i'm really really home.
where i belong.

the journey began when i stepped onto the SIA plane.
i was offered a copy of The Straits Times and greeted by singaporean flight stewards.
when the plane landed it felt rather surreal.
i looked out at changi airport in the bright sunshine through the windows- and i knew i was home.

but the great happiness i felt was somewhat dampened by this feeling of uncertainty and excitement- my tripos results were out.
my DOS sent me an email, which i knew would be waiting for me.
so once i entered the terminal i rushed around looking for free internet stations.
after waiting for some time, a computer terminal was finally available.
i logged in and opened the email titled "exam results"
and there it was.
the word i hoped i would see-
First.

thank you Lord.

i just made a first- ie i got a very very low first.
but i'm not complaining- i'm very very grateful.
i got a breakdown of the marks as well- and i got a first for physio. the first time ever.
that is definitely not by my own strength, but through His.
in fact getting through this tripos has only been possible through His grace.
its amazing.



after checking my email i went to the arrival hall and bought a bottle of baileys.
then i went to collect my luggage.
and that is in the fish tank place where ppl outside can look in through glass windows.
and i saw my daddy!
so happy :)
then i got my luggage and pushed it out.
and i saw my mummy!
then i hugged my mummy. and daddy. at last.

and we went to eat at the changi staff canteen.
char kuay teow
mee pok
soya bean milk
yay :)

yum :)




didn't blog much before i flew to austria cos i was too busy.
performed at Christ's May Ball on 20 june.
we didn't get to stay to enjoy the ball after that but we got free drinks, pop corn, candy floss and 2 bottles of champagne. and we were paid.
so it was all good fun- we did a demo, followed by a short class and social dancing.
taught some msians how to salsa so it was fun.

there was this caucasian girl who asked me to teach her. but it was the last song of our performance slot.
so i just taught her the basic step then danced with her. i'm not a good leader at all cos i only know some basic moves, but she really enjoyed the dance. at the end of it all she told me "i've always wanted to dance, but i never really got the chance to. thank you so much" then she kissed my hand. i was quite surprised, but v touched too.

me and yijin! i taught him how to salsa haha. thats the team costume this year.

the next night, 21 june, was the night of the Sidney Sussex May Ball
3 couples from the team performed there, and instead of being paid, we got free tix to the ball! so we got to enjoy the ball before and after our performance slot.
may balls are black tie events so everyone was really dressed up. i felt quite out of place cos i wasn't wearing a ball gown but too bad :)

salsa girls!

me with the guys

random scottish guy i saw. i thought that his outfit was really interesting so i had to take a photo! no idea who he is haha.

mark and i at the chocolate fountain! there was a milk chocolate fountain and a white chocolate fountain. v good :)

we entered the ball at about 9 pm, and left at 6am.
and i went back to my room and slept till 9 am.
packed my room up into suitcases and boxes till noon, when yijin and yifan arrived to help me carry stuff. but since i wasn't done packing they helped me to pack.
they were fantastic la. i managed to finish packing up everything by 1 pm with their help.
thanks guys :)

then i took a taxi to darwin college to store some suitcases, then went to the bus station to catch a coach to stansted airport.
from stansted airport, 5 of us flew to Austria.

so i have been very busy.
will blog about the austrian trip!
soon.
*yawn*

i'm off to austria for a week.
seeya!

its half time now in the england vs sweden match.
according to my little football-crazy cousin, england doesn't need to win this match cos they are already in.
but i decided that i cannot miss the last england match that i can watch in england this world cup.
so i went to the college bar with some of my friends to watch the match.
unfortunately owen got seriously injured within the first few minutes, so some other guy took his place.
i've come to one conclusion after watching the match- there is seriously no eye candy in the england team. or the sweden team, for that matter.
no wonder everyone is so crazy about beckam. he is the best of the lot. apart from owen, that is.
well then.
it was interesting watching in football in the college bar cos they set up this big screen and everyone arranged rows of chairs in front of the screen to watch.
i had a shot of baileys (secondary motive for going to the bar) while most of the other ppl around me had beer (boo).
the goal keeper was robinson- my college! haha
there were lots of sound effects.
everytime someone took a shot at the goal (eg lampard, who missed it dunno how many times) and missed, the whole bar will go "oOOOoo"
and when there was a good save, some of the guys in the front row would applause.
and when joe cole scored that first goal, there was a standing ovation and lots of noise.
quite cool.
cos everyone supported the same team.
to support the other team would be rather lethal.

