the meaning of multicultural (yes yes, insert multicultural food here). In Malaysia we stress about how harmonic is our society and how compatible each of our races are. I'm not gonna talk about racism in Malaysia since it "does not exist". That's why we learn so much Moral for, right? Anyone disagreeing with me? So let's go to Australia instead! But no, it's Harmony Day! How can racism exist?? Right....

I'll give an example. (Forgive me, whoever this story involves.) A friend of mine works in a kitchen. He has recently talked about how under pressured he has when working. the kitchenhand's mistress is a bit bias towards Asians. Why do I say so? Well, his testimony is one evidence. The second is that I have seen her scrutinizing all the Asian erm... 'customers'. Well, naturally this means that I have been under her scrutiny as well. Back to his work. He works in the kitchen, usually the cleaning up part. He is always asked to do the menial tasks. Example, washing the small room of... I dunno how he described it, full of machineries and the like. Then he also has to clean the dishes, place the dishes out to the front, take out the trash, yeah you get the idea. There was one instance where while throwing trash, the chef who went along, accidentally threw the bin into the commercial waste dumpsite and my friend had to retrieve it by the chef's orders. So what does the mistress do? Walk around, wipe a few tables, push in a few chairs, order the few kitchenhands around, mebbe rearrange the forks and spoons and knives, you know the like. Apparently, she's on very good terms with the head chef. I wonder why?

Well, that's the shorterned story of it. I shall not go any further in case of the federal agents of some sort in Australia finding me, and the next moment I know, I may be on the next flight back to Malaysia. My point is: I do not believe for one moment that someone does not harbor racism thoughts to any other race in the world. Yes, I'm admitting such that I myself do harbor small racism thoughts, I mean, who doesn't? We see one race getting benefits of the government, we feel envious. We see some other race getting additional benefits, we get envious. Be it in terms of finding a job or buying a property or anything at all, there's always some sort of law benefitting one race over the other. No, I'm not talking about the chinese race alone. I'm talking about all races. But it's just that we're content to let things go that way.

In the past we've seen, or rather, read how the English said that they must educate the dumber races. I forgot the exact words, but wth. Therefore you could say that in the past, every other non-English race was a dumber race or something along that line. What does that mean? They may be technologically advance, but is it necessary to oppress people? Well, although I'm a small scale racist, I believe that every life has a right to live in this world no matter how small it is.

This topic came to my mind when we were talking at the dining hall regarding how a friend eats rice with fork and knife, nothing wrong with that, but just that, isn't it better and more convenient to eat with fork and spoon? Well each to their own I guess, personal perspective of things.

But I think I shall stop. I feel myself getting outta hand. Given time, I'm really gonna trap myself and sentence myself to deportation. I do not harbor ill will, just that, no matter how helpful, kind and nice we humans are, we all harbor racist feelings towards another, be it small scale or big scale. Anyway, feelings aside, let's all enjoy this one day of Harmony Day where we all wear orange (which I dun have, so I wear red) and enjoy the fun in Union Court in uni.

PS: MSO has leftover fruits, so we shall have fruits for dinner! Nah... Oh, one more thing, I'm meaning about small scale racism in a country basis, not friendship basis, I still love my friends.

18. Screens

2006-03-20T15:42:00.000+11:00

Ever imagined playing DotA on a widescreen? Anyone who tried that before knows that it sarks, maximum. So we were talking about this issue and how wide screen affects gaming and how the normal ones are better while the wide screens one were better for movie watching. then the conversations just went off topic.

Try imagining this, playing DotA using an overhead projector, the image will be like 2 meters by 2 meters! It'll be like swining ur head back and forth to see the direction u're going and everything else in it. Then it went larger, imagine playing in a cinema while u're sitting on the back row, cool right? How about playing in a stadium! Set up on the field while the game is on the stadium screen! Can it get any bigger? I guess you can try open area screens and projections. But try this, using the Batman thingy, you know the thing the mayor of Gotham City use to summon/call Batman? Try using that and play in the sky! Now that's the true meaning of the world's a stage - for gaming.

17. Yume

2006-03-20T08:24:00.000+11:00

Wall of words, begin:

I moved along the field of grass silently. Me and my squadron were heading towards the fort looming in front of us for a specific mission. The night was quiet, the only sound we heard were our own footsteps and heartbeats. I could sense that a few of them are nervous, but we're soldiers and I, their commander.