decided not to stay for the second half.
cos i need to prepare to go for a May Ball.
yay.

before my tripos i discovered this relatively new group of singers.
not quite a boy band cos they can actually sing.
and very well indeed.
cos they sing "opera pop"
ie they are opera singers-turned-pop stars.
another one of simon cowell's creations.
and it works.
i quote a friend- "beautiful men with beautiful voices"
cool stuff :)

i've lost it.
lost my salsa oomph.
i used to have this chemistry with some of the guys here.
when we danced salsa or bachata it was amazing- we really could communicate without words.
that was before the exams.

and then somehow something happened during the tripos.
i didn't dance for more than 3 weeks.
and when i returned again, i stumbled a bit, but i could follow their leads reasonably well.
but that chemistry was gone.
dancing became mechanical.
it wasn't fun anymore.

then i went to SOS on sunday.
that helped to lift my out of the lull a bit.

today i returned to club salsa for the last time this term.
i danced with some guys i really enjoyed dancing with in the past.
its still nice dancing with them, but the mojo is gone.
there is no more connection, no more chemistry- we just go through the moves.
(especially hammalocks. i have no idea why all the guys lead hammalocks when dancing with me. it is annoying cos it gets boring.)

so its sad.
haiz.
so i'm generally in this salsa slump.
no energy.
no motivation.
no chemistry.
hopefully when i go back to xenbar in s'pore things will improve for me.

this afternoon i was faced with a tough question.
should i stay in cambridge at perform at the Emmanuel college may ball?
or should i go to SOS in london to salsa?
both were occuring at night, and both were salsa.
the only difference is that i had agreed to go to london with a friend a few days ago, whereas i had just received news of the mayball this afternoon.
so i decided not to pang seh my friend and go to london to salsa.

my friend is actually a korean scientist who did his phd in MIT and is now doing his post-doc here.
i didn't know he was so zai lah.
he is working on Xenopus!
haha.
so part of the car ride to london was spent discussing publishing papers and cloning embryos.
interesting stuff.
and of course we also discussed techniques in salsa, and listened to salsa music.

we went to SOS in london.
when i first stepped into the place i was awe struck.
everyone was really good!
my first dance was with my fren and he was like "you seem quite nervous"
which was true cos i felt quite stressed.
like everyone was so good i had to keep up and couldn't mess up.
then i stood around cos no one asked me to dance.
(so sad right)

then i danced with some guy, and that was alright.
and then this tall muscular black guy asked me to dance.
i watched him dance with another girl before, and they were both fantastic.
so i was a bit stressed.
in the end it was great fun!
we did dips, slide-through (like the one at xenbar!), some strange move which i didn't get (he said "lie back!", so i really just lay back and he sort of dragged me along the floor backwards on my heels. sounds strange but it worked quite well. fun!)
and a flip.
i almost screamed la.
like he picked me up, turned me upside down, then put me down. the right way up.
i was traumatized.
BUT i managed to land properly so it was alright.
and then when the song ended we continued dancing.
and he tried more of those strange dips and such.
quite fun ah.
haha.
and ppl were watching so after we finished more ppl asked me to dance.
so i didn't have to stand around looking lonely.

on the whole it was fun la.
yay.
i'm glad i went there instead of performing at the mayball.

my only gripe is that the ppl there like to shine.
a lot.
and since i only know like a few shines it was so embarrassing.
in the end i had to make up shines on the spot.
eek!
sth like "basic step, simple turn, suzi q, hip rotation"
permutation and combination of the above.
so jia lat.
:S

ok now dear mr song has just informed me that Al "liquid silver" will be performing at sentosa.
and there will be a salsa competition there too.
when i'm in austria.
boo :(

ee mae, darryl and i went to london yesterday.
did something i've put off doing for a long time- we took a photo at platform 9 3/4 at king's cross station.

had lunch, then went shopping.
went to Harrods to buy krispy kreme doughnuts, then went for dinner
(note all the food- cam ppl go down to london primarily to eat)
then we went to watch a musical.

Les Miserables!

a classic.
was good- the singers were brilliant.
the plot was quite complicated though.
so i didn't really get it at first.

if i had to rank the musicals i've watched so far, i would say:

1. Phantom of the Opera
2. Woman in White/ Chicago (can't decide which one i like more!)
3. Blood Brothers
4. Les Miserables

but of course this is just my opinion.
i like woman in white for the songs, plot and suspense, but i like chicago for the fantastic dancing.
blood brothers is sad and the narrator was scary, so that was a minus point.
les miserables was rather deep, but i liked some of the songs.