We ran on, reaching the outskirts of the fort. I gave them orders to stop and recuperate whatever energy they lost in the run and also to choose their desirable weapons for combat in the fort. Running through my own inventory of weapons, I decided to drop my awp gun (yes, corny, isn't it?) and opted for a m4a1 instead.

A few minutes later we're off, charging in through the main gate. The fort was surprisingly modern, with iron walls and security drones and cameras (imagination please...). We rushed through the few iron-walled rooms, our tech showing his ability in opening doors and disabling whatever booby traps there may be. Along our way, we shot at anything that did not look like us, be it humans or drones or mere holograms. We grouped around the center of the hall, looking expectantly around us for any exit other than the one we came in from. By now I've lost 2 members of my squadron and my team is feeling pretty demoralized. I told them to stay on guard and asked the tech to hurry up with his work. He looked at me and shook his head. I lost my patience and raged at him and took him by the scruff of his neck and shook him violently, "Whaddaya mean there's no exit, there's gotta be one somewhere in the hall!!!"

At that moment the walls around us began to open slowly. At first we could hear sounds, roars, shouts, screams and whatever barbaric sound that one hears in the wilderness. As the iron walls rose slowly, we could see hoofs, paws, bones and...... roots? Before the walls could rise completely, shorter creatures somewhat similar looking to leopards started running towards us, baring jaws and teeth. I commanded my team to open fire and unload everything they had on them. Soon the walls were raised and we could see what sort of adversaries we were facing.

Other than the leopards, there were centaur looking like creatures, except they had the face of a goat and wield a menacing half moon axe. Those bone like creatures resemble skeletons of all manner of creatures, flimsy as they are, they are armed with swords and shields. The last batch of creatures, the ones which has roots were the most surprising ones. They look like trees, however at the center of the bark, there was a very beautiful woman. She was naked from waist upwards and her body appeared embedded in the tree itself.

We clearly had the advantage of technology, however they had the advantage of numbers. skeletons were easily broken down by bashing them, but soon some were smart enough to start utilize their shields and deflect our bullets. The centaurs had thick hides and our bullets dealt little damage to them, thus a small number of my team were cleaved into two by them. Leopards which rushed out first were dealt with easily, however that cost us alot of bullets and we had to reload, losing valuable time. The trees were the worst enemies of all, they were immune to bullets and had strong thick branches for arms. They simply took a soldier and break their body into two. I stared as horror as my team was massacred. Picking up whatever grenades was left, I made the trees first priority. For some reason, the creatures were not aiming at me, instead were targetting my entire team. In the battle, centaur went down when we aimed at their faces, the rest were all victims to grenades. The long hard battle soon ended, and what was left of my team consists of me, a female recruit and another inexperienced soldier.

The hall was a mess of blood and bones. Heads and body parts were strewn all over the hall. We were covered in blood all over.

The female recruit puked at the sight of the scene while the other guy fainted. I tried hard not to look at the scene and dragged them across the room towards the door that just opened. In the next room, we were met with a hologram. And what came as a surprise was that it was the very image of my girlfreind's mother! I stared at shock at the hologram and wondered what sort of tricks the enemy could be playing upon us. The two of them who have recovered slightly were staring stupidly at the image. "Greetings to you, and the remnants of ur team, how was the game?", the hologram asked. "Oo... your face is filled with rage, is this how you should greet the mother of the one you love?", taunted the hologram. Then it continued, the face turning serious, "We shall have our battle the next room, I will be waiting...". *Zzzt* The image disappeared.

(This is where it gets weird... funny thoughts I have.) I decided to retrieve my awp which I left behind before I entered the fort. Dragging the two of them out of the fort, I went outside of the fort. When we exit, the sun rays shone upon us and were greeted by a beautiful sight. That is until we saw that it was a background. There was a filming crew there! They were as shocked of our appearance as we are of theirs. Some of them screamed and ran away while some of them turned their cameras towards us. Ignoring them, I walked to where I left my weapon. Along the way, I also saw a steyr aug, of which I picked up as well. When we reach the spot where I left my awp, there was someone sitting next to it. Then finally it hit me, there are weaponry all over the place and these people were filming a movie here?! Deciding to test if it was my true gun, I took it, aim it at a bird and fired. It grazed the abdomen of the bird and it fell.

(And this is where it gets weirder.) The female recruit then got seriously pissed off at my actions (the filiming crew and the fort and everything else simply vanished) and rushed towards where the bird fell. Up close, we could see that the bird was quite injured. It merely had a small scratch at the abdomen, however the right left was slightly twisted. She went mad and started hitting me and demanded that we treated the bird at once for my stupid actions (by now all thoughts of the battle vanished). The scene somehow transported to my room... There she demanded we set up a container filled with warm water... to... soak the bird? (Wth...). (And it gets back to reality from here on.) Discarding my container of which I had my stamps soaked inside (to remove the envelop...) I prepared a 'water bath' (the true literal meaning of water bath) for the bird. For some unknown reason, I decided to add yee mee and egg as well. She pounded me again on my stupidity of adding yee mee... We gently lowered the bird into the 'water bath'. The bird immediately perked up and started eating the mee.

And then, I got back to reality. Which means my alarm rang and I woke up. And I looked towards my room basin and saw that my container of stamps are still there, and no yee mee and egg thank goodness. The stamps were obtained from the envelops my mom sent me a week back, which had all my A Levels notes, I thought the fruits would make a good addition to my minute collection of stamps, which was why I soaked them. Anyway they are drying now and the stupid silly ridiculous dream has ended. It din make sense to me one bit either, I just decided it would make a good stupid story which makes no sense. I guess this is what happens when I play too much... That's it, from now on, I'm quitting DotA until mid sem break, but I shall keep with my CS ^^

PS: Yume is dream in jap. I wanted to put winged dream, but I dunno if it's yume no tsubasa or tsubasa yume, my jap is to the standard where I know individual words only...

16. Another change, thanks to someone.

2006-03-19T22:43:00.000+11:00

After talking with someone, the person encouraged me to pursue my emotions. A debate ensued between me and the person, of which the result was I decided to pursue my emotions, even for a little while. I know, I'm being hypocritical, but what the hell...

The person made a few strong points which I could not fight agaisnt. One is that I should not run from my true feelings... (Someone else should not too =P) Next is everyone has a right to like the person, be it the person attached or not.

So current status is to pursue! But to the extend of emotionally only, I still am quite a coward to pursue in term of actions. Such influence the person has on me... Honestly, I do not know if my actions (actually feelings, but that doesn't quite seem to fit the context) will result in anything in the future, since there's so many factors involved. I doubt myself too much sometimes.

15. Change

2006-03-17T23:55:00.000+11:00

I better type this down before I forget... I planned all this on my way back from Xin's house. Every single detail, content, and what not was planned, not to perfection of course, I still have much to learn, but I'm getting there, I hope. Plus IE just decided to die on me, giving me IE is not responding. Now I have to retype the whole thing...

Oh well, let's begin. A few weeks back, I noticed that I was changing, at that time, for the bettter. I was friendlier, cheerful, a bit more outgoing, more talkative. Overall, a bit more sociable. A few weeks passed and this time I've noticed myself changing again too. For the worse. I was becoming to everything opposite I was in the starting times of uni. The desire to be alone was becoming stronger. For example, I went to the lake by myself last Wed. I knew in my mind I shudda invite someone to come along, but no, I went there, sat by the rocks and see black swans swim pass me. Then there's the bus ride today, another perfect example of the lone wolf of me. Xin and her friends were talking in the bus. My name arose a few times in the conversation.

Them : *chatter* Felix *chatter*
Me (mentally) : Well, join them, it's your name.
Them : *Bla bla bla* Felix *Bla bla bla*
Me (mentally) : You mute or something? Open your mouth and do an intro or something.
Me : *Opens mouth...* and.... *Eats wind*
Me (Mentally) : You're a real retard...

Wow, my mind calling myself retard. Okay, I was portraying myself as two entities but those are first thoughts, instantly come to your mind thoughts. Nice isn't it, how your mind sometimes goes against you. Oh well, counting the number of words I've spoken since I've gone up the bus which was a 15 min ride. "hi, hello, bye, hey, yeah, see ya, nice wind". 9 words, kewl, can count with two hands... I'm that bad huh, guess I've gotta do another force change myself for the better.