5 musicals so far
and more to come.
quite expensive, but really good :)
les mis was 47 pounds but we got discount tix at 27 pounds.
but thats still ex.
so we'll probably watch one a term or sth.

cumsa garden party cum seniors farewell today.
tried Pimms for the first time.
didn't taste like much.

then went to starbucks to chill until dinner.
that was fun.
we just sat around drinking frappacinos and talking rubbish.
so what do cambridge ppl talk about?
not politics.
we discussed feminism, musicals, conductivity of metals, traveling, and other random stuff.

then we went to watch a sort of musical thing put up by a cambridge society.
a theatre society.
they sang songs from various musicals, and some of the singers were pretty good, so it was enjoyable.

i'm procrastinating.
again.
i should be packing up my room and practicing for a performance, but i'm not.
bah.
just feel like slacking.
*yawn*

in a previous post i concluded that regular clubbing is rubbish (unless there is good company and music)
and salsa clubbing is fantastic.
but what if the salsa team goes to a regular club?
that was what we did last night.
it was international night at fez so they claimed that they were playing "rai, dance, reggaeton, RnB, salsa"
they played a grand total of 3 salsa songs.
and maybe 3 reggaeton.
and the rest was RnB, with a bit of indian music and flamenco music in between.
it was fun clubbing with the team cos everyone could dance well, and were willing to dance.
but it got a bit boring after a while cos there was no salsa music.
so we started to salsa to any song they played whose beat we could catch.
it was alright i guess.
but we all agreed that club salsa was the way to go.


today has been a great day.
went for a CF committee meeting in the morning, then went for lunch and went shopping for a bit after that.
feels good not to have to worry abt supervisions and such.

and then i went back to my room to watch pirates of the caribbean.
(yes i know i'm slow)
and i've confirmed once again that jonney depp is my favourite actor.
that the conclusion i came to after watching Chocolate.
reinforced in Charlie And The Chocolate Factory.
orlando bloom doesn't even come close.
he only looks good in a rebonded white wig as legolas in LOTR.
don't see what the hype is all about.
johnny depp plays all the strange roles- and very well too.
thats why i like watching his movies.
not cos he is hot.
and cute.


ok enough of that.
i sound like some frivalous teenager.
well well.
too bad.
:)

and so it has happened.
one of the saddest farewells ever, yet with minimal shedding of tears cos we refused to cry.
and i guess the knowledge that we will meet again helped.
and, as someone said, we will all be together again- in heaven, where there will be no more tears and it will be for eternity.

i'll probably never see david again - unless he visits singapore, or comes back to visit cambridge.
will be going to austria with ls, so i'll still get to see him for a bit longer.
probably won't see kelvin for the next year or so cos he'll be in the US.
might see charles during the cf renuion in august.
will probably see daniel in bio polis land
won't get to see ben till he can book out of ns.
will see sl one last time to pass him sth.

used to be able to see them at cf every week.
i took that for granted i guess.
took it for granted that they will always be there when i go for cf on monday at HMH.
it will be so different next year.
as if something is missing, if they're all not there.
but we all must move on.

each of the seniors has taught me something valuable, and their faith and knowledge of the bible have encouraged and challenged me tremendously.
i thank God for putting them in my life- they have been such a blessing.


had a formal at robinson last night.
the only group photo i've got is blurry :s


well then.
so that's that.
post tripos is full of farewells and that has dampened the happy mood quite a bit.
and there is so much to do, there is no time to just slow down and breathe.
so today has been set aside for resting.
yay.

chem was, in a word, bad.
but then again everyone thought it was bad.
so i guess its ok.
i could do the whole of the first question perfectly.
and then it went downhill from there.
the paper was insanely difficult.
so much so that the guy sitting beside me just gave up and sat there, writing a bit occasionally and looking around.
oh well.
somehow i think that if i didn't study i might still have been able to do the paper.
cos nothing i studied came out.
boo.

but
its all over now.
i thank God for helping me through these months.
yes its been months.
the whole of cambridge has been mugging for this exam since the start of the easter hols.. which were in like.. march?
its been way too long.
now I'M FREE.
i can go back to the real world now.