A while back, I've posted on me having an infatuation on a girl, and how I was trying to forget about the girl? Because of various reasons...? I guess it's kinda hard when I face the person quite often. I seem to be pushing myself emotionally over the limits, not that I have not done it before, just that I did not expect to do it so soon. Truth is, I've only realize this stupid feelings of mine only recently (I call it stupid, and many people call it like/love/suki but currently it's from my perspective, sorry). Therefore that was actually the first time I made it known I harbor such emotions in me. I somehow get this vibe... that she knows that I have feelings for her. And yet, of everyone I know, only one person knows who the girl is. *To that person: Please accept my apologies if I have somehow make it seem like I'm accusing you. I'm not, I trust you with my life.* However, I dun quite like what I'm feeling... that the person knows that I have feelings for her before my task is done.
This 'forget her' task is kinda difficult. Especially when everytime I think about it, and the romance issue, Voon's phrase come to mind.

Voon's post:
Ter, you've got the least experience, yet you give the most advice. Thanks for the help. Also, it's already been 7 years since that incident. Don't look back at the past but look forward to the future. I hope you get better luck at love than Yang or me.

Erm, yeah, actually it comes up to the 'least experience' part only. Kinda painful and sharp and permanently memorable words. Hehz... And I hope just as well that you two get the love you two desire.

Then there's this educational factor! Well, no pressure complains this time. Just that the difficulty of this education increases exponentially. One moment it's easy as hell, can sleep in lecture theatres and what not. Next thing you know, you fee like you're listening to rocket science theories (which of course you're not, most probably what you're listening to is the fella next to you snoring). Today's experiment was hell. I feel like cursing the entire microbe species, we seem to be observing and drawing and measuring them over and over and over and over (yes yes, I plan to major in microbiology and will be seeing more of those, but at least I'll be seeing how to kill them!).

There's actually a fourth article I wanted to write on, but I could not remember it, all thanks to IE not responding, losing all my data and rewriting all over again. But anyway, main thing is, I hope not to return to being a semi-lone wolf..... ever. Too tired to think about the fourth one... when it come to mind, then I'll post it as something else...

14. Silence -> Raining

2006-03-16T16:58:00.000+11:00

Change of blog title... Had 'dry lab' for chem, was something of do calculation like molarity, volume, mass and others. Heard new terms like molality, %(w/w), %(v/w) and others.

Questions hard as hell... hardest final four questions I ever encountered in my chemistry life. And there the person beside me writing away happily... Another brilliant PhB student. Then memory recalled a course friend saying, "It's not too hard, but the final few questions can get a little tricky." A little?!?! Why the hell are all my friends brilliant people?! Not that it's a bad thing, but there's this major transparent ten tonne weight on me.

After completing all the questions (or rather after the demonstrator completed 1/2 of it), I felt like I simply died, leaving an empty shell behind. I'm feeling very very discouraged even now. I feel like I can't obtain the 2nd year scholarship liao... Argh, I'll just go lay by the lake after dinner...

Edit: After the walk to the lake, and a few games of pool, and a few good talks with great friends, my mood has been restored! And thus became serene...

13. Pressure

2006-03-15T21:12:00.000+11:00

I got my first assignment yesterday! Yeah well, it seems odd that I'm sounding pretty happy about it, but actually yeah, I am. I have something to do at last! Kinda pressured when studying with those actuarial people... Their notes all graphs, text, numbers... and whatever else... I dun bother about it, it's not my course. People out there doing econs or business or whatever similar field would surely understand.

And then there's someone who has an average HD doing... some course, I forgot, hehz... Kinda natural I guess, just that I wasn't ready to receive such news yet, and especially not over dinner! Seems like there's Gian Wans and Susans everywhere. 4th week into course and already got such... pressure. And then there's someone doing a somewhat similar field to mine doing PhB, another brilliant student. PhB is a Bachelor of Philosophy or something like that. No idea why is it called that, since it has nothing to do with philosophy... The philosophy of science mebbe. It's like a degree program for the "elites". Someone said that one must score average HD to maintain the degree, or one reverts back to their old program. Can't say it's insane, since so many people are doing it...

Oh, back to the story on my assignment. Got it yesterday and finished it today! With 5 more days to go! Yes, yes, I'm kinda overjoyed when I finished the last question, dunno why but I did.