and i'm going home soon!
to veek and joses and everyone else:

i'll be flying from Heathrow on the 29th of June at noon.
i'll arrive in S'pore at about 8 am on the 30th of June.
and if my parents allow, i'll down to xenbar on 1 july.
whee~


looking forward to seeing all of u.
YAY
can't wait to go back to church in s'pore
and go to orchard- where i can find clothes that fit.
and of course the food.
and most importantly- the PEOPLE i love!
oh my
soon soon.
exciting.

agnes is dreading tmr.
she used to be looking forward to 12 june cos thats the day of her last paper.

but now she is dreading it.
because 12 june is also the day of the CF's senior's farewell.
she loves the seniors very much indeed.
and she hates goodbyes.

but, she takes comfort in the email that she received from a senior:
"aiya don't be afraid of goodbyes. they won't be forever. and anyway cf/cambridge was never supposed to be our final destination, just a stop along the way."

that helps
but she is still not looking forward to tmr.
at all.

cells written prac today.
something is wrong with me.
i can't seem to read the time properly and understand what i'm seeing.
the paper was from 9am-12.
i planned to do the first half until 1050 am, then move on to the second half.
there were 9 questions in the first half and 1 ultralong question in the second.
by 930 am i had completed 2 questions.
but when i saw that it was 930 i panicked and somehow my brain thought that it was 1030, and that i only had 20 mins to finish the rest of the first section.
so i rushed through the rest of the first section until question 7 by 10 am.
upon which i realised that i had 50 mins left to do 2 questions in the first section.
which was just about enough cos we had to draw some embryos and i just couldn't draw 8 cells together in a convinving embryo-like fashion.
so i wasted some time there.
then i went on to the second section and just managed to complete it in time.
really thank God for that.

made one gigantic stoopid mistake though.
i'm so so blur.
i drew a series of 2 Xenopus and 2 Drosophila embryos.....
and labelled the page as Xenopus.
when we were supposed to draw 4 embryos from the same organism.
nooooooooooooo
and gave a Xenopus mutation at the end of it.
jia lat.
boohoo.

but its alright
its over and i'm happy that i completed the whole thing in time even though i couldn't comprehend the clock.
yup
so i thank God for that.


and after the paper tianyi, ivan and i decided that we didn't want to study so we bought sandwiches and went to king's college backs to picnic.
and bask in the sun.
and put the p53 proteins in our skin cells to work.

then we went to clare college gardens. and walked on the grass. the carefully manicured grass. so nice :)

then we went to John's.

can't believe we were acting touristy in the middle of our exams.
haha.
but we were really quite sian of studying.

on tuesday after my cells paper i went back to college.
and i saw this flower pot:

and of course like 3 flowers stood out incredibly.
once i saw those stripy purple and white flowers, the first thought that popped into my head was:
whoa the pigmentation pattern is so strange.
and then:
i wonder how the gene for expression of pigments is controlled during development to give rise to such a pattern. how do the alleles interact?
and lastly:
the flowers are mutated la.

and i realised that i was mad.
too much biology.

just now i mentioned this incident to tianyi and she said "do a backcross and see the progeny"
that would be quite cool haha.
and then we decided that bio was infiltrating our lives.

on wednesday after physio i visited the stripy flowers again.
and they were sort of wilted.
immediately i thought:
oh its about noon.. so excessive water loss must have resulted in a loss of turgor pressure and hence this flaccid looking flower.

this proves one thing:
the exams are destroying my brain
argh.

and so QB is over.
and out of my life forever and ever.
i wish.
bio statistics will remain a big part of my career.
but maybe there won't be any of that for next year's course.
but at least there will be no more of that rubbish differential equations blah blah anymore. yay.

feeling quite off now.
QB didn't go that fanastically well.
for one i didn't get enough sleep last night.
not cos i was mugging, but cos i just couldn't sleep.
just lay there on the bed for like 2 hours without falling asleep.
so i just felt quite horrible when i started doing the paper this morning.
couldn't really think properly.
and since its a math paper, this translates to careless mistakes.
and i spent half an hour on a question that was supposed to be done in 15 minutes cos i screwed up the first part and had to redo.
and that snowballed to the other parts.
really thank God that i still managed to finish the whole paper in time.
there was a fantastic question that was supposed to be done in 30 minutes but i managed to complete in 20 mins so that helped a lot.

argh
its QB
its supposed to be easy.
but i just couldn't do it.
i could do all most all of the questions, but i'm just not confident that they are correct.
cos they didn't look very correct to me.
argh.
why.
:(

i know that i will all work out in the end somehow.
i just need to trust.