Lastly, I'm almost sure I can hear people from UK saying how minute the above pressure is, but well, that's you, and this is me, so spare me your complains on pressure difference will ya?

12. Frustration...

2006-03-14T01:07:00.000+11:00

Argh... DotA again... I need to control my urges weh... But this is not the main point of this post...

I seem to be on losing streak, quite a long and satisfying losing streak. Why satisfying one may ask. This is due to the phrase "A man's loss is another man's gain". Yeap, I'm satisfied cuz I'm letting someone else gain from it.

Anyway, I wanna synchronize with all my DotA pals again. I miss having the games where the synchronize were near perfect. I miss having an adrenaline rush when gaming. I miss having a set of reliable and near perfect teammates (not that my current ones are bad, but it's still hard to synchronize to their moves). I miss the days... which is merely 2-3 months ago. But nvm, I shall hold firm and wait till November comes around, then we shall rule again, if I'm accepted again...

11. "I don't know. I don't think anyone in this world knows"

2006-03-13T15:32:00.000+11:00

Well, well, weekend ended and uni resumed. And life continues.

And so I have my Chemistry (which I fell asleep for the umpteenth time) which was quite manageable. And then I have my Bio or Living Cells or whatever the uni like to call it. This subject is quite crappy, I do not understand half of what the lecturer is talking. What with the formation of nerve cells, formation of bones, junctions and whatever crap he's talking (as a sidenote, any help on this subject is very welcomed). My lecturer goes by the name of Peter Janssens so I shall be calling him from here onwards. He's quite kewl, being someone quadraple or quintuple my age. His lectures are not that boring (unlike chem...) cuz he has coloured slides! Like how the books all have coloured pics on them? Yeah he copy and paste them into his slides, innovative eh? Anyway, that's not the prob here. The prob is when he encounters a problem he doesn't know (he specializes in animal cells, yes we're animals too) like... what "programs" the gene to switch on and off at X times or at position Y or when event Z occurs. He gives answers like "I don't really know. I don't think anyone in this world knows for the matter." Well, I applaud his honesty... but when a lecturer starts doing that three or more times in a lecture, you start doubting his capabilities.

Therefore, in the event that in an exam I do not know the answer to the question, it shall be: "I don't really know. I don't think anyone in this world knows for the matter." =)
Oh, and since ANU has such strict rules about plagarism and copying, we must give credit to the person who made the statement, musn't we? So final statement: "I don't really know. I don't think anyone in this world knows for the matter." (Janssens, 13 March 2006)

PS: If anyone who reads this feels offended, please accept my apologies, especially if the lecturer happens to read this somehow.

10. "He doesn't want to love anyone right now"

2006-03-13T15:19:00.000+11:00

Yeap, the title is correct. I do not feel like having someone in my mind right now.

Lemme restart the story. I think I may have an infatuation of some sort on someone (yeah well, no names allowed, I'm sure everyone understands why). But due to my past (I gotten over it already! So dun tell me to put it off!) and my future (work, academic, badminton, badminton and badminton, oh did I mention badminton?) I do not want this feeling to blossom or even develop into the next stage. Maybe I'm afraid of commitment, maybe I just do not want to encounter any negative event as described in Voon's blog or simply maybe I'm a mere coward. Therefore, from this moment on (actually from the time I realized I "may" like someone) I'm gonna kill off this feeling. You can say that I'm not so passionate about this entire romance event...

So, give me some free space of my own so that I can eventually get over this entire affair... hopefully ASAP.

9. Die bacteria, die!!

2006-03-12T20:03:00.000+11:00

This theory may be thought of multiple times and probably tried and failed over and over... It may have even succeeded for all I know, but I still wanna write this down. But I like to think that it still has an opportunity, therefore I say that I have not read through any medical journals or whatever of that sort to bring about this theory. Gun me down whenever you feel like it.

Theory 1:

Medicinal modification. In a way that the bacteria accepts it as a molecule it requires, but once it enters the cell, it proves harmful to the interior metabolism of the cell.

Theory 2:

Modify viruses in such that it can infiltrate only bacterial cells and multiply inside there, therefore killing it. Beforehand, a weakened virus have to be administered to humans so that they may personally be immuned to it. Or such that the virus does not react with human cells.