oh man.
at 5 pm i went to my balcony again
and then i saw Prince Charles leave the building.
he stood around talking to some people, then he continued walking.
and this lady came hurried up to him and said something to him and pointed towards my balcony.
then he turned towards my general direction and waved.
i was stunned.
then i waved back.
and then he left.
i looked around and realised that only one other balcony was occupied- there was some guy in the balcony beside mine watching too.
so that means that the prince was waving to the both of us!
how cool is that.
hehe :)

On Tuesday everyone in my college received an email:

From the Senior Tutor

The Prince of Wales will be visiting the College tomorrow afternoon,Wednesday 7 June, to participate in an Education Summer School beingheld here. He will arrive after lunch and leave around 5.00 p m. This is a private visit to the Summer School, not a public visit to the College.You need to be aware of this visit because the security measures thatwill be in place will affect all of us, although the visit has beenorganised so as to minimise impact on all who live and work here.

etc etc how exciting! Prince Charles coming to Robinson.
whee. i really wanted to see him but i had no idea where he would enter the college from. in the end i looked out of my balcony and behold! there were ppl in the gardens waiting his arrival- the press, policemen, and other random ppl. so i went to another balcony closer to the gardens for a better view. and after waiting for like 20 mins we finally got the see the Prince. yay!

on a separate note,
sat for Cells paper 1 yesterday.
used up 1 cm of ink.
wrote non-stop for 3 hours.ouch.
15 short answer questions in 1 hour and 3 essays in 2 hours.
and the short ans questions aren't exactly very short either.
"describe cyclic electron flow in chloroplasts"
"what are the main differences between mitosis and meiosis"
in the past such questions could have consituted half an essay questionand we have to do each short ans question in 4 mins.
whee.
i'm just glad its over.

today i sat for physio.
the 77 mcqs and 2 essays in 3 hours.
the mcqs started off alright.
cos it was animal physio.
then the questions moved on the plant physio and became not so alright anymore.
then they moved on to integrative animal physio (including questions on how birds fly) and then thats it liao.
and of course there were the practical mcq questions including one about modeling the cell membrance using an electric circuit (complete with resistors and capacitors). (*&^%.
and i thought i left physics behind when i left hc.
next time when ppl ask me "what is physiology" i'm going to say "physics"

anwthat was the most difficult mcq paper i've sat for in my life.
at least one that i've spent a lot of time studying for.
there was the sbo mcq round, which doesn't count cos i didn't really know wat was going on. and the bio med quiz mcq, which doesn't count either cos it was like extra curricular.

today's mcq was part of my course and it was incredibly difficult.
even yf and hk think its difficult.
therefore it must be difficult.
and the essays.
were so wafflely.i haven't written such wafflely bio essays in a long long time.
"water loss is an inevitable consequence of gaseous exchange across the stomata and can only be reduced, but not totally eliminated.. "etc etc.
anyone can write that la.
there were few solid facts in my essays.
so much so that i was compelled to just chuck in one paragraph of facts to show that i actually know sth.
but then i shouldn't complain cos i couldn't remember that many things to begin with anw.

well well.
as it is i thank God for leading me through these 2 days.
haven't been easy at all.
3 more papers to go!

so today is a significant day.
i saw prince charles,
and more importantly,
physiology is out of my life.
forever. i think.

no idea why i can't stand it so much.
i used to really like physio.actually i still do, cos i think its incredibly interesting.
i was mugging osmoregulation in animals last night, and i was really enjoying it cos its so cool- i love the 2 pages of drawings of telost fish, a shark, turtle, whale and bird, describing how these animals osmoregulate in aquatic environments.
i just found it so fascinating.
there are really clever mechanisms!
but my love for physio has been dampened by this thing called physics.
it was infiltrated physio and made it unbearable.
therefore i'm glad that there is no more of that ever.whee.

one more day to the Tripos.
first exam in cam.
shouldn't be new right.
cos i've been taking cambridge exams all my life.
sort of.
like in sec 4 and j2.
argh.

quite scared.
there is so much to remember- and i can't.
my cells file is 4 cm thick
physio is abt the same... or maybe even thicker.
and then there is QB.. and chem.
haiz.
but scared... so what.
what would that do.
nothing.
just pray.
and depend on His strength.



on a separate note:
i received a bday present last sunday.
i and i know the exact value of the present cos its a 2 pound coin.
a 2 pound coin with the structure of DNA engraved on it, that is.
something i've been looking for since i found out abt its existance.
and now i have it at last.
yay! :)